Tag: Riverside Park

My New York City Weekend

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I stayed in the city but I felt like I went to camp. I have been preoccupied with myself, winding down from my day job and gearing up for my small biz. So I got out of my writing head and into my artsy, theatrical side. I had such a restorative weekend in New York City, a ménage à moi.

There are so many creative, fun, and cheap things to do in the city. As a mother of three, I am always looking for fun and cheap activities for my kids, but I found fun and cheap stuff for myself.

On Friday night, I saw Shakespeare in the park — Riverside Park —  Hudson Warehouse’s Richard III. It was a magical, bloody, funny, professional production. (cost: free)

Richard III, the Hudson Warehouse production in Riverside Park

When you see theater outside, you are at the mercy of the elements. And there is room for serendipity, like the lamp posts flickering on at the magic moment. Or when a family looking for a picnic spot crosses in front of the stage with their stroller and grandmother. (That was very funny!) Also, you can’t go wrong with the backdrop of Riverside Park — breathtaking — at sunset.

On Saturday morning, I took my favorite collage art class with my favorite teacher Mariano Del Rosario. I learned that my life drawing teacher Anita Steckel had died. Sad, but she was getting up there.

There are so many brilliant men and women who teach at the Art Students League, many of them ancient. When you take art, it doesn’t matter how you look or what you wear or how you think. What matters is getting into the zone of creating and making something out of nothing. (cost: about $18)

Last night, I attended Sunday Night Improv with Tom Soter. I love improv. I believe in the, “Yes, and…” philosophy. Say yes and then move the story along. The one-hour class went quickly. (cost: $10)

After a scene in which I was making a ton of offers to my partner, Tom gave me a bit of advice, “You don’t have to work so hard.” Wow! He also advised the class not to try to be clever, but to “Say the simple thing.” Brilliant. I’m going back.

Check out:

Hudson Warehouse for Free Shakespeare

The Art Students League

and

Tom Soter’s Sunday Night Improv

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And no NYC weekend is perfect unless you have a slice. Mine was from T & R Pizza, my local joint. (cost with a soda: $3.50)
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Biking in New York City

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signage in a bike shop window in Portland

I love riding my bike in New York City. I love when I forget my helmet and I feel the wind in my hair. I used to not wear a helmet at all but then I had kids and I valued my life (and my brains) more.  I always make the kids wear a helmet now too.

I think I started riding a bike in the city when I was about 30 and had just broken up with my ex. At that time, if a girlfriend and I were going out for a drink, my friend’d take a cab and I’d ride my Schwinn. We’d set off at the same moment. And I’d always get there first.

Mostly now, I just ride my bike to work. The bus or subway takes about 30 minutes. I’ve pedaled the 45 blocks in less than 15 minutes.

my morning commute

Besides, staying healthy, saving money, I sail past trees and grass and flowers and happy people in the park. I have a lovely commute through Riverside Park.

Pulling in to my work garage, I used to think people were kind of laughing at me and my bike. Now? Am I imaging it? — coworkers seem slightly jealous. I have a sweet ride.

Ten thousand new bikes are about to be launched on New York City streets through a bike-sharing program. Cool. Every day, my fellow New Yorkers will discover my secret pleasure — commuting to work by bike.

I’m not worried about my route getting clogged with bikers, because most of the bike stations will be in midtown and downtown.

This blog post could easily have been written for another one of my blogs, My Beautiful New York blog. I love New York City.

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Tree Down

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I stood at the bus stop. I waited for the Riverside Drive M5 bus around 6:30 pm. I was later than usual coming home from work. It was still a sunny, hot evening.

I heard a crash like thunder: a gut-wrenching, tearing sound.

I looked at the road. Nothing. The sky? Not a cloud. Then I looked at the park, there it was, 20 feet from me — a huge limb of an old tree crashed to the ground, leaves still shaking.

No one was down but the tree. Just today in the New York Times, Lisa Foderaro reported that the city is allocating more money for trees. This money for pruning cannot come soon enough. Like most New Yorkers, I live in the New York City parks. I don’t want to be scared of (or killed by) falling limbs.

I’m a tree hugger. And I don’t like the crash of a huge fallen branch.

(Just as I went to investigate, my bus pulled up so I snapped this pic as I rolled away.)

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Living Simply

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I was really psyched that my friend Lorenza stopped by last night and my daughters got to meet her.

Lorenza Andrade Smith journeys around North America, voluntrarily homeless, offering kindness and communion to the people she meets. She and I met after the United Methodist Communicators (UMAC) conference last fall. I’m glad she’s loving New York and its beautiful diversity. She has to leave NYC at 5 pm today, arriving in Texas two days later via Greyhound bus.

Lorenza inspires me because of her simplicity, her non-traditional life and her ease with people.

She travels with one backpack and one rolling cart.

photo by Catherine Jones

We talked about Facebook, (of course!). We talked about how we use our phones to take photos. Lorenza talked about having her iPhone stolen at a $3/day hotel in Mexico. We talked about not being able to find Cath’s iPhone somewhere in the house.

We looked at and laughed with Lorenza about her Facebook photo folder, “Tall People and Me.” She may be small in stature but she is a superstar to me.

We talked about camping. And how the kids and I are planning a camping trip to Fire Island in a couple of weeks. We have no idea what we’re doing. We wished she’d come camping with us. She invited us to camp with her on the streets.

After such a nice relaxing conversation, it was time for Lorenza to go. She wasn’t sure if she’d be sleeping again in Central Park. I wondered if Riverside Park might be better. In Central Park, the previous night, they’d turned on big lights and hustled people awake and into the middle of the night. Lorenza thought that was due to the Tony Awards nearby. But I think they do it all the time.

I walked her to the subway station where she was looking for a single woman she’d met earlier. (She can engage in conversations better with women when their men are not around.)

I felt sad to see her walk away from me. I worry about her. This is one problem (of the many) when you love people. You worry about them. (She said she worries about herself too.)

Not long after I returned home, Char said she liked hearing Lorenza’s stories. Even though the stories are not easy to hear — they are honest and inspiring. Stories are what keep us going.

Lorenza connects with people, sometimes by telling stories and sometimes just by listening and laughing.

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Riverside Park

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The girls did gymnastics.A butterfly stayed close by.Toes in the grass.

Last year on Mother’s Day I was disappointed — no presents, no dinner out. Ultimately I just wanted to be alone!

But this year I let go of expectations. My motto? Low expectations = high results. High expectations = low results. So when one of my BFFs suggested a picnic in Riverside Park, I jumped. We spent hours with our toes in the grass, talking about work, books, politics, kids, health, mothering — all the usual.

We fought off a bold squirrel who kept inching closer, stalking our Middle Eastern and Mexican food. We watched our girls turn cartwheels. A hawk flew low with a squirrel dangling from its talons.

Mother Nature put on a show this Mother’s Day. Who needs a bouquet of roses when you have friends, Riverside Park, ethnic food, and nature? My beautiful New York.

Springtime in the Park

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Tell me if you’re getting tired of photos of flowers in Riverside Park. I can’t stop noticing their loveliness. I realized that Earth Day is around this time of year, because Mother Nature never looks so good as she does now. I took these this morning with my iPhone as I was riding my bike to work.

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The Top 7 Things About Riverside Park

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  1. The smell of Christmas trees in the Spring mulch.
  2. The repaved main upper level from 97th to 116th – smooth sailing on my bike.
  3. The Hudson River, a big shouldered companion, to the pretty, flowery park.
  4. The rings at 106th. How awesome are they? The kids swing on them for hours. On some Saturdays and Sundays, someone sets up a balancing wire. Someone else brings Hula Hoops. And then there’s a boom box playing hip hop music.
  5. The benches for just sitting and watching the kids in strollers and all the dogs — big dogs, little dogs — on leashes. I am not a dog lover, but I admit they can be cute in Riverside Park.
  6. The empanada lady — I should learn her name. She is positioned right by the soccer fields at around 103rd and you’d think she was just selling ice cream bars and hot dogs, but ask for the empanadas or the arroz con pollo, and you won’t be disappointed.
  7. The lampposts, so Victorian.

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Spring Has Sprung?

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Words really can’t describe how beautiful my bike trip to work is. So I will let my pictures show you. Every day I ride 45 blocks to work in New York City. I never stop. I ride through Riverside Park. I don’t pass any commercial establishments. I ride along the Hudson River. There is beauty all around.

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Riding my bike to work makes me very happy.

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Foggy

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This morning, I felt I lived in San Francisco as I walked in Riverside Park. The fog made everything quiet.

The muted fall colors and the sun somewhere behind the fog made me feel so good. So peaceful.

There is something sad, inevitable, beautiful about autumn in New York.

 

Maybe the bittersweet beauty is the reason writers write songs about New York this time of year. 

Flowers in Riverside Park

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Sometimes I don’t really feel like getting going in the morning. I’m in a groove with my writing and I don’t feel like waking the kids or setting their cereal on the kitchen table (I know, I know, they’re spoiled and they should do that themselves).

To cheer myself up, I think, “Hey, you’ll get to ride past the flowers in Riverside Park.”

There is no garden lovelier. It was the backdrop for the reunion scene in the movie, You’ve Got Mail.

When they were making that movie, I rode by on my bike. I stopped to watch them set up the shot. They were adding fake flowers throughout the garden. They were covering up the vents.

I chatted with the designer who was dressing the garden.

“Why are you adding more to the garden? It’s so lush.”

The designer agreed, “But we have to because we want things to be blooming in there that wouldn’t be blooming in there all together this time of year.”

That’s Hollywood for you, messing with nature.
When the movie came out, the garden did look good. Almost as good as it looked today.