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| | Best NY Week EverLately, I've been going away a lot on weekends, and every time I come back to New York, I am just overcome by how smelly, dirty, stuffy and crowded it is. When you're only around for the work week and spend any free time trying to escape the suffocating heat, you tend to get caught up in
mundane day-to-day living and forget to take advantage of what’s special
about New York. So this past week in NY came just in time: a week full of events that reminded me of why I love
living in New York. This string of only-in-New York
events (and mostly firsts for me) was really enjoyable; sometimes, you have to
pretend to be a tourist in your own town to see why it's so great!
 Tuesday – Every summer, the New
York Philharmonic does a "Concert in the Parks" series, and I went to watch when they performed in Central Park. They
performed Mussorgsky/Ravel’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” and
finished off the show with fireworks. Surprisingly, you can sit in the park drinking
wine and listening to music without feeling like too much of a tool because it’s
a lawn concert in the dark, so you can hardly see the thousands of other yuppies
sitting around you. Upon exiting the concert, I ran into one of my best friends
growing up, with whom I had played “Pictures at an Exhibition”
during high school orchestra days! I finished off the
night by making my first trip to the rooftop of the much-hyped 230 Fifth, the largest rooftop
bar in Manhattan.
 Wednesday – A co-worker who
was taking the day off had tickets to a taping of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart! When her
boyfriend couldn’t make it, she called me! I put her on the phone with my
supervisor, who mercifully gave me a get-out-of-work-early card and let me go
see the show! Matt Groenig (creator of The Simpson's) was on to promote the upcoming movie, and it was a lot of fun. Afterwards, had
dinner with citroburst, bbans and their church friends at Dallas BBQ, a New York chain which has quite the misnomer. A stroll
toward Koreatown led us to Pinkberry, where I got my first taste of what some
call Crackberry. Mm yes, it is very good.
 Thursday – Took another
work-sanctioned off-site trip, this time to Coney Island.
We went to watch the Brooklyn Cyclones, a minor league baseball team. I enjoyed eating a hotdog, corndog
and a bag of CrackerJacks (which, by the way, have crappy prizes these days).
 Saturday – Went to a friend’s
going away party at the Bohemian Beer Garden
in Astoria, Queens. The outdoor space was comfortably large and full of children playing. (It seems like there was a children's birthday party going on - which is strange, given that it's a beer hall, but I'll refrain from parenting commentary given my lack of experience.) They
have a great selection of Czech and German beers, and rather tasty kielbasa. Then
enjoyed some shopping in SoHo and helped a friend in her quest for a specific
pair of etched Nike dunks; followed up with dinner at Five Points Restaurant,
named for the old neighborhood slum in New
York which was also the basis for the plot of the
Gangs of New York. The restaurant uses mostly local ingredients, like its Hudson River rabbit or Montauk squid. My 3 dinner
companions (hi Caffee!) and I all had perfect meals from start to finish, especially the
finish – the desserts are amazing.
 Sunday – Finished off the weekend with a night at the Blue Note, a well-known jazz club in the Village, to see Betty Buckley perform. She sings mostly musical theatre type of stuff, not the kind of music I'm normally into, but she was really good and I was glad to finally myself over to the venue and end the weekend with some live music.
So it was a nice full week including live music, baseball, comedy, outdoor garden and rooftop drinking, great food and desserts, multiple boroughs, and, best of all, great company among friends, out-of-town visitors and chance encounters with old friends.
Only in New York 
| | | Posted 7/23/2007 9:15 PM - 4 comments
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