The year I didn't see Book of Mormon

Last year around this time, I fell into the trap of doing a recap of my year because all the cool bloggers were doing it. But really what is the point of it? I ended up just writing about the same stuff twice and some of it had just happened. It was like one of those flashback episodes on sitcoms that everyone always dreads in re-runs. Those of you who do want to recap my year are welcome to do so through the handy archives feature. For the rest, let's just move on to new, exciting 2012 things, shall we?

My sister was here (in both New York City and Astoria) to celebrate New Years. In the meantime, we kept trying to do things like ice skating or going to the Book of Mormon lottery (we tried and failed not once, but three times to get tickets) and deciding against it while marveling at the sheer number of people in the city also trying to do fun things. We had fun though, if for no other reason than because for the first time in four New Years that I've now spent in this city, it was not bitingly cold. In fact, up until this morning, it didn't even feel like winter. We New Years Eve'd at a bar in Manhattan (making this oddly my first non-Brooklyn New Years since moving to the five burroughs--next year Astoria, for sure!). There was an open bar, crowds, and questionable food stuffs, but overall it was a fun way to ring in 2012.

Here are a couple of photos from this part weekend. These were actually all taken in 2011, but henceforth all posts will contain nothing but the new, exciting, 2012 stuff I alluded to earlier. So far I guess there isn't a lot of 2012 stuff. All I've done is eaten tapas and lost at trivia night by not remembering that Peter Brady's real name, in full, is Christopher Knight. Nevertheless, I'm hoping for good things this year!

Walking through Central Park, shadowed by an iphone toting photographer.

You can't tell in this picture, but we're standing on a castle.

We made an important stop at the "Little Lebowski" a small shop in Greenwich Village devoted to fan merchandise of the film The Big Lebowski, of which my sister is a devoted fan. They seemed to be running low on merchandise (perhaps there was a Christmas rush?), but she got a couple of bumper stickers and a weird collection of movie tschotskes that included, among other things, a severed toe with green nail polish. Not that those are hard to find...

Hope you're all having a happy first few days of 2012!

A night not at the opera

Prepare to have your minds blown, any readers whose minds are easily blown. Last night I actually did in activity...in Astoria! I should say I spend many evenings in the neighborhood, but they are so often spent in less than blog-worthy ways (hiding summer squash in various foods, listening through the door in horror at the Darth Vader like sounds emitted by my neighbor's elderly pug, staring into my computer screen hoping that sheer force of will will make words appear on it, etc). It's not that there aren't a constant barrage of fun and fascinating activities in Astoria at any give time, it's that I'm too lazy/tired/busy/forgetful to actually do them.

Not so, last night! At Socrates Sculpture Park, a mere two blocks from one of my first apartments in Astoria, the Metropolitan Opera was having a showcase of arias in the park to drum up business for their new season. The park is about a 15 minute walk from my current apartment, and is essentially the walk I used to make to the train every day when I lived out there. However, now that I've grown spoiled by living close to public transportation, it seemed much farther than I remembered. However, the park borders the water, so it received a nice summer breeze, and--once we installed ourselves on a picnic blanket and poured some cups of water--it was quiet pleasant.

The performers were very talented, and mostly stuck to crowd-pleasers from Mozart and Rossini. It was just nice to enjoy a free evening in the park on a summer evening listening to music. Also, unrelated, being in Socrates Sculpture Park brought to my attention the inordinate number of puggles living in this neighborhood. It's like every other dog you see! There are a lot of events at Socrates in the summers ranging from classes in urban chicken raising to documentary film nights. I'll try to get over my mental block about trodding the path I walked every day for a year my first year in New York and attend a few more of them.

Naturally, my photographer captured a few shots of the evening:

The view from the park. Of the sky. Captions aren't really necessary for these probably.

Life on the other side of the fence

Despite having lived in New York over two years, there are still many places I haven't explored. These range from places I don't go because I'm concerned for my safety (the South Bronx, the TGI Fridays in Times Square, etc) to places I don't go because they're price prohibitive to a publishing assistant's budget (The Russian Tea Room, Megu, any restaurant above 57th that has a French sounding name). It's also just a large city, and it'll probably be another two years before I make it to all the places on my list. (Case in point, I still need to visit the Tenement Museum.)

However, I can say with confidence that I know the areas around where I work (Flatiron District, Union Square, Madison Square Park, and Gramercy) intimately. I tend to leave no cheap Thai lunch restaurant untasted or potential reading spot park bench untried. There has been, up to this point, one exception to my explorations. Less than three blocks from my office there is a park that until yesterday I had never stepped foot in. This is, of course, because it is Gramercy Park: the only private park in all of Manhattan. This means that the 2-acre, carefully maintained property is surrounded by a high metal fence. Only trustees of the park, who pay an annual fee and live in the expensive apartments and townhouses surrounding the park have keys. Normally, a couple of friends from work and I simply walk the border of the fence with the rest of the have-nots, occasionally stealing wistful glimpses through the fence at the lovely landscaping and quiet benches just beyond our reach.

But yesterday, our fortunes changed (well not substantively, but for the purposes of this story). A week or so ago, I was put in charge of training a new intern whose grandmother knows the owner of my company (who, incidentally, lives in Gramercy). As it turns out, during her time here, she is living with her grandmother, who happens to loan her the key to the park for her to go running in the morning. Luckily, she's a really cool girl (and not just because she fulfilled a New York fantasy for my friends and I). When she discovered our interest in the park on a routine coffee walk, she offered to let us in. Once we were assured that we fit all dress code requirements, we agreed. The key itself, which we had built up in our minds to be an ancient, skeleton key turned out to be rather mundane. (As my insider informed me, they change the locks annually.) However, this small key opened up a world of garden enchantment. Inside the confines of the iron gate, the air seemed sweeter. Despite the trees, it even seemed sunnier. The squirrels (of which there were a surprising number) seemed less bedraggled than your average urban tree rat.
You don't get this sort of whimsical statue in the humdrum public parks. Or you do, but the novelty inevitably wears off.

There was a sign by the entrance informing us that Gramercy Park is neither a "beach nor a playground." There were several other rules forbidding everything from dogs to frisbees, to encourage park goers to comport themselves appropriately. There was also an asterisk on the rule list assuring readers that this was only a partial list of guidelines. Persumbally you get the full set in the form of a bible accompanying your key every year. We started to worry that we were doing something wrong. Clearly, we were the riff raff that was never meant to be on that side of the fence. One old woman, who we decided is Arlene Harrison, the self proclaimed mayor of Gramercy Park (http://gothamist.com/2008/06/19/keeping_gramercy_park_clean_safe_an.php) wouldn't stop tracking us with her eyes. We tried to blend, but the agape mouths and the fact that I couldn't stop taking cell phone pictures clearly marked us as outsiders.

I don't know if you can read these (I have a really cheap phone that I hardly ever use the camera feature on), but it says that in order to "protect people and plantings" you are only allowed to play with soft foam balls in a small square of gravel. Naturally you're not permitted on the grass ANYWHERE.

Although I might have made it on some Gramercy Park trustees hit list, the experience was definitely worth it. There's something about being restricted from something that just makes it that much more enticing. The benches felt more comfortable than any park bench I'd ever sat on, no doubt partially because of the warmth of the jealous stares coming through the bars at me. A maintenance man left the gate open while blowing leaves off the sidewalk around the park entrance and we saw a man try to sneak in before being promptly sent away. It was nice to know, so long as we stuck close to our key holder (who was allowed to bring up to 6 guests at a time), we technically belonged there as much as anyone else.

I don't really think this one needs a caption.