After prioritizing my list of spots to visit (museums! Parks! More museums!), I went out in search of some authentic NY pizza and was cruelly jipped when this place that got good reviews was serving up some pretty average slices, if you ask me. How am I picking such crappy places that Nashville cuisine is coming out ahead (see yesterday's cupcake episode)?
Anyway, continuing on: I got my subway card (7 days unlimited rides for $29 -- good deal, considering each ride normally costs about $2.25) and rode it a couple stops to the vicinity of Chinatown. There was a random breakdancer on the train, who turned on his boombox for one stop and hung upside on the bars before asking for tips. Once there, I of course got distracted by other things. Of course I had to make detours to Bleecker Street (for the Simon and Garfunkel song) and the Bowery (of APUSH fame for riots and dudes acting like total 19th century douches), only to then see a sign for the Williamsburg bridge, which leads from Manhattan to a section of Brooklyn and features in one of my fave books, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. There's a pedestrian walkway over the bridge so potentially you can cross the East River by foot. I kidded myself that I could do this, but quickly saw the error of my ways when I realized I'd been walking on the "bridge" for half an hour and still hadn't hit water. I went far enough on to get a picture and then turned my sad self around.
My expression in this picture is due to the fact that
it is raining and I am dying, but I'm having fun.
Eventually found my way into Chinatown, which was basically a touristy riot of souvenir shops and restaurants. But most people there were Asian, so maybe it's legit?
Finding the "Little Italy" marked on my map was way more difficult, and after many miles I figured out why: it's been taken over by Chiantown, and the current "Little Italy" is in Brooklyn. This one, which was a few blocks of restaurants with names like "Mambo 'taliano", was designated "historic Little Italy", which is a bit of a con if you ask me. Then I thought about the conception of Little Italy that's been percolating in my mind since I was seven, and I realized I should've sensed something fishy way sooner: there's no way Tony Manero was living in Manhattan. Well, not until Staying Alive, anyway.
After that I wandered further south in search of the African Burial Ground, which is always talked about in American archaeology and even pops up in history texts sometimes. Basically what's going on is a huge African-American cemetery from the 17th and 18th centuries (like, > 20,000 people, more or less the slaves who built New York), that was uncovered during construction and set off enormous controversy. As the guard told me, this site is often surprising to people who generally conceive of slavery as a purely Southern institution -- you're telling me! New York, instead of a city built on rock 'n roll, is a city built literally on the graves of the people that constructed it. I'm not really sure what I expected, since obviously the site was minimally excavated, but there's a nice little memorial park there.
Following this, I limped south towards the financial district, but the rain that had been going all day got a little more serious and I thought I'd better head back up the island. Not before stopping in the "meatpacking district" (what? I'd ask, but it doesn't sound like the kind of thing I'd really want explained), which is apparently very trendy judging from the shops of exclusively one designer that even I'd heard of. They also built this thing called the High Line there, which is like a park converted from an old elevated train track that goes above the neighborhood and looks out on the Hudson River.
The view was not great due to the rain, and I also can't use it tomorrow as home base for the fireworks, unfortunately. I heard they set them off on both rivers surrounding the island, so I'll have to scope out a good spot somewhere tomorrow.
Check it, you can see the old tracks!
Finally made it home, and managed to find the nearest grocery store. Food is weirdly expensive here, even the normal non-organic environment-destroying stuff, and I have no idea why. It's not like they're shipping it huge distances -- surely these places have headquarters and distribution centers somewhere in the vicinity of this metropolis. Yoplait yogurt, which is like 60 cents at home, is $1.15 here. It's $8 for a brick of Breyer's ice cream -- are you for real?! I settled for a $4 half-gal of store brand chocolate and trucked it home. It's like VU munchie marts on crack.
Actually, the whole NY experience is very Vandy and dorm-like, if you ask me. Laundry in the basement, redonk security to get in your home, munchie marts that are convenient but bleed you dry,
Tomorrow... well, I'll have to look at the schedule I made, but I think it's the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which is supposed to be glorious and will fill up my day pretty sufficiently. Then scheming to find a spot for possibly the sweetest fireworks ever.
The Bowery at Night, W.L. Sontag 1895
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