new york, part one-more-than-yesterday
yeah, i'll go back and fix that subject line if i remember. then i'll take out this start...if i remember.
yesterday i did one of the things i was most excited to do in new york, something i've been anticipating for years. i finally went to Yankee Stadium. and...it sucked. fenway was closed, too, but at least they make it a little entertaining with their cool banners telling all the times they've won (third- or fourth-most ever, i believe. if you're curious yourself, go to www.baseball-reference.com, which i know was in your favorites anyway) and all the times they've almost won (AL champions), which of course includes the hilarious 1904 banner. you remember why they didn't win in 1904, right? it's pretty awesome, and you don't even have to be anti--red-sox to think so (yes, that was a poor man's n-dash just now). anyway, yankee stadium is concrete everywhere, no banners proclaiming their glory (they have an embarrassment of wealth; shouldn't they be ostentatious with it?), nothing but boring crap. you can't even get a good shot of the entrance because there's a parking lot in the way (the fences, i mean). and the guy i passed walking up told me that they'd canceled the 2 pm tour. stupid stupid. and you can't get to the new one yet, cos it's still a construction site. so i walked about three blocks away, partially cos several people have warned me that the bronx is rough and i need to watch out, especially cos i'm white. it looked like a sunny, pleasant neighborhood in a big city to me, but then i also stayed three blocks away from the subway stop, and it was 2 in the afternoon on a weekday.
so that was a bust. i niggled over the next stop for a while, then decided to hit up coney island and see the brooklyn cyclones' ballpark. being a minor league (triple A for the mets) park, it's smaller and cuter. you can see in from a few different angles, and there's stuff to take pictures of. out front there's a statue of Pee Wee Reese and Jackie Robinson. the base of the statue tells a story of how Pee Wee helped Jackie endure all the endless shit that he survived (basically he showed public support from day 1).
on the western (first base) wall outside they have plaques for all the cops and firefighters from the area who've died (i'm not sure if this is brooklyn or just coney island), and a special wall for the ones who died in 9/11. it's a little surreal to realize that shit happened right here. i haven't gone to ground zero, but i probably will.
but of course coney island is famous for its amusement park (astroland), not its ballpark. the thing is...everything was closed at coney island. i could not keep from smiling. (brooklyn will fill the beach eventually. everyone will go except me.) i walked around anyway. the coney island beach (rather, the pier) is the calmest, quietest spot i've found so far in new york city. it's on the ocean and there was no one there...well, relatively speaking, cos there were at least fifty people there, only you didn't notice cos the pier was so big. i guess your sense of "no one" changes when you're in new york.
i started taking pictures of the ferris wheel and the roller coaster (the famous Cyclone, from which the new baseball team got their name---and not to be a dick, but the folks naming brooklyn teams aren't very creative. you've got the Cyclones, the Trolley-Dodgers, and ((soon)) the Nets. it's like they just look at the stuff nearest them and say, "I do right there!"), and the local guy next to me told me this stuff was gonna be gone soon. apparently the various attractions of the park have been sold off and they're turning the thing into apartment buildings. i know that my only attachment to coney island is to the idea of it (and to the good book by mr. ferlinghetti), but i'm weirded out knowing that it's done for. i strongly believe that development should be done responsibly so that its melds with the stuff that's already there (there's that portland streak in me). while having yet more apartments on the beach (there are tons already) would definitely make money for some people, i think it takes away from some of the uniquenessitude of the area. but i've been there for an hour total in my life; what do i know about it. i walked around the actual park after that, and my pictures were mostly with an eye for showing how run-down and crappy everything is (very).
mermaid avenue is two streets up from the beach. germs's google-fu failed her (and me, and you, and the world), so i called chris, whose google-fu was running at its normal level (scaryhigh). he i found out that woody lives (er, let's make that past tense) at 3520 mermaid ave. i was at 16th and mermaid and my feet were already sore. sorry kids, no pictures other than the street sign.
i bought a week-long subway pass. the city is now my bitch. (it was $25, so i need to ride 12.5 times to make it worth the cash. i'm at 4 right now. i'll get there.)
on the ride back i stopped at washington cemetary (HUGE!) and prospect park. there was a high school frisbee team practicing. i've never seen so many good forehands in my life; it was really cool. then i went to the brooklyn bridge. everyone knows you're supposed to walk across it and see the incredible views of lower manhattan while you do. stuff like that gets built up a lot and never lives up to your expectations. but this one was pretty friggin' cool, especially cos its being a bridge means you have a million places to set down your camera and do longer exposures for good night shots. i got some awesome pictures. one thing about the bridge is that it's very cool (pretty, interesting, all that) from a personal walking perspective, and equally---but differently---cool from a photographic perspective. it was awesome to see the bridge and the views in two completely different, complimentary ways.
i wandered over to a park to rest, and i started chatting with a girl from brooklyn. we hung out for a few hours, and now i have a new facebook-friend. i'm up to 89 "friends" (some of whom are actually friends) on there, which seems like a lot to me. i think i've added about 75 people since i started the trip. then i looked at other people's "friends" total, and a lot of people have over 200. what the fuck? how does anyone know that many people? and how do they think they'll keep track of them all? i realize this is largely from people who are in (or just finished) school, but still.
after preksha and i parted ways, i found my host at a nearby bar (God bless cell phones). i had a good slice of pizza en route. we headed over to the subway to get back to his place, but first we stopped for pizza. that means i had 3.5 slices of pizza yesterday (including breakfast, which was leftovers from the night before), eight slices in the last two days, and i think two or three the day before. i just want to make sure you guys aren't worried about my getting enough of my favorite food. after the other day (4.5 pieces of pizza and five hot dogs), chris was concerned that i might not be getting enough sodium, so i also ate several (heaping) tablespoons of raw salt yesterday. don't worry, it was iodized---no goiters for me!
today i think i'm gonna go to shea stadium and maybe the staten island ferry. i'm tentatively supposed to hang out with carly (friend from high school), so i hope she gets in touch with me. you never ever know how that stuff will play out, though. i also need a place to stay tonight, cos i can't burden the friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend for a fourth night. he's been a wonderful host, but it's time to move on. i'm hoping either carly or miller can hook me up, but i'm sure something will work out (...so what's that odd feeling my chest then? it doesn't feel like "sure")---because it always does.
yesterday i did one of the things i was most excited to do in new york, something i've been anticipating for years. i finally went to Yankee Stadium. and...it sucked. fenway was closed, too, but at least they make it a little entertaining with their cool banners telling all the times they've won (third- or fourth-most ever, i believe. if you're curious yourself, go to www.baseball-reference.com, which i know was in your favorites anyway) and all the times they've almost won (AL champions), which of course includes the hilarious 1904 banner. you remember why they didn't win in 1904, right? it's pretty awesome, and you don't even have to be anti--red-sox to think so (yes, that was a poor man's n-dash just now). anyway, yankee stadium is concrete everywhere, no banners proclaiming their glory (they have an embarrassment of wealth; shouldn't they be ostentatious with it?), nothing but boring crap. you can't even get a good shot of the entrance because there's a parking lot in the way (the fences, i mean). and the guy i passed walking up told me that they'd canceled the 2 pm tour. stupid stupid. and you can't get to the new one yet, cos it's still a construction site. so i walked about three blocks away, partially cos several people have warned me that the bronx is rough and i need to watch out, especially cos i'm white. it looked like a sunny, pleasant neighborhood in a big city to me, but then i also stayed three blocks away from the subway stop, and it was 2 in the afternoon on a weekday.
so that was a bust. i niggled over the next stop for a while, then decided to hit up coney island and see the brooklyn cyclones' ballpark. being a minor league (triple A for the mets) park, it's smaller and cuter. you can see in from a few different angles, and there's stuff to take pictures of. out front there's a statue of Pee Wee Reese and Jackie Robinson. the base of the statue tells a story of how Pee Wee helped Jackie endure all the endless shit that he survived (basically he showed public support from day 1).
on the western (first base) wall outside they have plaques for all the cops and firefighters from the area who've died (i'm not sure if this is brooklyn or just coney island), and a special wall for the ones who died in 9/11. it's a little surreal to realize that shit happened right here. i haven't gone to ground zero, but i probably will.
but of course coney island is famous for its amusement park (astroland), not its ballpark. the thing is...everything was closed at coney island. i could not keep from smiling. (brooklyn will fill the beach eventually. everyone will go except me.) i walked around anyway. the coney island beach (rather, the pier) is the calmest, quietest spot i've found so far in new york city. it's on the ocean and there was no one there...well, relatively speaking, cos there were at least fifty people there, only you didn't notice cos the pier was so big. i guess your sense of "no one" changes when you're in new york.
i started taking pictures of the ferris wheel and the roller coaster (the famous Cyclone, from which the new baseball team got their name---and not to be a dick, but the folks naming brooklyn teams aren't very creative. you've got the Cyclones, the Trolley-Dodgers, and ((soon)) the Nets. it's like they just look at the stuff nearest them and say, "I do right there!"), and the local guy next to me told me this stuff was gonna be gone soon. apparently the various attractions of the park have been sold off and they're turning the thing into apartment buildings. i know that my only attachment to coney island is to the idea of it (and to the good book by mr. ferlinghetti), but i'm weirded out knowing that it's done for. i strongly believe that development should be done responsibly so that its melds with the stuff that's already there (there's that portland streak in me). while having yet more apartments on the beach (there are tons already) would definitely make money for some people, i think it takes away from some of the uniquenessitude of the area. but i've been there for an hour total in my life; what do i know about it. i walked around the actual park after that, and my pictures were mostly with an eye for showing how run-down and crappy everything is (very).
mermaid avenue is two streets up from the beach. germs's google-fu failed her (and me, and you, and the world), so i called chris, whose google-fu was running at its normal level (scaryhigh). he i found out that woody lives (er, let's make that past tense) at 3520 mermaid ave. i was at 16th and mermaid and my feet were already sore. sorry kids, no pictures other than the street sign.
i bought a week-long subway pass. the city is now my bitch. (it was $25, so i need to ride 12.5 times to make it worth the cash. i'm at 4 right now. i'll get there.)
on the ride back i stopped at washington cemetary (HUGE!) and prospect park. there was a high school frisbee team practicing. i've never seen so many good forehands in my life; it was really cool. then i went to the brooklyn bridge. everyone knows you're supposed to walk across it and see the incredible views of lower manhattan while you do. stuff like that gets built up a lot and never lives up to your expectations. but this one was pretty friggin' cool, especially cos its being a bridge means you have a million places to set down your camera and do longer exposures for good night shots. i got some awesome pictures. one thing about the bridge is that it's very cool (pretty, interesting, all that) from a personal walking perspective, and equally---but differently---cool from a photographic perspective. it was awesome to see the bridge and the views in two completely different, complimentary ways.
i wandered over to a park to rest, and i started chatting with a girl from brooklyn. we hung out for a few hours, and now i have a new facebook-friend. i'm up to 89 "friends" (some of whom are actually friends) on there, which seems like a lot to me. i think i've added about 75 people since i started the trip. then i looked at other people's "friends" total, and a lot of people have over 200. what the fuck? how does anyone know that many people? and how do they think they'll keep track of them all? i realize this is largely from people who are in (or just finished) school, but still.
after preksha and i parted ways, i found my host at a nearby bar (God bless cell phones). i had a good slice of pizza en route. we headed over to the subway to get back to his place, but first we stopped for pizza. that means i had 3.5 slices of pizza yesterday (including breakfast, which was leftovers from the night before), eight slices in the last two days, and i think two or three the day before. i just want to make sure you guys aren't worried about my getting enough of my favorite food. after the other day (4.5 pieces of pizza and five hot dogs), chris was concerned that i might not be getting enough sodium, so i also ate several (heaping) tablespoons of raw salt yesterday. don't worry, it was iodized---no goiters for me!
today i think i'm gonna go to shea stadium and maybe the staten island ferry. i'm tentatively supposed to hang out with carly (friend from high school), so i hope she gets in touch with me. you never ever know how that stuff will play out, though. i also need a place to stay tonight, cos i can't burden the friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend for a fourth night. he's been a wonderful host, but it's time to move on. i'm hoping either carly or miller can hook me up, but i'm sure something will work out (...so what's that odd feeling my chest then? it doesn't feel like "sure")---because it always does.