New York City!

Hello everyone!

I’m running behind on these blogs. Sometimes it does get to be a pain trying to keep up with them but it’s worth it I think. So I had a great trip to New York. I flew into Newark on Thursday afternoon. I could see NYC in the distance and I was amazed to be seeing it with my own eyes for the very first time. Salomon picked me up from the airport and we went back to his and Mark’s apartment in Jersey City. I’ve known both Sal & Mark since I was 19 and we all worked at the plasma center together. Back at their place Salomon quickly deteriorated from not feeling well to throwing up repeatedly. Food poisoning was the prime suspect. Mark and I left hoping Sal could nap and possibly feel better. Mark and I walked to Hoboken, a twenty or thirty minute walk. It was a lovely evening out. Hoboken has a main road with lots of cute shops, restaurants and nice brownstone homes. Just a few blocks away would be abandoned lots full of garbage and weeds. Mark and I ate a great little Thai restaurant then walked back towards Jersey City. We walked past a park which had a great view looking towards downtown Jersey City. We looked to the left and there was the Empire State and the Chrysler Buildings! The Manhattan skyline was lit up against the night sky and I was so thrilled to be seeing it. Mark and Sal had just moved to Jersey City a month before. Prior to that they lived near Rutgers where Mark was getting his Masters degree. They are still getting to know Jersey City so Mark wasn’t even aware that Manhattan could be seen from this park.

We got back home with dinner for Salomon and found he was feeling remarkably better. He had slept and not thrown up anymore. After eating he asked me if I wanted to still go into the city that night to which I enthusiastically said, “Yes!” So we jumped on a train into Manhattan (they go under the Hudson River) and we got out at Christopher Street in Greenwich Village. We walked around and decided to get a drink somewhere. There were several comedy clubs in the area with people outside trying to convince people to go inside. It was a Thursday night so they were trying to get an audience before they could start the show. We agreed to go into one of the clubs, below the Village Lantern. The host of the show got up and was decidedly un-funny. He was pretty terrible actually. After “warming us up” (ugh) he introduced the first comic, who turned out to be the guy from the street begging us to go in. Oh man, what a tough life! He was funnier than the host but still not that great. The comedians got progressively funnier and I don’t think it was because of my two beers but rather they were genuinely more polished. We left around 12:30 and stopped for a slice of pizza before jumping on the train back to Jersey. We made a game of counting mice on the tracks while waiting for the train. Of course the tracks are disgusting but the trains and subways themselves were incredibly clean, reliable and super easy to get around on.

Friday was a sunny, breezy day. I tried to adjust to the time change by waking up early though my body wanted to keep sleeping (thinking it was even 3 hours earlier). We hung out around the apartment, listening to music and watching old Loony Tunes cartoons. We ate lunch at a diner in Jersey City. The Sopranos had filmed there but it seems the Sopranos had filmed almost everywhere around Jersey City. We got on the New Jersey Turnpike. It is a truly ugly drive with industrial sprawl on either side of the road. The only respite was seeing the Statue of Liberty’s ass (she faces out toward Europe). We dropped off Mark in New Brunswick near Rutgers where he was meeting some friends. Salomon and I drove through Princeton which is very beautiful and quaint with ivy covered buildings everywhere. Ahhh the Ivy League. We continued on to the town of Hamilton where we went to a haunted house type thing. It was Friday the 13th! There were 3 different areas you could walk through and a haunted hay ride. It really was scary and hilarious. When a teenager in a freaky clown mask chases you with chainsaw, even if that chainsaw is fake it still sounds real and you scream and run. We got our free glow necklace and snack (hot dog or pretzel and a soda). We watched the little kids doing karaoke including a 9 year old who sang Macho Man and ended his song by saying “Thank you San Francisco” and walking off the stage. What?!?! We drove back to New Brunswick and picked up Mark before going back home to Jersey City.

Saturday I went into the city by myself. I found Manhattan really easy to get around once I understood a few basics. The streets are short, the avenues are long, 6th Avenue divides the island into east and west. Traffic on 6th Avenue is one way, going north so it really helped to orient myself. I took the train from Jersey City into Manhattan then walked a few blocks before getting on the subway towards uptown. I got off at 86th Street and walked a few blocks towards Central Park. I sat on the steps of the Met (Metropolitan Museum of Art not the Metropolitan Opera) for awhile. I then walked into Central Park where I would spend hours and hours that day, walking the long paths and sitting in the sun. I walked part of the way around the huge reservoir. I walked down the beautiful Literary Walk lined with huge elms arching over the wide path. I saw the pond full of remote control sailboats ($10/hour to rent) and the bronze Alice in Wonderland statue covered with children crawling all over the giant mushroom. Late in the afternoon I spoke with Salomon and he took the train into the city to meet me. I took the subway to meet him near Union Square then we walked into Greenwich Village. We ate dinner at restaurant called Manatu’s then stopped for a beer at a little café. We walked a few blocks to the Bank Street Theater where we had tickets to see Nickel and Dimed, a play based on the book by Barbara Ehrenreich. It was a very small theater and minimalist production but the actors was good and the story (about low wage workers) was interesting.

Sunday was another beautiful and sunny day. We went to a nice café in downtown Jersey City for breakfast then went to Liberty State Park which is right in Jersey City. From here we got on the ferry to Ellis Island. The security here was exactly the same as airport security, very strict. At Ellis Island we used the computers to look up Mark’s family name to see if his grandma had come through Ellis Island. Her name came up but after talking to his mom Mark learned that she was already in the US before the date listed. Salomon & I both knew that all of our family was here before Ellis Island opened in 1892. I went upstairs to the Registry Room, or the Great Hall, where new arrivals lined up for inspection and to be registered. It was an impressive space and it’s amazing to think of all the immigrants that came through this space. Supposedly half of all Americans can trace a family member back through Ellis Island. We left Ellis Island and continued on the ferry to Liberty Island, where the Statue of Liberty is located. She does look small from a distance, this icon that we know so well, but up close she is BIG. They no longer allow tourists inside the statue itself, but it was still really interesting to be standing right next to her. The views across to Manhattan were great and the weather was so nice. We went into the museum gift shop where I bought magnets and maple syrup (in a jar shaped like the statue of liberty of course, it made me laugh and laugh). We got back on the last ferry to New Jersey just as the sun was going down. We ate dinner in Jersey City then went home where we watched A Prairie Home Companion (meh) some Nova (yeah…super volcanoes!) and Curb Your Enthusiasm (always hilarious).

Monday Mark and I took the train into the city. From 33rd Ave we walked the rest of the way to MoMA (Museum of Modern Art). We walked through Times Square and I was pretty unimpressed. It’s a bunch of giant billboards. It was kinda neat to see the MTV studios & where David Letterman is taped but on the whole I thought it was really ugly. I suppose it might be better at night with all the lights but it’s just an advertising free for all. At MoMA Mark and I separated (I hate walking through museums with another person). We started on the top floor and worked our way down. I was totally overwhelmed after going through 2 floors and yet I still had several to go. Several paintings made me cry: Chagall’s “I and the Village”, Magritte’s “The Lovers” and Wyeth’s “Christina’s World”. I will forever be amazed when I look at an actual painting that I’ve studied in books and on slides for so long. I thought the crowds gathered around Van Gogh’s Starry Night were funny. The famous art gets the crowd while the other works were ignored. I would sit on a bench in front of a painting and close my eyes, look at my feet. My eyeballs and brain were overwhelmed by it all but then I’d think, “You paid $20 and god knows when you’ll be back here again. Keep looking. Keep looking.” It was an exhausting experience. Mark and I left the museum around 5 and found ourselves walking the streets of Manhattan at rush hour with the mobs of New Yorkers. We went into Penn Station but found the trains to New Jersey didn’t go through there so we walked a few blocks up to 33rd and caught the train back. Mark dropped me off at Sal’s work and he came out to meet me for dinner. We ate a cute bar and restaurant in Jersey City. It had a nice atmosphere and it was lovely to just talk with Salomon and relax after the day at MoMA. We went back to their apartment and the three of us watched “Carrie” which I hadn’t seen in ages. I’m crusading to convince someone to be Carrie and her prom date for Halloween next year.

Tuesday morning I went into the city by myself. I took the train and the subway and walked back to the Met and this time I went in. Again it was totally overwhelming experience as the museum’s collection is colossal. I went through the honeycomb of the European painting galleries then through the American wing. I went through some photography exhibits and the show about Vollard, the art dealer of the late 19th, early 20th century. I felt like my brain would burst from all the images. In the gift shop I bought a book about Balthus, a painter I had never really noticed but whose work I caught my tired attention at the Met. I left the museum after many hours and walked in the rain along 5th Avenue, next to Central Park. I bought a knish (meh) and a coke from a vendor on the street. I also had a hot dog, a pretzel and some candied nuts on my trip (ahhh the ny street vendor). I got on the subway then the train back to New Jersey. Salomon picked me up from the train station to take me back to the house to grab my luggage. They dropped me off at the airport in Newark and 6 hours of flying later I was back in Portland. I feel like I just barely scratched the surface in New York but I’m so happy that I finally went. I still need to go to the Guggenheim and the Whitney and back to the Met & MoMA for all the things I missed. I’d like to explore Central Park more. I’d like to go to a taping of the Daily Show. I’d like to walk around SoHo. I’d like to eat dim sum in Chinatown. Going to New York just made my New York list even longer. It’s good to know I have a place to stay when I go back.

Please let me know how you are and what you’ve been up to!

xoxox,

carolyn