200,000 Trees for Tacoma?

When I was in New York City I was impressed by the effort they were putting out to plant more trees--1 million trees to be precise. Their goal is 1,000,000 trees in the next 10 years.

I mentioned the program in a comment thread over at Exit133 about a big tree that fell down over the weekend in the Stadium District and suggested that Tacoma should consider something similar. We've lost a lot of trees to age and development and storms and I think that we should have a systematic effort to replant.

Turns out, it's being looked in to. Fellow blogger Tacoma Chickadee let me know that Tacoma's Green Ribbon Committee has as a draft recommendation that the City plant 200,000 trees, among some other ideas.

According to the time line on the website, the final recommendations should be put in front of the City Council in June.

I'm on board. Go trees!

My thoughts on "Avenue Q"

This raunchy puppet musical was surprisingly funny. I know a few "non-theater" types who greatly enjoyed it, so I was looking forward to it going in.

As we've done in the past, we bought the soundtrack before going. For a show like Spring Awakening, this helps make the show clearer. Sometimes the words get muddled on stage and it's better to know a little bit in advance. With Avenue Q, however, I actually wouldn't recommend it. Some of the joy of the show is its audacious lyrics, and I think maybe I knew too much going into it.

In general, the songs were very funny, the characters and puppets were surprisingly well crafted and acted (with a few notable exceptions). And the Sesame Street style interludes on the two TV monitors were handled well.

If anything really didn't work for me it was the character Christmas Eve, the Japanese therapist. I would even go so far as to call her a failed character. I understand what the creators were going for, but it just didn't work. There are good ways to poke fun at stereotypes, but Christmas Eve was no different that Long Duk Dong from Sixteen Candles, and even not so far apart from Mickey Rooney's horrendous Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany's. And it's bad when I reference a stereotype from 1961 (which was outdated even then).

It just didn't work. (And I don't think it's the actress. Her voice and songs didn't work on the soundtrack either, which was made by the original Broadway cast.)

But the show is very good and I definitely recommend it if you happen to be in NYC or London's West End. Although I hear now that it's closed at the Wynn in Vegas a national tour has started up too. Just be prepared for "full puppet nudity" and some dirty talk and you'll fine.

A Big Day in New York

As you might be able to tell by the pictures below, we were all over New York today. Battery Park, Ground Zero (they're already starting to rebuild), Midtown, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Central Park, and a Yankees-Mariners game (which we lost 5-1).

Plenty more coming, including Avenue Q. tomorrow night. It's been pretty cool, and the Yankees game was downright chilly. But other than that we've managed to avoid the rain we got hit with last night.

Looking forward to a fun weekend ...

Damn Yankees

Looking toward right field from our seats at the Yankees game. This is the last year for the current Yankee Stadium. You can see the upper lip of the new stadium in the background.

Even though it looks like blue skies in the picture it was dark-ish and cloudy when I took this picture. I think that's a result of the lights. Judging by the fielders, the Mariners are up to bad. Not that we were able to do much. Although our 4 errors in the first three innings means we were worse in the field than we were on offensive. Not a great game.

Day in NYC

This is from the roof garden at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Central Park is in the background.

Short Week

We're heading to New York for a long weekend, which is going to be awesome! Activities will include watching the Mariners play the Yankees at Yankee Stadium (it's the last season for Yankee stadium) and seeing Avenue Q (the musical, not the Avenue).

Plus lots of walking. We leave Thursday. I'll probably Twitter from there when I can with blog posts every so often. That said, I can take pictures with my iPhone and post them directly to my blog, so I might do that from the road, too. I do like travel blogging.

New York vs. New York

The congestion pricing plan for New York City that would have helped reform the City's and the region's transportation is basically dead now that the New York State legislature has said there's no way they will do it. Apparently one of the state senators even said it was "morally unconscionable."

Congestion pricing has worked well in London and other cities that have implemented it. Over at The Atlantic, Reihan Salam argues that this battle is grounds to once again start fighting for New York to consider secession from the state. Apparently, secession from the state has been considered for years, dating back to the civil war.

Maybe when DC becomes a state New York City will too ...

Mariners at Yankee Stadium

I'll be catching the Mariners playing at Yankee Stadium the first week of May and the tickets just arrived! This is the last year for Yankee Stadium, so it should be fun to see it before it goes. Happily, the trip is also going to coincide with the TriBeCa Film Festival, so we'll probably try to catch a flick if we can.

It's turned into a big group of us going. There will be 10 (10!) at the game and 5 of us over the weekend.

I'd never been to New York until November '06, then I went again in August of '07. And now I'm going back in '08. Making New York an annual trip would be just fine by me ...

NYT on the Cupcake Phenomenon

The New York Times today has a great story on cupcakes. It's interesting reading about how cupcakes have risen to new heights recently (witness the tidal wave of support for Hello, Cupcake's opening). And did you know Texas passed a Cupcake Amendment a couple years ago?

The story also mentions the Magnolia Bakery, where one of the bakers at Corina learned her trade. After Mary and I went in August, we both left feeling like Corina did it better...

A New York State of Mind

I put this together using my small digital photo camera, whose memory card maxed after 15 minutes of filming the Empire State Building. It's 15 minutes of the Empire State Building from our hotel room at the Broadway Plaza hotel, sped up to 1 minute time.

Watch for the flash bulbs from the observation deck.



Even though I'm back home, it's fun to post a last travel blog post.

Last Day

We arrived back in town late (although it's feeling especially late since I'm partly on East Coast Time).

On our last day, Mary trolled the garment district for yarn and fabrics, her favorite pasttime. I opted to sit for a leisurely morning soaking in New York in Madison Square Park, where I worked on today's NYT crossword puzzle with a pen with no ink (I did a lot of engraving into those little boxes so that when I held it just write I could see what I'd written).

From there I wandered around and stopped in a few shops that were priced way out of my league before we met up for lunch at Pastis, perhaps the most cool restaurant in New York. It's right in the Meat Packing District--a French bistro with great food and a truly wonderful atmosphere. You can take one of those weird 360 degree tours of the main room by following this link.

And that pretty much wrapped up the fun part of the trip. From there it was a walk, rolling our luggage behind us, to Penn Station, a train, then another train, then a loooong flight against the jet stream, and we're finally back in T Town.

It actually feels good to be back. It was a good length for a vacation. Any longer and we may as well just live there so that we don't have to go out every meal. Any shorter and we would have been anxious for more.

Note: On the plane on the way back both Mary and I listened to the soundtrack for Spring Awakening. Maybe it's not a good recording or maybe you need the cast's energy from the stage, but it's not a very exciting album.

Life in 10001

We moved hotels this morning because Stay the Night didn't have a room for us tonight.

Which has turned out pretty well, since being in the 10001 ZIP puts us much closer to the action than being way up north in 10128.

I rather liked this unexpected surprise for a view from the window:



We aimed for the coast today, and took the N train all the way out to Coney Island, a destination that turned out to be far more dilapidated than we'd expected. I think we were looking for a kitchy, antique, slightly run down amusement park. But it was just kind of blah, struggling to keep things alive.



The boardwalk was actually kind of nice, and it felt great to soak my feet in Atlantic. Highlights also include the original Nathan's hotdog stand. A few old buildings like the Parachute Jump in the background of the photo above ... but we really did not need the 50 minute trip out and then back again except to tell us that we don't need another trip there for a good long time.

Oh, and I also discovered the "Shoot The Freak" booth with a live human target that you get to shoot paintballs at.



Click on the picture to make it bigger and see the guy with the metal shield in front of him.

After we got back in to town we visited H&M and Macy's, which was a lot less crazy then the last time we went on the day after Thanksgiving -- that was a crazy day.

We wrapped up the night with a good dinner at Pete's Tavern, which has been around since the 18somethings and is where O Henry wrote "The Gift of the Magi." It's also where Mary and I had our last dinner in the City in November.

NYC: Saturday

We decided late last night that instead of venturing south to Atlantic City that we would stay in the city Monday night, adding nearly two full days of things to do here.

Because of the extra time, I elected a slightly more moderate pace than the whirlwind of Friday, but even still--we were busy. The day started at the Jewish Museum to see the work of Louise Nevelson, a sculptor admired by Mary and new to me. From there it was just two blocks to the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, a museum that Mary, being the graphic designer that she is, has been looking forward to seeing for some time.

The Cooper Hewitt was short on exhibits as they were installing two new galleries, but their garden exhibit "Design for the Other 90%" was moving in their portrayal of design which has helped--or can help--with disease, poverty, education, etc, in the Third World.

We also met up with an old classmate from Bellarmine, Pat B. He's moved here three months ago and is working on auditions, casting calls, etc. We had a good lunch at a Mexican restaurant in the East Village called La Palapa.

From there we wandered the East Village and Soho before settling on our chosen activity for the night: movies. What's New York without film you won't see anywhere else (at least not for a few months)?

We started at the Angelika Film Center with the directorial debut of Julie Delpy, 2 Days in Paris. I should mention the title is a bad choice, considering that the sex-tape of Paris Hilton was marketed under the title 1 Night in Paris, which--technically speaking--would fall between Day 1 and Day 2 of this 2 Days in Paris.

Delpy you might remember from Before Sunrise and the sequel, which is much better, Before Sunset. Here she starred, wrote, directed, edited, and scored, which is pretty good it seems. Her co-star is Adam Goldberg, who you've seen in a few things, including those Friends episodes when he plays Chandler's new roommate who puts goldfish crackers in his aquarium.

But I digress.

After the Anjelika we had a spicy dinner at a Cajun restaurant called Acme (on Great Jones St, by the way, which is an awesome name for any street, so awesome it's also the title of a Don Delillo book).

And then on to the three-screen, non-profit, art-house theater (sound familiar?) called the Film Forum. We caught a late show of Rear Window, a film that we had tried to get at the Grand for the Hitchcock film series in 2005 but couldn't because we didn't have the right kind of projectors.

Rear Window is set in New York during a summer heat wave, and seeing it in New York during a summer heat wave is just the thing, especially when you can do it with a crowd of people, some who've seen it, some who haven't it.

It's actually been years since I've seen the film, and seeing it on the big screen is absolutely worth it. It's funny, exciting, and creepy. Getting to see it here in these circumstances was very cool.

After the late show it was back to our own small courtyard that looks out at many other rear windows and balconies ...

Made for walkin'

Our trip up and down New York City today was on food and by subway; we traversed a pretty large section of this island.

We're staying at a nifty place on the Upper East Side called Stay the Night which is sort of like a bed and breakfast, but not at all since we don't see anyone. It's more like a non-hosted hotel, which means it costs a whole lot less than staying anywhere else on Manhattan. Plus it's awesome. If you're the New York-o-phile, you may want to avert your eyes from this picture of our awesome deck. (That's right--a full deck looking over a private courtyard.)



From our cool place we traveled very far south and set out from Union Square on foot. We covered Greenwich Village, the Meat Packing District, the cusp of SoHo, and Little Italy ... before jumping back on the subway and shooting back home in the afternoon.

We cleaned up (needed after sweating through the day) and aimed for Midtown. The Top of the Rock beckoned. Last time we summited the Empire State Building. This time it was Rockefeller Center and it was a sight.

Here's the South view.



And the North.



As dusk came, things started to get kinda hazy up top, as you can see. (Since we hadn't planned on going up to the top today, I didn't have my new digital camera with me. The pics above are from the iPhone's camera if you can believe it.)

After that, we walked to Times Square and had a drink before venturing in to "Spring Awakening," the 2007 Tony winner for Best Musical. I'll review that later in a separate post, but we had a good time at the show.

Afterward we dined on sushi and sake at Ruby Foo's, a place Aaron and Erin suggested we go. Our dining was actually quite good today. Lunch in the Meat Packing District at Florent; cupcakes from the Magnolia Bakery; gelato and tartufo at Ferrara in Little Italy; soup and sandwiches from a small take-out store in Rockefeller Center.

We're hitting up a fair number of museums tomorrow. We've also canceled our trip to Atlantic City and will instead be staying in Midtown for the last night. It didn't take too long hanging out here to realize that we could stay an extra two days if we switched our hotel for the last night from Atlantic City to New York. So we did, for just $30, and will be in NYC all day Monday and most of Tuesday before the return flight.

Looking forward to it!

Late night here ... nearly two. A review of Spring Awakening will be forthcoming.

New York Minute

Mary and I are venturing off to the Big Apple tomorrow for a long weekend of ... of Big Apple activities obviously.

Honestly, the list of things to do is close to this:

• Walk the streets.
• Eat good stuff.
• Repeat as needed.

We'll be seeing Spring Awakening, too, which won the award for Best Musical at the Tony's this past year.

And then it's one night in Atlantic City to finish things off. More on that later. So for awhile it's no more Tacoma blogging and back to the great fun of travel blogging.

I thought Democrats liked the environment

Upsetting news from New York today.

Mayor Bloomberg's proposal to overhaul New York City traffic was besieged in the State Senate by Democrats who, en masse, decided they would oppose the measure.

From the NYT:

In a tense meeting on Monday, testy exchanges erupted between the mayor and the Democratic state senators he was trying to win over. At one point, according to several people present, Mr. Bloomberg told the senators that his administration had sent plenty of information about his plan in the mail, and that it was not his fault if they had not read it.

...

So angered were Democrats that they decided to vote as a bloc to defeat the measure, and there were not nearly enough votes among the Republican senators for it to pass.

Guys. Congestion pricing for a city the size of New York makes a lot of sense and will be an incredible boon to the environment as it gets more people out of their cars and onto mass transit. I can understand that there might be concern about how the measure would affect poor families but, let's face it, if you live in the New York metropolis region and commute to Manhattan in a car, you're probably not poor.

It taxes rich people, which you like; it helps the environment, which you like; it's awesome, which you should also like. But the idea came from an ex-Republican, which you don't like. Why is it that Arnold and Bloomberg are greener than all of you in the New York State Senate? Why is it a Republican governor in Florida is on the bandwagon and you're not?

Oh, right. You don't like Bloomberg. That's just dumb.

News of the Day

It's worth point out two stories, one local, one not. Pierce County will be considering giving benefits to domestic partners. Good show from the folks in the County on that one. I hope it goes through.

Second, the big news is that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has withdrawn from the GOP to become an independent. Some people think he might run for President in '08 (meaning we'd have two New York mayors and a New York Senator in the race, which would be interesting).

I should say that from everything I know about Bloomberg, he's been an excellent Mayor for the City. The New York Times endorsement of him was positively glowing. His sustainability and environmental plans for the city are fabulous. When it comes to the Presidency, I'm still all about Obama, but I think Bloomberg withdrawing from the Grand Ol' Party is a very sure sign of the weakness in the Republican Party and their inability to be the "Big Tent" Party they tried to be for so many years.

Legally Blonde: The Musical

Amazingly, the musical version of "Legally Blonde" got a not-bad review from the chief theater critic for the New York Times. Perhaps he was just glad he didn't have to re-watch the musical of "High Fidelity."

Here's my favorite paragraph:

This high-energy, empty-calories and expensive-looking hymn to the glories of girlishness, based on the 2001 film of the same title, approximates the experience of eating a jumbo box of Gummi Bears in one sitting. This may be common fare for the show’s apparent target audience — female ’tweens and teenagers who still believe in Barbie. But unless you’re used to such a diet, you wind up feeling jittery, glazed and determined to swear off sweets for at least a month.

If you happen to be in New York anytime in the next, oh, seven years, "Legally Blonde" might be there waiting for you!

Missed it

I missed the snow!

My favorite 2-day season in Tacoma, the snow season, seems to have come and nearly gone.

But I guess I got to be in New York instead ... Macy's on the busiest shopping day of the year ... top of the Empire State Building ... walking across the Brooklyn Bridge ... not to mention the unseasonably warm temperatures.

So it didn't come out all bad.

The Vertical Hour

I saw David Hare's new play, "The Vertical Hour" yesterday with Julianne Moore and Bill Nighy (AKA Davy Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean.)

The play was still in previews, so I'm not quite sure what that means when it comes to whether it's finished or not. But I enjoyed it, in general. Bill Nighy was very good. Julianne Moore was a little miscast, but still good. The play weaves in the current Iraq war as best as possible without dramatically dragging down the play. But I much prefer Altman's method of critiquing the Vietnam war: use the Korean war. The play could have been set in 1991 and been more effective because it wouldn't have gotten bogged down in so much detail.

This was the 2nd David Hare play I've seen (the first was "My Zinc Bed" which I saw in 2000). This was also the 2nd play I've seen that Sam Mendes directed (the first was "To the Green Fields Beyond," also in 2000). I think both have done better work, but it was still very cool to see a Broadway play.