Getting to NYC

Finally, back to Seattle after a week in New York City, then back to Seattle for a day, then back to Buffalo until last night. I can already feel some semblance of normal creeping back into my life (thank goodness!) but I still have a lot of catch-up to do from all of this time away mid-quarter. New York City this time was a whirlwind as usual. I arrived on a Wednesday afternoon and made my way to Brooklyn from JFK, where I stopped by my friend Emma’s apartment and dropped off my stuff. Emma was at work and her roommate Leah was heading off to work, so I took a shower, snuggled in for an hour or so nap on the couch, and then took off into the Lower East Side to meet up with my friend Claire for dinner. I’m terrible–I was so hungry and tired and jet lagged, I do not remember the name of the place where we ate. And I forgot to take a photo of it. Whoops! I do remember that it was a cozy place where you can order 4 different vegetable dishes on one plate. I ordered roasted butternut squash, kale, roasted beets with walnuts, and soy-glazed tofu. It was all delicious and I had eaten only a small bowl of oatmeal at 4am that morning before leaving Seattle, so I was beyond ravenous. It was lovely catching up with Claire and we hung out for a while after dinner in her cozy apartment with pink walls and gold stars! I headed back to Brooklyn to meet up with Emma at her apartment when she got off work.

Thursday was Emma’s birthday, but she had to work all day, so we had breakfast (oatmeal and tea) together in the morning before she left and then I worked all day on writing my talk for the annual conference for the Association for American Geographers (which was the reason for my trip to NYC). The AAG is a massive geography conference hosting geographers from all walks of life: cartographers (yes, there are actually map makers in the discipline!), political geographers, feminist geographers, Marxist geographers, animal geographers, economic geographers, health and/or medical geographers, cultural geographers…the list goes on an on. There are usually about 25 or more sessions going on at once all day long for 5 days! It’s a totally overwhelming event. The program, which lists all the sessions and the talks within each session is about 1 inch thick. Things had just been so hectic in the week or two leading up to leaving for New York with teaching and everything else that I hadn’t had a chance to finish writing my talk. I took a break in the early afternoon from working to walk down the street for a bagel. Bagels are one of those things that are really special about New York. If you’re out on the west coast long enough, you can kind of convince yourself that the bagels are good, but then you happen upon a New York bagel in a New York deli and your realize that they shouldn’t even be called the same thing. This is the bagel I got–an onion bagel with spinach and artichoke tofu spread, cucumber, tomato and avocado:

That night, Emma and I ordered Thai food and then went out to a poetry reading that a friend of hers had organized. We took a completely insane cab ride through Brooklyn–the driver kept dozing off every time we stopped and then as soon as he realized that traffic was moving again he floored it and sped up like a maniac to catch up with the cars ahead. We arrived at an industrial area in Brooklyn and wandered around looking for the building. This, apparently, was it:

The door was locked, so we waited until someone came out and then went in. The inside was strange, with white walls, white tiles and lots of these metal doors:

We walked up a number of flights of stairs looking for the correct room, only to find that this was the address for the office of the group that was organizing the event and not the event space itself. On the way down the stairs, there were these neon light fixtures:

We ended up having to take the subway across Brooklyn to the correct location and found the poetry reading. But the journey there was a bit surreal.

Friday, Emma and I spent hanging out running some errands. We had a leisurely breakfast and then went into Union Square to hit up the Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s for Emma’s weekly grocery excursion. When we got back to her apartment, we were hungry, so we went out and got some Korean food for lunch. I had Bi Bim Bap, a bowl of rice with vegetables, tofu, kimchi, spicy sauce, etc. in a sizzling bowl that made the rice crunchy and brown on the bottom. Yum! We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around her neighborhood (Williamsburg) and went to the little kitchen store (see picture at top of page for awesome fence outside the shop). In the kitchen store, I was able to find some little heart shaped cookie cutters, which I had been wanting, for 75 cents. And I also found a little set of cookie cutters that will work perfectly for cutting out the centers of jam-filled tea cookies. That night, we made the flatbread with tapenade and vegetables recipe that I posted the other week. Saturday was the first day I went to the conference, so more of that next time.