NYC1: First Impressions, Friends, and Family

Jessica and I have been in New York for almost three weeks now and are absolutely loving it. It feels completely different from our last three months of travel, but also has some bits of similarity. Let me see if I can explain…

To start off, I have a very different relationship with New York than anywhere else we’ve been this year. My parents used to live here before I was born and have lots of friends and relatives in the area, so I grew up visiting here every other summer. And I’ve always been fascinated by mass transit, so the New York subway map is at least roughly tattooed in my brain somewhere. It’s also the only city I’ve ever been arrested in, so that’s also got to make an impression, right?

_{(If you don’t know the story, Jessica and I were arrested, along with seven of our friends and hundreds of other people, protesting at the 2004 Republican National Convention. It was ridiculous–we were given no chance to disperse or anything. We were held in disgusting conditions, including on the floor of a bus repair facility, and also held longer than legally allowed…all for what amounted to a ticketable offense. Eventually we sued and were reasonably well compensated for our illegal treatment…fortunately just in time for us to begin looking for housing in Santa Cruz.)}

Going on…

New York also feels an ocean away from Europe because it’s (surprise, surprise!) in the United States. But, it’s also a continent away from Santa Cruz, and still feels a bit foreign. The diversity here is enormous. We’re living in an apartment at 149th and Amsterdam, a bit north of Harlem and a somewhat south of Washington Heights. Our neighbors are Black, Dominican, Puerto Rican, a few white folks, and a bit more of everyone else in the world. As Jess says, the neighborhood seems to be slowly gentrifying, but is definitely not gentrified yet. In other parts of the city, Chinese, Spanish, Creole, or any number of other languages suddenly become dominant and that can change from block to block. It’s fun to get lost in. So, yeah, it’s totally the US, but also has moments of giving the sense of being definitely somewhere else, wherever that may be.

One of the things that has always struck me about New York is the mix of artificial and natural beauty. You can be lost among skyscrapers one moment and then staring out over the river the next. Or you can step out of the madness that is the Guggenheim Museum and right into Central Park. In fact, Central Park has really always been one of my favorite places on Earth. I love the ability to get lost in such a wild, twisting place right in the middle of one of the busiest cities in the world. And I love watching people there. Everyone seems to be having a good time: picnicking, out for a jog, kids exploring a giant rock, sitting quietly with a book, bird-watching, or just strolling and enjoying the fall.

_{Note: I’m sure I’ll add more Central Park photos in a later post. I just love it too much…}

New York also has the advantage of being a place with a lot of people, including several we know. When I flew in about three weeks ago, I first went a few hours outside the city to New Haven, CT, where my friends Ira and Ruth live with their two kids, Sam and Sarah. I stayed with them for a few days while I was waiting for the apartment we had rented to be open (and meanwhile, Jess was off in Toronto doing some interviews). It was a great place to recover from the jet lag. I loved chatting with Ruth about everything from politics to parenting. I stayed up late playing games with Ira, and the kids were constantly entertaining. Sam enjoyed pushing me back and forth down the hall and when Sara helped, I was a bit outmatched. Both of them are completely addicted to reading, too (not the worst habit), so I did get a reprieve from physical abuse from time to time. And, I got to see them all (except Ruth) again last weekend. Ira came down for an afternoon on the way to the airport and Jess and I spent an evening with the kids while they were staying with Ruth’s parents in the city. As I said, it’s nice to be somewhere so central.

I’ve also had a chance to briefly catch up with other friends from my youth. My friend and across-the-street neighbor for 16 years, Rebecca, lives in Brooklyn, and meeting up with her and her family was quite fun. And my friend Alison has been one of my consistent contacts in New York. I’ve visited her here a number of times over the years. She’s a wonderfully fun, sharp, and occasionally oddball conversationalist, but she has also been very sweet in abusing her privileges for me over the years. See, she works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and has gotten me in there for free a number of times. This time, I was a bit short on time, but after lunch with Alison, I saw a Big Bird mobile on the roof, ran through the super-cool Assyrian temple (I absolutely love the look of cuneiform etched into these amazing artistic panels), and immersed myself in a new exhibit about surrealist art. The cool thing about the “Surrealism Beyond Borders” exhibit was that it focused on surrealist artists from all over the world, not just Europe. One interesting bit was an “Exquisite Corpse” drawing. I’ve seen that used as a writing exercise, but never with drawing before. I also kinda loved one quote on the wall, from a Spanish artist (Granell) who fled Spain: “I was forced to leave because one of the traits of my personality, ever since my childhood, is that I do not like to be killed.” Seems fair.

Besides seeing a bunch of friends, we also got the chance to see my parents, who visited for a long weekend. We did all sorts of things with them, visiting museums, eating well, and some great people watching on Halloween. One day we had a great takeout lunch of West African food in the Conservatory Garden in Central Park. The Garden was in bloom with a dozen varieties of chrysanthemums, and a horticulturalist from the Brooklyn Botanical Garden gave us far more detail than we needed about the various flowers, expressing repeatedly how lucky we were to be there on the absolute perfect day to see everything in full bloom. He was absolutely right, but he was also a bit much.

Lunch and the garden were followed by a visit to the Museum of the City of New York. This is an excellent museum for learning about New York history. It also has a number of fun temporary exhibits. Besides all the general history, we enjoyed exhibits about activism throughout New York’s history, puppets in New York, and about music of the early 80s (especially looking at punk, post-punk and hip hop and their overlaps). Here you can enjoy Jess messing with puppets…

On, another day with my parents, we spent an entire afternoon checking out the Museum of Modern Art. I was particularly pleased to see a huge chunk of Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series, which is his attempt to document the causes and consequences of the Great Migration of African Americans from the South to the North. I also found the swinging video monitor over a mirror (by Shigeko Kubota) particularly fascinating to watch. There were a number of other cool things, from Chagall and Van Gogh to a weird dice game that produces music (maybe designed by Mozart?). And in the center of the museum, there’s an enormous exhibit and video titled “Who is Queen?” exploring Blackness. The video covers all sorts of things from the Poor People’s Campaign to controversies over Confederate statues. I just wish I’d had more time to see the whole thing.

We also joined my parents on a trip back and forth on the Staten Island Ferry. It’s a great way to get a view of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Jersey City, the Statue of Liberty and more on a completely free means of transportation. Go New York! Not only did we enjoy the views, but we also had fun chatting with Lynn and Margi, two of my mom’s friends from growing up just across the river in New Jersey. Lynn I’ve known my whole life, but this was my first time meeting Margi. They were both great folks to spend the afternoon with. We also, very importantly, learned that Margi had lived on the same street we lived on in Oakland. Small world.

Finally, one of the best things we did with my parents was just sitting at a cafe and watching Halloween pass by in front of us. I think after a year off for COVID last year, people were very excited to be out and about this year. The streets were packed. On the residential streets, people sat on their stoops to hand out candy, and on the business avenues kids invaded businesses in search of more. One kid exclaimed to her mom, “We’re having a candy dinner!” It was pretty fun.

I’ll share more stories and observations on New York as the weeks progress, but I did want to share one last completely serendipitous occurrence. Jessica and I are big fans of John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight.” When we subscribed to HBO briefly, we watched the whole thing weekly. WIthout HBO, we just watch the long stories that are posted on the web (about 20 min each week for half the year or so). He’s insightful, hilarious, and absolutely earnest about changing the world. It’s great. Anyhow, I failed to even get my name in for the lottery to see the show on Nov 7th, but we did manage to put our names in for the lottery to go to the last show of the year, this coming Sunday, Nov 14th. We were not lucky enough to get tickets. But…….

Last Sunday, when we finally got going for the day, we decided to avoid anythign too close to the NY Marathon route and so we went to the New York Public Libary to take a tour of the building there. Of course, when we arrived, we found out that Sundays are the one day they don’t run the tour. Oops. So, instead, we got library cards and checked out a book of walking tours of new archicture in New York. Since we had time, we followed one of the routes in the book along 57th street from river to river. (And we did happen to see just a bit of the marathon.) More on the architecture stuff in another post (it’s fascinating!), but just as we were approaching the last building on the tour we noticed we were passing a CBS broadcasting building…and outside that building was a small line of people…and just nearby was an awning that said “Last Week Tonight.” So………I asked one of the people managing the line, “Are these people waiting to see John Oliver?” When he said yes, I asked, “Got any free seats?” He was incredibly generous and made several calls on the radio, eventually confirming we could get in. Total serendipity. But so fun. You can see the long piece filmed that night here below, and there was also a web-only special that will come out in the next month or two about snacks. It’s pretty excellent.

So, as you can see, Jess and I are still playing tourist quite a bit. But, not 100%. We’re spending most mornings at home. I’m working on studying to get my math credential and she’s been doing a ton of writing and a handful of interviews for her new project. So, it’s not all fun and games. Just a much larger proportion thereof than normal life.

Of course, being at home that much means that New York had to come right to our house. Here’s what our street looks like on a normal day, and then what it’s looked like for the past week-plus. (Ours is the stairway next to the sawhorse, just one over from the giant hole in the ground.)

Anyhow, I’ll add (a lot) more on New York over the coming weeks. If there’s something you want to know more about, leave a comment. Hasta la próxima.