My boyfriend and I took the 1 Train out of Manhattan and into the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx. It was my first visit to an outer borough. We met up with a friend of mine from college, who among other things, is a wonderful encyclopedia of knowledge about NY parks, buildings, and calling 311 to complain about trash maintenance. We all walked from the 242nd Street Station (the end of the line), past Van Corlandt park (which is bigger than Central Park), up to Wave Hill. Wave Hill is a small botanical garden that offers free admission on Saturday mornings. At the garden, we saw a man that I can only describe as the Pickle Man, and I would love to know his life story.
Imaginary Re-enactment:
"I went to the park today to have my daily pickle. I was hungry. This is what I order for lunch every day. I like to cut my dill pickle into three meticulous vertical slices. They have to be sliced at exactly 1/3 the volume of the pickle. I do this with a plastic knife. Slowly, I cut my dill pickle into slices. I enjoyed my vertically sliced pickle very much today."
I was amazed at Wave Hill beautiful indoor cactus and succulent garden.
They also have a lily pond that is a favorite of my friend's. I enjoyed it, too. Lily ponds remind me of those 500 piece puzzles that are tricky because they have about 1001 not-quite-the-same instances of lily pads. This one was not like that though.
We probably walked about 4 miles from the subway, to the garden, and back to my friend's apartment. We ate lunch at a deli in the Bronx called Cold Cut City. I think the name comes from the fact that they put enough cured meat on my sub to feed a small city. Or at least one of the boroughs.
After our morning excursion, boyfriend and I were glad to rest up when we got back to the hotel. We had been exhausted. Later for that evening's entertainment, we found a wine bar called Cavatappo. If you say this very quickly, your friends might think you are saying "tapas," but you are not. So say it loudly. Cavatappo had cheese plates, wine, and thin-crust pizza. I ordered scamorzo cheese (if I remember the spelling correctly), and pear-and-gorgonzola pizza. I would make that again at home, I think. I particularly liked the chalk art on the walls.
After dinner, we went to a comedy club, New York Comedy Club. For $15, we saw 6 different comics, most of whom were hilarious. The uncensored jokes cracked me up. There were some good jokes, although I keep this blog rated PG... so unfortunately I won't share them :) There were a lot of people of different ethnicities there, and boy did some of them get heckled. There was the big table of Asians ("hey, the karate kid over there"), and the big black guy sitting next to me ("Oh, and we got Kenan over here"). Point being, if you don't want to get heckled at a comedy club, just sit next to someone who is a more interesting race than you are, or for bonus points, an interracial couple, and the comic is sure to heckle them and not you.
Lastly, here's the Overheard in New York moment of the trip:
Gay man on the street: "I would SO be a lesbian for Queen Latifah!"
Stay tuned for tomorrow and my last post on my NYC trip (day 3 and 4).
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