Summer over, NYC

I finished up my summer internship successfully last week. As I left after my last day, it was storming pretty well as what was left of Ernesto came through. This sums up the weather pretty well:

It continued like that on my way up to NYC later that evening. My Amtrak train was leaking, though thankfully not on me. It stayed pretty nasty on Saturday, but Alex and I got out and around anyway. (Including to Doughnut Plant...I ate three of their doughnuts and did not regret it.)

Alex's new place in Queens is nice, enormous by NYC standards, only a couple blocks from the elevated subway station. And I liked his neighborhood, which is nice in a pre-gentrification kind of way...it's heavily Greek, and there's a corner grocery store and most other things you'd want within easy walking distance. The subway ride to Manhattan is easy.

We had a number of very New York experiences:

• Sitting in a bagel shop, a man ushered in a four-piece brass band that was for some reason walking down the street and cajoled them to play. They were about to start when he said, by the way, he's not paying them or anything. The band stalked out.


• We went to see a movie that was only out in NYC and LA, and the director just happened to be doing a Q&A in the theater after the show. (Mutual Appreciation, it was absolutely fantastic, like an Alexander Payne film from my generation, stripped of the slight goofiness and not afraid to be awkward. See it if you can.)


• While eating gyros, a man sat down at our table. He was difficult to understand due to his poor English and the fact that he was presumably very high on something; he proceeded to stare at us and scold our gyro-eating technique.


• We went to the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum next to Central Park, housed in the old Carnegie mansion, and saw, among other things, a very extensive exhibit on silverware design throughout the centuries.


• When we attended a stand-up comedy club, we were seated in the front row and became part of the routines of three different comics. They only said nice things, of course.


• After Alex had to leave for a grad school orientation event, I went to Coney Island and got a chili-cheese dog from the original Nathan's Famous hot dog stand. (Decided the $6 for one ride on the Cyclone wasn't worth it.)

A very good trip. Here are some blurry cell phone pictures:

The view from the subway platform near Alex's apartment.


This gator occupies a place in the roof garden of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; he evidently incurred the wrath of some restaurant patrons.


This bit of categorization at the Duane Reade next to Penn Station struck me as unorthodox.


I got home late last night, and this morning was hectic because my car had been parked at a city meter all weekend with its key broken off in the ignition (I'll spare you the story). I cleared things up with some help from Jaclyn shuttling me around, Andrew feeding the meter, the Saab dealership in Hunt Valley, the title to the car, and a pair of tweezers.

But it also turns out that classes don't start until next week, I just have my public health ones this week. An unexpected respite, since I apparently can't read a calendar...