Day two- October 4th 2012

10-4-2012

The best surprise while I was skating through Fort Greene to Sunset Park was this gigantic Barry McGee mural. I just glanced across the street and immediately knew it was his work. It's like when you're in a museum and you see a painting all the way across the room and you immediately know who the artist is, this was the same thing but in the streets. I've always admired Barrys work, and was exposed to a lot of this work while I lived in the East Bay. 

After spending the morning in Brooklyn taking the train to get the best Banh Mi in Sunset Park, I took the train to Manhattan to finally visit the Museum of Modern Art. I think the biggest reason why I wanted to come back to New York was to visit places like the MoMA. I arrived fairly early and of course there were already hundreds and hundreds of people there. I think there is a huge difference in attendance with art museums in New York as opposed to Art Musuems in Los Angeles. In Los Angeles I can walk into the Moca or the LACMA and it won't be crowded at all, The MoMA much different. Maybe because NY has a much higher tourist population than LA does? 

Yoshimoto Nara Patch of the Earth 2001

And of course I saw this, along with a few more paintings by Yoshimoto Nara. I've always wanted to see an exhibit of his in person and hopefully I get a chance to in my lifetime. Just this painting made the entire visit to the MoMA completely satisfying.

There was a special exhibition called "Century of the Child: Growing by Design, 1900-2000. This film was projected onto the entrance of the exhibition. A small child riding this one wheeler and this man in a suit running next to him. I'm pretty sure that one wheeler was gas powered, terrifyingly awesome. 

We have this children's book at my job called "The Curious Garden" by Peter Brown. It's a story about a boy that lives in a city that has no plants, everything is grey and black. Until one day he finds this abandoned train track that runs through the entire city. After a while he finds a small sprout, he decides to water this tiny sprout and finally that sprout turns into a flower and he learns more and more about planting and gardening and decides to plant some things and plants more and more until this old railroad turns into a beautiful garden. This place is real and it's called the Highline in New York City. 

The highlines story isn't as cool as the one in The Curious Garden. But it's still a cool one, the elevated Railway was built in the 1930's and the last train stopped running in 1980. Friends of the High Line, a community-based non-profit group, formed in 1999 when the historic structure was under threat of demolition. Friends of the High Line works in partnership with the City of New York to preserve and maintain the structure as an elevated public park. 

It's a nice place to just take a stroll and people watch. I mostly just found nice places to sit where I could see a long stretch of road with big buildings all around. 

It started to rain as I was leaving the highline, and this woman that I was passing stopped me and told me, have you looked west, the sunset is beautiful. I replied "I have, it's something else". I don't have any pictures but the sunsets in NYC are quite beautiful especially with all the shadows from all the high buildings.