Year: 2004

First things first: Anyone wanna come visit me in September or October? You can now get round trip direct flights from SFO to JFK on Travelocity for $142.70 (taxes included). Act now while supplies last.

So today I slept in and pondered how I would spend my final weekend day before classes begin in under nine hours. At first I thought about perhaps going to explore Little Senegal which is south and east of me, on 116th St. between Eighth Ave and St. Nicholas Ave — straight east from the east edge of campus. But then my senses got ahold of me and I realized that I probably should deal with furniture and other housewares that I lacked up until today. Ian brought some kitchenware with him (a small amount of silverware, a few pots and assorted utensils, like spatulas and what not) but he only has one bowl and one coffee mug for himself. Last night in desperation I spent a few bucks and bought a bowl and glass mug for myself so I could make dinner from Appletree, the grocery store conveniently located across the street (and is open 24 hrs!), but I really needed to get a set of stuff.

So I tried to think about where the best place to go would be. Marshall’s in Harlem didn’t have much in the way of kitchenware, and probably the places around here that the housing office suggests in their little brochure that they give everyone would be more expensive — so I thought about Target. Where is the nearest Target? In the Bronx, near the 225th St. subway stop (Columbia is at 116th St) . Straight north. Sounds easy enough, right?

As I’ve been told by Jon and Ian, the key to going downtown is to head down to 96th St. and then catch the 2 or the 3 because they’re express trains. 96th St. is something of a mini-hub, where the 1, 2, 3, and 9 lines converge. The 2 and 3 head up north and east toward Harlem, and the 1 and 9 go uptown all the way into the Bronx. Anyway, so I head down into the subway and there was a hand-written sign saying that there wasn’t any uptown service from 116th St. today and that we’d have to go down to 96th St. to get it. So I hop aboard, and transfer over. But in my haste to get the train that was heading north, I got on the 3 instead of the 1/9 and ended up at 125th St. in Harlem. So I had to go back down to 96th St. to transfer again. Subway 1, Cyrus 0.

I finally found the right train and hopped on. I got up to 181st St. and there was some announcement about how the train was out of service or was having problems or whatever — I couldn’t really tell because I was listening to my iPod and reading piPod, my new local guide to NY pizza. (The pizzeria around the corner, Che Bella Pizza doesn’t seem to be all that fantastic, I discovered yesterday.) So I got off, and a few minutes later a new train showed up. I got on that and it went up about two stops to Dyckman Street and stopped again. I got off and waited. Another one showed up. I got on. We went up another stop to 207th St. and it stopped again! Some MTA guy said that there would be another train coming in a few minutes but that it was only going one more stop and that if we wanted to go to the Bronx that we should take the bus.

Dejected and annoyed, I climbed down off the tracks (these tracks in uptown are like the El Train in Chicago, they’re raised above the street) and walked northward, trying to scope out a bus stop. Instead, there was something else that I saw, much to my dismay. There was a guy peeing into the gutter. But he wasn’t being very discreet at all, unfortunately. As I approached from the south, he was just standing outside his parked car (the driver’s side door was open), facing north. But when I turned around to get my bearings I saw him, just standing there, fly down, with it all hanging out. Jeez, man, didn’t anyone ever teach you if you have to go on the street, to at least show a little courtesy to your fellow citizens? At least face a wall or something, y’know? But this guy was just standing right there, letting it rip. Welcome to New York, I guess.

I thought about turning back, but I had come so far and I was only 18 blocks away, so I walked west on 207th St. toward Broadway to find a bus stop. I discovered that I was in a Dominican neighborhood, which I could tell by the abundance of Dominican Republic flags that were all over the place — hanging in the stores, flying from passing cars, being sold on the street, everywhere. I walked up a few blocks and found a Dominican 99 cents store, where I was able to get what I needed: cheap plates, glasses, silverware and other kitchen stuff. Excellent.

207th St., like 125th St. in Harlem and most other parts of New York, is great because of the street life. There are people selling used electronics, hot dogs, candy, whatever — or if you’re on 207th St. they’re selling Dominican ice cream and what I think was something similar to a Sno-Cone. I’ll have to go back and check it out. If you’re on 125th St. they sell bootleg DVDs, baseball caps, used books, Black Panther recordings, and about every third guy seems to have a new copy of Clinton’s My Life for some odd reason.

With my three shopping bags full, I headed home.

Ian returned a short while later and we headed down to 106th St. to get a microwave and a bedside table from a girl on craigslist, so now my room is slightly more furnished. I still need to get a dresser and maybe a lamp or two.

Also, my boxes of books/DVDs/posters came today, and now my room has a bit more life to it. Photos will come tomorrow.

With Ian’s approval, I’ve turned our common room into a map room. The south wall has a map of the Middle East, the World, and the USA. The east wall has an amalgam of detailed maps of VT, NH, NJ, MA, and NY that are sorta pieced together and don’t exactly fit, but they work. And next to that is a detailed NYC map, and on the small west wall is a map of South America. One of the guys who delivered my bed last night pointed out his city in Columbia on the map as he was leaving last night. And when the bathroom door is closed from the inside, it reveals a subway map.

Tomorrow is my first day of class, starting with orientation at 8:30 am.

I have most of my schedule already, and I’ve discovered that I have hardly any classes it seems.

I’m taking six classes: Radio Workshop, Journalism Ethics, Libel, Reporting and Writing I (aka “RW1”), Thesis, and War Reporting

Radio (starts October 21): Thursday 7-9:30 pm
Ethics: Friday 12:30 – 2 pm
Libel: Friday 9 am – 12 pm
War Reporting: Wednesday 6 – 8 pm
RW1: TBA
Thesis: TBA

The Persian class I want to take (if I can take it) meets Monday and Wednesday 4-6 pm and Wind Ensemble (if I get in) meets 7-9 pm on Mondays.

So let’s assume that both my TBA classes are on Monday and Tuesday respectively. That means I have no class on Thursday and most of the first three days of the week free. I know we’ll have some reporting time and what not for RW1 that is meant to be spent out and about, but it seems like I’ll have quite a bit of time on my hands. I guess freelancing/interning will be in effect.

I guess I’ll see tomorrow.

Courtesy:

You’re Entering a World of Lebowski (The New York Times, August 8 2004)

There’s a LebowskiFest here in NYC on August 13-14! I’m really tempted to go on the night of the 13th for the screening…I’m going to Philly that weekend…

Today I woke up around 8:30 and explored the neighborhood (walking down Broadway) a bit and obtained some food (eggs on a bagel at Nussbaum & Wu’s) and apartment supplies, including paper towels, orange juice, and toothpaste (not necessarily in that order). The rest of the day I just hung out mostly, and played phone tag with my Dad concerning what the strategy was to be concerning my bed. Last night, I slept on a sleeping bag on the floor. I had a plan to bus over to the NJ Ikea which would have taken most of tomorrow — but instead I got a new bed from the folks over at Mattress.com who took care of me with this.

Tomorrow I think I’ll try to figure out about a dresser, take my comforter-that’s-really-a-bed-cover back to Marshall’s and get a real one, maybe practice my clarinet a little bit (I have to audition in about a month for the Wind Ensemble) and maybe do some more grocery shopping. I discovered that there is a little 24 hr grocery store across the street from my apartment, where I was able to get some pasta sauce and Italian sausasge and make a rudimentary pasta dinner once the bed was taken care of.

Today I (re) discovered some things about Ian:
He graduated from Swarthmore. He’s from Corvallis, OR. He’s taught 4th grad social studies at a Yeshiva in Brooklyn. He was the editor of Boston Review magazine, and was a freelance copy editor in the Bay Area. He plays the guitar and listens to pretty much every kind of music but 80s heavy metal (“although I was into punk in middle school”), and lived a few years ago in Avignon, France.

Photos of the apartment.

First let me say to all you guys who came to the party last night that you’re better friends than I’ve had in a long time — really. You guys are amazing, and it was wonderful to feel that I’ll actually be missed. Maybe that seems overly self-deprecating or whatever, but honestly, it meant a lot to me that you came, and made me laugh and fall over when I was bowling (Rich, Jake and Aaron). I’ll miss you guys, all of you.

I was so worn out that I immediately crashed out on my Oakland – Dallas leg, then woke up, changed gates, bought an NYT and the new issue of the Atlantic, read the NYT, got on my new plane, and fell asleep again. When I awoke, the captain was announcing that we were just passing over Philadelphia and were approaching New York. I looked out my window and saw a bunch of house, fields, freeways and rivers. I had no idea what I was looking at, nor could I orient myself — I didn’t know what direction we were coming from. Some water appeared and grew wider and wider, and then finally I saw what so many New Yorkers-to-be saw upon entry: Lady Liberty. And there was Lower Manhattan, and the Chrysler Building, and the Empire State Building, and I tried to guess where the WTC site is but I couldn’t exactly pinpoint it from the air. But wow, New York is huge, even from the air! Fortunately the flight path on the approach to La Guardia takes you right up the East River, crossing over all the bridges and even flies right up and around Shea Stadium before landing at La Guardia.

A $30 cab ride later (Rupa, how did you get them to bargain to $15?) I was at 420 W. 119th St., at the University Apartment Housing office. Apparently I was supposed to have made an appointment with them, and when I didn’t, I had to wait 40 minutes before I was handed a stack of papers to sign. I walked across the street to another office, where another woman led me around the corner to my building. I waited in an oversized black leather chair next to a new Psychology grad student named Lauren from Washington DC who was also waiting to get into her apt.

Six keys in my hand, a backpack on my back, a rolling bag on my front, and a duffel for each hand I took the elevator up to the fifth floor. The apartment is laid out like a long rectangle, with my room and the bathroom on the opposite end as the the front door. Ian, my roommate, has a room near to the front door, and between the bedrooms is a small kitchen/living room/dining room/lounge — it’s small, but perfectly manageable. My room, perhaps 2/3 of the size of my old Berkeley room, gleamed with new varnish on the hardwood floors. My window faces north overlooking 120th St at Broadway.

Ian showed up about 20 minutes later, and he mentioned that there was some perfectly good furniture that had been tossed out behind the apartment building — so we scored a couch and coffee table for the common room, and I got a desk with a shelf thingy to put on top of it.

By 5 pm, Jon, the husband of my Mom’s elementary school friend (and 9/11 survivor) Denise showed up as planned, and we subwayed downtown towards Wall Street and puttered around over there and eventually made our way to South Street Ferry and walked up the Hudson River and through Battery Park for about an hour. New York is a very lively place in the summer. There were joggers, chess players, basketball players, suit-types, homeless-types, kids wearing iPods and everyone else mixing it up along the evening summer riverside breeze. Eventually we ended up at a dimly lit, but swanky Italian restaurant called Ecco — I had pretty good mussels, a hearty plateful of rabbit and gnocchi, and a Napoleon (sorta a cross between a millefoglie and a cannoli) — I was stuffed. We also by happenstance met some girl sitting at the bar who was Senegalese, and I busted out with the Wolof. I ended the evening by getting Jon and Denise’s hourglass shaped lime green lamp table. As Jon said: “Green is the new pink and pink was the new black.” Right.

All in all, it was a good first evening, and I’m kinda tired so forgive me if my descriptions aren’t amazingly vivid.

I’m going to shower (sans shower curtain), and curl up in my sleeping bag and figure out how to procure a bed, groceries and other household items tomorrow.

My feet are really dirty.

WASHINGTON — The federal government warned Sunday of possible terrorist attacks against “iconic” financial institutions in New York City, Washington and Newark, N.J., saying a confluence of intelligence over the weekend pointed to a car or truck bomb.

–The Prudential building in Newark.

U.S. Warns of Possible Terror Threat Against 5 Buildings (August 1 2004, Associated Press)

At first I thought this would be just one of these “remain vigilant” “unspecified locations” type announcements, but with this level of specificity, this is sorta freaky.

Update: This is where Columbia is, in case you were wondering.