"Astorian" April: Er, miscellany?

Uh...so I guess we're almost halfway through April, and my plans to visit a lot of places in Queens/Astoria this week have gone somewhat awry. Part of the problem is that most of the events and places I want to go to are more weekend things. Also, I had every intention of doing a little "neighborhood spotlight" post on Forrest Hills, but then I found out I'll have a meeting coming up in Forrest Hills, so I decided to put off the train trip until then. But enough of my excuses! In the meantime, I thought I could post about my top 5 places in Queens. Places that I've already been to. See? Still in keeping with the Queens theme, but requiring a fraction of the effort. (Contrary to what the numbers would suggest, these are in no particular order)

5) Rockaway Beach

I almost hesitate to put this as a Queens location because, the easiest way to get there for those of us who don't have a car is to trek on the A train through Brooklyn. However, since it is in Queens--I'm claiming it! This is one of my preferred beaches because it's less gross than Coney Island and takes less time to get to than Long Beach. And, of course, because of my incredible Queen's pride

4) Corona Park, World's Fair Site

It harkens back to that bygone era (the 1960s) when Queens was given its due.

3) Queens Museum of Art, New York City Panorama

I've seen some interesting exhibits at the Queens Museum of Art, but my favorite thing is always the large New York City Panorama. I've heard they sometimes do trivia nights at the museum where they highlight certain sections of the panorama and ask questions about landmarks and neighborhoods of the city. Despite my love of trivia nights, I think I would be really terrible at that, which is why I haven't gone.

2) Socrates Sculpture Park

This has become one of my daily walking spots when the weather is nice and I want to go out on lunch. The sculptures change regularly, and in the summer they show movies and have workshops on everything from felt making to urban chicken raising.

1) Museum of Moving Image

Another one I can walk to. I used to think the Museum of Moving Image was really lame because it was only open for about 4 hours a day in the middle of week days, so it was impossible to ever go. However, after the re-vamp, they want to show it off, so it's open on weekends like a regular museum. They also have a couple of movie theaters where they show both old and recent films. I particularly enjoyed their recent retrospective on the Muppets.

I'm not actually sure if these are my top five favorite places in Queens or maybe just the first five I could think of. At any rate, I'm going to discover more in the coming weeks--no more excuses.

Also, totally unrelated, but I've spammed everyone though every other possible format, so it's time I take it to the blog. I'm trying to win a trip to New Orleans. If you're reading this and would like to vote for my entry (you can vote daily!), I would be much obliged. Here's the link.

"Astorian" April: The Noguchi

The first year I moved to Astoria (which may or may not have actually been Long Island City), I lived in an apartment that was far from everything--trains, grocery stores, businesses that would sell my parents decent coffee and the New York Times when they visited--with the possible exception of a Costco. The upswing of living by a Costco is that I only actually bought toilet paper for a three bedroom apartment twice in a year. However, for everything else, it was a pretty inconvenient location. Similarly inconviently located a block away was the Noguchi Museum. This museum and sculpture garden was designed in the 80s by Isamu Noguchi to house his sculptures. Despite living a block away from it and the fact that it is located literally 10 feet from the back wall of the Costco, I never actually made it there.

Luckily, now I live firmly in Astoria, close to trains and within a 5-minute walk of three grocery stores, two 24-hour fruit and vegetable markets, and an organic shop that offers you the choice of ice cream or a wheat grass shot every time you spend over $20 (always the easiest decision I ever make). However, I'm still within a 20-minute walk of my old apartment and thus the Noguchi. I heard it was free the first Friday of every month, so this past Friday, I decided to do something culturally relevant with my lunch break.

The sculptures of the museum are indeed nice, but I think the bigger work of art is the museum they are housed in. Much like The Modern in Fort Worth, I found the building itself far more memorable than any individual piece on display. It is a two story structure with a small sculpture garden.

When you first enter the museum, you are actually outside, despite being under an overhang of the building. It's a cool effect because you wonder why it feels so open and then realize if you keep walking you are actually in the garden. Even the parts of the museum that are entirely enclosed use windows and light to their best advantage, so that you always feel a bit like you're still outside.

The other positive thing is that there are no explanations for any of the pieces on the walls to break the flow. Instead, at the beginning of each room you can pick up a laminated sheet that tells you what stone each sculpture is made of and when they were made. The explanations have little thumbnail photos next to them, so I guess if you were actually interested in following all the information, it would be something of a scavenger hunt.

The second floor of the museum has a cool wood floor that I want to say is teak, although I actually have no sense of different woods. Although I didn't take any pictures of it, it also had an interesting exhibit on the environmental future of Long Island City.

Anyway, that's the Noguchi Museum in a nut shell. I was happy to finally get the chance to go out there. I'll have to spend longer next time, when I'm not worrying about hurrying back to stay within my lunch break. I'm really looking forward to trying out new things in Queens this month (and in general). In my research, I found a park that has a free rock wall and ropes course that's open in the summers. I've also always wanted to visit the Queens County Farm, although this weekend they're having an Easter Egg Hunt, so I decided to steer clear. Must save something for next weekend, too.

Let it slide

A few weeks ago, a friend wanted to go to the New Museum to see their "Experience" exhibit not so much because we are aficionados of cutting edge art as because we wanted to ride their three-story slide. However, when we rolled in at 2 in the afternoon, we discovered that we were not the only slide-loving people in New York and that particular exhibit had an hour and a half wait. So instead we went and got donuts. We are, if nothing else, people who appreciate life's simple pleasures.

At any rate, this preamble is all to say that this past weekend I was much more dogged in my pursuit of experiencing art through attractions more often seen on playgrounds. I insisted friends arrive by 11 (the museum's opening time) and that I would bring donuts lest we get distracted. I correctly deduced that the type of people who go the New Museum are likely the same people who don't like to get up early on Sunday morning. I deduced correctly and my friends and I (well, at least those friends who didn't bail because they preferred not to get up early on a Sunday morning) were part of the first 10 people in line. We were informed that the "psycho tank" was closed because the heater was broken. Apparently, this is a part of the exhibit where you float naked in a sensory deprivation tank, which seems very much just like a regular elevated hot tub, but I guess it's cool because seldom are you invited to disrobe in a museum. We were willing to overlook it's closure; however, and accept that we would have to go home and "float weightlessly" in our bathtubs to compensate. Thus, after signing a few waivers, we were soon once again slide-bound!

Actually before he hit the slide, we made a concerted effort to appear to look at other art first. We were some of the few people who stopped for a couple of turns on the random mirrored carousel that was adjacent to the slide entrance. This meant that we allowed a good 10 people to slide first, but having paid $16, we wanted to patronize the exhibit to its fullest.

Note that all the other chairs are empty. Some people have no respect for interactive art that does not require a helmet.

My friend embarking on her slide voyage. This photo and that previous sentence just made me realize how lame this post is.

This was the next floor down (the 4th floor). You could watch people sliding through. This person was not one of my friends, but he/she is a good stand in. I think that's pretty much what we looked like.

Here we are at the slide's endpoint (on floor 3). My friend and I are standing by that blue baby gorilla for scale (well for scale of the slide, it's hard to tell how large the baby gorilla is, but, based on my knowledge of primates, I'd say assume it's about life sized).

Okay, I hate to disappoint, but this final photo will have no slides to speak of in it. In fact, the rest of the exhibit was a photographic snooze, so this last photo wasn't even taken on the New Museum premises. However, I have to include it because it's the bacon and kale quiche I made last night. It's one of the better things I've done with my life.

It's just hard to go wrong with bacon and kale.

I hope you all had excellent weekends as well! I'm going to try to depart from my usual, "let's talk about what I did this weekend" commentary. I'm not sure what I'm going to replace it with though, so stay tuned. If I don't update...it's because I'm still thinking of ways to make myself more interesting.

Procrastinating through culture

I have an extra hour today, so I might as well update. Actually, that's more a reason I should be outside enjoying the beautiful day and perhaps ringing cowbells at marathoners because today the sun sets at 4:47. That's not an acceptable time for nightfall in November, and I go on record as against daylight savings time again this year. To celebrate the last day of pre-5 pm sunlight for a while, I did very little outside yesterday, and in fact, spent much of it inside at the museum. I recently renewed by membership to the Moma (after their many emails and thinly veiled threats about raising prices on membership fees if I didn't renew in the next few days), and yesterday seemed like a fine one to check out the much ballyhooed de Kooning retrospective.

What I learned from this exhibit is that I really didn't know much about de Kooning (which actually is fairly true of any modern artist). I like him better than the Cy Twombly's of the world though, and it was a well put together exhibit. While at the museum, my friends and I also checked out the labyrinth made of sheets in the atrium called Sum of Days. I'd read about it, and the idea sounded really cool in theory: you walk through a maze of hanging sheets that extend the six stories to the Moma's ceiling and while walking through microphones record the sounds of people walking through and project the sounds of previous days into the labyrinth. However, I think this is an exhibit that is much better in theory than in practice. One of my friends, who knows a fair bit about sound, said the way the microphones were hung basically ensured that after a few days all that you would hear would be a static white noise. Which incidentally is what we heard. I was more concerned with the fact that the "labyrinth" was more of a single concentric circle leading to the exit. I realize they were limited by space, but can you even call that a labyrinth if it takes you less than a minute to get to the center and back out? The curtains were cool though, and in smell and opacity kind of reminded me of huge dryer sheets.

This is the center: your reward for following the crowd through one turn in this not terribly grueling labyrinth. This makes me regret not springing the $10 for the corn maze at the Queen's Farm Museum this fall.

The other major exhibit on at the Moma right now is one called "Talk to Me" and explores how people communicate with objects. I think I didn't give this one the mental energy I needed to in order to fully understand it, but man, did I just not get this. The trouble started when I noticed I was glazing over while reading the description at the beginning of the exhibit. Then there were a series of videos played that seemed to have no connection (but likely did). One of them was 3D and had several pairs of 3D glasses hanging from the ceiling on wires. My problem with this was that they hung the glasses so that you couldn't really use them at eye level unless you were 5'7'' (something I am not) or above. Why not hang the glasses at multiple lengths? Or hang them on a stretchable bungee that short (or, in my opinion: average height) users might also partake?

From this point on, I was more prioritizing chatting with friends than following the cohesion of the exhibit, so I can really only comment on individual things that caught my eye. There was a working Metrocard selling machine (or I assume it working, although I never actually went so far as to put money in it). There was a series of headsets where you could listen to the innerworkings of a tree. There was a box of what (I hope) was fake, brightly-colored feces that was made my engineering certain e coli (is this really communication?). There was also a creepy bunny with a red light on it. Anyway, to sum up these vignettes, I think I need to go back and see this exhibit with a more open mind, which thanks to Moma membership--I can do for free, because right now it's making me feel dumb.

I will say, I think E. chromi is the perfect name for this.

Confession time: I'm actually writing this I realize, not so much to avoid enjoying these scant hours of daylight outside but because I'm avoiding working on what I'm supposed to be writing. There is a reason I should be inside at my computer on a lovely fall day, and sadly, blogging is not it. Therefore, I had best wrap this up and try to find other ways to eliminate writer's block.

Gluttony in September

This past weekend (plus a couple of days) my parents were in town which means that instead of updating this blog I was engaging in the equally important tasks of strolling through museums, attending Broadway musical productions (Anything Goes very much recommended!), and digesting rich, French foods. Taxing times, naturally, but as their only daughter on the East Coast these are the crosses I have to bare. I just turned in the first of two books today and am feeling a little light on language, so this post will mostly be photos of our trip, which were mostly taken by my dad (which should come as no great surprise to readers, who may wonder if I still even own a camera).

Our first stop of the trip was naturally the Met. And no matter how many photos you take of yourself on the steps of the Met, there is always room for one more. I think this is a more flattering photo than some of my previous Met steps poses, but I'm not so vain as to subject my readers to the entire series (as least not yet), so you'll just have to take my word for it.

Second only to Met steps photos are Met roof photos. I swapped parents in this one so that my father could make one of his rare appearances in family photos. Every so often, we like proof that he comes places with us.

Continuing the theme of photos of us on top of things, here we are at Top of the Rock, one of the few New York tourist attractions that I had never done.

For some reason, I always thought Top of the Rock would be lame and not worth the money, but it was gorgeous up there. Of course, going on a perfect, blue-sky day didn't hurt matters.

Those of you regular readers may remember my post on the exhibit of miniatures at the Museum of Design (a post that I am currently too lazy to look up the link for). I had sold it so highly that my parents wanted to go too, and I was happy to go back with a camera that is not predominantly a cell phone.

One of our weekend days was spent in Brooklyn and so we spent the morning at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. We took this picture with this cool brush sculpture thing. I realized I'd actually taken a similar picture when I was at the BBG a few months ago and was evening wearing the same shoes. Those of you who are friends with me on Google+ might even know the photo I mean! Unrelated, is anyone actually on Google+?

To counteract the Brooklyn day, we also spent one day in Queens (they were sadly not in town long enough for us to complete the five borough tour with days spent in the Bronx and Staten Island respectively). We drove out to the Unisphere, built for the World's Fair in 1964. Men in Black fans will note another familiar landmark from the fair to the right of the Unisphere.

You can't really see what this photo is of, but I think that's what I like about it. This photo is of the Panorama at the Queen's Museum of Art. It's a scale model of all five boroughs of New York City. Photos don't really do it justice anyway though, so I prefer this one that brings me to mind of an impressionist painting.

The best parts of the trip I didn't really get photos of (or rather my dad didn't). Those were the quiet times working the morning crossword or strolling around talking. Also, the food. We ate very well and at such nice places that it seemed gauche to try to photograph the dishes. Just as a quick recap, we enjoyed: Brooklyn bagels (weirdly, it's the name of an Astoria-exclusive chain), Belgium comfort food, a fabulous three-course meal at Le Bernadin, dinner at an Italian restaurant where the list of specials is a 20 minute recitation (Astorians: you really should try Trattoria L'incontro if you haven't already), brunch at Bareburger, and dinner at a New Zealand restaurant in Park Slope. You don't often get to enjoy traditional New Zealand fair, but it's quite tasty.

Thanks for coming to visit me, parents! And for continuing to read this blog post even though you experienced all of it.

Museums and awkwardness

My blog got a lot of new readers this week. I noticed that my number of hits was easily 5 times that of what it normally is, which at first was rather exciting. Then I put two and two together. I was looking for a new roommate all this week and thus emailing a lot of strangers from craigslist. I remembered that I put the link to my blog in my chat info, meaning that anyone I emailed could read it. My theory was confirmed when everyone who came to see the apartment mentioned having read it. Shortly after meeting with everyone, my roommate told me she thought she'd be able to stay another month, making the whole roommate search kind of a moot point--with the exception of my short-lived fanbase. My roommate suggested she threaten to move out every couple of months or so to help me increase my blog's readership one potential roommate at a time. The only fault with the plan is that then my only readers would be people embittered by my dangling a tantalizing apartment (complete with undeniably adorable cat) in front of them and then pulling it away at the last second. It's probably more a recipe for angry comments then content readership. Ah well, it was nice to be popular while it lasted.

The other day, my friend wanted to go to a "Science Cafe" at the American Museum of Natural History. Basically, it's an event where you can buy overpriced drinks and listen to free lectures about the future of space travel. I had to go home and clean my apartment (for the aforementioned potential roommate visits), so I had already intended to not stay for much of it. In the end, we didn't stay for any of it because my friend and I were yet again reminded of a universal fact that I always manage to forget: events in museums are, without exception, awkward.

Then again, maybe this is only true for me. I can see the appeal of hosting events in museums. They generally contain wide, reasonably open lobbies, are full of conversation pieces, and add an air of grace and formality to any social function. Perhaps it's this exact formality I find off-putting. That or the fact that I am not a born social network-er. Put me in a room with wine, free food, and other would-be science nerds, and I'll inevitably hug the table to crudities and avoid conversation with anyone I didn't come with. A couple of summers ago, when I was staying at my parent's house before moving to New York, a friend and I decided to go to a "singles mixers" at the Houston Museum of Natural History called "Mixers and Elixirs." The free food we were promised with our admission fee turned out to be mini hot dogs and buttered popcorn. My friend and I eased our way amongst a crowd of middle-aged Houstonians, below a hanging brontosaurus, and quickly realized we were likely going to mix with no one. Also, there's no way to elegantly eat a hot dog.

By far the most awkward museum event of my life was at an event at the South African science museum in Cape Town. I went to a public symposium held by the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation (a group of us were invited because of a hook-up from our Conflict Resolutions professor). The speakers were apparently well known nationally and one of them was a current executive for the ANC. Anyway, the symposium was held in the science museum in a room called the "whale well" because it is an open room spanning several floors with whale skeletons and models hanging from the ceiling. By the time our group got there, all the seating on the floor was taken, so our only option was to lean against the railing. Me and my friends, however, were feeling plucky and innovative and decided to go up to the second floor where we could look down on the conference from above and actually found some seats in what was called the "whale sounds booth." Basically it was a hollow tube with seats in it, in which you could listen to the melodic songs of whales while overlooking the whale well. We decided the relative advantages of sitting down during an hour-long speech were worth listening to whales, so we set up camp there. But once the speakers actually started the whale sound loop chose that exact moment to switch to the loudest possible cacophony of whale noise and everyone (in a room containing several hundred people) turned to look at us. We scurried out of the booth in fits of laughter (mostly out of awkwardness, but really, the moaning and singing of whales at a serious function on the future of South African democracy is quite funny). It also happened later in the evening after the museum people had supposedly turned the sounds off, and we'd cautiously returned to our seats, only to be displaced again by the sounds of whales. Later in the night when we were at the reception to try our hands at mingling with South Africa's conflict resolving elite, we found out that everyone at the symposium thought we'd been pressing a button to make the sounds go off. "Are you the girls making the whale sounds?" was a common question we were asked. And that's why I'm now blackballed from any future Institute for Justice and Reconciliation functions.