Picspam: New York City (120 photos)
Just returned from Going the Distance, which included just enough footage of New York City for my heart to pang with every new shot they showed. Perfect timing, I guess, to post more pics from this summer, and this time: the city that never sleeps.
Day 1: American Idiot, Sixth Street summer fair, Rockefeller Center and NBC store with
sabra_n
American Idiot cast stalking signing. No Stark Sands, alas.
Tentacles! I took this one for -- you know who you are :-)
Enormous Rob Lowe staring at us in the street! Very unnerving.
Day 2: Lunch with
linaerys and friends, Greenwich Village, Washington Square Park, NYU area, evening bagel with
seekingferret and eventual Times Square/Port Authority in the pouring rain
(Unintentional Lost references ftw)
mpreg everywhere...
Friends apartment! (
linaerys: confirmed by internet \o/)
Day 3: Bryant Park, NYC Public Library, soul food by Columbia and St. John the Divine, and ultimately fanvid watching with
hannah,
amproof, and
brimtoast
NYC Public Library, or -- King Silas's balcony at the palace at Shiloh
Prometheus mural, as seen on Kings
The original Winnie the Pooh dolls, donated to the NYPL by Christopher Robin Milne. Piglet is tiiiiny!
Eeyore's nailed on tail!
By St. John the Divine. What better way to make a church user-friendly than to place a statue of a wild bestial orgy on a toothy crab monster dangling severed demon heads from its claws in its front?
Day 4: Brooklyn and Jewish Children's Museum with
amproof, Museum of Comics and Cartoon Art, SoHo, Little Italy, Chinatown, and Promises, Promises with
sabra_n
...Brooklyn
This is what what I call "soup almonds" look like when sold here -- "mini croutons" by Osem. No chicken soup is complete without it. You can definitely find it in the international/Jewish/Israeli sections of some supermarkets.
Giant challah and matza balls at the Jewish Children's Museum!
View of midtown from museum top floor
Okay, this was pretty hilarious: a golf course that starts with aleph-bet building blocks, goes through your bar mitzvah and wedding...
...AND ENDS WITH YOUR KOSHER JEWISH DEATH.
Oh, Brooklyn. Feels just like home :/
...and this is not Brooklyn anymore :-)
Piccola Italia! At long last, some outdoor seating at cafes, which can hardly be found in Manhatten (or in any city I visited, really). One of those moments where it takes you a while to figure out what exactly it is about this place that suddenly makes it seem familiar, that reminds you of home, until you finally put your finger on it.
Chinatown market; I do not remember what these were called, but they're enormous. Jack apple, maybe?
Dragon fruit
I really love riding in the subway.
Enormous puppets that freak
sabra_n out. I am not mocking your pain! I'm just... reminiscing about it fondly :-)
Mars 2010 space themed restaurant bar :D Just peeked in to get a look, but I don't care it's AWESOME.
Snapped by
sabra_n!
Times Square nighttime photo ops
Really pretty cop; I must have taken 10 shots of her, but she kept turning away from me and I couln't get a clear one without being too obviously stalkery :(
People standing on the TKTS stand bleachers
Micheal J. Fox puddle reflection
I don't remember if I've mentioned it or not, but I find the presence and uniforms of NYC cops pretty unique; not just because they're so familiar from TV and movies, but because they're so foreign to my native landscape. I can barely visualize a local policeman's uniform, even if I think hard about it; I hardly ever see any around. You can't go anywhere without encountering soldiers on leave here, but police presence is hardly felt. So it was kind of cool to see in NY.
Day 5: Paley Center, general wandering around, Central Park
No photos from the Paley Center, but basically, you get to watch whatever you want from their entire archive for 90 minutes. Somehow I ended up watching this really fascinating documentary that was recced by one of the curators, that can be found in full on You Tube: Inside Pop - The Rock Revolution. It was a CBS special broadcast in 1967 that was on of the first examinations of rock/pop as a serious art form. The first 20 minutes are of Leonard Bernstein analyzing various pop songs, from the Beatles to Dylan to The Monkeys, lyrically and musically, and explaining to the older generation (because "what we have here," he explains, "is a generational gap--") what exactly it is about this music that makes it innovative, that makes it artistically worthwhile, after all. The second half, another twenty minutes, are interviews of these same "young people" who are, for the first time, creating music "by themselves and for themselves", asking them to explain what it is, exactly, that they're about. It's kind of funny, because after seeing Bernstein giving the music so much respect, it feels like these kids are shooting themselves in the foot with their stoned hippie talks about how it's all about love, and it's so pretentious it's endearing, in a... Ryan Ross modern hipster kind of way, I guess. More than anything, it was fascinating to see all this footage of both the 1967 music scene, and the way the establishment -- the camera -- tried to explain it. If you're interested in that time period musically, I really recommend this documentary.
...Okay, and now on to walking around the city. This is by Grand Central:
Me!
My Israeli Aroma coffee. Mmmmm.
In front of the Met; I arrived just as it was closing, so lots of people were just resting on the steps.
From there, to the park:
...and then my battery died.
Day 5: Was supposed to leave. Greenwich Village, Downtown, Brooklyn Bridge, Park Place 45, Battery Park City, picking up my suitcase from Fringe Central and last minute crashing at
linaerys's ♥
First day of actual sunlight in the city, after a week of gray and rainy weather. One of my favorite things (as future photos will attest) was finally being able to see reflections on the skyscrapers.
Washington Square Park, which had been completely empty a few days earlier in the rain:
Brooklyn Bridge & view from:
(tasted like Fanta)
On my way to Battery Park City, which is somehow where I always spend my last days in the city, I walked through Park Place 45, where the Muslim Community Center is going to be built. There were no protests that day, but just two groups of passersby, maybe ten each, who'd converged in front of the address and argued politics, with a handful of signs.
Say cheese! Battery Park City.
Nom, dinner.
Sun sets over New Jersey...
Day 6: Chelsea Market & High Line park, lunch with
sabra_n (or near enough to)
astolat and
cesperanza, and away.
Chelsea market is really, really pretty: the old National Biscuit Company factory turned into a very artsy indoor market, filled with specialty food shops and cafes.
Awesomecakes!
Outdoor art at High Line park (that reminded me a lot of
blackmare's art...)
View from the bus, leaving New Jersey. I've heard NJ has bogs! Are these bogs? I do not know...!
I don't know, I love New York City so much. Every time I've been there has been amazing. And it's not the things I did, it's the experience of the city itself, its scope, its reputation, its... legendariness; and this time, the people I met. I recently read an article by Daniel Kahneman, who studies how we experience happiness, and divides the self into the "I that experiences" and the "I that remembers". The translations are incorrect, I'm sure, but the gist is that how you experience and how you remember things are different things, and okay, I know it's obvious, but it really fits with how I feel about this summer. Ultimately, I didn't really do much in NYC; I don't have too many stories to tell my friends and family at home, I didn't do anything extraordinary, which makes it feel kind of empty when I try to recount. But as it was happening, experiencing this long collection of moments and people, I was happy.
And now the Richard Dean Anderson Simpsons episode is on, which is, I guess, the perfect time to stop.
comments on Dreamwidth.
Day 1: American Idiot, Sixth Street summer fair, Rockefeller Center and NBC store with
sabra_n
American Idiot cast stalking signing. No Stark Sands, alas.
Tentacles! I took this one for -- you know who you are :-)
Enormous Rob Lowe staring at us in the street! Very unnerving.
Day 2: Lunch with
linaerys and friends, Greenwich Village, Washington Square Park, NYU area, evening bagel with
seekingferret and eventual Times Square/Port Authority in the pouring rain
(Unintentional Lost references ftw)
mpreg everywhere...
Friends apartment! (
linaerys: confirmed by internet \o/)
Day 3: Bryant Park, NYC Public Library, soul food by Columbia and St. John the Divine, and ultimately fanvid watching with
hannah,
amproof, and
brimtoast
NYC Public Library, or -- King Silas's balcony at the palace at Shiloh
Prometheus mural, as seen on Kings
The original Winnie the Pooh dolls, donated to the NYPL by Christopher Robin Milne. Piglet is tiiiiny!
Eeyore's nailed on tail!
By St. John the Divine. What better way to make a church user-friendly than to place a statue of a wild bestial orgy on a toothy crab monster dangling severed demon heads from its claws in its front?
Day 4: Brooklyn and Jewish Children's Museum with
amproof, Museum of Comics and Cartoon Art, SoHo, Little Italy, Chinatown, and Promises, Promises with
sabra_n
...Brooklyn
This is what what I call "soup almonds" look like when sold here -- "mini croutons" by Osem. No chicken soup is complete without it. You can definitely find it in the international/Jewish/Israeli sections of some supermarkets.
Giant challah and matza balls at the Jewish Children's Museum!
View of midtown from museum top floor
Okay, this was pretty hilarious: a golf course that starts with aleph-bet building blocks, goes through your bar mitzvah and wedding...
...AND ENDS WITH YOUR KOSHER JEWISH DEATH.
Oh, Brooklyn. Feels just like home :/
...and this is not Brooklyn anymore :-)
Piccola Italia! At long last, some outdoor seating at cafes, which can hardly be found in Manhatten (or in any city I visited, really). One of those moments where it takes you a while to figure out what exactly it is about this place that suddenly makes it seem familiar, that reminds you of home, until you finally put your finger on it.
Chinatown market; I do not remember what these were called, but they're enormous. Jack apple, maybe?
Dragon fruit
I really love riding in the subway.
Enormous puppets that freak
sabra_n out. I am not mocking your pain! I'm just... reminiscing about it fondly :-)
Mars 2010 space themed restaurant bar :D Just peeked in to get a look, but I don't care it's AWESOME.
Snapped by
sabra_n!
Times Square nighttime photo ops
Really pretty cop; I must have taken 10 shots of her, but she kept turning away from me and I couln't get a clear one without being too obviously stalkery :(
People standing on the TKTS stand bleachers
Micheal J. Fox puddle reflection
I don't remember if I've mentioned it or not, but I find the presence and uniforms of NYC cops pretty unique; not just because they're so familiar from TV and movies, but because they're so foreign to my native landscape. I can barely visualize a local policeman's uniform, even if I think hard about it; I hardly ever see any around. You can't go anywhere without encountering soldiers on leave here, but police presence is hardly felt. So it was kind of cool to see in NY.
Day 5: Paley Center, general wandering around, Central Park
No photos from the Paley Center, but basically, you get to watch whatever you want from their entire archive for 90 minutes. Somehow I ended up watching this really fascinating documentary that was recced by one of the curators, that can be found in full on You Tube: Inside Pop - The Rock Revolution. It was a CBS special broadcast in 1967 that was on of the first examinations of rock/pop as a serious art form. The first 20 minutes are of Leonard Bernstein analyzing various pop songs, from the Beatles to Dylan to The Monkeys, lyrically and musically, and explaining to the older generation (because "what we have here," he explains, "is a generational gap--") what exactly it is about this music that makes it innovative, that makes it artistically worthwhile, after all. The second half, another twenty minutes, are interviews of these same "young people" who are, for the first time, creating music "by themselves and for themselves", asking them to explain what it is, exactly, that they're about. It's kind of funny, because after seeing Bernstein giving the music so much respect, it feels like these kids are shooting themselves in the foot with their stoned hippie talks about how it's all about love, and it's so pretentious it's endearing, in a... Ryan Ross modern hipster kind of way, I guess. More than anything, it was fascinating to see all this footage of both the 1967 music scene, and the way the establishment -- the camera -- tried to explain it. If you're interested in that time period musically, I really recommend this documentary.
...Okay, and now on to walking around the city. This is by Grand Central:
Me!
My Israeli Aroma coffee. Mmmmm.
In front of the Met; I arrived just as it was closing, so lots of people were just resting on the steps.
From there, to the park:
...and then my battery died.
Day 5: Was supposed to leave. Greenwich Village, Downtown, Brooklyn Bridge, Park Place 45, Battery Park City, picking up my suitcase from Fringe Central and last minute crashing at
linaerys's ♥
First day of actual sunlight in the city, after a week of gray and rainy weather. One of my favorite things (as future photos will attest) was finally being able to see reflections on the skyscrapers.
Washington Square Park, which had been completely empty a few days earlier in the rain:
Brooklyn Bridge & view from:
(tasted like Fanta)
On my way to Battery Park City, which is somehow where I always spend my last days in the city, I walked through Park Place 45, where the Muslim Community Center is going to be built. There were no protests that day, but just two groups of passersby, maybe ten each, who'd converged in front of the address and argued politics, with a handful of signs.
Say cheese! Battery Park City.
Nom, dinner.
Sun sets over New Jersey...
Day 6: Chelsea Market & High Line park, lunch with
sabra_n (or near enough to)
astolat and
cesperanza, and away.
Chelsea market is really, really pretty: the old National Biscuit Company factory turned into a very artsy indoor market, filled with specialty food shops and cafes.
Awesomecakes!
Outdoor art at High Line park (that reminded me a lot of
blackmare's art...)
View from the bus, leaving New Jersey. I've heard NJ has bogs! Are these bogs? I do not know...!
I don't know, I love New York City so much. Every time I've been there has been amazing. And it's not the things I did, it's the experience of the city itself, its scope, its reputation, its... legendariness; and this time, the people I met. I recently read an article by Daniel Kahneman, who studies how we experience happiness, and divides the self into the "I that experiences" and the "I that remembers". The translations are incorrect, I'm sure, but the gist is that how you experience and how you remember things are different things, and okay, I know it's obvious, but it really fits with how I feel about this summer. Ultimately, I didn't really do much in NYC; I don't have too many stories to tell my friends and family at home, I didn't do anything extraordinary, which makes it feel kind of empty when I try to recount. But as it was happening, experiencing this long collection of moments and people, I was happy.
And now the Richard Dean Anderson Simpsons episode is on, which is, I guess, the perfect time to stop.
comments on Dreamwidth.