Entries Tagged 'Out and about' ↓

FINALLY we got to go to a Yankees game when it wasn’t rained out or wasn’t raining and finished early. We went to the Friday night game that started the second Subway Series (between the 2 New York teams) and it was totally different to the last game we went to.

We were up one level this time looking straight down to the game and quite near the ‘cheap seats’ where the fans have matching ‘bleacher screechers’ t-shirts, chant, sing, heckle the opposition, get sun burned, fight and drink a lot.

It was stinking hot when we arrived with the setting sun blasting straight at our seats but once it set it was a gorgeous evening. The Mister had sliders again but he got me a slice of good old New York cheeeeese pizza and it was delicious, followed up by ice cream in a little plastic bowl in the shape of a Yankees cap.

It’s still amazing to me the extent fans go to, and when there’s 49,200 of them in a 55,000-seat stadium it’s truly awesome to see most of them decked out in Yankees gear. There were a few Mets fans in the crowd, a couple in our row and some further up including some that started a fight when the Mets scored and started goading the Yankees fans – there was blood and cops and hand cuffs!

Another great night but such a shame the Yankees lost. And thank god there were none of those FIFA world cup vuvuzelas drowning everything out – so good to hear the crowd cheering and oooo’ing and ahhhh’ing and calling out to the players to get them to give the crowd a wave.

At the Museum of the City of New York last week I saw a picture of a ’sky garage’ in their transport exhibit. I’ve looked up the new apartment building that this garage is in.

200 Eleventh Avenue, complete with ‘en-suite sky garages’ ($2.5M – $14M!!)

Each apartment comes with a ‘garage’ space so that your car can travel in the elevator and be ‘parked’ outside your front door! Imagine that!! Watch the movie on the site, it shows you how it works.

What next?!

Cafes and espresso bars in New York (& other parts of the States we’ve been) all have these coffee stations:

They’re a bit Starbucksesque but very efficient. This one at Saturdays Surf is pretty trendy done in wood like their furniture and with their skateboards all parked up as the station is fairly close to the door.

Typically, coffee stations have:

• 3 jugs milk – full fat, half fat, skim
• Bottle with pouring nozzle – contains sugar syrup
• Honey – as an alternative source of sweet I guess
• Napkins
• Lids – for every size cup
• Cardboard cup holders – for when cup is too hot to hold (technically not necessary but are required for drinkers of black or ‘regular’ coffee (i.e. drip filter)), for every size cup
• Sugar sachets – usually white, brown & sweetener
• Stirring sticks
• Straws – for iced coffees

Went along to the annual Madison Square BBQ block party last Saturday. Not that I was going to hoe into plates of BBQ ribs but as it’s kind of our local park and an annual event we wanted to at least have a look. Plus we’d seen in promotional material that 50,000 people attended and we wondered how they would fit into the park … and where would all the little dogs go?

There were some streets closed around the park and everywhere there were lines of people waiting to get ribs, pulled pork sandwiches (The Mister), brisket, and blueberry crisp (me) and people sitting or standing and eating everywhere!

But again as we’ve seen in this town, crowds don’t phase anyone:

• there were stacks of portaloos and hand-washing/sterilizing stations
• there were loads of bins and recycling stations and someone clearing them constantly
• each food or drinks tent just did ONE thing, cash only, clear signs up and people didn’t muck around – just ordered what they wanted, paid, and left. The Mister’s pulled pork sandwich line stretched almost a block then bent back a couple of times yet he only waited about 30 minutes

• even though the food was mass-produced it was good and homemade and fresh – giant trucks ferried food in and parked in the closed streets ready to bring more as needed. My blueberry crisp and ice-cream could’ve come straight out of a suburban kitchen

• all the food tents had packets of napkins, utensils and those foil pouches of wet soap/sterilizing cloths – what a great idea – just the thing for sticky BBQ food eaten with hands
• all the tents had a coloured flag flying off them and a corresponding flag of the same colour being held by a guy to mark the end of the line – with lines snaking for miles and criss-crossing over each other it was a really obvious way to know where to stand with out going to the tent and tracking back down the line.

Had a lovely unexpected evening out on Thursday at the premiere of the Topp Twins movie Untouchable Girls at the LGBT Film Festival in Chelsea. We realised we’d been completely remiss in contacting our Chrysler photographer friend Brian since being here, and when we finally made contact he invited us as his company’s guests to the film. Turned out he was the twins’ manager for a few years back in the 80’s and his company had been the independent financial backer on the film. We also didn’t realise the Topp Twins would actually be there!

There weren’t many New Zealand accents in the crowd, but they were certainly distinctive. We had an entire row of the theatre for Brian and about a dozen guests – we felt quite honoured! The twins came out to do a waiata before the film which was beautiful – they really do sing as one voice and a waiata is usually fairly beautiful anyway. The film was great! A mix of their lives growing up, their political stance in New Zealand in the 80’s, their being openly gay and Jools’ breast cancer.  We laughed, sang, cried and cringed (just a little) at some of the small town New Zealand footage – kids riding sheep at A&P shows and the twins busking on Queen Street – I wondered what end of the earth New Yorkers would think New Zealand was at!

The film received a standing ovation and during the question and answer session after the film there were a couple of questions about how they managed to have the lives they have in New Zealand, how the country accepted them and held them up as heroes and national icons ‘despite’ being gay – the American crowd were very much in awe of the acceptance. We felt quite proud to be Kiwis!

They tried to teach the crowd to yodel then Linda showed us how it was done! (See the video on my Flickr site.)

So I was feeling quite star struck by the end of the film – silly really because I’m sure I saw the twins live at some point, but when I got out and saw the throngs of people crowding around waving CDs and t-shirts and post cards to be signed I just had to get in there. They were lovely! Took a few minutes to chat about what we were doing in New York and pose for a picture. Their film t-shirt is black with an orange print on it but by the time I decided I just HAD to have one there were none left that would fit me … fingers crossed for another print run.

It was great to see the film – we missed seeing it in New Zealand as it was constantly sold out! Days later and I’m still singing Untouchable Girls (well the that phrase at least).

There are so many street festivals on in New York during spring, where entire sections of large avenues are closed to traffic, and street vendors selling food, crafts and souvenirs set up shop. Tuesday evening this week was the annual closing of 5th Avenue so 9 museums could fling their doors open for free. We thought we’d head along to two we hadn’t been to before, the Guggenheim and the Museum of the City of New York.

The line to get into the Guggenheim was incredible, we got there about 10 minutes before the free entry started and the line went from 5th Avenue, all the way down 89th Street to Lexington Avenue and then around the corner and on up Lexington Avenue – we joined it by the time it had almost reached 90th Street and I reckon in snaked around there as well. It was just like those movies you see where people line up around the block, this was literally! However when the doors opened it only took 10 or so minutes for everyone to shuffle in.

The museum is not that large and has an eclectic collection of well placed pieces, some art work hanging traditionally, some art ‘installations’ and a few exhibitions involving film or lights and shadows. The museum itself is pretty incredible inside, a lightly campered continuously declining circular ramp leaving you quite dizzy even after walking slowly from top to bottom!

The Museum of the City of New York was also small and quite interesting – lots of old clippings and pictures from early mayors, transport systems and city newspapers/magazines.

It was really amazing to see hundreds of people who didn’t seem to be the regular museum set lining up to go – a lot of locals and their families, rather than tourists and scream school tours.

It was such a gorgeous spring night that we decided not to fight the crowds at one of the larger museums and instead chose to walk through the entire park (as we’ve done once before) – it wasn’t quite dark and we entered 3/4 of the way up at about 95th Street. Everyone was out running after work and the park was bathed in setting sun – it was really gorgeous, especially the reservoir.

We finished the evening with a late dinner/supper outside at Morrell’s.

Whoa it’s hot again today. So we tried to stay in most of the day with the aircon going instead of going out and walking the streets and making ourselves all swollen and hot! It’s so bizarre to have the windows shut tight, and look out at a grey sky and understand that it’s stinking out there; that if you open the window warm air gushes in. Just not something I’m used to coming from Wellington.

It doesn’t look hot out there does it, more like a coolish day, about to rain.

However, the pull of coffee was too great to resist so we put on our shorts and jandals and walked very slowly the few blocks it is to the airconditioned Fika. Quite a stiff breeze for New York today and that helped. Saw this hilarious sight near the cafe – a fan, that got itself whirling in the wind, looking like it was doing it’s best to keep the city cool.

The little fan that could!

We encountered road works of sorts in Crosby Street when we went to get our coffee this morning. We’ve often commented on the roughness of the street due to the cobbles, very rustic they are, but also great pot holes that make crossing the road on a rainy day a test of concentration! And you certainly have to stand back if the UPS truck is rattling down the street. But today, they’re fixing the pot holes. By filling them with tar. As we overheard a couple of guys discussing in the street, not entirely sure how long that will last!

It was Memorial Day this weekend just gone, the official start of summer in the U.S. and we were being the visitors for a change, staying with The Mister’s brother and family in Chicago for an extended weekend. And it was HOT! After living through my first 35*C day in New York the day before we flew over there I thought we’d get a rest from the heat but we had 27, 28, 30, 32 and 28 – even had to break out the shorts one day (just around the house though).

We stayed in a beautiful leafy neighbourhood with some streets and houses that looked like many movie neighbourhoods we’ve seen and we had a great mix of family time and city time and I finally got to meet my Orange Friend from Chicago.

• When we arrived we went straight to the school to hear the girls sing in their end of year school concert – man there were a lot of kids there! Then we all went for ice-cream.

• We had a lovely morning with the kids showing us around a bit of Millennium Park, the highlights (theirs and ours) being the face ‘walls’ that spat water all over everyone and The Bean (it’s very cool).

• We were left to explore the city on our own for the afternoon – it’s a great city, more of the world’s tallest buildings than New York but on the whole doesn’t feel as high and everything is blue (guess it’s the reflection from the lake and sky). On our wander we discovered orange-trunked trees, the L (train, which is actually ‘L’ for loop according to the signs inside and not ‘El’ for elevated because it rattles around on high tracks as I’d always thought) and Intellegentsia that our Supreme Friend had asked us to find out about where we had fantastic coffee and bought some beans in an orange packet for home.

• My sister-in-law ran a 10-mile race ending at Soldier Field at the weekend so we were up early one morning to take our seats in the grandstand to clap and cheer when we finally spotted her amidst 10,000 other runners! After a celebratory picnic in the park we escaped from the heat under the trees in the backyard before braving a suffocating walk to Whole Foods to get some supplies to cook dinner for our hosts (kumara & feta salad and key lime pie).

• After meeting my Orange Friend from Chicago we sought shelter from the heat at the Planetarium and got right up close to the lake. Went out for a great night in the city including champagne at the top of the John Hancock building and a visit to a steak house.

• On Monday (Memorial Day) we were all set to go to the zoo when a massive thunderstorm struck with full on fork lightening so we diverted to a local mall to wait out the rain and have lunch. Managed to get out for a walk in the afternoon to see a lot of the houses proudly decked out with flags for Memorial Day.

Chicago is a great city, felt quite small in the centre – it was great to catch up with family and meet my Orange Friend.

One of the scraps of paper stuck into my notebook of things to do in New York was a visit upstate to the Woodbury Commons outlet mall village. So this is what we did on our weekend without visitors last weekend.

We had to leave New York state itself for a bit and drive through New Jersey, our first time out of the state. And when I say drive, I mean the bus driver drove us (and there didn’t seem to be a stigma attached to riding the bus like in LA and there were even a few other husbands on board). Our Caribbean driver was very chatty and told all sort of stories and I was rather amused by his pronunciation of Hudson River ‘oddsen reeeva’. The Port Authority bus terminal that we left from was huge! The buses left from level 3 and there were rows and rows of doors along a corridor, like a wide high school corridor, that you stepped out of and practically straight onto to a bus, angle parked in a line with loads of others, right up at your door. We drove out down a huge ramp leading out of the terminal in a great string of buses – not all going to Woodbury Commons – well, quite a few of them were as they went about even half hour. It actually felt pretty strange to be going so far away from the city but we got some pretty cool views looking back.

The bus trip felt very fast, not in time but in speed, and we figured it was because we hadn’t actually travelled above ground on anything other than our feet for a couple of months so that’s why trees and cars seemed to be whizzing by at extra speed. We travelled through some very green countryside – it was rather pretty.

A woman sitting in the seat in front of us had a store list printed out from the internet plus a village map and she was pointing to something on the list and locating the store on the map, showing her friend and noting stuff down – die hard shoppers who were obviously planning their route for the day to get some serious shopping done. It was about this time that I realised it was going to be very embarrassing to get back onto the bus with no shopping if I ended up having one of ‘those’ days. Luckily (I suppose) The Mister rarely comes home from the shops (even clothes shops) empty handed so I was safe.

When we got off the bus to start the day, some people collected suitcases from the luggage storage under the sides of the bus, made me wonder if there was a motel at the shops, but by the ease with which they grabbed and rushed off with their cases I realised they were empty and to be filled with the days purchases. Indeed watching people at the end of the day, that was the reason. Some suitcases and bags even looked brand new – bought to serve that purpose.

The shops themselves were pretty good – the day was absolutely stinking hot, the hottest one we’d had to date so we were forced to get back into the next shop after coming out of one. The place wasn’t a mall but seemed like a small town now deserted, lots of low rise peak-roofed sections of 2 or 3 buildings, like an old motel, with quite wide ’streets’ with hardly anyone outside – the heat was probably the reason for that. All the big name brands were there, not just clothes but homeware, jewellery, sunglasses, shoes, department stores, sports stores with mostly last season’s or odd sizes. The shops were fairly orderly, not like bargain outlet stores in the city, these had nicely arranged racks of clothes, but when you got to them it was a bit of a search for anything resembling your size. However, I didn’t embarrass myself getting back onto the bus, I had a couple of bags containing (you guessed it) some jeans and t-shirts. Great prices if you could find what you were looking for.

Not much in the way of food out there – was forced to Starbucks for only the 3rd time in our nearly 3 months in the States.

Saw a brown furry badger type animal on the grass verge as we were leaving – was about the size of a big rabbit or wombat, with a big tail, but not a squirrel. Must Google and see if I can figure out what it was. >> UPDATE: it was a groundhog! There’s a picture on Wikipedia of one.