Saturday: Tribeca, Soho, Civic Center, and the Brooklyn Film Festival

Warning: another long post. Note: comments are fun. Say something in response to something (if you feel so moved, as hopefully you will).

Saturday was a "me" day. Just me exploring, and exploring, and exploring.

I started off by venturing to a restaurant I heard a chowhound recommend called the Bright Food Shop supposedly close to my place. And boy was it close! It was on a corner of the nearest intersection to me! I'd walked by it so many times because it was hard to see in and what I could see gave the impression of a cheap restaurant with a counter and greasy short-order cook. But I ate there; it was definitely -how do I say it?- unpretentious in its decor. It turned out to be mostly a mexican-brunch style place, and was a bit more expensive than you'd expect. I had huevos rancheros, which were culinarily unexciting but unusual enough for me to be happy with the meal. I spent the whole meal thinking that the counter waitress really was exactly like a friend of a friend back in San Francisco, but I couldn't even remember the name of the person I thought she was like.

Then off to Tribeca (= triangle below canal street). The first thing of note with which I was confronted was a tall imposing windowless building. I managed to track down a picture (scroll down to 33 Thomas at Church Street). I guessed at the time it was a prison (but in downtown manhattan!), especially given the street it was on was subtitled something like Justice Row. According to the description, my guess wasn't too far off.

While walking to the hudson and up the shoreline, I noticed some more interesting places and things: minigolf, trapeze school (I watched some people practicing), a series of batting machines with one primary ball-throwing machine (the way it collected the balls from everything and fed them back again was pretty neat), a kayaking and sailing school, and lots of bikers and bladers. But by far coolest thing was in the sky. Five planes flew in parallel, alternatively emitting smoke or not. At first glance, I thought, morse code! But then I realized they were just drawing words. They spelled out HEINEKEN twice but not quite correctly -- it was mirrored as if desired to be read from above rather than below. Then they spell out "BEST DIAMOND VALUES," again twice, but these could be read correctly. Neat skywriters.

I stopped briefly in the fire fighters museum, which had lots of old fire trucks and equipment from the pre-truck days. They call each piece of equipment like that an "apparatus." Also neat: did you know that in the old days fire fighters were commercial groups? The first group to get to the fire and put it out would be paid by whatever insurance company insured that building against fire.

Then I explored Soho (= south of houston (north of canal)). It had an amazing vibrant arts district, blocks and blocks of artists selling good quality originals on the street. I saw some stunning 4 foot by 2 foot color photographs of waves crashing, some paintings with significant depth (> 0.5cm) simply made by so many layers of paint, and a truck with a ladder on it on which were balanced almost a dozen life-size and life-like metal (aluminum?) statues of men relaxing, sitting on the ladder, and talking to each other.

I shopped in Soho for a while. (How cool is that? That simple fact makes me hip.) Then I wandered into the civic center district. Lots of fancy building (mostly for governmental especially justice department offices), the most stunning of which was the municipal building. And another park with free wifi. (Maybe I should bring my laptop on my explorations and blog as I go?)

Finally, I hopped a train to the Brooklyn Museum to watch a film (and a short) at the Brooklyn International Film Festival. The Brooklyn Museum, at least the outside and the architecture, were stunning, on par with the nicest museums of manhattan. (I didn't get to see the exhibits because the museum itself had already closed.) The short I saw isn't worth mentioning (hehe), but the main feature, A Silent Love, definitely is. It is a touching drama (not gritty suspense drama, but drama nonetheless) about a Canadian who meets a Mexican woman on the internet and they marry (i.e., mail order bride). But he begins to fall for her mother. Themes of loneliness and stages in life abound. The director was there to talk about the film, a nice bonus which is always interesting.

Sorry for the lack of pictures. I've been thinking about buying a digital camera. If you want to encourage me to do so, post a comment (or mail me). (Yeah, like anyone will do that after most of you ignored my last request for comments.)