a week of wandering through nyc
I've had this incredibly busy week.
The weather is finally nice and New York is beautiful, so I'm doing my best to appreciate it.
Last Thursday night I went to the third annual Komedy for Karma at Gotham Comedy Club, which is a benefit for the awesometastic Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary. I made chocolate chip cookies which were sold at the merch table--everything was vegan. Lizz Winstead, co-creator of The Daily Show, was my favorite--she started out slow but then told a hilarious story about her vet's crazy advice regarding her shit-eating dog. (Best way to win over a vegan audience? Pet stories.) Sadly I forget the name of the first comedian, but he was vegan and told actual funny jokes about being vegan, so the crowd adored him, too. Wyatt Cenac was a disappointment, though--I love him on The Daily Show but he was totally phoning it in here, not connecting with the audience at all. Dave Attell was last and honestly I don't really get him or why he's funny, but I guess the crowd liked it.
Afterward we wandered over to the closest bar, which had very annoying big bright TVs playing sports. It was kind of like wandering into an alternate universe; a New York I usually never experience. The only beer that even sounded drinkable was their house wheat--everything else was like, Budweiser. But whatever, the point was the company.
My friend Cat had come into town for the comedy event, so she stayed over Thursday night. We got up in the... afternoon... and made blueberry pancakes (from Vegan with a Vengeance, they're perfect) and heated up the Red Flannel Hash I'd made earlier in the week (it's like smoky hash browns mixed with beets, from Vegan Brunch), and had basically a perfect brunch. Then we posted her interview with Moby to SuperVegan and finally headed out in the late afternoon to the new restaurant Terri on 23rd St at 6th Ave. It's entirely vegan but doesn't advertise itself that way, which is probably for the best since plenty of curious omnivores seemed to be wandering in and enjoying the food. It's basically fast food type sandwiches and smoothies and baked goods, satisfying if not brilliant. So we shared two sandwiches and then wandered over to the High Line, which was theoretically the point of our day. It was too crowded, though, and the wildflowers hadn't grown much yet; I think I'll enjoy it better later in the summer.
Afterward I insisted on walking back toward the L train via Gansevoort street, because I wanted to see the corner that White Collar turned into an outdoor restaurant in that episode with the French girls and the stakeout. It actually is a teeny tiny spot, but I totally bought it as a restaurant in the show. TV is magic. (I'm a giant geek--I've been making a point of wandering past various White Collar filming locations, which I may write about when/if I ever manage to find time to write up screencaped episode reviews.)
All this Normal Human Interaction has reminded me of why I love fandom so very much. It takes so much effort to force myself to be normal and social and talk about politics and haircuts and shoes and food and all the normal stuff that normal people talk about. I'm getting better at pretending and trying to be present in the moment, but really? ALL I WANT TO TALK ABOUT IS HOW CUTE PETER AND NEAL ARE TOGETHER. It's so good to have a place where that form of insanity is understood and shared.
Anyway, so then we headed back to my place and met up with jaydk. We made dinner; the salad was organic, with greens, grated carrots, sliced apple, toasted pine nuts, and a homemade dressing of peanut oil, balsalmic vingegar, red wine vinegar, fresh squeezed lemon juice, fresh black pepper, and a sprinkle of Italian seasoning. The main dish was spinach pasta with pesto and artichokes, from Veganomicon. This is a perfect dish to make with company since it seems fancy and is very satisfying, but is actually super easy to make.
We watched an episode of White Collar, 1x07, which is where I'm at chronologically with introducing jaydk to the series, and I thought would also work as an intro for Cat. I'm not sure if it did, though, but it could also just be that Cat has way different taste in TV than me, alas. Then we watched an episode of jaydk's favorite Korean soap opera, You Are Beautiful, and the Hitchcock movie Rear Window. I'd never seen it before--it is very good, but actually a lot sillier and less dark than I expected. A lot of the darkness is in the subtext and in the implied psychology of the main character. Anyway, I enjoyed it very much.
Cat stayed over again and we woke up, made brunch, watched the last season finale of Spooks which we've been slowly working our way through for months (Richard Armitage is pretty and the character of Ros is badass, but that show is just so terrible and cheesy and melodramatic and dull). Then we headed to the Met, where we wandered through the Egyptian section (Cat actually studied ancient Egypt and spent a lot of time there, so she was a great person to get a tour from), then looked at the drawings of Bronzino, which was also amazing. I really need to go to the Met more often; I love it but it's overwhelming. I didn't realize they're open until 9pm on Saturdays; I'm going to have to start making a habit of going there and just focusing on one gallery at a time.
It also made me miss chenanceou--the first time I ever went to the Met was with her. Way back in... was it 2003? Man, time flies. She is also one of those people who knows the history of everything and so makes a fantastic amateur tour guide. :)
We then had a drink in the atrium while a string quartet played live--it felt very classy, though we were surrounded by tourists. Then for dinner we headed to Tsampa, a Tibetan place in the East Village. Their spicy noodles are incredible, with eggplant and peppers and greens and this amazing garlic-ginger-tomato sauce, and I've discovered that I really love plum wine. Then back to my place, where we tried to watch an episode of an anime she likes called Ergo Proxy, but it was streaming too slow, so I showed her the premiere of White Collar instead. I can tell she's not into it, though at least jaydk kind of is. :)
Sunday we headed to Carroll Gardens to my friend Anne's place for brunch. The L and G were actually running quickly on Easter Sunday! We got there in about 35 minutes, a NYC public transportation miracle, and Anne prepared a fantastic vegan brunch: blueberry pancakes, veggie sausage, hash browns, and greens. Then we sat in her huge backyard and watched her four cats enjoy the weather and stalk... pretty much everything a cat can stalk. It was so cute to see their predatory instincts come out. Oh, and we ate this amazing homemade coconut ice cream that Anne had gotten from a friend; what a perfect Easter brunch.
So then Cat headed home and I went to visit my friend Livi, who's just moved to Prospect Heights. She's in a fourth-floor walk up, but it's huge and has tons of windows and a roof with a fantastic view of Manhattan--you can see the Statue of Liberty, Lower Manhattan, the Empire State Building, everything. Her friend Jamie was over, so we chatted and ate popcorn and vegan chocolate truffles, then went on the roof to watch the sun set.
Afterward I walked to Prospect Park, which I've only been to once before. It's actually really very nice around the Grand Army Plaza arch and the library--grand on a scale that felt more like Manhattan. Then I took the 2 to Christopher Street (it went local) and walked through the West Village up to the L at 6th Ave. It wasn't really a nice walk, though; I spent the whole time dodging tourists and frat boys. Maybe because it was Easter, or just because the West Village has become so touristy now, I don't know.
I went home and picked up The Power Broker again, the story of Robert Moses which I'd stopped reading during the winter but have picked up again now that I can walk around the city regularly and feel inspired.
Monday after work I wandered over to the new Brooklyn Bridge Park, only part of which is open, but it's the part nearest the bridge and is absolutely beautiful. Big lawns and roving paths and tons of benches and absolutely astounding views of Lower Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge. I want to go there every day. Then I walked under the bridge and over to the water between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges--did you know there's a beach there? A little tiny rocky one and I'd be afraid to let that water touch me, but how crazy is that, that you can stare right at Lower Manhattan from a beach? So I sat for a while as close as I could get, because the water is soothing and the view is beautiful and it was night so not crowded. Then I wandered around Dumbo a bit--cobblestone streets and old buildings, some of which actually haven't been gentrified yet. What's the big ancient brick building? It's right near the water and empty and covered in graffiti, so old that one tag actually says "Sonny + Cher"! I'd actually love to live in this area but I'm sure it's insanely expensive. Still, imagine being able to walk to Manhattan over the Brooklyn Bridge? *sigh* (I've been making a habit of walking across the Brooklyn Bridge at least once a week, even in cold weather--it doubles my commute but it's such a beautiful, inspiring view, something that makes me feel alive instead of the dreary soul-crushing 1.5 hours I spend per day on the subway. Plus the exercise is good for me.)
Tuesday night I watched the sun set from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, another stunningly beautiful view. The sun was very, very red. I like the waterfront in Brooklyn, because it has beautiful views of Manhattan, but I don't like Brooklyn. When I cross over the Brooklyn Bridge and get to the Manhattan side, I still feel a palpable sense of being home. I'm not a Brooklynite; I'm a Manhattanite who has the misfortune to live in Brooklyn.
I was in Dumbo again for a book party celebrating the release of Moby's new book Gristle, which is apparently about why people shouldn't eat meat, although you wouldn't know that from the speech Moby gave. He literally came out, took the mic in front of an attentive crowd, introduced himself, his co-editor, and three contributors, then said "If you have any questions, ask us in person when we sign your book," and that was it. He was onstage for less than two minutes and didn't bother to to 1) tell us what the book was about 2) or why it was worth buying 3) or read an excerpt 4) or answer any questions. What's the point of that?
Luckily my friend who organized the party also made a point of buying excellent wine, which was poured very freely. So I chit-chatted with various people that I can barely remember at this point, and then it ended and we went to a restaurant called Rice, which I'd never been to before. It was my friend Eva's birthday, so there was more drinking, and we shared food. She got these meatballs made of tofu that were actually quite good, with this coconut rice that was amazing. I got ratatouille with red rice, which wasn't as good--coconut rice for sure next time. And I had a mojito, so was ridiculously drunk afterward, but still managed to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge (everything was all shiny and vivid and I kept stopping and staring at random things), then took the 4 to the L. Got on an L to 8th Ave since the next Brooklyn one wasn't coming for 20 minutes, fell asleep, and thankfully woke up forty minutes later just as the train arrived at my stop. Fed the cats, staggered into bed, and just barely managed to get up in the morning.
Wednesday after work I headed to a SuperVegan-themed party thrown by one of our writers. He has this amazing, huge, beautiful, clean, climate-controlled new construction apartment right off Delancy Street next to the Williamsburg Bridge. I have such apartment envy, OMG. (And he even has affordable rent because it's one of those condo buildings that couldn't sell because of the recession and had to go rental and offer price concessions.) The party was good and the food was amazing, but I was hung over from the day before, and there's some stressful stuff going on, so I felt distant and didn't really connect. Also I'm just such an introvert and this week of social interaction, though basically nice, is really starting to wear me down. I'm having dinner with drujan tonight and going to Eva's official birthday party on Saturday and visiting jaydk on Sunday so hopefully I can recover a bit by spending Friday alone.
Oh but also, after the party Wednesday night, I walked up to Houston Street and then over to the East River. It was odd--not even midnight and I was almost completely alone on a beautiful day in NYC. Lots of housing projects in that area, not very street friendly. Jane Jacobs had a great point about cities being safer the busier the streets are--it was very disconcerting to be nearly the only one out. The crowds are why I usually love the city despite my extreme introversion--you can be more invisible in a crowd that you can ever be in an isolated place, because in a crowd as big as NYC, no one cares that they can see you. If you're isolated, fewer people see you, but anyone who sees you really sees you.
Anyway, so I walked over to the water and up the river walk, which was terribly disappointing. It's such an example of poor urban planning--there are all these buildings along the river (housing projects?), but there's a highway separating them from the river walk and very few ways to get across it, so even if you live in a building that looks right out at the water, it'll probably take 15 minutes to actually get to it. It's messed up. It also means that if you're wandering alone along the river walk at night, there's no way to get out for long stretches of time, which left me feeling rather claustrophobic.
I wandered past the water--I do love the reminder that Manhattan is an island--and then there's this weird point where the landscaping ends and you squeeze through a narrow passageway past a Con Edison plant, which gushes (waste?) water into the river and spews smoke through a smokestack and is covered in chain-link fences and feels terribly dystopic and 70s NYC and just weird, like stepping briefly into a time warp, and then suddenly the landscaping starts up again and you're back on the river walk like nothing happened. I finally exited at Stuyvesant Town and wandered aimlessly, completely lost because that place is a maze but enjoying the ambiance, then finally managed to exit at 1st Ave. The Empire State Building was red, yellow, and blue, and worked as a beacon for heading in a vaguely west-ish direction. 1st Ave was full of the homeless people that I'd expected to see along the river walk, but the L train was close and came so quickly that I was home in ten minutes. I stayed up an extra hour with my cats since they've been so lonely this week, then went to sleep at 2am.
Walking Stuyvesant Town reminded me of my ex--sometimes we'd meet up at night and walk through there and he'd tell me he dreamed of living there one day. That was before it got sold for $5.4 billion to Tishman Speyer and they started kicking out longtime tenants and making it a ~luxury~ thing and then got sued and screwed by the recession and finally gave the whole thing to their creditors, oopsie. But anyway, as much as my ex was a sleazy pathetic excuse for a human being, it was nice having someone to walk around NYC with at night. Not that I miss him, just maybe it's been long enough that I can try to look at the whole thing with a little bit of perspective and see the occasional parts that were good or at least interesting in a I-can't-believe-that-was-my-life way.
I know no one's going to read this far--I'm basically just writing this for me. I want to flock it, but my stupid WordPress privacy levels plugin is broken. So until I fix that, I'm crossing my fingers for security through obscurity.
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