To Inwood and Beyond, or Lost! in Harlem

A simple idea gone quickly awry, stereotypically: a small white girl with no food, water, map, or Spanish capabilities, lost in upper Manhattan. Who knew there were woods up there?

I rode my bike up the Hudson River Greenway yesterday afternoon; I wanted to see how far it went. I went as far north as Inwood, the narrow northern tip of Manhattan, just above where the George Washington Bridge connects New Jersey and New York. I wanted to ride down the Harlem River (assuming there was a path; there wasn't), cutting a diagonal across the city to 125th Street, where I could jump on the Triboro Bridge and make it easily back to Queens.

Hot, concrete neighborhoods eventually gave way to some kind of forest, what I later learned is called Highbridge Park. I carried my bike under bridges, up numerous flights of stairs, in and around woodsy trails; I rode over gravel and dusty, grassy paths. I asked for directions from people who either didn't know or couldn't speak English. I eventually re-emerged into the city at 190th Street, and thanked the Dutch for building this city on a grid. (To give you an idea of how far north this is, Central Park ends at 110th Street.)

So my plan failed, but I did get to see a lot of Manhattan that I've never even tried to explore before. Beautiful, wooded parks are juxtaposed with wide, gray boulevards; music is constantly playing (depending on what neighborhood it is, it's either merengue or Rihanna); merchants line the streets, fruits and t-shirts and radios spilling out onto the sidewalks. Riding past these places at such a high speed was like reading a quick summary of each neighborhood -- I got the smells, sights, and sounds for a couple minutes, and then moved onto the next.

Highbridge Park
 

Space Odyssey: The Meatpacking District

I feel so far removed from the world of the wealthy elite that glancing into the red, pulsing depths of a nightclub is about as strange as peering down the endless corridors of the New York subway system. Dramatic lighting and gleaming chrome, paired with broken teeth cobblestones and aged wood, makes the Meatpacking District a foreign and attractive place -- a beautiful person dressed in homespun fabrics and shabby clogs (and a wallet packed with benjamins).

I don't go out here much, other than to play around in the High Line Park. The drinks are expensive, and I always somehow end up feeling like a little kid sitting at the grown-ups' table, surrounded by good-looking people who stink of casual money. Oh well!, I thought last night, and brought Kiersten down to Gansevoort for a drunkenly good time.

We started at Pastis, a French bistro with predictably high prices and strong cocktails. The waiter looked like a pathetic James Dean. We moved on to the Brass Monkey, where I gave up on cocktails and just drank a cup of Jim Beam. If it were not pouring rain, we would have probably also gone to the Standard Biergarten, which looked grubby and fun.

The Meatpacking District was apparently quite a dangerous area back in the day, home to AIDS-bearing transsexual prostitutes and Mafia-run nightclubs. The area was "cleansed" by the gradual opening of trendy boutiques and bistros, to the dismay of some nostalgic New Yorkers (do you see a pattern here?). The Meatpacking District now tends to appeal to the "bridge and tunnel" crowd, a.k.a. the Unmentionables from New Jersey, a change that has only added to frustration for the needle-brandishing, corrupt Italian locals.

Williamsburg

I've been spending short chunks of time in and out of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, lately -- just short enough to keep me from both going broke and becoming a beehive-haired, plaid-sporting hipster. The 'Burg has been rejuvenated from a disgusting industrial park on the East River to an ultra-cool mega-village that likes to be reminded that it has its roots in a disgusting industrial park. After some time of kids pouring their parents' money into these renovated warehouses, Williamsburg became the throbbing nucleus of all things cool, absurd, ironic, self-aware, ironically self-aware, etc. Unfortunately for its thrift store-hound inhabitants, the competition for coolness has made Williamsburg bars, restaurants, and public events actually quite good.

Today I was joined by a few friends at the East River Park for the final installment of the Jelly Pool Parties, free concerts held on a riverside stage, usually featuring semi-well known indie artists like !!!, Cut Copy, and Deerhoof. Today's concert -- in the pouring rain! -- was Chromeo, a pop electronica duo (I suppose that's what I would label them) from Montreal that uses cool props like the Talk Box and dancing, slender women. Unlike the malady-stricken audience present at the Real Estate concert last week, the crowd at the Chromeo concert was alive and well, soaking wet, dancing like they should've been. I approved.

Lit Life

I'm trying to get a grip on the words and letters of my new urban life. Seeing as I'm starting graduate school in the spring, I figured I should educate myself as much as possible on the literary front, beginning with a failed attempt to read War and Peace and an empty relationship with the New York Public Library (I have yet to avail myself of its revered tomes). I have, however, been keeping up with my and Don's New York Times subscription.

(Note: does anyone else think the magazine is losing it's spark? The writing doesn't seem as good these days...)

I also have a New Yorker subscription, whose short stories and masterfully-crafted articles keep my literary side pretty much satiated. Its recent running feature, "20 Under 40," is a set of 20 short stories -- one or two per issue -- that have all been written by authors under 40. (An entertaining and respectable effort to keep young peeps involved -- kind of like P.S. 1's Young Architects Program).

I also went to the Strand the other day, the famous "home of 18 miles of books" -- meaning, it's a crazy mess that hides its good deals in the basement. I bought Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace. Let's see if I get to it.

P.S. 1

Long Island City, Queens -- the MoMA sister museum. Housed in an old public elementary school, P.S. 1 has the strange, reminiscient feel of a locker room -- and simultaneously blows this notion apart with ultra-modern art exhibitions. I've only visited half the museum (LIC residents get in for free, so I'm in no hurry), but went instead for the Warm Up, an outdoor dance party held in the entrance area of the museum from 2 - 9pm on Saturdays. Guest DJs this summer included ?uestlove, Animal Collective, Ratatat, and James Murphy & Pat Mahoney (DFA Records); still to come are Big Freedia (nutso tranny rapper from New Orleans), Holy Ghost!, and DJ Medhi. (Unfortunately, these last two artists will be playing on the day of ELECTRIC ZOO, so I will obviously not be there [yahoo!]. DJ Mehdi was actually at the Zoo last year; funny that a music festival should have to compete with a museum.)

The most recent outdoor exhibit is called "Pole Dancing," an interactive (as always) techno-game that allows you to shake these poles and somehow involve your iPhone so that different poles make different musics. Kind of neat; I don't have an iPhone. A little less exclusive, however, is the outdoor bar and grill located in the bizarre, warren-like sand pit (you've gotta go to check out the layout for yourself; that simile doesn't explain well). Beer and hotdogs are prohibited inside the museum, obviously, but there's nothing preventing you from having a cold one outside on the dreamscape patio, electric beats afloat.

Parx

Two of my favorite parks in Manhattan.

Hudson River Park: perfect for biking (a north-south expressway for two-wheelers, essentially), watching fireworks (July 4th!), reading, waiting, and attending free concerts, which I did on Thursday. Deerhunter and Real Estate were playing out on Pier 54, two bands whose innocuous and mind-numbing music can be found on my iPod's "Background Music" playlist. I left the concert early, escaping the hordes of bobbing hipsters yet sadly leaving behind the Van Leeuwen ice cream truck that was stationed there. At the very least, the $4 candied ginger ice cream was amazing.

H

High Line Park: where Don took me when we were first dating to prove to me he was cool. Built on top of an old elevated train line running through the Meatpacking District in Manhattan (the REAL midnight meat train, apparently), the park is overgrown with a pleasing mixture of native plants (read: weeds) and strategically-placed trees that will eventually provide shade and more structure to the park. Highlights include a futuristic bandshell, old railroad remnants (the metal rails and the wooden ties are incorporated seamlessly into the garden's design), and a constant fresh breeze. I can't wait until they finish the section called "the Chelsea Thicket"; sounds like a prime doobie-smoking spot to meeeeeeee.

Neighborhood #2: Beer Garden

Every bar with a patio claims to have a beer garden. But this one -- the 100 year-old Czech Bohemian Beer Hall in Astoria -- is no exaggeration. Serving mostly imported European beers and potent liquors (including the recently banned Czech absinthe...), the place is about as legitimately foreign as the rest of the neighborhood (read: very) and makes drinking outdoors seem like the only proper path to inebriation (as it should be). Nothing more complicated than trees, gravel, and picnic tables adorn the fortress-like space (its perimeter is made up of thick stone walls), and the only thing you can do to get yourself kicked out is to lie unconscious on a table (thank Don for that one). It goes without saying that this is one of my favorite places in Astoria.

Harlem River Rave

This one happened awhile back. Myself, Don, and two of his friends went uptown to an ad-hoc, outdoor "rave," where local (I guess) DJs were spinning on sawhorse tables, glowsticks and mysterious chemicals aplenty, breakdance circles and little personal light shows happening here and there. The police drove by and saw that no one was causing harm, so they let it be. Aaah. I took these pictures.

I

It was Chris' birthday.

Light show.

DJ.

I'd like to go to more of these. Don's friend Mike is on a couple of listserves and forums that alert people when a spontaneous rave is about to happen, whether it's in a legitimate club or a sketchy abandoned warehouse in Queens. I like the vibes -- people are there just to dance, and are usually dressed in nothing more formal than sneakers and shorts; there is no pretension. It keeps the hipsters out, who are too cool to dance (but not for drugs). I'm guessing they're like lemmings; one day, the onslaught will be over, the hipsters will self-destruct and dancing will be cool again.

..................

In more recent news, Emily and Megan came to visit:

Red Hook

Something to keep in mind: riding 10 miles through a city is not the same as riding 10 miles in the country. Constantly alert, avoiding car doors, weaving taxis, traffic lights, Hasidic Jews (a dangerous distraction), bad drivers and bad bikers. What saved me was the Amsterdam-style bike lane -- a full lane, two-way, separated from the traffic by a row of parked cars -- than ran from the Pulaski Bridge to Downtown Brooklyn. I made it, finally, to IKEA -- my absurd destination for that day -- located in Red Hook, Brooklyn, an inconsistently quaint neighborhood that, despite its lack of subway access, maintains its respectable reputation due to the sick view:

Weird that there are parts of the city where cars are more popular than public transit.

Trusty bike, trusty bike.

Roosevelt Island

A little sliver of an island, a splinter between Queens and Manhattan. Home to a strange abandoned hospital, a functional hospital, and lots of people in wheelchairs. There are no traffic lights, nor properly paved roads; they're all somewhat uneven red brick, like the walkways at Disney World. I rode my bike over the little red bridge (not the big one in the above picture) a few weeks ago to check it out, with neutral results. It's a strange collection of housing projects that feel more like they belong in Philly than New York; I'm not sure why. The bike paths are okay, but not long enough; the circumference of the island is probably only about a mile. There is a nice little park at the northern tip with a small lighthouse and a view.

Uninspiring island trips elicit uninspired language. Whatever. There are plenty of other islands around New York that I'm planning to explore: Governor's Island, located south of Manhattan and popular music venue (lots of free summer concerts!); Randall's Island/Ward's Island, which I have visited, last year, for the awesome Electric Zoo festival; Riker's Island, a water-bound prison where I intend on paying Weezy a visit; Staten Island, which is huge and much farther away than everyone thinks; Coney Island, not an island anymore, still worth a trip.

Hebdomadaire Work Commute

I do this commute about once a week, sometimes not even that much, sometimes twice -- whenever I have a shift that will allow me to bike both to and from Manhattan in daylight. It takes about as long as the subway (half hour, more or less) and leaves me twice as sweaty. Oh well.

Neighborhood #1: Da Pool

No relation to The Arcade Fire... this is the first of perhaps many entries on my little home, Astoria, Queens. I moved in about two months ago (with Don, my boyfriend) and our apartment is a chaotic nest of curios, Mediterranean-inspired foods, and dust. But it's coming along; I actually kind of love it.

But onto the pool -- I discovered Astoria Park's public pool as I was checking out the park itself, a green slice of scraggly grass sandwiched between the Triborough and Hellgate Bridges, hugging the East River with a slimy yet somehow endearing "coastline." The pool is the largest in all five boroughs, and was built during the 1930s as part of the Works Progress Administration by our own dear Robert Moses. The place has a massive, classical feel about it; it reminds me of F. Scott Fitzgerald, synchronized swimming, and white people. Think about some of the bath houses at Jones Beach and you'll know what I mean.

Now, the place is a haven for Astoria's ethnically diverse population (most diverse in the country!) and is, of course, free. Discovering this pool started things off on a good note.

Oh, fine.

I try only to have a blog when I'm on some kind of special adventure. Great things happen when you're overseas, things that deserve talking about and sharing, like watching drag races in Australia or rock climbing in France. At home, though -- eh. I don't consider posting about my sweet new haircut or, omg, those AWESOME cupcakes at Magnolia blog-worthy material. Next thing you know I'll be tweeting quotes from bums on the subway and there goes any respect for bloggish integrity, out the fenster.

But in keeping with the spirit of what I not-so-whimsically call my "New York adventure," I thought I'd revive the old public journal and start recording my experiences here. I've been up to some pretty neat shit lately, lots of it on my bike, most of it by accident, some it with other people. I work more or less 40 hours a week at the restaurant, and the rest of my time I spend exploring.

I'm keeping the thing in French, though; at least some remnant of my former life as a little Vosgien denizen will remain, if not the title -- "my daily, everyday life" just sounds a lot cooler in French.