The Final Year

Great!

I woke up late.  Showered (a frothy, filthy, fungus-filled typical hostel shower), dressed, and packed, I dragged almost all my belongings downstairs to the lobby and found a place to sit so that I could call United and pay a $110 inconvenience fee to book me on a Saturday flight instead of a Sunday flight. There’s just no need for me to be around all weekend. Knowing my schedule, I checked out of the room and changed my reservation here at the hostel to one additional night instead of two. Then I found a locker downstairs and paid $5 to put my bag in it until I could check in again later in the day. Then I went back upstairs and walked to the front door, where I realized that I had left a plastic zip-lock bag with my sunglasses and my book on the air conditioning unit in the now securely locked and unavailable room. Was I surprised? Not in the slightest. You’d think I plan these things, they happen so often. I wondered if it was worth the incredible hassle to get someone to escort me back into the ‘hostel members only’ area, up the locked stairs and finally into the locked room. These people have been less than friendly at the best of times. I saw someone going through the first layer of security while the guard was distracted by a rediculously pretty australian girl, so on the spot I decided to just break into the place and get my stuff back. I slipped my hand into the doorway as it was shutting and yanked it back open to gain entry to the lounge area. Then I paced nonchalantly back and forth in front of the stairway door, and in just a few seconds I had given a hearty ‘goodday mate’ to a startled asian dude as I barrelled past him into the stairs. Five flights later I was on my floor, hoping and praying that the door to my old room would be ajar as it sometimes was when people had gone to the shower. If not, it would be nearly impossible, as the doors had high-security card-key locks on them that blinked menacingly red when you jiggled the handle without the proper swiping action. Sure enough, it was shut and locked. My last and only hope was to knock, but by now it was 10:30 in the morning, and I knew most of the people would be gone. I knocked. Instant reaction, the door flew open. One last big German dude was just about to struggle his huge frame backpack on and would have been gone in just moments. There was my stuff on the air conditioner, just as I’d left them, and I swiftly snatched them up. I turned back around to leave with thanks when I was confronted with a big, orange-haired german cockroach laying on its back in the center of the room flailing its legs and arms furiously in the air, weighed down by the equally prone pack beneath his head.

"Urf. Orf. Unh." he said, kicking and flopping about. I literally could not get past his waving limbs. I looked down with just a moment’s amusement.

"Would you like some help with that?" I said, wiping the smile quickly from my face.

"Oh, for yes. Could you please be the helping up? I am quite heavy in the package."

"Ur, ok." I reached out a hand to lift him to his feet, pack and all.

"Nein, could you please be under the package with lifting?"

"Oh, right. Of course." I grabbed his package by the strap and held it up while he clambered to a standing position.

"Oh, thank you American. From Wisconsin you are?" (no, really, that’s what he asked me)

"Um, no. I’m from Los Angeles. Do I look like I’m from Wisconsin?" I asked that last question quite innocently, not threateningly like someone from New York would ask it.

"Oh, no. You look Choormann." (German)

"Oh."

Awkward silence.

"Well, I’m going to be off. Have a nice day!"

"Thank you big American!"

Ok.

I went back down to the lockers and found that in order to add my book and things to the locker I already rented I’d have to pay another $5 to open it and lock it again. So I did. Then I got to the front door and remembered why I had remembered my stuff in the first place. I needed my sunglasses. And I just spent $5 to PUT THEM IN THE DAMN LOCKER. Sigh.

I met up with my crew in Manhattan before heading over to Queens to visit our site in Long Island City (which is in Queens). We walked around Queens for a while looking at the neighborhood and filming before PS1 opened for the day. PS1 is a party spot/museum/gallery/architecture showcase. Every 6 months five architects are invited to compete for a chance to build something in the open courtyard in front of PS1. Only the best, brightest, up-and-comingest architects are invited, and the temporary structures they design are always written up in trade magazines like Architectural Record. It’s a great honor that quite a few of my professors at SCI-Arc have won. I’d always wanted to see what the place was about, and the piece that is currently up and on display is rad. We stopped into a local deli next door to grab lunch and sit out under the winning entry to eat.

After a half a relaxing hour we set off again for Manhattan. We had a 2pm appointment with the NYC planning department that was complete news to me. After a short walk through the Wall St. area and city hall we found a little out of the way building that housed the planning department. We were shown up to a conference room where four stern-looking besuited people looked at us with puzzlement. I think they were expecting a bit more polish. I spit into my hand and ran it through my hair. There.

It was a very surreal experience to go from lounging in a sail-sized hammock under a big plastic pink canopy to a buttoned-down conference room looking at a powerpoint presentation on city planning. Nonetheless it was entirely fascinating and relevant, and we all felt as though this 2 hour meeting had saved us two weeks of research. Not to mention the fact that they were more than willing to provide us with their 3D model of ALL OF NEW YORK CITY. Holycrap.

So we had Ground Zero next to see, which we did, and it looked as I expected, a big construction hole blocked off by tarps you couldn’t see past. But at least now I’ve been there. There was a cross erected at the nearby Catholic church made up of steel from the fallen buildings signed by relatives of the victims of the day which was moving in a I-know-they’re-just-trying-to-be-moving-on-purpose-but-I-don’t-care-it’s-moving-anyway sort of way. By that time people were so beat that we were starting to get on each other’s nerves. Gordon smacked Kris in the face for gbouncing sunlight off his sunglasses into Gordon’s eyes, and Yazmeen was curled in the corner with her head on the lap of a homeless man playing Amazing Grace on a beat-up old flute. It was time to go.

I headed down to the subway and took four trains back to the hostel, where I was finally able to check in again. I dumped some stuff on my bed to make sure everyone knew it was occupied and called Gillie to see what was up before I returned to the subway, intent upon seeing MOMA at least for an hour before it closed. When I emerged at 86th and 2nd it was dropping threatening globs of sporadic rain onto the map which told me I had somehow taken the wrong train 5 stops too far. When I actually arrived at the correct station there was a torrent of people flooding into the station looking like they just jumped out of the way of a bulldozer stampede. Actually, it was the sky opening up and absolutely DUMPING on the city. I was in a great hurry, pushing my way through the opposite-flowing throng that was looking increasingly wet the closer I got to the exit of the station. Then, I saw it. An entrepeneurial man had just placed a rack of umbrellas outside his shop right at the entrance of the subway station. I grabbed one and handed him a $5 bill just as the rack was set upon by hyenas to a zebra. It was nothing but bones in seconds. Feeling thankful, I gave incredibly patronizing looks to all the great idiots in full rush-hour business attire fighting like mad for every square inch of dry space under each and every awning as far as I could see. HA! Smarter than the locals, for once. I traded a woman a dry walk to the nearest subway entrance for directions to sixth ave and 53rd, and found MOMA without much more difficulty.

The place is huge. Way more than 1.5 hours huge. It has Monets, Degas, Picassos, Pollacks, Van Goughs, Bentons, and a hundred other works that adorn the covers of high school art history textbooks. AND, in a stroke of AWESOMENESS, they let you take all the pictures you want, as long as you don’t have your flash on. And you don’t want your flash on anyway. CRAZY! They finally get it! I think I took 100 pictures in there. The building is new as well, and was interesting of its own accord. But to add pastry to perfection, the place was COMPLETELY FREE to enter. There wasn’t even a cost for the audio tour. Wow. Unbelievable.

By the time I got out of there the rain had quite literally disappeared. No clouds, no rain, not even a hint of water on the ground. Just gone. Now everyone scoffed at me as I walked by with an utterly useless umbrella. Oh well. I had my laugh. I went to dinner at a place in Times Square before returning to the hostel feeling like a baby seal after an Orca encounter. The blisters have not gone away.

I am very glad to be returning a day earlier. I just can’t take this frenetic pace any more. It’s time to get back to the nice, slow Los Angeles tempo. Sigh. See you all soon.

-C

K, so I’m in a lot of pain right now. I think I have fourteen blisters. I tried to count them, but some had merged together before I finished. It’s amazing how such little things can completely incapacitate a person. Also, we walked something on the order of a quadrillion spans today. I’m not 100% sure of the conversion rate, but that’s like 8 miles. Uphill. Both ways. In the snow. Naked. With a skunk chasing you. Ugh. It’s 9:45 and I’m already ready for bed, when it’s supposed to feel like 6:45 to me. I’m all screwed up.

I began the day at 7:30 in the morning by waking up nine disgruntled foreigners with my cell phone alarm. After repeated blows to the head I managed to find my way to the showers and pretend I wasn’t contracting diseases just by touching the door handle. At least this hostel has doors. And lockers. All you need, really. I was ready to go at about 8, and after a call from Kris Feldmann telling me how to get there, I headed for a bakery in SoHo where I was to meet my classmates. I hadn’t seen anyone but Lina yet, and didn’t know who actually made it after all. The answer was practically nobody. My two professors sat on a bench outside the bakery and Kris and Gordon were inside, but that’s pretty much all of the fifteen people in my class who were there at 9:20 (I was late on account of the not knowing where I was most of the time).

So, we sat and waited. And waited. And waited, until about thirty minutes later Lina showed up. The five of us, ready to set out, began what was to be a VERY long and VERY confused walk across Manhattan and Brooklyn. ‘mommy‘. Or, at least, that’s what I would have said had I known. We first walked 20 blocks to a building that I’d read about many times but never would have found near the Hudson river. After sufficiently looking at it, we walked another 20 blocks to another building that was entirely blue and devastatingly ugly. It was just being finished, and looked as though it were designed and built to the cutting edge 25 years ago. Ghastly, really.

Lunch time had arrived, so we walked 10 blocks to an eatery that served very small, expensive ’boutique’ sandwiches. I had two, and wished I’d been like everyone else and gotten three. There’s another 20 down the drain. We gathered ourselves and began the longest trek of the day, aaaaall the way down to the edge of the water at the Brooklyn bridge, only to find that the only way up and across it was to go aaaaall the way back to where it actually touched ground, 20 blocks away. We finally got to the end of the damn thing and were so wiped out that we had to stop to catch our collective breaths before heading out again.

I’m not sure I mentioned how miserable it is here. It’s as though we are indirectly in the midst of a mighty rain storm. But instead of it falling straight from the clouds, the moisture is simply hovering in the air, making it so humid that all the people of New York are sweating a downpour into the streets. There are literally rivers of sweat running through the gutters. It’s the kind of weather that isn’t really that hot, but makes you want to take a shower every time you step out of the shower. By the time we got to the end of the Brooklyn Bridge we were all ready to change pants. Not with each other, I just mean…nevermind.

So, removing a slew of video cameras from several shoulder bags, we began our looooong slooooow march across the most famous of NY bridges. There were throngs and throngs of hot, sweaty, disgusting tourists like us madly snapping pictures along the entire span of the structure. I was reminded of the time I wandered naked through a spa for infirm slugs. Very much reminded.

After an hour or so, we made it to the other side, full videotapes in hand, and set out to find a subway station back to Manhattan. 20 blocks and three sets of directions later, we found a hot, dark, crap-infested hole and gleefully charged down to the platform. We arrived back at Fourth Street in Manhattan 20 minutes later and disembarked, happy for the only-headache-inducing heat of the topside. We all bought hot dogs and threw them away just to get some napkins to wipe the swimming pools from our butts, and then set off to find a building by Herzog and Demeuron that turned out to be about 20 blocks away. It was, and we saw.

It was time to make a choice. Either make the 40 block underground sauna trip to a bunch of art galleries that were going to close in 50 minutes, or find a place to drink. After such a long, sweaty, long day, the latter was chosen by all, and we walked 20 blocks to find a nearby pub. Beer on an empty, dehydrated stomach is really quite coma-inducing, and after one and a half Stellas, I was ready to call it a day. Gordon and I thought we oughta put some food in (to mix in with the alcohol), so all went their separate ways and Gordon and I found a subway stop 20 blocks away. Three trains later we emerged in Times Square and found a cheap little NY pizza place about 20 blocks away. By the time we were done eating, my feet were the size of softballs, which I guess if you ball up a foot into a sphere really isn’t that big, but it was all blister, so that’s bad. Gordon and I hobbled back to the station 20 blocks away and split up, he to his friend’s place in SoHo and me to my hostel on the Upper West Side.

I emerged from underground and dragged my bluddy stumps (for some reason I find it to be more descriptive when it’s spelled like that) only two blocks past the projects (actually, project singular), where a nice crack dealer helped me stumble across the street to the hostel’s front door. I have not gained the courage to tackle the five flights of stairs up to my room, and am using this time of hopeful recuperation to write this blog. Unfortunately, now I’m done, and I have to stand up. Which makes me very very sad.

Oh, one last bit of info, last night I went to meet Gillian at her friend’s place, which turned out to be a mansion stuffed into the fifth floor of a gigantic building full of mansions. Like a can of sardines, except instead of fish they are mansions. I had to convince three separate security guards (one who doubled as a gun-wielding elevator operator) to gain entry to the place. Gus’ friends are very nice, very well-connected (in terms of dead grandmothers) people, who were a fun bunch to hang out with. After a while of sitting on one of their many couches talking about stuff with the crew, Gillie took me to a nice diner down the street and I drank water (remember the slug sauna?) while she ate dinner (since I’d already eaten). Just thought I’d mention that bit of my night, because it was cool. Some people have all the luck.

-c

Well, it took me twelve and half hours, but I finally arrived at the Hostel NY at 7:30 pm. Ok, it’s a bit of a stretch to call it 12.5 hours, because three of those hours were lost due to time zone issues. But still, my flight was supposed to leave at 7:00am sharp, and I locked my stuff in my room at 7:30pm local time. I say my flight was ’supposed’ to leave at seven because it actually left at more like 8:30, due to an unexpected loss of fuel-level-monitoring capability. This was discovered just moments before we hit the accelerator to lift our 30,000,000 tons of metal into the air. So we had to turn back around, wait to determine if there was really a problem, wait to determine the course of action, then finally taxi back to the terminal to have it looked at, then wait while they diagnosed the problem, then wait while they installed a brand new fuel-level-monitoring device, which looked oddly enough like a rather-too-young-looking chimpanzee. Standards certainly have fallen since my day.

As a nice piece of fortune I ran into one of my classmates (Lina) in LAX, and we not surprisingly were on the same plane. That meant that I didn’t have to make the trek out to Manhattan by myself, and instead meant that I got to shuttle a quivering undergrad girl around for seven hours. When she stepped off the bus in the city I swear I heard her say something akin to ‘mommy‘. Her hostel was in SoHo, and we were north of SoHo, and my hostel was north of that. So, instead of going to mine, we went to hers and I made sure she got in ok. Hers looked like a dump, and it was the one my professor reccommended to us. My hopes were not high. I took the 6 train to the 7 train to the 1 train uptown and exited at 103, where I was confronted with a rough-looking public housing project and 100 rough-looking housing project residents all staring at me like I was made of pastry-flavored cotton candy. ‘mommy‘. I figured as long as I looked like I knew where I was going, and could convey my now well practiced f-offishness, they would leave me alone. And also I saw a sign for my hostel across the street. To be honest, it’s just a big smashup of people, and there are so many that it’s easy to just get lost in the crowd. No big deal whatsoever. I went inside the place and found (as expected) that they had no room for me, even though I’d made a reservation last week. They got me a room for two nights, then another reservation for a different room for the final two nights. Oh well.

After slogging my stuff up five flights of stairs I got it locked up in my 10 person dorm room and quickly headed back to Grand Central station (1 train to 7 train again) where I met up with Lina to go to dinner. We found a nice on-the-street restaurant and ate, then walked around a bit, then went and got grocery-store food, then walked around a bit more, then went back to our respective hostels. Now I’m going to go hang out with my friend Gillie, who has also just arrived in the city. We shall see how that goes.

That’s what’s up.

-c