We have been pretty busy, Monique & Julia keep us on the move!
Since last time we have settled in and have found some better delis/fresh fruit and veggie type supermarkets so good on that front. To keep track of our time I have kept note of our activities daily. So…….
Last Thursday we headed off to MOMA (Museum Of Modern Art). Once again the collection is overwhelming in the amount to see. Amongst many works there are Vincent van Gogh’s ‘The Starry Night’, Salvador Dali’s ‘The Persistence of memory’, Picasso’s, etc. I have always loved Claude Monet,’s water lilies and here they have a massive triptych: ‘Reflections of clouds on the water lily pond’. Andy Warhol is well represented and I was taken of course by his ‘Campbell’s soup cans’! Is it art? Of course it is and it helped kick of the pop art era. On a more mundane level how many of the soups have you had? As some would know I have soup frequently for lunch at work. I reckon I have knocked over 18 of the 32! There are some flavours unique to the USA and some maybe discontinued, The piece is now 52 years old! I will check them out on our travels. The gallery also has very contemporary art and you can see where our David Walsh at MONA in Hobart gets some of his inspiration from only that MOMA has had a 80 year start on him.
One of the temporary exhibits was on the future of Mega cities. It had the New York area at over 18.5 million inhabitants. It had the statistics to show the disparity in the city: in New York there are 389,100 millionaires. However 21.4% of New Yorkers live in poverty and 5.4% live in extreme poverty, below 50 percent of the poverty threshold. The poverty threshold for the annual income of a family of four is $23,283 US. The high costs of rent and the removal of rental subsidies and wage stagnation being the main reasons. This has resulted in an ‘invisible’ part of the population living in sub standard accommodation if any at all.
Next we had another standard USA meal at ‘Bill’s Bar and Burger’ burgers, hot dogs and shakes! Then off to Bloomingdales, another Myer type store over I think nine stories. Too much fashion for me. I have never seen such elaborate Christmas decorations for sale. Like many things the America’s love their Christmas decorations and most of the bigger buildings and businesses have elaborate trees and decorations. We made a small purchase to get one of the iconic ‘Brown Bags’ that Bloomingdales is know for. Finally we tried the frozen yoghurt that Bloomingdales was the first to pioneer back in the 70’s. Not bad, once again even the regular serve was large! Then home on our local subway the Lexington Avenue line that opened ba ck in 1904.
Friday was spent at the The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met). What can I say? The Americans may have pillaged the world but this collection is so encompassing and immense to see in one location. I thought of the Indiana Jones movie where Sean Connery reckons his friend gets lost in his own museum. This is so large with interconnecting sections that you would take days to do it justice. It ranges from the antiquities: Greek, Egyptian, Roman to all corners of the globe covering different eras. There’s Medieval art, Arms & Armour, musical instruments over time and different cultures, costumes over time, tapestries, recreations of period furnished rooms, drawings, prints, photographs, Asian art, Islamic art and modern art. On top of that is the extensive European art collection and the section: The American Wing’. All of the well known European artist are well represented. Just a few highlights are Rembrandt’s self Portrait as well as Van Gogh’s. I liked a little one of Picasso’s ‘Woman in profile’. One for public servants was George Tooker’s ‘Government Bureau’. The description talks of the tired, sad eyes of government workers staring blankly!!
In the American wing there is the iconic ‘Washington crossing the Delaware’ on the way to launch a surprise attack during the American War of Independence. It would be at least a 10 by 20 foot canvas. Another was a majestic ‘The Rocky Mountains, Lander’s Peak’ by Albert Bierstadt. Finally the gallery has reconstructed an Egyptian Temple: The Temple of Dendur, a gift from the Egyptian Government. It was going to be flooded by the rising waters from the Aswan Dam and was given to the U.S. in recognition for what the U.S. had done to help save other monuments. I had spent 8 hours wandering about and being a bit foot weary called it a day. One last thing the cafeteria at the Met is much better than the one at the Museum of Natural History and has free iced water!
The next day was more mundane; we were off to the basketball at Madison Square Garden. Monique had a run in Central Park in the morning as did 1000’s of others. I passed. MSG was originally near Madison Square but was rebuilt over Penn Station in 1968. It holds 18-20,000 depending on the event. It is mainly used for the basketball, ice hockey, concerts and in the past boxing. It is like a mini Docklands with the roof closed but cleaner! Unfortunately our team the New York Knicks lost 90 to 99. Evidently they have not done well in the draft and are having a bad season coming 4th in the Atlantic Division with only 5 wins. New Yorkers don’t like losing and there were many empty seats and an exodus when the result was obvious. I’m not that taken with basketball, 48 minutes of actual game time over 2 hours plus. It was more like the basketball interrupted the singers, celebrity spotting, the dancers, the child prodigy piano player and the shooting of T shirts into the crowd to get everyone excited. However the traditional hot dog was good. One thing I did notice was that most people put their rubbish in the bins unlike at our sporting events.
After the game we wandered through Penn Station. It is the main station to link New York to New Jersey, Washington and Boston so is pretty busy, here even the blokes have to queue for the toilets. After that we accidentally found Bryant Park. It has a market and during winter has free ice skating sponsored by Bank of America our Westpac partners in the U.S! The rest of the year it is a large open grassed area. It is built over the underground archives of the New York Public Library. Due to the cold one of the main offerings is hot apple cider, it wasn’t too bad. Further on up E 42 nd street is Grand Central Station. It services areas north of New York up into New York State. It is a massive open space with an astronomical ceiling. It’s hard to believe but there were plans to build a tower over it destroying the integrity of the existing structure. Thankfully there was a huge campaign involving Jacqueline Kennedy that was ultimately successful in having the station saved. There is a dedication to Jacqueline Kennedy inside the front entrance on 42 nd street.
I walked around the local area in the morning and went past the apartment block the Marx Brothers grew up in at 179 E93 street. In those days (early 1900’s) it was a tough area with the Jewish section sandwiched between the Irish and the Germans. The area is more affluent the closer you are to Central Park, we are down the other end closer to the East River near the Metropolitan Hospital Centre. It has an inner city feel maybe similar to a Richmond but just more vertical accommodation with I think a higher proportion of public housing down our way. A new subway is being constructed down 2nd Avenue so I would think that may change things. We are on the third level of the lighter coloured building.
To get into the Christmas cheer we went to the Christmas concert at Carnegie Hall. It was a pantomime celebrating the 50th anniversary of Rudolph the Red nosed reindeer with the New York Pops orchestra. Carnegie Hall opened in 1891 and was the premier concert venue until the Lincoln Centre was built in the 1960s. The main auditorium (Isaac Stern auditorium) holds about 2,800 people over 5 levels. It was named after the violinist Isaac Stern as he helped save it from demolition in the early 60s. The Beatles played at Carnegie Hall. We were on the fourth level with a partially obstructed view but it was still good fun, I think the elderly folk enjoyed it more than many of the younger ones.
After the concert we strolled a couple of kilometres downtown to Bryant Park for Monique & Julia to have a skate. Whilst the girls were skating there was a slight snow flurry so Jacinta and I headed home. As a person who likes his newspaper the New York Times Sunday edition is a must (similar to Saturday’s Age) so I purchased a copy on the way home for a leisurely read.
On the weather front it hasn’t been too bad: gets down low to freezing overnight but during the day varies between 4 degrees C to 16 degrees C. It is predicted that in the upcoming days maximums may only be up to about 10 C. Unfortunately the sun sets at about 4.30 and dark by 5.00pm.
nmht 