Village In The City

I'm in NY for 2 weeks, neighborhood shopping for a potential move here next year. We usually stay within walking distance of David's office, which plants us firmly in the heart of all the touristy areas between Central Park and Times Square. It's fun but it's not exactly real life. So this time we headed downtown for the first week and stayed in Soho just outside the West Village. He experimented with a daily subway commute (which he still reverts to calling the Tube half the time) and I spent the days wandering around imagining being here permanently. I should be so lucky!

These roads of beautiful townhouses in the West Village used to be considered the heart of bohemia and in the 60s it was a very run down area. Now they're out of most normal people's reach financially and Bleecker St looks like an oldtown version of 5th Ave, lined with designer stores and film set locations.

While taking the photograph of the townhouses I was curious about the excitement a number of young girls were displaying over this building on the opposite corner. ("I can't believe I'm here, seeing it in real life!") Turns out it was used as the exterior shot for the apartment block in Friends.

The arch at the north side of Washington Square Park. 

We first went to Washington Square Park in '87, a few months after we moved to America from England. We visited David's cousin who was sharing a tiny studio (one room) apartment in the Village with a friend. It was so tiny his bed was on a platform accessed by a ladder, the rents must have been exorbitant even then. Long time Velvet Underground and Dylan fans, we were excited to be in Greenwich Village but it was a bit intimidating. At that time the park was full of disreputable characters,  music and craziness and we had Chloe with us, age 5. Like Times Square it's been cleaned up and made quite safe and respectable since then. NY University has moved there, buying up several blocks of buildings around the park, so it's a major hangout for students, a popular destination for tourists and a general resting place for people with time on their hands like me.

There's still music.......

.....and there's still craziness......

.....this guy in the aluminum foil hat is giving a tarot card reading. He wouldn't allow anyone to photograph him with his special hat on but I was sitting behind him having a sandwich.

The other Dylan, Dylan Thomas, stayed in the Village several times in the 1950s as did so many of the Beat Generation writers and artists before the hippies and musicians of the 60s and 70s moved in.

 Dylan Thomas was staying at the infamous Chelsea Hotel and preparing Under Milkwood for it's first recordings and performances when he was taken ill and rushed to St Vincent's Hospital in the Village where he subsequently died. Despite notorious heavy drinking, drunkenness on stage, blackouts, a fatty liver....  pneumonia, not alcoholism, was deemed the cause of death. There was smog in the city in those days,  another thing that's been cleaned up.
You can take a Dylan Thomas walking tour of the Village looking at the houses he stayed in, the places he wrote certain poems and the pubs he drank in, or maybe do the Sex And The City walking tour showing you Carrie Bradshaw's apartment house where she wrote her articles, the bars she drank in and Magnolia Bakery. Except she wasn't real of course, I was forgetting that. One end of the cultural scale to the other and all within the same few blocks. I love America!

Hearts and minds

I need something to occupy my mind when I'm walking so I set myself a goal to find 3 hearts....

Mission accomplished!

Swapping postcards.... summer project number 2

The Great Big Stitched Postcard Swap....

..... is a 4 times a year project co-ordinated by the wonderful Beth Nicholls of Do What You Love For Life fame. She picks a theme, you enroll, you design and make a postcard, post a photograph of it on a Flickr group, then mail it to the person assigned to you.

"Why?" you might well be wondering. Just for the fun of it and the sense of community.  I really enjoyed making mine and it was an interesting exercise to put so much time and effort into something that was going to be given away to a stranger. There's an online gallery of some 300 photos of various postcard contributions from people all over the world to look through. People leave each other encouraging, admiring comments. I love that sort of stuff!

This time the theme was Discover. I made an envelope out of felt and fabric, added beads and buttons, then attached charms to the inside, to be discovered when it was opened. Then I sewed it onto a postcard and off it went. Actually I mailed it inside an envelope as it wasn't practical to send as-is.

Now I'm waiting for mine to arrive from Canada! 

The fabulous fit and the flab fighters

Lake Newport, my new gym

By the end of my recent 2 year gym membership I had gained 20 miserable lbs. There was no mystery as to why.... .. A/ I had not actually been to the gym once, not ONCE! during the whole 2 years and B / I had stuck doggedly to my preferred diet of caffeine, sugar and alcohol and it had ceased to serve me well.

Although I was now finally desperate enough to get myself to the gym I could hardly justify the cost after wasting so much money, so instead I decided to join the ranks of the Reston-ites who enthusiastically take advantage of the fact that we live in a planned community. We have 4 residential lakes to walk, jog or run around for free. In fact Robert E Simon, (who put the Res in Reston) designed this little suburban haven with our exercise needs in mind and there are miles of pretty footpaths wending their way through the communities, as well as tennis courts and so on for the ultra keen.

The people who, like me, head to the footpaths round Lake Newport every day fall into a few distinct categories. The fit and fabulous fly past in shorts, expensive footwear and tank tops, ipod headphones in place, exuding an intimidating sweaty, youthful vigor. Occasionally they can be be seen recklessly pushing sports-style baby carriages in front of them as they run, maybe with an equally athletic dog alongside, gamely keeping up the pace. They're like super-human beings from another planet compared to the rest of us.
The flab fighters slog wearily round on their worthy mission in thigh-hiding capri length sweats, surely the most unflattering garment on the market but cooler in our 100F humid summer weather than full length. (Been there, worn them) We exchange rueful smiles of mutual appreciation of each other's commitment and suffering as we pass.
After successfully shedding the offending poundage I've graduated to a kind of contented middle mode, addicted to accomplishing a brisk-ish 2 loops every morning but without the former sense of desperation. There are a few of us around, we're in it for maintenance and mental health or maybe just to walk the dog and meet the neighbors.

I'm not usually bold enough to ask people if I can photograph them but this lovely lady in her hat seemed to invite attention and sure enough, she obliged!

Lucky people live in lakeside houses. The paths weave their way around and between them

It's the heart of the suburbs ..... a mailbox may have it's own picket fence......

......  a plastic goose may guard a lamp post......

.

while some go for a more sculptural ornament .....

......and others fly the flag.

There are a lot worse places to live than Reston. Thank you Mr Simon!

Some favorite twofers

Coffee at the Whitney Museum NY,  Chihuly glass at Delaware Art Museum,  Chloe and Dan,  my take on the Greek myth of Narcissus,  Smokie and Frankie, David's make-do shoes held together with duct tape survived a rafting trip in the Grand Canyon when luggage didn't show up in time,  sculpture in Meadowlark Park VA,  Chloe and Juleen, Ritz Carlton NY Christmas 2011, 

A dear old, one-eyed friend

Me 'n Owey (derived from Meow of course) London 1956 and New York 2012. 

Happy Birthday to both of us!

Glen Echo Deco

My classroom

There's very little Americana in the Washington DC suburbs, it all tends to be either too tasteful or too new. I recently signed up for a sculpture class at Glen Echo Park, Maryland,  about 30 mins drive round the beltway from home. I knew it was quite a center for art, dance and music classes but I had no idea they were housed in what was formerly an amusement park.

The buildings are beautifully preserved. It's surprisingly appropriate that they are being used to house artists' studios and galleries because in the late 1800s, before the amusement park was built in 1911, the park was part of a program called the National Chautauqua Assembly. This was an adult education movement with Methodist roots, dedicated to teaching science, arts, languages and literature and once referred to by former president Theodore Roosevelt as "the most American thing about America". There were traveling programs and some permanent sites, including Glen Echo.

 I wore the right color!

The amusement park closed in 1968 and in '71 the Federal Government bought the land. The National Park Service collaborated with art organizations to create a visual and performing arts program on the site which would be in the spirit of the original Chautauqua movement. What an inspired decision.

It's an evening class, so I nipped out to enjoy the lights. Wonderful!

Anyone got a spare bulb?