To Be a Part of It...in Old New York!

Scott and I are very proficient at the Divide and Conquer routine, divvying up kids and doing fun things with them, or just taking them to lessons.  Not only is it very difficult for a group of nine to have fun together, but it's very expensive.  So we each take a kid or two of three here and there, to dinner or bubble tea or a movie, which means we are hardly ever together.  Like I said, we're efficient, and doing things together that just one of us could accomplish, well, there's no time in life for that.  We don't mind;  it works.

Then again, we do like each other, so we figured that we'd take a vacation together, just the two of us, every couple of years.  The last time we did this was August 2011, when we went to DC.  I was five months along with Tziporah, and while that didn't slow us down, I sure paid the price in aching muscles!  That was such a great trip.  It's hard to believe it was so long ago!  I have to admit, as excited as I was for this trip with Scott, it's hard to justify not taking a couple of kids, just to give them the experience.  Four days of non-stop Scott, you'd think it would be a little much, but it turns out I can't get enough of this guy!  I already knew that, but it's nice to be reminded.  :)

 Regardless, we managed to set sail, leaving our kids to fend for themselves.  I knew they could handle it, especially with Coco and Bill next door, Nikki planning on bringing them dinner that first night, and a whole army of supporters lined up to help watch kids and drive them where they needed to be.  With everything taken care of, we vowed to relax from the first minute of the trip.  Except that my dad was taking us to the airport, and he is a maniacal driver.  Being in his car is always the most dangerous thrilling part of a trip.   So we relaxed once we got to the airport alive.  Our layover in Denver was a nice, leisurely break.  We had lunch at a Mexican restaurant and chai from a Russian cafe.

 Once we got into New York, we exited the subway to this incredible view.  Grand Central Station.

 Scott and I are the most over-enthusiastic people you will ever go on a trip with.  Everything is always perfect, according to us.  Beyond perfect.  Just ask our kids how much we talk about how incredible the weather is, or how lucky we were to find such a good hotel.  Well, this trip was no exception, but the hotel REALLY WAS AMAZING!  www.pod39.com.  It's this hip, cool, brand-new hotel on Lexington and 39th, in a really happening neighborhood close to all the subway lines.  I mean, Grand Central Station.  So you can get anywhere in a hurry.  It would have taken us at least a week to try out all the restaurants on our block.  And, the roof is a beautiful terrace, with a panoramic view of the city outside and a fun room inside, to just hang out.  That first night, we got to our hotel at around 11 pm, and hung out with a group of Canadians in this cozy room.

 The view from our roof.

The next morning, bagels and lox for breakfast at Zucker's, then we caught the subway down to Battery Park and Ground Zero

Freedom Tower

 The 9-11 Memorial was sobering, and deeply comforting.  The design that won the contest for the memorial is absolutely chilling.  I can't imagine anything more perfect.  In the two footprints of the Twin Towers, there are 30-foot waterfalls, cascading down into nothing in the center.  They are surrounded by the names of the dead.  Ari is a big 9-11 aficionado, so we stopped in the gift shop to buy her a souvenir.  There was a film on, documenting the stories of the victims' families.  One mother and father lost both of their firefighter sons, who were 34 and 36 years old.  Some of the many who rushed in to save and never came out.  I can't even imagine.

 From the memorial, we went to Chelsea and walked the High Line and the Chelsea Market.  Lunch found us nestled in at The Spice Market for three courses of ambrosial goodness.  It's safe to say we savored every single bite.  These servers were all from Bangladesh.  It was fun to hear them converse and joke around in what I imagine was Bengali.  (On a side note, when we landed in Salt Lake after the trip, I overheard a nearby conversation.  I strained to hear it, thinking, "I wonder what language they'll be speaking."  It was a sad realization that probably every conversation I'll overhear in Utah will be in English.)

 Scott and I kept teasing my dad by sending him pictures of our food, since he always makes fun of people who take pictures of their food.  This was the best:  beef brisket marinated in soy sauce over a puree of celery root, topped with granny smith apples and daikon.  Heaven!!

 At the Chelsea Market.  I love salt.

High Line

 Just our luck, the Museum of Modern Art is free on Friday nights, so we stood in line with all the other cheapskates.  I have to admit, some contemporary art fills me with an extraordinary sense of despair, emptiness and depression.  Some of it gives me the heebie-jeebies.  Shudder!  A display of mannequins in thrift-store clothing?  Sick.  You would have to see it to believe me, it was disturbing.  Then there are the video montages of suckling piglets and industrial wastelands, accompanied by music that sounds like it's being played on a slinky.  Sure, it evokes some response, but I don't want to look at art and experience despair.  Maybe some people do.

I would rather spend my time with the masters.  It could be as simple as the fact that I have studied this art, and I get it.  Some of the new stuff, I just don't get.  But I hold to my conviction that some people have creative impulses that aren't worthy to be shared.

 St. Patrick's Cathedral

Back at Grand Central Station, Scott asked some guys to take our picture, and it turned out to be the same two guys he yakked with on the flight!  What are the odds?  I tell you, what are the odds?

 The whole trip was a smorgasbord of food and soaking up the vibe of various neighborhoods.  House of Lasagne was near our hotel.

 Willimsburg, Brooklyn

 Lower East Side

 Chinatown.  After we got our bubble tea, we found a restaurant where everyone in the place was Asian.  Can't go wrong that way!  For $5.95 each, we got an awesome meal.  It's so cheap to eat in New York.  Cheaper than Kaysville!

Why do I love Chinatown so much?  Why do I feel so at home there?  Maybe echos of past lives.  (Hee hee.  I did read a book called Breakfast With Buddha on the trip.  I must have been influenced!)

 Upper East Side.  We just happened to find out about a Chagall exhibit at the Jewish Museum, and it was Saturday, which means that the museum is free because of the Sabbath.  We waited in line for probably an hour, and it was icy cold, with the wind whipping through the streets, but the exhibit was 100% worth the frigid wait.  In fact, it we both said it was the best exhibit we have ever been to.  I wish we could have taken pictures, because the rooms were exquisite, with dark blue walls and ornate woodwork.  The paintings each had a plaque, detailing the context in the artist's life and symbolism of the painting.  We came out of it with a very clear sense of Chagall's life story and the emotion behind his art.  (Escaped Russian pogroms, fled Paris for New York, wife died suddenly...he was a broken-hearted man through and through, yet he was successful in his time.)  I have never been in a museum crowd where every single person reads every single plaque or stares at every single painting, but this exhibit was special.

 Did you know New York City has the best tap water in the country?  It does.  Look it up.  Here is Scott at a pizza joint, enjoying a nice class of water, vintage 2014.

 Our friends, Bryan and his son Bradley, from Indiana, were in New York at the same time.  Bradley's high school choir was invited to sing at Carnegie Hall!  We managed to meet up with Bryan briefly, while the choir was in rehearsal.  What fun!  We went 20 years without seeing each other, and now it's been twice in one year.

 Ari sent us a google docs thing that had several pages, telling us what was happening at home.  We were proud of our kids for holding it all together and cooperating.  Except Tziporah, who was super wakeful.  She kept Ruby up all night.

 A restaurant called Salvation Taco was in our hotel, and it was a happenin' place!  There were ping pong tables, couches, books, a fireplace, a bar, and it was crowded with hipsters from all over the world, judging by the languages spoken.  Scott and I liked to people-watch in there.

 Still on an art high from the Chagall exhibit, we walked down to the Guggenheim for - you guessed it - the free Saturday night.  We waited in another line in the cold, when Scott would rather have been sitting next to a brick oven eating pizza.  Our main goal at the Guggenheim was to take in the architecture.  There was a Kandinsky exhibit which, if I had been the curator, I would have been embarrassed by the quality of the experience, compared to the Jewish Museum's Chagall exhibit.  Plus, Kandinsky himself seemed to be a small, unemotional person in comparison with Marc Chagall, based on the little amoeba-like designs in his paintings.  I don't mind his work, but it certainly doesn't sweep me off my feet.  The pizza we got afterward, on the other hand, did!

Eggplant!  I also had one with breaded chicken.  

 Spiced cider at the Pig and Whistle, because we couldn't go to bed at a reasonable hour, not when we were in the city that never sleeps!

 We tried to go back to our hotel and turn in, but it was still early.  Like 11.

 So we got pizza again.  The boy working the counter in this place looked so sad, I asked him if he was very tired.  His eyes welled up and he said yes.  He said his mom was sick in Bangladesh and that she wanted him to come home.  He said it hadn't worked out for him to go.  After that, Scott and I talked a lot about how fortunate we are, that our jobs pay relatively well, that our hours are humane, that the work we do is enough to yield a comfortable, satisfying life with plenty of time for our family and the strength to enjoy the life around us.  We noticed and appreciated so many people working such long hours, for so little money.  We saw an older Chinese man (I'm assuming Chinese because he was playing a traditional Chinese instrument) playing for money on the subway.  We speculated that his kids were at Harvard, and he was turning his time and talents into money to buy opportunities for the next generation.  Who knows?  All I know is, our predecessors did that for us, coming to this country and sacrificing entire lifetimes to hard work so that we could pick up where they left off.  We made a commitment to not complain about things.  We are terribly spoiled in every way.  I hope that young man at the pizza place does his mom proud.

 Sunday morning we took the subway up to Harlem.  There was a restaurant there that we planned to go to.  As we got off the subway, we saw a family and said, "They have to be Mormon."  We followed them, and sure enough, the LDS church was a block away.  We sat in on a Spanish-speaking sacrament meeting where the subject of the talks was missionary work and children were eating Cheerios.  Church is the same everywhere!

Coming out of the LDS church, we were somehow swept into services at the Harlem Church of Christ.  Two elderly people, dressed to the nines, steered us in, saying, "You come in now, you hear?  You come on in.  You'll enjoy it."  Wow!  I could write a whole essay about that experience!  Finely dressed young men took time to usher every person to a specific spot in the congregation.  Dozens of people welcomed us.  The pastor leaped up out of his chair to talk to us.  The back row was a line of older gentlemen who were the most zealous about shouting out their "You tell 'em!"  and "That's right!"

The opening song lasted, I'm not kidding you, 40 minutes, and included two singers who led the congregation in what can only be described as joyous musical meditation.  At first, we turned to the page in the hymn book that was mentioned, but it soon became clear that what the singer was singing had very little to do with what was written in the book.  For one thing, it didn't end when the music in the book ended.  He just made up more verses, riffed on them, led the congregation in an on-the-spot harmonization, and kept right on going.  It was pure praise, pure prayer.  We didn't even get to hear the sermon.  We had a flight to catch, and there was still brunch to be had.  We left reluctantly, with the sure knowledge that God was in that chapel with that well-dressed and devout group of worshipers, and that His love pervaded their souls.

 Brunch was at The Red Rooster.  The highlight was the band, and more specifically, the singer.  She was a woman in her 60's who rocked the place like nothing I've ever seen.  Her voice was smooth, agile, powerful and sure.  She hit every note known to man during the course of her scatting and improvising.  Here's a taste of it.  She worked the crowd like nobody's business, too.   And here's a little trumpet solo.  We had no desire to ever leave that restaurant!

 A walking tour of Harlem showed us a neighborhood that knows who it is, with a burnished sense of identity, proud with nothing to prove, and quite bourgeois.  A fun place to be.  We spent some time at Levain Bakery, talking to some people we met.  The timid, friendly guy behind the counter, whose partner was at Sundance right then;  a Yale-educated young woman who was on a jog with her boyfriend and didn't get a cookie;  an educator in a mink coat who waxed on about unemployment and the troubles of the working class.  Sheesh, we didn't want to leave anywhere, it was all so enjoyable.  Or maybe we were just too worn out to contemplate our next move!

 Our next move, unfortunately, was leaving Harlem and going back to our hotel to get our bags.  We took a little nap in the rooftop lounge first, before leaving for the airport.

This is La Guardia.  I guess it was time to come home.  *sigh*