Category: Manhattan

I Marched.. Now Back to Monday

On Sunday I had my fun day on New York City’s 5th Avenue marching in the parade. This dress is from the Greek nomads known as the Sarakatsani. I like this costume because it’s very different than many others, and there are plenty of layers to ward off some of the cold.

And man, was it cold!  The Greek Independence Day Parade saw sunny, but cold and windy weather as the backdrop. Painfully cold! As our group waited to step off 64th Street to march we had to endure an hour of side street winds. The little kids were so cold their teeth were chattering, their bodies were shivering and every time a strong wind blew they screamed. So did the adults. Thankfully the sun was shining on the avenue. Marching was ten times better than standing in one place waiting.

The Evones marched in formation, tall and strong, at the start of the parade. The National Guards of Greece are amazing to see in Athens when they perform the changing of the guards, but to see them out of their element here in NYC was great. I was able to watch what I could of them because soon after that our group had to line up and be ready to go.
I was lucky to get a couple of pictures at the start and at the end of marching. My fingers were stiff from the cold and I could barely move them to hold the camera and push the button. The parade began at the Pierre Hotel on 62nd Street and extended to 80th Street, near the Metropolitan Museum of Art where we stopped to take a group photo. It was a nice walk at a good pace so it really didn’t feel uncomfortable at all. If it wasn’t so windy the day would have been perfect, but I was glad to march again.
And now, it’s back to Monday.

Photo for Friday on Saturday, Again

Snowing on 72nd Street 

Yes, I know I missed Friday. So, okay, it’s Saturday and I’m posting Friday’s photo that I didn’t even take this Friday. I can’t even remember what day this was, but it was snowing and I had to be in Manhattan. Maybe it was last Friday. I didn’t have a chance to post it. By the time I was ready to do so it was too late because we got hit with another snowstorm and this was old news, sort of. At 10 A.M. in NYC, this was just the beginning of it.

A few years ago I made plans to visit my sister in the city to look at apartments with her. It was a wintry day, cold and cloudy with a flurry of snow in the forecast for the late afternoon. I hopped on the Long Island Railroad, having parked my car in the lot at the train station near my house. A 40 minute ride and I would be in Manhattan. No problem. We were going to look at a few places, have lunch and I’d go home. Done.

Only minutes into the ride the snow starts falling. It’s only 10 A.M. and I was thinking to myself “Wasn’t this supposed to be later in the day?” If you don’t know the L.I.R.R., a little snow could shut down the whole system. Ugh. Fifteen minutes in, the announcement I could barely make out said the train would be delayed. Oh great. I called my sister to tell her the news so she could re-arrange the appointment. The best, most relaxed trip into Manhattan from mid-Nassau County Long Island and a little snow wipes out the system. Just think about it. Do you have any idea how many people ride the railroad as their daily commute? Some days you love it, some days you hate it.

The trip was an hour late getting into Pennsylvania Station and so was our appointment. Everything worked out fine, except we trudged around in the snow that was accumulating inches by the minute. By lunch there was four inches on the ground and more falling. After we were done I hailed a cab back to the train station for my trip home. When I arrived I found my car under seven inches of snow! Of course I didn’t listen to my father who used to have us keep a shovel in the trunk. All I had was a magazine to push all that snow off my windshield. Not fun.

A photograph of my decimated magazine pushing snow off the car would have been fun for the blog, if I had one then. Next time.

Photo for Friday and Sept. 11

On Fridays I like to post a photo on the blog.  Something you might like to see me working on or something to laugh about.  I had planned to post a picture of the watercolor I did on that beach day this week.  Then I thought to post the new painting I started yesterday when I realized that tomorrow is the ninth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on our city.

I hunted through my photographs, mind you that was not an easy task since most of my photos are NOT in books.  I know, bad girl.  Anyway, I took this photo of the twin towers of the World Trade Center during the summer of 1990.  Our boys were young and my husband and I decided to visit lower Manhattan for the day.  We took a Skyline Tour on a boat around the city.  It was a beautiful sunny day and I remember lending other tourists my sunscreen.

How can we ignore what happened in our city?  Now that I’m blogging I could not ignore the date.  The pain is still there, just under the surface.  A news article, a documentary on television, and I’m right there again.  The sadness, the shock, the lost people, right back in the moment.

Nine years ago tomorrow.  September 11, 2001 I was at home on Long Island getting ready for my day. I had an appointment, my father was in the hospital, the sons were at college and freshman year of high school, The Mr. at work, my mom also, and my sister was in Manhattan.  Son#1 called to say something is happening, he heard it on the Howard Stern radio show and thought it was a joke.  I turned on my TV and watched the towers being hit in a matter of minutes.  I told Son #1 that this is a terrorist attack on New York City, maybe the whole country.

Frantically I phoned my sister and she answered her cell phone just as she was driving out of the city over the Triborough Bridge to Queens.  Later that day all access to and from Manhattan would be shut down.  Thankful she was safe I went about my day, to my appointment and the hospital.  Cell phones were the only means of communication until later that day.

On the car radio I heard the reporters say one tower was collapsing.  I switched the radio off.  I switched it back on.  And the second tower went down.

Three thousand regular people lost their lives for no good reason that day.  3000.  Regular people going to work, or school.  Regular every day people became murder victims and other regular every day people became heroes.  People just working.  3000 regular people.  Buildings, offices, homes, churches, schools, museums, restaurants, regular every day people living in that densely packed city.

The people who piloted those planes into office buildings believe that anyone not of their religion is an infidel and must be conquered.  Say what you want, but that’s the truth of it.  Greeks know it, the Armenians and Assyrians know it, and others do too.  It’s not our wealth, prosperity, or life style.  It’s because other religions are beneath theirs.  Only theirs is the true faith.  Others are the dirty infidel dogs.  This is nothing new and has been going on for centuries.  Their religion says they must conquer and bring down the infidel.

Fight or flight set in after the shock of such an event.  In the moment of that quick, sharp inhale of breath the mind is set at a tilt, but thankful knowing my family was safe.  How? Why? Who?  In the nine years since the attacks sad things happened here, but happy things happened too.  As time passed the distance grew between the events allowing life to continue to go on.

As I prepared my photo for Friday there was no way I could ignore the date.

M.I.A in Manhattan

Yes, I know.  I was M.I.A on Monday.  Missing In Action.  Actually I was in action, in movement, on the road.  This time my sister’s back went out and as she was unable to drive her car to get back to her apartment in New York City,  I drove her there on Monday.  So, it sort of was and sort of wasn’t an adventure.

Every time I go to Manhattan I call it an adventure.  It ‘s no big deal to go there, I just make it seem like that.  I make believe I’m doing some big thing, but I’m really not.  I’m used to the city.  I worked there as a paste-up artist years ago downtown in the 20’s and 5th Avenue.

When we were kids my mother took us into the city plenty of times. She grew up in Manhattan on Columbus Avenue on the West Side.  We lived just across the Queens Borough Bridge in Astoria and Manhattan was a bus ride over the bridge for us.  Our mom didn’t want us to be country bumpkins and not know how to navigate the city.  We had to dress well to visit, or to shop, or to go to the theater.  No one was wearing dungarees to Manhattan in the 1960’s!  Dungarees, aka jeans, were for weekend wear at home with comfy shoes and a sweater. 

Now when we go to the city my mom always remarks on how everyone in the city is dressed like a slob! Here and there you see some high society people, but even they’re not dressed to the nines.  What is everyone doing with their expensive designer clothes and shoes?  Most times the fancy people are dressed in rags and some regular schmoes are wearing Chanel on the street!  East side, west side, doesn’t matter.  Even on 5th Avenue or Madison Avenue, no one is really dressed like my mom was used to doing.  That time is over!

So anyway, I drove my sister to the West Side for her appointment, which took three hours.  But he’s a great chiropractor, so we didn’t care how long it took.  When we were done I dropped her off at her building and drove around for a half hour to find a place to park my Mountaineer.  Yeah, don’t worry.  Everyone in Manhattan is driving an S.U.V!  Why?  Who knows?  More trucks than Audis, BMW’s or Mercedes on the East side.  Park a truck in a garage and you have to pay extra!  I had to find street parking.

I found a spot, noted where I parked and walked a couple of blocks back to the apartment building.  The air was crisp, the sun high and warm, and I had an overall good feeling.  A free kind of feeling.  No agenda, nothing else to do, just a wonderful walk alone.  Head and eyes up and alert, but comfortable.

That’s a good kind of adventure for me.

Adventure in NYC

At peek at lovely Grammercy Park through the wrought iron fence
Visiting New York City is always an adventure.  Not that I’m so into having adventures, on the contrary.  However, any time I visit, there’s some little thing that makes my trip adventurous.  It helps that my sister lives there.  She’s the instigator.  Ok, I can be my own instigator, I’m just blaming this one on her.  That’s fair, right? 
This visit was to help my sister move some boxes of books and other stuff from her office.  Just a couple of boxes, but heavy and bulky to carry down elevators, out the building and into my truck.  The craziness of parking in NY is another adventure, and a story for another day.  Lucky for us there was a religious holiday being celebrated and alternate-side-of-the-street parking was not in effect, halleluia!  That meant I could park on the street instead of in a parking lot where I might pay big dollar bills for that truck!
After we loaded the truck, with the help of the wonderful security guard who did the heavy lifting, we were free.  First lunch at a nearby diner for great burgers and later a little poking around a thrift shop.  My sister’s office is downtown Manhattan in the ’20’s on the east side of the island.  Plenty of shops, restaurants, cafes, schools, a busy neighborhood.  We walked around thinking of where to go, what to do, when we ended up walking toward Irving Place and the Gramercy Park section of the city and it was just beautiful.
Talk about hidden areas of beauty in NYC and this has to be one of them.  Not to mention it’s inaccessable to the regular person on the street!  We saw a fence and gates, tried the gate but it was locked.  So we walked around one side thinking the opening should be there, but nope, another locked gate. Around and around we went.  Not one gate opened!  Each gate had a shiny lock on it.  A sign said “Close the gate when leaving the park.”  I told my sister “I bet you need a key to get in!”  I was right!  People were coming out of the park with a key on a lanyard!  I had never seen that before.  How interesting!  So we drooled at the pretty two acre park from behind the tall wrought iron fence.  Area residents are the only people allowed to use the park.  Some were walking, some were jogging around, kids were playing in the grass under the tall trees and amid mature rododendrons and azaleas.  It was an oasis in the middle of the big city.
The area at one time was a swamp.  The neighborhood was developed around 1831and is considered to be one of the first planned communities.  The well kept apartments were brownstones and carriage houses designed in 1883 and the 1905.  The central statue in the park is a sculpture of the area’s most famous resident, Edwin Booth, who was the brother of John Wilkes Booth who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln.  The area had been part of the Underground Railroad before the Civil War, one building was a Quaker Meeting House, and a flower shop was a front for a speakeasy during Prohibition.  Even President Theodore Roosevelt had a home here.  So much history in two acres! 
Since we couldn’t sit in the park we decided to return to my sister’s apartment to relax before planning where to have dinner.  When we were ready we got ourselves on the York Avenue bus for a ride crosstown to the west side where we had dinner at a Greek restaurant called Uncle Nick’s.  That girl drags me all over Manhattan!  I said it was adventure, right?