All Saints' Day

So yesterday was a busy day. My feet are a mess - literally blisters on my blisters. I went into the city late in the morning and caught a subway downtown. My plan was to wander around downtown for a bit to look at some of the really old landmark buildings, do my phone interview in Battery Parkm, then catch a ferry or something to get some distance from Manhattan for some skyline shots then maybe walk by Ground Zero on the way back uptown. Not exactly what happened.

Of course the grid disintigates in the old part of town and I ended up walking closer to the river than I meant to and quite accidentlly found myself at Ground Zero (see my previous entry). I found myself gawking and it took me a lot longer to get around it than I planned. I barely made it to Battery Park for my interview.

The interview itself went well and all indications are that I will be moving to Toronto very soon. I'm not sure what I can say about that since I've been pretty much shoving the emotional ramifactions of that aside. Not to mention any though of what will happen to my pet projects like GothicBC. But hey, can't stay a club kid forever.

Anyway after the interview I did wander about downtown a bit and took a few pictures. Then I followed the promenade uptown along the river, which took me to the other side of Ground Zero. From there I wandered up through Tribeca and the Village, taking a few more pictures of interesting side-streets and things.

I took a break in a park at the cornter of W13th St. and 8th Ave. There I gave Elisabeth a ring to to see if she was interested in coming into the city or if I should just make my way to the Port Authority for a bus back to New Jersey. It turned out that her friend Michelle had free passes to a new cinema opening on 34th St..

I walked over to Michelle's. I was quite pleased with myself not only for knowing how to get where I was going without help (not that the grid is hard to figure out, and I was now uptown enough to be on the grid) but for recognising little things along the way. I walked past where we had breakfast last Sunday and the firehall I posted a picture of. It was fun to have such a familiar feeling in a place I've only been for a few days.

At Michelle's we chatted about my Ground Zero experience and the nature of New Yorkers. People here aren't nearly as freaked out or gung-ho about things as the rest of North America. Other people outside of here are shocked that something like this could happen in North America because they have felt safety in isolation, New Yorkers however always knew they were part of the world, and a very important part at that.

On the way to the Cinema Michelle gave me a quick tour of Macy's. It's fun getting shown around my Michelle. She is a New Yorker through and through and so dearly loves her city.

Elisabeth met us at the cinema. It was a new cinema and it was a promotion where they were showing old movies for free. The queue for the cinema was not surprisingly enourmous and event though we were "on line" (people don't say "in line" or "in the queue" here) not long after six o'clock the earliest movie we could get in to was a 9:50 showing of "The Matrix". Once we had our tickets we had time to kill so we went for dinner.

We went to a Chinese restaurant kitty-corner from Madison Square Gardens. THe food was pretty good and by New York standards not to expensive. But the place made me homesick. The waiter's accent (which Elisabeth couldn't undersand - lol) made me pine for Vancouver. Funny what can trip a bout of homesickness.

The movie actually kind of sucked. It was fun to see the Matrix on a big screen again, but the print sucked, the sound was spotty, the cinema was way too hot, and they were having some kind of problem with the house light. Of course I'm sure that was the point of the whole free moving thing, to work out the kniks with the new cinema. And I have to admit I liked the building. It was a mulitplex in a small skyscraper. The screen we saw the Matrix on was on the 4th level of the cinema, about 10 regular stories up. Around the walls in the lobbies they had quotes from various movies and I was thuroughly impressed to see "Nobody can eat fifty eggs" on the frieze!

Once the movie ended we literally had to run for the bus back to NJ, which sucked because of the blisters on my feet. Tonight I'm going to a party with Elisabeth and some people she works with so will be staying in Jersey today. Saturday will be my last night here and will entail some clubbing in the city. Then I fly back on Sunday. I can't wait to give Ivana a big hug. I miss her a lot.

The unretouched pictures from the day are here.

Oringinal post: http://mbarrick.livejournal.com/133003.html