Sunday, June 15, 2014

Only in NYC...

Only in NYC, do you find young Chinese children decorating and wearing kippahs that they made at the annual Egg Rolls and Egg Creams festival sponsored by the Museum at Eldridge St.


Elderly Chinese men and women playing mahjong, while 20-something Jews watch and try to understand how to play.

Jewish children listening to Chinese live music.

A sofer and a Chinese calligraphist sitting side by side inside the Eldridge St Synagogue, demonstrating their written arts.

This was last weekend.  We spent the first part of the day at Governor's Island, enjoying the FIGMENT art festival.  First stop off the ferry boat - costume boxes for the kids.  Max and Nava were transformed into a packet of ketchup and a flower.


Governor's Island is incredibly peaceful since there are no cars, despite it being just a few minutes' ferry ride from Manhattan and Brooklyn.  Wandering around art installations, playing with found musical instruments, all while being encouraged to create and relax was an amazing start to the latest in what we've termed our "family adventure days."

The egg rolls and egg creams (which, we learned, naturally contain no eggs nor cream of any kind!) were an added bonus.  It's always fun to walk through Chinatown - it feels truly foreign, which of course it is as the majority of signage is in Chinese only.  I would love to know what all those vegetables and herbs and other products being haggled over by Chinese shop owners and Chinese customers actually are.  The Eldridge St shul, right on the border of the Lower East Side and Chinatown, opened its doors in 1887 to serve the Jewish community of the Lower East Side, and is still home to a small congregation today.  That's over 120 years of continuous Jewish life in one building.  And gorgeous to boot.

I love that the Museum at Eldridge St has embraced the diversity of the area, and in a way that feels unique to New York City.  Ferry boats, free costumes, art installations, multi-cultural celebrations - that's a good Sunday in NYC!

Monday, June 2, 2014

Things I've Seen Lately

We went to the Bronx Zoo this weekend.  The most peculiar part about going to the zoo (peculiar is being extremely polite, and not at all representative of words that were being spelled in our car at the time, little pitchers and all that) is getting into the parking lot.

Actually, it starts before that, when you get off the Triboro Bridge and start driving through the Bronx.  Like its borough brethren (e.g. everywhere but Manhattan), it seems that the Bronx is largely dirty, gross, and not somewhere you would choose to spend much time.  I know you all believe that Brooklyn is the coolest thing to happen to America since artisanal mac 'n' cheese, but beyond the pockets of yuppie-dom and hipster-burg, it's dirty, gray, and unappealing.

So you drive past liquor stores and check cashing fronts, and then you hit traffic. A lot of traffic.  This is the traffic to get into the zoo parking lot.  Twenty minutes later, you get to park.  And then, just a few steps down the path, you completely forget you are in New York City (and not only because the diversity of visitors at the Bronx Zoo seemed to consist of white people from New Jersey AND white people from Connecticut in addition to white New Yorkers).

We're not really talking about "you", of course, we're talking about us.  And in our actual experience of this, Max started asking to eat lunch while we were waiting to get into the parking lot (at 10:10am - the zoo opens at 10). He then decided he cared nothing for seeing any animal other than African wild dogs.  We said, "let's go see the gorillas! Look, there are giraffes!"  And he screamed, "Wild dogs! I want to see the wild dogs!"   Five sleeping, mangy, overgrown mutts - check.

Nava was happy to see everything, but only if it meant she could walk.  And the zoo is big.  Put her in the stroller to shlep from Tiger Mountain to the Sea Bird Aviary, and toddler shrieking commenced.  Max, naturally, refused to walk at all.  Because why walk when someone will push you for two-and-a-half-hours?

All in all, we saw some great animals and it felt like we got out of the city.  However, weekend animal sightings were trumped today by a sighting of a different kind - celebrity sighting!

If you know me, you may know that I have a habit of talking to strangers.  A jumping-into-someone-else's-conversation-uninvited habit.  Maybe it's because I grew up in a friendly place; maybe it's because I've had a severe shortage of adult conversation in the past three years; maybe I'm a social freak.  In any event, today I took Max to get his haircut at the neighborhood toy store/kid's hair cutting place.  It's outrageously priced, but Max gets to sit in a train and watch a movie, which is a total preschooler high.  Nava and I were wandering around the store when a woman around my age came in with two girls.

There was something about her that was noticeable - she had this zen voice, and was so cool she wasn't even carrying a purse or a diaper bag.  She announced she wanted to buy a scooter for her two-year-old (seriously - out with a two-year-old without a bag of any sort!), and then asked the sales clerk whether she thought the girl was old enough for a scooter.  Sure, she didn't ask me, but I was standing right there so I helpfully offered up the fact that we bought Max a scooter a few months after his second birthday but that I thought Nava would be ready for one even sooner.

Honestly, normally I get a pretty good response to my uninvited comments.  I like to believe that all of us moms are always more interested in hearing from another mom then from the person selling the product.  And maybe I cling to the idea that us moms are in a club - especially those of us out with kids during the work day - and you can always chat up a fellow club member.

But not today.  Today, I received a look that clearly stated, "I have no interest in you, your children or your scooter information."  In that moment, I realized that I was pretty sure I was talking to a celebrity, and that she believed I was only speaking to her because she was a celebrity.  She had a celebrity vibe, and also was wearing over-sized sunglasses inside.

And then she actually pulled her credit card out of her bra to pay for the scooter and helmet.  Suddenly I knew that I had just chatted up Maggie Gyllenhall.  It then became very difficult not to stare at her.  Possibly I tried to read the name on the credit card but I wasn't wearing my glasses so I probably looked like a stalker.  After she left, I said to the sales girl, "So not to gossip, but that was Maggie Gyllenhall, right?"

Identity confirmed, and apparently she's something of a regular at Lulu's.  I didn't find her breath-takingly beautiful or anything like that, but I am in serious awe of her lack of bag.  My new goal in life - leave house with nothing but a credit card.  Thank you Maggie.

PS Maggie, if you are looking for a play date for Gloria, hit me up.