New York! I've decided to make this blog to share some stories, observations, etc. involving this city with my friends from home and other places.

So right now I'm staying with my friend from college, Sarah. Here she is, posing with a regal dog on the street.



One of the main reasons I decided to move to New York, besides the general excitement, diverse population, and the ridiculous size, was the architecture. I love old creepy buildings and New York is full of them! I love the tallest bulding in this photo:




It's also full of eerie vistas, such as this:



I'm staying in Brooklyn, which I enjoy. What I keep telling people is this fact I have read a few times, which is, if Brooklyn were its own city and were not part of New York, it would be the fourth largest city in the U.S., coming in just after Chicago. It's big. In fact, until the late 1800s, it was its own city, and Brooklyn and New York (Manhattan) were considered twin cities. In the inscription on the Statue of Liberty there is mention of this twin cities thing. But now Brooklyn is part of the city of New York, and the entire city is at about 8,000,000 people right now, which is insane! That's 1.5 million more people than the population of Massachusetts. I know.

Brooklyn for most of its life has been a city and a borough of working class people, except for a few areas, but now the borough is seeing this huge change in the appearance of its population. Basically, people like me, white, educated people from out of town, are moving in and are pissing some people off. This is a big thing in neighborhoods like Williamsburg (indie-rock haven, but also a huge Hasidic Jewish community) and Bedford-Stuyvesant (where Notorious B.I.G. was from).

My neighborhood is called Windsor Terrace. It's between a huge cemetery and Prospect Park. This is the park:



Also, the park has this big rotary area called "Grand Army Plaza" which is like Brooklyn's Arc de Triomphe. Apparently there is a puppet library inside the arch, but it's kind of secret. Here's the Plaza:



But anyway, more about the area. So Windsor Terrace is a cool neighborhood. It is much less gentrified, hip than neighboring areas. It has a large Hispanic population, as well as an Irish and Italian population. There's a good bagel place, a cobbler, a few pizza places, and a weird dollar store. It's just a normal neighborhood. It's next to Park Slope however, which is the center of the NPR-listening, Ivy-League educated, literary, independent film star, I just had a baby and carry it around on a sling, community arts-oriented, thrift store-frequenting population. Think of it being what happens after one leaves the indie-rock stage, but is yet to enter the art-mom stage. It is a nice neighborhood, though, but it's expensive, and I like where we're living right now.

I could go on and on about this Brooklyn stuff, but I thought I'd add a little bit about a tour I took of the United Nations the other day. It was so so so so cool.

I had just finished my temping job for the afternoon, and I wandered over to the East River, where the U.N. sits. I decided to pay for a tour ($8) of the place. My tourguide was this great South Korean woman who was full of interesting info. about the U.N. Apparently the U.N. sits on internationally-owned land, so it doesn't abide by U.S. laws, even though it's surrounded by Manhattan. They have their own fire department, their own stamps, and their own post-office. Everything inside is written in French and English. The place looks as though it has not been updated since it was built in 1950. The chairs are kind of falling apart, the colors are so dated (lime green seats and such)



and it's a really great example of the architecture of that period. Here's a shot of the general assembly room, where all of the countries meet to vote:



Next time you come to New York (and I encourage you to) you have to take a tour of the U.N. It's impressive and interesting, and I enjoyed learning about all the organizations that the U.N. runs, and how important an organization it is. Good!

Before I close, I wanted to show you this photo. As you may know, I am obsessed with red pandas, so when I saw the following poster near my neighborhood, I knew I had come to the right city, and had made the right decision to move here!