Wednesday, April 25th, 2007

NY, day 2 and 3 report

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Our forays into New York continued with a visit to the World Trade Centre site on Monday. While it was weird to look up and try to imagine the twin towers in an expanse of what is now blue sky, the entire site is blocked by a huge fence (and the site itself is essentially a construction yard), so it didn’t have the gut-level impact that I got when I stood at the Hiroshima bomb site a few years ago (note the much chunkier Freyburg in the photo.) From there we hit the financial district, saw the New York Stock Exchange, took the Staten Island Ferry (which offers great views of Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty), wandered through Chinatown’s Canal St. (meh..), and ended up our day at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, an unfortunately named but otherwise great jazz club in Lincoln Center. The show at Dizzy’s, which overlooks Central Park, was one of the big highlights of the trip. Monday is the day Julliard students play (and cover is half-price), but these kids were insanely talented, and Mel and I were blown away by the music, the food and the view. Much thanks to Killahmullet for recommending this fine establishment.

Tuesday we took things fairly slow, with a wander into Brooklyn’s hipster mecca, Williamsburg. Since we were there around noon, all the trust-fund cool kids were probably still in bed sleeping things off, so the place was actually fairly quiet and relaxed. I also noticed the mean age of everyone on the streets dipped about ten years from Manhattan.

We headed back and stopped in at Union Square and Chelsea, before wandering back to the hotel. We were feeling pretty bagged, so we wound up our evening with a viewing of Blades of Glory at a cineplex on 42nd St. Will Ferrell can pretty much read off his grocery list and I’ll find it funny, so thumbs up.

Warren Frey is a journalist, freelance writer, podcaster, video producer, and all-around media consultant currently based in Vancouver, Canada. His written work has appeared in such publications as Metro Vancouver, the Westender, Mac | Life and the Japan Times.

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