Jul 18

A Potpourri of NYC (for Free!)

Entertainment, Mascots, New York City

NICOLE CATÁ (New York, New York)

Since Devon has already graced you, the readership, with a photo entry about the Yankees, Nicole won’t follow suit with such a one about the Mets (who have won ten consecutive games and earned ten consecutive Snoopy dances from a particularly enthused fan as her team tied the Phillies for first place in the National League East).  Instead, she will build on an important BOTO theme:  free events in the Big Apple.  There is no better time than the summer to soak up the city like a (fiscal) sponge, so, for this entry, Nicole will leave the news reporting to the other half of BOTO and assume the role of travel writer.  But first, we present you with a blast from the past in the form of some field evidence of the Peregrine Falcon That Wasn’t.  Behold, Exhibit A.  Quick poll:  Baby Falcon, or Teenage Robin?  Discuss.  In any case, while Nicole has given up hopes of a career in ornithology, she is proud to call this bird her mascot.  By the way, if you’d like to see more animals of the cute and feathered variety in New York, you needn’t travel all the way to Westchester to do so:  the Bronx Zoo offers free admission on Wednesday afternoons and is, for Nicole’s money, the best of the many popular destinations in the borough.

An otherwise baseball-free entry about architecture and outdoor concerts awaits after the jump:

Option 1: For architecture aficionados, it is difficult to imagine that the so-called Capital of the World would disappoint even the most acute artistic craving.  From the Dorilton, a Second Empire Baroque on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, to the Trump Building, an Art Deco on Wall Street, the buildings in the Big Apple are enough to whet the pallet of any architectural customer.  But to truly satisfy all such appetites, one must pick through the barrel to uncover some of the city’s best-kept secrets.  In a nook of the infrequently visited, relatively obscure Times Square, this peckish art buff happened upon the modern architectural masterpiece known as Regal Cinemas.  What with its towering columns and arched roof, this building lends credence to the phrase, “If You Build It, They Will Come.”  Readers:  come hungry.

Option 2: So you’ve been to a few free concerts in Central Park and you’d like a change of scenery.  You flip through the papers and find that your favorite local band from high school is playing at an art studio in Brooklyn.  You ride the subway for an hour, navigate the western edge of another borough, find the musical act of the hour, park yourself in a fold-up chair, bask in the July sun, lend your friend your sunglasses for his rendition of - you guessed it - “My Sunglasses,” and enjoy being serenaded.  You wash the experience down with guava juice, because nothing is sweeter than an afternoon filled with guitar strumming and 48 grams of sugar.

Option 3: For all of their charm, local street performances do not draw crowds of 60,000, do not feature a conductor named Lang Lang, and are not followed by a ten-minute fireworks show.  The New York Philharmonic, and their two-hour set of classical music, are worth the trek back to Central Park, as is the view of explosive pyrotechnics over the Central Park South skyline.  Observe (crookedly):

That’s all for tonight, folks.  Tune in next time as Nicole returns to news reporting to take on the Bodies Exhibit, the Upper West Side, and perhaps her love affair with the Mets, or as Devon posts an entry.

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