How To Have A Fun Saturday Night In New York City

Concrete jungle where dreams are made of

1. To ensure that you have the maximum amount of energy going into the night, get no more than five hours of hollow, inebriated sleep on Friday, eat an offensive fast food concoction for lunch, and pregame by watching the Republican debate alone. Then take a few swigs of Monster immediately before leaving your house.

2. Do not learn the name or location of the place where you are going. Rather, assume other people know this information. This will probably work out well.

3. Get on the downtown 1 train at 110th St around 11:30 PM. Once you reach 96th St, switch to the 2/3 express train in order to get downtown faster.

4. Actually, guys, it says the next express train isn't coming for 19 minutes. So maybe we should just stay on the 1 train? Guys?

5. Spend 19 minutes in the 96th St station pacing.

6. Take the 2 train to 14th St. When the conductor announces that this train will be making local stops between 34th St and 14th St, further invalidating your decision to wait for the 2 train instead of staying on the 1, pretend you don't hear him.

7. Transfer to the F train at 14th St. While waiting for the F train to arrive, make a hubristic comment about New York having the best public transportation system in the country that will probably not come back to bite you in the ass later in the night.

8. Board the F train. Intend on taking it to Delancey St until you hear the conductor announce something about the F train making stops on the C line after West 4th St that you still don't fully understand.

9. Get off at Canal St because why not.

10. Despite not really knowing where you are or where you're trying to go, stubbornly refuse to take a cab because you're a grad student, damn it, and such luxuries will have to wait until you're making more than negative five figures a year.

11. Bid a cheerful farewell to your friends who decide to take a cab. Smugly congratulate yourself and your remaining friends on your frugalness. This also will probably not come back to bite you in the ass later in the night.

12. Decide against walking to the club because doing so would take almost 20 minutes. Attempt to find the J train and take that to Delancey St instead.

13. No, that's the 1 train.

14. That's the ACE train.

15. That's the 1 train again.

16. Shit.

17. Wait, wait! Here it is! We found it! Nice work everyone! And it only took, like, 20 minutes! Things are finally looking up!

18. Take the J train one stop from Canal St to Chambers St, after which it will stop. Do not realize you took the train in the wrong direction until the next day when you are attempting to write a blog post about your night.

19. Get off at Chambers St. Establish that you are now farther away from the club than you were before getting on the J train.

20. Hold on, is it seriously after 1 AM right now? So we've been trying to get to this place for, like, an hour and a half?

21. You know it takes me an hour and a half to get from the city to my house, right? My house in Connecticut?

22. Call your friends who took a cab to see how the club is.

23. You're still waiting in line? Wait, there's a line to get into this place? And a $10 cover? Seriously?

24. Decide not to go.

25. Decide to go.

26. Try to catch a cab. Fail.

27. Decide not to go.

28. Take the 2 train back to 96th St. Experience a brief sense of relief that you at least managed to catch an express train home before realizing that it is making all local stops.

29. Order mozzarella sticks at the Seinfeld restaurant while discussing the Republican debate you were all watching earlier and attempting to convince yourself that none of the girls at that club would've talked to you anyway.

30. Go home. Watch an episode of Party Down before going to bed.

31. Realize any night that ended with you and some good friends eating together at 2 AM really couldn't have been that bad.

32. Apologize for the cheesy ending. Rectify it by acknowledging that it was cheesy in a snarky, self-aware fashion.