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New York City symphony
July 26, 2009When people ask me about living in the city, they always anticipate that I'll gripe about the noise. True, this isn't the farm in Paducah, but there is a certain melody about all the honking and screaming and bustle that is city life.
One of my great delights is the music that pervades the air, from car stereos to home-entertainment systems to the numerous musicians that call this delightful city home.
I especially like the musicians that occupy my building. There's the French horn player who warms up every afternoon for his evening gig with a Broadway show. A harpist lives on the top floor of my building, and there's the high pitch of a flute -- or maybe it's a piccolo instead -- that floats through the air outside my window. And I swear I heard a trombone the other day.
Only in NYC.
Posted by Lara Richards at 9:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
American Girl
July 25, 2009My walk to work each morning each morning takes me past the best of the best shopping in New York City. I cross Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue before arriving at my office on Park Avenue.
My route takes me right by the American Girl shop, and it always makes me smile when I pass the store in the morning and see little girls anxiously waiting to go inside to buy the latest historically inspired doll. And they are just SOOOOO excited!!
The American Girl shop also serves as my personal "watch" of sorts as well. I know that if I pass the shop and little girls are still waiting outside that I'm on time. (The store doesn't open until 9 a.m., which is the start of my workday.)
Posted by Lara Richards at 5:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
My favorite hobo
It goes without saying that there are many homeless people living in New York City. The panhandlers take to the streets and subways in droves, asking for handouts at virtually every street corner.
One of the beggars' tactics is to get on a subway car with you. People are literally trapped, a captive audience, as the beggar walks with hands out. Sometimes, if they tell a really good story, I'll give them a buck or two.
The most creative I've encountered so far was this woman who came on the subway with her own makeshift stereo system, which played that disco hit, "On the Radio" while she sang. I must admit that she had the most amazing voice, and the song truly put me in a great mood for the rest of the day. (Which probably explains why I shelled out some money.)
But my favorite hobo encountered happened yesterday. He was sitting in a chair on the corner and held up his homemade sign. It read:
I need money for
Beer Drugs Hooker
(At least I'm honest.)
And it made me chuckle.
Posted by Lara Richards at 9:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Nasti D-Light
July 18, 2009I am about to admit to something that I never thought I would ever do in my entire, entire life.
Last week, I threw away ice cream.
Yes, ME!! Lover of all whipped dairy goodness.
There's this chain of ice cream shops up here in New York City called Tasti D-Light. I'm always seeing them and people are always smiling coming out from them. So last week, me and my sister went into one because I was craving ice cream, which I do 23-1/2 hours of every day.
She ordered the vanilla flavored; I got the rice pudding. We started walking down the street, each eating our cones. It took us about a block before little sister spoke up.
She didn't like her ice cream. I told her I hated mine, too. Hated it so much, in fact, that we found the nearest trash can.
Mine tasted like whipped cardboard, minus the cardboard flavor. Her's was like eating a shave ice without the topping.
When I get home to Texas in August, Mom has promised to make me Milky Way ice cream. The recipe is simple -- you take about 16 Milky Ways and melt them, add a gallon of chocolate milk, about a quart of half and half, and some vanilla. You whip it up and throw it in the ice cream maker. And tada.
Now THAT's what I call ice cream.
Posted by Lara Richards at 5:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Felt tip pen on paper
So my sister the artist dragged me to the Museum of Modern Art on Friday (the MOMA, for short). Now, I'm not much of an art connisseur, but I do dig the classics -- Monet, Manet, Picasso, the French guy that did all the pics of the girls dancing, etc...
Modern art, well, not so much. I can appreciate Warhol and Basquiat, and I have to admit that the Jackson Pollack's we looked at Friday were way more interesting than those splatter paint T-shirts I made at cheerleading camp back in high school. But when I got to a room where the "artist" had just cut out large pieces of construction paper and then drawn a line down the middle of it and framed it, well, it just didn't scream art to me.
Now some of the modern stuff was pretty cool. From afar, I couldn't figure out what this one mural-ish thing of a horse was made of. Turns out, it was cigarettes that the artist had twisted and squished into the shape of the animal. Pretty cool. And then there was this other exhibit where the artist had dipped probably 1,000 paint brushes in red paint and then squished it into some kind of jelly and then mounted it. (Believe me, it was LOTS cooler in person.)
My standards for art aren't high. I want it to inspire me or make me smile or make me think. I like when I look at something and say, "I would have never thought to do that" or "I could never do something that creative" or "Wow, I'd like to meet the person who created this." Simple standards.
Which brings me to "Felt Tip Pen on Paper."
I walked into the room and there, on the far wall, were seven sheets of standard 8-1/2 x 11 inch paper mounted on the wall in seven different colors -- red, blue, yellow, etc.. From afar, it looked like someone had just colored seven sheets of paper with different kinds of pens. From upclose, it looked the same. And then I looked at the "title" of the "art" -- Felt Tip Pen on Paper. That's exactly what someone had done.
There was no pattern or method to this "art." Someone -- I'm guessing a 5-year-old -- had just colored seven sheets of paper with felt tip pens. And then a big city museum decided to hang it up.
Posted by Lara Richards at 5:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Dirty subway hands
July 14, 2009It amazes me the things that people do with their dirty subway hands.
It goes without saying that the subway is just gross, a germ factory. You get on a train and you have to hang on to these steel poles to keep from falling over as the subway jostles from stop to stop. Thousands of people with all kinds of colds and flues and diseases have been hanging on to these grimy steel poles day after day after day.
And yet, it doesn't stop some people from using their dirty subway hands to eat food on the train.
There was this one girl the other day that would hold onto the pole and then, once the train got going, she would reach into her bag - with her dirty subway hands - and grab celery sticks. And there was a guy peeling and eating Starburst candy, which are sticky and gooey, and I'm sure every subway germ must have clung to those bursts of flavor before he popped the candy in his mouth.
It truly amazes me (and totally grosses me out) when I see folks eating on the train. Go home, wash your freakin' dirty subway hands, and THEN reach into your bag for some Cheetos!
Posted by Lara Richards at 8:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
El Mundo
July 13, 2009It is called "El Mundo" and it truly is "The World" to me.
It is a department store chain up here in upper, upper, upper it's way the heck upper West Side of New York, and I use the term "department store" very loosely. It's basically a big huge garage sale full of name-brand goods that are dumped in a barrel.
Ever wonder where shoes and shirts go when they don't sell on the clearance racks at TJ Maxx or Ross or Marshall's? Well, they go to the end of the world -- El Mundo.
The motto at El Mundo is caveat shoptor. There is no air-conditioning. There are no organized racks where all of the jeans are and all of the blue shirts are and all of the dresses are. It's just endless rack upon endless rack of stuff. Wander too far down a "row" and you are literally trapped. It's chaos galore!
No dressing rooms. No mirrors. When you find something you like, you kind of put it on over your existing clothes and, if you're lucky like I was Monday night, you ask the nice lady shopping next to you if you look good in the jacket/shirt you're trying on. (For the record, my nice lady had a great eye. I bought three name-brand jackets for only $14 a piece (regularly a gazillion dollars in the department stores) and they looked fabulous when I tried them on at home in a mirror.)
You have to be careful, though, or the allure of cheap shopping will lead you astray. I almost bought a pair of hot pink 4-inch Jessica Simpson stiletto heels, mainly cuz I was feeling sorry for her Monday because Tone-Tone gave her the boot (or, he called an audible or he fumbled their relationship or he turned over a new girlfriend, etc, etc., whatever football pun you want to insert about her quarterback beau giving her the heave-ho!) BUT, then I realized that I was about to purchase 4-inch hot pink heels.
You have to work up the courage for a little shopping excursion to El Mundo, but trust me, it is well worth the trouble,as long as you can avoid the Jessica Simpson heels.
Posted by Lara Richards at 10:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Takings its toll
We had already paid about $3.50 in tolls to drive about 5 miles on the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey. Now, my little sister (No. 6) was trying to get me across the George Washington Bridge to deposit me at my apartment in New York City. (She's living in New Jersey for the summer, we had gone to the beach for the day, and now I was trying to get home.)
We saw a sign that another toll booth was coming up. Sigh. We collectively scrounged around in our purses to see how much money we could come up with -- $1.85, plus a handful of pennies. Surely, that would get us across a mile-or-so-long bridge.
And then we saw the sign -- $8.
EIGHT DOLLARS????
We were just a smidge short. There was nothing we could do except pull up to the gate and tell the guy that we didn't have the money. Luckily, this was the first congenial Yankee I'd met. He told us to just go on through.
Posted by Lara Richards at 10:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
