Wednesday: Eastern Chelsea, and Later Curry Hill

(This refers to Wednesday, July 7th; written on Thursday, July 8th.)

Wednesday morning, a little worried that my time to explore New York was running out, I decided to wander eastern Chelsea / the garment district on the way to work. Much of it I'd already seen, like the enormous post office that I walk by all the time (panorama picture taken on an earlier evening). On the way out of my apartment, I grabbed some rugalach and a small hamantashen to nosh along the trip. (If you don't know what these are, you don't hang out with jews enough.) Mostly this wandering in Chelsea taught me how apt the garment district and fashion avenue references were. It's not that clothes were hipper or even more abundant in stores here, it's that the street vendors sold belts, and side streets were filled with store after store selling women's handbags. Lots of accessories. And then, of course, there was Macy's -so big it had fast food vendors in different parts of different levels of its store- and some giant shopping centers.

See, this whole part of the district is anchored by the empire state building. The line of tourists went around the corner of the block. I snickered at them and passed it by. Of course I'll go back. :) Maybe 11pm when all the tourists are nicely tucked in their hotel rooms or hotel bars.

What else is worth mentioning? Again there were some nice churches; Saint John the Baptist had a nice stained glass window. (It had lots of others further inside but I didn't feel comfortable taking pictures of those.) Here's another church; I think it is a good example of what I mean by hidden/camouflaged churches. There is a monument to General Worth here (for which Fort Worth is named); apparently he is buried under a street. (What an honor!) Also, there was a nice building that looked like a castle. And, to mention for name value, the Fashion Institute of Technology is in this district. Penn Station and Madison Square Garden are too, though they're what you'd expect and thereby not worth mentioning. Oops. :)

I left work at a reasonable time today to go toss a disc with some googlers (mostly interns) in Central Park. Very nice, very green. Got a nice breeze so it was cooler than the rest of the city. From where we were, we had a tremendous view of the Manhattan skyline. Sadly my camera batteries died when trying to take this panorama. But I'll be back and take it some other time.

After frisbee and a subway right down to the east village, I arrived at curry hill. Walking up and down the street, I could really tell what Anthony Bourdain meant in Kitchen Confidential when he refers to the stench of death on a restaurant. It really is a depressing feeling of despair, of desperation, a feeling that the restaurant will close soon. The feeling is accentuated by the fact that some restaurants have sad-looking Indian men in suits (clearly the managers) looking for foot traffic and sometimes urging people to go in.

I came with some recommendations and ended up at a fairly lively feeling place called the Brick Lane. I could tell it was a good restaurant, despite making bad choices in what I ordered. I had something called goam (a whitish creamy sauce) with lamb and a naan-like bread stuffed with onions (kulcha?). I frequently make the mistake of ordering kulcha at indian restaurants and, while good, it's always so potent to dominate the flavors in a meal. In this case, that wasn't so bad because I didn't like the tanginess of the goam. But I know the restaurant is good because of the flavors in the rice by itself and the tenderness of the lamb.