The Old Ball Game

On May 5, I attended my first Major League Baseball game.  Baseball has such a deep-seated history in New York, especially, so I figured I should partake. I went on a friend’s invitation to the Mets game versus the Arizona Diamondbacks.*

I have never been much of a baseball fan, per se, but I have always enjoyed being at baseball games, even in the nosebleed section (where our fine tickets granted us seating).  I like the leisurely pace, the white-noise drone of the announcer, the good-natured nostalgia of it all.  Citi Field did not disappoint. Nor was it without its adorable old men who had probably attended every game since before they hit puberty, sitting beside their admiring grandchildren, dressed identical to their elders: the next generation of fans in training.  The blowsy old women could bellow at the players with the best of them, and every single fan had the most stereotypical New York accent that even the LaGuardia planes flying overhead couldn’t drown out.

The Mets won that day.  But really, I think we came out ahead: we got free Tom Seaver bobbleheads.

*Next on the NY sports docket, hopefully a Yankees game.

6 Months of New York Times

 Today marks the six month anniversary of my arrival in New York City.  Before living here was a tangible possibility or even a plan to be actualized, I used to say, “I want to live in a city–a big metropolitan center.  Not forever, but a good two years at least.  Just to do it, just to live that way, just to fully experience an urban life different from anything I’ve ever really known.”

If I’m on that two-year plan of “urban life discovery,” then I’m a quarter of the way through.  To be cliche: it feels like I just got here, like I’m still “fresh off the (non-immigrant, totally white and privileged, therefore highly metaphorical and probably inappropriate) boat.” But at the same time, I’ve been here long enough to get acclimated, to forget to speak the awed  “I live here” thoughts to myself, to understand the city and my neighborhood a little bit.  A very little bit, to be sure, but still.

Plenty has happened since I’ve been here, including making a big life decision that I’m still contemplating and processing, for better or for worse.  Several friends of mine got married, and life has moved forward.

I’m still looking to BE here.  I’m still looking for a career, a foothold into professional life here, and I’ve barely begun to establish a social life....but I suppose I’ve started enough of one to have less and less time to post about my experiences and contemplations.  So for the next few days, I’m going to do a bit of a backlog for all those of you (parents, grandmother, random person who regrets clicking the facebook link) who are interested.

Onward and upward, New York.

I Need Some W(h)ine

I realize that I haven’t been posting lately.  Part of this is due to the fact that I’ve been keeping myself busy (which I know is all the more reason to post.  Alas, alack.) Another part is sheer laziness. 

But perhaps the greatest part is that (I fear) the “glamour” and novelty of the city is beginning to wear off.  My subway trek is habitual and forgettable. On the streets, I neglect to look up, to see the towering skyscrapers or to be impressed by them. I stop being optimistic about the possibilities of the city and start seeing the aspects that frustrate me most.

Thus, I introduce to you the first installment of a new list.

What’s Pissing Me Off in NYC:

1. People who just decide to STOP in the middle of the sidewalk, making you run into them.
2. Tourists. (#1 and #2 are usually synonymous).
3. Especially tourists who feel the need to take pictures of EVERY building.  Times Square looks exactly the same from every angle, people, I promise: a lot of annoying people, a lot of lights.  Take one shot and MOVE ON.
4. Bikers who feel they are exempt from basic traffic laws and streetlight functions.  Just because you’re going green doesn’t mean you have the right to be an idiot.
5. People who walk two abreast going up the stairs when leaving the subway, painstakingly stomping up the stairs as if each foot weighed 300 lbs.  This is especially frustrating when people do this on both sides of the stairwell, thereby disrupting traffic flow going up and down, ignoring the “slow-ass people keep to the right (please)” rule.
6. People who ignore the “let people off before you get on” the elevator or train rule. Seriously, it’s 5 seconds, and whether you wait or not, you will make it into that claustrophobic can, trust me.
7. People who don’t move to the middle of the subway car, then laugh at everyone in the mob by the door because the newcomers couldn’t move into the middle.  Because you’re standing there laughing.
8. People who play their music too loud (when I'm trying to read).  It’s not my fault you’ve caused yourself to go deaf.  Get some better earphones or go see an ENT doctor.
9. People with strollers. Yeah, I said it.  But especially people with strollers on the subway. At rush hour.  COME ON.  (I’ll extend this to bikes as well.  Ride the damn thing, don’t ride with it.)
10. People I pass on the street who are more attractive, more stylish, or are clearly wealthier than me.  So, basically, everyone.

Yep. New Yorker in the making.

(Can you tell it’s Monday?)

Really kitschy, cheesy photo googled to serve my purposes of providing at least some visual content.  You're welcome.

On a related note, while g-chatting with my coworker today (the modern era’s version of the watercooler conversation), our complaints about our management led to a business proposition.

It began with my suggestion that we start a club called (imaginatively) the Bitter Club.  Then I suggested that we drink alcoholic concoctions involving bitters because 1) it’s thematic and 2) every club should involve alcohols of some kind.

Then we latched onto the bar idea.

W(h)ine

• An after-work (or anytime) bar for everyone who wants to complain about bosses, job frustrations, coworkers, family, significant others, New Yorkers, etc.
• (We realize that an argument could be made that this is, justifiably, any and every bar, but that’s how business works, isn’t it?  Create a “new” product out of existing one by simply repackaging what everyone already has, then convincing them that they need the new.)
• No “happy hour.”  The term would contradict the bar’s name, after all.  We will still have a time when we offer drink deals, but instead, we’ll call it “[The] Bitching Hour.”  As my business partner pointed out, “Hey, let’s go out for bitchin’ hour” sounds pretty legit.
• A menu.  Typical bar fare at the moment, maybe some special fare in the future.  Right now, it features items with punny names such as “French Fry Your Boss.”  Eh.  Probably too cutesy/terrible.  We’ll work on that.
• To prevent violation of the “what happens here, stays here” principle, instead of (or perhaps in addition to) a coat check, we will also have a cell phone check, thereby assuring that you come to our bar to bitch about rather than at through the means of drunk dialing/texting.

Business plan to follow.

(Now, I do realize that the ethical claims against an establishment based solely on gossiping are probably astounding and, well, correct.  Chalk the idea up to a case of the Mondays? or the Mean Reds?)



*I've been harboring some of these thoughts for awhile.  On April 27, I accompanied a friend to a strange underground art gallery event in Bed-Stuy.  Literally underground - it was in the basement of a nondescript brownstone where they served Two-Buck Chuck on top of the washer and dryer. We went because her coworker was performing (vocals and guitar), though we may have missed that part.  The reason for the show - the art side of it - was a number of self-portraits from artists in France.  (Incidentally, only about a quarter of these art projects actually made it to the show through the mail; the walls were a bit bare.)  Along with the self-portrait, the artists were asked to answer a few questions, including things such as "What do you think about when you're on the metro?"  For the thronging crowd (i.e. 10 people) in attendance at this event, the organizers had also laid out a notebook with these same questions, which I assumed was a log to show who had come to the event.  So I jokingly filled it out.

Then I learned that they were shipping this back to France for the artists.  Whoops.

What the French received (please excuse the language...not usually my style. Blame it on the 2-Buck Chuck).

I Celebrate Myself...and Whitman

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

One of the most problematic aspects of New York is the tyranny of choice: there is just too damn much to do, and you can’t expect to do it all.  There’s even too much to do for your particular nerd group: music nerd, sports nerd, technology nerd, art nerd, etc. It’s not a bad problem to have, to be sure, but it’s not a fun problem when you’re - shall we say - financially challenged.

But if you’re a literature nerd, sometimes you’ll luck out on free events that are wonderful in content and concept and whose excellence is only augmented by the New York setting.

And by a Brooklyn setting, in particular, where poetic clout rests largely in Walt Whitman.  In early May, I attended a concert/small festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) titled “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” after Whitman’s famous poem describing the pre-bridge ferry crossing from Manhattan to Brooklyn. (My friend Monica and I attended for one night, where we saw the bands Ava Luna, the Antlers, Buke and Gass, and St. Vincent.  Good times, indeed.) 

On Sunday, June 3, in between a million events and errands on my agenda, I found time to walk past the old home of the Brooklyn Eagle (which Whitman edited), down to Brooklyn Bridge Park.  On Pier 1, an NYU professor was hosting the annual marathon reading of Song of Myself.  As clouds and wind moved in, building gray waves on the East River beneath the skyline of the Financial District and the iconic Brooklyn Bridge, poets and volunteers stood to recite their favorite sections from the 1855 version.  Even when the rain fell in a quick and thorough summer shower, drenching Walt Whitman look-a-likes  through their big white beards, the reading lost no momentum.  The small but hearty audience followed along as raindrops splattered their diverse copies of the poem.

Although I could only stay for a few minutes, the literature nerd in me was pleased.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir58X7WiCqg

Click to hear the current Poet-in-Residence of the Walt Whitman Birthplace - Martin Espada - read Part II of Song of Myself (and also glimpse what seems like an anachronistic car drive through the back of the shot).

My souvenir

Gray's Papaya

I did it.  I ate lunch at the famed Gray's Papaya. It's featured in films, TV shows, a Beastie Boys song, pretty much as well-known in the entertainment industry as a hot dog establishment can ever be.

It tasted like...a hot dog.  Yay.

Being Cliche Can Be Fun

Winter in New York City. Cold air, warm coats, images of...ice skating in the park (or at Rockefeller Center).  I'm fairly certain that every romantic comedy set in New York during winter involves an ice skating scene of some kind. 

My life clearly isn't a rom-com, but I did go ice skating Saturday night at Bryant Park with an old friend from high school, Clif Brown, and his wife Lauren. 

Being here a week has shown me that as "brave" as I fancy myself to be because of the act of moving here, I would not know what to do with myself if I didn't have some friends already here to welcome me in, even in small amounts. 

On to the skating.  Truth be told, it was so packed with skaters that people who oppose either the act of skating or large crowds (e.g. Clif) would find it miserable.  However, people who optimistically reconceive the crushing mass of skaters on a small rink as a living obstacle course, more prone to surprises and hilarious spills in which show-offs eat the ice (e.g. me), then it was quite enjoyable.

Blurry shot, mid-skate, pre-avoiding people who fell in front of me

Crazy eyes

Let it be known that cell phones and cameras were "strictly" prohibited.  New York is clearly turning me into an anarchist already.