Insufficient Postage

Album: Saturday, Sunday, Snow Day

Related posts: Snowed in at Sundance, Sag Harbor Offseason

Album: Princeton-Yale Game

Album: ING New York City Marathon

Album: Fall Foliage

Album: Water Taxi Beach

Sun, sand and skyline, just minutes from Midtown:

A Park with Personality

New York's newest attraction, a garden built on the remains of an elevated rail line that once carried meat and produce through the industrial neighborhoods of western Manhattan, has officially opened. (Readers unfamiliar with the project are referred to this 2-minute overview here on Youtube.)

Art and architecture critics enthuse about its design features. For me, as someone raised in the city during the 1970's, when the train was still in operation, what's even more exciting is that the High Line is a park with personality, reminiscent of a pre-Giuliani past when New York life was a bit more colorful and a little less predictable. I was pleased, therefore, to happen upon this art show in the back of a U-Haul by one of the High Line entrances on a recent afternoon:

Although centered around a physical space, the experience is more than just that. Only a few weeks old, the High Line has already produced enough stories to fill an O'Henry volume. An accordionist who plays tunes from classic video games. A young couple's engagement. A cabaret singer who performs from her fire escape:

It's also interesting to see how online media, which helped galvanize supporters around the idea of the park in the first place, is being used to enrich the experience. The Friends of the Highline publishes a wonderful blog and Flickr photo pool, both worthy of a visit unto themselves. Want to find out more about the fire-escape cabaret? Simply join the artist's Facebook group or see her here and here on Youtube. It's our tactile, industrial past meets our hyper-social, digital future, and the results are rather thrilling.

A Carnivore's Delight

"The New York State steak dinner, or 'beefsteak,' is a form of gluttony as stylized and regional as the riverbank fish fry, the hot-rock clambake, or the Texas barbeque," wrote Joseph Mitchell in his now-classic New Yorker article (ca. 1939).

 

Until the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, giving women the right to vote, these dinners were strictly male affairs, usually thrown by or in association with political clubs. Like the German-influenced barbeque still found in areas of Texas today (see Insufficient's earlier posting here), the old New York beefsteak would have foregone amenities like knives, forks, napkins and tablecloths. 

 "The life of the party at a beefsteak used to be the man who let out the most ecstatic grunts, drank the most beer, ate the most steak, and got the most grease on his ears," wrote Mitchell.

All of this changed in 1920 when the beefsteaks went co-ed and, in Mitchell's telling, "degenerated into polite banquets" with the forced addition of such things as "Manhattan cocktails, fruit cups, and fancy salads to the traditional menu of slices of ripened steaks, double lamb chops, kidneys, and beer by the pitcher."

 

Album: Lower East Side

Despite all that's happened over the past few months, life in and around the New York financial district could be much worse. If in doubt, just pay a visit to the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. This is no Disney-fied history (although, on a recent visit, Disney did happen to be filming "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" just around the corner). Aside from making you grateful you don't live there, the museum also does a fine job at celebrating the lives of the immigrant families who did. 

Sag Harbor Offseason

Photo credit: My Mom

Sunday in the Park with a Camera

 
 

Special Delivery

Food delivery is, for many New Yorkers, as much a regular routine as opening the refrigerator. It may make economic sense, given the high cost of real estate, which makes having a stocked kitchen pantry a luxury for most of us. At least we rationalize it that way.

Photo courtesy of newsriffs's flickr photostream

There have been other attempts to explain this ritual. These have ranged from the sociological (the prevalence of two-job families), to the cultural (the hatred of cooking by yuppies), to the geological (the city is relatively flat, hence good for bicycle delivery men). See, for examples, this article from the archives of the New Yorker.

Just when you thought Central Park was safe at night

Photo courtesy of mycraze's flickr photostream

Has anyone else noticed an increase in the number of raccoons living in Central Park? Go for a jog around the reservoir after dusk and you're almost guaranteed to trip over one.

The city estimates there are "hundreds" of these furry creatures in Central Park, according to this recent New York Times article. At least they keep the rats at bay, and possibly the muggers too.

Busy Day at the Beach

Scenes from Sagg Main beach, Sagaponack, Long Island:

A Week in the Hamptons

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