Encore: New York City pt IV -Summertime

With the arrival of Saturday, Thad was off work, so I suggested we go back to Williamsburg to lounge around on a generally nice hot Brooklyn Day. We sat at the Verb Cafe again, I tried to edit my manuscripts, Thad tried to read the New York Times, but it wasn't happening. Thad found it hard to concentrate and relax with all the people around, and I was a little bit hung over from the night before when we went out until 4 AM in the morning. So... we just chatted and watched the stick figure people.

Since it was a hot day, the fire department had opened up the fire hydrants for people to run through. Not many of the hipsters took advantage of them, but their dogs certainly did.

Bedford Avenue was closed off to traffic, and the streets were full of people enjoying themselves. Having been to New York, Chicago, and Pittsburgh in the period of the last three weeks, I am shocked by how beautiful the woman are in cities compared to Ann Arbor. Now Ann Arbor, like any college town, has plenty of pretty gals. But in urban centers, I don't know, women just seem incredibly more stunning than in rural middle America. I hypothesize such dense beauty is due to a number of factors: 1) the women in cities are generally in better shape since they walk a lot, 2) they are generally better dressed or dressed more exotically with the "newest" fashions that are pleasing to the eye due to the novelty, 3) some probably actually are models, 4) cities also have more a diverse population, so there is more of an "exotic" effect and 5) The simplest explanation: there are more women around, so the chance of seeing bombshells is higher. I don't have any pictures of the angels, unfortunately, as I often feel uncomfortable taking pictures of strangers without their permission.

A nice young woman had brought a barrel of sidewalk chalk, and she and her toddler were drawing pictures on the road. I asked if the chalk could be shared, and she happily gave me some of the chalk to draw with. I am, and will continue to be, a notoriously bad drawer, and so I drew the only things I know how to draw: a model of the neocortex column and a spaceship.

Following the walking tour of Williamsburg, we biked to Manhattan to see the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art (see post on MOMA here) and visit central park. On the way, I saw a taxi garage, a lovely taxi garage, with plants everywhere hanging from the ceiling.

And then we went to central park. Central park was full of its typical melange of people: troupes of gay men in roller states dancing to music in makeshift rinks, groups of young black kids playing African-inspired percussion instruments, break dancers, lovers, bikers, and the like. I took a brief nap in one of the fields, and then we began to motor on to make it to our Mets game. Thad and I were talking as we were walking our bikes through a crowd on our way out, when a big black guy told us to stop and walk around a touch football game. We had screwed up the last play. I'm sorry, Puff Daddy. He was playing some touch football with his kids, and that was his bodyguard who had told us to watch where we were going.

I actually thought it pretty cool that the hip hop star could enjoy a day in central park like the rest of us, with minimal entourage (one dude), and no one would bother him.

We had tickets to the Mets game, but we had lounged too long in Central Park, so there wasn't enough time to bike out to Queens to make it to Shea Stadium. So...we had to break our own rule of not taking the subway anywhere on this trip. We were those guys, bringing our bikes on the subway.

We actually didn't even make it to the game until the 6th inning, but it didn't really matter because the game went out to 14 innings anyway. Twas the Mets versus St. Louis, and St. Louis ultimately won 10-8. When we left the game (saying goodbye to Shea Stadium as this is the last season before it is demolished), we biked down Northern Blvd all the way from Flushing back to Long Island City before we headed south down to Bushwick. We were exhausted from the near 20 miles of biking we had done that day and crashed out at home.

The next day had some rather nasty weather, but we tried to make it to a free concert in Brooklyn. Unfortunately, it was packed beyond capacity, so we met one of my old friends from Ann Arbor for dinner, and we spent the reminder of the night playing dominoes.

I got up up at 9 AM the next morning to get my cab for my 11 AM flight back to Detroit. Now, since I was rolling first class, I thought LaGuardia would run as fast as Detroit Metro (10 minutes tops to go through check in and security in first class lines), but I was wrong. It took 45 minutes to check 5 people in. The staff at the airport were overworked from the previous day of bad weather, the airport was full of people who had stayed through all night, and everyone was generally pissed off and not very helpful. Due to the huge lines, blast, I missed the flight! I had to arrange for another flight the next morning, 6 AM.

What a drag. I was ready to go home, and I had to get back to work anyway to work on my dissertation revisions and manuscripts. But, like staying at a party two hours longer than you want to, even though you liked the party, I had another day in New York City. I spent most of it in an internet cafe working on a manuscript that was due in two days. Some of the local hipsters would come in and out, and I particularly noticed this one gal who came in with her Boston Terrier. I normally hate these dogs..so yappy and alien looking, but this one was incredibly well behaved while its owner was surfing the net. I asked the cute gal if I could take a picture of her and her dog, and she laughed and said it was fine. I also enjoyed how her shirt was a shirt in name only.

And Yes, I was actually working, not just taking pictures of pretty girls with their dogs (see Hirak! I told you so).

I worked until about 9:30 PM, then took the L train back to Thad's place. I had to get up at 3:45 AM to catch my cab at 4 AM to the airport, so we chatted only briefly before I packed up and tried to sleep for a few hours before heading out of New York City to go back home, the great American exploration coming to a satisfying close.

Coming Up: Codicil: Coming back Home, 9000 miles and 19 States