Jul 29, 2010

I started the day driving up the Turnpike to the Parkway and finding my way to the Willow Grove Mall in Wayne, NJ to meet up with Alex.

We got our bus tickets and took the NJ Transit bus into the city. I had never done it before but it was pretty efficient. Cheaper parking than trains too.

Once we got into the city we walked around a bit and checked out the MoMa, learning that Fridays are the only "free after 4pm" days. We decided to check out some things downtown and hopped on the subway. Second time on the subway for Alex.

First we went to the Peter Lik gallery. I had seen most of the images before but they are just amazing to see in person. I just stare at them for a long time.

He has scenes from all over America and Australia, including some places that I've been and they look more brilliant in his photos than they did in person. I really want one of these to hang on my wall.

We checked out another artist's gallery down the street in SoHo. He uses natural items like leaves and sticks in his painting and builds up the texture on the canvas so it's noticeably thick. We looked at some pieces downstairs in the gallery and the artist was there eating lunch. We didn't realize it was him until we were leaving though so we didn't say anything. Too bad.

We stopped at the Leica gallery to see the portraits on display and then went to Whole Foods for a snack. Alex learned that she doesn't like parfait and I enjoyed mine.

We headed uptown to Chelsea in search of more galleries, finding this contemporary artist's gallery, Volume Black. Some of the things were really cool...

Especially this one, called "Technostalgia" that I think is great.

We went into the Museum of Sex, the gift shop anyway. We didn't want to spend a lot of money to find out what could be in there so we just browsed the shop and then left.

We headed in the direction of some other galleries but ended up deciding to save them for another day and kept heading uptown. I finally got to check out B & H Camera. The store is amazing. I wish I had a lot of money for camera equipment.

We went to get dinner at Mercury Bar. I got a surprisingly delicious veggie quesadilla. Usually they're pretty bland for some reason but this one was great. Alex enjoyed her pesto chicken as well so I think this could be a place to come back to.



After eating we took a subway ride on the BQ line to Brooklyn just to ride it back so we could see this. It was done by Bill Brand in 1980 as a public art exhibit and I love it. I took a video but this one is better.. aside from the first twenty seconds of nothing.

Bars were up next. We went a higher class bar first and had a couple beers and soon wandered to the Celtic Bar down the street with slightly more reasonable prices. Slightly. After we had a couple we went back to the Port Authority and got lost in the maze of closed bus terminals until we finally stumbled upon our bus with four minutes left.

I headed to Joanna's and now I need to get some rest before heading out on a disc golf adventure tomorrow. Goodnight.