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new york, 9/25-9/27
New York still thrills me. Just coming up from the train in Penn Station, moving through the crowd, had me grinning like a fool, which is completely not the right way to be grinning in Penn Station, but I managed to suppress it by the time I got outside. Onto the streets of Manhattan. So great. So much motion, so much intensity.
I can't even begin to impose an order on the three half-days I spent in New York on this trip, but here are some things I did:
I have a question: Where'd all the babies come from? I mean, I know, storks, obviously, but look, everywhere I turned, there were people pushing strollers around. There weren't strollers all over the place last time I was in New York. I listened to two neighborhood guys complaining about a woman who pushes a double-wide stroller even when she's left one of the kids at home, taking up the sidewalk for no reason. The place is overrun. It was so cute.
I can't even begin to impose an order on the three half-days I spent in New York on this trip, but here are some things I did:
- Drove! I'd never driven in the city before! (I moved to Morristown after years of not driving at all, and New Jersey driving was scary enough for me.) I drove through the Holland Tunnel! And I drove past Pace University in lower Manhattan while I listened to the Democratic presidential candidates debating at Pace University in lower Manhattan! And I drove over the Brooklyn Bridge!
Later I tried desperately to get onto the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway heading toward Queens, but kept on getting steered back into Brooklyn, so eventually I let the city win and headed back across the bridge and through the tunnel. - Sang! I made my New York Debut at an open mike at Tillie's of Brooklyn, and it felt good.
- Spent an hour with Time Out New York on the train, deciding where to go when it stopped moving. How do New Yorkers ever manage to go to work? There's so much stuff to do! Although it all costs a lot. Maybe that's how.
- Rode the subway. I have nothing to say about that, I just wanted to share this picture of the express train, taken from the local as they raced side by side:
His friend had just pointed me out, holding my camera up to the window. He made a "did it work?" face, I nodded and grinned, he gave me the thumbs-up sign. Thumbs up! - Saw eastmountainsouth at Joe's Pub. I thought the album was hit-or-miss, but I really liked them in concert. When my attention wandered, as it will do, I spent some time mentally composing a want ad for my dream band, specifically the girl singer, who would sound something like Kat Maslich. And I would like to sound like Peter Adams, if that can be arranged.
- Wandered all over the West Village looking for the Belgian cafe that Lynn and I went to a few times. I thought I'd been down every street in the area, but I saw blocks I've never seen before. And I found the spot where 4th Street meets 10th Street.
The next day at Petite Abeille (after a call to Lynn, who found me the address), I ate real Belgian waffles and drank iced hot chocolate--which sounds like it might just mean "chocolate milk", but is in fact THE BEST DRINK EVER CREATED--and listened to a woman and her mother haggle over exactly how positive the mother had been about the daughter's decision to have a child without a husband. The daughter recalled her mother saying it "would be a good idea"; the mother admittedly only to saying her daughter that she "would be a good mother." Another woman with an English accent tried to moderate. It all felt very Will and Grace somehow. - Went to museums: The Scandinavia House (an exhibit on Jews in Denmark during World War II), the New York Transit Museum gallery in Grand Central Station (Transit Views, a neat collection of prints depicting mass transit), the Aronson Galleries at Parsons School of Design (a moving collection of designs for memorials, the exhibit itself in memory of a short-lived student at the school).
- Watched a choir of cult members in Union Square singing about messages from the spirits of dead U.S. presidents. All of them were dressed in yellow, except for the ones in costume as Lincoln and, I think, Jefferson.
- Shopped at Books of Wonder, Academy Records, the Barnes and Noble main store (crammed at odd angles into a Manhattan skyscraper and by that method somehow almost cool), Forbidden Planet (which used to be a science fiction bookstore but is now a science fiction bookshelf surrounded by a store full of comics, anime, and action figures), and the Union Square farmers market.
- Overcame my reservations about taking pictures of strangers without their permission.
I have a question: Where'd all the babies come from? I mean, I know, storks, obviously, but look, everywhere I turned, there were people pushing strollers around. There weren't strollers all over the place last time I was in New York. I listened to two neighborhood guys complaining about a woman who pushes a double-wide stroller even when she's left one of the kids at home, taking up the sidewalk for no reason. The place is overrun. It was so cute.
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Awwww.
Regarding NYC babies: Hmm. Not nine months after the blackout, too many years since 9/11... although maybe somehow related with the urge to couple after 9/11. just on a longer timespan.