thrill of the chase

In Tuesday's adventures...

#1: TAKE A NAP AT METRONAPS. Submitted by four different people, including a hungover guy sitting in front of a Park Slope coffee shop.

Metronaps is a new place in the Emprie State building. It features special napping pods in which you take a 20 minute nap in the middle of your workday and leave, they claim, feeling refreshed and revived. As a New Yorker who often finds herself wanting to take a mid-day nap while out in the city, but is hesitant to camp out on a bench (the one time I did try that, on a Broadway median strip bench, a cop shook me awake with the inexplicable words, "Whyncha wake up, honey, and go play some tennis". I arrived for my appointment with great expectations. Everything about the place, as you'd imagine, is quiet. The attendant said, "Welcome to Metronaps" in a voice that was barely audible. The room was very dark and full of sleeping pods that look 2001-ish and also like the egg chair on the cover of that Luna album. The attendant explained that a light would come on when my nap was over, and that the chair would vibrate. He tucked me in with a fleecey blanket. Being tucked in by someone you don't know at all is a funny, sweet feeling. And so my nap began. I had to control the desire to whisper toward the socked feet napping in the pod next to mine the eternal sleepover question: "Are you asleep yet?" I put on the headphones, which were playing Nature Sounds New Age music, and listened as loons and trickling water were tortured by Casio keyboards and harps. I was so excited to be lying in a white pod in a dark room that I couldn't come close to sleeping at all, until the last two minutes or so, when I started to get sleepy and closed my eyes. The lights in my pod came on then, and I staggered over to the "refreshment station" to splash some lemon spritzer on my face, about a hundred times more tired than I had been when I came in. It took some really spicy Korean food for lunch, around the corner from the Empire State, to wake me up again.

#2: FOLLOW SOMEONE AROUND MANHATTAN. BUT DON'T LET THEM KNOW YOU'RE FOLLOWING THEM.
Submitted by Alex, napper in the pod next to mine.

This was by far the craziest and funnest summer adventure so far. I'm not going to start writing about it now, though, because I need to pack. I leave tomorrow for a driving vacation around the south. But be assured, I'm bringing the summer list along and my adventures will continue south of the Mason-Dixon. Hopefully I can update along the way; if not, I'll have a lot to write about when I get back.