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May 7, 2000
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all over town New York as every sentient American knows (even if he's never visited the city) is a city of neighborhoods. They constantly merge, ebb, flow and re-invent themselves. But there are always neighborhoods and, it seems, people with the idea that it means something. Even if that something is a switch to McDonald's and Old Navy. We started the day by meeting Jessamin and Sasha (remember...Forrest's distant cousin and her girlfriend). They told us how to find a dim sum place. They hadn't been there either, but it was recommended to them. We were, of course, impossibly early. So, we walked around Chinatown and the markets were just opening and there was a lot of trash and smell of garbage and people were scurrying around and washing sidewalks. The people are not well-off and they sell each other cheap clothes on the sidewalk and you see these clothes with slogans that are in English but funny. "Happy Boy" and "Plenty Tough U.S.A. Sports." I have to write these things down or I can't remember them later. People were setting up street vending tables for these cheap clothes, the seafood market help was chipping away at the ice to ice the day's catch, some of yesterday's crabs lay rotting on the sidewalk. Bundles of Chinese language newspapers awaited vendors. There wasn't a New York Times in sight. We found Columbus Park and sat on a bench. Older Chinese men played some kind of game (you'd think mah jong, but it looked like dominoes). They appeared to be gambling. Older Chinese women played a card game at other, less desirable tables. Really just benches with makeshift tables. And in the sun. So they had on odd, cheap hats or held umbrellas over them. Everyone brought food in bags. Many had Chinese language newspapers. Several classes in some kind of slow movement martial art or exercise were being conducted on the ball fields behind us to Chinese music on boom boxes. Then we went to the restaurant. The neighborhood was more awake, smelling better (people had washed the sidewalks) and you could smell fresh smells from the produce tables and dumplings cooking. The restaurant door opened to...a gleaming pair of tall escalators. Hmm...I didn't expect that. At the top, a ballroom-sized restaurant which was a little seedy but was, at least, huge. "Occupancy by more than 892 persons is dangerous and unlawful." The room had two stage areas, one with two attractive dragons, one with a red eye, one with a green. There were large lighted photos of sights in China like the Great Wall and Giant Floating Restaurant. A poster advertised a visit by Hillary Clinton (you know who she is without me giving her maiden name, don't you?). She would be there Thursday and I imagined her up on that stage with the dragons. There were already mountains of little bamboo baskets and plates of food being passed around. We waited for the girls and they showed up, not too late. The dim sum was great...all these great dumplings and stuff...we didn't know what we were eating, we just said yes to a bunch of little plates of stuff and waved the baskets over until we were full. We walked up to little Italy and had a coffee and talked some more to the girls. Then we split and they went back to China Town to look for cheap bamboo curtains for their apartment and we walked around some of the SoHo shops and galleries, window shopping. We headed back north and decided that the heat wave was killing us. We went to the Levi's Store near the hotel and I got some jeans and a short-sleeved shirt and Forrest bought a polo shirt. Thus dressed down, we went to the Modern Art Museum. This amused us for a while and then we decided to sit in Central Park and read our books. We walked about a bit until we found a spot on a bench we liked and we watched the people go by and read for a long time. Skaters, kids in strollers, tourists, old bent upper East Siders, all of humanity, all races, all religions, the whole parade went by. One guy wore pajamas and wooden shoes and pushed a cart with some sort of metallic skeleton type sculpture. We were sitting near the caricature and portrait artists. A couple sat down for the caricature guy. "You are laughing already," the girl said accusingly to the artist. "He saw the curly hair," her boyfriend said. I thought the same thing. People are just endlessly interesting, aren't they. We paused on the way back to the hotel to put a dollar in the bucket for some great break dancers. It was hot. A record heat wave. We felt wilted so we went to our hotel room and took advantage of the air conditioning and another shower. We were impossibly early for the reservation at Il Cantinori in the East Village. But we were hungry having only had drinks and a bit of fruit since the dim sum. So we started and finished our meal early. I had some of the best calf's liver I've had in a long time. Very European. As we were finishing up, a familar-looking guy walked in. Sure enough...someone we knew from Texas in New York to visit his daughter. What are the odds? We considered going to hear some more Cabaret music. But we were very tired so after a short walk we found a cab and went back to our wonderful hotel room and enjoyed it, lounging in the comfortable bed, watching TV. Tomorrow, it's back to reality Ed note: I have made a couple of rules. Because you have to have rules. I will post something for every day. But not necessarily on the day. Or even the next day. And I may come back and add my own pictures to those stolen from ebay traders. |
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"Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors." Henry David Thoreau, Spring |
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chinatown postcard for sale on ebay
undershirts dry in Little Italy |
