Across 110th street New York, NY

New York, NY

Operation “get some washing done” got into full swing early on, at a laundry two blocks away. With wonderful friendly customer service, I was surprised the guy didn’t end up yelling “No washing for you!” and pushing us out the door. Never mind, at least we’ll have clean clothes. Breakfast was at “Best bagel and coffee”. The bagel? Awesome. My cappuccino? Well, it was created by a guy pressing a “cappuccino” button on a machine. And this wasn’t any kind of espresso machine. But hey, put a bit of frothy milk on top of over-sweetened percolated (or who knows, maybe even instant!) coffee, and that’s a cappuccino, right? Like all New York coffee, it’s served at a temperature not that much lower than, say, the surface of the sun. I guess this would be welcome when one is grabbing one’s ‘cawfee’ in the snows of December when walking a block or two to the office. I’m just glad Perry orders iced coffee – I steal his ice cubes to get my coffee down to some kind of less-scalding temperature.

We learnt a bit about the subway today. Or more specifically, how the express A-train can be, well, rather expressive indeed. Let’s look at the numbers. We hopped on at 59th St, aiming for 86th (more on that shortly). Well the train zoomed off from 59th and kept going. Next station was 72nd street. But there’s no stopping the A train. It zoomed through 72nd, and 81st. Then 86th (oh well…), 96th, 103rd went by in a blur. I was singing “Across 110th St” as it too zipped past us almost too fast to read. I was wondering if I should have carried my passport today, as I pretty sure at this rate we were heading straight for Canada. After 116th street, finally we began to slow… Lo and behold the A train does sometimes stop, as we finally parted company with the train and exited at 125th street station, in Harlem. So hey, cool, we’ve been to Harlem! Until the C-train arrived and took us back to 86th street, anyway. So now we know about the A-train… When they say express, they mean it!

We took a stroll across Central Park, from Central Park West over to the East side, through the Shakespeare Garden, and past plenty of squirrels, that I could have just sat and watched for hours.

Having crossed the park it was time for a little culture, at the Guggenheim Museum. I was a bit surprised – it’s way smaller than I thought it would be. I pictured it as some kind of massive behemoth, but it’s quite a modestly sized building, not dominating the 5th Ave neighbourhood like I thought it would. Alas a good section of it was closed for a new installation – so no chance to walk the famous/infamous ‘rotunda’ – the constantly sloping spiral that also forms the most eye-catching part of the exterior. Even so, in the space of two minutes we had already seen a number of works from Picasso, Matisse, Degas, Van Gogh, and on one of the upper floors it was nice to see a Mondrian.

Further wandering around the city ensued, heading back downtown until we happened across a cool collection of food stalls in Madison Square, near the Flatiron building. Hello, freshly made Nutella crepes! Tonight’s show was Newsies. How to describe Newsies… well, it’s a musical about the industrial dispute process and the power of organising a powerful union that can successfully negotiate effective workplace agreements. In 1899. As done by Disney. Yes really, it was a Disney musical. It was entertaining, sure, but … I never really warmed to it. Not because of the subject matter – heck maybe they’ll do one about people’s jobs being outsourced offshore. But the story was quite predictable, some of the big dance numbers seemed to be inserted just because “umm, don’t know how to advance the story, I know, let’s just do a big dance number!” Still, most of the crowd really seemed to love it, so what would I know. Great set design, and the lead actor put in an excellent performance, trying very hard to sell a relatively thin story. And to get the girl. Of course. Had a great dinner after the show, a sloppy joe and a purple cow. At least I know now what a sloppy joe and a purple cow are – a burger basically full of delicious bolognaise sauce (yup, sloppy), and a soft drink float with grape soda and ice cream (yup, purple). Only two full days left in New York… What to do. Might go and see a show….