May 24, 2008
New York
Cec and I went back to New York for my cousin Aja's wedding. It was great to see the NYC branch of the family again - I'm out in space most of the time and need to be reminded where I come from. And we got a few days to enjoy the city, for which I'm always grateful.
Sometimes I just can't figure out why I'm not living in New York. I've never had time to make detailed plans before arriving - but there's so much cooking in NYC it's never been a problem to just stumble into some crazy fun. Last year we randomly ended up at the launch event for Jeremy Scahill's Blackwater book and ended up meeting Scahill and Amy Goodman (Goodman was one of the people who inspired me to become a journalist in the first place).
This time around, besides going to the wedding, we ended up front row at an off-Broadway production of The Importance of Being Earnest, which I'd never seen on stage before. And we missed out on a lecture about the history of Japanese lacquer because it filled up before we could reserve a couple of seats. That's what I love about New York - only in NYC would one even stumble into something so diverse (and obscure) as a class on ancient Japanese lacquer techniques. And only in New York would there be enough people interested in it to have the class sell out!
And there were the usual impressionistic touches that make New York special - the way people dress, the energy of the place, the food... listening to 1970's Brian Eno looking out into the midtown haze... picking up my jacket from a Japanese restaurant's coatcheck and hearing Boards of Canada's "Aquarius" in the hallways, of all things...
I wish I was loaded. I'd move to Manhattan in a second. But these days I guess you'd have to be very loaded indeed to live there. With the crashing dollar, New York is awash in foreign capital. So the housing prices that used to be merely obscene have shot up to, like, interplanetary levels. But I still love the city anyway.
Posted by case at May 24, 2008 01:56 PM