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I've not so many friends that I can grow confused about the number and forget the very best
Rabbit, rabbit, belatedly. I am on a train back from New York City, the traditional latest Amtrak we didn't have to catch this time by the grace of St. Christopher in the guise of a cabbie. We made sure to come back from 1964 in plenty of time.
The Strand treated us well on Friday. I am now in possession of Jane Gardam's Last Friends (2013), which I would have bought on the way down if the book kiosk in South Station hadn't been ejected in favor of a bar that turned out not to fit; Derek Jarman's At Your Own Risk: A Saint's Testament (1993), because it was that or Kicking the Pricks (1987) and I've seen that one in used book stores before; and the complete playscript of the RSC's The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1980), which was the best luck of the evening. I had found earlier, in the drama section, Parts One and Two as separate scripts. I knew I owned one of them. I couldn't remember which. I knew whichever one I put back would be the wrong one and buying both of them to be sure would be stupid, so I left them both discouragedly, with a faint sense that I should have a better mental inventory of my books, and went to look for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
derspatchel in the stacks. As we passed the film and television section for the last time, I noticed the carrel I had only checked one side of: I spun it around for the sake of one last look and there was a book on early variety television for Rob and the hardcover first edition of Nicholas Nickleby, thank you, Thalia, for me. I've been alternating the first and third since—I'm saving the Jarman until I can watch one of his movies afterward.
We also had dinner at Steak Frites and I have been so lucky ordering mussels recently, I am going to step away from the Muses and offer to Neptune for a moment here. I've gone back twice now for the ones at Cambridge Brewing Co., which are on the menu under "BLT": bacon, leeks, tomatoes, with a whole-grain mustard in the stew. The ones at M3 came as part of a fisherman's plate with shrimp and crayfish and cornbread to sop up the shellfish juices, which I did. At Magoun's Saloon on Wednesday as part of their last week of Baconpalooza, they were served in crème fraîche with chorizo. Friday was moules frites Provençal, a stunning and entirely vanished amount (three plates' worth of shells—I've never had waitstaff keep taking them away before) with a fennel and tomato broth so sweet and savory, I finished it like a chowder. Profiteroles for dessert, because I never see those outside of Legal Sea Foods. I don't know that drinking a French 75 was much like being in the trenches, but I admit I wasn't around to compare notes with its inventor in 1915. I wish we'd discovered that our room at the Jane had air conditioning before it was three in the morning, but at least we finally figured it out. Around four o'clock the room cooled enough for sleep and we did, hard.
Probably for this reason, neither of us woke on Saturday before noon-thirty. There was a brief, aborted scramble to find a pharmacy in Manhattan that stayed open later than three o'clock—nothing fatal, everyone's fine—and then we pinged a pair of Rob's friends and headed out to Coney Island, where we had tried to go last April. It was bright cold then, and closed, and we walked up and down the boardwalk in the sharp wind-beaten sunlight and promised the Cyclone we would come back when it was warm. Yesterday it was warm to broiling point and the beach was crowded as a Weegee photo and the first thing we did was ride the B&B Carousell, because last year we thought it was never coming back. The painted wooden horses are beautifully restored, the mirrors flash and the calliope is the original with a player piano's thumping automatic drum. Everyone else refueled at the newly renovated Nathan's Famous (I bought a small paper bag of bull's-eyes and Atomic Fireballs from a no-name candy store down the block) and then Rob and I finally, for the first time together, rode the Cyclone. It's not a smooth ride. It's a wooden coaster and it needs to be retracked and there's new wood down at the bottom of the structure where Sandy brought the sea in, but the cars still stretch out and slam together as gravity pleases and the steeply banked turns remind you that there are seven separable bones in the human neck and I do not care, I loved it. I loved the Wonder Wheel, too—swinging you out above the sunset and the slow wind-down of a day by the sea—and Spook-a-Rama, which was just a rather magnificent warehouse of freaky animatronic stuff that pops out at you from dusty, dimly lit walls, but neither of them engendered in me the same instant fondness as an eighty-six-year-old coaster with no re-ride option and a mule-kicking judderiness I didn't expect. I'd have liked to ride the Soarin' Eagle in Luna Park, but it was closed for some kind of repairs—there were ladders on the brake runs and people standing around on the platform gesturing at each other—and then it became evident I needed to eat something or I'd start to prey on passers-by. The half of our party who were local offered to serve as restaurant guides, being less ravenous and better versed in navigating Brooklyn. We took the F train to Park Slope, started walking down 5th Avenue and I don't know where we ended up for dinner because it was a sports bar with more screens than I have ever seen in one room and somewhere between the main course and dessert the migraine hit; I left the restaurant with my eyes closed. [edit: Rob remembered that the name started with "200," and indeed it appears to be 200 Fifth. Advertising over a hundred televisions. That's it all right.] A bison burger with Swiss and mushrooms is not a bad thing to eat, but I think next time I am in Brooklyn and I want a lot of meat on a bun, I will brave the forty-five-minute wait at Bareburger, because it looked amazing, also served milkshakes, and was notably lacking in flatscreen TVs. Unfortunately, was also spilling its wait time out the doors, ditto Rose Water, but that's what return visits are for. And not getting migraines.
And this afternoon we went to the World's Fair. All right, technically we took the 7 to Flushing Meadows, but since we were there to see the Panorama, the Unisphere, the Observation Towers, and the Gemini Titan and Mercury Atlas rockets outside the Hall of Science, I don't much see the difference, give or take seventy-four to forty-nine years. The boardwalk is still there, the mosaics and the fountains and the modernist sculptures, some space-race all-in-one, some semi-successfully mythic. We were fool's lucky with the Queens Museum of Art: this was their last day open until October. (They'll be commemorating both World's Fairs in 2014. Go on, guess what we're doing next year.) Looking at the Panorama, I remember saying that it was the most comprehensive act of sympathetic magic I'd ever seen and like the best part of an airplane takeoff; on hearing that it is constantly updated to reflect the changing city, but that the museum chose to leave the Twin Towers in place, I said it was like Diane Duane's Timeheart. Much of the museum was already closed off for renovations, but their collections of World's Fair memorabilia were still in display cases on the second floor and the relief map of the New York City Water Supply System was a lovely surprise on the first. And when I asked the woman at the gift shop if there was a water fountain anywhere in the museum (because I needed to pour out the bottle of lemonade I'd bought and refill it with something I could drink: it turns out stevia tastes awful to me), I did not expect her to lead me up the employee stairs—blue-and-red-tiled, I don't know from what decade—behind a key-carded door and into an office kitchen, passing a wall of lithographs, a pietà, and a scale model of the New York City Building from the '39 World's Fair on our way. I tried not to linger and stare. This sort of thing happens to me occasionally in museums, but I try never to rely on it. I thanked her profusely and we went outside into the billowing cloud-blue afternoon and wandered around the outside of things, because we clearly weren't going to have that good fortune again. I took a bunch of pictures on Rob's phone and may even post some once I get home and the internet moves faster than Amtrak Regional free-speed. It was very hot and neither of us drank enough and I feel like deer might lick me for nutrition if I don't shower soon. It was a wonderful timeslip afternoon.
And because we had slightly scarifying memories of praying to Hermes not to miss our train the last time, we left ourselves more returning time than seemed strictly necessary and therefore arrived on perfect schedule to pick up our bags from the Jane and steel ourselves for the concrete rat warren of Penn Station. I had realized on the way out of Corona Park that I desperately wanted a salad, so between the hotel and 14th Street we stopped at a vegetarian café with the slightly hopelessly hipster name of 'sNice and I got an extremely tasty tempeh wrap with mixed greens and chipotle dressing, of which I ate half on the train before Rob realized he was also starving and ate the other half. It was kind of adorable, honestly. Both of the kids behind the counter were in bands. One of them had started her band to fill a name vacancy and the other had once made up a second-stringer (Facebook page and all) in order to get a booking. They appreciated my Tenmen T-shirt. Also sold us Boylan's ginger ale. I would actually buy sandwiches from them again.
[We'd had lunch at Peanut Butter & Co., which was worth walking to Washington Square in the wilting heat. Rob had the Elvis with bacon, I had their PB&J of the week: white chocolate peanut butter with marshmallow fluff and strawberry jam. Chocolate malted rice milk turns out to taste like a sort of comfort soda rice pudding. It was a good food day.]
And because the conductor called for Back Bay as I was finishing the previous paragraph, we are in fact home by now, opening windows against the heat and listening to Abbie jingle around inconveniently at shin-level, which is one of the things he does best. I am going to download photos and answer e-mail and shower.
I am quite happy.
The Strand treated us well on Friday. I am now in possession of Jane Gardam's Last Friends (2013), which I would have bought on the way down if the book kiosk in South Station hadn't been ejected in favor of a bar that turned out not to fit; Derek Jarman's At Your Own Risk: A Saint's Testament (1993), because it was that or Kicking the Pricks (1987) and I've seen that one in used book stores before; and the complete playscript of the RSC's The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1980), which was the best luck of the evening. I had found earlier, in the drama section, Parts One and Two as separate scripts. I knew I owned one of them. I couldn't remember which. I knew whichever one I put back would be the wrong one and buying both of them to be sure would be stupid, so I left them both discouragedly, with a faint sense that I should have a better mental inventory of my books, and went to look for
derspatchel in the stacks. As we passed the film and television section for the last time, I noticed the carrel I had only checked one side of: I spun it around for the sake of one last look and there was a book on early variety television for Rob and the hardcover first edition of Nicholas Nickleby, thank you, Thalia, for me. I've been alternating the first and third since—I'm saving the Jarman until I can watch one of his movies afterward.We also had dinner at Steak Frites and I have been so lucky ordering mussels recently, I am going to step away from the Muses and offer to Neptune for a moment here. I've gone back twice now for the ones at Cambridge Brewing Co., which are on the menu under "BLT": bacon, leeks, tomatoes, with a whole-grain mustard in the stew. The ones at M3 came as part of a fisherman's plate with shrimp and crayfish and cornbread to sop up the shellfish juices, which I did. At Magoun's Saloon on Wednesday as part of their last week of Baconpalooza, they were served in crème fraîche with chorizo. Friday was moules frites Provençal, a stunning and entirely vanished amount (three plates' worth of shells—I've never had waitstaff keep taking them away before) with a fennel and tomato broth so sweet and savory, I finished it like a chowder. Profiteroles for dessert, because I never see those outside of Legal Sea Foods. I don't know that drinking a French 75 was much like being in the trenches, but I admit I wasn't around to compare notes with its inventor in 1915. I wish we'd discovered that our room at the Jane had air conditioning before it was three in the morning, but at least we finally figured it out. Around four o'clock the room cooled enough for sleep and we did, hard.
Probably for this reason, neither of us woke on Saturday before noon-thirty. There was a brief, aborted scramble to find a pharmacy in Manhattan that stayed open later than three o'clock—nothing fatal, everyone's fine—and then we pinged a pair of Rob's friends and headed out to Coney Island, where we had tried to go last April. It was bright cold then, and closed, and we walked up and down the boardwalk in the sharp wind-beaten sunlight and promised the Cyclone we would come back when it was warm. Yesterday it was warm to broiling point and the beach was crowded as a Weegee photo and the first thing we did was ride the B&B Carousell, because last year we thought it was never coming back. The painted wooden horses are beautifully restored, the mirrors flash and the calliope is the original with a player piano's thumping automatic drum. Everyone else refueled at the newly renovated Nathan's Famous (I bought a small paper bag of bull's-eyes and Atomic Fireballs from a no-name candy store down the block) and then Rob and I finally, for the first time together, rode the Cyclone. It's not a smooth ride. It's a wooden coaster and it needs to be retracked and there's new wood down at the bottom of the structure where Sandy brought the sea in, but the cars still stretch out and slam together as gravity pleases and the steeply banked turns remind you that there are seven separable bones in the human neck and I do not care, I loved it. I loved the Wonder Wheel, too—swinging you out above the sunset and the slow wind-down of a day by the sea—and Spook-a-Rama, which was just a rather magnificent warehouse of freaky animatronic stuff that pops out at you from dusty, dimly lit walls, but neither of them engendered in me the same instant fondness as an eighty-six-year-old coaster with no re-ride option and a mule-kicking judderiness I didn't expect. I'd have liked to ride the Soarin' Eagle in Luna Park, but it was closed for some kind of repairs—there were ladders on the brake runs and people standing around on the platform gesturing at each other—and then it became evident I needed to eat something or I'd start to prey on passers-by. The half of our party who were local offered to serve as restaurant guides, being less ravenous and better versed in navigating Brooklyn. We took the F train to Park Slope, started walking down 5th Avenue and I don't know where we ended up for dinner because it was a sports bar with more screens than I have ever seen in one room and somewhere between the main course and dessert the migraine hit; I left the restaurant with my eyes closed. [edit: Rob remembered that the name started with "200," and indeed it appears to be 200 Fifth. Advertising over a hundred televisions. That's it all right.] A bison burger with Swiss and mushrooms is not a bad thing to eat, but I think next time I am in Brooklyn and I want a lot of meat on a bun, I will brave the forty-five-minute wait at Bareburger, because it looked amazing, also served milkshakes, and was notably lacking in flatscreen TVs. Unfortunately, was also spilling its wait time out the doors, ditto Rose Water, but that's what return visits are for. And not getting migraines.
And this afternoon we went to the World's Fair. All right, technically we took the 7 to Flushing Meadows, but since we were there to see the Panorama, the Unisphere, the Observation Towers, and the Gemini Titan and Mercury Atlas rockets outside the Hall of Science, I don't much see the difference, give or take seventy-four to forty-nine years. The boardwalk is still there, the mosaics and the fountains and the modernist sculptures, some space-race all-in-one, some semi-successfully mythic. We were fool's lucky with the Queens Museum of Art: this was their last day open until October. (They'll be commemorating both World's Fairs in 2014. Go on, guess what we're doing next year.) Looking at the Panorama, I remember saying that it was the most comprehensive act of sympathetic magic I'd ever seen and like the best part of an airplane takeoff; on hearing that it is constantly updated to reflect the changing city, but that the museum chose to leave the Twin Towers in place, I said it was like Diane Duane's Timeheart. Much of the museum was already closed off for renovations, but their collections of World's Fair memorabilia were still in display cases on the second floor and the relief map of the New York City Water Supply System was a lovely surprise on the first. And when I asked the woman at the gift shop if there was a water fountain anywhere in the museum (because I needed to pour out the bottle of lemonade I'd bought and refill it with something I could drink: it turns out stevia tastes awful to me), I did not expect her to lead me up the employee stairs—blue-and-red-tiled, I don't know from what decade—behind a key-carded door and into an office kitchen, passing a wall of lithographs, a pietà, and a scale model of the New York City Building from the '39 World's Fair on our way. I tried not to linger and stare. This sort of thing happens to me occasionally in museums, but I try never to rely on it. I thanked her profusely and we went outside into the billowing cloud-blue afternoon and wandered around the outside of things, because we clearly weren't going to have that good fortune again. I took a bunch of pictures on Rob's phone and may even post some once I get home and the internet moves faster than Amtrak Regional free-speed. It was very hot and neither of us drank enough and I feel like deer might lick me for nutrition if I don't shower soon. It was a wonderful timeslip afternoon.
And because we had slightly scarifying memories of praying to Hermes not to miss our train the last time, we left ourselves more returning time than seemed strictly necessary and therefore arrived on perfect schedule to pick up our bags from the Jane and steel ourselves for the concrete rat warren of Penn Station. I had realized on the way out of Corona Park that I desperately wanted a salad, so between the hotel and 14th Street we stopped at a vegetarian café with the slightly hopelessly hipster name of 'sNice and I got an extremely tasty tempeh wrap with mixed greens and chipotle dressing, of which I ate half on the train before Rob realized he was also starving and ate the other half. It was kind of adorable, honestly. Both of the kids behind the counter were in bands. One of them had started her band to fill a name vacancy and the other had once made up a second-stringer (Facebook page and all) in order to get a booking. They appreciated my Tenmen T-shirt. Also sold us Boylan's ginger ale. I would actually buy sandwiches from them again.
[We'd had lunch at Peanut Butter & Co., which was worth walking to Washington Square in the wilting heat. Rob had the Elvis with bacon, I had their PB&J of the week: white chocolate peanut butter with marshmallow fluff and strawberry jam. Chocolate malted rice milk turns out to taste like a sort of comfort soda rice pudding. It was a good food day.]
And because the conductor called for Back Bay as I was finishing the previous paragraph, we are in fact home by now, opening windows against the heat and listening to Abbie jingle around inconveniently at shin-level, which is one of the things he does best. I am going to download photos and answer e-mail and shower.
I am quite happy.
no subject
Cool! I can recommend their smoked tempeh wrap.
Your weekend sounds delightful, and I am glad that your migraine was not able to take that away.
Thank you. I don't think I'll even remember the migraine when I look back on the story, except as a reminder that we will never eat anywhere with that many screens again. The weekend was great.