It was a perfectly lovely weekend, so Steve and I went in different directions.
I met my friends in the city with no plans other than roaming about. We managed to eat a terrible meal at the Heartland Brewery on 34th Street. There are so many fantastic pubs and restaurants in the city that it takes real skill to have a bad meal, but we were starving and we ran into the first place we came across.
We bopped into the stores on 34th Street, which are basically suburban mall stores. The one standout is Zara, which is Madrid's equivalent of the Gap. When I would visit my sister in Spain, I would come back with shopping bags of sundresses and little sweaters.
Once we broke free of the mall strip, we walked through a street fair on 6th Avenue. The street fair was all about the great smells. Grilled corn, sausage and onions, unnamed meat on the stick. Should have had street food rather than the nasty, salty mac n' cheese at the Heartland.
The other stand out on the trip was an antique shop on 24th Street. Check out the framed, tin ceiling tiles.
While I was roaming through the streets of Manhattan, Steve was roaming through Harriman State Park with the boys. His destination was the remains of a mansion that had belonged to a man who made his fortune from KARO Syrup.
On Sunday morning, I wrestled with our complicated summer calendar. We have to balance our explorations with work and camp, so the calendar needed to be anal-ized. It looks like we'll have several day trips in July and, in August, we'll be going to Lake George, Portsmouth, NH, and Toronto. I mapped out our restless ways for the summer on iCal.
Jonah's camp bus should be here any minute. He is so excited about the first day of camp that he woke up three hours early.
Oh, to be heir to the Karo syrup fortune! But yes, Heartland Brewery is terrible. I had the misfortune to lead some visiting Spaniards there one night when they didn't want to go far from their hotel and didn't like the other option I'd suggested. Even the beer is so-so at best. But the street fair food isn't wonderful, either, even though it smells better. The big problem is that it's all the same at all the street fairs now (literally- the very same stands at each fair, often multilples of them), and so just as mass-produced and crappy as, say, the Heartland Brewery. Many state fairs are like this now, too. A horrible mockery of how things should be, and a sad development.
Posted by: Matt | June 29, 2009 at 09:54 AM
"A horrible mockery of how things should be, and a sad development. "
yeah, and I don't see any alternative around it except to continue to buy artisanal pickles when I can. I attended a moderately attended art fair yesterday, and you can tell the artists are struggling. The problem (in addition to the economy) is that their work needs to be original but not too original. Leads to a tyranny of mediocrity.
Posted by: bj | June 29, 2009 at 12:14 PM
I'm so easily bored. I find myself looking around for something really different and interesting. It wasn't at the heartland brewery or the Banana Republic on 34th Street and Matt, you're right that the street food and booths at that fair were all owned by some corporation that replicates that same street fair all over the city. It also wasn't at the suburban swim club on Sunday where Steve and I considered taking pharmaceuticals to get through the afternoon. We've been complaining about the tyranny of mediocrity lately, too.
Posted by: laura | June 29, 2009 at 12:53 PM