NYC (now with pictures!)

So the problem with posting pictures about NYC is that I took a lot like this:


See great b/c I want to learn to draw people. Baaad b/c well, family and friends keep asking about the NYC trip and all I have is a bunch of crooked pictures.

OK so the basics: Zach and I went for 9 days. We stayed with our friend Lin and his boyfriend Marc. Marc has great design sense and I should have dropped everything and taken pictures of their apt the moment I walked in. Because it was cute and designy and had fresh flowers and nicely placed posters. It was sort of everything a Brooklyn apt should be. By the end of our stay, all the pictures would have had my socks, books and the aero bed in them and wouldn't have done it justice.

BUT to show off Lin and Marc's tastes, here are some shots from a bar they brought us to our second night in town.

Beautiful. And excellent drinks. This is the main thing I learned in NYC, people may not know how to make a good latte (I'm looking at you lady in deli across from the MOMA) but man the bartenders, at least the ones we experienced, know their craft. It's not just a job like I think it might be for a lot of people in Portland. It's sort of an art.

So my favorite part of New York was the people watching and the art. We went to a ton of art. So much art that I think my body started shutting down somewhere in the middle of hipster capital PS.1. PS1 is something that I found totally boring when we went. I didn't connect at ALL to the exhibits but they had really nice walls....



And looking at their website I know I'd be there all the freaking time if I lived in NYC. But the current show was a lot of video installations and soundscapes and Zach found it very cool but I found it boring. Also a security guard with a Queens accent and attitude yelled at me unnecessarily and I kind of wanted to cry.


We of course went to the MOMA, which lets you take non-flash photos inside. Sweet! But super crowded and a bit overwhelming. I like galleries. Small galleries you discover, explore and then leave. (Which was by the way our entire art experience in Miami, South Beach, and the Keys.) But the new exhibit at MOMA (where you couldn't take photos unfortunately) was awesome. The other museums visited were Neue (think Klimt and late 1800 to early 1900s Austrian artists) and the Cooper-Hewitt (AWESOME). The latter had an exhibit on felt but you weren't suppose to touch the pieces. Very very strange sensation. But along with PS1, Cooper-Hewitt is a place I'd be all the time. Plus all your Christmas gifts would forever be cool stuff from their gift shop. Seriously worth checking out even if you don't spend the $15 to go into the museum.

My favorite art however had to be the American Watercolor Society Show. It's the big deal for the watercolor artists we know from work. We knew a bunch of people who had work in the show and it was just such a cool experience to walk around the room and know a half dozen of the personalities that went behind the names.

Theater was another cool experience. With the help of my Grandma, Zach and I got to see South Pacific. Well done production. Apparently it's about racism. Who knew. The woman next to me was conducting at times along with the music. She even sang a little. She glared the hell out of me when I coughed...once. OK, so I coughed a fair amount more but it was all during the clapping in between songs. (Thank god for clapping in between songs.) And for heaven's sake I wasn't CONDUCTING. Whatever.

The other show is now up for a bunch of Tonys and is called God of Carnage. It was a one act (no intermission) about two sets of parents discussing an incident that happened between their sons. It was fantastic! Hope Davis, James Gandolfini, Marcia Gay Harden and Jeff Daniels. All fantastic. Such a treat to see people you know from the movies and TV act right in front of you.



Before the trip Zach and I got recommendations from 4 main sources: Lin (our friend who lives in NYC), Andy, Judah and a stranger named Erin. Zach did a ton of research before we went. He really did a fantastic job finding random cool stuff. My one major contribution however ended up being a gold mine. I randomly came across a blog and emailed the woman for NYC recommendations. She is a freelancer graphic designer who lives in Brooklyn and her blog made it clear we shared some tastes. Absolute win. I still have to email her a HUGE thanks b/c we kind of knew everything on her list was going to be fantastic.

Cooper-Hewitt Museum?
Fantastic.
Hot chocolate and salt croissant at city bakery?
Fantastic.
Greenwich Letterpress store.
HOLY CRAP FANTASTIC.

She pointed us to a bunch of paper stores and some galleries and just a bunch of random cool stuff.

Actually it was really neat to compare how our various sources (friends and strangers) had overlapping tastes. We knew if two people recommended it it would almost perfectly fit our tastes. The people we asked for suggestions all really went out of their way to create fabulous lists for us. Really generous.



One of the places Zach found prior to departure was something he'd heard about on one of the 10 million public radio shows he listens to. He had saved this particular show for three years just in case he ever visited NYC. It was a perfume gallery called CB I Hate Perfume. AWESOME. Ironically we visited the day my head cold was at its sloppiest and I only had one nostril in working order but basically this is a gallery... but of smells. The designer creates smells based on personal experiences so he'll have one called something like "Summer at the Beach 1967." On one side of the small gallery were boxy bookshelves filled with his perfumes. On the other side are all the scents he created to combine to make the perfumes. So on one side of the room would be "Summer at the Beach 1967" and on the other side would be scents like, freshly cut grass, peony, lemon wedge, rubbing alcohol. He had the individual scents divided up into categories: fruits, foods, body (shaving cream, suntan lotion), earth (mud), etc. Really truly cool. Zach bought a perfume scent in a house spray called Russian Caravan Tea and it literally smells exactly like my second host family in Slovakia's kitchen during breakfast when they brought out the tea. INCREDIBLE.

So that is the trip in a nut shell. Really kind of fantastic. Very very different than our Florida trip but equally great.

NYC.2

So we're back. Nine days of walking, eating and inundation of all kinds. Kind of awesome. Kind of great to be home.

There are two main components to my trip. The facts: what, where, when. And then what it all *means.* I'm torn between the two yet one can't exist without the other. I had this great plan of really sectioning off ideas but a lot of my posts this week will be big blurs.

New York was different than I expected partially because I expected it to be so different. This is what's interesting about New York. Little is surprising. Awe inspiring, overwhelming, frustrating, yes, but if you watch TV or movies you've seen New York. You know New York. You may not realize you do but you do.

What New York has is scale. There is just more of everything. More Portland Hipsters. More black people. More Thai restaurants. I feel like the culture that New York has is Portland culture...just with 8 million people. New York's originality isn't built on some uniqueness bread from the city itself. It's just the result of being...bigger.

My favorite parts of New York (beyond like the museums and galleries) were the parts that most reminded me of gentrified Portland. I hate to say it but I like the places that are probably the worst on poor people. Then on the other side of this, I liked the parts of NYC that I haven't seen a million times on every television show ever. I liked Queens (OK Ugly Betty, whatever Andrea :) I liked Brighten Beach.

Brighten Beach is one express metro stop from Coney Island and is full of Russians. It's like stepping off a plane. Signs are in Cyrillic. Everything in the little grocery stores are labeled in Cyrillic. Don't read Cyrillic? Well then you guess. And guess we did. When we were ordering from a deli counter and trying to ask what didn't have meat in it the lady helping us actually called over another employee who spoke better English. Finally I said "w/o meat" in Slovak and it was close enough to Russian to cause them to look first surprised, then laugh, then shake their heads "no." But holy hell, they made poppy seed cake like my host moms in Slovakia. What a treat.

Queens was the only place in NYC where we saw a mixing of race. Manhattan has people of all colors, but those people all fall down particular slots like those coin machines we had as children. Drop in a dime and it slides into the dime column. Drop in a nickel and it goes to a different, nickel, column. Once Zach pointed out that it was only young black men who stood on guard for camera flashes inside the museums did that become radiantly clear. And it was everywhere. Although even in Queens Zach said all the dish washers in the Thai restaurant were Latinos. But it felt different somehow. In Manhattan, black people and white people ride the elevator together but all the black people might as well get off at one floor of the building while the white people continue on up. To continue the analogies: Queens felt like tossed salad. Much of NYC felt like people lived parallel lives never to touch.

This was in part why Queens was amazing. There were little neighborhoods of influence (Indians above a certain street number, central americans below a certain street number) but people seemed to be actually living together. Whether or not there are racial tensions, that may be a whole different issue. But it felt different than Manhattan.

Also what I loved about Queens and Brighten Beach is that people actually LIVED there. Williamsburg (birth place of the dark rimmed classes and the hipster) and parts of the Lower East Side had an average age of probably 24. A whole micro civilization of 24 year olds. But in Brighten Beach and Queens there were people, gasp, in their 40s and 50s and 60s. (Hell in Brighten Beach the average age was probably 60 and that's just because I saw a few babies that pull the scale from all the 70 year olds.) People grocery shopping. People going to and from work. Not that people don't go to and from work in Manhattan or Williamsburg or Prospect Park but it wasn't like you'd think there must be a college 2 blocks away.

I think the fact that real people with real families made those areas not only interesting but accessible. A lot of New York wasn't accessible to me. Like a piece of art work you don't connect with. You can look at it and break it down technically but that thing that connects you with it emotionally isn't there. I think this would change if I lived there. I know a lot of my perspective comes from making snap judgments on first impressions.

NYC.1

I just finished watching an episode on Hulu. This could be any Sunday night. But it isn't...because I'm in Brooklyn.

Zach's and my host, Lin, are currently at an Eat the Easter Bunny dinner party. I love the sentiment and in that they are Lin's friends you know they are going to be great people, but there is only so much New York City that the brain can handle some days. And so tonight I am staying in with the comfort of internet TV and thinking.

I can admit to this: I wanted to fall in love with New York. Part of me still fights this idea that I should be somewhere big. New York. Los Angeles. It doesn't matter what you do in NYC, just the fact that you are in NYC gives you a credibility. Since whenever I decided I wanted to be a filmmaker I've thought of myself on some level in New York. And perhaps that has been the most fascinating part of my time here. NYC hasn't swept me off my feet like people say she will.  I find her fascinating in ways I never expected but on some level I feel she is overhyped. Not that she doesn't deserve awe, but awe with a footnote.

So first a few brief details. Zach and I are staying with our friend Lin and his boyfriend Mark. They have a beautiful apartment in Prospect Park Brooklyn. Lin informs me that Mark is responsible for the incredible design inside their apartment, and we've bonded a wee bit over vintage wallpaper. They are marvelous people and we couldn't ask for better hosts. I seriously can't say enough positive things about these two.

We have been moving at high speeds since we landed on Friday afternoon. The weather rushes between beautiful but windy as fuck to Oregon style rain. Yesterday was downright miserable weather wise. Today was spectacularly clear but cold. Another NY friend gave us good advice when he said that the weather is always colder than it says on weather.com because it never accounts for the wind. That was 100% true today.

I have a lot of thoughts and they will come out in bits and pieces here. There will be overlap. They will be both short and long. But I find NY over stimulating. I know I've only been here a few days but I don't find that it's inspiring creativity within me. There is so much hitting the senses all the time that there are times in the day when literally my depth perception dims. I mentioned this to Lin and he knew exactly what I was talking about. At some point you reach sensory overload and your brain says, "No more."

I think I'd love being here for design and art, but not for story telling. Not for film. That part of my creativity hates this place. Bristles defensively at it. The design part of me explodes with joy at every piece of lovely iron work and every new boutique shop. There is so much I could learn here with the museums and the galleries and all of that. But I really just don't feel that way instinctually about filmmaking here. (I'm saying this all for me personally. Different people react creativity to different circumstances.) I feel like New York tells the same stories. Not that there aren't other stories to tell but that the same ones get told here. Whereas I feel that new art can be created here. I still need to think on this and maybe my opinion will change but right now, that's my impression.

I could go on here for hours but I need to spend the bit of time I have left alone here tonight reorganizing my suitcase. It's no big surprise that I've taken over the corner in which I planted.

Tomorrow Zach and I have to say goodbye to Lin and Mark (who apparently have jobs during the week) and take a boat ride around Manhattan (thank you Mom and Dad) and then hopefully explore the museums that close Tuesday and Wednesday. Good lord we will have seen a lot of museums. That will be a post in and of itself.