Armageddon: MTA breaks down!

It's raining just now as though I was on a back lot in some movie studio. Sheets of rain that are just to strong and constant not to be fake. Even the double-decker tour buses which have tourists covered in plastic riding on top in awful weather, are empty. I'm considering my empty stomach, and even emptier fridge, and going out in this. There is also a very real fear of flooding.

Three evenings ago it rained like this the entire night. I woke up to a sort of Armageddon, if the end of the world was very first-world and the final battle of good vs. evil took place in Manhattan and not on Tel Megiddo. That is to say, the subway system wasn't working.

Da-da-daaaaaaaaah (crash of lightening)

I know it doesn't sound that awful, "So the subways aren't working, big deal" and as a suburbanite I would agree with you. But there are no cars! And it was a rainy hot day, which is just cruel really. When you weren't soaked you were standing in Sahara-like heat, and you were soaked just the same with sweat. I was trying to get from home up at 123rd and Broadway down to the UN on 46th and 1st, on the opposite side of the island. I headed over to the M60 just an avenue over. Because I live fairly high up, and it was early, only around 8:20, I was able to get on the bus without much shoving. It's the ride from there on that was hellish.

At first people were just shocked. People on the bus were making calls to family and friends to find out if the 6 train or other trains further east or south were working. It built a little camaraderie between 4 of us as we shared information; every train line was flooded and not working. Whenever we thought of getting off the bus to see if a train line was working. we would be confronted by dozens of people waiting at the bus stop to try to board our bus. Paying soon became passe as people surged onto the bus, through the front and back doors.

The bus was incredibly crowded, and I found myself slipping in between people to get to a spot towards the center of the bus. People bottle-necked at the front and back entrances. It's just like on the subway everyday; people are screaming at each other to make room at the doors and the middle is pretty open. Usually it was packed, but when there was room in the middle of the bus, still no one would move for fear of losing their new found breathing room. So I called out "Move into the middle, there will be more room!" and sometimes people would listen and listlessly shuffle toward me, but usually not. There was an especially rude man who kept screaming at people trying to enter the bus "Don't you dare get on MY bus! There's no room on MY bus!" and I called back, in a cheerful tone, "There's plenty of room on my bus, just come towards the middle!" As we got further downtown the bus only stopped every 10 blocks instead of every 2, and would pull away from the crowds that had grown to a 100 people at each stop.

By the time I was in the east 70s, I just had to get off. The usual NY crazies had been caught up in the frenzy and frustration so that people were yelling and singing alternately. So off I went to walk the last 20ish blocks. I arrived at the UN for the Peace Education conference, but that is another post...

Harlem Shuffle

After having lived in SOHA for about a year, I decided it was long past time to visit my good neighbor to the North. I had a perfect excuse, a new coworker at Tanenbaum, Heather, has moved up into Washington Heights and was excited to see the sights of Harlem as well. So one hot Saturday, off we went in our sneakers on the Lonely Planet Harlem walk.

We started off with lunch at Amy Ruth's. This soul food diner is known for its southern style, and its speciality, chicken and waffles. Heather had smothered chicken and I had fried. I have to say,t he chicken was incredible. The waffles were delicious. But I just don't know if I get them as a combo. Either one would have been meal enough. I was interested to find that this is very much an American tradition, and Wikipedia sites two probable origins:

1. Wells Super Club, who's official slogan is "Wells: Home of Chicken and Waffles since 1938," who during the Jazz Age served the combination late at night for patrons who wanted a dinner/breakfast meal.
2. It might have gone back to the 1800s, when recently freed slaves from the South migrated up North. Fried chicken with a breakfast bread comes from Southern rural traditions.

I prefer the first idea because it makes chicken and waffles a decidedly Harlem delicacy. After a large brunch, we went to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. There we went to their special exhibition called Stereotypes vs. Humantypes. The exhibit opened with cultural comparisons of stereotypes and caricatures of different groups; Irish as unmixable, Jews as sheenies, Chinese as cheap launderers, etc. It was interesting to see the roots of what have sadly become nationally held stereotypes about different groups. The exhibit then delved into the specially heinous stereotypes and caricatures held against African Americans. It questioned how Black and White Americans experiences and interpret these stereotypes in their lives. The exhibit compared racist memorabilia from the late 1800s and throughout the 1900s to actual photographs of African Americans during that time period. Although the collection was small, it is definitely worth seeing.

From there Heather and I walked West to the Harlem YMCA. My guidebook said we should ask to see their mural, which we did and they found fairly funny. Truly it's a simple painting on the wall of one of their rooms. Oh Lonely Planet, you've bested me again! We walked past the former sites of the Big Apple Jazz Club (perhaps where NY got its nickname) and Ed Small's Place (where Malcom Little, later X, waitered). From Jazz we went to church, passing by the Abyssinian Baptist Church which was formed in response to segregated services in 1808, and Mother African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, which played an important role in the Underground Railroad. We went past a lot of interesting places on the tour route which were sadly closed, like the Liberation Bookstore. We also went into the less-than-overwhelming Scarf Lady store (a bunch of scarves and church hats, go figure) and walked past Langston Hughes last home.

By far the best part of the tour was our walk down Striver's Row. These are two blocks of townhouses originally owned by Whites who fled when Blacks began moving into the area. The aspiring African American middle class moved in during the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s. These beautiful homes have alleys behind them where trash was originally, and still is, picked up so that the mains streets stay clear. I think all of NY should adopt such standards. And there are some cute reminders of days gone by.

Heather and I stopped on a stoop to rest and try to stop sweating for a bit. We got some "Catch the Flava" an icey version of ice cream in tropical flavors. We then went our separate ways for some shower and rest before meeting up again that evening. We went to Strictly Roots, a vegan Jamaican restaurant in Harlem, and Conan and Kylah, two of Heather's friends Joined us. The restaurant was across from the cleverly named Halal restaurant (pictured), "Mookie's No Pork on My Fork." Conan and Kylah has both been in the Peace Corp in Africa and shared some of their experiences. From their we walked around Morningside Park to the Hungarian Pastry Shop for a change of pace and then Suite, our local gay bar. I went to bed completely worn out.

Summer Happening Continued

So after Figment there was....

PS 1

MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art, has a campus just inside of Queens on the 7 train. This art museum is known as PS1: Contemporary Art Center. It gets the name because it is housed in an old (abandoned?) school that lends an interesting dynamic to the museum itself. Not only creepy, it seems to ask whether it is a museums job, or art's for that matter, to educate the masses. And this brings me to a conversation with Cyrus on truth in art and museums and propriatizing and..... well it's thoughts still unformed for me.

Anyway, on Saturday nights PS1 hosts large parties with admission to the museum. I went with Cyrus and we got in and went straight to the art. And by going straight I mean we waded through hundreds of yuppies and hipsters drinking beer out of plastic cups and sitting an the hammock-like benches around the open area. At one point we got root beer floats and sat above the crowds, watching as people we knew and didn't danced around to a Russian band. The lead singer, a balding man in his 50s, swirled with one hand one a metal pole, the other alternating holding a cigarette or microphone.

The art itself was not really my thing, but quite interesting. There were a few exhibits I enjoyed. One was a ghoulish collection appropriately sequestered in the old boiler room of the school. Another was found on the top floor of the building; I entered to find a room packed with people lying on the ground or sitting on benches angled backwards, and when I sat and looked up I realized there was no roof, just perfect blue clouded sky. There was a tongue-in-cheek exhibit called "The Donner Party" which was a clever play on "The Dinner Party" I saw earlier this year at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

After some art appreciation, Cyrus and I met up with our good friend Anna. She had brought along Jennifer, from Brooklyn, and Fifi from England. Fifi was hysterical, telling us stories of how she'd impersonated a police officer to get her troublesome middle-school-aged neighbors to stop picking on a little girl. Cyrus and I then went out to find dinner at a cute little authentic French restaurant, complete with snobby French waitress. (Pictured: Cyrus, Jennifer, Fifi, Anna)

Beer Garden

We have been taking turns in our group of putting together outings, and Sandy took a turn with the Bohemian Beer Garden in Astoria, Queens. It used to be, I am told, that there were dozens of beer gardens of the European variety all over New York, and that this one is the last one standing. It had a castle-like feel, complete with heavy wooden doors. If only there had been a moat to keep out those people from New Jersey and Long Island that I would have wanted to keep out. When we first arrived, the place was full of Frat boys and girls who were not completely dressed, and by the time we left the Frat boys had been replaced with hipsters, and those same girls were still there. The food was definitely authentic, I got goulash with dumplings and some beer, and the waitress staff seemed to be the gruffer sort of East-European woman, not the sweet milkmaids with braids. (Pictured: Sandy, Cyrus, Me, Michael)