A First Time for Everything

It's nice to know that there's still room in my life for plenty of firsts. With as much crap as I've gone through, as many subjects as I've studied, places I've travelled, I can still find new experiences, new things to see and do.

I think I had my first real non-dysfunctional Thanksgiving this year, without being a "guest." Maria's family has embraced me to the point of making me one of their own, and although I still struggle with calling her parents "Mom" and "Dad," they have absolutely no problem giving me birthday cards addressed to their daughter and telling me to cover up and drive safely.

Of course, like every family, they have their problems. People get sick, disagree, forget things, whatever, but all the while, there is love.

I'm lucky to be receiving some of it.

To officially kick off the holiday season, with Christmas and my next trip home less than a month away, Maria took me to my first drive through Lights on the Lake, a Syracuse holiday tradition in Onondaga Lake Park. I'd driven through something similar in Springfield, MA while spending Thanksgiving with Jon in college, but even after having grown up in Syracuse, somehow I'd missed this annual ritual in my own hometown.


Big costumed characters greeted us at the entryway, including a big penguin. I think Eric would like this.


All the themes were pretty fantastical, and they kept getting more and more elaborate as we drove farther through.


If only that damn car wasn't always so close in front of us. We kept trying to stop to take pictures to give some space ahead but the car behind us kept getting antsy.


Watching all those reindeer and gingerbread men fly over our heads, while we listened to the Christmas radio station, really put me in the holiday spirit.

Or was I already in the spirit once Maria and I put the turkey in the oven and we all sat down around a table stuffing our faces with stuffing and actually talking to each other?

The New Yorker

I travel a lot, so I get to experience all kinds of folks. And sometimes in my job, I end up on the phone with parents from around the country, and I'm astounded and terrified by them.

But thank God I get to experience something outside of my relatively tiny, homogeneous New York circle.

But come on, this is New York, the promised land for people all over the world. Most of us, however, don't encounter much ethnic diversity at all unless we go to Harlem to be hip and celebrate Obama's election, or we take a cab with a driver from Haiti or something.

My New York crew is comprised mostly of non-New Yorkers, graduates from Colgate who I've known since I was a teenager and who come from all over the States. The rest of them are pretty much across the board white, accentless, and either Jewish or Christian or, most commonly, at least agnostic or atheist.

So who is the New Yorker? If you watch Top Chef like I did last night, you think that New Yorkers are poorly dressed, inarticulate, bitter, bitter people with a bad attitude and a thirst for criticism. If you watch most Hollywood films and TV productions like the yet-to-be-aired Showtime series that was being filmed at Baruch College in my neighborhood the other night, you think that New York cabbies are crabby old white men who smell of cigars and pizza sauce.

How can the stereotype of the New Yorker not have changed since the seventies, an era of television which largely informed my knowledge of the city through sitcoms like The Odd Couple? How is it possible that Hollywood is still perpetuating that appalling iconography?

Sure, some of those guys do exist, the Queens College graduates who pronounce "toilet" like "terlet" and the girls in Bensonhurst who don't move out of their parents' house until they absolutely have to, and often they're extremely charming (or is it just me?). But New York has become such a hodgepodge of cultures and accents and beliefs, it's hard to characterize who exactly a "New Yorker" is anymore.

Am I a New Yorker?

After 11 years of living here, I'm realizing more and more that I'm not. I don't want the stress anymore. I don't want a Valentine's Day full of couples, a New Year's that costs me $150 without even a single kiss, and a Thanksgiving with absolutely no one to hang out with. I don't want to be identified with a city that steals your wallet, punches you on the subway, calls you a dog and barks at you, and threatens to stalk you. Worse yet, a city that promises to call and never does. And takes all your love and money and never gives anything back.

The city is changing - it's a lot safer than it was in 1997 when I first moved here - but I'm not sure I can wait for it to change enough until it's the right fit for me. And the more people keep perpetuating the stereotype of this city being filled with people behaving badly, the more people will think it's a license to behave badly.

Sometimes I just want to put myself on a little higher ground.

City of Brotherly Love

I was suspended 54 stories high in the Philadelphia sky today, when the rain came in and the fog settled. A white, billowy blanket draped itself across the skyline, covering the picture window of the Comcast tower like we were flying in an airplane through the cloud line. I couldn't see past myself.

On our way out of the Comcast headquarters, we decided to try to take public transportation to the Amtrak station, but became hopelessly confused by the regional rail, trolley, and subway options that irrationally intertwined before us. I couldn't see past my confusion.

Suddenly, Kevin beckoned me, and we started following a local man - was he Indian? Pakistani? - who took us all the way to the right train, stopping periodically along the way to try to leave, thinking we'd figure out where we're going earlier than we did. But as confused as we were, baffled by a metro system that wasn't run by the MTA, this Philadelphia stranger dropped us off at the information booth and turnstiles just steps away from the right train. And then he turned, waving, and went in the opposite direction, wherever he was headed in the first place.

I can't always see the good in things. I can barely ever see the good in people. But in a low-hanging, white-out fog today, I could see clearly, even for just a moment.

Come On, Get Happy

I didn't do much this weekend, at least nothing as splashy as my last several weekends, full of travel and exploration.

So it gave me a chance to appreciate the small things, to take note that some things do go right in life.

In no particular order, these are the things that made me happy this weekend:

• losing another 1.5 lbs
• fixing my desk drawer with some packing tape and nails
• discovering that my crap camera on my new phone actually takes gorgeous lo-fi grayscale photos
• swimming
• brussel sprouts, at home and at Bar Milano
• free underwear coupons from Victoria's Secret, which just keep coming even though I refuse to sign up for an Angels credit card
• the annual Christmas explosion at Rolf's

The last year has been the slowest year of my life, and now that the days are shorter and sure to get colder, there will be less and less for me to do to entertain myself when alone on weekends except Christmas shopping. So I have to make the most of every small joyful event, otherwise I just won't last the year.

Falling In Queens

Last weekend when we took the train upstate to Beacon for our Bannerman Castle tour, I noted the gorgeous Hudson Valley foliage and bemoaned the lack of it in New York City. Edith had assured me that there were, in fact, turning leaves on the trees in Queens, but I didn't quite believe her til I took a trip myself this weekend.

It's a little past peak this time of year, just after Halloween when wearing flip flops is no longer quite possible, but in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, the trees intermingle greens and reds and yellows and of course the requisite brown.

I headed to the park this weekend not for a colorful autumnal stroll, but to snoop around some of the buildings from the 1964 World's Fair that I had seen on a walking tour two years ago. Since I first spotted it, I've become a little obsessed with the New York State Pavilion and its three observation towers, whose blinking red lights are clearly visible from the Grand Central Parkway, the Van Wyck, and the LIE, and therefore a regular sight on my way home from the airport. It's a living relic of a time not too long ago, a ruin that was built to be futuristic and now stands useless, decaying.


With all of the proposals to turn the thing into something fantastic - most recently, a proposed space museum - the towers stand there, waiting, blinking, slowly falling apart, unpreserved, unstabilized. I keep waiting for that red light to go out.

Adjacent to the towers is the "Tent of Tomorrow," which was built basically as a big advertisement for Texaco but also hosted art shows for the likes of Warhol, and even provided the setting for a music video by They Might Be Giants. The red and white paint is peeling and there are huge shifts in the cinder block walls on the outer facade. The interior is overgrown with weeds (pretty much destroying the mosaic tile map that used to form the floor of the place), and looks like it's become a storage facility for the Parks Department. Why are there always barbeque grills sitting in abandoned buildings?



I pressed my face in the gate opening to see inside, to catch a glimpse of the original splendor, despite the rusty, overgrown mess it's become. Curiously, there's still a light on inside the tent, a singular lit bulb, on even during the day.

Some of the structures around the old World's Fair grounds are still standing, and even in use: the restored Unisphere, the Hall of Science, the Queens Museum of Art (formerly the New York City Pavilion), and Terrace on the Park, a former heliport that looks like a big table looming over the park, currently used as a banquet hall / catering space available for rent. It looks like there's an observation deck on the roof where helicopters used to land, but of course when I was skulking on the grounds, everything was locked up. I really want to call and tell them I'm getting married just so I can get a tour of the place and take some pictures.

Although normally open, the Queens Museum was closed on Saturday too because of an elevator accident the day before. Which is just another reason I have to go back, again.

How many more ruins can I really visit? And how do you choose between Bannerman Castle and High Bridge and the smallpox hospital and the High Line and the typhoid hospital and Ellis Island's hospital and Castle Clinton and all the forts and other historic buildings around New York City - around the country - around the world? Can you preserve them all? I suppose some get stabilized as a historic ruin, like Eastern State Penitentiary, and others get fully restored to a usable attraction if enough money is raised. And I suppose some buildings just fall down before they can earn historic status. I don't think you can save them all.

But in the meantime, I'll try to visit as many as I can.

Further Reading:
NY-Architecture.com: New York State Pavilion
NY Daily News: Are Web pics of damage to restored New York State Pavilion map real?

Singing for My Survival

I had a hard day yesterday, one that made me not want to come into work today. But unfortunately I had to, today at least, so to get me through the afternoon, I popped in some volumes of A.M. Gold and sang along to songs like "Crystal Blue Persuasion," "Never My Love" and "Like to Get to Know You" which I remember listening to on WEZG in Syracuse before falling asleep as a little kid.

I couldn't listen to anything happy, but regardless, I wanted to sing. It was therapeutic. But as I thought about how sad I felt, and how the singing made me feel better, I remembered a time as a child when things got really bad with my parents, and they caught me singing along to the radio. They became accusatory, telling me, "Obviously you don't feel bad and don't feel sorry, because if you did, you wouldn't be singing. Only happy people sing. Clearly you're not as depressed as you say you are."

Of course, they must've never listened to The Cure or even Dusty Springfield to make a statement like that.

I've lost my voice quite a bit over the last few months. Not physically per se, but one could say I've lost the will to sing, the will to try to make things feel better. I've just accepted them for what they are. Which has been terrible. And I assumed no one wanted to listen to my singing, or would hear me if I did. So I stopped. Even when I sang two songs at James' birthday karaoke party, I didn't use my own voice, instead putting on a fake karaoke voice which is as much talking in tune as anything else.

But today, I kept my frosted glass office door open, cranked the computer speakers, and sang, hoping someone would hear me finally.

I'm sure the coworkers who sit outside of my office did, but nobody said anything. At least no one asked me to stop.

One Less Bell to Answer

I bought a new phone this weekend. I'm usually ready for one every two years when my T-Mobile contract expires anyway, not only to take advantage of technological advances, but also to do a little soul-cleansing.

I always have strong visceral attachments to my cell phones, either because of the text messages I've received or the phone calls I didn't receive, constantly pressing my purse against me to feel it vibrate when it never does. Getting rid of my first Samsung four years ago was an important part of excising Freddy from my life and my heart.

After stints with a Motorola and another Samsung, no one really calls me anymore and I've stopped waiting for it to ring. My most recent Samsung has been good to me, with a freakishly good camera that got me interested in digital photography and gave birth to my photo blog, but these days my phone has to do more than conduct calls or it's just not worth having at all.

So I upgraded to the Nokia Xpress Music, which will be serviceable for txting and the occasional phone call (which I'll actually be able to hear thanks to an improved earpiece), but will also ultimately replace my ancient iPod shuffle which has been small and convenient but a total mystery in terms of actually knowing what I'm listening to.

I'm not much of a tech geek unless it involves lasers or something sparkly, but this new phone is a cute little guy. I hope he keeps me company for the next two years.

The camera on it is crap but fortunately I'd already upgraded to a Panasonic Lumix which makes me look like a photographic genius.

Besides, I needed a fresh start in my life. Some people cut or dye their hair, buy a new wardrobe, or grow a beard. I swap out my phones.

The Hudson River's Only Castle on an Island

I guess I always assumed the castle I saw on a tiny, rocky island in the middle of the Hudson River - usually from the Amtrak or the Metro-North - was as unreachable as the typhoid hospital on North Brother Island. Crumbling, forbidding, mysterious.

But earlier this year, Edith discovered that the castle - in fact, Bannerman Castle - was indeed accessible via Hudson Valley Outfitters' kayak trips to Pollepel Island! It was an explorer's dream come true, but in September when we were scheduled to go, our trip was cancelled because of danger of land mines. Or so they told us.



I was devastated, but relieved that I wouldn't have to haul my overweight body three miles in a kayak to get to the island from Cold Spring, and again three miles to return.

Somehow by chance, last week we found out that Hudson River Adventures had one remaining boat cruise to Pollepel for the year, replete with hard hat tour of the castle grounds, just like we had missed out on a month prior. That last tour was today.

We took the Metro-North to Beacon, followed by a half hour boat ride to the island. I recalled the ferry we took to Alcatraz, the way the forboding structure loomed against the skyline, and I couldn't quite believe I was getting this close to the castle I'd previously only seen from the train tracks along the water.

The castle, of course, isn't really a castle, but it was built to look like one. Not unlike Eastern State Penitentiary, even in the early 20th century the image of the castle was one that Americans were both fascinated with and terrified by. Bannerman Castle was built in the style of a Scottish castle, except with bricks and only a concrete overlay, and with wooden floorboards that ultimately made it tragically susceptible to a fire in 1969. And instead of being used to protect the waterways of New York State, it was used as a warehouse for military surplus items to be sold - any items, from hats to musical instruments to cannons to unexploded ordnances (hence the land mine danger which closed the island for months).

The island must've been a beautiful place when the Bannerman family actually lived there, in the "lodge" residence that once housed a fireplace and a sun porch. There are gardens that are being restored, with a labyrinth of paths leading around the massive grounds, most of which have been cleared of the forsythia and lilac overgrowth that covered them for the last several decades. We followed one treacherous path down to the castle which felt unsafe not only for us, but for the retiree behind us walking with a cane. In fact, we got a lot closer to the buildings than I thought we would, though still not inside because of the imminent danger of collapse or of random pieces of rusted metal falling on our heads.

At one point early on in our tour, we stumbled on some young guys not wearing hard hats, and immediately I knew they weren't part of any official group. Our tour guide asked them, "How did you get here?" and they answered, "On a boat." After our guide scoffed and sized them up as quickly as I did, he tried to shoo them off the island, but he didn't seem that intimidating to me. They should have feared fines or imprisonment, but instead they basically got a "scram" and made it out without a scratch.

Don't get me wrong, I love urban exploration, and I love to read about explorers' illicit visits to ruins and see their incredible photographs. But unfortunately, a lot of the people who do that contribute to the accelerated disintegration of these structures, and, sadly, often steal some of the historic relics from the sites (like Scottish emblems and prismatic glass, in the case of Bannerman).



Pollepel Island, once just a lump of rocks in the middle of the river, actually became quite whimsical under Bannerman's influence, with every sloping hill and staircase receiving its own cute name and making sure there's always a stone seat when you need to take a rest. Sure, lots of the compound was utilitarian as well - an outhouse, cisterns, warehouses - but the island has somehow managed to retain its character, or perhaps the character of Frank Bannerman, its owner, who could never get the name of the island officially changed to Bannerman but labelled everything with his name including the castle, which still reads "Bannerman Island Arsenal." He did such a good job self-marketing that no one really knows that "Bannerman Island" isn't the name of that piece of land.

Like many of the sites I visit, there has been a trust formed to preserve and educate, and most importantly to raise money for stabilization and restoration. The tour I took today was inexpensive for the amount of regret it swept out of my soul, and at only $30 makes a great bizarre day trip from NYC for anybody who's feeling a bit bored. But unfortunately people will have to wait til spring in order to see it first-hand like we did today. Let's hope the winter isn't too hard on the buildings and doesn't cause more collapse.



Further Reading/Photos:
Hudson Valley Ruins: Rob Yasinsac's photos
The New York Times: Kayakers Among the Ruins
Suckapants Blog

Fort Totten, Finally

People are always surprised to find out how much war history there is in New York City, but there are forts all over the place. Castle Clinton, Fort Wadsworth in Staten Island, the former "numbered" forts by the Old Croton Aqueduct in the Bronx (as well as Fort Schuyler), and of course Fort Totten in Bayside, Queens.

I first discovered Fort Totten on the Open House New York schedule two years ago, but after having visited Floyd Bennett Field and Flushing Meadows Corona Park, I was too pooped to find my way to Bayside. After Edith and Eric ended up taking a tour this year and reported back, I became desperate to go.

Lucky for me, the NYC Parks were having a Halloween lantern tour of it this weekend. Right up my alley.

When we arrived we were a little confused, because we were surrounded by really little kids who'd brought their own glowsticks and flashlights. We kind of thought those would be provided, as they were at the Queens County Farm Museum corn maze, and that we would just be experiencing a nighttime tour of the fort. Instead, we got a strange little haunted house.

In a way, this one was actually better than Eastern State, because it was so dark, and the ghosts and goblins were so few and far between, we were almost always startled by them. Unfortunately for the kids, they were terrified, and their parents only encouraged the terror by pretending to be eaten by spiders and getting caught in webs and other unnecessary fake perils that the kids really believed.



I couldn't really see the layout of Fort Totten because it was so dark, but boy was it spooky. Lots of long, dark tunnels, with a red sky looming over us as the trees rustled and it let out a quietly dripping rain that made the floors beneath us slick and dank.

The tour was brief and the urban park ranger was sure to ease the fears of the kiddies by telling them it was all pretend, but I tried to suspend my disbelief as much as possible. Surely there was something ghoulish about this place, even if only the hauntings of the members of the Willets family....

Fort Totten is actually in good shape, not in ruins the way I normally like my historic buildings. But there are lots of abandoned barracks that are being torn down and that make the entire park kind of feel like a ghost town, including some spooky brick houses with chipped paint and gravestones in the front yard. And yet you can still see the Whitestone Bridge in the distance, a mere stone's throw away with the Bronx's city lights twinkling, reminding you of the present day, 200 years in the future from Fort Totten's origins.

Dirty Dancing in Chicago

I couldn't be in Chicago and not see the pre-Broadway, U.S. premiere stage adaptation of Dirty Dancing. It was incomprehensible. Besides, having that ticket in my purse was the only thing that made this Chicago trip worthwhile, as I've had to suffer through another work-related conference surrounded by parents.

Some might say I only came to Chicago for Dirty Dancing.

I'd heard horrible things about it. It was critically panned on the West End but an audience favorite, and even Michelle's parents were disappointed with it. But I'm a sucker for anything related to the film - t-shirts, keychains, talking pens, calendars - and I figured it had to be better than the TV special I watched as part of the bonus features of the anniversary DVD.

Besides, I was used to sharing my love for Dirty Dancing with no one. And at least I knew tonight, I would be alone in a crowd (unlike when I was alone in an empty Ziegfeld Theater for a screening of it).

The stage production is basically the movie. There are lots of soundtrack songs played in their original form in the background, with the addition of some other 1960s period hits. Occasionally some of the cast members sing the songs instead, but kind of in the background too, standing off to the side or on an upper platform, trading the leads often enough that it forms somewhat of a Greek chorus. I guess that might seem strange to some (including this Chicago Tribune writer), but come on, let's be honest. Nobody wants to see Johnny Castle sing.

And boy can this Johnny dance. His portrayer, Josef Brown, has been with the production since his native Australia and although he has a really strange forced American accent and isn't the greatest actor (neither was Patrick Swayze really), the choreography slides off his chiseled body to slither around the stage, leap in the air and crouch to the earth. This production's Baby is also a dead-ringer for Jennifer Grey, making you forget sometimes you're not watching the movie.

So why not just stay home and watch the movie? Surely it must be showing on the We network or VH1's "Movies That Rock."

I guess there's just something about the live experience, the disco balls that start spinning in the house during the finale, Johnny busting into "Kellerman's Anthem" as he walks through the audience down the aisle and hops up onto the stage from the front. And when they finally do the lift, that silly f-ing lift, it just takes your breath away. Johnny spins her around 360 degrees for the whole audience to see, so nobody can miss it.

There are some unnecessary musical numbers added to the show, mostly for expository purposes I think, and there's been some dialogue added to fill the gaps that the movie leaves to your imagination. Those parts are mostly just annoying, as is the civil rights subplot which I think is supposed to give the story more meaning but actually just makes it more trite. But overall, it's like you can almost reach out and touch the movie, and although it looks and sounds a little different, if you've seen the movie as many times as I have, it just never gets old. You find yourself wishing the stage adaptation was more like the movie. Exactly like it.

(The casting of John Bolger as the father was an odd one, but since I am a fan from the 80s when he briefly portrayed Phillip Spaulding on Guiding Light, it was thrilling to see him perform something besides the TV commercials I occasionally spot him in. After all, he is the great-nephew of Ray Bolger, the Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz!)

This stage production is supposed to be coming to Broadway, but the theater tonight wasn't that full so I wonder if it will make it. Will I see it again if it hits New York? Maybe, if only to avoid the regret of not going.