Having missed both Tim and Mari’s wedding and George’s 30th birthday to run the marathon last weekend, I tried to make up for the only one I could, and made the trip to Manhattan this weekend to celebrate a little late. Aimee and I have driven the last five or six times we’ve come to New York, so I hadn’t had a chance to try to the Chinatown Bus in awhile. I chose the Fung Wah once again, which has since moved operations from Chinatown to South Station, so we no longer line up on a sidewalk outside a Chinese hair salon, or wherever it used to be. I hadn’t been to South Station in ages; it’s still under the same never-ending construction that it was when I used to commute through there for work. The ride down was fine, including a stop at a Roy Rogers (I don’t think I’ve ever been to a Roy Rogers before; I passed on the “Holster Fries” and “Double R Bar Burger”). The ride took about five hours, but I’d left early enough that I still made it in time for the great dinner party Anne threw for George at her place. The ten of us enjoyed good wine and hearty stew, and tried not to gang up on the one Republican at the table. It was hard.
Saturday morning, George headed back to PA for the day, and I took off on a day alone in the city, a wonderful guilty pleasure. I decided to put my newly-minted museum ID card to the test, and headed to the Met to see the Andy Goldsworthy exhibition.
Free entrance to any museum around, not to rub it in, is a liberating thing. I popped in for forty-five minutes, enjoyed what I was looking for, stopped at a few other familiar sights, and headed out again. At the Guggenheim, an exhibition on Aztec culture might not have grabbed me, especially with the massive lines that filled the lower level of the museum. But with nothing to lose, I flashed the badge and headed right in. Turns out, of course, it was a great show, with some amazing stone sculptures and some cool Arumbaya fetish-esque figurines. I continued up Museum Mile to the Cooper-Hewitt, where I enjoyed an interesting small exhibition on the revolutions of 1848, in political, social, artistic, and cultural spheres. I wasn’t as taken with the Design ≠ Art show, but hey, it was free anyway.
I took the train back downtown and had a delicious sandwich at Lemon, and noted their photobooth. I headed to Trailer Park in Chelsea for another photo booth sighting; Elvis, Liberace, Ann-Margret, and Ed Sullivan were all in effect, but the booth was out of order.
People selling balloon animals, activists arguing with park-goers about voting for Nader, and people with too many dogs were just some of the folks I saw as I read some of my new Wilco/Tweedy book in Union Square. By late afternoon, it was time to head out to Astoria Queens to pay my first visit to the Museum of the Moving Image and catch a screening of Billion Dollar Brain, part of the Ken Russell series there this month. BDB (hey!) is one of those films that has been on my list of movies to see for so long that I’ve forgotten how or why it got there in the first place. But when you get a chance to see it on the big screen, you don’t ask questions. It was a truly strange film, a Cold War spy thriller overrun with goofiness and a very scary pre-W Texas oil man crusading against Commies and making pre-emptive military strikes to preserve the American Way.
What was almost more riveting than the film, though, was the fact that two of the original Cinemania cinemaniacs were in the audience, being, well, themselves. If you’ve seen the film, have no doubt, they weren’t acting up for the camera. They’re like that all…the…time. Roberta was fussy and sour, and Harvey (“Running-Time Guy”) shouted out the correct, Harvey-measured running time before the lights even had time to come up at the end of the film. I have to say, it really deepened my experience at the movies. The theater is great, the print looked terrific and was well-projected, and for fifty bucks a year, you can get in to every single movie they show. What a deal. Too bad it’s in the middle of nowhere.
What followed was a transit nightmare of a particular New York variety: the weekend cutbacks in service to the outer boroughs. It took me an hour and forty-five minutes to get from Queens to Brooklyn, using five separate trains on three different lines. I finally got to Brian’s place around 8:00, and enjoyed a blueberry-chocolate chip waffle with him and Dave before I headed back to Manhattan (via Buttermilk for another photobooth) to watch the rest of the game. I’d heard dribbles about the score – 3-0, 3-3, 6-6 – as I made my way though the city; it’s one of the things I love about being in New York during baseball season, especially the post-season. Everyone’s watching the games, everyone’s talking about the games, and everywhere you go, you’re kept up to the minute on what’s going on.
By the time I got to the bar to meet George, Anne, and Anne’s mom, the score had ballooned to 11-6, and from that point on, the game was not that interesting. We stayed at Failte, watching the game less than we were listening to the quality dj playing The Killers, Modest Mouse, and some old Cure tunes.
This morning brought egg and cheese sandwiches and hanging out at George’s place before I headed back down to Chinatown for the return bus ride. I had a ticket for the 2:00 pm bus, but I arrived at 12:30 and got right on the bus about to pull out – Fung Wah had exorcised my transit woes, and we had a quick and uneventful ride back.
