Sunday (part 1): Ultimate, Columbia, and more

Sunday was another busy day. First ultimate, at a field close to this spot on the Hudson river. Well not really ultimate exactly. At first we only had five people so we played a variation I hadn't seen before. It's played on a small field, with two pairs of cones about 3 feet apart from each other on each end of the field. To score, knock over a cone with a disc. Any cone. (Obvious variations involve giving sides and knocking over your opponents' cone(s).) Only additional rule is that if you get the disc on one half of the field due to a turnover, you can't knock over the nearby cones immediately. The disc has to cross the center line of the field before you can go back to knock over either of those cones. Of course, if you're already on the other half of the field, you may want to continue in that direction and knock over one of their cones. If you touch the cone (you, not the frisbee), your opponents get a point. After playing this for a while someone else came and we played real small field ultimate. Pretty fun.

On the way to ultimate, I spotted an odd sight called safety city. Apparently used for helping teach traffic laws and policy.

Then I ventured off to explore the somewhat nearby district of Morningside Heights.

* It contains Grant's Tomb (well, his wife's tomb too). I can't believe I had forgotten he was president (in addition to being a famous general)! Impressive and like the memorials in DC (but certainly not surpassing them).

* There was also an international house nearby with an odd sign. I wonder if the letter substitution was conscious..

* This district, like all others, has a number of well-hidden and not-so-well-hidden churches. Riverside Church is particularly impressive; another nice church was just around the corner.

* The center of this neighborhood is Columbia University. It's very well-fortified: buildings lay around all the edges; where there is not a building, there is a fence or a gate. There are only about four entrances into the university, each watched by a Columbia police officer. Entering makes one feel very safe and cozy. The campus is nice. Nice assortment of architecture. Quite dense, but with some wide-open spaces like their quad. I also found a very large random statue. If you think you can tell what (or why) this is, do so!

* A quick walk along Morningside Park reminds one why all the security. The number of homeless people sleeping on benches reminded me that perhaps this isn't the best neighborhood. Along this side of Morningside Heights was a strange fountain. Was it meant to be a fountain? If so, where was the base of the fountain? These questions may never be answered..

* The Cathedral of Saint John the Divine (side view; top view - not taken by me) was fairly majestic looking. It's been in the process of being built for more than a century. They're about two-thirds done now but it looks pretty finished. Raise money, build more, raise money, repair, raise money, build more, ... When finished, it'll be the largest cathedral in the world. Sadly, I couldn't take pictures inside because it was so tremendously large my flash wouldn't do anything (and I didn't have a tripod). Let's just say the place is everything you'd imagine a cathedral is and should be. The outside looks pretty impressive too.

* The Cathedral is on a very large beautiful grassy plot of land. Sadly, most of it was fenced off. One part that wasn't fenced had yet another weird statue. Also, I noticed something wrong with one of the fences -- do you notice it too?

These pictures and more are available.

By this point, the day was hot and humid and I was thirsty. A quick subway and smoothie later, I was back in my air conditioned apartment. Then after a quick shower, a brief attempt at hair spiking (didn't look that great - maybe I'll try again later) (also, camera was dead by this point so no picture for you!), a mediocre burrito, I headed out to an evening of Un-American Films. Yes, it was July 4th.

The group that runs this is called Rooftop Films. They normally show films on a rooftop. (Duh!) But this time the showing was on a pier on the west side of Manhattan (near Tribeca). I had imagined the people there would be hip sf-mission-district-like people but really they looked fairly regular. Before the movie, we watched the fireworks off in the distance by the south tip of the island. Fireworks generally don't excite me that much, but they did some cute things this time like a heart and a smiley face.

Narrator's remark: at this point in writing I realized I have enough to say about the films to merit another post. Besides, this post is long enough already and I wanted to post it rather than wait a few days to finish it. So, part 2 about the movies will be forthcoming.