new york

I blame a cheap, no-name brand cell phone data cable for the huge gap in my posts this past week. Oh, and also the fact that I’m having way too much fun on vacation to sit in front of a computer all day. Actually, I’d rather never sit in front of a computer again, but I’m pretty sure work people are reading this so I’ll have to leave it at that.

It’s my third time in New York, and while it’s a nice place to visit, I think I like it either the same, or possibly, less. And, according to my realtor, if you like a house less upon visiting it the second time, it’s not for you. If you like it the same or more, you should make an offer. I’m not making an offer on New York, but I don’t mind visiting every now and then. The funny thing about living in a place is that you often don’t see as much of it as a tourist. When L. Diddy toured me around the Big Apple, he had never been to the Ellis Island immigration museum. When Sampleminded took me all the way up to 190th Street to see the Cloisters, a medieval monastery (and now, museum) overlooking the Hudson, it was a new trip for him as well. Ditto for my recent trip to Muir Woods, only about an hour from my place in Mountain View, and yet I’d never been.

Friday we took the A train (Sampleminded was disturbed that I didn’t know the “famous” song by the same name) to a station that looked a lot like the other subway stops, except that upon exiting the elevator, we were surrounded by trees instead of concrete, and a warm breeze rose up over the river and across the street. We were at the entrance to Tryon Park, and kids were running and yelling through a fountain of water in a playground to our left, just like the kids in Sesame Street when I was a kid. I think all my childhood perceptions of New York derive from the not-so-accurate representations of that kid’s TV show.

Tryon Park has numerous flower gardens that wind around for half a mile to the Cloisters entrance. It was a nice break from the heat and haze and noise of the city. If all of New York was like this, I might reconsider, but then again, if it was, I suppose it wouldn’t be New York. The Cloisters is a medieval art museum that extends the Met. The problem with medieval museums is that unless you’re interested in looking at religious art for three hours straight, you’re going to get a little bored. (This is why they have Renaissance Faires and not Medieval Faires, because at a Medieval Faire there’d be nothing to do but sit around praying all day, wearing hair shirts, and occasionally, beheading people). Nonetheless, it was a very pretty building, as you can see for yourself in the pictures (more to come).

I finally got to walk around inside Central Park today also. Where there is a skating rink in the winter, there was instead a mini-carnival complete with kiddie rides shadowed by a city backdrop. I had to look at a map to understand how big the park was in relation to Manhattan. It’s huge. Even so, the traffic seems to go through it in a lot of places, and there are just as many people in the park as in the rest of the city, so you don’t really feel as if you’ve escaped from anything — now you just have grass instead of asphalt. I wanted to go see the carriage horses, but Sampleminded doesn’t like horses and just complained about how they smelled, so I didn’t make any requests. I would have just wanted to drive a carriage anyway, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t have enough money on hand to bribe one of the guys to let me drive. I can drive horses for free at home if I want, so I don’t know what I was thinking, other than it would make for a great blog entry and no one would believe me.

One of the more haunting images on the way to Manhattan from Sampleminded’s Jersey City apartment is the huge “hole” that the Path train passes through where the World Trade Center used to be. Disturbingly, the giant hole in the ground appears to be a tourist attraction, albeit not as big a draw as the original two buildings. According to Sampleminded, most of the WTC train station looks exactly as it did before the destruction, except that now, upon the approach to the stop, the tunnel opens up into the sunlight, reflecting on grayish-white, jagged concrete walls with the remnants of rusted steel support beams protruding in a grid shape from the sides of the hole. You can see both trains as they circle around this vacancy, passing each other in opposite directions. “No matter how many times you go through this stop,” Sampleminded said,” it’s still creepy.” The station was fairly empty; the expected throngs of people represented only by a few gawkers who stood pressed up against the glass and metal that was built to enclose the worksite. I have to say that I, too, had a look, but there wasn’t much to see other than a few orange construction vehicles and a vast emptiness. At street level, the huge chrome sign still says “World Trade Center Station,” and an American flag flies at half mast in the middle of the hole. Across the street in an ancient cemetery, Sampleminded says there’s a 200 year old tree that was destroyed when the buildings fell and is now just a stump. Sure enough, as we walked by the cemetery I saw a crowd of the curious through the iron bars, staring at a tree stump near the entrance. This is as close as I’ve come to ground zero since November of 2002 when L. Diddy and I walked within a block of the site but were scared away by the hundreds of memorials to dead people plastered all over the chain link fences.

Riding the subway is still a treat for me, no matter how silly that sounds. When you live in a state where you have to drive everywhere, mass transit that works and doesn’t cost a fortune is a novelty and feels like a ride at Disneyland instead of a commute. So of course, when Sampleminded wanted to walk from 60th street all the way to the Met somewhere near 82nd street, I begrudgingly obliged him. Being from California, I of course can’t bear to do anything athletic (including walking twenty city blocks) without the perfect clothes and the right shoes. This means, I don’t get sweaty in my “going out” clothes. I figured I’d have to chalk that one up to the exercise I really needed after eating my way through a vacation that had only just begun.

We managed to get to the Met right before a mortal downpour started, and we did the 5k marathon through the museum in the manner I probably should have used to tour the Louvre when I was in Paris. It reminded me a lot of the Louvre actually, except that you see the work of American artists and painters and some local themes with a familiar flavor. I especially liked the exhibit by American Impressionist Childe Hassam, who painted Boston in the mid 1800s, complete with women in Victorian dresses and horse drawn carriages and the glow of street lamps at night. I drew some satisfaction from actually recognizing the places in Boston as perceived by this painter. I haven’t seen a furniture exhibit at a museum before, but that’s exactly what the Met had, rooms upon rooms of ornate tables, desks, sofas, and those wicked little chairs with the velvet cushions that look like they come alive at night and tiptoe stealthily through the museum.

Saturday we left the city for a breather and drove several hours to the Poconos for a whitewater rafting trip. I love Pennsylvania. Every time I see the trees I can recognize the state on sight. I remember the day I was watching TV and the news was showing a rainbow wood, with colorful trees stretching all the way to the horizon. “That looks like Pennsylvania,” I had said. A minute later, the caption at the bottom of the screen displayed “State College, PA.” I knew it. The other way you know you’re in PA is when you come to a highway entrance and there’s a stop sign with about ten feet in which you are supposed to accelerate from 0-60 and merge into speeding traffic. Yes, that’s the state as I remember it.

The rafting, while fun at moments, was a bit of a wash, since we didn’t have a lot of current despite their advertised “dam release day.” We were pretty sure we saw some old ladies in boats on the same trip as us, having a grand old time and doing just fine paddling their way through the river. Droo did fall out of the boat once when we hit a large rock, and was hoping to God we’d pick him up before the Japanese tourist boat did.

Sunday we wandered around the city again, and Sampleminded looked in vain for an NYPD baby doll t-shirt that would fit me, but to no avail. Yes, this is why I order all my clothes online. I left in a big yellow taxi this evening, just like in the song, except not as romantic, because I couldn’t understand the driver and although I was dead tired from all the walking, I was too afraid to fall asleep in a cab. Tonight I’m off to Boston to see my favorite person in the whole wide world and shoot the DS dragon poop and all that good stuff. See you in Boston.