Day 2

Well, I guess hitting the 2-day mark makes us official New Yorkers...well, a least we're a little closer.

After tossing and turning to the sounds of the city all night, we finally drifted off for an hour or two (the window was open because it's freakin hot in this apt, which we aren't used to considering the arctic environment we're used to withstanding -- Dan is probably a human popsicle right now), then woke up to the soothing sound of rain and car horns. The day started off on a sad note -- as we were getting ready to head out for the day, ambulances screamed to a halt just outside the window. As we watched from above, the homeless person J was using as a guide to locate our building yesterday turned out to be a woman who, it appeared from above, was probably not going to make it. Very strange and sad -- maybe she's just fine...

To get us started on the long what-are-we-going-to-do-today decision-making process, we set the goal of figuring out how to ride the subway. With this lofty task in mind, we headed out into the rain to find food. We ate aigs and grits at this great place that served soul-food breakfast in the village, and were fueled enough to take on the trains. On our first foray into the subway, J discovered he knew the guy sitting next to us from the Bantu African dance and music camp that he went to last year in NM -- crazy world! This fellow was so kind and gave us a place to go see his band play next week. He also guided us through a scary thing called a "transfer" in which you get off one train, walk up and down some stairs, then get on another train. It felt very fortuitous to meet him and we felt like we had conquered our first challenge (please read this knowing that I know that it sounds ridiculous and is only meant in a half-kidding, pitifully partially true way).

On to the Lower East Side Tenement museum, which was amazing. We really enjoyed the tour of the actual apts of garment-district working-class immigrants. The building had been shut off to the world since 1935, and was a well-preserved illustration of a bygone era. Although the apts were crazy small and housed "sweatshops" of up to 10 people in addition to the large families, they didn't have a bad feeling to me. Unlike the larger sweatshops that locked employees in horrible conditions, these people were working out of their homes side-by-side with their employees. I'm sure the work was very difficult, but the pictures showed smiling faces of people who were working to make a life in a new place and were constantly surrounded by the love of their families. I don't mean to romanticize what was obviously an incredibly difficult struggle; the apts we visited just felt full of hope to me.

After the tour, we decided to trek down to the south TKTS booth to get discout tickets for a matinee show tomorrow. As we wandered through Chinatown, it was surreal and wonderful. We stopped to snap pics of guys delivering huge slaughtered pigs to storefronts that displayed the browned chicken and geese that we've all seen in the movies. For most of the time we wandered, we were the only Boulder hippies -- at least white Boulder hippies -- for blocks at a time. Coming from such a sadly diversity-deficient place, it was a powerful and heartening feeling to be vastly in the minority. On one of the more popular tourist blocks, we discovered a deal on t-shirts and took the bait. As I waited in line to buy two for $10 (they were the high-class t's -- the cheap ones were 7 for $10), the Chinese cashier and a group of French tourists figured out a way to speak the international language of commerce, and I was again inspired by the exposure to something other than born-and-raised-in-the-west-beef-eatin-space-lovin-white-bread Coloradoans.

At about this time, the weather took a turn for the ridiculous, and we somehow managed to laugh at the sight of ourselves trying to walk into whipping wind that made sculptures out of our worthless umbrellas. In heavy rain, we finally gave up the idea of staying dry, and swam the last few blocks to the ticket place...only to discover that we didn't have enough cash to buy tickets (the place doesn't take credit). Without the heart to find the nearest subway stop in the gail-force winds, we took solace in beer and fries at a chain brewery.

After peeling off our soaked stuff and defrosting in the shower, we napped until now, about 9pm, and are ready to go out and face the world again...I love this place!