When ultra famous DJ Hardwell announced his Rebels Never Die world tour I instantly bought tickets for my brother and I. On the 2nd weekend of September I went to go see him at the UBS arena. I managed to make an awesome trip out of it by seeing other things along the way. Here is the story! Sorry, I kind of got carried away writing this although WordPress says that this will only take 22 minutes to read. Heh
The Train
There are a few ways to get to New York City from Boston:
- Take a train ($50 – 200, takes around 4 hours)
- Fly (generally $150 – 300, takes roughly 3 hours if you don’t have TSA pre-check)
- Drive (maybe $50 for gas + $15 for tolls, about 4 hours unless you hit the infamous NYC rush hour traffic, and you need a car)
I would drive, but I left my car in New Mexico so I took the Acela train instead. It is one of the only high speed trains in the USA. (I’m not 100% on this since there are a lot of “upcoming projects” such as a high speed maglev from DC to NYC or Elon Musks east coast to west coast rocket train. Anyways, the Acela is real so that’s what I went with.
On the train you can choose from 3 classes: First, Business, and Coach. In my opinion the only difference between first and business is usually clothing and “more leg room” (the only way to tell is with a tape measure). The 4 hours took forever since the only thing to look at was trees and houses. Ahead of schedule at roughly 4:50pm I got to NYC.
One thing to note about Moynihan Train Hall is that it’s MASSIVE. South Station in Boston is tiny in comparison. Once I stepped off the train I quickly realized I was lost. There were 3 ish levels of tracks and once at the main hall level I tried to follow Philip’s ‘simple’ directions:
Take the N/Q downtown to 14th and the L to Brooklyn!
Philip after rolling his eyes
The only problem was I looked like a total fool trying to find the N/Q train. It simply didn’t exist. Instead I walked about a mile underground, took the L train to 14 then to Brooklyn from there. Also, sorry I forgot to take pictures until the 2nd day. Eventually I arrived. The subway from downtown to Philip’s house takes a rather long time. For dinner we went to Shake Shack in Williamsburg.
Day To Myself
It would’ve been cool to tour the city with Philip, but he has work on Friday so off I went alone. I was headed to New Jersey at 7am. You see, I mistakenly bought the Ellis Island ferry tickets out of Jersey City instead of Battery Park a few nights before and with no way to cancel / refund / change them I decided to just go that way. In reality it is not that difficult to travel from Brooklyn to Jersey City. I took the L train to 14th street, then the PATH train under the Hudson River to Grove St, and then an Uber to the ferry dock. Took about an hour overall.
Right behind it used to be the Central Railroad of New Jersey (Terminal building). The tracks and platforms are abandoned now, but the interior is in relatively good condition with a bunch of history displays. Since I didn’t have much time to explore…I skipped it.
The ferry ride out to Ellis Island was great! On a good day you get a fantastic view of the Manhattan skyline. The Statue of Liberty looks pretty small from the boat in my opinion, especially coming from the NJ side. My ticket said to be there at 9am, but when I got there I learned the actual tour I was on didn’t start until 11am. Sooooo what the heck do I do for 2 hours?? Turns out there is a really cool audio tour that takes the perfect amount of time to complete if you listen to every audio recording. I started out on level 2.
The Great Hall (aka Registry Room) was the first stop. A person’s paperwork was processed here and could take anywhere from 3 – 5 hours to complete. During intake a doctor would briefly inspect each person for sickness. The next few stops on the audio tour went through a bunch of differently themed rooms. A person would go through a series of tests ranging from mental health status, whether or not someone was coming to work legally, where they were coming from…etc. The doctors were top class and employed a dreaded chalk marking system to divide up people’s illnesses.
Going back to the legality of an immigrant for a second, I’m talking about whether they were coming under contract or not. If you were contracted out of another country, that was illegal and you would be sent back. Also if you had a contagious disease then a doctor could send you back. You were allowed a bunch of witnesses, which could be friends or family, to help convince the judges. It wasn’t really like todays traditional prosecution / defense, more like “haha convince me to let you stay or goodbye forever”. Despite all the risk of entry, nearly everyone who came made it through. 🙂
Finally at 11am the Hardhat Tour started! We all got hardhats and proceeded into the prohibited side of Ellis Island: the hospital. It’s been abandoned so long that it is really dangerous to walk around in without a guide. It would suck to fall through the floor on your trip wouldn’t it?
There are a ton of rooms to walk through on the first floor. They are all pretty devoid of life, but the tour guide made things interesting. His grandfather actually entered into America through the Ellis Island immigration system so there were plenty of unique stories to tell.
This was the best hospital in the country at the time and boasted a bunch of never before seen stuff such as the caged in porch where patients could get fresh air. There was also a window in nearly every room to allow light and fresh air inside. There were electric lights, but nothing extravagant so even with a few bulbs in the room it was still pretty dark by todays standards.
This was kind of a big problem in the surgery room. They lined this ground floor room with reflective tiles to try to improve the situation, but most of the time no one would operate at night since visibility was just too poor. Would you rather risk waiting until daylight or have a sketchy night time surgery?
On the plus side, there were these really cool operation towers where the ceiling was basically glass windows! (More light). Unfortunately since the tour was only on the ground floor I didn’t get to see them.
Another strange feature in the hospital was the tiny sink on the wall. I personally haven’t ever visited a hospital room for a long time and never overnight so I don’t really know if these are still common now. They were intended as spittoon type sinks. Next to the tiny sink was a regular sized one for hand washing and such. Along the tour I also got to see the laundry room! This had a giant autoclave to purge entire mattresses. There was also an incinerator because this was around the time all doctors started agreeing that reusing bandages was gross. There were also of course a bunch of giant washing machines.
Further down the long hallway was the kitchen, or one of them at least. The room was really small compared to Philmont’s. Lets assume with the 750 hospital beds + doctors / staff there was maybe 850 people to feed. Philmont’s kitchen is probably 3-4x the size and feeds maybe 1100 a meal during the summer peak. Since I work in the Philmont kitchen I feel like I’m qualified to judge the kitchen size.
I sort of sped through the tour to save you from a novel, but the tour was totally worth the price and I’d highly recommend. On the way back I caught a glimpse of The Edge skyscraper. This was one of the highlights of the weekend, but more on that later. It wasn’t long until I made it back to the mainland and the next thing to do was the Federal Hall building.
I was planning to come here when my family came for Christmas in 2021, but it was closed for Covid. It is located on Wall Street and I honestly thought there would be guys with shotguns in front of the stock exchange building, but there was just a bunch of people in suits and car barriers in the street. I sort of just went here to get the passport stamp, but I did walk around and read all the history stations. It was more quiet than a library in there.
After a quick stop at Federal Hall I wasn’t really sure what to do. I’m great at planning for what to do in the rural country, but I’m relatively new at city planning. The plan was to just walk around and see what was up on the streets. (Essentially walk around with no plan until something interesting happens) Something this bold was frankly a bit nerve-racking, but my one of my friends suggested it so I was determined to try it out. I was pleasantly surprised with the results. I located a gelato shop and got a lemon sobet before walking around Little Italy. They were having an annual food festival and I had just happened upon it. At this point in the day I was getting pretty tired so I headed back to Brooklyn to meet up with Philip again before we both headed to dinner.
Dinner was waaaaay on the other side of town. My Mom, a bunch of her friends, Philip, and I were going to celebrate her birthday a few days in advance. First up was a few drinks at the Frying Pan on pier 66. I had a cocktail with habanero in it and it was actually spicy! I tried a hatch green chili beer in New Mexico and got just a hint of heat, this was more like a firework of heat. After drinks, we walked south past a golf driving range to the City Winery restaurant. As the name implies it has a ton of wine there. The food was really good, but I’d say they aren’t really known for their burgers. After dinner Philip and I headed home to bed since our Saturday would be a really long day.
🙌 Get Your Hands Up! 🙌
On Saturday we left the apartment at a crisp 8:30am. Unheard of for Philip (usually he sleeps in). I won’t bore you with the details: a long subway ride and a few blocks of walking. The first few floors of the building were stores, the middle section of the building were offices, and the very top is the Edge Skydeck. That’s where we were going. Like usual I bought the ‘Ultimate tickets’ which includes the City Climb, Skydeck, and souvenir medal. I also bought the souvenir photo book. For me I value pictures of the moment. Philip usually reserves pictures for vip worthy events and holds experiences to higher esteem when visiting places.
At 9:45am there was quite the line forming outside the door so we joined in and pretty soon were ushered off to the side where we met another person with a City Climb ticket. Not long after that we were led into a private back room where we met the other 8 or so people joining us. After using the bathroom, signing a waver, and getting our height and weight checked we rocketed towards the 100th floor in a high speed elevator.
~Quick side-note: the next couple photos are from the GoPro since you are prohibited from bringing your phone with you. So they might appear a bit hazy~
On the 100th floor Philip finally started realizing just what exactly I had bought him a ticket for. I already knew what to expect when we were putting on the blue jumpsuit, full safety harness, and helmet. I do my research almost every time to make sure the cost is worth it! Just before we went outside one of the staff mentioned that we had $5k worth of safety equipment on. After getting suited up we went to the final safety check before the stairs and soon after we made it outside.
This is where you get to ‘test the waters’ and look out towards the Hudson River. It’s also the last chance to turn around before going up. Luckily no one in our group went back. Also at this point Philip told me he was super excited to do everything since at the beginning he really had no idea.
I’d say that falling off the stairs is next to impossible. You not aren’t really near the side of the building and if you happen to slip you still have 1 heavy duty safety line with a backup “rope” which I suspect is actually more of a cable. Also you need to have one hand on the safety line (dragging it up no hands would be tough I think) and the other hand on the railing.
The “Apex” summit of the climb is the highest outdoor viewing platform in the Western Hemisphere. Everyone spread out along the platform and we went right into the lean out lesson. This is where you lean out over the edge at 1,271ft with nothing but the safety line keeping you tethered. The 2 people in front of us were from Texas and were super nervous with heights but they faced their fears, which was pretty impressive. It was strongly encouraged to try all the lean outs. Some people on the observation deck below waved to us so we waved back.
Before heading back down to the 100th floor we all posed for the Edge’s official TikTok. I don’t use TikTok, but perhaps I’m famous now! (probably not haha) After taking off everything and getting my phone back we were then allowed to explore the gift shop, get champagne (I asked the guy if it was good champagne and he gave me one of those “heh no way” replies, so Phil and I didn’t get that), and the Skydeck. You were allowed to spend as much time as you wanted on it. So far the Sears Tower in Chicago has the best glass floor, Space Needle WA in 2nd, Skydeck in third. What do you think? (The link goes to my blog with picture of the Sears Tower glass floor, I’ll edit the Space Needle one in when I write that blog)
Later in the day Philip had graciously offered to pay for a round of mini golf for himself, a friend from NYC, and me at Swingers Crazy Golf. We got there earlier than the friend so we had a round of drinks at the first bar. You see, this place offers mini golf with expensive cocktails. There was even a bouncer at the front door, which was a first for me (bouncer at a mini golf?!). Legend has it that a group of 5 guys paid a tab of $1500 at the bar just on the drinks not including the golf or tips. Wild prices at this place, but the drinks were all delicious. Although the Negroni in Raleigh is still my favorite. (Campari, gin, vermouth, orange peel)
There are 3 courses to play: Windmill, Waterwheel, and Clocktower. We picked the Clocktower course since it was the hardest. We only discovered the length was 9 holes when we got the scorecard, somehow Phil missed that part on the website. They were’t too tricky and each hole had a 6 stroke limit. We got to ferry our drinks around with us and when we ran out of one a waiter would come by to supply us with a new one. It was a clever way to siphon a ton of money from us. Oh and the whole time there was a live DJ playing. At hole 9 there’s a wheel with a bunch of prizes on it. If you get a hole-in-one you get to spin the wheel. Guess what? Philip got a hole-in-one and out of prizes like a free drink, a free round of golf, or other extremely epic prizes he won…building suspense…a cookie! Bahaha! He was thrilled.
After the cookie, Philip and I gave our goodbyes to his friend and made our way back to his apartment so Philip could take a nap before we left to go to the stadium. At about 5:45pm we hopped on the J train and sped off to 121st St. Since there was construction after that we had to take an Uber to the UBS arena instead. We got there just before 7pm. According to the ticket the doors opened at 7pm.
Once inside, Philip bought the most expensive beers in the world and we took our seats. One tall can of white claw was a shocking $18. So we each only got 1 drink lol. I’m not sure who the first DJ was, but he played for about 1.5 hours to keep the crowd company. Philip was not impressed, but I thought it wasn’t that bad. He didn’t talk at all and the only stage effect was smoke.
Next up was Laidback Luke. He is a popular DJ who plays at big sets like Ultra Miami, Tomorrowland, EDC, and more. He brought more energy to the arena and by this time the floor was filling up a little faster. His set had a light show, smoke, and visuals. Pretty good 1.5 hour set I thought. Philip thought this set was barely better than the first.
Lastly was Hardwell!! I love Hardwell and his new Rebels Never Die tour was amazing! Even Philip was jamming. Hardwell often says stuff like “Get your hands up!”, “Everybody **** Jump!”, and “How are you doing -NYC-?!!” to loud cheers. For the first DJ and Laidback Luke the sound was not bad, but for Hardwell I probably should’ve brought earplugs. Some of the DJ sets can get up to 115 decibels, which is not ideal for your ears. My favorite track is a tie between “Laser”, “Rebels Never Die”, and “PacMan”.
Hardwell also played some of his Tomorrowland 2022 set which was awesome to hear in person. The Freestyler vs Astronauts In The Ocean vs We Will Rock You1 mashup is epic. The Hardwell set went on for about 2 hours ending at 12:05am. We had about 30 minutes to make it to the train station before it left. If we missed the 12:45am train we would’ve had to either take a $100 Uber or wait like 5 hours for the next train. (Impossible because of my early flight). Once back at Philip’s apartment I got maybe 4 hours of sleep before I packed up my stuff and went to the airport.
Sunday
I don’t really have a good title for this. Basically I flew out of LaGuardia to Minneapolis then 2 hours later I flew to Albuquerque.
Upon entering New Mexico airspace I passed over Philmont which was really really cool. On the middle right side is Mt. Baldy. In the bottom left corner is the Tooth of Time (mountain) along with Basecamp. That’s where I work. This is currently my 4th fall season!
In Albuquerque I got my car from Paul and Brenda (1000 Thanks!). But before heading to Philmont I visited Nana. As usual the drive back north took 3 hours. (It took about 30 minutes to fly south by plane). Anyways, that about wraps things up on this trip. See you next time!
Trip Stats
- Officially I think the track goes by: Bomfunk MC’s vs. Masked Wolf vs. Queen – Freestyler vs. Astronaut In The Ocean vs. We Will Rock You (Bass Modulators Mashup) — just in case you are curious
- ~$35 spent on my Metro Card
- I walked about 54k steps from Thursday – Sunday
- The level of planning for this trip was minimal at best compared to others like my Home to Philmont trip
- Delta’s Biscoff cookies are the best airplane snack
- I watched Top Gun: Maverick on the plane (10/10 on the movie list, although I haven’t updated the blog one recently)
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