On Thursday May 10, 2012 we went to the Queens Museum of Art which is at the site of the 1964/1965 World's Fair (as well as the 1939/1940 World's Fair) in Flushing, Queens. Both Felice and I had a chance to go to the World's Fair way back when and it was a source of many happy memories. Walking to the Museum, we passed the Unisphere and the helipads, which caused the memories to come rushing back. The Museum had some very interesting exhibits, but we particularly enjoyed the exhibit that had black and white pictures taken on the streets of New York in the 1940's and 1950's. They were very cool. From there we went to what the Museum calls The Panorama. The Panorama is a scale model of New York City that was constructed for the first World's Fair and the plan was for the City of New York to use it for city planning purposes. It was updated in 1992 so it is relatively current. Oh, and when I say it is a model, it is a very large model that covers almost 10,000 square feet (think about one-quarter acre) and takes up one very large room. There are over 25,000 buildings that are built to scale. It was created from maps, helicopter pictures, tax records, etc. as they didn't have Google Earth back then. What is neat is that you view the model from above and it is almost like you are in a helicopter hovering over the City, and by City, I mean all 5 Boroughs. This exhibit is a must for anyone who wants to get a birds-eye view of the City. From there we walked to the New York Hall of Science where we saw the Rockets that were placed on the premises by NASA for the World's Fair. We then went to dinner at Five Napkin Burger and went to a piano bar called Don't Tell Mama where we watched Seth Rudetsky of SiriusXM record his interview show called Chatterbox. His guest was Tony Award Nominee Laura Osnes and besides interviewing her, she sang two songs on which Seth accompanied her. We accomplished 4 3/4 miles of walking.
Friday was our day to go to the Intrepid Museum, which is a decommissioned World War II battleship. It is an immense ship and has quite a history, surviving three or four kamikaze attacks. As part of the complex, they have the US Submarine Growler, which we got to tour as well. It was fascinating to be in a nuclear arms submarine. Also on the premises is the Concorde supersonic transport that regularly made the trip between New York City and Europe. This airplane set the record for the shortest trip between the two locations. In July, the space shuttle will be in the complex, also available for tours. From there we went to Peter's Since 1969, a comfort food restaurant that is like a Boston Market, only run as a family restaurant, not a chain. We walked for about an hour in Central Park and accumulated 5 1/4 miles during the day.
Saturday I met Lauren at the Paley Center for Media where we saw the world premier of the documentary The Standbys, which told the story of three actors who's primary jobs to sit around and wait to see if a principal actor is unable to perform. Each day they come back day and wait again. After this very enlightening and well conceived documentary, there was a talk-back with the three stars of the movie, the producer and other actors. Felice met us afterwards and we went to the Italian Restaurant Mia Pia. We had a good meal and then walked to the 52nd Street Stages to see the kids of Our Time perform in six mini plays that they wrote and acted in. There was a lot of singing and dancing and it was so impressive that the kids were developing inner confidence in dealing with their stuttering challenges. We again learned that weekends are a time when the subways are messed up due to limited schedules or construction/maintenance. We walked 4 1/4 miles on Saturday.
Now to Mother's Day. Felice and I met Lauren in Times Square at the Blue Fin for brunch. We had a wonderful time as it was the first time we have been with Lauren for Mother's Day in five years. After brunch, we split with Felice and Lauren going for a little shopping, seeing a documentary film and manicures/pedicures. The film was about ballet dancing and was called First Position. I went to West Chelsea to the West Chelsea Artists festival where I toured through about 2 dozen studios. I did have a chance encounter with a Tucson lawyer at a gallery when I heard him complaining to an artist about Tucson. He was a former New Yorker (38 years ago) and is still not ecstatic about living in Tucson, but I stood up for Tucson. Of course, he would have realized my allegiance as I was wearing my customary red University of Arizona polo shirt. Felice and I met up at the apartment where we both realized that we had become very dehydrated. I guess the combination of heat, humidity and limited water consumption was tough on us and took us each a couple hours to get over the dehydration and related headache. We walked about 4 miles today and this brings our total walking up to 144 1/2 miles.
We are relaxing this Mother's Day evening, having enjoyed a Mother's Day with a daughter, which we know will be an infrequent occurrence. We also wish all of the mothers on the email list a happy Mother's Day and hope yours was as joyous as ours was today.
Gary and Felice
No comments:
Post a Comment