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magidNew York can be such a fun place to visit. Last weekend I went down for a cousin's bar mitzvah (well, first cousin once removed), and there was time for sight-seeing. It's been far too long since I've done this.
____
I hadn't been in Chinatown before, and it was fun to check out all the produce stands. There were all sorts of odd vegetables that looked vaguely familiar from visits to Russo's, including lots of durian, plus more familiar things (cherries for $2/lb!). Some stores sold fish, both already filleted and still on the fin, as it were. The smells reminded me of Machane Yehudah.
____
Since I'd taken the bus down, I used the subway to get around the city. The stops are dirtier, and frequently smellier, but the art in many of them is really nice. Most stops have mosaics for the station name, and a number of them have other mosaic decorations as well. My favorite was finding the four Alice mosaics at 50th Street. (Alice underground! ;-)
____
The hotel was a couple of blocks from Times Square, so I had the chance to see it both during the day and at night. It is really garish, with the news, and stock quotes, and big boards with ads playing over them, and the lit-up installments (a castle along one corner of a building, three stories up, for instance, or a huge hand coming out of the side of another building looking rather like a Hilary Scott piece on hormones), many with moving parts.... talk about overload. My mom said it reminded her of Las Vegas.
____
Sunday morning I went walked around the Lower East Side (finding a street market, the Tenement Museum, and a tabac), then went to the Orchard Street corset store. An orker had given me the information, and I couldn't resist her description of a Chassidic guy figuring out what bra would work for her. So. I walked into the narrow store, and an older Chassidic man asked what I was looking for. Bras. OK. He looked at me for a minute or two, then asked me to turn around and studied my back for another long minute. Front again, and he asked me to hold my shirt tighter to me. He got a couple of bras down, then his assistant (an African-American woman) drew two curtains at the back of the store, forming a little fitting room. I changed into the first one, put my shirt back on. The curtain was pulled aside, and the man turned (he'd kept his back to the changing room, just in case). He asked how this bra felt (decent), and the curtain was pulled again. I tried the rest of them on, and finally changed back into my original clothes. I got four new bras, discounted, and in much less time than when I'm shopping alone. Almost worth going to NYC for...
____
The two best signs I saw were
"Antique
Clairvoyant"
and
"Come in between Sunday May 16 and Sunday May 23 and get a free smile!"
____
Queue came down for the day. I went to meet his bus bearing garlic bialys, and we headed uptown, to the Met. We meandered about, just browsing exhibits here and there. I very much liked the Dangerous Liaisons exhibits (I'm so glad I don't have to wear tall wigs like that!), and suspect it would be a fun movie to see sometime. There was an Andy Goldsworthy installation on the roof, which took a while to get to (figuring out the elevator system), and felt anticlimactic once we arrived. It's one installation, two sort-of domes of wood stacked up, with a pillar of ever-smaller stones balanced one atop the next inside. They're cool, but... Well, after Rivers and Tides, this wasn't as intense as some of the pieces featured in the documentary. The coolest pieces in the Byzantium exhibit were a huge chandelier of iron that cast interesting shadows on the floor, and a reliquary case, which is something I'd never thought I'd see. Other nice things included grandfather clocks, an ornately inlaid piano, armor, ancient glass, and some modern paintings. We never wandered past any four-poster beds, but I couldn't help but think about From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.
After the museum we meandered south through Central Park. It was a lovely day, and lots of people were out, though some of them may have been there for the AIDS walk. One man stopped us to point out a hawk perched on the railing of a penhouse apartment high above; apparently he's the father of a growing number of hawks around the city. We found a pond with lots of radio-controlled sailboats. We found the children's zoo, which looked interesting, if crowded. And we found a parade, the Martin Luther King / 369th Regiment Parade.
We went to little India for lunch, getting some lovely vegetarian food at Pongal (thanks, Gnomi, for the suggestion). It's so exciting to go to a new restaurant, to have food I'd not tried before, interesting things I haven't yet attempted at home. The only thing I found a bit jarring was the note on the menu that they charge an extra $2 if you want leftovers packed up to take home.
And then it was time to get the bus home.
____
The downsides of the trip: hurting feet, too much sun, and a broken Shabbat watch (which I need to fix this week since the eruv's down). On the whole, a plusful weekend, even though it left me too tired to celebrate changes in MA law.
____
I hadn't been in Chinatown before, and it was fun to check out all the produce stands. There were all sorts of odd vegetables that looked vaguely familiar from visits to Russo's, including lots of durian, plus more familiar things (cherries for $2/lb!). Some stores sold fish, both already filleted and still on the fin, as it were. The smells reminded me of Machane Yehudah.
____
Since I'd taken the bus down, I used the subway to get around the city. The stops are dirtier, and frequently smellier, but the art in many of them is really nice. Most stops have mosaics for the station name, and a number of them have other mosaic decorations as well. My favorite was finding the four Alice mosaics at 50th Street. (Alice underground! ;-)
____
The hotel was a couple of blocks from Times Square, so I had the chance to see it both during the day and at night. It is really garish, with the news, and stock quotes, and big boards with ads playing over them, and the lit-up installments (a castle along one corner of a building, three stories up, for instance, or a huge hand coming out of the side of another building looking rather like a Hilary Scott piece on hormones), many with moving parts.... talk about overload. My mom said it reminded her of Las Vegas.
____
Sunday morning I went walked around the Lower East Side (finding a street market, the Tenement Museum, and a tabac), then went to the Orchard Street corset store. An orker had given me the information, and I couldn't resist her description of a Chassidic guy figuring out what bra would work for her. So. I walked into the narrow store, and an older Chassidic man asked what I was looking for. Bras. OK. He looked at me for a minute or two, then asked me to turn around and studied my back for another long minute. Front again, and he asked me to hold my shirt tighter to me. He got a couple of bras down, then his assistant (an African-American woman) drew two curtains at the back of the store, forming a little fitting room. I changed into the first one, put my shirt back on. The curtain was pulled aside, and the man turned (he'd kept his back to the changing room, just in case). He asked how this bra felt (decent), and the curtain was pulled again. I tried the rest of them on, and finally changed back into my original clothes. I got four new bras, discounted, and in much less time than when I'm shopping alone. Almost worth going to NYC for...
____
The two best signs I saw were
"Antique
Clairvoyant"
and
"Come in between Sunday May 16 and Sunday May 23 and get a free smile!"
____
Queue came down for the day. I went to meet his bus bearing garlic bialys, and we headed uptown, to the Met. We meandered about, just browsing exhibits here and there. I very much liked the Dangerous Liaisons exhibits (I'm so glad I don't have to wear tall wigs like that!), and suspect it would be a fun movie to see sometime. There was an Andy Goldsworthy installation on the roof, which took a while to get to (figuring out the elevator system), and felt anticlimactic once we arrived. It's one installation, two sort-of domes of wood stacked up, with a pillar of ever-smaller stones balanced one atop the next inside. They're cool, but... Well, after Rivers and Tides, this wasn't as intense as some of the pieces featured in the documentary. The coolest pieces in the Byzantium exhibit were a huge chandelier of iron that cast interesting shadows on the floor, and a reliquary case, which is something I'd never thought I'd see. Other nice things included grandfather clocks, an ornately inlaid piano, armor, ancient glass, and some modern paintings. We never wandered past any four-poster beds, but I couldn't help but think about From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.
After the museum we meandered south through Central Park. It was a lovely day, and lots of people were out, though some of them may have been there for the AIDS walk. One man stopped us to point out a hawk perched on the railing of a penhouse apartment high above; apparently he's the father of a growing number of hawks around the city. We found a pond with lots of radio-controlled sailboats. We found the children's zoo, which looked interesting, if crowded. And we found a parade, the Martin Luther King / 369th Regiment Parade.
We went to little India for lunch, getting some lovely vegetarian food at Pongal (thanks, Gnomi, for the suggestion). It's so exciting to go to a new restaurant, to have food I'd not tried before, interesting things I haven't yet attempted at home. The only thing I found a bit jarring was the note on the menu that they charge an extra $2 if you want leftovers packed up to take home.
And then it was time to get the bus home.
____
The downsides of the trip: hurting feet, too much sun, and a broken Shabbat watch (which I need to fix this week since the eruv's down). On the whole, a plusful weekend, even though it left me too tired to celebrate changes in MA law.
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no subject
Date: 2004-05-18 01:22 pm (UTC)--MuseumKids 'The "Mixed-Up Filed" Issue'
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Education
2001
Have I ever mentioned how much I love the Met? And the AMNH...
no subject
Date: 2004-05-19 03:33 am (UTC)Btw, it's one of my more favorite of her books, though I have yet to find one I don't like. (Which is your favorite? Or do you not have one?)
I hadn't realized you were a Met/AMNH fan...
no subject
Date: 2004-05-19 09:40 am (UTC)Yes, the Met owns the bed in the book...but it's not on display any more.
My grandparents used to live at 88th and Madison. Museum hopping was an important part of my childhood.
Mom used to work at the AMNH.
I've always been such the NYC junkie... :)
no subject
Date: 2004-05-19 09:52 am (UTC)I wonder why the bed isn't out. I mean, I know museums cycle through things so only part of their collections are out at any given time (except for the Gardner, but that's a special case), but you'd think they'd put it out for when the 2001 kid's guide referencing it came out, at least.
You're lucky to have had such wonderful museums as part of your childhood. Worcester has decent ones, but it's not quite at the same level.
NYC is one of the places I like visiting, but really can't imagine living in (too many people, just too large). Some days I wish I had time for a long visit, or a summer, or something, to feel that I'd gotten time to explore, rather than just see one or two things.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-18 07:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-19 03:29 am (UTC)The only other one I've had food from in that neighborhood was Madras Mahal, back in 1993, which I still remember fondly. Though some of that might be that the food was taken to be a picnic dinner on the grounds of the Cloisters, overlooking the cliffs of NJ as the sun set...