usa part four: new york

Saturday May 16th I headed down to New York (took Amtrak instead of the bus this time - nice!!!). I had a kind of panic attack as my train pulled into Penn Station because my suitcases were SO heavy and I had no idea how I was going to get from the train platform up to the street and all the way to Sara's house in Brooklyn and I think also visiting New York just kind of stresses me out now that I don't live there anymore! It turned out to be no problem after all, I just took a taxi, easy peasy. Sara and Pete were very nice hosts, and Sara baked a delicious pineapple upside-down cake. On Sunday I went out to White Plains and had a wonderful brunch with Barbara and Lisa, and got to see Lisa's vegetable patch in the community gardens which was pretty neat.

Spent most of the New York visit in design mode, window-shopping and researching, took lots of fun pictures!

Its always amazing to be back in Greenpoint, where I used to live almost TEN years ago! Everything has changed so much, there is so much more going on in Greenpoint now, but it's still a really lovely little neighborhood and no longer feels as remote and disconnected as it did when I lived there. Anyway, it was fun to see this place totally unchanged:

they still have the same payphone that I always used to call up to my (then) boyfriend's apartment to say come on downstairs and meet me!

Had a happy night out drinking beers at Botanica with New York friends, went to visit Ben's backyard garden in Brooklyn, hung out at Emily's house in the East Village, and on my last night went out to a Public Art Fund benefit dinner and bowling night in which I WON A BOWLING TROPHY in a fabulous surprise coup since I am usually a poor-to-horrible bowler. An excellent finish to my New York visit. This was the first time that I've gone back to visit New York and NOT gone in to work a bunch of hours while I'm there. It was a super short visit but I think it was a lot nicer not having to squeeze in long work days on top of visiting friends and everything.

Wednesday, May 20th: night flight back to Argentina, sad to leave behind friends and family but excited to get back to my work and routine, feeling homesick for my cozy house in Buenos Aires and Mike and dogs and studio etc...

bottled water is stupid

kinda gimmicky, but if i still lived in new york i would TOTALLY buy this. from their website: "Tap'dNY is a New York City bottled water company with a local twist and knack for honesty. We don't travel the world from Fiji to France seeking water or offer the usual bottled water gimmicks. We work with NYC’s public water system to source the world's best tasting tap water, purify it through reverse osmosis and bottle it locally, leaving out ludicrous transportation miles. We offer an honest and local alternative to thirsty New Yorkers, giving them a smarter choice: to drink their own (award winning) water."
the thing about new york is that no matter how much i hate paying $2 to buy a plastic bottle full of water, i sometimes have no choice because i'm walking around all day, it's hot, i'm dehydrated, and there's not exactly a water fountain on every corner. i try to carry around a nalgene bottle or something but sometimes it runs dry or gets left at home. so anyway, this company sells NYC tap water (which is supposed to be some of the best in the country) in a bottle. It makes a lot more sense to drink "local" water than to drink water shipped from france or maine. idunno how much it costs, but it better be cheaper than evian or poland spring.
on the same topic, Poland Springs company sucks water out of lots of towns around Maine, not just Poland Springs, and while they make gobs of money selling it around the world, not everyone in Maine is psyched about having their natural resources sucked out from under them and sold to profit corporate giant Nestle. defendingwaterinmaine.org

Bajofondo / electrotango

I just heard that Bajofondo is playing Central Park Summerstage tonight! I think it's free. Awesome. Actually i've never seen a central park summerstage show (based on a suspicion that it would involve too much waiting-in-lines) nor have i seen Bajofondo play live but anyway, I have a few of their cd's and I like their music. It's more or less electro-tango, i think it's really easy for anybody to enjoy.

Buenos Aires is s totally saturated in tango music and culture, it was weird moving here and knowing nothing about tango. At least half the time people hear my american accent they ask me "oh, did you come here to study tango?" At first all the tango everything (cds, stage shows, street performers, tango schools, tango shoes, tango apparel, tango murals, tango vacations, tango museums, etcetcetc!) struck me as touristy and schlocky but now I am totally filled with awe and respect for this intense tango culture and tradition that's all around Buenos Aires all the time. And I've realized how much I love accordions.

During the military dictatorship in the 1970's, tango dancing was outlawed (like most other types of public gathering). So tango culture became less popular and started to die out. It became an old-peoples' culture, just a throwback to old times... but now there's a whole new interest in tango, tons of young people are learning to dance and in addition to the milongas filled with old people dancing tango, there are now other milongas filled with young people dancing tango. I love going to a place where you can see everyone, young and old, twenty-five-year-old hipsters and ninety-year-old guys with suits and neatly greased hair, crowded together and gliding around the same dance floor. And although you can pay US$300 for a big tango dinner show, you can also go to the community center in any neighborhood and pay $2 to dance cheek-to-cheek with the local senior citizens, if you know how.
Anyway, i'm obviously neither expert nor purist when it comes to tango music; I totally love all of this electro-tango music: Bajofondo, and Gotan Project, Carlos Libedinsky, Tanghetto, ummm, i think there's more but i can't remember, i'll check my ipod and post more later...

new york

como siempre, my visit to new york was fun and way too crazy. i stopped first to visit Emily and Eric in Boston for the weekend, which was nice, especially because it was the only part of my trip when I really didn't have to be anywhere at any particular time or do anything. just wandered around beacon hill, boston common, newbury street, ate an ice cream cone, watched the people coming and going. we did get stuck in south station for three hours on sunday evening, waiting in line to buy a bus ticket to new york, only to be told that all the buses were sold out. so we had to stay another night and take a bus on monday morning. it all worked out fine in the end.
in new york i stayed at Emily D's apartment in the East Village for a few nights, and one night at Sara's apartment in Greenpoint too. Emily took me out for dinner at Prune, which was yummy. I was sad when I got full and couldn't eat any more. There was a ricotta ice cream with butterscotch croutons for dessert. Butterscotch croutons!!! they were supremely crunchy, sweet, and salty. wow. Also, at Emily's house I picked up this book off the shelf: Everyday Matters by Danny Gregory. I read it in like one hour and it was fun and kind of inspiring.
My favorite moment in New York was picnic night in McCarren park with friends.

I did freelance work at Oshkosh for two days, which was really fun. It made me wish i could go back and work there full-time again!! Went to visit the Met with Sara and sat in Central Park, drinking an iced tea out of a clear plastic cup with a straw, which felt very fancy and special because you can't get that in BsAs (and because i normally try to avoid such gratuitous plastic wastage).
Really, everyone and everything in New York was awesome but getting from one end of the city to another can be such a bitch, and it's impossible to be in new york without a cell phone! That, and there is always so much to do and never enough time to sleep!!! By the last day, I was so totally completely exhausted, and sick of running all over the city. Friday I had to run an errand near the BQE in Clinton Hill and ended up walking along the expressway all the way up to williamsburg in the hot hot sun, sweating and frying on the pavement with the cars flying by overhead, ugh.
So, I was very very exhausted and relieved and happy and homesick when I headed to the airport on Friday. This was a really awesome and fun trip to the USA! but boy, was i excited to go back home.

farm

mike was just showing me all these pictures. his friends work here, at this farm in Germantown, NY. it looks so nice it just about made me want to cry from missing farm life and vegetables and gardens and green. and they really make it look like fun.

Bronx mansion

I love this story. I love the picture of this beautiful, creepy piece of history sitting in the middle of an ordinary neighborhood. It reminds me of some of the glorious, dilapidated houses I admired in Brooklyn when I lived in Bed-Stuy, and it reminds me of Buenos Aires too. You can't look at a place like this without wanting to know its story.

It makes me happy that someone has enough money to buy this place and enough sense to respect the house and its history.

Summer Break in New York

Coney Island

I haven't posted in a long time because I was busy traveling to los Estados Unidos for a summer break. I made the trip because my sister Amy was getting married to George! It was my first trip back to the North since moving to Argentina 9 months ago. During the overnight flight, the pilot came on the loudspeaker and woke us all up to tell us that Argentina had beat Mexico in a World Cup match, and everyone cheered.
In the morning I woke up for my transfer in Atlanta. I walked off the plane sleepy and confused and found myself surrounded by huge fat people speaking English everywhere. At first I felt a little revolted but actually every single person in the Atlanta airport was disarmingly friendly and sweet. I had a hard time remembering which language to speak for the first few days.
First I went to New York for a few weeks and had so much fun working back in the office at Oshkosh and seeing all my friends. The first few days in New York I felt completely happy and high on summertime and so excited to see all my friends. I stayed at Sara's house in Greenpoint and I realized, walking down a silent tree-filled street on a warm Friday morning with sunshine sparkling on the East River, thinking about the friends I would see that evening, an ice cream shop on one side of me and a shady cafe on the other side, that Greenpoint is the most beautiful place in the whole city.

Other highlights were making dinner with Andrew and Vickie and Angie just like old times! and going to see Band of Horses at the McCarren Pool. It felt like summer camp. It was great to be back in my old city with nothing to do but see the people I love and have a good time. And work. In truth, by the end of two weeks I was so totally completely exhausted from working all day every day and going out to meet friends every night.

Then Emily and I left town and drove upstate to spend a few days at a house on Somerset lake in the Catskills. I didn't know the other people there but they turned out to be great company and great cooks. We spent a few days napping and reading on the dock by the lake, jumping in for a swim, buying corn at the farmers market, making delicious meals, going for evening paddles in the canoe, falling asleep listening to frogs and crickets.