I'll Take Manhattan (Part II)

Our Friday adventure continues!  After spending some time in the Bronx, my friend from work and I headed back into Manhattan to the famous Museum Mile, a stretch of the Upper East Side where one can find many of the city's best hot dog stands--in front of museums.  One of the Key destinations was the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but sadly, they only participated through the end of June.  I've heard from other Key holders that it "unlocked" free admission, which is kind of funny since the admission fee is a suggested donation anyway.  There was also a music box that a staff member would show to Key holders.  Since I only received my key the day before the museum stopped participating, I didn't really get a chance to see it, but I still wanted to stop by since it was one of the destinations.

We then walked down along Central Park to the Whitney Museum of American Art.  I'd been there once before, seven years ago, but couldn't remember much from that trip.  The lock we were looking for was on the coat check counter right by the entrance, so we went there first.  It was a simple wooden box, with a strap around it locked by a padlock.  I opened it, not really sure what to expect, and the walls of the box unfolded down flat.  Insider was a model of the new building the Whitney is going to build down by the High Line park.  The insides of each wall, now lying flat on the table, had detailed schematics of each wall of the building.  It was really cool to see, it felt like we were peering into the planning stages of the Whitney's future.

We then had the rest of the afternoon to wander the museum.  I often approach art museums with some trepidation.  I like art works, in general, but I find I rarely understand or find meaning in most modern art.  I feel like the concept of "making art" has become more about the artist's act than the art itself.  For example, one wall in the Whitney had a large canvas with markings on it made by various materials.  The markings seemed to be random, and I just couldn't find any meaning in any of it.  Nothing.  Near it was a television showing the artist "creating" it.  He had set up some metal ramps along the wall, and was climbing on these ramps while making the random markings on the canvas.  The kicker: he was climbing on these metal ramps wearing ice skates.  Yes, ice skates.  So naturally he was not having an easy time on the metal ramps, and I can only imagine the sound must have been horrendous.  And this is art.  This is inspired creation.  What?  Surely, surely, there's an easier way to make random marks on a canvas.  Perhaps I'm artistically-challenged, but I fail to see how the artist's act of creation--done in private--can be more "art" than the results of that creation, hung in a museum.  I feel like art should be judged by the people viewing it, and not have meaning imposed upon it by the artist.  This tends to put me at odds with any art that I can't make sense out of in my own head.

Same goes for one installation that was an entire floor set up for a performance.  There was a large projection screen showing what looked like old black and white video of cowboys riding horses, with random bright green dots slowly filling the screen.  In front of this was a group of musicians, consisting of a cellist and several guys with keyboards.  The cellist made the occasional scraping sounds, while the keyboardists looked incredibly busy and active producing only static and what sounded like speaker feedback.  Another floor showed videos of a woman slamming a door, with a loud door-slamming soundtrack that was out of synch with the video itself.  I was supposed to feel the artist's frustration at not being taken seriously as a young female artist.  Yet, seeing this, I really couldn't take her seriously as any kind of artist at all.

It wasn't all incomprehensible (to me) sculptures and installations.  There was one entire floor devoted to Charles Burchfield, who I came to really enjoy throughout the exhibit.  He started with a sort of realist watercolor style painting landscapes from his childhood.  Though the exhibit we could see his style change, becoming brighter, darker, then more fantastical.  His were interesting and engaging, and I found myself seeing more and more in his paintings.  There was even a room showing his throw-away doodles and drawings that he never turned into paintings, and it was fun to see what he hadn't intended to be displayed.  Thoroughly enjoyable.

Having covered the Whitney top to bottom, the plan was to jump into the subway and head down to meet Lynn near Bryant Park for the fifth and final lock of the day.  We started walking toward the subway, walked past it, and ended up walking the two miles down into Midtown to meet Lynn at a little Italian restaurant we've been to before, Via Italia.  Lynn and I ate there when she decided to move to NYC, and later when I proposed, so it's a place we tend to gravitate towards when looking for a good dinner in Midtown.

After dinner, we walked down to Bryant Park for the last destination of the evening.  By this point, night had fallen, setting the perfect scene for this particular lock.  In Bryant Park, near the 'Wichcraft kiosk we found a specific park lamp.  It looked like all the others that light up the park except for a small green box near the base with a lock on it.  On this evening, some event was going on, and we had to get just inside the barrier they'd set up to access the lock.  I opened it with my key and found a simple light switch.  I turned off the light.  Lynn then reached over and turned it back on, though it took several long minutes for it to warm up and light again.  I'd have to say this is one of the coolest locks.  These lamps are everywhere throughout the city, and it felt strangely special to be able to turn one off and on.  If any of these locks are left in place after the project ends next week, I hope this one is among them.

As promised, a map of the whole day:


View Key to the City - BX/Man - 8/27/10 in a larger map

Return to the Bronx (Part I)

So much for last Saturday being the last marathon Key to the City day.  I'd intended to run up quickly to the Bronx today to stop by the two last destinations up there.  (The first three were on a weekend trip earlier in the month.)  Instead, a friend from work joined me and we had a whole afternoon adventure, eventually hitting five of the remaining destinations--more than any other single day.

Leaving work, we ran by Union Square where Lynn and two of her work friends were having lunch.  Then we were off on the subway up to the Bronx.  I had heard that the first stop, Public School 73 was at the top of the steepest hill in the Bronx.  Thinking we might skip the uphill climb, we  took the subway one stop further than necessary in hopes of coming out on top of the hill.  No luck there.  We hard to climb a stairwell reminiscent of Montmartre in Paris to get up to the street and find PS 73.  I thought we might have struck out right away when we got to the front doors and they were locked.  Fortunately, there was an open door around the side of the building.

Boy did that bring back memories.  We walked in and immediately saw those fold-up long picnic tables, drinking fountains, and walls full of childrens' art projects.  A couple security guards (it is the Bronx after all, but there were no metal detectors or security bars to perpetuate that stereotype) showed us to the front lobby.  There, we found a display case that typically holds announcements for the students.  It was full of Key holders' notes as well, so we unlocked the case and added our own.  Mine: "School days.  Do I miss you?  NO."  My friend's: "Playing hooky from work to go back to school!"

A short walk, fortunately downhill this time, took us over to the Grand Concourse.  Our destination was deep inside the Bronx County Courthouse.  The guide book suggested that we "Be patient: security and freedom of access have to coexist."  It was referring to the very strict security measures we had to go through to get into the courthouse.  I took everything I had out of my pockets and the metal detectors still beeped; it was more sensitive than any airport I've gone through in years.

The directions were surprisingly complex, sending us down a couple hallways, to a stairway into a lower level, and down more hallways.  We walked past the Marriage Bureau where there were several couples waiting to be married, and down another hall.  At the end of it was a small plastic "quality service survey box."  Anyone could drop their suggestions in, but only with a Key could we open the box and read what's inside.  Interestingly, there were no quality service surveys, only notes from other Key holders.  We once again added our own, one reading "Nice to come in through the visitors' entrance this time!"

All five stops in the Bronx complete!  Next stop, Manhattan....

(I'll put the map on the second part of the day's adventure, in the next post.)

The Old Churchyard

A doctor's appointment across the street from a Key to the City lock? Sounds like a recipe for a quick detour!

Trinity Church (not where my doctor practices) is a historic church in the Financial District. The building there today was built in 1846, though the Trinity Church parish goes back to 1698 when the first of three churches was built on the same spot as today's. According to church records, the infamous pirate/privateer Captain William Kidd lent the runner and tackle from his ship to hoist the stones in building the first church. Today's church is no less distinguished. It was the tallest building in NYC until 1890, and served as the welcome beacon to sailors coming up the bay from the Atlantic, along with being one of the most prominent churches in the city's history.

Today the church still sits in its original land chartered property, most of which consists of the Trinity Church Cemetery. The Key to the City opens the gate to the cemetery, although on this particular day Lynn and I found it wide open as tourists and Wall Streeters alike meandered through or ate lunch in the shade.

Walking through this cemetery is like reading a laundry list of NYC street names, signers of the Declaration of Independence, members of the Continental Congresses, and prominent statesmen of the eighteenth century.  Two of the largest cenotaphs are for Robert Fulton and Alexander Hamilton, the former an accomplished inventor and engineer, and the latter, well, Alexander Hamilton.  I especially loved the epitaph on Hamilton's tomb:

ALEXANDER HAMILTON
The CORPORATION of TRINITY CHURCH Has erected this
MONUMENT
In Testimony of their Respect
FOR
The PATRIOT of incorruptible INTEGRITY.

The SOLDIER of approved VALOUR.
The STATESMAN of consummate WISDOM:
Whose TALENTS and VIRTUES will be admired

BY
Grateful Posterity.
Long after this MARBLE shall have mouldered into
DUST
He Died July 12th 1804. Aged 47.

Hamilton's tomb, though I'm unsure whether this was intentional or not, is on the site where a small building stood during his lifetime.  This building was the original home to King's College, which began in the churchyard, though the College had moved to its own independent building in 1760.  Hamilton began studying at King's College in 1774, and so never studied in the building that stood where he now lies.  King's College today is better known as Columbia University, where I also spent my grad school years.  Columbia claims Hamilton as its "most famous alumnus."  Though truth be told, Hamilton began leading a group of students in military drill, and in 1776 they all joined the Revolutionary Army, making him really Columbia's "most famous drop-out."

Nothing like a little walk through history on a mid-summer day.


View Key to the City - Manhattan - 8/26/10 in a larger map

Staaten Eylandt

In what was probably our last marathon Key to the City day, Lynn and I spent Saturday on Staten Island searching out the four locks there.  They were spread from the northernmost neighborhood to the very southern tip of NYC. And I'll freely admit, we blended right in with the locals by taking a car.  The island is so big there's now way we could have traversed all of the stops in one day using only the busses and single light rail line.

I'm sure I don't need to explain the stigma that is Staten Island.  It's not so much called the "forgotten borough" because it slips under the radar as it is because most New Yorkers wish they could forget it.  I'd been to Staten Island once before, and while the experience was too painful to record in the blog, that trip was referenced in this old post.  Ok, truth is, that trip happened before this blog existed--but I liked the "too painful to record" line too much not to use it.  Still, there are some truly beautiful places on the island.  Some lovely beaches, fascinating former military bases, and as I learned on Saturday, some very  historically significant sites.

Setting off in the morning, we first headed to the neighborhood of Elm Park.  This stop was another community garden, named after local Joe Holzka.  It used to be the site of an illegal casino, but was eventually turned into a source of neighborhood pride.  Our key opened the gate to a gazebo in the garden to relax in--that is, if the gates to the garden itself were not locked.  We discovered, unfortunately, that the garden is only open on alternating Saturdays.  Oops.  Undaunted, we smelled the roses through the chain-link fence and moved on.

Near the approach of the Bayonne Bridge, a few miles west of the first stop, is the Staten Island Buddhist Vihara.  Vihara, I later learned, is the Sanskrit term for monastery, though this was a house like all the other houses in this residential neighborhood.  Our key was to open the lock to the "garden maintained by the monks" behind the house.  The gate was wide open, but a typed note on the gate welcomed us to wander the garden, meditate, and come inside for tea.  We did wander the garden, and were especially interested in the Bodhi tree they had, directly descended from the original Bodhi tree under which the Buddha attained enlightenment.

A little nervous, we rang the bell and were welcomed inside by a monk in orange robes.  He eagerly showed us into the shrine room with a large statue of Buddha surrounded by flowers and incense.  The floor was empty, but for stacks of pillows along the walls, and the ceiling was everywhere covered in soft paper lanterns.  We suddenly felt like we were intruding on their lives.  We tried to ask questions and engage the monk showing us around, but he seemed--not unwilling, not unfriendly--just not engaged in talking too much with us.  I'm not sure if this was a language barrier, or if we were upsetting a typical Saturday morning at the Vihara.  We tried to politely and quickly thank him, put our shoes back on, and excuse ourselves.

By this point it was time for lunch, so we opted to drive down to the very middle of the island near where our next stop, a bus tour, would begin.  This took us by the Staten Island Mall, the destination of my first fateful trip into Staten Island.  Being the most suburban-like part of NYC, and since we were near a real suburban-like shopping mall, Lynn was hoping for an Olive Garden for lunch.  Would you believe that although there are two Olive Gardens in Manhattan, there is not a single one in Staten Island?  I'm amazed, too.  Still, we found another typical suburban chain we hadn't been to in ages, Outback Steakhouse.  Closed.  Next door was another, closed.  Who knew Staten Island didn't wake up before 1pm on a Saturday?  We finally ended up at TGI Fridays.  Oh yes, yes we did.

It was then time to meet the bus for our third destination, Freshkills Park.  Why a bus?  Well, the park isn't technically open yet, though they're giving tours of parts of it to let the public know what's going on.  Freshkills Park is more commonly known by its previous name, Freshkills Landfill.  It received most of NYC's daily trash from 1947 to 2001, and is the largest landfill in the world.  As our guide said, if you lived in or visited NYC during the fifty-four years it was open, your trash is in there somewhere.  Today the landfill is closed, and almost completely capped off.  The city is turning it into a 2,600 acre park, the largest in NYC.  The tour was pretty interesting, we drove up onto two of the capped "mounds" and saw the views out over most of Staten Island.  Meanwhile, our guide told us the history of the landfill, trash collecting in NYC, and how the Parks Department is slowly turning it into what will be great parkland with lots of amenities.  Our key unlocked a case in the front of the bus, inside of which were the largest pair of binoculars I'd ever seen.  Through them we could just barely make out the Lower Manhattan skyscrapers in the haze off in the distance.

Sitting in the row behind us on the bus, was a couple from London on--if you can belive this--their honeymoon.  Yes, they crossed the Atlantic to honeymoon in the least interesting borough of NYC on a pile of garbage.  Well, mostly.  She's working on a sewage reclamation project in London that will create a park around a terribly-polluted stream in the East End, so they worked this little side trip into their otherwise quite romantic NYC holiday.  We got to chatting with them, and enjoyed our time on the tour bus even more for it.  They loved the idea of the Key to the City project, so we invited them to come along with us to the final stop of the day.  Quite surprisingly, they accepted.

So, off we were with our British captives--friends!--to the very southern-most tip of Staten Island, the Conference House Park.  We parked the car, and walked down a gravel path past an old stone house to a beautiful wooden pavilion right on the beach.  It overlooked Raritan Bay, and out to the Atlantic Ocean.  I've been to NYC beaches before in the Rockaways and Coney Island, but this was completely different.  It felt more like a campground in some woodsy park far from anything that could be called city.  On the beach was a woman walking her horse into the water to bathe, and shells washed ashore from the bay.  Our key unlocked a door under the pavilion to let us into the space below it.  There we found tickets for free admission to tour the Conference House, the stone house we'd walked past on the way.

We went up to the Conference House, and I'm so glad we did as it was the best part of the whole day.  Walking around the house with our British friends, I learned that the guy was an architect.  It was incredible to circle this old house with him as he thought out loud about the way the stones were set, pointed out where windows had been removed, and clearly discerned what was original to the house and what was added on or upgraded later.  We managed to get in on the very last tour of the day (it was late afternoon by this point), with a couple other people who were clearly also enthusiastic about history.

I've always taken an interest in the history of places I've lived, and New York has been a veritable treasure chest.  I love finding little pieces of history everywhere here and learning their stories.  I've read extensively on the city's origins, the early settlements, and its role in American history.  A big part of that role was during the Revolutionary War, where in the Battle of Long Island George Washington famously lost NYC to the British and retreated north.  That battle occurred where I currently live, and during his retreat Washington made fortifications in northern Manhattan where I went to grad school and where Gracie Mansion would eventually be built.  It's a fascinating story of how the American patriots nearly lost the Revolutionary War, or as our new British friends insisted on calling it, the Civil War.  Ah, perspective.

Somehow, though, I missed the Conference House.  I'd never read about it, and indeed had never even heard of it.  Built as a country manor sometime before 1680, by the time of the Revolutionary War it had been commandeered by Lord Howe, commander of the British naval fleet in America.  Howe had been somewhat sympathetic to the colonists in the past, and so he was chosen to engage in the one and only session of peace talks between the two sides.  A peace conference was brokered between Howe and the Continental Conference to occur at Howe's residence.  On September 11, 1776, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Edward Rutledge rowed across the bay from New Jersey, and were led up to the Conference House.  They met with Howe in the parlor to the left when you walk in the front door.  There's no official record of the discussion, but after three hours, the three politely refused Howe's offer of peace, and so the war raged on for another seven years before the British conceded their colonies to the new United States of America.

The house itself was just as fascinating as its story.  Our tour guide was the caretaker of the house, and lived in a part of it that had been added on in the nineteenth century.  She was new, the usual guide hadn't shown up that day, and it was the last tour of the day, which meant we were all very relaxed and she was hilarious.  She led us through the main and upper floors of the house, where period furniture and everyday items were placed as if someone lived there still.  Down in the basement kitchen, quite unlike every other historic house I've ever toured, we were encouraged to look around and touch things.  Three hundred year old pots and pans?  Check 'em out!  Eighteenth century contraption in the corner?  We have no idea what this is, come play with it and see if you can figure it out!  It was awesome.  If for any reason you go to Staten Island, take this tour.

Our planned destinations all visited, it was time to return to more familiar territory.  Our new friends had become good friends, and so we went out to dinner with them in our neighborhood.  And naturally, ice cream followed.  The cool thing about this Key to the City project has been going to all of these places I'd never visit otherwise.  But the best part is meeting all of these amazing people along the way.


View Key to the City - Staten Island 8/21/10 in a larger map

From the Mayor's Mansion to the End of the Line

Another day, another Key to the City adventure.  Lynn and I managed to take a tour over our lunch break, then I took off to the far reaches of southern Brooklyn in the evening.

Our lunch destination was Gracie Mansion, the official residence of the Mayor of the City of New York.  This is another of the many places on this project that I've meant to see before but never got around to it.  The house was beautiful--I do love the Federalist style!--and the tour was really enjoyable.  Our two guides were great, and they told many anecdotes of the families who lived in the house before it became city property as well as the Mayors and their families.  My favorite part was seeing a British Revolutionary War cannon ball on a mantelpiece in the main parlor.  It was discovered in the ground while the mansion was being renovated, having done its part in destroying the house that stood there before Gracie Mansion was built.

Our key opened a closet upstairs in the master bedroom.  The whole upstairs is traditionally the residence of the Mayor, but since our current Mayor Bloomberg opted to reside in his own house, the second floor has been opened to the public.  Inside the closet was a portrait of Archibald Gracie, who built the house and lived there until his sons lost it in a business venture.  Also there was the original check Gracie wrote to purchase the property--in 1798.  Our tour guide explained these things, and showed us a real NYC Key to the City.  I'll have to find a way to earn one of those some day.

Later in the evening, I jumped on the subway and followed it to the end of the line.  Four subway lines end at Stillwell Avenue in Coney Island.  The huge subway station there pours riders out into the thick of the Coney Island beach atmosphere.  There are food stands, beach stores, and of course, the original Nathan's Famous Hot Dogs.  A block away and you're on the iconic boardwalk with all the arcades, stands, music, and rides.  There's also sand, and some water too.  This lock was not amidst all that, but one avenue north in the more practical part of Coney Island.  Here are the real stores for the people who live there, and the places they go--like the local branch of the Brooklyn Public Library.

This was the first time I've struck out on my own to find a lock, and coincidentally it turned out to be a good one for it.  I found a metal safe box on a reference shelf that matched my key.  Inside was a whole history of Coney Island.  Newspaper articles stretching back a hundred years, a printed history of the early settlements on what was once literally an island (today it's only an island in name, landfill attached it to the mainland of Brooklyn long ago).  There were artifacts as well, including an old tin can of Coney Island brand sea food, that was once quite popular, and an early electrical conductor found preserved on the ocean floor off-shore.  It was a good place to sit, read, and learn.  Who would've thought?  I went to the library and ended up reading.

I visited the beach, which was empty as it was both late in the evening and starting to rain.  I was so close, I just had to go see the ocean.  And of course, stopped for dinner at Nathan's.

Today marks two milestones in the Key to the City adventure.  First, Gracie Mansion marks the 12th lock opened, meaning the Coney Island library took me beyond the half-way point to opening every single lock.  Second, Coney Island finishes off all the locks in Brooklyn, the second borough completed.  Time is short to reach all of the locks by the end of the project, September 6th.  But with some good planning, I may just make it.


View Key to the City - Man/BK - 8/18/10 in a larger map

Pieces of Brooklyn

The great Key to the City adventure continues.  Rather than have another marathon adventure, we opted to break the Brooklyn locations up among several days.

The very next day after our Bronx adventure, Lynn and I jumped on the subway for the quick trip over to the Brooklyn Museum.  Neither of us had been here before, so we didn't know what to expect, but it was a really good experience.  Our favorite exhibits were the full-scale replicas of actual colonial houses, built within the museum halls.  It was really cool to walk around these houses as if you were actually inside.  We eventually found our way to the top floor, where our key opened a secret door in the wall between two portraits.  Inside was a secret exhibit, just for us: a small collection of tiny Fabergé sculptures.  I didn't know that the House of Fabergé made things other than the famous eggs, but there were some great little sculptures here.  Tiny animals make of precious stones with diamond eyes, a miniature jewel-encrusted clock, and a life-size dandelion gone to seed, made of asbestos filaments.  It was a cool surprise, behind a secret door.

The following day, we ventured out again.  After work, we headed down to the Gowanus Canal, a highly-polluted body of water a short walk from our neighborhood.  This formerly industrial area is now dotted with artist studios, galleries, workshops, and performance spaces.  Right along the canal are the offices of Cabinet Magazine, a quarterly art and culture publication.  Our key unlocked a small box in the dark alleyway beside Cabinet.  Upon opening, the empty box played an old recording of "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles," a Tin Pan Alley hit song from 1919.  A note in the box said, "For the full experience call 718-XXX-XXXX between the hours of 10am and 6pm."  We'd arrived well after 6pm, but I later looked up what other keyholders had said about the location.  There used to be a bubble machine above the box that would start blowing bubbles when the box was opened.  It broke some time ago, so the folks at Cabinet decided to put their phone number in the box.  If we had arrived in time, and called the number, someone would have come running out into the alleyway to blow bubbles for us.

A week went by, with us traveling and some thunderstorms passing through, and the following Tuesday we once again set off after work.  This time, our destination was right along the way home, up in DUMBO.  We climbed a stairway off the street up to the entrance of Gleason's Boxing Gym.  The place was alive with the sound of solid impacts, and the distinct smell of hard work and sweat.  Gleason's is the oldest continually operating boxing gym in the country, and champions of all classes have trained there.  Cassius Clay, Mike Tyson, and a host of other boxing legends have trained here, and their pictures cover an entire wall in the back of the main room.  Individual lockers are scattered throughout along the walls, and one of them could be opened with our key.  Inside were boxing gloves, jump ropes, tape, and everything we'd need to get started ourselves.  We tried the gloves, but long days of work convinced both of us not to stay long.  On our way out, we were completely surprised to be approached by one of our new neighbors, himself training hard after a long day at work.  What a pleasant surprise.

There's one more location in Brooklyn, way down in Coney Island.  It has more difficult hours to work with, so we're not sure when we'll make it down there.  Tomorrow, the adventure continues in Manhattan, where we still have many more secrets to unlock.


View Key to the City - Brooklyn in a larger map

Upstate NYC

Continuing with the Key to the City project, Lynn and I ventured out again this weekend to find some more locks to open.  This time we headed way up north, to the Bronx.  There are five locks in the Bronx, but two of them are only available during business hours on weekdays.  We haven't quite figured out how we might visit those yet.  Three others we could get to, however, and there were a couple in northern Manhattan if we had extra time.

The beginning of our adventure took us to the Grand Concourse near Yankee Stadium.  The Grand Concourse was supposed to be the Champs-Élysées of the Bronx, a wide boulevard with tree-lined dividers, running up through Bronx four miles all the way to Van Cortlandt Park.  For a time, it was the height of middle-class living in NYC.  But like much of the city, and especially much of the Bronx, rapidly declined in the 1960s.  Today, however, it's doing very well again, and we walked passed a couple very tempting restaurants serving brunch on our Saturday excursion.

Three friends meet at their mailbox.

The first stop was PostNet, which is a pretty standard printing/copying/shipping place.  To the left after entering is a wall of post office boxes, and our key opened box 136.  Inside were messages people had left, and interestingly, messages people had mailed to the PO box directly.  As we stood reading some of these, we noticed a woman sitting in the only chair next to the PO boxes, looking at a subway map and writing in her notebook.  She smiled at us and said she was a fellow keyholder, and we quickly struck up conversation.  A fast friendship was formed, and we invited her to join us on our Bronx adventure.

....unless you have a key.

The newly formed trio trekked east to the neighborhood of Melrose.  Melrose is one the largest Puerto Rican communities in NYC, and sadly, also one of the poorest neighborhoods.  Throughout the 1970s, the neighborhood was synonymous with arson, and most of the residential buildings were damaged or destroyed.  Much of what exists now has been rebuilt by the NYC Housing Authority as low-income and subsidized housing.  Our destination was the Centro Cultural Rincon Criollo, a community garden on a quiet street right in the middle of the neighborhood.  It was lovely, lush and green plots surrounded a small green club house in the middle.  There were many people spending a relaxing Saturday afternoon in the garden, and they all waved to us as we searched for the garden plot that our key unlocked.  We found it behind a large "No Trespassing - Prohibido El Paso" sign, but the garden was as welcoming as could be.  Fresh cabbage, peppers, tomatoes, and grapes grew all around, and were watched over by a whimsical scarecrow.  It was easy to see how such a place could bring the people here together, and we felt grateful to be welcomed into their lush treasure.

Moving further east to the shores of the Bronx River, our last destination in the Bronx was The Point Community Development Corporation.  This was in Hunts Point, another of the most difficult neighborhoods in the Bronx.  Here, more than 60% of the population is unemployed, and the average income is less than half the national average, making Hunts Point part of the poorest congressional district in the entire country.  There are essentially two main businesses here, it is home to one of the largest food distribution centers in the world, and three detention centers.  Still, like everywhere, the people make due and enjoy life as well they can.  Several small parks have popped up, and a few small businesses have opened, and are trying to engage the community.

Building boats

One of these is called Rocking the Boat.  It was started by a man named Adam Green, who Lynn and I first heard about when he was the subject of a "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" episode.  (Don't judge.)  The program allows high school kids in the neighborhood to learn practical, leadership, and life skills by building wooden boats from scratch over the course of a school semester.  They plan the work, they do the work (all of it, from chopping wood to painting the name on the stern), and then they run a program where locals can take the boats out on the Bronx River on weekends.  The main entrance to the lock we were looking for was closed the day we arrived, and a note directed us to the dock where the Rocking the Boat staff were renting out their boats.  A nice woman there offered to take us through their building into the courtyard where we'd find a door we could unlock.  Along the way, she gave us an impromptu tour of their boat workshop, which was very cool to see.

Art inside

Behind the building lay a courtyard with a garden, some portable classrooms to teach the city-born kids how to operate their boats, and a small brick shed.  A rusted door held the lock matching our key, though we mistakenly went in through a second, unlocked back door.  We opened it, turned on the lights and found color.  Bright colors shouted at us form all directions.  This building was a piece of art itself.  A table stood in the middle with paints, brushes, markers, crayons, papers, glues--everything you could want to make something fun.  And those who had come before us certainly had.  There were paintings on the walls, ceilings, and floor.  A web of yarn made it an enjoyable challenge to get from one end of the room to another.  Papers were everywhere with drawings and messages.  We rolled up our sleeves and dug in, leaving a message (me), a drawing (Lynn), and a painting on the wall (our new friend).  I'm running out of synonyms for "fun," but it was truly, and simply, kid-creative fun.

Under Construction, 118 years and counting

Realizing there was much more light left in the day, we decided to head over to Manhattan to open one more lock.  We went down to Lynn's and my old neighborhood of Morningside Heights.  We even stopped right in front of the apartment I lived in while attending Columbia University.  A quick walk around the corner took us to the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, the fourth-largest church in the world.  Although the inside is breathtaking, the outside is still under construction--having been started in 1892.  (There's a neighborhood joke about Saint John the Unfinished.)  Two world wars and a devastating fire have plagued the construction of the church, but it continues to this day nonetheless.  Much of the nave was off-limits and under construction when I lived in the neighborhood, so this was the first time I could see it all open.  And open is a pretty accurate description; the ceiling was 124 feet above us.  It's a beautiful, quiet place, and we wandered the whole church before even starting to look for the lock.  At last we came to a gate, padlocked with a velvet rope.  Unlocking the gate let us into the Baptistry, which was a gift to the church from the descendants of Peter Stuyvesant.  Peter was the last governor of the New Amsterdam colony, right up until it became New York.  The Baptistry was quiet, and empty, and we enjoyed the peacefulness.

Tired, and in desperate need of milkshakes, we ended our journey at one of Lynn's and my old haunts, Tom's Restaurant.  Most notable for being the external shot of the diner in "Seinfeld," it's also a neighborhood favorite for the milkshakes, late hours, and friendly staff.  Being almost exactly between our two apartments when we were in grad school, Lynn and I frequently met there at all hours.  The owner, who will chat your ear off if you let him, recognized us when we walked in and sternly asked me where I'd been for the last three years.  We had our shakes, and chatted more, ranging from our lives in New York to cultural differences (our new friend is French, and lived in Paris and Guadeloupe).  It was a pleasant end to another grand adventure.

PS: Map!

View Key to City - Bronx/No. Manhattan - 8/7 in a larger map

Adventures in Queens

A while back, I received a Key to the City.  Not quite the gold key in the nice box presented by the Mayor, but rather, a normal key that opens locks all around the city.  It's the Key to the City project, from artist Paul Ramirez Jonas.  The concept is two-fold: to bestow keys to the city to everyday people for their everyday works, and to give the city back to those people by making the keys actually unlock something.

When I went to Times Square to get my key, I had no idea the production that it would it be.  There was a little park set up in the square, and those present were paired off if they didn't come with someone.  I was paired with a sweet woman named Julie, and we chatted as we waited for our turn.  Finally, we went into the little park together, and met volunteers running the project.  They pulled out huge ledgers for each of us, and we went through a whole ceremony for bestowing a key to each other.  I gave her a key for her contributions to theater in New York (she's worked in theaters all her life).  She gave me a key for courtesy and caring, saying I was the nicest person she had met that day. (Aw, shucks.)

What do the keys open?  With the key, we also got little passports that have descriptions and maps of how to find the locks, but not what's inside them.  There are twenty-four locks spread throughout all five boroughs.

This past weekend, two good friends of ours were in town.  And as part of a real NYC adventure, we decided to start finding some locks and see what happened.  We hit all four of the locks in Queens, along with another friend who had recently moved there.  We started in Astoria at the Bohemian Hall and Beer Garden, which is exactly what it sounds like.  Grilled brats, large mugs of beer, and all in a nice big open space where they have music and dancing in the evenings.

Hey, Pops
The first lock was in a place I'd been meaning to visit since moving here, the Louis Armstrong House Museuem.   It's way up in Corona, a little ways from LaGuardia airport.  The tour we took was great, and the house has been amazingly preserved from when Louis and Lucille lived there.  As a trumpet player myself, it was amazing to see so intimately into the life of an idol, though Lucille clearly had all the say when it came to most of the house!  Still, Louis had a den on the second floor in the front of the house that was his, and you could almost feel him there.  His big desk, his tape recorders (he recorded everything, even everyday conversations), the pictures on the wall, it was all him.  There's a little balcony off the front where he'd play to the neighborhood kids.  The museum had taken some of his recordings from certain rooms and put in speakers to play them in those rooms.  In his den, for example, they played a recording of him sitting at his desk playing his horn along with some music.  You could feel his energy and charm, and I just wished I could have seen him in life.

Louis was undoubtedly a character, too.  He loved bawdy jokes, and collected them like stamps.  The museum played one recording from the living room, where he had his niece recite "Mary Had a Little Lamb."  She did, then he replied with his own version: "Mary had a little bear, and he was mighty fine. And everywhere that Mary went, you saw her bear behind!" to the laughter of his niece and himself.  He laughed a lot.  He also was a big proponent of laxatives, and absolutely swore by Swiss Kriss herbal laxatives, going so far as to give them to the Royal Family when he went to London.

The basement of the house has mostly been turned into the exhibition space for the museum, showing off pictures, a trumpet, clothing, and other effects.  But one room has been left exactly the way it was when Louis himself used it for extended periods of time with his Swiss Kriss.  This room is not on the tour, and not open to the public, but the Key to the City opens the door.  It's his downstairs bathroom.  And sitting on the sink is a photo of him in that bathroom, facing away form the camera, with a clear view of his--ahem--bear behind.

Daniel Dromm's Flag
The second stop was the office of New York City Council Member Daniel Dromm, in Jackson Heights.  His office was closed, being the weekend, but the key unlocked a display case next to the front door.  The case displays an American flag, but behind it previous key holders have left messages and small tokens.  It was a neat, quick stop, but we were admittedly distracted by the myriad of ethnic shops and restaurants on Roosevelt Avenue.  Queens is one of the most diverse boroughs in the city, and neighborhoods there change drastically from generation to generation.  It's fascinating.

Nixta-what?
Not realizing the geography of our trek, we then ventured back to Corona for stop number three, Tortilleria Nixtamal.  This place was awesome.  We got a table to sample the food, placed our orders, and then asked where the lock was.  We were escorted to the back and told that our key would unlock the two doors there, and we could pick which one.  (The one on the right was the bathroom.)  We opened the door on the left, and followed the stairwell on the other side down into the basement.  We squeezed through sacks of fresh corn piled up to the ceiling and into the small kitchen, where everything is made from scratch.  Our waitress showed us the machines for washing the corn, and cooking it into nixtamal.  They then crush this into a dough, and press out flat circles.  These are then tossed onto a skillet for a few minutes, and become delicious corn tortillas.

We were already impressed and thought this was a pretty amazing process to see first-hand.  Then our waitress left us with the cooks, who gave us a bowl of nixtamal and said we were going to make our own tortillas.  We had fun rolling out our tortillas tossing them on the skillet.  I tore my tortilla on the skillet trying to turn it, but everyone's came out great.  We all nibbled on our freshly-made tortillas back up the stairs to our table, where we had some great food (the tostados were fantastic).

Back in Time
Having already eaten our way through half of Queens, we headed down to Forest Hills (home of Peter Parker!) for the final stop of our adventure.  Eddie's Sweet Shop has been serving up homemade ice cream at their soda fountain counter for over one hundred years.  Just walking in the door feels like traveling through time, and you're slightly embarrassed by your own funny clothing.  But the sundaes more than make up for it.  Here our lock opened a small safe box the staff held behind the counter.  Inside were notes and memories of other key holders who had come before.  Some were inspirational snippets, some were professions of love, and some were simple drawings.  We each wrote our own notes, ate our ice cream, and reflected on our exhausting but wholly enjoyable day in Queens.

*Update: Now with a map!

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