New York, New York

I flew to New York on the Friday before I left Monday night in order to spend some quality time with my Aunt and shorten my flight to Florence.



I have just finished Eat, Pray, Love; and have found it a helpful way to remember a city is by finding one word that epitomizes it. My word for New York is stylish. Of course, I have tons of words for New York: eccentric, distinctive, crazy, raucous, boisterous, and hectic. But everything has style in New York: people, shows, restaurants, the buildings, even the subways. Its not just young women with style here it is everyone: teenagers, college students, young men, older women, older men. I may not like a particular New Yorker style, but at least it is there. I did not once see someone wearing sweatpants. I never felt out of place with my blackberry as almost everyone we hung out with had either a blackberry or an iphone—or both. Most importantly, what I liked is that I didn’t feel silly because I care about my appearance or dressed up. In fact I liked dressing up, loved dressing up. I saw people walking down the street in outfits that would be deemed too formal for a Pacific Northwest Homecoming dance, but they were working it just fine.

One of my favorite activities in New York, was going to the Fuerza Bruta Brazilian dance performance. I believe this type of performance could only happen in New York (and perhaps Brazil as well). You stand up for the entire show and move around as the sets are constantly intersecting the audience. I am not sure of all the themes portrayed in the show but one was criticizing the corporate world as the performers were wearing almost suits and throwing around paper and breaking it on peoples heads (performed much better than described). I thought that was somewhat ironic since the majority of people probably were in the corporate world in order to afford the one hour performance for $75 a head. My favorite part of the entire show was when a plexi-glass ceiling was suspended just a foot above my head while four gorgeous women danced, posed, and slid around. It was like a performance art slip-n-slide. Sometimes, the professional dancers would pick random people to dance and they all (well, one exception) had an excellent sense of rhythm and style in which they danced. It looked nothing like a Whitman dance party. Also, everyone seemed so nonchalant about gallons of water falling on their heads as they danced at the end of the show. I could only think about the impracticality of it being soaked with no clothes at 11:30 pm but they were just having a blast and enjoying the moment.

Other than that, my weekend was filled with fun activities mostly involving food, family, and shopping. Wine & cheese party on Friday followed by Jimmy’s in which I absolutely enjoyed meeting my aunt’s fabulous friends. Saturday, my grandmother, aunt, uncle, and new cousin visited and we went to Brooklyn for brunch and played in the park. Sunday included an excellent brunch at 5 Points, a little shopping, and a fantastic performance of Avenue Q. I would highly suggest this show because it was hilarious, tongue-in-cheek, and clever (with such titles as “It Sucks to be Me”, “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist”, and “Sheidenfreuda”! Followed by a Sex and the City style dinner at Morimoto and drinks at Milady’s. Monday was a scramble to get ready to fly in Florence but we managed to fit in a trip to Century 21 to pick up some essentials and have brunch with the girls at The Smith.

After this experience, I decided I would like to devote an entire section of my blog entry to the amazingness of Japanese toilets. I had my first experience with a Japanese toilet at my fabulous farewell dinner at Moriomoto. Moriomoto who has been a colossal celebrity chef in my mind, since he was featured as the best Iron Chef on the original Japanese show. Back to the toilets—if you can even call it that. It was more a combination of a toilet, bedit, and hair dryer. I guess Japanese toilets are designed so you don’t have to touch anything or use any paper. So there is no toilet flush, but a button for flush. There are a few buttons for drying including “pulse”, “oscillating”, and “steady”. There are also front and rear cleansing mechanisms that you can adjust for the best angle. The toilets are locating in some type of stall with a full door and a beautiful glass wall with a Japanese garden behind it. It was hard to leave.

I am almost ready to move to New York. Granted, the city did chew me up and spit me out day one… by introducing me to one of its famous neighborhood iced teas, but I just feel like I belong here. The spirit and the energy are in sync with how I am feeling. Plus, the food is amazing.