New York - Day Five

Wednesday, April 2nd

And so we come to my last day in New York, I'd seen so much and yet so little, and I know I will be back one day.

New York Philharmonic
Intrepid Air, Sea and Space Museum
Circle Line Cruise
The Lion King
Times Square

New York Philharmonic

I ventured out uptown to the Lincoln Center, walking past some of the buildings for the Julliard school (which I only know because of High School Musical, which is a little sad), and to the Avery Fisher Hall. On various mornings, the New York Philharmonic holds open rehearsals which naturally I was like "YES! I WANT TO GO TO THIS". So I did. It appears to be a Thing for locals-- there were several older residents with newspapers or books sitting with arguably one of the best musical accompaniments you can get to start their morning. If I lived there I'd probably do the same, really. There is no reserved seating or anything so you can just pick a seat and chill there while the Orchestra plays through a few pieces--which was great because I moved around to sit in a box at one point, got to pretend to be all pro. It is a working rehearsal so they stop every now and then to talk, and repeated a few sections.

The Avery Fisher Hall

Me being hipster/artistic.

Lincoln Center Courtyard

Inside the hall, from the back

The Orchestra

View from a box

The music was incredible. Even having played one myself/being involved in music I'm still astonished at what can be produced by pieces of wood, metal and string. It's amazing. Naturally I picked the side so I could watch the trombones,but all the artists were so into their music and I love watching the conductor as well because of their intensity! The only thing that perplexed me was... where did the piano come from/go? The second song featured a pianist so they brought out a piano for them to play (as you do), but I looked up at one point and the piano had magically appeared, nothing else seemed out of place. And then it disappeared while I was moving around, without a trace! I'm sure the explanation is something mundane like they just moved the chairs and wheeled it in and out, but I'd like to believe there was a trap door involved.

Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum

I heard the name, and I was like "YES! I WANT TO GO TO THIS!" (notice a theme here?) Travelling on my own was great, didn't have to convince anyone to go to things, got to plan it all myself, and when I got sick of something I could just leave. Not that travelling with others isn't great as well, alone was just really easy!

Me and the Intrepid

Lego Intrepid

Real Intrepid

Good to know.

Inside the anchor room

Casually pointed at New York

The Intrepid was an aircraft carrier that was decommissioned and going to be broken up into scrap metal before someone intervened and turned it into a museum-- so most of the ship is a museum, with planes on the top deck, information through the sailors quarters, even a Lego replica of itself. I liked the anchor room, with the giant chains and little pieces of art etched in all around by bored sailors. There is also a submarine in the complex (which unfortunately I didn't get to).

Aircraft on the flight deck

Oh and there is a space shuttle too. (I KNOW RIGHT?!) When NASA was decided what to do with all the old space shuttles, they ended up donating them to various museums around the US (possibly the world), and the Intrepid got the Enterprise. It was bigger than I thought it would be, I don't know how big I thought a space shuttle would be, but smaller than it was. The Enterprise was one of the very early shuttles, and it never actually made it into orbit, but did brush the outskirts of space a few times. The cool part is that they were originally going to name it something else, then Star Trek fans everywhere were like "wouldn't it be cool if they named it the Enterprise?" and everyone else was like "sure, why not?" and hence, the Enterprise.

Me and the Enterprise

Circle Line Cruise

Manhattan is in fact an island. Not a terribly big one, but it does take about three hours to go all the way around on a boat. I know this, because that is exactly what I did. It was nice to see the sights of the city from a different perspective, and I finally made it past the Statue of Liberty. I also had some really bad nachos. That was upsetting, but the view was nice.

Freedom Tower, built near the 9/11 Precinct,
1776 feet tall

Another "smaller than I thought"
statue I've encountered

It was a little windy.

Hello city!

Brooklyn Bridge and Manhattan

Me and the city

Possibly the best part of the cruise though was the tour guide. He had the best voice I've heard in a while, and it was delightful to listen to him, and if it would let me upload the video I have of him talking I would, but it's not so I can't. I'll keep trying.

You can get to Roosevelt Island by cable car.

Yankee Stadium

Rotating bridge

There isn't terribly much to see around the very uptown of Manhattan. I did get to see some of the Bronx and a glimpse of Queens, which was exciting but but I was kinda bored by the time we got back to the dock.

The Lion King

The show was fantastic. The costuming and staging was incredible-- rotating Pride Rock rising out of the floor? Sure. Elephant bones to go climbing over, why not? The stampede scene was particularly well done. It was a very different show than Book of Mormon (namely being for kids), and it was also very good. The Minskoff Theatre seemed much more pro than the Eugene O'Neill-- I had to smuggle in food (they checked bags but not jacket pockets :P), and there was a whole group of high school kids in prom gear, all dolled up to fight through.

The Minskoff Theatre

Me and Rafiki 

Anticipation building...

Times Square

After the show, I stayed in Times Square for a while, just watching people. I had a great view of the street from inside the theatre actually, and I stayed there until politely informed they were closing. There really is something magical about the city, it is hard to explain, but I really loved being in New York.

Times Square

So farewell, until we meet again, New York.

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New York - Day Four

Tuesday, April 1st

The United Nations
New York Public Library
Battery Park, Washington Square, The Cage and Macy's
(The view from the) Top of the Rock
Rockefeller Center

The United Nations

There are 193 members of the United Nations. I know this, because my tour guide mentioned it every five minutes for the whole tour. The compound is on the east side of Manhattan, overlooking the East River - such prime land generously donated by Rockefeller Jr (who we'll meet later tonight)- and I commenced my April Fools Day by trying to go in the staff entrance. Awkward. So I walked down past the road of flags to reach the visitors entrance, but alas the direction I was walking was Z-A so I never got to Australia's flag. I saw New Zealand's. Pretty close :D

(One of the) UN Building(s)

There are some really curious gifts from members around.

Nice view

Inside is nice, but it is a functioning, work environment after all. There are gifts of paintings and other artwork all around donated by various members, displays about work done by various UN bodies, a wall with framed and decorated articles of the Declaration on Human Rights (translated into more than 400 languages and dialects). They still have elevator-people to guide you to your floor/say good morning to/improve security. The Trade Council was just starting a meeting so we quietly walked through the back of the room, and the General Assembly is under reconstruction so we couldn't go there. But the Security Council chamber was empty and we were allowed to stop for photos-- the benefits of having only three people in your group!

The UN Security Council Chamber

New York Public Library

There are a few branches of the New York Library, I went to what I'm fairly sure is the flagship one. Fun fact - there are two stone lions guarding the library steps (and on the day I visited, there were also Greenpeace volunteers. We talked about whales for a while.) named Patience and Fortitude, after what the Mayor of New York at the time declared the people would need to get through the Depression. And the name stuck. Inside the building is gorgeous-- marble in the lobby and wood panelling everywhere. Maybe not as big as I would have expected, but with plenty of fun encyclopaedic titles around the walls and people 'busy' at 'work'. They also had an exhibition on the HIV awareness and de-stigmatisation  movement which was really interesting. 

New York Library

Good motto.

The main study room

Possibly the actual key to the city

Battery Park, Washington Square, the Cage and Macy's

So my plan after this had been to go and visit Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, so I took the subway downtown to Battery Park. But when I got there a combination of not wanting David's UN Letter Opener confiscated off me by security and the giant line meant that I decided not to visit. So I caught a different train uptown, and spontaneously got off at the station for New York University. I bought a shirt at their campus store and saw a few buildings -- it's more like UTS than Sydney, a collection of buildings sprinkled around the city as best they can. I saw I was near a park thing and wandered over there and found Washington Square, a delightful small area where locals (mostly college students) were enjoying their lunch break, playing chess, running, just hanging out. They also had a nice arch. In getting back to the subway I went past the West 4th Street Courts, a moderately famous streetball (basketball) location. Nicknamed the Cage and renowned for fostering hard, aggressive play, there were kids playing when I was there, but it was nice to watch for a little while.

I found my way to the giant Macy's. It takes up an entire block. And is eight floors high. Crazy. I wandered around inside for a while, rode the wooden escalators (not as big as the Wynyard ones) and ended up buying myself some black jeans on sale and a lovely (overpriced but gorgeous) swimsuit.

Washington Square Entry

Washington Arch

Washington Square

Battery Park

Macy's... one of the entrances

West Fourth St Courts

The Top of the Rock

After dropping my shopping home, I ventured back to the skyline of New York, to the Top of the Rock, the observation deck at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. They have a timed system-- you buy a ticket and it tells you when you can go up (since I was New York Pass-ing it, I got to go up straight away). I timed it perfectly as the sun was starting to set (though I will admit to cheating a little with the sunset setting on my camera)... and well, enjoy! Tip for when you go: when you exit the elevator, you can go two more floors up via escalator and then stairs. Don't waste your time on the first floor with its limited glass decks, go straight up (it's included in the normal price) to the full observation deck on the 70th floor. By day (and well, by night as well I guess), the building is the GE Money building, and also houses several other businesses. The show '30 Rock' is set there (kind of. It's a parody of the people who work there.)

Looking north/uptown: Central Park

Views of the city. It almost looks like Lego, hey.

I spent a lot of time in this windowsill. Just sitting, watching.

Concrete jungle where dreams are made...

Looking down on my (future) dominion.

^Let the sweet sound of my commentary complement your view of the city...

The Rockefeller Center

John D. Rockefeller made a fortune in oil. Under monopoly/anti-trust laws they had to break his Standard Oil company up into separate entities (but since he retained ownership of a lot of shares meant he became even richer), and in today's terms it is estimated that at the peak, his empire was worth $318.8 billion. (For comparison, Bill Gates had about $101 billion). Rockefeller seems like a cool guy, gave a lot of his wealth to charity as well. His son, John D. Rockefeller Jr went into business and construction and among other things built the Rockefeller Center, which started off as 14 art deco commercial buildings, and then five modern towers were later built. It was actually meant to be an opera house, but then the Depression happened and people lost their disposable income. The buildings became part of the Allied operations centre during WWII, and is now predominantly a commercial sector. There is a huge underground shopping concourse connecting everything too. 

Inside the building

Magnolia Bakery

NBC Studios

I went on an art and architecture tour around the complex and it was really fun! Junior's wife was put in charge of decoration and decided to commission heaps of art that could be enjoyed by the whole public. It's pretty cool. I'm informed the bakery has Sex and the City fame? I didn't go on the tour through the whole NBC studios, but we did go past the fishbowl studio where they film the equivalent of Sunrise.

Site of the Christmas Tree

The real statue...

The Lego version

Do you remember how I mentioned that Junior donated the land for the UN? Philanthropic and all but it also stopped his competitors building a similar complex out that way. Either way, there are national flags all around the Rockefeller Plaza, which featured an ice rink while I was there.

Buildings of the Rockefeller Center

Rockefeller Plaza

An escalator to nowhere inside a lobby... 

30 Rock

Atlas

This view is heritage protected--
one of the few unobstructed views
of a full skyscraper in New York.

The roof inside the lobby of 30 Rock is cool-- it represents a transition from past to present and depending on where you stand, it looks as if the guy (literally) shouldering the burden is unequally reliant on one or the other.

I returned back to my hostel to find an amateur comedy night in progress-- it wasn't terribly great but I think they have a good gig-- an audience who doesn't really care and you're never going to see again to try out new jokes on. Nice to wind down to.


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