Rubbernecking/Sightseeing in NYC

boomerang--

I'll dedicate a bit of vodka and whatever to you.

Phoenix--

Wheelchairs are hard in crowds. If you push yourself you can't see much for navigating--and the paintings are hung too high. If you have a lacky to propel the chair, you can't make eye contact and you have to shout to be heard.

With luck this won't be my last trip to the Big Apple--and perhaps the next trip will be on my own two feet.

A bus tour might be a possibility.


D'artagnan--

Washington Square, weather permitting. I hanker for local color and metropolitan variety.

kickycan--

You're absolutely right about the limitations of crutches. I want to see the New & Improved MOMA--but later.

As for Times Square--I shall remember it seedy and seamy and not update my memories.


Roberta--

Thanksgiving weekend the Museum of Natural History is packed with non-custodial parents and visiting firemen. I've told you I like the idea of the balloons.

dlowan--

Standing, whether in a line or a queue, is a bitch. I found that out on Election Day. I've done the ferry trip to Staten Island--Lady Liberty still stands. I will get back to the Cloisters someday. Unicorns!

ehBeth--

Buses are handicapped friendly. For handicapped parking NYC does not accept out of town handicapped parking placards--even NY State placards are Not Official.

Even in the big city, people are kind to sweet little old ladies on crutches.
I copied the Frommer hospital number--since I'll have it handy, I won't need it.


loislane--

The Frick is on my list. Thank you.

Ceili--

A scooter? You overestimate my driving ability. Very flattering.


And thank you all! Planning is such fun.

Noddy, for ethnic food in the East Village, you pretty much just have to step out your door. There's a block of East Sixth Street (I think it's the block between First and Second Avenues) that is lined with nothing but Indian restaurants, one next to the other. Two of the better-reviewed ones are Banjara and the Brick Lane Curry House. And if you crave something sweet after a spicy Indian meal, Veniero's, on East 11th Street between First and Second Avenues, is a fabulous (and very popular, and very crowded) Italian pastry shop.

I may run into you at the Asia Society -- there's an exhibit there now about Asian games that sounds interesting. If you're interested in American history, you might want to take in the Alexander Hamilton exhibit at the New-York Historical Society (on Central Park West at 77th Street, just below the Museum of Natural History). I wasn't crazy about the way the exhibit was laid out, but there's a lot of interesting stuff in it. (By the way, the audio guide to the exhibit is free, which the people at the desk don't always remember to mention.) Some other current exhibits worth mentioning are "Comic Grotesque: Wit and Mockery in German Art, 1870-1940" (at the Neue Galerie, a new-ish museum on East 86th Street, just off Fifth Avenue, which is devoted to German and Austrian art, and which has an excellent cafe) and a Romare Bearden show at the Whitney (Madison Avenue at 75th Street).

If you're in midtown and need to get off your feet for a while, head for Bryant Park, at Sixth Avenue (nobody says "Avenue of the Americas") between 40th and 42nd Streets, right behind the Public Library. Formerly a hangout for drug dealers, Bryant Park is now a beautifully refurbished park that looks like the Luxembourg Gardens. There's even a children's carousel. From there, you can go into the library building (there are steps on the Fifth Avenue side -- where the lions are currently being renovated, and are unfortunately enclosed in protective scaffolding -- but there may be a side entrance that doesn't require steps) and take the elevator up to the beautifully restored reading room, which is open to the public (hey, it's the public library). From there, it's just a couple of blocks east to Grand Central Station, where lunch at the Oyster Bar is always a fun thing to do.

bree--

Thanks. If you see a dear, sweet, little old lady with a crutch and an attitude at the Asia Society, come say "Hi!".

Home again, home again--and in spite of an attack of the wamblies, I had a wonderful time. Afghani food; Vietnamese food, Mexican food, Italian food--all delicious.

The Asia Society exhibit of Asian games was very interesting. I knew that card games originated in the east, but not that board games had.
Of course, most of the cards and boards and counters and dice were works of art created to divert the bored and wealthy--but there were a few back alley dice and knucklebones representing peasant leisure.

As I feared, other rubberneckers made culture almost inaccessible during the holiday weekend. Still I saw the Andy Goldsworthy's Garden of Stones. http://www.mjhnyc.org/visit_gardenofstones.htm

The oak trees are very young and in the November wind the stones--however varied in size--seemed much of a muchness, but this is a growing memorial and shouldn't be either enshrined or damned in its first year.

We also went to a gallery opening, Gallery M in Harlem for an exhibit of "formalism and conceptualism in sculpture and painting." I'm not convinced that I saw enduring art, but the guests provided a wonderful visual and theatrical experience.

Finally, on Saturday night, I was an inadvertent actor in a slice-of-life one act somewhere between an old fashioned happening and an even older-fashioned well-constructed farce.

Five women and a bored male teenager are seated around a coffee table. On the coffee table are an assortment of nibbles and five cell phones. Via cell phone I was dealing with a domestic emergency back in the Poconos; my hostess had just found the husband she'd been supporting all these years had been unfaithful all these years and was being loudly indignant with friend in France about a hostile e-mail from her soon-to-be-former in-laws. Another woman, a contractor, was dealing with a burst pipe. The loutish male adolescent exhibited manly boredom with both face-to-face and electronic events--until his cell phone rang. When the electronic bells were playing his tune he vaulted the coffee table and sought privace in the hall. When his conversations were finished he'd elbow his way back, next to the cheese and crackers.

A change is as good as a rest--and I had both.

Thank you all for your suggestions. I'll make sure my January jaunt doesn't include a legal holiday so my cultural will be uncrowded.

What a wonderful farcical slice of life by the coffeetable!

Ossobuco--

Thanks for the kind words.

Kind but true, I saw the whole scene.

Hey, girl, you and I could do a quiet but exciting NY together...

I walk fine, now, but lose out at night. Memories of taking my cell phone out of the ymca building to make a call. This wouldn't be hard for anyone else. First I had to get down the entrance stairs....

the thing is, Noddy, that we speak for others. I was about run over as I held to the ymca wall to get into or out of the front door.
It is hard for me to dump on people who don't have physical doubts...

first of all, I don't wish them loss of doubt.

Or do I?

I wish a sense of context to be available to everybody, some putting of selves in others spots.



Interesting, actually. I wouldn't have minded, at nine, to get any clue to how it is to be encumbered in various ways....

Hope your domestic emergency proved less shattering than your hostess'. At what point in your visit did this happen? Were you able to enjoy your time with her or was it largely as Sympathetic Ear? (You've certainly spent enough time in that role here...)

osso, when I was taking a disablities studies class in grad school we had to take on a disability and go about some sort of everyday living -- I was assigned blindness and it was paralyzingly awful.

Soz, I don't live in really awful, but I have a carbuncle of fear of it... which I express on a2k from time to time.

The ymca steps thing was part of it.

Mostly I am cool.


Skipping back to Noddy's hostess, I am listening on that, deep worry firing up.

Soz, a guy who'll I'll call mob, a serious fellow re many conjoining accumulations of knowledge...

anyway, this particular friend (with no personal disabilities to my knowledge) did a disabled constructed tour, through UCLA, quite a bit ago... which must have been quite a convincer.

Really, even for me, who is only at the slightest edge of this stuff, getting around is full of havoc.

Ossobuco--

I bet we could do a dandy NYC excursion. Since I'm also night blind, we'd have to pick up a few paperbacks for the evenings after we'd discussed and digested the wonders of the day.

Sozobe--

My hostess (for the evening, not the weekend) had discovered two months ago that her husband (a writer whom she had been supporting) was cheating on her with many woman over a span of 14 years. Now that His Book is being published his lies became blatant.

My hostess called her plumber and advised him that holiday weekend or no he was needed by one of her clients. She didn't actually threaten him--she just sounded exceedingly firm.

My troubles were easier--Mr. Noddy misjudged his blood sugar levels and collapsed in a neighbor's driveway. They called an ambulance, then me. I talked to the ER and decided that the situation was under control and their was not need for me to rush to his bedside. Mr. Noddy was given a glucose drip and released three hours later. Unfortunately, his new LL Bean birthday shirt has a tattered sleeve (impossible to sew) where the EMT cut to hook up the IV, but life is like that.

Art reflects life. Life imitates art.

And art is long.


Osso says, leering at art....

Noddy, Glad you had a relatively good visit to my fair city. You're right about not wanting to do it again on Thanksgiving. I don't go anywhere on Thanksgiving. Too many people, even by a Noo Yawker's standards.

Also glad Mr. Noddy is ok.

Roberta--

Thanks for the words of wisdom. I abhor crowds--I'm in and out of the grocery store before 9 a.m. just to avoid "normal" happy shoppers.

On the other hand, leaving the dinner-serving fringes of Mr. Noddy's family to be thankful without me was worth a little excess hustle and bustle.

My next jaunt will be January--but not MLK weekend (unless there is a personal event worth compromising for).

Noddy, I was only nineteen when I went to NYC. The one exciting night that I spent was in the Village at a place called la Boheme (I think). We stayed up all night singing jazz songs with the managers.

Met Lloyd Bridges, but I was entirely too shy to ask for his autograph, and too naive to realize that New York was a big BIG city.

Letty--

London is my favorite city, but NYC and San Francisco battle for second place in my affections.

Long ago I lived in the Big Apple--but I was young and poor and spent most of my time at the 103rd Street sandbox in Riverside Park. Of course it was a very educational sandbox.

Always wanted to visit London. Life is so weird. Could have gone many places, but didn't have the money. Now I gots the money, and I can't get away. (bad words--bad words--bad words)

Letty--

Sometime the good ships USS Solvent and USS Sail will be in port at the same time and you'll be able to book your tickets.

Hold your dominion.

Holding on to that thought, Noddy.

Gee, I sympathize, Letty. Is there no one who could help you out and give you, oh, say, five days? a short time is almost worse than no time, but ... not quite.