First week in New York. I find the city beautiful and overwhelming in the most positive of ways, breathtaking both in its potential and anonymity. Brooklyn Heights and the St. George will be home for the next 3.5 months. If you stick your head out our window you can see the Brooklyn Bridge, and it's a 5 minute walk to the pier underneath it that looks onto the Financial District. We live on the corner of Henry and Pineapple, which is part of a family of other fun fruit-named streets such as Cranberry and Orange, with Love Lane like the honorary uncle that's the really just the best friend of somebody's dad, just like
Full House. It's very neighborhoody and quiet here, with a grocery store across the street and the subway stop, a corner deli, a movie theatre, a video store, a convenience store, a CVS, a farmer's market, the public library, and a park all within a block's radius. The Brooklyn Promenade runs along the back of our building, jammed between us and the East River. I've been jogging a lot there, and today I found a set of Batman-style Russian stacking dolls at a "flea market" I stumbled upon a few blocks down. It was more a yard sale than anything, but since they don't have yards here I guess they can't call them that. We have a Zion German Evangelical Lutheran Church up the street, whatever the fuck that is. I hear rumor that black squirrels exist but I have yet to find them. However, the pigeons are equally as entertaining and might prove themselves a worthy adversary to their rodent counterparts back in Chapel Hill. Organic in Brooklyn isn't just food, it's dry cleaners and hair cuts and more, and it's everywhere. Shopping here is wonderful since there's no sales tax on clothes and all the department stores play indie rock. The downside is that people fucking love their Sacajawea dollars and that's what you're getting as change, so get used to it. I went looking for a pair of nice shoes the other day and found 3 Payless stores on the same street and asked my friend Julia if that was common and she said no, so that must be some strange Brooklyn anomaly.
We spent our first few days here getting the whole tourist thing out of our system so we could start feeling less like visitors and more like residents. Times Square is incredible in its American Dream-like dichotomy, a hub of endless opportunity and subsequent draining excess. Central Park is like an urban paradise. The Toys 'R' Us has a giant robotic T-Rex that is impressive in scale but not quite entertaining enough to make up for the severe lack of Batman representation. "Les Misérables" was an awful choice for a first Broadway show, but it was epic and grand and kind of made up for it's shittiness in a girth of expensive gadgets. The $18 view from the Empire State Building is stunning, as is the one from the Brooklyn Bridge, though the latter is free and less crowded and doesn't sell rubber Statue of Liberties. The Macy's is huge and overwhelming and when I went to buy a wallet I was assaulted by men trying to give me cologne samples and I really don't think I'll be going back. Ryan and I bought tickets to the U.S. Open off of Craig's List for $25 and picked them up from a "candy store" in a Queens barrio. It was in actuality a liquor store, but the seats were great and watching Venus Williams and Justine Henin throwdown was an absolute highlight. The courts are in Queens, close to an apartment Ryan's boss gave him the keys to for the semester. We went Wednesday and I cooked for everyone and we met the nun upstairs and drank wine and baked brownies and tried unsuccessfully to hookah. But despite all the heavy adventuring, I have yet to run into any of the Big Bad Wolf ideas that the South often mythicizes Manhattan to embody. Sure, there's lots of people, and the service workers could give a fuck about you, and, yes, they don't make crazy like they do in the New York streets, but overall the people are just people. They ask you how you are, they open the door, they tell which side of the subway to get out on. Even so, I'm glad I'm a Brooklyn boy, and I find the idea of waking up on our little neighborhood block and getting a coffee and walking to the park to buy homemade donuts and reading a book at the Barnes and Noble afterwards and just making a whole morning out of it quite thrilling, though I have yet to find a decent record store in all this cultural goodiness. Hopefully I'll be finding a guitar teacher soon and beginning work on my play, and my goals for the semester will be underway. Overall, though, it's been quite a good run of things, and tomorrow I start my internship and apparently get to meet Edward Albee. It's a bit overwhelming in the way that I would imagine it would be if you went to film school and on your first day you find out Steven Spielberg is coming to visit and all you can talk about is how much you love Reese's Pieces cause you're so afraid you're going to just nervously pee right there all over him and you both. However, I plan to beat the Albee butterflies by wearing my new Nike Dunks, cause they're fucking sweet and comfy as hell.
First week in New York. I find the city beautiful and overwhelming in the most positive of ways, breathtaking both in its potential and anonymity. Brooklyn Heights and the St. George will be home for the next 3.5 months. If you stick your head out our window you can see the Brooklyn Bridge, and it's a 5 minute walk to the pier underneath it that looks onto the Financial District. We live on the corner of Henry and Pineapple, which is part of a family of other fun fruit-named streets such as Cranberry and Orange, with Love Lane like the honorary uncle that's the really just the best friend of somebody's dad, just like Full House. It's very neighborhoody and quiet here, with a grocery store across the street and the subway stop, a corner deli, a movie theatre, a video store, a convenience store, a CVS, a farmer's market, the public library, and a park all within a block's radius. The Brooklyn Promenade runs along the back of our building, jammed between us and the East River. I've been jogging a lot there, and today I found a set of Batman-style Russian stacking dolls at a "flea market" I stumbled upon a few blocks down. It was more a yard sale than anything, but since they don't have yards here I guess they can't call them that. We have a Zion German Evangelical Lutheran Church up the street, whatever the fuck that is. I hear rumor that black squirrels exist but I have yet to find them. However, the pigeons are equally as entertaining and might prove themselves a worthy adversary to their rodent counterparts back in Chapel Hill. Organic in Brooklyn isn't just food, it's dry cleaners and hair cuts and more, and it's everywhere. Shopping here is wonderful since there's no sales tax on clothes and all the department stores play indie rock. The downside is that people fucking love their Sacajawea dollars and that's what you're getting as change, so get used to it. I went looking for a pair of nice shoes the other day and found 3 Payless stores on the same street and asked my friend Julia if that was common and she said no, so that must be some strange Brooklyn anomaly.
We spent our first few days here getting the whole tourist thing out of our system so we could start feeling less like visitors and more like residents. Times Square is incredible in its American Dream-like dichotomy, a hub of endless opportunity and subsequent draining excess. Central Park is like an urban paradise. The Toys 'R' Us has a giant robotic T-Rex that is impressive in scale but not quite entertaining enough to make up for the severe lack of Batman representation. "Les Misérables" was an awful choice for a first Broadway show, but it was epic and grand and kind of made up for it's shittiness in a girth of expensive gadgets. The $18 view from the Empire State Building is stunning, as is the one from the Brooklyn Bridge, though the latter is free and less crowded and doesn't sell rubber Statue of Liberties. The Macy's is huge and overwhelming and when I went to buy a wallet I was assaulted by men trying to give me cologne samples and I really don't think I'll be going back. Ryan and I bought tickets to the U.S. Open off of Craig's List for $25 and picked them up from a "candy store" in a Queens barrio. It was in actuality a liquor store, but the seats were great and watching Venus Williams and Justine Henin throwdown was an absolute highlight. The courts are in Queens, close to an apartment Ryan's boss gave him the keys to for the semester. We went Wednesday and I cooked for everyone and we met the nun upstairs and drank wine and baked brownies and tried unsuccessfully to hookah. But despite all the heavy adventuring, I have yet to run into any of the Big Bad Wolf ideas that the South often mythicizes Manhattan to embody. Sure, there's lots of people, and the service workers could give a fuck about you, and, yes, they don't make crazy like they do in the New York streets, but overall the people are just people. They ask you how you are, they open the door, they tell which side of the subway to get out on. Even so, I'm glad I'm a Brooklyn boy, and I find the idea of waking up on our little neighborhood block and getting a coffee and walking to the park to buy homemade donuts and reading a book at the Barnes and Noble afterwards and just making a whole morning out of it quite thrilling, though I have yet to find a decent record store in all this cultural goodiness. Hopefully I'll be finding a guitar teacher soon and beginning work on my play, and my goals for the semester will be underway. Overall, though, it's been quite a good run of things, and tomorrow I start my internship and apparently get to meet Edward Albee. It's a bit overwhelming in the way that I would imagine it would be if you went to film school and on your first day you find out Steven Spielberg is coming to visit and all you can talk about is how much you love Reese's Pieces cause you're so afraid you're going to just nervously pee right there all over him and you both. However, I plan to beat the Albee butterflies by wearing my new Nike Dunks, cause they're fucking sweet and comfy as hell.
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