NYC October 2012 - Trip Notes

No matter how many days I spend in NYC, I will always run out of time to do everything on my list.

First up, mad props (hey, is that saying starting to sound dated to anyone else?  I'm getting old so I can't tell...) to Porter Airlines who made this like the smoothest trip imaginable back & forth from T.O. to NYC.  My flight out departed at 9:55am and at 8:36am I was still lining up for caffeine in my hood, was I cutting it close for my flight?  Not even! (Ok, fine, I would've been if I'd missed the shuttle and had luggage to check - so, bit of luck and planning)  Coming home, I'd been dragging my bag around for a couple of hours so I decided to head for the airport a little earlier than I normally would (arrived at Newark 2 hours before my flight... pretty unheard of for me when flying USA/Canada)... where upon check-in they offered me seats on an earlier flight. This was great as I had work the next day, and could use that extra time at home.  Breezed through security and chilled in the new Porter Lounge at EWR for half an hour before getting on the plane (that even arrived home a few mins early!)  For those of you who are wondering, the lounge is a sectioned-off space near Terminal B's gate 51.  It includes the standard Porter seating with a number of electrical outlets to recharge your devices while you wait (the airport also has a number of these nearby if you can't access an outlet in the lounge for any reason), and an adorable self-serve beverage bar.  This includes a espresso machine, pre-brewed coffees, and a selection of Starbucks Teas, along with mini-bar fridges fully-stocked with an assortment of pop, juices, and water.  There are also some individually packaged biscuits available.  Pretty much everything you'd get in the Toronto Island Airport lounge.  Plus Porter provides dedicated wi-fi (complete with password) so you don't have to deal with all the other so-called free wi-fi signals in the airport (that don't work half the time or require account set-up).

Back to the city itself though... I arrived on a super-warm Saturday (think the high was 26C), as I had the foresight to keep my liquid containers smaller than 100ml, I didn't have to check my bag (note:  Porter planes are too small for you to stow your average carry-on wheelie, however they will tag them and store for you as gate-side baggage, to be retrieved as soon as you step off the plane, so no need to wait around.  I usually keep the items I actually need on the plane, ie. tablet and magazine, in my suitcase's front compartment and pull it out just before I give the bag to the attendant.) and breezed through the baggage claim area.  I'm starting to get accustomed to taking local New Jersey Transit into Manhattan, plus it's $6 less than the bus, so I headed to the Skytrain that takes you to the rail station.  It's a good idea to buy your NJ train ticket while still at the airport so you don't accidentally miss a train while stuck in line at the rail station (where more people tend to buy their tix), look for the orange machines enroute to the Skytrain, and be careful to select NY Penn Station - as opposed to NJ Penn Station.  I stepped onto the NJ train platform just as my train was pulling in, so that saved me up to 30mins wait time.  As such, I arrived at Penn Station by 12:30 instead of my original ETA of 1pm.

I stepped out onto 7th Av. and instantly felt at home.  I love the familiarity of NYC, sometimes it feels more like home than my actual home.  Usually within the first day I fall into the New Yorker habit of crossing streets (ie. look both ways and cross if it's clear, regardless of the lights.  This is also typical of many other cities like Hong Kong, London, and Montreal),  took me all of 2 blocks to adapt this time.  I had some time to kill before meeting my AirBnB host (his assistant actually because Casper was out of town), and since my bag was half-empty (even after I stuff my coat into it...as I said, 26C and sunny!) I decided to stroll through eastern edge of Chelsea, and eventually down to Union Square.  Saturday is a busy day in the square, plus Columbus Day weekend probably made it busier.  There was the usual farmer's market (which I can never resist) plus a couple streets closed off for a street market.

My apartment was on the north end of the East Village... 15th Street between 1st & 2nd Av. on the 4th floor of a walk-up.  A spacious (esp for NY) one bedroom apartment.  Ellis met me there and showed me the place, every time I stay somewhere with a fire escape, it makes me wish I had one at home.  After dumping my bags, I went back out to do more wandering.  Circled around Alphabet City, as I haven't spent much time anywhere past A.  Stopped at a couple of my favourite knick-knack/gift shops then realized I was kinda hungry.  My theory is, when in doubt and hungry in EV, go to St Mark's Place!  It was a wise decision as the new Japadog store caught my eye.  I would also make a stop at Ramen Setagaya, on the same street, later that trip.

By late afternoon, I'd received a text from my mother and went to go let her into the apartment.  She's a Whole Foods junkie (understandably so) hence we stopped there before heading to the Metropolitan Opera House to see Carmen.  It was actually my first time inside any of the performance spaces at the Lincoln Centre, every other time I've tried to see shows there it's never worked out.  Opera set designs and productions always blow me away, though I have to admit I liked the music a lot better before I learned what all the lyrics meant.  (Most are about love, lamenting about love, and whining about love).  Very impressed by Yonghoon Lee, the Korean male lead. Yes, Korean performer in a French opera about a gypsy...lol.  Carmen is a four act opera with a 35min intermission between Acts 2 & 3, so no surprise we got home closer to 1am.

Another cultural/tourist site that I've never been to in all my visits to New York is the Frick Collection, so I hightailed it up to... well, not quite Museum Mile (The Frick is only 70th St) mid-day Sunday where it's pay what you wish between 11am and 1pm.  Stood in rain for a short while before getting in to see the art collection, which is housed in a New York mansion circa the 1910's.  Much of the original home and furnishings are preserved, with few ropes and cases to guard fragile items, therefore children under 10 are not admitted (bonus!).

A shame the same no-kids rule couldn't be applied to FAO Schwarz, but being a gigantic toy store and all, I suppose some children are required.  I spent way too long in there, especially at the Muppet Whatnot Factory watching in wide-eyed fascination as they created custom muppets on the spot.  (You can take home your own Muppet for a mere $100, I'm saving up for my next trip!)  I also found a Fraggle almost as big as me, and bought a few gifts for some of my favourite little ones and not-so-little ones.  It took some effort to extract me from the store to continue my 5th Avenue (window) shopping.

Monday was jam packed starting with a brunch meet-up with one of the sexiest ladies and most talented-writers I know.  Chris and I have known each other for 10 years now!  Despite many life-changing events, travels, and everything else that life has thrown at us, we've managed to keep tabs on each other.  This was my last opportunity (last day literally) to see her before her extended trip to Asia and Europe, we were both so delighted that it could happen on the road, in one of our favourite cities!  We met up at Union Square and wandered down to the East Village, eventually stopping in Vaselka, a cute cafe that featured Ukrainian home cooking (of which we had none ironically).  So lovely to catch up, especially with like-minded people, it's proof that you don't have to be with someone 24/7 to be on the same page.

After a quick wander through the NYU campus, it wasn't really planned but it was interesting, it was time for some dim sum with mom at one of our favs - Jing Fong in Chinatown, which is like a 80's Hong Kong timewarp complete with push carts!  The prices are good and they have a wide variety of retro-desserts, but admittedly, I've had better for some of the savoury items.  My best friend Carrie likes to make fun of me for being easily lured by street fruit vendors, she says it's the Asian in me.  Well, this time she would be correct as I had to stop for a bunch of baby plantains (harder to find here in Toronto for some reason) on my way to SoHo.

While heading from the row of independent boutiques on West Broadway back over to the chain-stored line Broadway, I happened upon an art sale of some limited editions by John Lenon, in rememberance of his 72nd birthday.  While it was nothing I could hope to afford, I was still happy to have the opportunity to take a look at some of his delightful line drawings. I'd thought to revisit Strawberry Fields during this visit, but the damp weather discouraged me from going into Central Park (beyond peeking at the animals at the little zoo on the east side), so I was glad to have happened upon this instead.

Around dinner time, I found myself still full from the day's eating, so after checking out the particularly cool decor of the United Colours of Benetton pop-up store on Crosby, I went across the street to the Housingworks Bookstore.  I figured I had some time to kill before heading to a 9pm film screening (where an old classmate was screening his latest short film), only I completely lost track of time!  My phone's 15 min reminder went off and I realized I wasn't going to make it in time. :(  Plan B turned out to be:  race to Jamba Juice before they closed.  I did get a most delicious pumpkin smoothie there.

While at the Lincoln Center on the first night, I'd noticed some posters advertising the New York Film Festival.  I've been to the Tribeca Film Festival a few times but never NYFF.  Upon checking their schedule online, I discovered there was a repeat screening of Berberian Sound Studio, a film that I'd very much wanted to see at TIFF but couldn't due to scheduling conflicts and nabbed tix for Tuesday.  The screening was at 1pm, which gave me just enough time to get off the 1 train a stop early at Columbus Circle to grab a snack.  I'd tweeted about food trucks (in planning for this trip, I started following many NYC food trucks, but admittedly did not have much luck crossing paths with them at the appropriate times.) earlier and my friend Rita responded with a recommendation for Wafels & Dinges, a waffle cart just outside the Time Warner Building.  Their now-dubbed "Throwdown Waffle" beat out Bobby Flay on his show "Throwdown with Bobby Flay", making it was a must-try!  It was well worth the detour, very delicious.

Though they've been around longer (50 years now), boast some big films, celebrity appearances, and interesting year round programing, the New York Film Festival is much smaller than my beloved Toronto International Film Festival.  Berberian Sound Studio was part of their Midnight Movies program (as was Barry Levinson's The Bay, from the Midnight Madness program, which was well-received at TIFF), and this was the repeat screening I was attending.  The film stars Tobey Jones as Gilderoy, a mild-mannered, soft spoken sound engineer hired over from England to work in an Italian Studio on a horror film.  The movie also doubles as a homage to the 70's Italian Horror genre, and the age of analog sound recording with close up shots of film fed through a projector, Nagra tape recorders, and reels of winding mag stock.  Cinema tends to be a focus on the visual image, but here we never see the film which they work on, we discover purely through sound.  Those not familiar with the workings of ADR (Additional Dialogue Recording) or foley might not understand at first what is happening, for those who've done foley work, the chuckles begin almost immediately.  As the recording booth screams grow shriller, and pressures of finding just the right melon to replicate the sound of a skull smashing starts to blur with Gilderoy's reality, we begin to delve into Lynch-ian dream-sequences of mounting psychological horror.  You'll likely find yourself quaking, despite not seeing a single drop of blood spilled.

That evening (the day before I was leaving!) I finally had the chance to make use of one of my restaurant Groupons, this one for appetizers and entrees at Masak in the East Village (almost bordering Alphabet City).  The service was good and the waitress answered our questions and made recommendations, though the cuisine was Singaporean, it was not your typical hawker fare.  The menu had some westernized-sounding dishes but also many flavours of Singapore/Malaysia (I'll be the first to admit I can't really tell the difference).  We had  a couple starters including the seared chicken hearts with kale, radish, medjool dates, pistachios and beet salad with pickles, cashews, coconut, crispy shallots.  Both were astonishingly delicious!  Chicken hearts are really good when made well, I've been a fan all my life.  I also like kale, so it wasn't that surprising that this was the appetizer for me.  Beets are another story, same with eating onions that aren't caramelized or hidden in another food, so to have the beet salad bowl me over speaks volumes.  For my main, I had the Babi Assam, which was chunks of pork tenderloin served with black fried rice and sweet potato.  It was tangy and savoury but not spicy, which is what I prefer.  If you're ever in the area and want to try a slightly different kind of Asian food, I would recommend checking out Masak.  It's an intimate space with an open kitchen, polite servers, and reasonable prices for most items, even without the Groupon.

Another restaurant that I ate at with a daily deal (Living Social this time) was La Paella, also in the East Village.  As the name alludes to, this is a Spanish restaurant serving typical fare such as a variety of tapas and signature Spanish rice dish - Paella.  My voucher entitled me to $50 worth of food (for the price of $25 I believe), with which we selected a couple of forgettable tapas dishes and a yummy pan of seafood paella.  The paella included prawns, shrimp, calamari, mussels, clams mixed in a bed of saffron rice.  I have to say, when made well, paella is one of my favourite foods and this was a most delicious lunch, the total for all that food was just over $50.  For all that seafood, I would say it was a fair price.  I will have to go back again sometime, good Spanish food is hard to find.

I was in New York a total of 5 days (almost) and would say that I did a fair amount.  I think it's important to experience different things in your travels, attend an opera, eat a street waffle, befriend the impatient lady in line with you at Trader Joe's.  Friends and acquaintances are always impressed with the variety of films that I watch, it's my hopes that readers of this blog will feel similarly about the way I travel.  New York City is truly one of the most eclectic, vibrant, and accepting cities that I've ever been to, I can never get enough of her, and I hope to be back soon.