A Classic Jog

I've been able to start jogging again since my twisted ankle recovered. My jogging mate is called Michael, he's a journalist from Austria doing a postgrad here. , and earlier on tonight we went to Central Park for the first time. It takes about 15 minutes to jog there from where I am staying at International House.

Jogging into the heart of the park we came to the reservoir ... a setting in a thousand films, like a smal circular lake, but this was for me the ultimate jogging experience. The buildings of Manhatten were on three sides, the sun was going down with sunset and spectacular dark clouds behind the Chrysler Building and the other skyscrapers of midtown Manhattan. An awesome 360 view of the city which we jogged around twice - with packs of other New Yorkes. It was a moment - and they are suprisingly rare - when it really hit me that I was living in New York.

Shopping!

I am trying to keep one day a week free from study as a chill-out-discover-new-york-live-it-up day. Yesterday I succeeded, and I went shopping because I thought this would be a good way to discover New York. The highlight of this trip was the Strand Bookshop on the corner of 12th and Broadway. This place is a huge and magic collection of new and second hand books. It was humming with people. Came out of it with a handful of books on New York and the feeling that I had really seen something


In addition to bookstores, New York has the most amazing collections of delis. Many of them are open all night, and they offer a great variety of things like cheese and turkey meat ... or in this case, live crabs.

Evening of the 9/11 Anniversary

Friends of mine had been to Ground Zero and said it was just a big hole in the ground. But on the evening of the actual anniversary, I spontaneously decided to go down and have a look at the site. Perhaps it had something to do with the Towers of Light which had been beamed up into the sky in the days preceding. Like a moth, I'm attracted to lights and bright colours.

These glass towers for sale were the first thing I saw as i came out the subway. Further along the site there are signs asking people not to sell anything. There were a lot of people milling around; at some stage the Hells Angels (or the American Rifle Association, no idea) thumped past on Harley Davidsons. There were a lot of photos and flowers stuck in the fence around the site. People were there telling their stories from the backs of fire engines. Others were making brass rubbings of a copper memorial plaque. Mosts people there were tourists with cameras, but there was still a charged atmosphere. At some point, a middle aged man started ranting about the muslims and got quickly taken to one side by the police, who were out in force.

The site of Ground Zero has a suprising, newly-built train station (link to New Jersey) in the centre of it. The twin spotlights were not not coming out of the Ground Zero site itself, but from some buildings a little to the south. The posters of the police and fireman as saints were an extreme form of the way they are seen as heros here.

Harlem and The World Famous Apollo Theatre

Harlem is just around the corner from International House. The border between Riverside Heights, where the university lies, and Harlem is razor sharp, and the thoroughfares of Broadway (Riverside Heights) and Harlem (125th street) couldn't be more different. Broadway is full of delis and bookshops, and it gets more and more swank the further you head south towards the Upper West Side. 125th street is full of churches and discount department stores, and its heaving with life ... hawkers, people hanging around, a mobile dental clinic.

There have been big changes in Harlem since I was last there 10 years ago though. Back then I stuck out like a sore thumb with my whiteness. Its become a lot more mixed, racially. Back then I was nervous walking around, now 125th street hosts an H&M, and a Starbucks, and a Body Shop. How is that for normality: retail chains. One of my favourite vegetarian eateries is there too; you get a delicious mix of things in a paper cup for a couple of dollars and excellent fruit juices, advertised by the ailments they cure (so you order an extra large Rheuma or some freshly squeezed Impotency).

Bill Clinton's office is on 125th street. So is my social security office. I have one of these cards now, its printed on cheap card, there is some symbolism here somewhere, and in general a social security number seems more than anything else to function as a handy key for all kinds of other systems, from tax to the university.

Also on 125th street is the World Famous Apollo Theatre. The World Famous Apollo Theatre has an amateur night which launched stars like James Brown, Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder. I went to the World Famous Apollo Theatre last Wednesday with Catherijn, a law student from Amsterdam. People were pulled out of the audience and really pulled off a great act, although some of them ran. Luckily we were in the upstairs part. The audience really gets in on the act and cheers or yells people off the stage. The real contestants had all already won a couple of competitions, so there weren't enough really bad ones and too many that would really like to be Celine Dione, and in fact probably will be some day. Everyone can be a star: that is an American phenomenon, and those that don't make it don't loose the hope.

Wine in a Brown Paper Bag in Brooklyn

Last Friday I walked with a group of other IH students across the Brooklyn Bridge. This is the classic view of the bridge (with the Manhattan Bridge further in the background). It was a beautiful evening, full moon rising, and the bridge was crowded. You are walking on slats, so when you look down you can see the river beneath you ... and some of the girls in the group were in stilletos! I sprained my ankle just before I took this photo, and have the bruises to prove my bridge experience.

We were supposed to be going to a famous pizzeria just close to where the brige meets Brooklyn, but they didn't want so many people at once so a smaller group of us split off and walked (hop hop for me) down to Brooklyn Heights, where we got something else to eat.

After the meal we went down to the waterfront. On the way we stopped at a wine shop which was still open (11 at night, I love this) and bought a bottle of wine. When we asked if it was a screw top (we thought we were being subtle), the owner promptly corked the wine for us, gave us plastic cups, and that famous Brown Paper Bag. Abel (Germany), Catherine (Korea) and I drank the wine (in the bag) to this view over Manhattan. The light beam is the "Towers of Light" from Ground Zero which was marking the 9/11 anniversary; I'll post more photos of this later from a night-time visit to the site.

West Indian American Day Parade

A giant Caribbean parade which takes place in Brooklyn on the Labour Day Holiday (last Monday Sept 4). The first part of it was made use of by American politicians (Congressional midterms are comming up here in November) and corporations, although sometimes the difference between the two was not clear.







Later the real party started. There were people from all over: Haiti, Cuba, Trinidad and Tabago. This was the crowd going crazy with flags behind one of the Jamaican floats. Apparently some people party through the night before, sleep a couple of hours and then carry on.







Here are some more random images of the parade:

Manhattan and Columbia

This is Columbia, the very statue where the tourists line up to get their photos taken and incoming graduates whip out there cell phone cameras. She's an Ivy League babe, cause this is Ivy League, baby. Columbia has lots of faux grecian columns. Where have I seen this all before?







These guys scamper around all over the campus ... it adds to the Harry Potter feeling that I get from some of the professors.






The campus is way up on the North East part of Manhatten, sandwiched between Harlem and the Hudson River. Most New York addresses are written with street coordinates. Columbia is 116th/Broadway.














And here's a view down Broadway with a taxi (yellow, but no checks - when and why were these abolished?):





International House, where I am staying, is a lot of fun, friendly atmosphere and a grand location 5 minutes from the uni. The sole disadvantage: the rooms are tiny! Here are the 8 square metres of New York I call my own:

And here is the gotham-city view I have over Harlem and Washington Heights in North Manhatten ... the metro line 1 comes up above ground just here and it sparks and squeels over this old iron bridge. The 125th street metro station (the closest to IH) sits up on this bridge, and the whole thing shakes as the trains roll by. Not sure when the last time was the metro got a cash injection, but it was a long time ago. This is a genuine New York real deal view, no parks or river or other frills. Further advantage of my room location: I don't have to spend money on an alarm clock, because the roar of the traffic and the squeeling of the subway wakes me up at about 7 in the morning every day.

International House and the ISSO (international student organisation) have been doing a lot of orientation activities ... this was one of the more unusual: a trip to a fake city beach (yup, that palm tree is not real) in Queens with a brilliant view across to Manhatten. It is called Water Taxi Beach because the Water Taxi ferry stops here. The view is amazing, but that was the best thing that could be said about the beach: otherwise bad beer and cringe-inducing open mic session blew this one out the water ... and no amount of skyscrapers could save it.

New Mokum Week Zero

Tomorrow I will have been in New York a week. I wanted to start a blog of my impressions and images of the city; I will be here for only 18 months.

This is the last photo of me on my house boat in Amsterdam, the day before I left. The book is "Ik ben een New Yorker".

About the name: Mokum is the old yiddish name for Amsterdam, New York used to be New Amsterdam, I have just moved here from Mokum, so it all ties together ... at least it feels that way at two o'clock in the morning.

Tomorrow is the start of the semester at Columbia and I still haven't got a final list of courses. The city never sleeps, but right now I sure need to.