Now I Have A Slightly Better Understanding of Monopoly

I spent Saturday exploring a large swath of the ritzy upper east side: 5th Avenue, Park Avenue, Madison Avenue, Lexington Avenue, ... from 59th to 88th. Lots of fancy galleries/stores selling artwork, jewelry, and clothes. Eight hours on my feet.

For breakfast/lunch I had good potato knish (can't find those on the west coast!) and a good panini sandwich made from roast beef, cheese, onions, spinach, and various other minor toppings. I hadn't seen this before: it looks like a very thin (pressed) grilled sandwich. In my case, the bread was pita.

In the upper east side I saw a number of fancy architecture and nice buildings in assorted styles. Notably, I went to a small museum, the Society of Illustrators. Two rooms. It was amazing what kind of things people can draw! Lots of illustrations of various famous people. Okay, I'm not feeling very verbal right now, so I'll make my descriptions short or non-existent. Let me just say Bryson probably would've liked one of the rooms, all pictures by various artists that involved frogs. A frog pilot. The dancing figures picture from Matisse but with frogs. The New Yorker logo but as a frog.

Also notably, I was going to visit the Seventh Regiment Armory. Basically, it is a fortress like old building with a colonial inside that used to be a national guard station. But the main drill area inside was being used temporarily for the SOFA 2004 exhibit. (SOFA = Sculpture Objects and Functional Art) It was stunning the objects people can make with glass, metal, wood, and clay. I was really impressed by some pieces by Stephen Knapp. Basically, he used lots of pieces of glass (prisms, lens) attached to a white surface to make some amazing light patterns. I don't think those pictures on the web do him justice.

Other amazing things there: embedding a flower made of different colors of colored glass in a large glass block; something that looked like a quilt but was made out of basswood (a soft wood) and silk dye; a piece of glass art that Edison would like, around 3 by 5 feet, decorated with swiggly silver lines and some pairs of lines were connected by little pieces of what looked like colored glass, from which little slinky pieces that glowed at the end sprouted. When you looked closely, you realize the whole thing is a circuit! The swiggly silver were the plus or ground lines. The little things that looked like glass were actually semi-translucent chips. The slinky tubes were optical fibers.

Also notably, I spent some time at the Frisk Collection. Fairly nice. Had some nice Turners. I was impressed that for the portable audio devices they gave us for the audio tour they asked what language we wanted. By the time I was done with this I was all museumed out. So I skipped the Asian Society museum. Then I read about the American Art museum and decided it was so cool I had energy again. But it just closing so I didn't pay to go in. All this without even making it to Museum Mile.

Other neat observations: the french embassy cultural services building was designed to look like it was from the italian (!) renaissance; there is a private residence directly on the corner of the block across the street from the Met[ropolitan museum of art] (!); I wandered by to see Trinity Church and happened to notice an open door. Wandering in, I found I could hear a bluesy Sinatra-era concert. (The program on the desk by the door revealed it started a while ago, so no one was manning the door anymore.) I listened for a while before getting scared away.

After spending so much money on museums and previous dinners (why can't museums be free like in DC?) I went to a inexpensive chinese noodle-type place for dinner (Chinam 28). Had a nice three meat dish with string beans, mushrooms, onions, and yellow squash (I think). During dinner, I had a Tsing Tao, a weak Chinese pilsner that reminded me of bud. (Ah, the joy of popping an imported label on items to make them more tempting. I hear bud is popular in Thailand.)

Current rant: This could be because I've been flipping though various dining alone/dining solo books at bookstores, but Chinam 28 is the first place I've seen that really doesn't know how to treat single customers. Anytime during dinner that my beer glass was getting low they'd come over and pour from my bottle into it. I can this myself. Anytime that a dish (e.g., rice) was empty, they'd come over and take it away instantly. Anytime I tried to pause during dinner to read a bit, they'd come over and ask if everything was okay. It felt like they wanted to hurry me out. But the place had space and there was no need. Then after dinner, they didn't bring the check at all for ages while I was reading. I had to close my book and look bored for a while before they came by. They should just bring it at some point, and I'd pay it when I was ready. There is no need for me to have to be bored in order to get my check. But the place was good; I'd eat there again.

Beneficent Fate

This is going to be another long post...

These last two days have been neat. Thursday the NY office has a TGIAF. A is for almost. It is much more a party than the TGIF in Mountain View. Some 40s, jello shots, ... Met some more Google people. Then I wandered a different way toward home and ended up eating at a chinese restaurant across the street from Empire State building. Called Hunan. Sounded good and the menu looked good and inexpensive. But I must've been hallucinating. The restaurant was more expensive than I remembered from the menu, didn't have a nice decor, and only had some white people in it, and tourists at that. The food of okay, Jing Jing quality. Then another brief bookstore trip, hung with my apartment-mate who left today. (I get a new one on Monday.)

In happier news, I searched and searched and am confident I know every pickup game in Manhattan (4/week, with one that is attempting to start for the first time this weekend, and 2 ones that sound good in brooklyn).

Friday I found a truly New York place for breakfast. Brooklyn Bagels. Very efficient. Sliced, smears, sandwiches on demand, fast, fast fast. Employees are terse. I had a good (sadly untoasted) sundried tomato bagel with butter. And what a wide selection of fresh fruit. (But fresh fruit is really easy to find in NYC in general!)

After the bagel, I stopped by a fairly large independent bookstore I got a recommendation for and bought some New York guides that I'd been eyeing at Barnes and Noble. Yay for supporting independent bookstores!

Google's lunch on Friday was pretty unexciting.

I hung around late on Friday (today) while reading some guidebooks. An engineer at google with style (Tom, who wears old-style swinger suit-like things) whom I just met happened to come by to ask an engineering question and ended up referring me to some mailing lists he knows (and one he runs) that list unusual/weird events in the NYC area.

Now, we are coming to the reason for the title of the post. I was reading one guidebook with the intention of going to a jazz club tonight. But I couldn't find any that was inexpensive, of a size that I could get into on a friday night, and a style that'd I'd comfortable with while wearing the jeans I'd worn today. So then I got settled on just finding a good place to eat. But I hadn't yet bought the eclectic gourmet guide that I wanted to get me restaurant recommendations. So then my plan became to stop by a nearby Barnes and Noble that was likely to be open, flip through it, and find some good place to eat. But when I made it to the B&N (a different one than before), I found it was just closing -- it had a different schedule than the one I had previously visited. So now I was without jazz and without food recommendations. I kept wandering north. Ran into Saint Patrick's Cathedral. Stunning. Then I kept walking, looking for decent food.

And loh, in a side street I spotted a lot more restaurants than usually appear on a side street. One said Brazilian and I thought, hmmm, sounds good. And so I walked down the street. And looked at the menu. And it looked good. Then I noticed the place next to it was also Brazilian/Portuguese. And I knew these were authentic because I heard people speaking Portuguese. And looked down the street, an Italian restaurant, Chinese, subway, McDonald's, pub, and two more Brazilian restaurants! So I looked at those too, and decided on one of the Brazilian restaurants (Via Brasil). Why? Because it sounded good: both food and aurally -- it had a good jazz trio (Bossa Nova style) playing inside. The decor had style. The wait staff was really attentive. I had an appetizer which was fish as in fish-and-chips but more tender, less batter, and served with a red pepper sauce. My entree was "a Stew made W. Dende Oil, Green Herbs, Onions, Tomatoes and Coconut Milk served W. Rice and Pirao ( Yucca Flour Puree)" with shrimp. It was good. It was served in three separate parts, the stew, the pirao, and the rice for me to mix for myself. The stew itself had a zing to it but when mixed it was relatively mild. Very reminiscent of jambalaya. I gave a 25% tip because the staff was so nice and I was so pleased with the jazz.

As I left that street I noticed it (51st) also had a street sign labeled "Little Brazil Street". Then I wandered through large stretches of broadway and times square on the way home. The lights.. the excitement.. the crowds.. My god the crowds. Like Las Vegas but more packed, higher class, and less tacky.

What's the point? Had I not chilled late at work, I wouldn't have found how to find the weird stuff happening in New York. Had I not stayed late and talked about this, I would've left earlier and hit Barnes and Noble before it closed. Had I hit Barnes and Noble before it closed, I would've turned around and found a recommended restaurant on the way home. Instead I walked in the opposite direction, found some beautiful sights, a great restaurant (and district), and got the jazz for which I was searching. Fate.

P.S. The Thai restaurant I tried at the beginning of my trip was "Regional Thai Taste Restaurant."

Day Two: Observations on the Way to Work

Walking down 7th, I passed Mustang Sally's (bar-restaurant-grill) and about two blocks later passed Mustang Harry's.

I passed a graduation (!) (near penn station).

Overalls can look good on women, but not with fanny packs.

I haven't seen any funky dyed hair yet. And I walked by a lot of people.

Google Off-Site

What I ate recently: okay pizza (lunch ordered in); dinner see below.

This morning I got up and walked to work. It was probably a bit over a mile but felt very short since there was so much to see. I bought a good croissant at a bakery on the way. Someone else with a very New York accent ordered two pounds of donuts (among other things). I passed a number of better looking bakeries later, in Midtown, which I plan to try. Oh, and the USPS has a very big fancy looking building.

At work, after getting my computer set up, we had an engineering offsite. :) So I get to see all the other engineers (and meet some, and re-met a few that I met before when they were in Mountain View). Went climbing then bowling and drinking at a giant sports park built on a pier! (Didn't climb very well because I wasn't dressed appropriately; didn't bowl that well (just average) because of the alcohol (so I claim).)

For dinner I wandered around (again past an absurd number of pizza parlors, and quite a number of restaurant-bars for which it's hard to know how good the food is (one I specifically avoided because I heard the sounds of meatloaf coming out)) and eventually found a restaurant not far from my apartment called The Tomato Restaurant. It was another restaurant-bar, but the name intrigued me and the diners to drinkers ratio was high.

The Tomato Restaurant was mostly a red-sauce (hence the name) style Italian restaurant. The interior was burgundy and with the upper-walls a white-brick-green-vine theme gave it a vaguely earthy theme. Not earthy-granola but earthy-secluded-glade. The walls had many large black-and-white photographs of people eating pasta. The lighting was provided by large orangish-red globes (again reminiscent of the namesake).

I had some decent garlic bread (flavorful but crustier than I prefer) and a good fussili with chicken and sausage pasta dish with a tomato-basil sauce. Exactly what I was in the mood for. Next time, however, I'll get something which sounded more interesting (but I wasn't in the mood for): a fried green tomato sandwich.

Browsed a bookstore after dinner. Still trying to decide how to meet (non-google) people here; maybe talking to them a bookstore might work. Seems a little sketchy.. (Didn't browse for that reason, by the way. Browsed for books.) Every time I was in an elevator today people talked to me: that didn't happen much in california. Cool.

I don't think this post frequency is sustainable.

Sign Your Comments!

I can usually guess by writing style (at least while I have few friends that read this), and posting anonymously is fine, but if you don't mind please stick your name in the comment body somewhere. It'd make me happy. :)

Blogger Time Zone Issues

I noticed that the time on my last post was wrong (because my time zone was still set to pacific time). I changed my settings to fix it and all future posts, but it means all the old posts I made from California now are off by three hours. Apparently I cannot set it so it displays the time zone in the post-time-and-date field or mark particular posts as made in a different time zone. I suppose I could go an manually change all the times for all the west coast posts but that seems silly. I wonder how many people have run into this blogger issue before..

Google Trash Can

Since a blog supposed to reflect the person that writes it, I think it means I should occasionally write down some the random observations I make (at least those I make and am close enough to a computer and remember long enough to walk to the computer and post). (This is, of course, only a small fraction of them...)

One of the trash cans in our kitchenette says in pretty big letters:
"PLEASE NOTE: RECEPTACLE BASE AND LID SOLD SEPARATELY"

Why do I need to know this?! (I suppose if I was thinking, wow, google has nice trash containers in the kitchenette, but I don't want one with a lid, and I hate buying something and not using all of it, but now I know that they're sold separately I can go out and buy one!)

My First New York Post!

Recently ate: <see below>

I suppose if this were a real blog, I'd write about all the neat things that happened recently. But I'll skip that since the point of the blog is to document my life in NY. (All the previous posts have been was practice.) Suffice it to say that I had a productive cool shopping trip to the Castro during which I got some good fashion advice; Jodie is cool for letting me crash with her for a while while I'm homeless (actually, she'd be cool anyway); the Roxie is showing a fairly interesting movie about the national scrabble championships called Word Wars (in the style of Spellbound but a bit scarier because the characters here are older); I recently started Myst; being checked out by gay men in the Castro is a funky feeling.

Now, to the good stuff: I'm in NEW YORK! Freaken` cool. The apartment I'm in is pretty nice. A two-story (on floors four and five) two-bedroom. I'll take pictures sometime. It's pretty, and it has a wireless router. Sad but funny that I think that's one of the more important things to mention. Looks like I have an apartment-mate, but I haven't met him yet.

After I arrived there was brief downpour with some thunder. How's that for instantly proving that I'm not on the east coast anymore? I think this is portentous (in a good way) because I always miss thunderstorms on the west coast. And then there was a new episode of The Simpsons on! The odds of that happening to me are near zero. Another omen. And right when it finished, the rain stopped, I put on my swanky new shoes and went exploring.

The area around my apartment (Chelsea) feels like the mission but much less sketchy. I walked a wide circle during which I noticed countless pizza places and quite a number of well-populated second floor exercise rooms while looking for a good place to eat. Despite being hungry (having not eaten all day), I was being picky: I wanted my first meal in NY to be something special.

I finally decided to eat at a Thai restaurant near the end of my loop only two blocks Manhattan distance from my apartment. (If you were an AI person, you'd find that funny. :) Actually most of the really promising restaurants I saw were close to my apartment! Yay!

This restaurant was a good choice. The decor was an attractive red-tint. Probably fifteen tables, some outside on the sidewalk. I sat just inside by the sidewalk and ordered Pannang Duck and a drink called a Mango Caress that was mostly mango and rum and quite tasty and pretty strong. The duck was tender and juicy, served beautifully on a stylish colorful crate-and-barrel-style plate, with pineapple and scallops on top. It was great! I didn't realize the restaurant had music until suddenly one song -Roxette's She's Got The Look- impinged on my consciousness. It's a catchy 80's song that isn't played that often and this instantly raised my view of the restaurant's style. I people-watched for a while, attempted to count the taxi to other vehicles ratio (about 3:1 on the street I was sitting at), then went home and posted this.

Sorry for the long post. Now is also the time to take bets about whether all my future blog posts will be restaurant reviews.