New York City Day #4: Jew York City, wanna flex your muscle!
(Disclaimer: I realize that the term "Jew York City" is offensive to many people -- including my Jewish manager. But I think it's funny, and more to the point, I just like the feeling I get from knowing that this city is full of Jews. At my hometown temple, you would go there on Friday evenings, look around at the 10 or so old people who showed up for services, and think, "This is it. This is all of us." But here -- before we left, I googled Manhattan synagogues, and the whole frickin' map lit up! Here, it's not, this is all there is of us. We're it. It's, we run this town! We're everywhere! That is why I love calling it "Jew York City.")
Sara wanted to sleep in this morning, so I brought her a breakfast sandwich back from the cafe because I'm nice like that. While I was sitting there eating pancakes, two German (I think?) women next to me kept looking over at my plate, and I kept catching the word "pancake" in their conversation. I'm fairly certain that they were trying to figure out what pancakes were. Haha.
I'd wanted to visit Roosevelt Island, so that's where we went this morning. To get to the island, you have to take a tramcar from Manhattan over the East River. The tramcar had all clear walls and swung over the river on wires, so the ride was really neat and gave us some amazing views of Manhattan. And for some reason, it was even more insanely packed with Asian tourists than the Met.
Me on the tramcar ride. There weren't many seats in the car, so Sara and I were both standing up and holding onto straps from the ceiling.
I love this shot looking down at the Manhattan traffic from the tramcar. Look at how far down the street you can see!
The weather was perfect today, so we walked along the riverfront, all the way down to the southern tip of the island and back. Of course, sunny, cool weather also meant taking pictures in awful direct sunlight.
I know my photos of it are all park, but most of Roosevelt Island is more of the rest of New York City -- traffic, buildings, people, etc.
My failed attempt to hold the tip of the Chrysler Building between my fingers. Ugh!
Me in Four Freedoms Park at the end of the island, looking out at downtown Manhattan.
We also saw the ruins of the old smallpox hosptail, which I thought was pretty cool. Of course they were all fenced off so nobody could approach them, but I didn't really want to.
After Roosevelt Island, Sara went back to the hotel (I think she spent the afternoon watching "Sex and the City") and I took the subway uptown to the Jewish Museum. This trip hasn't been quite as Jewish as I'd hoped (fuck you, Temple Emmanuel!) so I'm really glad I got to go there. I saw a lot of mezuzahs and old Jewish artifacts from all over the world.
At the Jewish Museum: "He Cast a Look and Went Mad," 1910 oil-painting by Maurycy Minkowski. I've seen reproductions of this in a few synagogues, so it was cool to see it in person.
Portion of a wall from a 16th-century Persian synagogue. It was huge and so colorful. Eastern Jews used to keep their Torah scrolls in niches in a wall, instead of in Arks like most Jews today.
1918 memorial plaque from the Great Synagogue of Danzig, Poland. I think this was the most sobering thing that I saw in the Jewish Museum. It is engraved with the names of members of the Great Synagogue who were killed in World War I. In the late '30s, congregants pooled their money to ship this huge, heavy plaque to safety in America, fearing that their synagogue would be destroyed by the rising Nazi powers -- which it was. The synagogue was demolished by Nazis in 1939, and most of the Jews of Danzig were killed in the Shoah.
The windows of the Jewish Museum were all covered in this elaborate Star of David pattern, and I was stunned by how beautiful the trees of Central Park (which was across the street) were reflected in the glass. Just gorgeous.
I was also really impressed by the sheer variety of items for sale in the gift shop. I didn't buy any, but boy, now I know I'm in Jew York City!
Copies of a book called 'Twas the Night Before Hanukkah. I'd never even heard of this before!
A copy of Where the Wild Things Are... in Hebrew!
A Statue of Liberty menorah! I think her arm holding the torch is the shamas.
After I left the museum, the weather was still so perfect that I just walked around the neighborhood for a while, taking random pictures of pretty things.
I love everything about the shot: the brownstones with their front steps and curved windows, the little flowerbeds around the trees, the sunlight on the branches, and of course, the little orange balloons. I imagine some kid was having a birthday party at that address.
A message that I spotted on the side of a food truck.
Isn't this vine-covered old building so cool-looking? I wish I could find out more about it. I love the contrast of the yellow stoplight too.
Artwork for sale on the sidewalk near the Guggenheim Museum, across the street from Central Park.
By then, I was in agony with every. single. step I took. My legs felt like they would never stop hurting. So I subwayed back to our hotel room and rested for a while before we headed out again. I thought I would be too excited to take a nap, but I wasn't. Sara joked, what if I forgot to set my alarm, overslept, and missed Les Mis? Honestly, I think I would've shot myself. But we got up, taxied to the theater district, and found the Imperial Theatre, where Les Mis was playing with plenty of time to spare. I, of course, had to take some pictures.
Me outside the Imperial lobby (which wasn't open yet). Can you tell how excited I am? CAN YOU HEAR THE PEOPLE SING?
Waiting for the show to start, we had dinner at Junior's, which took a little longer than I would've liked, but it was so yummy. Since it was our last night in the city, I decided to splurge and bought probably the single most expensive meal of my entire life. (Of course, I have pretty very cheap standards, so that isn't much.) I had a Shirley Temple and Something Different, a brisket sandwich that had two latkes instead of bread, and it was HUGE! I love brisket and latkes (I spend all year waiting for Hanukkah so I can eat some!) and stuffed myself with as much as I could hold and still didn't eat it all.
See the little bowl of pickles and coleslaw in the background? They came with every table, and apparently this is a very New York thing. It made me think of Julia Louis-Dreyfus's mean tweet.
Junior's was just around the corner from the Imperial, and we had a window seat with THIS amazing view:
I may or may not have spent the entire meal humming Les Mis songs. Mostly may.
Times Square was down the street, so after dinner, we walked around there for a little while. But we didn't stay too long because 1) I was paranoid about being pickpocketed, and 2) it was crazy-crowded with tourists and people in costumes wanting you to take photos with them: various superheroes, Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Statues of Liberty, and one woman with nothing on but body-paint! To get away from the insanity, we ducked into the Disney Store... and it was almost just as crowded in there! It was also a Frozen explosion. So much of the merchandise was characters that I didn't recongize because they were after my time, which made me feel really old.
A giant wall of plush inside the Disney Store! It was a little scary.
You can bet that as soon as the lobby opened to let people in, we were waiting in line for Les Mis. We were sitting all the way up in the highest mezzanine, but I didn't care. I still can't believe that I actually saw Les Mis on Broadway! I lived the dream I dreamed in time gone by! It was kinda overwhelming, but here are some bits that I want to remember:
~ At first, I really made an effort not to cry... but I lost that battle early on, during "Valjean's Soliloquoy." When Valjean (Ramin Karimloo - I still don't know how to pronounce his name) sang, "And the night is closing in / As I stare into the void, to the whirlpool of my sin," it was a very powerful moment for me. We saw this on Kol Nidre night, the night before Yom Kippur, the holiest night in Judaism. Every other Jew in the world was likely atoning for their sins and fasting... while I spent the night stuffing myself with latkes and watching Les Mis! I felt so guilty.
~ I feel bitchy for saying this, but Fantine (Caissie Levy) and Eponine (Nikki M. James) were both pretty underwhelming, to the point that I wondered how they made it all the way to Broadway. Eponine's voice had a very strange quality to it that distracted from her songs. The Fantine and Eponine that I saw in a local production earlier this year were actually better. Everyone else was good-to-great.
~ Joshua Colley brought a lot of spark and pluck to Gavroche, especially considering how young he looked, and Chris McCarrell was probably the best Marius I've ever seen. I wasn't crazy over him at first, but I think that was because Marius is a kinda wimpy character to play. (I mean, "Black, my world if she's not there"?) He absolutely crushed "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables" and "Valjean's Confession." Crushed. Them. "Valjean's Confession," by the way, was when I really started crying, and try as a I might, I couldn't reign it back in for the rest of the show.
During "Javert's Soliloquy," between the lines "This man has killed me, even so" and "I am reaching, but I fall," Javert (Earl Carpenter) paused and did this creepy laugh. I'd never seen a Javert do that before, and it was a really cool, effective touch. This production also had a really good use of candles during "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables" that I'd never seen before, either.
~ I've seen some productions where after Marius is wounded, Valjean sorta semi-picks him up, and Marius walks along while pretending to be unconscious. Apparently this is not the case on Broadway! For the scenes in the sewers, Valjean completely picked up Marius and carried him around over his shoulder. I was expecting him to rush across the stage with him, but he actually moseyed across slowly, like carrying Marius wasn't difficult. I was so impressed.
And now... I guess I can die happy!
Sara wanted to sleep in this morning, so I brought her a breakfast sandwich back from the cafe because I'm nice like that. While I was sitting there eating pancakes, two German (I think?) women next to me kept looking over at my plate, and I kept catching the word "pancake" in their conversation. I'm fairly certain that they were trying to figure out what pancakes were. Haha.
I'd wanted to visit Roosevelt Island, so that's where we went this morning. To get to the island, you have to take a tramcar from Manhattan over the East River. The tramcar had all clear walls and swung over the river on wires, so the ride was really neat and gave us some amazing views of Manhattan. And for some reason, it was even more insanely packed with Asian tourists than the Met.
Me on the tramcar ride. There weren't many seats in the car, so Sara and I were both standing up and holding onto straps from the ceiling.
I love this shot looking down at the Manhattan traffic from the tramcar. Look at how far down the street you can see!
The weather was perfect today, so we walked along the riverfront, all the way down to the southern tip of the island and back. Of course, sunny, cool weather also meant taking pictures in awful direct sunlight.
I know my photos of it are all park, but most of Roosevelt Island is more of the rest of New York City -- traffic, buildings, people, etc.
My failed attempt to hold the tip of the Chrysler Building between my fingers. Ugh!
Me in Four Freedoms Park at the end of the island, looking out at downtown Manhattan.
We also saw the ruins of the old smallpox hosptail, which I thought was pretty cool. Of course they were all fenced off so nobody could approach them, but I didn't really want to.
After Roosevelt Island, Sara went back to the hotel (I think she spent the afternoon watching "Sex and the City") and I took the subway uptown to the Jewish Museum. This trip hasn't been quite as Jewish as I'd hoped (fuck you, Temple Emmanuel!) so I'm really glad I got to go there. I saw a lot of mezuzahs and old Jewish artifacts from all over the world.
At the Jewish Museum: "He Cast a Look and Went Mad," 1910 oil-painting by Maurycy Minkowski. I've seen reproductions of this in a few synagogues, so it was cool to see it in person.
Portion of a wall from a 16th-century Persian synagogue. It was huge and so colorful. Eastern Jews used to keep their Torah scrolls in niches in a wall, instead of in Arks like most Jews today.
1918 memorial plaque from the Great Synagogue of Danzig, Poland. I think this was the most sobering thing that I saw in the Jewish Museum. It is engraved with the names of members of the Great Synagogue who were killed in World War I. In the late '30s, congregants pooled their money to ship this huge, heavy plaque to safety in America, fearing that their synagogue would be destroyed by the rising Nazi powers -- which it was. The synagogue was demolished by Nazis in 1939, and most of the Jews of Danzig were killed in the Shoah.
The windows of the Jewish Museum were all covered in this elaborate Star of David pattern, and I was stunned by how beautiful the trees of Central Park (which was across the street) were reflected in the glass. Just gorgeous.
I was also really impressed by the sheer variety of items for sale in the gift shop. I didn't buy any, but boy, now I know I'm in Jew York City!
Copies of a book called 'Twas the Night Before Hanukkah. I'd never even heard of this before!
A copy of Where the Wild Things Are... in Hebrew!
A Statue of Liberty menorah! I think her arm holding the torch is the shamas.
After I left the museum, the weather was still so perfect that I just walked around the neighborhood for a while, taking random pictures of pretty things.
I love everything about the shot: the brownstones with their front steps and curved windows, the little flowerbeds around the trees, the sunlight on the branches, and of course, the little orange balloons. I imagine some kid was having a birthday party at that address.
A message that I spotted on the side of a food truck.
Isn't this vine-covered old building so cool-looking? I wish I could find out more about it. I love the contrast of the yellow stoplight too.
Artwork for sale on the sidewalk near the Guggenheim Museum, across the street from Central Park.
By then, I was in agony with every. single. step I took. My legs felt like they would never stop hurting. So I subwayed back to our hotel room and rested for a while before we headed out again. I thought I would be too excited to take a nap, but I wasn't. Sara joked, what if I forgot to set my alarm, overslept, and missed Les Mis? Honestly, I think I would've shot myself. But we got up, taxied to the theater district, and found the Imperial Theatre, where Les Mis was playing with plenty of time to spare. I, of course, had to take some pictures.
Me outside the Imperial lobby (which wasn't open yet). Can you tell how excited I am? CAN YOU HEAR THE PEOPLE SING?
Waiting for the show to start, we had dinner at Junior's, which took a little longer than I would've liked, but it was so yummy. Since it was our last night in the city, I decided to splurge and bought probably the single most expensive meal of my entire life. (Of course, I have pretty very cheap standards, so that isn't much.) I had a Shirley Temple and Something Different, a brisket sandwich that had two latkes instead of bread, and it was HUGE! I love brisket and latkes (I spend all year waiting for Hanukkah so I can eat some!) and stuffed myself with as much as I could hold and still didn't eat it all.
See the little bowl of pickles and coleslaw in the background? They came with every table, and apparently this is a very New York thing. It made me think of Julia Louis-Dreyfus's mean tweet.
Junior's was just around the corner from the Imperial, and we had a window seat with THIS amazing view:
I may or may not have spent the entire meal humming Les Mis songs. Mostly may.
Times Square was down the street, so after dinner, we walked around there for a little while. But we didn't stay too long because 1) I was paranoid about being pickpocketed, and 2) it was crazy-crowded with tourists and people in costumes wanting you to take photos with them: various superheroes, Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Statues of Liberty, and one woman with nothing on but body-paint! To get away from the insanity, we ducked into the Disney Store... and it was almost just as crowded in there! It was also a Frozen explosion. So much of the merchandise was characters that I didn't recongize because they were after my time, which made me feel really old.
A giant wall of plush inside the Disney Store! It was a little scary.
You can bet that as soon as the lobby opened to let people in, we were waiting in line for Les Mis. We were sitting all the way up in the highest mezzanine, but I didn't care. I still can't believe that I actually saw Les Mis on Broadway! I lived the dream I dreamed in time gone by! It was kinda overwhelming, but here are some bits that I want to remember:
~ At first, I really made an effort not to cry... but I lost that battle early on, during "Valjean's Soliloquoy." When Valjean (Ramin Karimloo - I still don't know how to pronounce his name) sang, "And the night is closing in / As I stare into the void, to the whirlpool of my sin," it was a very powerful moment for me. We saw this on Kol Nidre night, the night before Yom Kippur, the holiest night in Judaism. Every other Jew in the world was likely atoning for their sins and fasting... while I spent the night stuffing myself with latkes and watching Les Mis! I felt so guilty.
~ I feel bitchy for saying this, but Fantine (Caissie Levy) and Eponine (Nikki M. James) were both pretty underwhelming, to the point that I wondered how they made it all the way to Broadway. Eponine's voice had a very strange quality to it that distracted from her songs. The Fantine and Eponine that I saw in a local production earlier this year were actually better. Everyone else was good-to-great.
~ Joshua Colley brought a lot of spark and pluck to Gavroche, especially considering how young he looked, and Chris McCarrell was probably the best Marius I've ever seen. I wasn't crazy over him at first, but I think that was because Marius is a kinda wimpy character to play. (I mean, "Black, my world if she's not there"?) He absolutely crushed "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables" and "Valjean's Confession." Crushed. Them. "Valjean's Confession," by the way, was when I really started crying, and try as a I might, I couldn't reign it back in for the rest of the show.
During "Javert's Soliloquy," between the lines "This man has killed me, even so" and "I am reaching, but I fall," Javert (Earl Carpenter) paused and did this creepy laugh. I'd never seen a Javert do that before, and it was a really cool, effective touch. This production also had a really good use of candles during "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables" that I'd never seen before, either.
Click to view~ I've seen some productions where after Marius is wounded, Valjean sorta semi-picks him up, and Marius walks along while pretending to be unconscious. Apparently this is not the case on Broadway! For the scenes in the sewers, Valjean completely picked up Marius and carried him around over his shoulder. I was expecting him to rush across the stage with him, but he actually moseyed across slowly, like carrying Marius wasn't difficult. I was so impressed.
And now... I guess I can die happy!