NY Travelogue

NY Travelogue: June 29 through July 9

Many of you know that I am not a writer, I’m a visual person, and as such I make no assumptions as to the quality of this piece. It is not a chronologic recounting of my trip to NY but rather an accounting of experiences and feelings that I have had before, during, and since making this trip. I hope you’ll enjoy, and if not, delete. I won’t take it personally.

My dear friend Maureen drove me to the airport, or we drove each other as she was headed to Albuquerque to visit friends and get a haircut and then travel on to Sedona. Very pleasant. We have traveled together before and I always enjoy our trips. I have actually moved into Maureen’s home temporarily, until I make the move east. Thank you for everything Maureen.

I had a brief layover at Chicago O’Hare where I called my Mom and my sister, since they live in Oak Park I wanted them to know I was nearby and flying safely.

Got into Laguardia Monday about 9pm and was picked up by my friends Stan and Julie and taken into Brooklyn, where we had a great late dinner at Bogota, a wonderful South American bistro that had been recommended by Mario and Rachel, also from Brooklyn recently transplanted to Santa Fe. Thanks! The pork chops and yellow rice are great.

Then off to Stephen and Suzanne’s home on Prospect Avenue. A beautiful large apartment in a lovely quiet neighborhood. I am very grateful for the friendships I have with Stephen and Suzanne. We’ve known each other about 18 years now, and have seen each other through thick and thin, challenges and victories. I lived with Stephen about 12 years ago while working in Austin, and I was honored to create the floral arrangements for their wedding I don’t know how many years ago. Thank you for your friendship, and for opening your home to me. They are in Colorado with their son Eldon getting some wonderful help for this incredibly gifted three and a half year old miracle. Prayers for Eldon, Suzanne, and Stephen!

I had three main goals for this trip to NY. The first was to get acquainted with the neighborhood around Pratt. Then, to meet some of the folks at Pratt, and third to find a place to live. It’s really great to have an idea of what I’d like to accomplish when I travel. It creates a focus from which deviations can naturally occur, if I’m paying attention. This trip was really special in that I got to accomplish what I went for, AND I got to deviate in some creative ways that I might not have been able to were it not for the focus already set.

I knew that getting around New York, and Brooklyn specifically, would involve lots of walking. I wasn’t aware, however, what a toll that would take on my legs and feet! Oy! I knew that finding an apartment or room within five blocks of campus was a realistic goal. I didn’t know how much walking it would take to actually find that place. It also took a diligence on the computer, on craigslist, which I’m glad I was up for. I had actually found the perfect place on Friday afternoon at 4:30. It was a large room in a three bedroom apartment just two blocks from campus. I said to the couple renting the room that I wanted to be impulsive and write a deposit check right then, but that I should and would sleep on my decision. When I emailed them at 10 that evening I said I’d be by in the morning to write that check. They emailed at 10:30, after I was in bed, saying that they had rented the place to a friend… Such is the pace in NY, and perhaps because they were 25 years old, they weren’t willing or able to wait 12 hours. Anyway, I decided that assertiveness would be my new focus.

I re-doubled my craigslist efforts and booked three appointments for Monday morning. I am moving into the first apartment I saw last Monday, and I called all the other contacts and said thanks, that I’d found a place. I’m really happy to be moving into Olivier’s place on Gates Avenue. He’s a musician from Martinique who writes opera. Great place, great neighborhood, quiet, and close to campus. I’ll pass along the address in a later email, just in case you’ve got checks to mail to this grad student! Hint, Hint!

The adventures were fabulous. The beach (Long Beach) with Stan was great. I hadn’t seen the Atlantic since the last trip to NY about five years ago. It still overwhelms me. I had a blast sitting in the sun, watching people surf and splash and play. And I even went into the water and got soaked! It was invigorating and salty. And I didn’t lose my glasses. Stan had warned me. Thank you Stan.

I got to meet my niece and goddaughter Taylor in the city. She was visiting her brother Zak, who lives either in Tribeca and works in the East Village, or vice versa. I can’t remember. He works for Verizon and I’ve asked for his help with my phone bill. We’ll see what he comes up with. Taylor and I met at MoMA, on 57th, and went through the entire museum, talking and commenting on all the exhibits. Most memorable was the piece by Song Dong, a Chinese artist, whose work took up the entire mezzanine area. It’s entitled “Waste Not” and is a commentary on the pre-revolution Chinese edict not to waste anything that might be of use or value. The entire contents of Song’s mother’s home was laid out in a very tidy fashion on the granite floor of the first level of the museum. In the center of the display was erected the skeletal framework of her home, a smallish rectangular structure of about 15’x20’. The amazement comes with the contents, and the quantity of the individual collections of contents: dozens of paper shopping bags lining one area, dozens of Styrofoam containers of various sizes laid out soldier-fashion, at least 75 clay pots, with and without dirt, stacked helter-skelter in another area, cardboard boxes, various pieces of silverware, enough shoes in multiple sizes to entice Imelda out of retirement, kitchen gadgets galore working and not, and more things than I can recall here. I took photos of the piece from many angles and balconies. It was a tangible reminder of my own pack-ratism, and my need to throw it away now, especially as I’m moving into a room about 12’x14’. Eeeek.

We had a lovely tea afterward at Park Avenue Plaza Starbucks.

That was the first of my Manhattan adventures. The second was a trip to the Guggenheim, to see the Frank Lloyd Wright retrospective. For all of the Wright fans reading this, you might want to skip the next part. I’ll be as kind as possible while expressing my opinions. The building itself is grand and imposing, a real work of art. And having said that, I was disappointed, not only with the building but with the exhibition of Wright’s other work. First, I was amazed that the curator(s) did not follow Wright’s own vision of the flow of the galleries. He built the museum from the inside out, suggesting that visitors start at the top of the museum and leisurely walk down the ramp. This exhibit starts at the bottom and requires viewers to climb the five or so floors of ramps up to the top. The works are presented in a fairly chronologic fashion, with lovely large-format drawings: elevations, sections, perspectives, and an occasional model created by contemporary model-builders with computer generated imaging techniques. The unfortunate thing for me is that 75% or so of the drawings and models are of buildings that were never built, showing oodles of Wright’s imagination and not much of his practical output. The best example of an existing building was the SC Johnson building in Wisconsin. Here they created an elaborate model with all the delicious lily pod columnar structures made of clear plexiglass so one can see how the building actually operates. The exhibit finishes at the top of the building with several color renderings of the Guggenheim itself, and several models of same. Frankly, boring, confusing, disorganized, and lastly, the audio carry-along for the exhibit is poorly organized, with small and hard-to-find numbers on the works themselves, and little useful information about the work. Don’t take my word for it, the show is up through September or so. Judge for yourselves!

I got to meet some really wonderful people there, right from the start and straight through to the trip home. Tuesday morning I had an appointment with a new friend, Karin, from Ireland, who was looking to rent her one-bedroom apartment about three blocks from campus. She’s returning to the UK to open a bookstore in Belfast. It’s wonderful to see people living their vision. The apartment is in a World War II-era building built for the workers at the Navy Shipyards there in Brooklyn. The Yards have since been back-filled with land and built upon, and the apartments have gone co-op, which means everybody owns a piece of the building, just not necessarily the exact piece they happen to be living in. It’s confusing. And you have to pay monthly fees and whatnot. Karin’s place is great, on a corner and filled with air and light. She’s willing to leave all the furniture, which would have been a great opportunity, and as a grad student I have a spending plan to stick within. Karin’s apartment was just too much money. Damn! It would have been great. I wish Karin luck with her new adventures!

I didn’t know before I got to Pratt that the campus was semi-closed for street repairs. I walked up to the guard (it’s a 25-acre wooded and gated campus that feels more like a sculpture garden with buildings in it) and asked to walk around. He let me in and I was amazed at the beauty and grace of the place. Really lovely old buildings with a quad filled with large scale sculptures. I didn’t get into any of the buildings that Tuesday because no one was there and the buildings require an ID to enter. Bummer. So I walked around, saw where the design studios are, and read all the placards on each and every sculpture. Delicious.

The next day I had available for seeing apartments and rooms for let. Walking walking walking, wandering around Clinton Hill, getting acquainted with the grocery store, the post office, the PrattStore! Oh, how I love the PrattStore. Imagine the best art supply store you’ve ever been in, add sundries that you might need for an apartment or dorm room, add textbooks for every conceivable art/design/art history class, add t-shirts, sweatshirts and the like, and your imagination would fall short of what PrattStore has to offer. Sweet! And the prices aren’t bad. I’ll be in there quite a bit.

I found a wonderful frame shop on Myrtle Avenue, close to campus, with a great collection of old photo post cards of famous photographs and people and a lovely chatty woman owns the place. We talked about Michael Jackson’s tragic death and the reading of the will, each expressing our opinions on who should be raising the children. Interesting neighborhood filled with every possible language and dialect. I started the process of applying for a post office box, and finally gave it up when I rented the room from Olivier. I’m projecting because I didn’t rent the room until Monday. Apparently you can’t rent a post office box without first having a physical address. Odd bureaucratic rules. So I asked Julie to write a letter stating that I was living with them at their address and then I didn’t need to use it.

More later…