Graffiti Hall of Fame and Intrepid Museum

After spending eight weeks in New York, I’m still blown away by how many great restaurants there are and how many great things there are to do and see. One thing I wanted to be sure to do this summer was to eat at a Tibetan restaurant in the City. Tibet is such a mystical place to me. Even though I’ve been to Nepal and Bhutan, which are both heavily influence by Tibetan culture and have a very ‘Tibetan’ feel to them, I still haven’t made it to the real Tibet. It would be unreasonable to expect to find something closer to ‘real’ Tibet in New York City than I did in the foothills of the Himalayas in Asia, but having a meal at ‘Tibetan Kitchen’ on Park Ave was still a lot of fun. Apparently Tibetan Kitchen is where the Dali Lama eats when he’s in New York (or at least that’s the claim that was made by a flyer on the door). The interior of the restaurant was covered in colorful Buddhist shrines and Tibetan paintings, and it instantly reminded me of my visit to Bhutan last year. The food was just okay… I had ‘tingmo’, which is a Tibetan bread roll, and some Tibetan curry with chicken. It came across to me as New York food at a New York price, but the ambiance was still great. I couldn’t help but be reminded of an incredible Tibetan restaurant I ate at in Nepal last year; and I even looked it up in my travel journal so I could recall the experience…

“I had an early dinner at a Tibetan restaurant in Thamel called “Old Tashi Deleg”. I ordered “Tingmo”, which is a Tibetan dish of a giant bowl of spicy curry with potatoes and pork, and three soft, steamed bread rolls on the side. There are some really great restaurants in Thamel. Dinner tonight was one of the best meals I've had weeks and it was as authentic as Tibetan food comes.”

Tuesday night I headed to Central Park after work to listen to the New York Philharmonic Orchestra perform their annual outdoor summer concert in the City. There’s no admission fee, so tens of thousands of New Yorkers come every year, and The Great Lawn at the park was packed with hoards of people. Giant speakers project the music across the park, and I quickly realized that this was very different than just an outdoor concert. Pretty much everyone was laughing and talking and enjoying the mood as the orchestra played, but it was still fun to be a part of it. A friend of mine who lives in New York described it well… “The Philharmonic concert in Central Park every summer is basically an excuse for everyone to come out and have a picnic.”

I love Broadway shows! This week I got a half-price ticket to ’39 Steps’, a play that spoofs iconic scenes from various Alfred Hitchcock movies to form a single full-length comedy/thriller. A particularly intriguing aspect of the show is that it features only four actors, and between them they play over 100 different characters. I wish I were more familiar with Alfred Hitchcock films so I could have recognized more of the spoofs, but there were a few scenes that were memorable even though I didn’t recognize them as famous. My favorite was a scene depicting the hero and a villain chasing each other across the top of a speeding train. The ‘train’ was really a collection of old trunks that the men jumped across; but between the sound effects, the lighting, and deliberate stumbling and flailing of the actors limbs, it was impossible not to imagine a speeding train.

Friday afternoon I left the World Financial Center with 30 other finance interns from American Express and went to ‘The Institute of Culinary Education’ in Midtown Manhattan. I still can’t believe that I get paid for this kind of stuff… for three hours Friday afternoon we partied away and stuffed ourselves with tasty hors d’oeuvres and a gourmet meal of filet mignon and salmon. The best part about it all was that we got to prepare and cook the food ourselves. The 30 of us rotated around at our own discretion between various stations and acted as chefs, with a few legitimate chefs to guide us as we worked. I helped mix ingredients for crab cakes, roll some Greek pastries, and fill wine glasses with a chocolatey mousse dessert.

Later Friday night I paid a visit to the Museum of Modern Art (more commonly known as the MOMA). I already knew that New York’s museums are world class, but I was still blown away by the quality of the Art in the MOMA. I imagined it would be something like the Tate Modern in London; very high-quality art, but mostly by contemporary artists, very few of whom are well-known. The bottom three floors of the MOMA are filled with rotating art exhibits that are very radical and often offensive (although I did spot a few less offensive pieces, including a photograph by a Utahan artist of a driveway in Bountiful). The top two floors blew me away. In only a few minutes I saw several renowned pieces by Pablo Picasso, ‘Starry Night’ by Vincent Van Gogh, Salvador Dali’s famous work “The Persistence of Memory”, several Andy Warhol pieces, works by Matisse, and paintings by many other wildly famous artists that I’m sure I would be much more familiar with if I knew more about art.

Saturday was yet another rush to pack in as much as possible during one of my few remaining weekends in New York City. I began the day by taking the Lexington Avenue Line up to 123rd Street, where I walked a few blocks to the ‘Graffiti Hall of Fame’. The place is a collection of murals covering the walls of a playground at a local junior high school, but the murals are clearly painted by professionals and are deserving of the ‘Hall of Fame’ designation. Most of the paintings are on the inside of the playground which was unfortunately locked, but from what I could tell, the best sections of the murals were reserved for the exterior walls of the playground, which are easily viewable by anyone walking down the sidewalk. I enjoyed observing the various styles and characters depicted in the graffiti. The artwork clearly wasn’t about tagging or gangs or vandalism, it was art for art’s sake, but in a style that is easily identified as graffiti.

Next up was the ‘Intrepid Museum’, a gigantic aircraft carrier that sits in the Hudson River at a pier on 46th Street. I couldn’t even begin to list all the amazing things I saw in just two hours at the Intrepid. I thought that I was just getting a tour of a big ship used during the cold war, but it turned out to be a whole lot more than that. During my visit at the Intrepid I toured a nuclear submarine from the Cold War, an authentic Concorde passenger jet used by British Airways (which flew between London and New York in about three hours), an SR-71 Blackbird spy jet, several US Navy fighter jets, and, of course, the interior of the Intrepid itself. One of my favorite parts of the visit was climbing up to the tower of the carrier from which the captain would guide the ship. As I looked out I saw the entire flight deck down below, and a former seaman from the Intrepid told stories of Japanese kamikaze attacks on the carrier to visitors passing through the room.

Since coming to New York last November I’ve wanted to visit the Lower East Side Tenement Museum; a collection of tenements used by immigrants to New York in the early 1900’s. I followed a group of twelve other visitors to one of the tenements and listened as a guide described the building to us and what life was like for immigrants who lived in the neighborhood. The building itself was broken-down and dilapidated – deliberately left in the state it was found by the Tenement Museum when the acquired it in the 1980’s. We toured an apartment that was barely larger than my bedroom back home, and housed 13 people when it was in use. Our guide described many aspects of the lifestyle to us, but one of them was especially graphic and stuck with me. Many of the immigrants during the early 1900’s were malnourished and could not provide natural milk for their newborn babies. Buying cow’s milk was possible, but those who drank it faced incredible health risks. The milk was carried through Manhattan unrefrigerated – first through the wealthier neighborhoods on the Upper East Side, then through the Lower East Side several days later. To mask the stench and putridity of the rotting milk, vendors mixed ammonia and chalk into it. Between the bacteria, chemicals, and other unnatural additions to the milk, it’s likely that more babies were killed because of it than if they had gone hungry.

Later Saturday night I headed to a wedding reception in Central Park with John Calder. John happened to bump into some mutual relatives of ours in the city and was invited to the reception. The bride, Kim Calder, is a second cousin of ours, and we spent an hour or so catching up with extended family members who were there. I happened to see a few other friends there as well, including Sam Skidmore, a friend of mine from BYU who I used to go snowboarding with at The Canyons.

I finished off the week Sunday afternoon by wandering down to Washington Square Park near NYU. Originally I wanted to go there because it’s a prominently featured spot in the movie ‘I Am Legend’, but it turned out to be a fun place for entirely different reasons. The park is filled with talented performers on Sunday afternoons. From break-dancers to a string quartet, the park was packed with circles of people watching various music and dancing acts. The most memorable for me was a performer I had seen before near Times Square – a man banging catchy rhythms on metal pans, plastic buckets, and random kitchen utensils.

Boston

Traveling to exciting East Coast destinations like Philadelphia and Washington DC has been a nice benefit of living in New York for a summer, but I felt lucky this week to also visit family as part of my summer.

As always, I tried to pack the week full of activities in New York before heading away for the weekend. Monday night I took the ‘N’ train to Greenwich Village to spend a few hours at Café Wha; widely recognized as one of the best small live music venues in New York, and famous for being the place where Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan started their careers. ‘Brazooka’ was the name of the band that played, and its six members treated the small audience to wild, Brazilian-style music and dancing that was something between salsa and reggae, but much more energetic.

I’m learning to appreciate all kinds of different Broadway shows. Watching three witty women star in ‘9 to 5’ last week made me feel less than manly, and this week I pretended I was fifteen years younger and bought a ticket to ‘Shrek the Musical’. The great thing about Shrek was that the show really transported the audience to a different world. Walking into the theatre felt like walking into a fairy tale, and the tale was brought to life by phenomenal props and costumes on stage. I particularly enjoyed the nasally-voiced Pinocchio with a nose that actually grew by several inches, the three fat pigs complete with bewildered expressions and classic pink costumes, the emotions of Shrek’s wily and impulsive donkey, and the giant electrical magic mirror that the arrogant king used to locate his fair maiden. I can only imagine what surprises I’ll find at ‘The Lion King’ when I see it a few weeks from now.

Wednesday night I discovered one of the best cheap Thai restaurants in New York, called “Pam’s Real Thai”. The tasty Pad Thai noodles and sweet but spicy Panang Curry was enough to convince me to head back for more before the summer is over.

I love going to Boston. Of course the historical sites are nice, but it feels like a rare luxury these days to be able to spend a weekend with family. A four hour bus ride Thursday night was a small price to pay to spend the weekend with Camille and Steve and their kids in Sudbury, Massachusetts.

The weekend was packed with unique and interesting activities. Friday morning I visited the Minute Man National Park with Camille and the kids. The visitors center had a great video presentation detailing the beginning of the Revolutionary War, including an account of the first shots fired in Lexington, the ‘Shot Heard Round the World’ in Concord, and the bloody battle that followed as American colonists chased the British troops back to Boston. After watching the movie I headed for a bike ride down the Minute Man trail with Jono, Emilie, and Annelise. It was incredible to me to pass a couple giant headstones that read, ‘Near here lies a British soldier’. Even more incredible, perhaps, was that some tourist had placed a Union Jack and small memorial at the base of the headstones to honor the British soldiers that served their king so faithfully. After passing a 17th century house made famous by a colonist who sympathetically treated the British soldiers wounds, we arrived at a tavern near Concord. I was impressed to watch a lady dressed in colonial clothing fire a musket twice as part of a demonstration. Camille’s kids were not quite as impressed… “They fire muskets all the time around here”, Emilie told me.

Back in Lexington the group of us toured the Buckman Tavern, which is known as the ‘headquarters’ of the colonial militia prior to the provoking attack by British troops (although my impression from the tour guide was that the militia just happened to be drinking at the tavern beforehand – hence the building was their headquarters). I was fascinated to walk through the cramped, dark rooms of the home (one of which was open to visitors for drinking and socializing), and I tried to imagine what life would have been like there during the late 18th century. While chatting with the tour guide I learned that colonists in Massachusetts were generally more educated than those in other states because they were so dedicated to religion. By studying the Bible the colonists learned to read, and thus were more educated and able to stay informed about politics and current events. That likely was the reason why Massachusetts was the first place where colonists voiced opposition to the British and began the Revolutionary War. Sophia also asked an interesting question of the tour guide, “How old are the plastic logs in the fireplace?”

Before heading back to Sudbury we stopped at Kimball Farms for some classic homestyle ice cream. Camille warned me that the portions were enormous and sure enough, my ‘Kiddie Size’ cup had at least two pints of ice cream in it. I enjoyed the ‘Heath Bar’ and ‘Chocolate Raspberry Swirl’ flavors, and Ezra happily licked ice cream off his fingers as I snapped a few pictures.

Friday night Steve joined us and we all drove up to Rockport, Massachusetts to hang out and enjoy the scenery. With all its restaurants and art galleries the place reminded me of Park City, Utah, but with a colonial fishing village twist. The most famous sight in the town is easily “Motif Number 1”, a red fishing shack originally built in the 1840’s that is now one of the most often-painted buildings in America.

After a lazy Saturday morning Camille and the family and I headed to Boston to see the long-awaited “Tall Ships Festival”. Giant colonial-era sailboats lined the piers of Boston, and hoards of visitors walked along the shoreline to admire the massive ships. The boats are in Boston as part of a giant race, during which they have already crossed the entire Atlantic Ocean. I amazed that sailing across the Atlantic Ocean is something people do for recreation these days… I’m sure it didn’t feel recreational for Christopher Columbus or for the many explorers who came after him.

Sunday was relaxing. It feels great to wake up to a bright, airy house filled with kids on a Sunday morning. I don’t think I’ve done that for twelve years or more. In classic Ebert tradition we all feasted on homemade crepes with Nutella and fruit filling (a tradition I definitely want to integrate into my own family someday). After church Steve drove me to a handful of Sudbury’s famous historical sites before dinner; including Longfellow’s Wayside Inn (the longest operating inn in America), the Wayside Inn Grist Mill with its giant red waterwheel, and the Redstone School, where Mary of ‘Mary had a Little Lamb’ brought her tiny sheep to class each day.

Touring the East Coast has been a blast and I’m glad I had the opportunity to do it. Spending time with Camille’s family was definitely the highlight of the weekend, and I look forward to getting together with family in Salt Lake only a few weeks from now.

Washington DC

Visiting Washington DC this past weekend has been a potent reminder to me. It was impossible not to be reminded of the great accomplishment that is American democracy, the stellar innovation and achievements of Americans over the past two-hundred-fifty years, and how fortunate I am to be part of a nation that is a worldwide role-model for freedom, opportunity, and self-government.

Taking the Bolt Bus down to DC Thursday night meant that I had to fit my weekly Broadway show in earlier in the week. Tuesday night I took the #2 train from the Financial District up to Times Square and searched around for a good deal on one of Broadway’s top musicals. I finally settled on a half-price ticket to ‘9 to 5’, a new musical written by Dolly Parton and based on the 1980 movie of the same name. I can’t say I’ve ever been a big Dolly Parton fan, and I was seriously hesitant to go to a musical written entirely by her, but I heard great things about it from a lot of different people, so I decided to take a chance.

‘9 to 5’ turned out to be a great surprise. Besides top-notch props and a well-executed plot, the show was well acted and was completely hilarious. The story follows three professional women in a stale, unproductive office who are dominated by an arrogant, perverted, chauvinistic male boss. After getting high on marijuana and fantasizing about killing the boss, the women actually hog-tie and kidnap the man, imprison him in his own home (tied from the ceiling by the garage door opener, no less), then take over the office and transform it into a progressive, ultra high-performing workplace. Several scenes of the show left the audience howling with laughter, including the part where an overly-serious, overweight woman in the office dreams of a spicy relationship with the arrogant boss, and the scene where the man is dangled from his bedroom ceiling by the garage door opener. My only reservation with ‘9 to 5’ was that every man depicted happened to be an egotistical, sexist slob with smut for brains, but other than that it was pretty entertaining.

I loved Washington DC. Thursday night the Bolt Bus dumped me off at 10th and H Street, and after spending the night at my friend Justin’s place I began my exploration of the nation’s capitol. One of my favorite things to do in big cities is to get a view of my surroundings from the highest point available. Friday morning I took an elevator to the top of the Washington Monument for a good look at the city from above. I was vaguely familiar with the layout of the city before coming this weekend, but I loved peeking out from the tiny windows 500 feet above the mall and snapping pictures of the iconic sights below. After seeing the Lincoln Memorial from a distance I was so excited to visit that I went directly there afterwards, passing the newly built World War 2 Memorial on the way. My walk back to the Smithsonian museums took me past the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. As I passed hundreds of people searching for names on the black granite wall, I wondered to myself how the events of the 20th century will be viewed at the end of my lifetime. Hopefully such long and painful conflicts as Vietnam and World War 2 will prove to be a thing of the past during the coming years. If not, I can only imagine what memorials might exist in DC should I come back in my seventies or eighties.

My weekend in DC turned out to be a reunion with several different friends. Staying with Justin and his wife was great, but I also happened to bump into a friend of mine from New York, a friend from the BYU MBA program, and a friend from my freshman dorm at BYU. Friday afternoon I met up with my friend Mike Johnson and went with he and his fiancée Sarah to a hamburger joint in Arlington called ‘Big Buns’ (earlier in the day Mike suggested that I ask for directions to ‘Big Buns’… I’m glad I didn’t have to do that). I normally wouldn’t spend time writing about a hamburger I ate, but this one was worth noting – the ‘Big Buns’ guys grilled my beef to perfection and topped it off with grilled peppers, red onions, black bean and mango salsa, grilled pineapple, and, of course, fresh hamburger buns. It was nice to chat with Mike and Sarah about their coming marriage and their future life in DC, with Mike working for a Washington law firm and Sarah for an international non-profit funded by the government.

Washington DC is known for museums that house the greatest achievements of the nation, and I packed as many museum-visits as I could into my weekend in the capitol. I loved the American History Museum for classic relics such as Andrew Jackson’s uniform used in the Battle of New Orleans, as well as newer relics like Mohammad Ali’s boxing gloves (the giant fiberglass elephant from Disney’s ‘Dumbo’ ride was also nice). The dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum were great, but I was blown away by its collection of gems that included the famous Hope Diamond. I’ve heard so much about the Holocaust Museum in DC and had to visit. The museum was very well presented, and it included actual uniforms worn by Jewish inmates at concentration camps, but as far as holocaust museums go, it’s hard to top the Yad Vashem museum in Jerusalem – Israel’s fantastic and somber documentation of the era.

I had to visit to the Spy Museum, where I saw innumerable spy artifacts (including many tiny hidden cameras and microphones) and learned of several famous spy stories. My favorite was one about William Sebold; an American of German descent. Sebold was persuaded to become a Nazi spy during a visit to Germany in the 1940’s. What the Nazi’s didn’t realize was that Sebold immediately informed the FBI of this ‘persuasion’, became a double-agent for the US, and facilitated the identification and arrest of 33 Nazi spies living in America.

Saturday afternoon a gigantic line wound around the National Archives building, housing the most treasured documents in America. It took me well over an hour to finally be standing in front of the original Declaration of Independence, but I enjoyed every second of my time spent observing it. What better way could there be to spend the 4th of July than by reading over the original text drafted by Thomas Jefferson and read by King George III? I can only imagine the incredible creative thought and ambition it must have taken to establish the world’s most progressive democracy, and to do it by standing up to the world’s greatest superpower at the time. It’s hard to even comprehend the tremendous risk assumed by each man who signed the infamous document. If there ever was a ‘David versus Goliath’ story in recent history, then that was it.

Finally, how could a trip to Washington DC be complete without a visit to the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum? One of my few memories of a trip to DC as an 8-year-old kid is of the absolute fascination I had with the Air & Space Museum. This time I spent nearly an hour in a giant exhibit dedicated to the Wright Brothers. Of course seeing the 1903 Flyer, the world’s first true airplane, was a must; but I also enjoyed reading about the Wright Brothers’ progress from merely experimenting with concepts of flight to creating, piloting, and marketing a fully functional airplane. It’s amazing to me that even on modern jet liners, elements of the Wright Brothers’ original design are still prominently in use. After visiting exhibits on the Apollo space program and observing modern, unmanned drone aircraft used by the military, I could hardly believe how far human flight has come in just 100 years.

I was sure to take a tour of the US Capitol during my visit to Washington. Unfortunately the House and Senate chambers are only open to visitors on weekdays, but did see the intricately decorated interior of the dome, as well as the many statues of state heroes sent to the capitol by the various states of the Union. Utah’s contribution, a marble carving of Brigham Young, sits in a small corner opposite a former governor of Kansas. I happen to feel that he should be displayed more prominently (Brigham Young, not the governor of Kansas).

Perhaps my favorite part of the whole weekend was attending a few events specifically held to celebrate Independence Day. Friday night I headed to the steps of the capitol building, where a free 4th of July concert featuring famous musicians was held. Coincidentally, I bumped in to Mike Johnson and his fiancée at the concert (after having lunch with them just a few hours earlier), and watched the performance from the front lawn of the capitol with several of Mike’s friends, including an old friend of mine from junior high, Curtis Cannon. Aretha Franklin opened up by belting out ‘The Star Spangled Banner’, then after Barry Manilow and an odd Sesame Street performance, Natasha Bedingfield performed a modern R&B hit, ‘Pocket Full of Sunshine’. The concert finished up with an orchestra performing patriotic music, and ‘fireworks’ that were actually only seen by those watching the show live on PBS.

Saturday night I met up with Justin, his wife Lindsay, and a couple of their friends on the National Mall to watch a spectacular fireworks show set behind the Washington Monument. While the fireworks show was certainly the climax of celebrations in DC this weekend, I particularly enjoyed a brief visit to the Jefferson Memorial just before leaving to head back to New York City. A quotation written in giant brass letters on the marble wall of the memorial stood out to me:

“As [laws and constitutions] become more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.”

I’m always amazed by the wisdom and foresight of the founders of the United States. I hope that as a nation Americans can build on that democratic foundation; ever advancing and keeping pace with the times as Thomas Jefferson envisioned over 200 years ago.