I'd never been to New York before... I had only this mental image of the place in my mind due to all the symbolic references that lie inserted in endless pieces of Literature, Cinema, Theatre, TV, and the media as a whole... almost like an ever-present subtle whisper in the wind.
Virtually everyone I know has either spent a week there or just landed on one of the two larger airports; La Guardia + JFK (a more than 6 hour wait counts as a check mark!). Major convo starter, I'd say!
Physically knowing NYC opens you up to a whole new world. Matrix like; NOW you get that local joke that's been floating around in all those social gatherings and artsy-posh events. It's like finally getting the hang of double meanings in adult conversations (hehehe).
Fortunately I had already had my own very little training in the subject (city-handling-wise) due to the exercise of spending several hours in front of the "tele", visually slurping shows such as "Sex AND the City", "Friends", "Seinfeld", "Gossip Girl" (not really... but some, yeah, busted!), Woody Allen flicks, and just recently "New York, I love You" (Oh! for all those great looking men conveniently crammed in a single movie).
All of sudden those words I'd only heard of came to life, in a blast of information going straight to my brain: Broadway, 5th Av., SoHo, NoHo, China Town, Little Italy, The HighLine, Brooklyn... And so I was introduced to one of the planet's most actively evolving cities in the ART world.
Heck yes! Because this was no ordinary trip, no sirey! Me and my mate Dan are very very keen art students with a psychosomatic crave for anything that has the word CREATIVE involved in it. "HECTIC as!" Some would say, and they would be correct.
HENCE, we ate those museums like hot dogs at a Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest (*reference #1. See what I'm talking about? This happens in Coney Island, either google it up or just reminisce your head off!). MoMa was first, sweet and FREE thanks to some tips we got from a friend studying in Poughkeepsie (shit, that was hard to write, imagine spelling it drunk!). I cannot believe how much art these guys have got bottled up in a single building in downtown NY! My eyes were sore in the end, but not sore enough to detain myself from wandering around the gift shop hehehe.
Next on the menu was The Frick Collection, where our friendly "acquaintance" worked as an intern. Good stuff! Then we visited the Neue Gallery where we both stood open mouthed before no other than Gustav Klimt's "Adele (Bloch-Bauer)", and even better; I saw my very first EGON SCHIELE!!! (I still cannot get over that moment... the 15 bucks were totally worth it).
The day after we went to the Guggenheim where we saw a couple of works of Julie Mehretu, and the "Haunted" exhibit with Warhol, González-Torres, Abramovic, Rauschenberg, Sherman, and plenty more. Kasimir Malevich was there as well, in spirit and in work; for an entire floor of the museum was dedicated to his early paintings, which was cooooool.
After that we took two entire days to roam about senselessly through the infinite corridors inside the MET. Holy Kaw! I definitely could not process the whole content of what we saw those in such a limited amount of time... no human being could possibly ever! I mean, they say if you contemplate each piece for about 5 minutes you'd take up to 5 years looking at them all! I mean 'CMON!
What I reckon is that the museum is made for people who, after having visited the rudely humongous museum, will therefore have no further need for traveling outside the US. Period. (Although, I know this is BS, the experience of GETTING to places can never be replaced with incarcerated objects). CRAZY.
Anyways, The Noguchi Sculpture Garden was mind-blowing, the New Museum flabbergasting, the Brooklyn Museum was nice (Kiki Smith was there!), The PS.S1 MoMa incredible, and the Natural History was absolute CRAP! (one of the worst museums I've been to, absolute caca).
We walked everywhere during the day, and ate with as little money as we could spend (having taken trail mix for a very repetitive lunch until we went NUTS with the sun dried berries and all the almonds haha). And at night time we went out with our newly made friends (Poughkeepsie's very best). Flashback to:
THE FIRST NIGHT--> we showered thoroughly (the heat was intense!), changed from sweaty to dry clothes and met with "M-E" at one of NY's most popular streets (Bleeker... I think). We ended up hanging out with a bunch of very Jewish guys at this darkish bar with a wooden Apache statue greeting us at the door (the 7 dollar pitch was worth it, tho'). After a few drinks their "leader" ("A") decided we should move to his granny's apartment near Central Park, just for kicks... and so we did! Being all hyped by the feeling of adventure and... I dunno why else really, well besides the booze in our blood, which dictated our actions for the night.
When we arrived we found ourselves sitting down in old fashioned couches surrounded by old fashioned furniture and old fashioned family pictures... granma's lodge indeed!
"A" opened a drawer and brought out two peculiar bottles of what looked like ancient, and dangerous looking liquor; Amaretto and some sort of peach alcohol. We played drunken games and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.
On our way back to the subway we were accompanied by a Spanish speaking dude with whom we shared a friendly chit chat while dodging random people lying on the street (this was 3:30am). It was then we confirmed the fact that NY does not ever sleep! People were already opening up their shops, riding the bus wearing their jogging gear... I mean, amazing...
TO BE CONTINUED...
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