Go Metro

Saturday was a bit more relaxed. We had only one plan – to go to the Met, so we hung out at the apartment, talked philosophy over home-made spaghetti with meatballs and played frisbee in Astoria Park until early afternoon.

Here is a descriptive photo of a friendly warning posted on a neighbor’s house. The blurry enlargement is of an illustration of a pit bull gnawing on a bloody human arm. How cute!

Here is a shot taken in Astoria Park from under the Triborough Bridge looking out at the East River and the Hell Gate Bridge.

Afterwards we headed back to the apartment for the spaghetti lunch and then took the R into Manhattan once again. The first gallery we visited at the Met was the American Wing. To my surprise after only a few minutes I came upon a painting very familiar. This painting has been hanging in my parents’ living room for many years. I always thought it had been an original (never bothered to go up and feel it) that my mother had found or bought at an antiques store. Personally I never liked it because it always looked like there should be a house in the middle. After learning that it is nearly a century old and the subject matter is Eastern Oregon I’m even more befuddled. I tried to sneak a call to my mother as I stood in front of it only to find out that my cell phone was dead even though I’d charged it the night before. This was a common problem and Aaron explained it was due to the fact that I wasn’t on my usual network – so my phone had to constantly search for the signal – thus wasting lots of battery power. Maybe when pops reads this he can shed some light on how a print of a Childe Hassam painting displayed in the Met made it into his living room.

Aaron and I had an in depth conversation about our lives and our parents that left me feeling a little shaken. He has a year membership to the Met so he didn’t want to walk through any longer after the first ninety minutes. I wanted to see as much as possible so we agreed to split up and meet again at his apartment. I planned to stay until the museum closed at 9, but after another hour of walking through the galleries I was having a hard time finding new pieces.

I left the Met and crossed Central Park to the western side of the park to see if the Natural History Museum had anything to offer. On the way I stopped at the Belvadere Castle and the Great Lawn

It was closed, so I kept on walking along Central Park West until I came to a building that looked familiar. I couldn’t place it at first – but then I looked up at the top and realized it was the infamous “built by Ivo Shandor and held rooftop rituals in the 20s” building from Ghostbusters. Turns out it was built in 1929 by Schwartz and Gross.

I continued down Central Park West to Columbus Circle.

A handsome cab stopped for a breather right in my path after pulling through central park.

Knowing this was likely my last day in Manhattan I took a stroll down to Central Park Station again instead of getting on the subway at Columbus Circle.

Here is my last view of Times Square as dusk overtakes New York.

After returning home Aaron made some home-made cheese pizza with pita bread and a toaster oven.

We then walked to a convenience store and bought fruit and ice cream for a treat to watch the pilot of X-Files on his computer. Apparently Aaron is going through the X-Files and STNG addiction that I had in college. Of course, I had to catch it all at random on Spike network – he is watching them on the internet.

On the way to the store I saw a great view of the Triborough Bridge that I wanted to capture on film. There was nothing to stabalize the camera for a long exposure though – so after the x-files I borrowed Aaron’s tripod and we ventured back out.

Some might say it is risking your life to hang out in a dark alleyway in Queens at 1am. All I found were some ghosts that looked like me.