be a tourist in my own town

today on the brooklyn bound F train, there was a real live chinese cowboy. how ironic – getting off in delancey, in chinatown. i wasn’t really sure where he was originally from, but he definitely wasn’t from chinatown. he was 6ix feet tall, wearing a black cowboy hat, tapered, unfaded denim blue jeans and black cowboy boots. it was really cool.

today i took a different route to work and went through grand central station. as i entered the main concourse and the blue sky ceiling with its constellations revealed itself, i was listening on my ipod to the climax of camille saint-saen’s carnaval des animaux (which is btw the genesis for the theme of Babe the talking pig movie)

those 30 seconds just made my week.

the transit strike allowed me to walk almost two miles from 85th to 47th yesterday – at least it was sunny, brisk but sunny. fifth avenue was a ghost town!

rockefeller ctr tree – this actually made me smile when i walked by it. i work a couple of blocks away actually, and now i’ve made the effort to take this route on the way home.

the roc center tree is supposed to go up tomorrow night. this evening after work, i walked around midtown and actually took in the scenery around rockefeller center. the big snowflake was up around 57th/5 and saks had their musical snowflake light show going on. it was actually really pretty.
next stop – guggenheim – okay actually it’s dj party on friday, so maybe that doesn’t seem so touristy?

it took going across the ocean to figure out that i probably didn’t know as much as i should about nyc, being born and bred here.

on my plane back from paris last night i sat next to a couple who were embarking on their first trip to nyc, in fact, to the States in general. he asked first about little things, how long is the trip from jfk to upper east side, how much do we usually pay the taxi driver, etc etc. and then he asked, so what should we do when we get to nyc? he had begun to ask about all the regular tourist traps – statue of liberty, broadway shows, empire state building etc etc.

of course i had heard of them, in fact walked by all of them but never actually visited or enjoyed them myself. he found it quite strange that i’d never been there at least once – he had already visited his own eiffel tower several times over his life. i guess you always think they’ll be there, so you never take the time to actually go. and then i was reminded quite easily of the wtc and how i always wanted to visit, but just put it off because i’d always thought i can visit whenever i’d want to.

so from now on, i’ll take every opportunity i can to visit something that “has just always been there” in nyc. i realized that whenever i visit paris i’m always taking the time to actually see things. here in ny nobody looks at each other or at anything – myself included. but when i was in paris -especially a trip i took this past summer – i took the time to explore everything and smile at everyone, and lo and behold, they smiled back.

i’m always saying how i would love, love to live in paris, and maybe someday i will. but for now we live in one of the best cities of the world, so i better enjoy it while i can.