The rhythm of a neighborhood…
There is a different feeling to this year's visit. It struck me today that I have become comfortable with being here. Certainly, the novelty factor has worn off. I know the neighborhood, where to go for coffee, groceries, a piece of New York-style pizza and takeout Chinese. I have the subway system figured out. I know which museums and galleries I want to visit. I can relax as I am today, and not feel like I am missing anything. I know that there are so many things about this city I do not know, places I have not visited, things I have not seen or photographed, but that is okay. I will never be able to see the whole city, but I am discovering another side of the city by staying here in this neighborhood. That is a part of New York City most visitors never see. This city is home to almost 9 million people, and most of them live their lives very differently from the way they are portrayed in popular culture. Most New Yorkers live ordinary lives in an extraordinary city, and this neighborhood is an example of that.
My parents subscribed to the New Yorker magazine, and I remember reading it cover to cover during certain periods of my youth. It was so exotic and beyond my experience growing up on the West Coast. If you know the New Yorker, you know the wonderful cover art, the cartoons, the regular columns — but two advertisements are among my strongest recollections. They appeared in every issue I read. One was for a cashmere watch cap, a small, text-heavy ad that ran unchanged for years. In my research on the ad, I discovered that I was not alone in remembering that ad, it had become almost a cultural in-joke among regular readers. The other was for short-term furnished apartments in New York — the kind marketed to visiting professionals or people wanting a temporary stay in Manhattan. Both had that persistent, plain-spoken quality, as if they had always been there and always would be.
I never bought one of those watch caps, but in a fashion, I am staying in one of those apartments. Funny how things turn out sometimes.
Like any neighborhood, there is a rhythm to each day. The rhythm changes through the seasons, but in the early spring, this is the rhythm I know. The weekdays start with early dog walkers in the park, the early commuters streaming towards the subway, then the school-aged children are walked or driven to school, followed by a second wave of commuters, and finally, the parents and caregivers bring out the younger children for a walk or to play in the park. Throughout the day, there are seniors — old people like me, well maybe older than me — who walk the park and sit on the benches in the sun. Later in the day, the pattern reverses itself, but plays much less rigidly. The pattern is periodically interrupted by weather, sirens, garbage trucks, and the inevitable New York car horn honk.
I have started to make images, small vignettes, of parts of this apartment. I want the images to capture the ambiance without seeming like an invasion of privacy or revealing my host's identity in any way. I have included several of those images below.
I have also included some images from yesterday's walk around mid-town. The day started with a visit to MoMA for the Marcel Duchamp exhibition. I spent two hours going through the exhibition, which is more time than I usually allow for visiting the entire museum. After an hour, I am usually over-stimulated and stop really seeing anything. It was such a great exhibition that I will probably return tomorrow. Another post on the Marcel Duchamp exhibition will be coming soon.
Anyway, back to yesterday's photos. Midtown was a zoo, the museum was a zoo. The crowds were suffocating, stifling, and standing still to take a photo was almost impossible. I was shooting with my Fujifilm X-Half camera. It is small and unobtrusive. I had hoped to just shoot without care and just see the results. I have not reached that level of nonchalance yet. The camera has an interesting feature. You can operate it as a "film" camera. You take 36 pictures; you cannot use the screen, and you cannot review your images until you have taken all 36. You shoot using the optical viewfinder, which has no framelines, so you cannot really tell what is in the image or outside it, just like an old point-and-shoot film camera. I need more practice using the camera; I keep cutting things off or including things I did not mean to, like my feet! I am not sure I will ever be comfortable with just pointing, pressing the shutter and hoping for the best.
Another interesting feature is the iPhone app that supports the camera can produce a contact sheet — yup, a contact sheet, just like the good old days. I have included yesterday's below.
I am heading over to my friend's home for dinner soon and then we are off to the New York Philharmonic concert this evening.
