NY is Cheap as Chips

So, if you exclude accommodation (or maybe if you live, really, really far away) then it turns out that you can have a really good time for very little (something that we are increasingly interested in given the aussie dollar is now the prototypical little aussie battler).

Even accommodation can be cheap if you are willing to stay in the gritty old school Manhattan as we did (and then put up with intemperate heating and construction on three sides). But I digress.

The best way to save money is to not spend any at all. There are a surprising number of venues that do not charge cover, and give away free alcohol and food. We went to Chelsea Markets twice to see free indie shorts and were shouted free beer. Free movies and beer - a winning concept if ever there was one.

There is a website that lists the bars that are giving away free alcohol each night. There are also gallery opening nights that routinely give away free stuff. If you get really desperate, every bar has happy hours with drinks around $3. So clearly, paying for drinks in this town is for suckers.

Food wise, you can still get a massive cooked breakfast from a really excellent diner for $5 (includes orange juice and bottomless coffee). Prices seem to be going up fast though, so these "old school" prices are probably from people that haven't gotten around to printing new menus.

Most delis, Whole Foods, etc have great salad bars where you can get tasty fresh food (healthy too) for around $6, which is cheaper than going to a supermarket and cooking at home (the supermarkets in Manhattan are soooo expensive). The salad bar at Whole Foods is the best, Jerry, the best.

The met has a policy of pay what you want. The suggested amount is $20 per person, but we decided to pay $2.50 each.

Guggenheim, MOMA and Whitney are some really excellent galleries that are pay what you like on Friday nights. We decided to pay $1 each for both of these (suggested amounts are both around $20). This is seriously good value, as the collection at Whitney is mind-bogglingly good and of course MOMA has just about every piece of popular modern art in existence.

Free events abound - I went to a two day semantic conference for nix at NYU (and where else in the world would you find 200 people interested in the discovery, use and organisation of semantic knowledge).

Movies are $6 before twelve every day of the week, and of course this is the place to see those limited releases that might never be released to the cinema in Sydney.

And there is endless entertainment just from walking about Central Park, catching the subways (buskers do their bit, and there are some really good ones) and just walking down the street. There is a strange sense of evident truth, an unfiltered insight into the human condition that is both stimulating and provocative. When you take every culture in the world, add in some rational civic sensibility and an overriding courtesy that stems both from a feeling of equality and a fear and uncertainty of who you might be sharing a street with, you get the opportunity to understand the world as a whole.

And when you can get all this for next to nothing, it really is something to celebrate. To use a well worn phrase, We Love NYC!!