September 2022
I run the risk of romanticizing a city. And cities are not to be romanticized. They are collections of moments and relations; living breathing beings with organs and circulatory systems. They are places where people live. I am but a guest with the luxury of leaving and returning to my own city. The built environment is not my own so I treat it with a certain reverence. I wipe my shoes on the metaphorical doormat of JFK airport as I arrive. But this is not a temple, it is a collective construction of millions of individuals, thousands of communities; all interconnected with one another. A place where people work, eat, sleep, argue, grow old, learn, pay rent, read, and create. New York is already an institution, a collective ideal. It does not require another endnote of worshipful praise from me. So what is a visitor to do for three days? Despite my brief stay, how has the city shaped me and, how have I shaped it?
A trip is like a museum visit except I play both the role of curator and visitor. As curator, I decide the sights like an exhibit. As visitor, I follow the path laid out for me. I might feel as though I am “wandering” but the experience is tailored to me. What is an “authentic” experience? Tourist, traveler, visitor; what is the difference?
Seattle -> Airport -> Airplane -> Airport -> New York City
Travel itself, is mediated by nowhere spaces. We try to make these transitory moments as seamless as possible despite the monumental number of disruptions and annoyances that we encounter. Other people, going through the exact same experience as us, itching to get to point B. We distract ourselves from these moments in transit. Movies, music, books, sleep, snacks, shopping; everything but the awareness of the act of travel itself. The modern airport is a glorified shopping mall.
With flying, however, there is an added level of strangeness. We are packed like sardines into a flying metal cylinder with wings, launched at high speed into the sky, then miraculously soar at 30,000 feet above the clouds for hours, then glide back to the surface. Our legs fall asleep, we squirm, we grumble, and we clench our jaws.
***
Three full days in New York; the weather is warm and sunny, mornings are cool and evenings are pleasant, perfect weather for documenting travels in ink, watercolor, and light. I bring an Ilford Sprite 35mm camera, a small pocket sketchbook, and a larger 225x500mm sketchbook.
With winds in our favor, we land at JFK an hour early. After relearning the subway system, we arrive at my cousin’s apartment still recovering from travel fatigue, and order pizza for dinner. George, my friend since the third grade who has been living in New York since college joins us. It has been over two years since I saw them last after my original plan to visit in the spring of 2020 was canceled. Our travel adrenaline is beginning to set in. I want to dive in head first, not even remembering just how wide and deep of a pool this city is. It is Sam’s first time, and I can’t wait to share with her a city I have longed to return to since I first visited. We drink, we eat someone else’s pizza that was accidentally delivered to us, we eat more pizza, and eventually retire to bed anxious for tomorrow to begin.
***
Central Park is first. The F train takes us from Park Slopes to 57th Street. Manhattan greets visitors like a slap in the face when you first emerge from the subway. We dodge horse carriages and tour guides as we enter the park. Olmstead has designed what could be best described as a 19th-century Disneyland. An idealized wilderness, Central Park is a curated collection of lawns, forests, bridges, twisting and tangled paths, and a castle. We stop at the Bow Bridge where I start my first watercolor of the trip. The blue sky is juxtaposed with the murky green of the water. The San Remo towers stand tall above the dense treeline. Monoliths of iron, stone, and glass stretch up as if to remind those inside this green sanctuary that the concrete jungle awaits their return. As we stroll on, it is like being in a Grimm fairytale story. I draw the Belvedere Castle (the original Anaheim Sleeping Beauty palace).
Passing ponds and lakes, traversing through miniature forests, and pondering statues, we crisscross our way to the Glapstow Bridge to meet George. We walk from Central Park to Lincoln Center and spend some time wandering around the plaza. The simple and imposing forms stand tall above us, modernist geometric behemoths. From here we drag our feet through Hell’s Kitchen to grab some sandwiches. We realize we are not far from Bryant Park and the New York Public Library and on the way, we pass through Times Square.
It is a war zone for attention seekers.
People are bombarded with advertisements that last no longer than 30 seconds on repeat. The people, the ads, the gimmicks, and the performances of both. Eventually, we are overwhelmed and the spectacle is no longer interesting; we continue to the library.
The main branch of the New York Public Library is a cathedral of a building. Staircases zig-zag their way between levels, special collections rooms quietly guard the treasures within them, and footsteps echo down the marble halls.
To get into the Rose Reading Room we say we have “study materials”. We brought books and a newspaper with us on this trip, which is good enough for the guard who is interrogating people wanting to gain entry. We choose a few chairs at a long solid wood table that spans half the width of the room. I sit down in spot #127 and set to work.
The sheer magnitude of this space makes one feel small, but not unimportant. There is a quiet joy in being in a space in which 636 people—be they reading, writing, or in my case, drawing—feel a collective spirit. A library is one of the few remaining spaces in our society in which no one is expected to buy anything. Instead, we are genuinely asked to be curious. The library asks us to pause and to think for ourselves, away from the incessant pleading and begging of mega-corporations to buy their objects. Libraries are good. This is a tautological truth, a truth that perhaps is being eroded away as we sink deeper and deeper into the clutches of capitalist realism. Libraries are places of resistance; an institution where information is free and access to it isn’t predicated upon the mining of your personal information and your browsing history to be bought and sold. In an economic system where all aspects of one’s life are packaged up and sold to be bought by companies so they can sell you more things, the library represents something entirely antithetical and radical. An institution with the capacity for active engagement with the world which encourages its users to be active with it.
After we finish “studying” at the library we walk to Grand Central Terminal to catch the 6 train to the East Village. We visit a speakeasy behind a phone booth in a hot dog shop and enjoy a round of cocktails in our booth. The streets have come alive with people waiting in line to get into the dozens of restaurants tucked into every space; a ramen joint right above a small bistro. We settle on a soup dumpling restaurant without having to wait long for a table and order plate after plate of food. We continue to explore the village and peruse a used bookstore (I don’t have any cash on me despite a rather attractive book by Adorno that is calling my name). With the air still warm, and with a buzzing yet subdued energy in our bodies we enjoy a glass of wine at a bookstore and bar before heading back to Brooklyn.
The subway car and its elongated perspective, ever-changing cast of characters, and bustling atmosphere provide a wondrous subject for drawing. Some people knit, some read, some listen to music and close their eyes, some make conversation with their seat companion, a high number of people just look at their phone which makes my life easier, and some, perhaps unbeknownst to me, draw.
***
We begin the next day early with fresh baked goods, coffee, and tea. We have a long journey ahead of us.
It’s an hour-long ride on the 8th Avenue Express. Our destination: The Met Cloisters. The train is an R46 with orange and yellow seats, fake dark wood paneling, and beige walls. There is something hypnotic about racing at high speed down the express track as stations go by in a blur. There is a train on a separate track that is in tandem with ours for a brief moment, allowing us to glance peripherally toward our neighbors. Appearing as if in a zoetrope, their movement is segmented by the columns of the tunnels until eventually; the short film ends when we dive deeper into the earth to continue our journey.
The Met Cloisters is not a real place. It is a construction of various real elements of medieval art and architecture joined with contemporary architecture to create a simulation of a medieval monastery while also functioning as a museum for artifacts and objects. My drawing of the herbal garden is a geometric exercise in representation and perspective. I wonder if the monks who would have resided in a cloister such as this ever drew the space they lived and meditated in. While originally a cloister would have had glazed windows in the arches, separating the inside from the out, it would have had the most natural light of any part of the monastery.
We leave the Cloisters and walk through Fort Tryon Park to Washington Heights. If my limited ability to translate train operator intercom-speak means anything, the A train to return to Brooklyn is delayed between stations due to track maintenance on 81st Street. The car is warm, there is someone on their phone saying they’ll be late for an appointment, and after about 15 minutes we start moving again. Transferring to the F back to Brooklyn, we walk along 8th Avenue as children head home after school to ask for ice cream from older siblings and nannies. At a Middle Eastern bistro, we sit down for lunch. I draw as we wait for our food.
Prospect Park is Brooklyn’s largest and oldest forest and New York’s second-largest park with 250 acres of woodlands and meadows. I buy a vanilla soft-serve ice cream with a cake cone. Perfect for a warm afternoon. We meander along its paths and come across the boathouse. We buy a bottle of wine and spend the evening at George’s apartment
***
Our final day is a hurrah like no other and to begin, we wake up early to get breakfast from my cousin’s favorite bagel shop. We ride the G train up to Williamsburg and meet George at a deli where I order my much sought-after perfect pastrami on rye with mustard. We eat in the park, a hornet attacks my sandwich, and I drop half on the ground. There is no greater tragedy. I enjoy what I can then discard the remaining dirt-covered half in sadness.
Walking through Williamsburg, we have enough time to kill and on a whim decide to ride the East River ferry to DUMBO. The sky is clear, we pass under both the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges. When we dock, we make our way to the Brooklyn Bridge to begin the pilgrimage across to Manhattan. It is busy, people are posing, and there are countless vendors selling NYC-themed wares and cold beverages. I pause to draw.
As we continue, Sam grabs my hand to guide me as I walk and draw at the same time. People get up on benches and railings to get the photo. That photo which shows that they came, they saw, and they conquered. They don’t need to look at what’s behind them, they need you to see where they are. This is proof that shows everyone that yes, I made it to this spot.
In Chinatown, we visit what is to become my favorite bookstore of the trip. It is a single room with a small reading nook in the back. There is a bar and counter to one side, with shelves filled with both new and used titles wrapping around the walls. The interior space is warm and cramped and outside it is tucked between a laundromat and a dumpling restaurant. The space used to be a funeral home supply store, a darkly ironic location for a bookstore.
A mix of new and used, Yu and Me Books is centered around Asian American voices. This is a true bookstore, one in which there is a thread of logic connecting each and every one of the titles, an intentionality that does not exist in the Barnes and Nobles of the world. While it is not a store one could get lost in, the spirit of the store pulls one in to engage with it. There is a sincerity and desire to provide a unique voice amidst a growing sea of homogeneity. I hope, of all the places visited on this trip, that this place will be here when I return.
Passing through Chinatown, it feels odd to be in a place that is both a home for so many people as well as a sightseeing stop for thousands more. These are people whose lives have become entangled with the nature of the city as a spectacle, but these are lives, not spectacles to be witnessed.
Crossing Broome Street we enter NoLita, passing countless high-end chic shops and bistros that look too pristine. This area has become curated and preened to such an extent that it is difficult to believe that anyone actually lives here. It is almost too picture-perfect. Is this a performance of the city? Is this the “New York City” that people have come to see? Shops attempting to be “neighborly” and have “history” but are in fact only in their infancy?
Washington Square Park is where our feet finally give out. We plop down on the lawn and rest. There is a jazz trio playing. People are soaking up the warm September day. I am determined to visit another bookstore. Mercer Street Books is unpretentious in its offerings of stacks of books, ephemera, and records. The chaos of the shelves is a curiosity. It is a labyrinthine browsing experience where you are expected to work to find something that you don’t even know exists. There might be a book calling out to you somewhere amongst the piles of $3 paperbacks and 50-cent out-of-print quarterly journals. You just have to listen. A collection of Kandinsky’s essays and a book of architectural drawings are my two finds.
We take a train north to Chelsea to meet my cousin for dinner. We are early and decide to walk to Madison Square Park. Only a few blocks away…from east to west. By this point in the trip, we are stumbling our way from avenue to avenue. The Flatiron and Empire State buildings standing tall above seas of traffic and pedestrians are almost dreamlike. From a bench, we watch running duos chat about their day, people waiting for friends to get off work, dog walkers rushing, business and salespeople finishing up their last calls of the day, and others reading and people-watching.
As we walk back to Chelsea, the sun sinks lower, and Manhattan enters an evening glow as the street lights turn on, and the orange and yellow of restaurants and cafes bask into the blue and purple of the street. At the restaurant, everyone at the table orders the same kind of ramen, it is rich, comforting, and filling.
This gives us just enough energy to get back on the train to Brooklyn. In the dark, the window lights of skyscrapers replace the light of stars. It was difficult to not fall asleep on the train; the city’s cradle rocking us into a slumber to the sound of wheels on tracks.
“The right to the city is not merely a right of access to what already exists, but a right to change it after our heart's desire. We need to be sure we can live with our own creations (a problem for every planner, architect and utopian thinker). But the right to remake ourselves by creating a qualitatively different kind of urban sociality is one of the most precious of all human rights. The sheer pace and chaotic forms of urbanization throughout the world have made it hard to reflect on the nature of this task. We have been made and re-made without knowing exactly why, how, wherefore and to what end. How then, can we better exercise this right to the city?” -David Harvey, “The Right to the City”