www.flickr.com
Goodnight, New York
For some reason, the folks I've met in NY the last 2 years have been predominantly immigrants from California. It's not an unusual phenomenon I suppose. It seems in large cities all over the world, you'll find enclaves of ex-patriots - Roppongi in Tokyo, Lan Kwai Fong in Hong Kong, the Golden Triangle in Kuala Lumpur. And in New York, on any given weekend, you can wander into some bar, usually in the East Village, sometimes the Lower East Side, and occassionally in the Meatpacking district, and run into a group of Californian ex-pats in NY, all gathered for some drinks and some laughs.
This morning saw the departure of a big catalyst to most of these gatherings and the friend to whom nearly everyone I've met in New York can be traced back to. After one final all-nighter, one last drink, and one last hunt for food at 4:30am, his two year stint in the City that Never Sleeps has come to a close.
Thanks friend. It was a good run.
Unnecessary Walking
I've started to realize that I do a fair amount of walking in this city. Every weekday, there's the 69 stairs that I walk to get down from my 5th floor apartment, the 2 blocks east and 1 block south to the subway station, two more blocks from the station by work to get to the office, and then the reverse commute home...including the 69 stairs back up. And really, other than the four flights of stairs, it's not all that bad.
However, in the last few days, I've done a good deal of unnecessary walking on top of the regular commute. I always wonder how far it is that I've walked on any one of these unnecessary walks that I take. Thanks to the wonders of Google Local (apparently their new name, so as not to be mistaken for Google Earth I assume) and the Google Maps API, I've found a
site that will tell me. So I've mapped out some of my walks and here's what they work out to:
- Movie-night Stroll: After watching Dave Chappelle's Block Party, I felt inspired to pick up some music. So after walking some friends home, I continued on to Virgin Records in Union Square and then went to hunt down the start of the M7 bus line going uptown.
- 2.24 miles - Here's the route
- East to West stroll: My friend threw her back out so rather than make her catch a bus home, I rode with her in a cab back to the Upper East Side with the plan of meeting another friend up there for drinks. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, that friend had already made his way downtown. So instead of catching a cab or bus back, I walked home instead.
Field Trip
I stopped by the American Museum of Natural History this afternoon to check out the somewhat
controversial Darwin exhibit. Unfortunately, this was only my second trip to this museum. As a friend pointed out, it's somewhat dated in design - some of the wings look old, not in the classical Greek architecture kind of way but more of the Brady Bunch early 70's kind of way - but there's still something about this particular museum that others in NY seem to lack. Kids.
And while I'm not generally a fan of kids - at least not on airplanes, in restaurants, at bars - seeing the pride on a kid's face when he's figured out that the skeleton in the plexiglass display is that of a fur seal or the look of excitement of one kid running to show his friend the live iguana display that he's found just around the corner makes you just that much more enthusiastic about being there yourself.
As for the Darwin exhibit, I enjoyed it. If you do happen to go by, somewhere past the model of the HMS
Beagle and that live iguana, there's a couple pages of a letter written to Darwin from his wife that's worth a read.
