Staycation(ish) in NYC

I have two things that I do upon starting long trips. The first is wearing lucky socks. I don't necessarily have a pair of socks that is the lucky pair; any colorful pair will do. That is not to say that I don't have my favorites. The purple pair with cows jumping over the moon (a gift from niece and nephew), the blue pair with pandas (borrowed from a friend in Bolivia and never returned), and any pair from the pack of striped yellow socks that my Mom bought me when I got a job in Nicaragua rank pretty highly.

I'm not sure how this started but I would guess that my mother initiated the tradition. In my family themed socks are appropriate gifts for almost every holiday: Christmas, Easter, Halloween, St. Patrick's Day - I even inherited a few pairs when my gramma died. That said, wearing of these socks for the purpose of luck is only appropriate for exams and flights. I suppose I'll need a pair of lucky boot socks for my trip to Nepal.

The other superstition I hold is listening to the song Long Way Around by the Dixie Chicks. This applies particularly to bus trips and stems from my Peace Corps days. the lyrics fit my life so well at the time except instead of  a Winnebago I was in a chicken bus. I don't journey by bus very often anymore - a few trips to NYC each year but I don't regard those as having tourism ends - mostly just family events where I will sit in my parents' house wearing pjs and bingeing on pizza, Chinese food, bagels, and Entenmanns devils food crumb donuts. (Buy me some?)

However, On this last trip to "the city" for a work reunion I made sure to take some time to explore. I also thought it'd be appropriate to get out because none of the usual suspects were available to host me and I wasn't sure that Joe, an old work friend with a swanky new apartment, would welcome my pj-lounging ways. Generally, I head straight for The Strand upon stepping off the bus but this time I planned a circuit of Bluestockings Books, the Tenement Museum, and the E Street Cinema -- wait, that's in DC.

I was completely unfamiliar with the Tenement Museum's tour system and was surprised to learn that each themed tour cost $25 ($20 if you still use an unexpired and undated student ID like I do. I paid a pretty penny for that ID and I have no shame using it post-graduation. It's also easier that trying to convince people that my self-description as "life-long learner" should count for a discount as I tried once in Seville.) Also, as a lone wolf I couldn't just go on any tour I wanted but one that welcomed lonely desperate singletons. To clarify, I am neither lonely nor desperate but that was the vibe that was projected onto me as I bought my ticket --" Oh you poor thing. All alone? I suppose we could we squeeze you in."

I realize that this account is not strictly chronologically correct; the first thing I did upon entering the museum was find the bathroom (and then use it). It is safe to assume, in fact, that my first move upon arrival anywhere is to go to the bathroom. So now that the timeline is settled, I was put on a tour called "Shop Life" that started at 4:30pm. I had two and a half hours to kill.

First I watched the museum's comprehensive welcome video which featured several heavily NY-accented researchers talking about the history of the Lower East Side and how it transitioned from German to Jewish to Puerto Rican -- all with their own challenges and white uptown rescuers. The museum, by the way, is in an old tenement (strictly speaking, a multi-family building) that had been abandoned when sanitary improvements became too onerous for the owners (Fire proofing! The horror!) and they evicted everyone and lived on the proceeds of the first-floor shops -- which I would get to see in two hours.

So I moseyed over to Bluestockings Books which I am ashamed to say I had never visited in my three years living in the city. Perhaps I am not as feminist, environmentalist, and rabble-rousey as everyone thinks I am. I'm also not a big book buyer; that habit would bankrupt me. But I was looking for a gift for my host, the best read Parkie on the planet. Unfortunately I think his reading tastes might be even less feminist, environmentalist, and rabble-rousey so I just bought an uninspiring chocolate chip cookie and headed back to the museum...which has a fabulous bookstore! History! Culture! City planning! (Hint, hint Christmas is coming.) So I picked up a copy of Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs took on NY's master builder and transformed the American city by Anthony Flint. The book is for people who have powered through Robert Caro's The Power Broker about Robert Moses and Jane Jacob's The Death and Life of American Cities and are looking for a lightweight synthesis of the two. Or for someone who doesn't have the time, inclination, or mental fortitude to read those behemoths. (Joe is the former, and I am the latter having started the Power Broker twice now.)

Book in hand, I jumped on the 4pm tour "Hard Times" which if you were paying attention was totally not the tour I was assigned to - oops. Hard Times was a tour of the first floor apartments which were set up to show what the building looked like when it was abandoned, a German-Jewish family's in the late 1870s, and an Italian family;s in the late 1920s. I don't want to spoil the tour for you but three things were of note: 1) The apartments were found to have ~30 layers of wallpaper. Rather than a deep clean, the landlords would just paint or paper over between tenants. 2) Several people bandied about the same statistic that the population density of the Lower East Side in the 1870s was greater than that of Calcutta. Being a statistics nerd and a stickler for accuracy I asked at the first opportunity if that referred to the population of Calcutta then or now. That was evidently a stumper. 3) One family, in their move toward Americanization named their children Josephine and John -- the same names as my gramma and her brother.

After the tour, I walked by the theater to find that nothing was showing until after dinner so I headed north, oddly running into a former coworker in Union Square. I would hum It's a Small World After All but I know how much an earworm that is. Then I received a text inviting me to the Queens' Park's softball team's victory party at the Elk's Lodge in Elmhurst. This being just quirky enough of an invitation for me to accept. I can't tell you too much about the evening of course because I was sworn to secrecy in a masked ceremony but I did get really good pizza and clarify my life plan to marry rich.

The next morning I woke up ridiculously early and so left the apartment ridiculously early and so arrived at the Staten Island ferry terminal ridiculously early -- where I ate a pretzel with cheese for breakfast. So when Chelsea texted me to see which ferry we were aiming for I had to admit that I had been sitting in the terminal all morning. We were heading to SI for a MillionTreesNYC staff reunion. Yay trees!After some difficulty finding our shuttle and enduring some stomach-wrenching driving we arrived to Greenbelt Nature Center where, after I peed of course, I signed in to be met with "Oh you're Lenni! Our password is still 'weheartlenni'"." At first I was deeply flattered but then I remembered that that particular password was my idea and the programmers ran with the joke. Anyway, it was a gorgeous warm day of tromping through the woods and planting trees. The only low points were whne I spectacularly failed at the farmer's hanky and wound up with booger everywhere. Aren't you glad you asked?

Post-planting and picnic lunch, I hitched a ride back to the city with Kat and Susan to catch up with people I find so hard-working and inspiring -- and to avoid getting carsick again. (Most of my notes from the day are about projects that I need to read more about and people I should contact.)  Since we wound up parking near the City Museum -- and a little birdie had told me that Parkies get in for free -- I decided to try my luck. Although I enjoyed the Stanley Tucci-narrated movie about the city and the displays on tenements I totally thought the museum would be more fun!

So I headed back to J's place to lounge around in my pjs and watch the Mets game while he and his girlfriend went to a party. The next morning we went to Brooklyn Bagel which I only mention because it checked off one more item on my food checklist -- and I ran into a friend from grad school who now lives in Boston. (Iiiiits' a small woooorld...)

Now generally when I head into New York, I contact everyone I know there to see who has the best plans and then I hang with them. This time around Jana totally won with her idea to go to the Brooklyn Banya (Russian baths) but alas the timing didn't work out so instead I went to the Hall of Science to hang out with my friend Erin who was there coordinating events for National Chemistry Day. I hung out a bit, got offered a job as a scent chemist, explored a bit, ate some lunch with her family, and took her kidlet to the hall of mirrors before heading back to my bus. Big weekend!