To the City

For how long I’ve lived out here, it feels like I haven’t really been down to New York City all that much. I think I’ve been out to Boston much more often!

But my mother asked me to come down and meet up with her, so here I am, on the train down to the City. One thing that can be said, even if everything else is terrible, the train ride down is fantastic so long as one can snag a seat on the river side of the train.


https://flic.kr/p/2ohxW8h

Difficult to properly photograph, of course. But that’s okay. I also consider these train trips to be reconnaissance missions for the day (someday) when I voyage down to the city by boat.


https://flic.kr/p/2ohvi3f

Today I am also simply relieved to have made it to the train. Our only bike/ped river crossing over to Rensselaer, where the train station is located, is currently completely closed. I am livid about that for equity and accessibility reasons. On a practical level, we made plans to use an electric car share vehicle to manage the crossing. But when we arrived at the lot where the charging station is located, the vehicle was nowhere in sight. S eventually tracked it down via the app, in a neighborhood several miles away, but at that point there wasn’t enough time to go get it and get to the train station on time. Thankfully I have rower friends who are awake at an ungodly early hour on a Saturday morning, and one was able to get me to the train in a hurry with 5 minutes to spare.

Brooklyn

Brooklyn did not disappoint. The Artist and Craftsman Supply there is the best art supply store I have ever been to in my entire life. What a heavenly place. They had every single miscellaneous art supply item I wanted: clay tools, watercolor tubes, stamp pads, and Pitt pens.

And THEN, we managed to successfully sneak into Masalawala, without a reservation. They were recently featured in a NYT story and the restaurant is the size of a postage stamp, so our experience was a miracle.

Oh, there were also visits to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island in there. Not technically Brooklyn, of course. I regret that I did not buy the rubber ducky version of the Statue of Liberty, but also I hope I never go back again for another visit because THRONGS of people.