I got back from a week in New York City yesterday.  In case you were interested, here is what I saw and did:

On the way from the airport to the East Village where I was staying, my subway broke down.  It was already midnight, I'd been in transit since 3:30 Texas time, and I was leaning heavily and exhaustedly against my suitcase on the seat.  Apparently someone was injured on the tracks, but amidst multiple sirens and "an ongoing police investigation," we were finally allowed to go.

The Puerto Rican Day parade.  I'll never again forget what the flag of Puerto Rico looks like, as it is burned now into my brain -- I saw it waving, accessorizing, being worn as a cape, eaten as a snow cone, and driven up Fifth Avenue as a stage for girls in flag bikinis and flag ball gowns.  I decided to leave when a scuffle broke out, involving a man who had hit his girlfriend, and 15 or 30 of their friends.

The World Trade Center site. Last time I was in New York, I drank sake at a restaurant at the top of one of the towers.  Three weeks after it was destroyed, I moved to Japan for four years, and watched most of the proceedings via spottily-subtitled foreign news.  I wanted to go see it to try to get my head around it, to grasp it and let it sink in that it is gone.  I had no idea how I might react.  For the first ten minutes, I just felt nauseous.  For the 20 minutes following that, I wanted to cry. Seeing the way people just walk around it, this enormous bare scar in the ground,  on their way to work, on their way to lunch, acceptingly and determined, made me feel better.

Tthe Statue of Liberty.  She is big and green.  At the ticket booth, a woman lost it when the booth attendant told her she couldn't have the military discount.  "But my husband is in the military, I'm his spouse," calmly at first.  Then, "Even if he's in Afghanistan?!" and increasingly shrill, "but he's in AfghanisTAN!! AFGHANISTAAAAN!! WHO MAKES THESE RULES?!?!?!?!!!!!"  I thought security was going to have to drag her off, but she finally stomped away.  When our ferry passed the Statue of Liberty, the copper and iron iconic embodiment of our nation's supposed values, a couple of anorexic model wannabe-types said only, "God, she's so fat!  Like, look at her arm!" 

Ellis Island.  The museum at Ellis was amazing.  I'm not sure most Americans realize what so many of our ancestors went through to get here, or what their lives were like.  Studying Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine photographs is a good start, a visit to Ellis Island makes it much more personal.   I think everyone even considering the anti-immigration nonsense currently being discussed should have to go there.  If they actually sign anything, they should have to sign it there, in the Great Hall, where their own ancestors checked in just within fairly recent memory. They should have to look their own carpetbagging relatives in the eyes before they tell anyone else they can't come in. Sure, things are different, but they're also the same.

Central Park.  I've been there three or four times, each time for three or hours, and each time I find a new part I'd never seen before, each time the new part was the size of a park.  Central Park is like 600 parks strung together in a sequence.  Tthis part was my favorite yet, called "The Ravine."  I sat for an hour on a rock next to a waterfall watching birds take baths and get all up in each other's bird-faces.  Birds are a lot more territorial than I'd realized.  But they're so cute when they're mad.

On the way to the Guggenheim, the train broke down again, and we had to evacuate.  A friend told me of all the time he's been in new york, of all the people he knows, he's never heard of anyone actually having to do that.  Apparently our station flooded, on a perfect, cloudless day, and we had to walk through all the cars to the front of the train and onto the platform.  I got to migrate from the car with the crazy guy on PCP, who kept yelling and swinging on the pole and gesticulating like he was covered with cat-sized flies.  The doors of our car wouldn't open at first, and the lights went out a couple times, but luckily PCP-Guy wasn't Random-Stabbing Guy they had caught on some uptown line the day before.  What was incredible to me was the way people didn't freak out.  On both broken-train occasions, people took it all in stride, they were patient and understanding, and no one took it as a personal strike of inconvenience against their busy schedules, the way i've seen people in smaller cities like my hometown do under similar circumstances.  People calmly waited through delays and vague explanatory announcements, and when we finally had to evacuate, no one left a car without holding the doors open for the person behind them.  Anyone who had trouble bridging the gap between cars found help doing so without even asking.  And all of this, this huge shift in pace between impersonal city-rush and neighborly helping-hand, happened smoothly, instantly, and without perceptible effort.  I was impressed.

The Guggenheim.  The outside was swathed in netting and scaffolding, which was pretty disappointing, as it's one of the coolest-looking buildings in the world.  Tthe exhibit inside though was incredible.  The main show was Zaha Hadid, an Iraqi female architect who designs the most insane and incredible structures i've ever seen, most of which people are too timid to actually build.  She also designed a really cool car.

Lots of interesting people in New York.  My favorite was the woman on St. Mark's, a tall, done-up, sassy, strutting black woman, pushing a baby stroller, who when I passed her,  said to me, "I. Am a diva."  The award in the men's category goes to the Barry White impersonator near Rrockefeller Center who had his own table, rotating light ball, and backup music.

Ethiopian food at Awash.  Mmmmm.  And Japanese yakitori, just like I miss so much from Japan -- okonomiyaki, yaki onigiri, tonkatsu ramen why do Japanese restaurants in my town only serve flash-frozen sushi and miso soup?  There is so much more to Japanese cuisine!

PS1, the most awesome art museum ever.  Tthe building itself is amazing, a labyrinthine, stripped-down, old brick schoolhouse where you can wander for hours up and down stairways and halls, never sure you've seen all the rooms.  There was an exhibit of John Lurie drawings there, I wrote down a lot of the titles because they were so brilliant:
-Bird has absolutely no face
-Your life is meaningless. Why don't you masturbate?
-Horse with mullet
-Self-portrait as a weed
-Obscure presidents and Sally Fields on the water
-Monks' last day of earthly pleasures (shows monks in line at a hot dog stand)
-I will not sodomize the teacher on Fridays (shows a naughty duck writing sentences on a blackboard)
-The sultan loved his BVD's
-The crow will scratch your bottom now
-I am a bear.  You are an asshole.  God is God.
-The image above:  friendly fascist bird.  The image below:  Bassho is goofy.
-I was a coyote, then I died, then I came back as a coyote.
-Jesus was in my garden once
-Audrey Hepburn as the Lone Ranger
-Man's hands have turned into forks.  Don't trust him.
-Bunny -- I'll kill you
-Marge moved to the country and she was not happy about it, and she was particularly pissed that Harry painted the door orange
-My clown's on fire
-My assistant Jeremy is gay, now I paint like a fag
-Women liked the wizard because of his hat (shows a wizard with an enormous erection)
-Three dentists think of the same squirrel

From PS1, I walked to Socrates Sculpture Park, a free and fantastic art park near the water at the end of Broadway in Queens.  To get there, I walked through the infamous Ravenswood projects.  I didn't pick up the hint when they guy at the museum answered my every question regarding the park's whereabouts and walking distance from PS1 with, "... but you could also take a cab."

I saw the Bell-Rays.  Most amazing show I've ever seen in my life.  And Ive seen a lot of shows. 

Two drinks at Joe's Pub = $21. If I ever pay that much for a drink again, it had damn well better come with at least two straws and be served in a smoking volcano the size of my head.

At a gorgeous velvet-wallpapered speakeasy, supposedly owned by Susan Sarandon, i drank a teacup of Jamison's whiskey on ice. 

I ate a bagel every single morning.  I don't know that I'll ever be able to eat a Texas bagel again. 

On Fridays from 4-8 pm, Target picks up the tab for everyone who wants to go the MOMA.  Which is great, since it's usually $20, as long as you're willing to deal with all the jackasses crowding in to take their pictures standing next to Starry Night.  The place is incredible, six stories of amazing art, photography, sculpture, design, and a bunch of that crap people jokingly donate to the art-world, but which the art-world doesn't understand isn't meant to be serious.  Slab of marble on a bed of rice?  Painted length of thick rope coming out of a concrete block?  C'mon, you thought they were serious?  Don't you people get a joke when you see one?

Art galleries' open night in Chelsea.  The art was okay, but the free wine was better.

A few spontaneous games of H-O-R-S-E on a basketball court with a view of the Empire State Building.  I haven't played since 5th grade when we had no girls' team and I had to play with the boys, and I'm better at basketball than I'd thought.  And I'm much better at basketball in a skirt  and three-inch heeled boots than I would have thought.

I am so moving to New York.