iiiiiiiiiiii....love new yorrrrrrrrk!

pollution makes the best sunsets

the Met, in the snow

I just got back from New York city, where I spent the weekend and mucho dinero with my sister. We stayed at a friend's apartment on the upper East side, and walked all day long shopping all over town. The night we arrived, it snowed huge fake-looking flakes, and the whole city was gorgeous. There were massive slush-puddles of muck at every intersection, but I was wearing boots. We spent a morning at the Met looking at all my favorite paintings and an amazing Van Gogh drawing exhibit, then the rest of the time we were shopping at outdoor holiday markets and stores we can't find in our own hometowns (well, most of the stores are not in my sister's hometown, since she lives in the boonies in Maine).

Saturday afternoon we went to Rockefeller Center, along with all of the known world, and went to the top of the building where they have just opened an observation deck. The sun was setting behind the Empire State Building, and all the city was purplish and misty, with beautiful lights everywhere. Times Square was a canyon of light, and even the traffic looked pretty from so far away. It was worth the wait in 6 different lines of people plus a security checkpoint like the airport.

I think I have changed quite a bit since I was there last. I no longer like being in massive crowds of people, especially ones who have no clue where they are going and stop randomly to take pictures. But even though that chaos bothered me, going into Nintendo World was like a breath of fresh air. I can't explain it except that all those video gamers remind me of my husband and our friends (who are mostly all nerds). Sigh. They had a sort of "history of Nintendo" exhibit, with Hanafuda cards that the company originally made, a picture of Shigeru Miamoto who designed Mario etc, and a jillion special versions of old Nintendo products, including a gameboy that was bombed in the Gulf War that still works. Who knew?

The Hanafuda cards and the Shigeru picture were especially interesting to me because my husband loooooves Shiggy, who plays the banjo, and he also asked for "Nintendo playing cards" for Christmas one year. He thought they were just the standard 52 deck we have here, but they are really a special game played by Japanese gamblers 100 years ago. I spent almost a month emailing everyone I could find to tell me about them, and all the sites that sold them were in Japanese. Eventually, I found a site that has this guy's collection of Hanafuda ("flower cards" literally in Japanese) and a Japanese import store in California where he gets them. A very anxious phone call ensued, where I asked the English-challenged lady if she had these nintendo hanafuda, and she kept talking to some other lady at the store about it in Japanese. The cards arrived 2 days later, which isn't terribly surprising because everything I order for D comes immediately in the mail. Everything I order for myself comes 6 weeks later with no apology.

Another place I went was Knit New York, a cafe and yarn store that was pretty great. It looked a lot bigger in the picture, but it was still heavenly. I got some baby alpaca yarn that feels like heaven on a string, and some hand-painted mohair too. I usually buy the yarn, and then figure out what to do with it, so suffice it to say that I have a lot of nice yarn now and lots of ideas.

I was told that my favorite store in the world, Canal Plastics, is closed. Their website looks like they are still in business, but I am not sure if it is recently updated or if my friend was incorrect. This place has everything you ever wanted, if you ever wanted yards and yards of vinyl and shiny sticker material and sheets of plexiglas, and colored plastic boxes and buttons and plastic Venus di Milos and giraffes and cellophane. Whew. It's just a staggering place. I could smell vinyl all day. Freak.