Quick note – hi everyone! I’ve started a Substack. It will be the same content that you see here and I will still be updating this blog (did I just refer to my own writing as content? UGH), but I’m looking to connect with more people on other platforms. If you’re on Substack, let me know so I can follow you there 🙂

I recently worked on a two-week field project in New Jersey that was just a short train from NYC. On Friday night after work, I stepped out of Penn Station, feeling giddy about being back in the city but not wanting to wear it on my face. The last time I was in NYC, I was able to see Occupy Wall Street in person. It had been a minute.

I was supposed to have dinner that night with an old friend, an actor. I had a couple of hours to kill while he was in rehearsal, so I decided to visit the Empire State Building for the first time, which is just a short walk from Penn Station.

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I just want to preface what I’m about to say next with this – I’ve accumulated a decent amount of life experience in my 41 years. I’ve done a fair amount of travel and general touristy things.

And yet I, Jennifer Stark, of sound mind and body and in the year of our Lord 2025, thought I could just waltz into the Empire State Building and casually hop on an elevator to see the top. Without paying anything. Such naivete. I was so young and innocent back then.

The first challenge was finding the entrance to damn thing.

I walked into several entrances, only to find out that the real entrance was on a different street. “The entrance is three doors down,” a security guard told me, clearly having repeated this same instruction 3,910 times today.

I still couldn’t discern an obvious entrance three doors down. But I entered the third door and wandered around, finding myself facing the same security guard.

“What are you doing here?” he asked incredulously in a thick New York accent. “The entrance is three doors down.”

It was actually four doors down, sir, but MINOR DETAILS.

I was surprised to see a line outside of the real entrance. I watched attendants scanning tickets on tourists’ phones. “Hmm,” I thought, my brain synapses slowly revving. “I guess this isn’t going to be free.”

I walked to the back of the roped entrance to purchase a ticket from my phone. I scrolled down the menu of ticket options while standing next to a brighly lit pedicab, the kind that is contractually obligated to play Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind.”

SEVENTY DOLLARS. It cost seventy dollars for a ticket that wouldn’t even get me to the top. Getting to the 102nd floor would cost even more money. Plebeians like me could only get access up to the 86th floor. I purchased the cheaper ticket for a 7:30 entrance, swallowing my burgeoning regret.

I walked up to the entrance. “Ticket?” the attendant asked. “I have one for 7:30,” I said, pulling out my phone. It was 7:15 and I hoped that the entrance times weren’t strictly enforced, because I didn’t want to wait another 15 minutes standing outside to think about my life choices. But the attendant smiled and waved me inside.

An escalator took me up to the second floor. A very happy employee was taking photos of tourists, the kind where you stand in front of a backdrop and are photoshopped in front of whatever destination you’re at later for purchase. I cannot resist these.

After taking the photo, I walked through an exhibit on the history of the Empire State Building and its significance in pop culture.

The exhibit ended in a hallway of elevators. “Going up?” an attendant asked. I walked into an elevator, our destination the 80th floor. A group of Italian tourists in their fifties and sixties followed me inside. I listened quietly as they chattered in a language that I have known since childhood but cannot speak. I tried to think of something I could say to them, but the doors opened before my brain could cobble together anything to say in my Level A Italian.

We all filed out of the elevator into an observatory that offered panoramic views of the city. Tourists were peering out of tall windows, taking photos and selfies. I walked up to the nearest empty window I could find, looking outside at the city.

I don’t know if these views were worth $70, but they were beautiful nonetheless. “You are experiencing something,” my brain reminded me. “Take it in and shut up for a moment.”

The most popular windows had the One World Trade Center directly in the background.

I had to wait awhile for this view. There was a family in front of it, which is fine, because I’m sure this was a several hundred dollar endeavor for them to get into and they should get their money’s worth. HOWEVER. They were parked in front of the window, chatting casually, not really looking out the window at all. This is not a cafe. Get the fuck out of the way.

And here is where you learn that when I’m in a big city, I feel like I have permission to be more rude and not unfailingly polite, which is my default, which is terrible because I AM PERPETUATING THE PROBLEM. But now we know a little more about each other.

“Excuse me,” I said impatiently, weaving my way through the family so I could look outside. I did say excuse me! I’m not a heathen.

After I walked through the observatory, I had to stand in a long line for another elevator. I thought this was the elevator down to the ground floor. This was actually to the 86th floor, which I almost missed, because I saw kiosks where you can purchase photos. I hopped out of line and looped around to the kiosks. It wasn’t a direct path, so this should have been my cue that the exhibit wasn’t complete yet.

I selected the digital photos option, and froze when I saw the price on the screen. THIRTY-FIVE DOLLARS? I was about to pay $35 for a photo of me photoshopped in front of the Empire State Building? “I…need to go back and see what other options there are,” I stammered to the employee. “How much are the other options?”

“The prices are listed right below the options,” the employee said in a bored tone.

I wanted to tell him that I’d had a long day of work and, despite all the strong evidence suggesting otherwise, I did have reading comprehension skills, but I stayed quiet. Instead, I spent an inordinate amount of time deciding whether I wanted to pay an extra $5 for both digital AND physical copies. I’m sure the employee wanted to murder me by this point.

“I’ll just get the digital copies,” I said, selecting my original option.

As I walked away, I realized that I had spent over $100 already. I was filled with regret over my purchase until I downloaded them later. It was a set of 16 photos, many of them with me photoshopped in front of the Empire State Building or the New York skyline in ways defying gravity and basic laws of nature. I’d also like for us to take a second to acknowledge that I decided my water bottle needed to make a very special cameo in all these photos.

But they increasingly got more unhinged. Like this.

Or, my favorite:

IT’S AN ARMY OF ME IN TIMES SQUARE. This is so dumb and yet once I saw the photos, any regret I felt at shelling out $35 over photoshopped digital photos evaporated. (Insert dark joke about late-stage capitalism here).

Somehow, I figured out that there is an 86th floor. I had to loop all the way back around the 80th floor observatory and stand in the elevator line I was originally in, except it was longer this time.

When I finally reached the top, I was delighted that it was outside. I think this was the first time I considered that maybe my experience was partially worth the ticket price. A couple got engaged right as I walked by them. I could hear cheers as I looked down at the city, the buildings looking like Lego blocks.

The views from the top were admittedly impressive.

Sunset was hitting NYC, and a huge crowd had gathered at one end of the observatory deck to take photos. I had little interest in dealing with that many people, so I thought, “Screw this” and took the elevator back down to the 80th floor. I snapped one more photo before leaving.

I suppose this essay didn’t really have a point. Someone in my MFA program once described writing essays as, “What’s it about? And what’s it about?” I dropped out of my program before I could fully learn how to make that ~ underlying point~ cohesive with the rest of my essay. YAY. WELCOME TO MY SUBSTACK! But if I had to throw a pat summary at you, I’d say this – you can enjoy leaning into something touristy, even if it’s overpriced.

Like.

Way overpriced.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.