The crossover between the art of Banksy and a citizenship test is neither obvious nor intentional, but resonates true when you cook the 2 up and eat them in a single meal. Through art, Banksy shows that man-made border demarkations are often flippant and counter-productive. Through real life, citizenship brings a new dynamic to our own home front. In the first case, refugees have no right nor any place that welcomes them. In the second, the road is a well-trodden, easy path to take.
But none of that is intentional. It just makes sense as I sit down to write this summary of a 2-day trip into NYC. On one hand, we’re cashing in a birthday present for myself, which is the Banksy show. The following day, D has her citizenship test. The opposing sides of the same coin bear some remark. Well, there’s the remark. We can move on now.
Before that, no narrative would be complete without a nod to the green-eared spaghetti monster that is Covid-19, fresh and alive in it’s 3rd year. On the way to the city, we swung by Zac’s dad’s house to give him a Covid test, and surprise, he was positive. Thus begins our illustrious foray into the Covid-laced holiday season.
Driving into NYC is a relatively painless experience in most instances, and today is 1 of those instances. We park under the Woolworth Building, downtown, in an Icon garage which only charges mildly rape-like prices. Some other garages approach $100 a day, which merely shows that some orgs have more money than they know what to do with. The city, as much as I love it, is a bit of an exercise in wealth presentation in a way.
We leave the garage and walk to the WTC area. I think it’s called the 9/11 Memorial now, though for us old-timers it’ll always be known as WTC in some respects. I’m not sure what the Path stop is called now but it used to be WTC.
Back when I worked at the NYSE I used to come through here every day, taking the PATH from Newark and ending here, then walking to the office. It went through a few iterations while I was going in, but it’s come a long, long way and looks pretty potent in the final installment. We didn’t go inside, but the last time I was here it was starting to shape up to be quite the little world in there.
From the 9-11 site we walk the 15 minutes to the hotel, which we’ll be for just 1 night. We go past the building that D will need to find tomorrow, and we hop into a market to grab a quick bite to eat, as we haven’t eaten lunch yet. The hotel is north of Canal, in the grey area that connects Chinatown & Little Italy. The place is decent enough.
In the room we eat our market sushi on the bed before taking a moment and head out for the next part of the day. The food is decent.
Walking from point to point in the city makes more sense these days, and the Banksy exhibit isn’t far enough to warrant consideration to take a subway. We head towards Midtown, passing through Washington Square Park on the way. This is a park I’ve been to years before, back when we used to come here in college. In one of the corner’s are the tables where people play chess.
There aren’t many open places to play outdoors like this anymore, as I understand it. Back in the day they say Bobby Fisher used to frequent the tables there. I’ve read that many have moved north to Union Square Park, but this does remain alive & well.
So, Banksy. Why are we here? For my 50th birthday our good friends Jason & Elizabeth gifted us a VIP trip to this exhibit. This was a fantastic present and I’m grateful for having such wonderful friends. We originally planned to go the weekend before, but the tour was cancelled and we decided to move it to Monday to wrap it up with the plans for tomorrow.
The Banksy exhibit posits the question: Is he an artist or a vandal? The obvious return question is, why can’t he be both? He’s clearly an artist that focuses on social commentary, but perhaps in a more obvious way and with somewhat interesting & public canvass choices. I’m reasonably sure he’s not a straight up vandal, and a lot of what he does in England seems to be to be tolerated by authorities. Here he would be hung by his balls and set on fire by the Conservatives in the US.
His work is interesting, though we watched a webinar at home before we left, which made it much easier to digest & understand. After seeing his stuff all together like this, he might come off as a bit heavy-handed or repetitive but this is what a collection of ones work tend to be. When you see all of something you don’t necessarily get the context of the individual piece.
I enjoyed it. I enjoy this kind of art.
We were there 1.5+ hours, maybe a hair more. We walked back to the hotel to get a quick break and take our shoes to get a breather. The city at night is always lovely on some level, even if the lovely aspects present themselves in the form of RV-sized garbage heaps.
Dinner is on the other side of Chinatown, which we walk through at night. It’s a cool site, heading down Mott Street. This is some of my old Chinatown stomping grounds, by which I mean I liked to come down here in another life. Truth be told, it’s not that big and once you get a meal, the utility of the place is lacking. The stores are almost total junk, and do not resemble anything I used to see in Taiwan.
Still, it was cool to stroll through at night.
We have dinner at Hwa Yuan Szechuan, which I found through a Times review. It had been on the radar for some time and given our hotel location, this was about the perfect setup here. The place was somewhat sparse, then again it was a Monday night. We started with the sesame noodle dish, which was cold but 1 of the recommended things to have. It was quite tasty.
The next 2 dishes were pork, then beef. The pork was incredibly flavorful and had the fermented black beans I love but rarely have a chance to eat. The beef was, well it was less good. They pretty much made it with no spice and when the waitress came over to look, she was mildly concerned that there was no spice whatsoever on it. I added some hot oil which helped. I would skip this one.
I felt like they were going out of their way to be overly attendant. Kind of appeared they thought we were food critics or something. Given that we were 2 white people in a Chinatown restaurant, I might be inclined to see this at some level. But almost everyone eating there was non-Asian. Who knows.
The meal was solid. We wrapped up and walked back to the hotel and called it a night, after D did a bit more studying for her civics test tomorrow morning.
Tuesday Morning
The 2nd day starts at Think Coffee, which is a new-to-me chain in the city. Despite the fact I have spent 1000s of days in this city, I truly have not put a lot of time into learning where the good stuff is. I had previously given up on NYC as a place to get good coffee. Over the years I’ve been around the country and found countless places that roast & serve splendid coffee in many forms. None of them have been in NYC. Not until today.
Thankfully, someone finally got the memo.
In addition to the coffee, they had a decent selection of breakfast foods, which was the main point of coming here.
After breakfast we walk to the building where D has her appointment, but we’re early so we walk around a bit, seeing the Woolworth Building and the Brooklyn Bridge. After a big circle she goes in and I head to another Think Coffee location, just a few blocks away.
I spend a little time in the coffee shop having a coffee and sitting on my laptop. Before long I get the text that she passed and is on her way back. Shortly after we are on the street walking around, just spending some time before we head home.
We pass a Covid testing tent so we get in line and take a test. We would eventually learn we were negative, but not until 4 days had passed. This was pretty much the leading edge of the Omicron explosion.
We walk north and find a seasonal market at Union Square Park. We like these, but rarely buy anything because we have to carry it with us everywhere we go. You know, so we rarely pick up any couches in these markets.
But today we buy a print of the city, which will need to be stretched & framed. It’s also pretty easy to carry this time.
Lunch is shortly after at Taboonette, a Mediterranean place we randomly picked which was close to the park. The meal is very good and caps off the eating part of this trip.
From here, we walk back to the car, drive home, and pick up the sick kid for the start of Covid Quarantine Holiday Break, 2021.
Traveling Normandy 