Green-New-Deal

Summer at Columbia is quite a magical experience. People are no longer sad, cold, or longing for the day they can actually exit their cramped dwellings and venture out into the exciting world of New York City. They emerge on bikes in flamingo-patterned cotton dresses and embroidered shorts, listening to new and old summertime releases. On campus, the dead Bacchanal grass has finally been replaced by multimillion-dollar lush green, and flowers—ones that you might have forgotten exist—are in full bloom.

We know that it’s hard to get out of Columbia’s MoHi bubble to begin with, and even when you want to venture up or downtown, it can be tough to find affordable things to do in New York City. That’s why we made a list where you can make the most of your time at Columbia by exploring all the great spots in the city—while saving money along the way.

As the familiar melody of the Super Mario Bros. 2 soundtrack pierced the soundscape, audience members could not help but erupt in infectious laughter. The juxtaposition of ballet and tunes from the popular video game was as pleasantly surprising as it was choreographically well executed.

Columbia ruined New York for me.

In my personal experience, Paris has the best public transportation of all time; trains that come every three minutes on the dot; plush, leather, baby blue seats; and shockingly clean tracks. So when I took the New York subway home from JFK at the end of spring break, you could imagine my disappointment at its decaying state—unidentifiable sludge dripping from the rusted ceilings, rats scuttling over the tracks, an overhead light flickering, filled with the twitching bodies of half-dead insects.

For the nearly three seconds that I sailed down the world’s tallest raftable waterfall––a 40-foot curtain of water gushing over and around my arms and legs, the guide shouting at us to cover our heads, nothing but a rock-strewn river below us––I had time to think. About that TLC song, of course, and how suddenly painful its wisdom was, but also about my strange new habit of extreme adventure sports. I’d greeted the day on a rickety mountain bike, careening down a sheer cliff face the width of a shopping cart, punctuated by boulders and the occasional aggressive ram. The next weekend, I would leap from a glorified gondola off one of the highest bungee platforms in the world, plunging 440 feet into a rocky canyon. My quest for adrenaline had led me here, to this waterfall. But it had also led me here, to southern New Zealand, the unofficial capital of adventure sports and about as remote of a relatively comfy place as you can find.

You’ve landed your dream internship, and are now counting down the days until sweet, sweet summer. There’s only one problem: You don’t know where you’re going to live. While getting a roof over your head for the summer can certainly be stressful here in New York City, you do have an abundance of options.

From just its title, “The Magic Flute” acknowledges its reputation as a lighthearted opera immersed in fantasy and the supernatural, offering the audience a mystical world to inhabit for a couple of hours. However, its reinvention by the Columbia University New Opera Workshop revealed a story both earthly and relatable.

For five hours, I sit on a bench. Some divine punishment for going too deep down a YouTube binge and then missing my bus to leave campus for break. Tired, hungry, and frustrated, I wait to line up for my new 10:15 p.m. bus. The last place I want to be is the Port Authority Bus Terminal. I cling to my bench seat, too scared to move, for fear of having to beg for it back. I am in a box made of cold cement walls and never-ending automatic sliding doors, where station managers facilitate intricate line manipulations to keep everything moving in a mechanical harmony—together the scene is an impersonal reminder of the impossibly complex world around me.