This one's easy. There are so many New York songs, ITunes has put together a playlist of them. The one above, recorded by both Frank Sinatra and Liza Minnelli, is my favorite.
I spent my vacation in New York City. For the second time in a little over a year. And I loved it just as much as the first time last summer.
Pam and I left Friday morning, early, for the GSP airport. We got underway on time, and arrived at the hotel around 5. Question: what do an English teacher and a librarian do upon lighting in Manhattan? We go visit the lions at the New York Public Library. First thing. Our visit this time was bracketed by visits to NYPL, and much happened between those visits. The first visit, the library was closed, but we sat in the plaza in front of the library, watched the crowds, and absorbed (and re-acclimated to) the energy of this wonderful city. The last visit was a tour of the building done by a volunteer, and while it was interesting, I had far more questions about the library's collections and operations than she was prepared to answer. (No, I didn't ask them.)
We revisited the President Hotel, where they put us in a tiny room with a double bed, a non-functioning desk lamp, and not enough towels. Pam had to use her teacher voice to get both fixed. The housekeepers never quite got the idea that there were two of us in the room, in spite of the two suitcases and two different toilet kits sitting around. After a day or two it also seemed quintessentially New York. Our view was of another building in the hotel. The upside was that it was incredibly quiet. And it had a great shower!
The highlights:
Seeing August: Osage County, this year's Tony award winning Best Play and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. This was incredible. It's a very dark, reeking black comedy about a VERY dysfunctional family in Oklahoma. Some of my favorite lines: "I don't drink because my wife takes pills." "This MADHOUSE is my home!" "I'M RUNNING THINGS NOW!" The family gathers because Daddy has gone missing. Mama is popping various types of highly addictive pills like they're candy. The three daughters show up--the family hero, the lost child, and the happy child, with all of their family members (estranged husband and pothead child; a fiance; and a secret lover).
For someone who grew up in an alcoholic family, this play was both painful and rehabilitating. There were characters and lines so real I cringed, and then I laughed. At the end, you see the dissolution of a woman who realizes what she has lost. It's very moving, and very well done.
Museums. Last year we went to the Met. This year, it was MOMA and the American Museum of Natural History. Pam chose the AMNH, I chose MOMA. AMNH was pretty awesome in its own way. We spent a lot of time in the space and planetarium part, where I felt like I got entirely too much information; and the Oceania Hall. I liked that better--the room had the ambiance of being underwater, and there was much information about marine life and the need for conservation. I saw a coral reef up close. I'm glad I went but I don't care if I go there again. One real downer: the special exhibitions cost extra. Another downer (or could it be an upper?): Pam and I got the senior citizen's discount there: we told the girl we weren't old enough, and she said, "That's okay, I'm giving it to you because I like your accents." So, a Southern accent turns out to be good for SOMETHING in New York!
MOMA was a different story. We were both interested in the paintings, and we saw a special exhibition on Dali. I will say--I have never seen as many Picassos in one place in my life. They were incredible, awesome, and it was such a blast to see paintings that I have only seen in books. I also really liked Kandinsky and Klee and Mondrian. Not so much the guys who painted canvases solid red. It just didn't move me. It bored me. I left feeling like there was more to see. I would gladly go there again.
Food: We revisited two restaurants from last year: Becco (Pam's choice) and Pigalle (my choice). We spent lots of money in both places and ate and drank more than we should have. Other fun food things: eating a goat cheese and lettuce sandwich in Bryant Park, and eating potato pancakes in Maxie's Deli at midnight. We also found a better place for breakfast than the hotel bar: a deli/takeout place/supermarket called Food Emporium, where in 4 days we became regulars and the women working the coffee and bakery goods bar knew what we wanted. Pam and I want the Food Emporium to come to South Carolina. If it did, I would NEVER cook again. And I would be broke...
Parks: We headed back to Central Park after the Natural History museum and rambled through the Ramble, a portion of the park with walking paths and protected wildlife (read: birds) areas. I got worried that we were not going to find our way out, but we did--to discover the lake and the Bow Bridge, one of the "great sights" of Central Park. Lots of people were rowing on the lake, and we just sat there and watched. The weather was beautiful, warm and breezy. The BEST thing about Central Park, aside from the beautiful views and walking/biking paths, is the fact that you can sit there for hours and not be even approached by mosquitoes. That in itself is enough to make me want to live in NYC. As beautiful as our green trees and vegetation are, the heat and the mosquitoes keep you inside.
Park no. 2: Bryant Park, a grassy 1/2 block area behind the New York Public Library. There are tables and chairs there, part of the NYPL's Outdoor Reading Room. HBO also sponsors a Summer Film Festival there on Monday nights. This week, it was the old Jack Lemmon/Shirley McLaine movie The Apartment. Funny things that happened: in the beginning of the movie, Jack Lemmon's character runs through some actuarial statistics about New York City, dated 1954. The one that got boos and groans from the crowd: "And my rent is 85 dollars a month." There were lots of younger people there, students and just out of college working kids there, all dressed up in sundresses and business clothes, with food and wine. Another funny thing that happened: Pam and I pulled up chairs to the edge of the grass to sit. Then we saw a table with chairs and sat there instead. We left the chairs we pulled up behind us. We were asked by a young man if he could sit "with us." He turned out to be quite chatty; told us his life story, nearly. He was born in the Caribbean, and his family moved to New York. He stayed there when his family moved to Georgia. He worked in finance but wanted to be a filmmaker. He told a hilarious story about making a drive to Georgia in a decrepit car. The car finally died in South Carolina--yes, SC is just so notorious for killing cars! It was one of my "this is real New York" evenings.
Sunday morning church, another "real New York" moment. In our wanderings around Times Square, we found an Episcopal church called St. Mary the Virgin. They had "solemn mass" at 11 on Sunday. Pam asked me what "solemn mass" was and I answered, "mass with bells and smells." It was a lovely service--bells, a wonderful cantor, and a LOT of incense--in a church built in 1868, with no air-conditioning. They had huge fans running, and it was not so bad. The rector, a youngish man named Robert, delivered a sermon that started out with a description of a painting he had seen in the Vatican, and included "It would be easier to carry a bomb into the Vatican than wear shorts there." All of this was to say that the Church could just be a pain in the butt sometimes. He was wonderfully welcoming and joyful. After the service, I shook his hand and got what I'd consider "what a priest says when trying to be friendly": Haven't we met??" I said no, and introduced myself. We were then invited for lemonade in the parish hall, where we had a great conversation with a Belgian woman who worked for an international bank and had lived in NYC for 30 years. She seemed like someone I would like to get to know.
I think, summing it up, this New York trip was a "humanizing" one. Last year, we went as tourists--we didn't really talk much to anyone. This time, we met people, talked with people, got to hear from them, and they from us. Maybe they carried away a new perception of tourists or Southerners from meeting us. I know I carried away a perception of New Yorkers as not so different from me. And yes, I still want to go back.
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