i'd live in nolita | new york

Were I to move to New York, and had I the money, I've rent an apartment in Nolita. I'd have a fire escape slanting down the side of my building, just the way they do in Manhattan, with a ledge outside built just for me to sit and people-watch with a glass of wine and a good book. I'd take pictures far too often of the Little Italy sign and the adjoining streets with their string lights hanging, but I'd tire of the crowds and probably not eat or drink there. I'd get lost in Nolita's crisscrossed streets, avoiding the trash bags on one street and admiring the ivy growing up the brick buildings on another. I'd own too many kitchen gadgets I rarely use but buy for "just in case!" on Bowery Street on Saturday mornings. I'd befriend the bartenders at those tucked away bars that the tourists haven't found. I'd sip on sangria at open-air, 20-seat restaurants that I don't bother to look up on Yelp! I'd learn the best spots for hummus, if you're craving that, or for Prosecco specials, or even dinner on the cheap. I'd have a go-to carryout Chinese place and find the best hole-in-the-wall food joint around. I'd like Nolita, I think, with its boutique clothing stores and little known shops. I'd find a corner of Nolita to make my own, that feels like home. If I were to move to New York, I think that neighborhood could be mine.

Here are some additional photos that don't quite fit one single post from my weekend in New York, taken from all over Manhattan. I thoroughly enjoyed meandering from one hub in Manhattan to another, learning the neighborhood names, and wondering, "Which one would be me?" New York is a world of possibilities.

Thanks to my friends Ellie, Andy, and Noelle for housing me and/or showing me around and for an incredible weekend!

teeing & taking off at hains point | dc

I'm guilty of being fickle. I make extraordinary plans that sound incredible in the moment - kayking, golfing, camping, yes, yes, yes! But when the time comes to execute them, I occasionally err on the side of, "But it's raining a little? I mean, I think I felt a drop of rain. And Netflix has movies, you know, that we could watch inside. And I hear pizza places deliver these days." For instance, Zander and I have been together for almost a year and a half, and we've seen a grand total of two movies in theaters. It's not for lack of trying - we plan to go to movies all the time! But when the Friday evening comes, and we saddle up to a bar for a pre-feature flick happy hour drink and snack, it's suddenly 10:00pm, and where did the night go? And I guess we missed the movie. I can be fickle, and I'm working to change that.

Zander's helping me. This past Friday night, we had planned to go out to Hains Point, a beautiful park peninsula that is so peaceful and quiet and outdoors-oriented that it doesn't seem to belong in DC, but that's what's so great about this city - there's always something new to discover and relish. We grabbed a drink at Dino first, and after one glass of Prosecco, I yawned and protested: "Are you sure we don't want to just stay in and order a movie and dinner?" Zan didn't flinch when he said, "Nope, we decided to go, so let's go." I've seldom been more attracted to that man.

Hains Point is all the way past the National Mall and across the water from the Southwest Waterfront. It's the southern tip of East Potomac Park. It's under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service. There's an 18-hole golf course, a driving range, a mini-golf course, a public outdoor lap pool, trails for running and cycling, and stunning views of the Potomac River and planes landing and taking off from Ronald Reagan National Airport.

Zan and I tried our hand at the driving range. I learned a few things... 

1. Zan owns golf clubs. He played golf when he was younger! He'd like to take lessons and improve his stroke.
2. Hand-eye coordination is not, nor has ever been, my strongest suit.
3. But with a little instruction, I can hold my own (read: hit the ball and not just air).
4. Driving ranges make for great dates! You can buy beer and there are plenty of opportunities for hand-over-hand, get-you-in-the-correct-position guidance.
5. There are lots and lots of double entendres in golf.

There are times when I mentally and physically need to take a break and relax, but from now on, I'm going to be more discerning about it and stick to my plans. They make for the best, most memorable weekends, after all.

Now, when's the next showing of Blue Jasmine?

If you go...

Hains Point overview

map and directions

east potomac golf rates

the staten island ferry | new york

The last time I saw the Statue of Liberty up close, I must have only been three years old. Maybe 4? I have an old photo of my mom with her hair wild and thick and curly in the wind, my brother standing next to her, and me - lifted up or standing on something, with the Statue of Liberty in the background. On the outside, we look like a happy tourist little family. I see that picture as an adult, and I can see the shades of conflict and emotion and nuance in it. I know now that at the time that picture was taken, my mom had recently taken my brother and me out of Florida illegally and moved us to Georgia, to keep us safe. I know that she had just cut ties with the majority of her family and friends so that no one would know our address or how to contact us, were they ever to be questioned, or worse, threatened. What I don't know, and can't remember, and for some odd reason, have never asked my mom, is why we were in New York. Funny enough. I remember the airplane ride. At least, I think I do. It was my first time on a plane. My brother and I sat next to each other, and our mom wasn't with us. I think she must have been in New York already, and we were meeting her there. If I was about 3 or 4, my brother was 7 or 8. The nice stewardess brought us headphones, and I felt excitement at the whole journey. I like to think I was adventurous, even then. I've seen the picture my whole life, but it wasn't until last weekend in New York that it dawned on me that it was taken on the Staten Island Ferry.

Pam, Ellie, Ellie's boyfriend Andy, and I hopped on the subway in Little Italy and made a mad dash to make the 4:30 Staten Island Ferry (they run every half hour). The ferry is free and draws hundreds upon hundreds upon maybe thousands of people seemingly on every trip across the waterway. The ferry not only provides transportation for workers and residents of Staten Island, it also affords the best (free) views of the Statue of Liberty. We fought our way up two flights of stairs to stand on the top deck. I wanted to sneak onto the roof, and we figured with three sets of boobs, it shouldn't be a problem, but ultimately, and probably for the best, we kept our tops on. 

I fought for a position right at the rail like a little kid would so I could ogle the view of the Manhattan skyline. When the Statue of Liberty came into view, Ellie and I held a pose for so long it became comical so Andy could get us and the Statue in the frame. When we finished taking photos, I turned to actually take in the view, and it stunned me. She was beautiful, our Lady of Liberty, with a clear blue sky above her and elegant ripples in the water beneath her feet. I was stunned, too, with the realization that this is where my family had been. I was standing right here when someone, a stranger probably, took that photo.

The Statue of Liberty grandly represents freedom the world over. But she's my own statue of freedom, too. My mom took us there, for whatever reason that I'm going to ask her next time we talk, and maybe she went for work or maybe in some way to be reminded that she, too, could be free and move on and build a new life for us? It struck me as monumental and beautiful and wondrous, that 24 years ago I was in the same place with the same view and now I can be there again because of the life she built for us. I'm being entirely too introspective and metaphorical and with the grand notions, but sometimes on a Friday, you just need to be full of gratitude. And big hair.

  if you go...

staten island ferry schedules 

operates 24/day

manhattan subway stops: j/z to broad street

1 to south ferry

4/5 to bowling green

tip: you can get off the ferry and immediately re-load on staten island (1 hour roundtrip)

where to eat & drink in brooklyn | cafe mogador & maracuja

I've long heard that DC's H Street neighborhood resembles the Williamsburg one in Brooklyn. Hipsters claim both as their stomping ground, local businesses rule the streets, and the bartenders hand out Jameson shots like candy to kids. I got my DC legs on H Street so I had an inkling I'd "get" its Brooklyn counterpart (big sibling?). Williamsburg has the same tight-knit vibe I love about H Street, with the same burgeoning restaurant scene, and some seedier underpinnings. Pam and I found a quaint restaurant on a back street with a stellar wine list and a covered ivy-laced terrace for dinner. We followed it up with champagne and Brooklyn beer at a dirty dive bar with a secret garden out back. I felt right at home in Williamsburg.

 

if you go...

cafe mogador

(one of the bartenders looks like Guillermo from Weeds & Scandal, and i did not mind)

maracuja bar

(ask for the hidden door to the secret garden. tip: charge your phone on one of the holiday lights extensions)

the american museum of natural history | new york

I'm not a big fan of museums. I'd rather be outside, trying to find living versions of the fossilized creatures in the museums. I'd rather stumble on a mysterious buried shell in the sand of a rocky beach and take pictures and google it endlessly to ascertain to what animal it once belonged - probably a crab - than to see a neatly printed sign beneath a fossil in an AC-fueled building. But every once in a while, I make an exception for an extraordinary museum. Okay, I make an exception when a friend works at the museum and offers me free tickets.

Ellie works in the Mammalogy Department at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. She generously offered Melanie, a friend of hers, and me tickets to the museum and all of its paid exhibits, as well as a tour of her department. So we spent Friday afternoon playing tourist frogger, and I can tell you this for certain about the AMNH: there is no shortage of children in that place.

And we had a really great time. We gawked at the size of the Woolly Mammoth and wondered out loud how whales mate (answer: while swimming or stationary in the water!). But the very best part is what lay behind the established exhibits: I love the museum behind the exhibits.

Ellie helps preserve and put together and catalog the mammals-related exhibits at the museum. She has jars of mice and bats preserved in alcohol on her desk... because her job is so ridiculously cool. She pulled out a mouse to show us, and I jumped back 10 feet and Melanie and Nabila got as close as possible.

She took us up a steep staircase next to a real, original dumb waiter, to the department's library. Stocked with field notes and scientific books, with a glass floor no less, it was stunning. Melanie and I wanted to move in here and live among the old books and read researchers' observations of animals from all over the world over the last 100 years.

Ellie took us into what she calls the "elephant graveyard," where the museum stores non-exhibited jaws and long bones of elephants dating back to the early 1900s, from what we saw. They're housed in an attic with a domed ceiling and enough light shining through that, had I had the time, I would have napped and daydreamed I was in Africa, studying the way these giant, mysterious creatures move.

After winding down several staircases, we came to several white-washed rooms with pull-out drawers. Series of numbers are all that distinguish the drawers from one another -- the earlier the number, the earlier the specimen. Ellie opened drawers of goat horns and skulls and various animal skins.

And then there were these cute guys. I'll confess that I jumped back each time Ellie opened the next drawer or sliding door. Professionals, as always, she chased me down with one skin to make me touch it, and I squealed like a scaredy-cat kid. I just prefer my animals alive or on my hamburger bun, is all. 

Squeamish and all, seeing behind the scenes fascinated me. To make the flashy exhibits takes hundreds of people - from the ones in the fields and jungles in Africa and India and Nebraska to Ellie, working with mice that have found their way to her desk in jars. I have a newfound respect for museums, and if you ever have the chance - the museum behind the museum is the best part of the museum.

A few fun facts I learned at the AMNH: 

+Museums in New York cost money! (The Smithsonian museums in DC are all free.) 

+Whales have penises up to 10 feet long 

+A sperm whale's heart is so large a human child (or a bendable adult) could climb through its arteries

+30% of the food the world produces goes to waste every day while over 800 million people went hungry last year

+All it takes to pickle vegetables is a mason jar, some herbs, including dill, the veggies you want pickled, and some apple cider vinegar left in the fridge for a few days

+There are more nutrients in pickled veggies than raw ones (say what? is that real?) 

+There is a thing called the "Great Canoe" that I am going to google endlessly as soon as I finish writing this 

+The incubation time for whale fetuses is 8-10 months. 

+Blue whales are up to 98 feet and can weigh 380,000 pounds

+Jane Austen had a particular affinity for ice cream, and now I adore her all the more. 

+I want to host an 1800s Rome-themed dinner party. The menu would be bomb. 

If you go...

American Museum of Natural History

general admission tickets: $22 (special exhibits extra)

we particularly enjoyed the whale & global kitchen exhibits

a run through central park | new york

A few weeks ago I emailed my friend Ellie - one of my closest friends from college and former DC roommate - about visiting her in Brooklyn. Within a few hours, I'd picked out buses and started planning our weekend. What I didn't know is that Melanie and Pam - my two other closest girlfriends - were going to be in town the same weekend from Boston and Kansas City, respectively. The luck! I could hardly contain my excitement.

I rolled into town near Penn Station around 11:00pm on a drizzly, gray Thursday night. Ellie and I devoured slices at a local pizza joint and began the long trek back to Brooklyn.

Let me say that very time I visit New York, I spend the first 24 hours so enchanted by it that I start imagining my soon-to-be life there. When the clock strikes 36 hours, I remember how big it is. The city is ginormous, and it takes approximately forever to get anywhere. That's why bars stay open until 4am - it takes all night to get to a destination and the rest of the day to return home underground. NYC is grooming vampires, is my theory.

But back to the first 24 hours. We crashed around 1:00am, and for the first time in weeks I slept past 8:00am, and it was glorious! Forget the city that never sleeps, New York is the city of soundless sleep! Ellie and I hopped on the subway for a 45 minute trip to the Upper West Side, where I promptly fell head over heels in love with everything, but mostly with Central Park, luring me in for a run.

Since taking nearly a month off of running to recover from a stress reaction in my right tibia, I've been adhering to a vigorous training plan. I work out six days a week, but I only run on three of those and only on tracks and trails to protect that leg. Unfortunately, two weeks into training, the injury is back. I have another ortho appointment next week. I've been battling with myself over whether to keep training until then. I'd decided to stop, but when I knew I'd be near Central Park, I brought my running clothes anyway. 

I hemmed and hawed standing under shaded trees in the Park until I couldn't take it anymore. I'm not in New York very often, and it's Central Park - the world's most famous, beautiful urban park! I ran along a shaded path with rolling hills for about half a mile before cutting over to a track that runs around a reservoir. The track is soft - gravel and worn from the runners before me. I took it easy, stopping twice to snap photos of the incredible Manhattan skyline reflected in the water. The track is 1.58 miles around, bringing my total run to just over 2.5 miles back to where I started.

The weather was a breezy 70 degrees at 10am, my leg felt better than it had in weeks, and I had an entire weekend with friends I don't see often enough in front of me. I got lost in the views of skyscrapers and decided if I lived in New York, I'd run in Central Park every day. Or at least as often as I could commit to the commute.

in the stacks | wwII germany & communist north korea

The Book Thief 
Markus Zusak

Summary 
Nine-year-old Liesel Memminger watches her brother die on a train heading to Mulching, Germany before the start of World War II. At his funeral, she steals a book even though she can't read. Her mother is taken by Nazi's, and she's raised by her foster parents, Hans and Rosa Hubermann. She meets a poor neighborhood boy named Rudy Steiner in her first days in Molching, and the two quickly become best friends, stealing fruit to have enough to eat, playing soccer, and negotiating their way through a war that threatens to tear them, their families, and their town apart. The book is narrated by Death, who grows fascinated with Liesel on his many encounters with her while carrying off the souls of those she loves.

Quote(s)
"I wanted to tell the book thief many things, about beauty and brutality. But what could I tell her about those things that she didn't already know? I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race-that rarely do I ever simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant."

My thoughts 
Markus Zusak has written a compelling, entrancing work of experimental fiction. It took me 50 pages or so to get into it and to understand the unique format - words are bolded, Death dedicates pages to definitions, inserts commentary about Liesel's life, and spoils parts of the ending. Death as a narrator offers an interesting paradigm shift - an opportunity to see humanity from 'the other side' so to speak. Liesel is a shy, quiet girl by most measures, but she has a ferocity and tenacity that builds throughout the novel and culminates in her being one of the truest heroines of modern literature. Zusak is a poet, too - there were entire passages I read and re-read to soak in them. Every character is developed with careful consideration, and I cried for Liesel, for Rudy, for Hans and Rosa, and for everyone I got to know and would miss when I closed the last page of this beautiful novel.

The Orphan Master's Son  
Adam Johnson

Summary 
Pak Jun Do swears he's not an orphan - a member of North Korean's lowest class. He believes his mother is a famous singer kidnapped to Pyongyang, the nation's capital, and his father runs the orphan camp in which he works as a child. He's later sent to work in underground tunnels, clearing pathways to the DMZ, and endures pain resistance training. The state regime detects his loyalty and picks him to rise in the ranks. He's sent to Japan as a kidnapper, taught English and sent to spy on American ships in international waters, and eventually picked to accompany a team of diplomats to Texas to recapture an item "stolen" from the Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il. Upon his return, he must decide what he's willing to do in order to stay alive and to save the woman he loves - Sun Moon, including challenging the Dear Leader himself.

Quote 
"I wonder of what you must daily endure in America, having no government to protect you, no one to tell you what to do. Is it true you're given no ration card, that you must find food for yourself? Is it true that you labor for no higher purpose than paper money? What is California, this place you come from? I have never seen a picture. What plays over the American loudspeakers, when is your curfew, what is taught at your child-rearing collectives? Where does a woman go with her children on Sunday afternoons, and if a woman loses her husband, how does she know the government will assign her a good replacement? With whom would she curry favor to ensure her children got the best Youth Troop leader?"

My thoughts
Adam Johnson visited North Korea as research for a short story he intended to write. He envisioned a fantastical, satirical account of a story that could be told over mandatory loudspeakers in homes across North Korea. As the original conception turned into a novel, he kept the short story, interspersing it throughout: the novel tells the protagonist's version, and the story told to citizens is North Korea's account of it. It's a powerful novel that shines light on the gross human rights violations in a country for which so little factual information is available. What's fiction and what's real, about the country itself, can only be imagined; Johnson admits that even after visiting, it's impossible to know what daily life is like for North Koreans outside of the areas of Pyongyang that the government allows visitors to see. While there are some fantastical elements to the novel that give it a lightness I didn't often feel it needed, it's a moving, captivating, engrossing read that I thoroughly enjoyed. It won the 2013 Pulitzer Price for fiction for a reason; it's that damn good.