New York New York

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Here I am in New York City! Wow is this a change from living at Gema's house. 0-60 in an hour and 20 minute ride on the Metro North commuter train. People in NY (and I suppose this is sort of true of most cities compared to smaller towns...) walk fast, go fast, everything is very quick and a little stressful. I've had to be careful not to be "that wandering gawking idiot tourist that made me walk around them". Constantly. But it's nice for me, because in the past day I've had enough things happen to warrant pages of journal writing, where Gema's house was a lot less interesting (but plenty necessary, I needed a break).
To start off, I arrived at 1130ish at Grand Central Terminal, which is probably easy to figure out if you go there a lot, but it seemed easy to get lost in. It's appropriately named though as it is both grand and centrally located. I thought I had about 2 hours before meeting Tory, my host and childhood friend's younger sister, so I headed for Times Square via the main room, which has a high ceiling painted with starscapes and zodiac figures. Really cool and difficult to photograph, but everyone tries (including me). Then I headed to the library, but was turned away because I had a Nalgene-ful of cranberry juice that I didn't want to throw out or drink that quickly, so I ate my egg salad sandwich in Bryant Park, behind the library. People watched and stuff, then headed further west to Times Square. The last and only time I was in NYC was with Becca about 2.5 years ago, so it was winter, and at the time we had all our baggage with us. So we got to the corner of Times Square and went "wow, lets take the subway and get to somewhere warm we can stow all this stuff". Little did I know that Times Square is a whole area of town, flush with neon lights and crazy-size TV billboards. After sauntering around, dodging fast-walking NYers, I received a call from Tory, who was at Grand Central earlier than I expected, so I headed back and met up with her, took the subway up to her apartment near 80th and 1st Ave. For future reference... Up means north and down means south. Tory seemed surprised that I was able to find my way around, but Gema's idea of cutting Manhattan out of a AAA map was actually a really smart idea. Plus this city is a grid and those are always easy, especially when the streets are all numbered in order. Anyway, her apartment is tiny tiny and super expensive. I couldn't believe it. I would never move here. We walked to Central Park, which is huge and wonderful. You step inside and about a minute later you forget you're in a huge fast city and it's this neverending garden with various types of fields, lakes, buildings, statues, walkways, on and on. We visited a castle! No kidding! Then she took her dog Malachi back and I wandered through "the Ramble" which is a maze of paths through a forest, practiced contact juggling for a bit, sunned myself, turned down a balding, middle-aged gay guy on a bicycle who approved of my tan, sat on a bench where I wrote in my journal until I was assured of my background appearance in the upcoming indie film "Felix and Alexandra," a scene of which was being shot on "the Mall" area of the park. Walked past several people practicing figure skating on roller skates (note to self, get roller skates... it looked so cool), sat and listened to a 3-man jazz band that was fantastic, continued to the Alice and Wonderland statue where I got a norwegian guy to take my picture telling the rabbit that I don't have a watch... Eventually I left and checked out a couple avenues on my way back to Tory's. Her and Mo (bf) went to see the Harry Potter movie, so I called a couchsurfer and went to meet up with the New York couchsurfing clan in Greenwich Village where I was met by literally 50 couchsurfer folks, hosts, travellers from all over the world. Wow. And I was lucky enough to find a place to sleep Saturday so I can continue seeing NY!
Took the subway back and slept like a baby. Today I went out to see the Met(ropolitan Museum of Art) but was confused by their "suggested donations" sign and thought I should get my student ID and save $10. So instead I checked out the northern part of Central Park which is not as interesting, more for exercising (big reservoir to run around) and playing tennis. So I headed back, picked up some bagels (the only cheap food here besides $1 hot dogs from carts). Speaking of... why is it that Chicago can't make a good bagel? I had some incredibly bagels in Montreal, and again here in NY, and I've never found anything up to par in Chicago. Maybe I'm not going to the right places. Anyway, Tory had gone out shopping, so I headed to the East River and looked at it, rested on a bench, asked a street food cart guy what "Knish" is, but didn't get any (it's fried mashed potatoes... yeah!). Decided to bus it down to the UN plaza and took pictures of some ridiculous advertisements that seemed far too political to work, but I guess there's so many people here you can offend half of them and still be rich. Somehow got my bagels past security by promising that I wouldn't eat them, but they took my pocketknife and still have it because I forgot to pick it up. So I'm going to the UN *again* tomorrow. The tour was expensive so I didn't go, but they have some incredible art there, and I found a Unicef manual for evaluating and responding to a disaster anywhere in the world. COOL! but it was $30. I found a really beautiful stained glass and next to it a meditation room, so I had a chance to meditate in the UN. Some tourists came in and I think were surprised to see someone actually meditating in there because they shut up really suddenly.
Called my friend Shelley because for some reason being at the UN made me wish I was travelling with her. She told me about an art gallery of one of my favorite artists (Alex Grey) who I am definitely going to check out before I go. Then I headed back to Madison Ave and picked up a delicious Knish and a $1 hot dog and bussed it back to Tory's. She's going to another movie, so I'm just trying to keep up with the blog, as so much keeps happening I don't want to have to write a novel. Tonite I'm hanging out with the couchsurfers again, and tomorrow it looks like we're going to "One Night of Fire", a gathering of people that will shut down the Brooklyn Bridge, take over the subway, and then have a firedancing party somewhere yet to be disclosed. www.thedanger.com I'm there! OK, time to upload some pictures... actually I'm going to wait. This computer is not happy about the idea.

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