I have a tour today, so I can’t write a lot.

It’s with three Italians. It’s the first time I’m touring Italians. They didn’t want the full tour, so they are paying me by the hour, which is fine.

I need to get more tours going. I need to get more gigs.

I have an interview for a gig tomorrow.

So things are going…

October is almost here. I need to pay rent and all the rest. My bank account is the lowest it has been in years, but it is slowly going up.

Things are going to be fine. I still have New York in my mind.

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I talked to my friend SoupyGarbageJuice about moving over to New York. Perhaps when he needs a new roommate. Perhaps sometime in the future. He says I’ll do great in the city.

It felt like that when I was there. Like I could easily live there and thrive.

I doooo private tours in New York in Español.

Alas, I do not.

I’m still doing tours in Tijuana and will be for all of 2026. The dream is still to travel and live off travel content and the mountain of content I’ve created.

For the past 7 or 8 years, I’ve gone out to Halloween in Tijuana and taken hundreds of pictures. I will do that again this year. And all the pictures will be available on my Patreon.

I’m posting the oldest album first. The mountain of content I have is available on my Patreon.

And all my texts are in Substack.

I have a lot of work to do.

I’m still not done with New York.

More than 200 photos and 500 videos from the GoPro… And… A lot of photos and videos from my iPhone X. If it was a newer iPhone, it would have been more…

That’s the next target. New iPhone. It’s been the target for years, yet I still rock the X. And it’s still a solid phone.

New York is very photogenic. It’s easy to be a photographer there. It’s saturated with photographers. The world is saturated with them.

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New York.

Day 2.

The day I drank the most. I already wrote about it in my previous post… I had so much content. From that day, I was going to create so much more content. It’s the only day that I lost all my content.

It included McSorley’s, The Backroom (Speakeasy), the Library (punk bar), views of Staten Island and the Statue of Liberty, Veselka’s, Bagel Pub, and more…

I got disillusioned with creating more New York content. It barely gets views. But I enjoy it.

A couple of times in the streets of Tijuana, strangers were like, “Aren’t you in New York right now?!”

Nah sir! I’m in front of you. The content gets created and posted days later.

In the future… I would like to create content during the day/night, and first thing in the morning, then upload the videos while having coffee.

That’s ideal.

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New York Day 4.

We had the worst fucking bagel ever. I would think every place in New York would have amazing bagels. I was wrong. I should have gone to a bodega with a cat. Bagels I could trust.

But we end up going to a fancy bagel shop called “Modern Bread and Bagel.”

We.

I went with my cousin, his wife, and my girlfriend. It was hot as balls inside the bakery, and it seemed to be rush hour. It looks nice on Google and it has nice reviews, but the picture lied. There is no sit-down space.

The cashier was pretending to be nice. You can tell she was annoyed, but had to keep working. She didn’t like that I asked if they had non-vegan sausage. And though I have an accent, I can say my name… “Matthew.” She wrote my name as “Patty-O.”

What the fuck?!

Expensive bagels. And… they never prepared our order. I had to complain in the back to get things right. Completely ignored until we showed them the receipts.

All sandwiches were big and heavy. I was excited. We walked to a nearby park to sit down and enjoy the bagels. I wanted to enjoy it so much… but it was shit.

It was the worst vegan sausage I’ve had in my life. I’ve had vegan sausage before. It’s one of the few things that vegans imitate well.

Not this one. This wasn’t even sausage. It was mushy as fuck.

I didn’t get to try the other bagels because they were all too messy to share. Heavy and big… but shitty. No one liked their bagels.

That’s when it hit me. While sitting at the bakery, I read their shirts. One shirt read: “No gluten kneaded here.” Clever pun and a nice cartoon. But… FUCK!

It’s a GLUTEN-FREE BAKERY!

Fuck meeeeee!

I’m not celiac. I only know one celiac friend of my primo. The most I tried was gluten-free pizza, and that wasn’t bad. However, I barely tried it because it was the only option my celiac friend could eat, so it was just a bite.

Besides that…

OH MAN!!! I didn’t know how bad celiac people had it. That’s why the bagels were that bad. No gluten. They were so dry. They were… just almost like dog food.

Hey. If you are celiac… I’m sure the bagels at this place are AMAZING! But… I’m not.

It was my mistake for choosing this place. It was expensive and bad.

Compared that to the Bagel Pub, which was expensive but absolutely fantastic. I could eat at the Bagel Pub every day. They weren’t the friendliest at customer service, but they were fair-standard and great fucking bagels.

I was going to make a video about the two bagel spots… but I lost my material for the Bagel Pub. I’m still going to make the video. It’s just not going to be the same. And a video of just talking shit about a bagel place is not the best look.

I have so many more videos to do.

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It was Norte’s 10th Anniversary. I’ve been going to the bar since it started. I can’t believe I’ve been going to that place for ten years.

My first cover story on the Reader had Norte on the cover.

My first book that I’ve ever written has Norte on the cover.

I have hundreds of pictures and videos at Norte. I’ve taken hundreds of people to Norte.

I made videos of their anniversary. I still have to edit and post that.

I have too many videos to do.

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New York Day 4.

After horrible bagels, we went to the Museum of Natural History.

This place is also HUGE!

I prefer art museums. But it was cool. You get to see displays of animals from all over the world and different eras. Gigantic dinosaur replicas. And a lot and a lot of shit. Great for kids, but one that I would skip if I ever go back to New York.

After the museum, Primo and his wife went back to their place. We kept being tourists.

We went back to Times Square to find cheap tickets to Broadway. She wanted Chicago. I wanted the Book of Mormon. She said to get what would make me happy…

$100 per ticket.

And we were IN THE FRONT ROW!

I’ve watched Trey Parker musicals before, so I knew what to expect. And the music, the dirty/stupid jokes, everything just screamed Trey Parker.

First Broadway show, and it was amazing. But I am sure Chicago was going to be amazing as well. Anything on Broadway is probably fantastic. I’m not much of a theater guy, but if it’s Broadway, I’m always in.

And after Broadway… more being tourists.

We walked all of 5th Avenue at night. All the fancy stores are there. The Louis Vuitton corporate building that looks like gigantic bags. And The Trump Tower…

We walked all night. And close to midnight, we went to 7th Street Burger, Bad Bunny’s favorite burger.

They are cheap. They are greasy. They are fucking delicious. I just had a burger from The Friendly last night, and that was still better. But 7th Street is a similar approach. Shitty little smash burgers that are a great late-night snack. I could eat at 7th Street Burger at any time. Great price and convenient.

We went back to the apartment almost at midnight.

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New York Day 5.

Last full day in New York. All that was left on my girlfriend’s bucket list. We saw the Friend’s apartment and Carrie Bradshaw’s apartment.

We went to Grand Central Station, and it’s fucking GRAND! We went to Penn Station by accident (my bad), and it’s also fucking huge!

These places feel like gigantic airports, but underground and with trains. To any destination on the East Coast. I love this shit. TRAINS WOO!

She went shopping, and I went to try more pizza. St. Prince Pizza this time. It was okay. Great sauce, okay bread, convenient, and fast. But I wasn’t blown away. The next New York trip will have way more pizza.

I joined her shopping, got cool sunglasses for $10 at the Japanese store: Gu. She kept shopping, and I walked around. I found the sunglasses shop of Tilda Swinton, named Gentle Monster. This place looks like an art gallery, and I highly recommend checking it out even if you can’t afford sunglasses. Because I can’t at all. I just bought some for $10, and the cheapest in this store were around $300.

Some amazing, weird designs that somehow worked… If I were rich. Perhaps one day I’ll wear Gentle Monster sunglasses…

Outside the store, they were filming a commercial.

And that’s when we saw her.

Gigi Hadid.

My paparazzi instincts kicked in, and I did videos and took pictures. But I had no idea who she was. My girlfriend recognized her but couldn’t think of it either. I posted it as an Instagram story, and not even 5 minutes later, someone responded: That’s Gigi Hadid.

We stayed and took a few more pictures. Walked around and checked the scene and kept checking on the commercial shoot, but after a while… I had had enough. There was no reason to stay, much less without a good camera. I’m not a paparazzi anymore. Though once a Pap, always a pap… I took some pictures. We got the experience. It was time to get to more New York.

We went through San Genaro’s Market and into Chinatown. There we went to a restaurant she saw on TikTok that has very cheap noodles. And very cheap they were. Her plate was less than $5. I got 10 shrimp dumplings and a cucumber salad for $9.

All cash. No taxes. No tipping. There is a tip jar, but it was not very full, and it didn’t seem to be encouraged. Excellent and very cheap. The cheapest meal we had in New York by far.

More touring everywhere. More walking everywhere. And made our way to Roosevelt Island. The sole reason to go to Roosevelt Island is to take the tramway. It’s free or $2.90, just like the subway, but because we already had 12 trips on the card, it’s free. Right before getting on the tram, we got some onigiris and a drink in a Japanese market.

Excellent sunset views of the city. I want to print a panoramic picture that I took on my phone just because I’m curious to see if it will print well…

I will update y’all on how that goes soon.

All the pictures from my phone and the GoPro… again in my Patreon!

After Roosevelt Island, we went back to Primo’s house for our last night in New York. We went to their favorite Thai restaurant. My girlfriend and his wife ordered the same thing: green curry (it was delicious). My cousin got the fried fish, and I got a beef dish.

Mine was my least favorite. It was still delicious, but the rest were SO MUCH BETTER.

It was abundant and cheap. We all had leftovers.

After Thai, we went to my cousin’s favorite beer bar. Very Brooklyn hipster. Very good beers. The crowlers were cheaper to go than to drink there. So after a couple of beers, we got a crowler of a double IPA sour and drank that at their place. That was one of the most interesting beers out there, but you can tell that craft beer is not New York’s interest like it is in San Diego. Yet, there is so much more.

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Day 6 was nothing.

We got ready to leave. We said our thanks and goodbyes, and we headed to Newark. But first, we got bagels at The Bagel Pub because again… amazing bagels.

The cheapest way to get from Brooklyn to Newark is by subway, then train to Penn Station in Jersey, then bus to Newark. Google Maps and videos want to tell you there are better ways… this is the cheapest. You can get the skytrain to Newark, but that costs $18.

Our way was the best way.

Easy-peasy, and we were back at Newark airport, ready to get back to San Diego and eventually to Tijuana.

And that’s how we went to New York round-trip with $177.

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I said I didn’t have time to write. I proceeded to write over 2,000 words.

I need to get ready for my tour with the Italians. I’ll post this tomorrow.

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I don’t have time to write today! I have the gig interview.

It’s at 4:30 pm and it’s 2 pm. I have some time to finish this blog. Checked the grammar. It’s shit. Added a picture. It was Gigi Hadid.

And update with how the tour Italiano went.

It went fantastic. Three really fun guys from Rome. We drank a bunch of tequila. We talked a bunch about Tijuana and life. They loved the tour. I enjoyed giving them a tour. They loved Tijuana.

You can see the videos on all my social media. A shit ton of media. A ton of content. I still have to create more content. Content everywhere. So much MEDIA!

Subscribe to my YouTube channel. The more subscribers, the more money, the more time I have to upload cool shit.

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Thanks for reading. Wish me luck in the interview. I need more gigs.