The Whitney & The City - June 23

New York City, June 23

Test packing the luggage, realize that I'm way overweight and that even the 2nd check-in suitcase might be too. And I'm not even done shopping yet.... It was easier in the old days, when I yo-yo'ed back and forth every six months and could bring two pieces of check-in luggage at 77 lbs. each (35 kg).
   Then the phone zonks out, and I'm incommunicado with the rest of the world. The local mobile provider sells me a $30 plan and a new sim card - the same provider in The Midwest said my phone was too old for that - so I'm not blind for the remaining 5 days after all. Let this be a warning to all Danes: The company '3' that claims you can call at local rates when abroad, has unscrupulous sales people, awful customer service, and the 'T-Mobile' company they work with over here has bad coverage. Avoid them like The Plague, and go to Verizon or AT&T instead. It'll save you a lot of grief. No reason to go into details about them fucking things up so bad, but if there was one mistake I made on this trip, it was using that company.

Wall mosaic at 66th St subway stop.

Looks like it'd rain every minute now, but it never did.

I meet old friend Julie in Midtown. We go see the relatively new High Line Park that's been established on old elevated railroad tracks, which in places runs a mere few yards right next to people's homes - which has made park visitors complain that the apartment dwellers sometimes walk around in their birthday suits....
   Then we enter The Whitney Museum, where Julie promptly lies for me by claiming I'm a senior ($9 entry fee instead of $25, thanks girl). Good museum, first time I see Ed Hoppers paintings in the flesh, and there's special exhibitions about social protests and about the Guerilla Girls focusing on how few female artists get into the established institutions, if at all. Except in the nude, on a canvas.

Julie on High Line Park, where the railroad crossed the street below.

They kept the old tracks in most of the place.

Elevator at the Whitney. Julie said her brother's flat was smaller than this.

Ed Hopper is well represented there.

Musicians at subway station, spectacular more for their costumes than for the music.

Already full of impressions we get a lot more of those by merely walking and subwaying it from 12th to 103rd, with the chaos and the light show around Times Square being the most intense. This is not a place to be unless one has a high tolerance for noise and for crowds. Yet it has become very sanitized compared to it's more seedy days in the 1980s, which is both good and bad. I also note how many new apartment buildings have appeared, and that there are rainbow colours just about everywhere: Today 'Dykes on Bykes' had their alternative parade, protesting the regular Gay Pride Parade which I'll go watch tomorrow.

Times Square has been turned into a permanent pedestrian zone. A few days ago here were thousands of people doing yoga there, Julie says.

Now what was it about small hands....?