Jun 10

A Microview of NYC Goings-On

New York City

NICOLE CATÁ (New York, New York)

The recently-sweltering New York City heat and Devon’s return to the United States have prompted Nicole to update the readership on selected goings-on of her favorite metropolis. But first, we pause and remark that several new blogs of interest seem to have cropped up lately. This post singles out I Ate My DVD Collection, which features music and movie reviews ala Break Out the Oreo’s most faithful Obie. (Note: here, BOTO refers to the first definition.) As always, links of interest are provided on the right-hand side of the screen, on the main page.

BOTO Pick for Most Awkward Encounter and general impressions of a summer in the city await after the jump:

BOTO’s Pick for Most Awkward Encounter involves a young blogger and her gentleman lover, who, as our story unfolds, were drifting in and out of consciousness in various states of (un)dress. Who should happen by but a bemused, rather intoxicated young stranger, convinced that he’s stumbled upon his own room? In a fit of gallantry, chivalry, and near-nudity, our Quaker Bouncer (the gentleman lover) negotiated with the vagabond, convincing him that the room upon which he had stumbled (and inside which he had dumped his belongings on the desk) was not, in fact, his. The argument, which came close to regressing into an “Is not! Is too!” tennis match, culminated when our visitor discerned the difference between the numbers “1101″ and “1401.” Moral of the story? Lock your doors. Nicole must qualify Clipse’s articulate wisdom: keys don’t open all doors. Please note that the image to the left represents the results of a Google image search for “awkward encounter.”

Nicole only wishes she could benefit from the wonders of CU Housing Security for the rest of her days. For those who cannot, one’s instincts become infinitely more vital. If you take one entry on BOTO seriously, it should be this one. Nicole wouldn’t dream of equating this poor woman’s experience with her own, but similar safety tips apply in both scenarios. This half of BOTO is often mocked for the motherly tendencies she exhibits here by urging you to browse through the safety advice provided in the linked webpage, but she loves her readership too much to let this opportunity slip through her concerned fingers. Constant vigilance, I say!

And now for some general impressions of New York from the weekend. With an entire summer to reacquaint herself with the city she loves, Nicole has chosen to begin her exploration at a leisurely pace. A visit to The American Museum of Natural History was long overdue, and the promise of air conditioning was a fine way to escape the aforementioned heat. This museum is remarkable because its exhibits are so memorable. Without having been there for years, the redheaded half of BOTO immediately and viscerally recognized the towering apatosaurus fossils in the lobby, the enormous blue whale in the Milstein Hall of Ocean Life, and the Heilbrunn Cosmic Pathway in the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space. There’s something about gazing up at non-sentient beings several times your size and walking along a timeline of which the span of human history constitutes a few inches that sticks with you.

Also on the unofficial list was Greenwich Village, which provided much-needed therapy after the death of Nicole and Devon’s alma mater. Anything a restless college student could want to experience is here for the taking. For historical sites, or places generally representative of the once-bohemian Village aesthetic, you have the Oscar Wilde Bookshop, the Stonewall Inn, and the ever-bustling Washington Square Park, the latter of which is located in the heart of New York University’s “campus.” (As you can tell, this college student also enjoys keeping tabs on rival schools.) If you’re looking for food, you can find plenty of cheap restaurants that almost never sleep (Mamoun’s Falafel is a particular favorite), tons of fancy alternatives to Starbucks, and divinely frosted cupcakes. To this half of BOTO, Greenwich Village is a bustling microcosm of a metropolis that is remarkable for having changed vastly in the past 50 years (largely due to soaring rent prices in the neighborhood) while maintaining its reputation as a haven for artistic inclination and “live-and-let-live” viewpoints. Also, it’s good to get out of Morningside Heights every so often.

Having hit the maximum word count, Nicole will stand aside for the evening and review either the Mets’ recent performances or the bad-assery of the Iron Man movie when next she updates.

Related Posts

• No Related Post