NYC Weekend on $97!

Actually, not entirely sure if that's something to be proud of, or even if it qualifies as a weekend, but I did get to NYC at about noon on Saturday and got home on Sunday around the same time. I guess its more of a 24-hours on $97.

I managed to go to the Museum of Modern Art, eat 3 meals, ride around in a taxi, and go to three bars.

So how did I do it?

First, student ID helps a lot with MoMA. It's only $12! I split lunch for $4, and found a great sushi place (Sushi Park) that had a brilliant marketing concept. Sushi entrees over $14 are 50% off. I split a $40 sushi combo for $10, and was still impressed that the sushi was relatively fresh and pretty tasty.

The taxi ride was interesting. I was going from Penn Station back to the hookah bar I was at, and traffic was bad. About 5 blocks out, the traffic was totally stuck, and I pulled something I kept seeing from movies. I told the cabbie, "I'll get out here." It worked, and probably saved me a good $5.

Bars in the city are expensive. But one of the things I've learned to exploit is general laziness. If you open a tab, drink a few drinks, and then order one last drink and request your tab closed, more often than not, you'll get that last one for free. I haven't really figured out why this happens, but I think when the bar is busy, they rather not deal with it and just close your tab out whenever the credit card machine is free.

Thanks to a good friend, I was able to sleep the night at his apartment, so that was free!

Breakfast was probably the least cost-effective, running me $10, but I figured after a frugal night, what the hell.

Got any frugal NYC stories? Post some in the comments.