Journal's 1-4
Our Professor Mike Russo; I swear he was in the Hangover!!
1. Impressions of NYC
What are your impressions when you think of New York City? Is it the skyline? NYC Taxi cabs? Times Square? Broadway shows? Maybe you even think of the city that never sleeps. For me, I think of a huge mystery that I have yet to discover. I have lived in NY pretty much my entire life and have not even made a dent in the things that there are to do in New York City!
When I do go into the city it is often with my family to eat at the amazing Italian restaurant Carmine's! Usually I like to go into the city to see Broadway plays. Although they are expensive, it is well worth it. It is crazy to think that people have worked their entire life training in the arts to perform on these hallowed stages. Some of the plays I have seen include The Lion King, Hairspray, Wicked, Avenue Q, 42nd Street and Bring it on the Musical. I LOVE to go see Broadway plays! The performers are so incredibly talented.
My absolute favorite thing to do in NYC is to walk around Times Square. I love the hustle and bustle, the lights and of course the SHOPPING!! I also like to visit museums in the city. Some of the ones I have seen include Ripley's Believe it or not, Madame Tussaud's, The Metropolitan Museum of art, The Natural History Museum and the Ellis Island Museum. I would really like to see a lot more museums. My family and I also enjoy heading to Yankee Stadium to see the Bronx Bombers kick some a** :p .
When I was younger we used to go to the city to play in Central Park. It is humongous and beautiful; it is pretty much a city within a city. But to be completely honest, that is pretty much all I have ever done in NYC! I really only ever go to Manhattan. I am REALLY looking forward to this course to learn a lot more about the greatest city in the world!! It is pretty amazing how people come from all over the world to see NYC and it is right in our backyards! I feel blessed to live in New York and to be a part of this class.
When I do go into the city it is often with my family to eat at the amazing Italian restaurant Carmine's! Usually I like to go into the city to see Broadway plays. Although they are expensive, it is well worth it. It is crazy to think that people have worked their entire life training in the arts to perform on these hallowed stages. Some of the plays I have seen include The Lion King, Hairspray, Wicked, Avenue Q, 42nd Street and Bring it on the Musical. I LOVE to go see Broadway plays! The performers are so incredibly talented.
My absolute favorite thing to do in NYC is to walk around Times Square. I love the hustle and bustle, the lights and of course the SHOPPING!! I also like to visit museums in the city. Some of the ones I have seen include Ripley's Believe it or not, Madame Tussaud's, The Metropolitan Museum of art, The Natural History Museum and the Ellis Island Museum. I would really like to see a lot more museums. My family and I also enjoy heading to Yankee Stadium to see the Bronx Bombers kick some a** :p .
When I was younger we used to go to the city to play in Central Park. It is humongous and beautiful; it is pretty much a city within a city. But to be completely honest, that is pretty much all I have ever done in NYC! I really only ever go to Manhattan. I am REALLY looking forward to this course to learn a lot more about the greatest city in the world!! It is pretty amazing how people come from all over the world to see NYC and it is right in our backyards! I feel blessed to live in New York and to be a part of this class.
2. You Can Call Me QUEEN B
WOW, what an awesome first day of Molloy's NYC class! Today's agenda was Queens and boy was it hot! Queens was "origionally inhabated by the Rockaway Indians" (ENY 213). After we all met up and went over the "rules" in Penn Station, we took the Subway to Flushing Meadows Corona's Park. It was cool to see all the hustle and bustle of everything for the US Open. It was cool to see things being set up for this famous event! Once we actually got into the park, we learned a little bit about the history of the fair. Back before the park was a park, it was practically a dump! It was an ashes dumping ground. Back in the early 1900's, people did not have heating systems like we have now. Most people had coal furnaces to heat their houses. These leftover ashes needed a place to rest and Flushing Meadows Corona Park became that place.
During the Great Depression, New York needed a way to lift the spirits of the citizens as well as bring some money to the city. The idea came to create a World's fair. This fair would have food, entertainment and cultural items from all around the world! Today Flushing Meadows Corona Park sits where the two world's fairs were held. Only one of the buildings still exists from the fair. It is now the Queen's museum which was our next stop! ( FUN FACT: The Queens museum actually used to also be home to the United Nations). The attraction that the Queens museum is most known for is the panorama. The panorama was origionally constructed for the 1964 World's Fair and still stands today. Although some alterations have been made, it is very similar to how it stood at the World's Fair. It is over 9,000 square feet! I thought it was a really helpful tool. I have a hard time imagining how geographically NYC is layed out and this helped me to put it all into perspective! I was a really cool experience.
Next it was time for lunch. And thank G-d because I was starving!! I was VERY hesitant to try Indian food. I had never had it before and its spicy. I truly believe in trying something because you may regret it for the rest of your life! So I tried a little bit of everything (except for the goat)! Even thought I did not really like the food, at least I can say I tried it! :)
After lunch we went to the museum of the moving image! This museum was beyond cool! Even though not many people know, Astoria was the "original" Hollywood. The museum shows filmmaking in Astoria as well as film history and general movie production techniques. I learned a lot in the museum and I LOVED the interactive parts!! It was cool to make our own stop motion pictures. It's incredible to see how much work had to go into a 30 second bit of film! I really enjoyed seeing the makeup production part of films. My sister is a cosmetologist and I want to bring her to the museum to see it. She would really love it! I think that this is a really cool part of the class, we get to later on share our experiences with our loved ones.
Our last stop for the day was Long Island city!! I was really excited to visit hear because I had heard so much about it becoming an up and coming area. It is currently going through gentrification. It was really cool to see the first public school (PS One). Even though it is not in use anymore, it was really cool to be able to say I had been there. Today it houses an annex exhibit for The Museum of Modern Art or MOMA for short. Mike tried to get us into the museum to see a piece of art but they would not let us :( . As we were walking towards the water, we saw the beautiful Chrysler Building! From the book ENY, we know it was built in the Art Deco style. We then arrived at a park along the East River and boy was it beautiful!! We even got the see the " 147 foot Pepsi- Cola sign" (ENY 226). It was cool to see such a well known commercial landmark. So to sum up day one in Queens, was an amazing experience! We walked a lot and it was hot, but that was a small price to pay for all the memories we made!!
During the Great Depression, New York needed a way to lift the spirits of the citizens as well as bring some money to the city. The idea came to create a World's fair. This fair would have food, entertainment and cultural items from all around the world! Today Flushing Meadows Corona Park sits where the two world's fairs were held. Only one of the buildings still exists from the fair. It is now the Queen's museum which was our next stop! ( FUN FACT: The Queens museum actually used to also be home to the United Nations). The attraction that the Queens museum is most known for is the panorama. The panorama was origionally constructed for the 1964 World's Fair and still stands today. Although some alterations have been made, it is very similar to how it stood at the World's Fair. It is over 9,000 square feet! I thought it was a really helpful tool. I have a hard time imagining how geographically NYC is layed out and this helped me to put it all into perspective! I was a really cool experience.
Next it was time for lunch. And thank G-d because I was starving!! I was VERY hesitant to try Indian food. I had never had it before and its spicy. I truly believe in trying something because you may regret it for the rest of your life! So I tried a little bit of everything (except for the goat)! Even thought I did not really like the food, at least I can say I tried it! :)
After lunch we went to the museum of the moving image! This museum was beyond cool! Even though not many people know, Astoria was the "original" Hollywood. The museum shows filmmaking in Astoria as well as film history and general movie production techniques. I learned a lot in the museum and I LOVED the interactive parts!! It was cool to make our own stop motion pictures. It's incredible to see how much work had to go into a 30 second bit of film! I really enjoyed seeing the makeup production part of films. My sister is a cosmetologist and I want to bring her to the museum to see it. She would really love it! I think that this is a really cool part of the class, we get to later on share our experiences with our loved ones.
Our last stop for the day was Long Island city!! I was really excited to visit hear because I had heard so much about it becoming an up and coming area. It is currently going through gentrification. It was really cool to see the first public school (PS One). Even though it is not in use anymore, it was really cool to be able to say I had been there. Today it houses an annex exhibit for The Museum of Modern Art or MOMA for short. Mike tried to get us into the museum to see a piece of art but they would not let us :( . As we were walking towards the water, we saw the beautiful Chrysler Building! From the book ENY, we know it was built in the Art Deco style. We then arrived at a park along the East River and boy was it beautiful!! We even got the see the " 147 foot Pepsi- Cola sign" (ENY 226). It was cool to see such a well known commercial landmark. So to sum up day one in Queens, was an amazing experience! We walked a lot and it was hot, but that was a small price to pay for all the memories we made!!
3. It's Brooklyn B*tch
Day two of our CORE class and it was my favorite so far! On today's to do list was Brooklyn and our first stop was Coney Island! I was so super excited to go to Coney Island because I had never been before! It was a very long train ride to get there but it was worth it! When we got to Coney Island Hannah and I went on the new coaster at Luna Park called Thunderbolt! It cost ten dollars just to ride it! Even though I did not want to pay that, I figured if you are in Coney Island, you have to ride a ride! Then we had lunch at the famous Nathan's Hot Dogs (ENY 195). Even though there is a Nathan's right by my house, you know what they say; when in Rome! Not only was it a lot of fun, but I thought it was cool to go there because my grandmother used to go there as a little girl.
After another long train ride, we headed to the NYC Transit museum. It was really cool to see because the museum is actually built on a old subway station/platform that is no longer in use! At first we had a brief history of the NY subway system by our awesome tour guide. She was really interesting and knowledgeable to listen to. The only thing that was a bit difficult was the heat. Because the museum was an old subway stain, it has no air conditioning. But true absolute coolest part of the museum was on the subway platform itself. They had subway cars from ever since the subway began in 1904 until now. Not only was it cool to be able to go into the cars and see what they look like, but it was even cooler to see all os the old advertisements that were still in the cars. It was cool to see products we still use today but in their older forms. ( ENY 203). It was definitely a trip back in time!
Our next stop was to walk around Brooklyn heights! Usually Brooklyn you would think is ghetto, but boy did I have the wrong thing in ming! Brooklyn heights was a gorgeous area with million dollar homes. The Height was so beautiful and it actually felt like a city in Europe rather than NYC! The brownstone house were absolutely gorgeous and it seemed like a really nice place to live! The area had lots of beautiful parks and churches that we got to see. One church was a very famous one called The Plymouth Church; this church particularly struck my interest because a very famous preacher used to speak there. His name was Henry Ward Beecher. People would come from very far to come hear him speak!
After we walked to a gorgeous park on the water. Even though this sight is just a beautiful place to take a walk, it also has some very important historical value! At this very spot George Washington and his troops during the Revolutionary Ware hid here from the British. Then in the dark and fog of night, they were able to break free from the British eye. It was so cool to think that I have stood where the founder of our country has stood! If they were not able to escape from the british by crossing the water, who knows how that could have changed history! Maybe we would still be under British rule and not the proud USA that we are today.
We walked along the water to a Park right under the Brooklyn Bridge. It was so full of life! People were just hanging out and enjoying the beautiful weather. There was a really cool band there that was incredibly talented! There were also multiple brides there taking wedding photos because the scene was drop dead gorgeous! There was even a carousel! Hannah and I got to ride "Jane's Carousel" (ENY 207). This carousel used to have a home in Philadelphia but a woman Jane refurbished the entire thing and brought it to Brooklyn. It was so cool to had this right by the open water. As we walked along shortly we ended up in the DUMBO area and there was a lot of cool places to hang out. Our last stop for the day was the Brooklyn Bridge! We got to walk over it while the sun was setting! It was so pretty it looked like something out of a movie. It was cool to walk over the bridge and really get to appreciate the skyline and architecture as we walked closer and closer to Manhattan.
After another long train ride, we headed to the NYC Transit museum. It was really cool to see because the museum is actually built on a old subway station/platform that is no longer in use! At first we had a brief history of the NY subway system by our awesome tour guide. She was really interesting and knowledgeable to listen to. The only thing that was a bit difficult was the heat. Because the museum was an old subway stain, it has no air conditioning. But true absolute coolest part of the museum was on the subway platform itself. They had subway cars from ever since the subway began in 1904 until now. Not only was it cool to be able to go into the cars and see what they look like, but it was even cooler to see all os the old advertisements that were still in the cars. It was cool to see products we still use today but in their older forms. ( ENY 203). It was definitely a trip back in time!
Our next stop was to walk around Brooklyn heights! Usually Brooklyn you would think is ghetto, but boy did I have the wrong thing in ming! Brooklyn heights was a gorgeous area with million dollar homes. The Height was so beautiful and it actually felt like a city in Europe rather than NYC! The brownstone house were absolutely gorgeous and it seemed like a really nice place to live! The area had lots of beautiful parks and churches that we got to see. One church was a very famous one called The Plymouth Church; this church particularly struck my interest because a very famous preacher used to speak there. His name was Henry Ward Beecher. People would come from very far to come hear him speak!
After we walked to a gorgeous park on the water. Even though this sight is just a beautiful place to take a walk, it also has some very important historical value! At this very spot George Washington and his troops during the Revolutionary Ware hid here from the British. Then in the dark and fog of night, they were able to break free from the British eye. It was so cool to think that I have stood where the founder of our country has stood! If they were not able to escape from the british by crossing the water, who knows how that could have changed history! Maybe we would still be under British rule and not the proud USA that we are today.
We walked along the water to a Park right under the Brooklyn Bridge. It was so full of life! People were just hanging out and enjoying the beautiful weather. There was a really cool band there that was incredibly talented! There were also multiple brides there taking wedding photos because the scene was drop dead gorgeous! There was even a carousel! Hannah and I got to ride "Jane's Carousel" (ENY 207). This carousel used to have a home in Philadelphia but a woman Jane refurbished the entire thing and brought it to Brooklyn. It was so cool to had this right by the open water. As we walked along shortly we ended up in the DUMBO area and there was a lot of cool places to hang out. Our last stop for the day was the Brooklyn Bridge! We got to walk over it while the sun was setting! It was so pretty it looked like something out of a movie. It was cool to walk over the bridge and really get to appreciate the skyline and architecture as we walked closer and closer to Manhattan.
4. It's CHELSEA Lately!
Today was an awesome day to explore NYC and on today's agenda was Chelsea and the east village. This week started a little bit differently than most; we did not take the subway but we started in Penn Station itself. It was very interesting to hear Mike talk about the Station. I never knew that where Penn stands now if not the initial station. The post office that stands across the street of Penn was the original location. "it had become prohibitively expensive to maintain the station, and plans were made to tear it down and replace it with a more modern railroad station" (ENY 114). I have no idea what they were thinking though because the old station looked so much more beautiful.
Next we walked over to the HighLine! It was really something. It is a park built on the above ground platform of an old freight line. It was very busy that day with lots of people buzzing around. Although it was a little too crowded for my liking, it was still an awesome experience. It was beautiful to see all of the plant life growing on the once freight tracks.There was also art spread though out the platforms. My favorite was a vintage paintings with bright colors showing the symbolic kiss of the sailor and his girlfriend and the end of World War two. At some points in the park, you could even still see the tracks! "When the high line was threatened with demolition, a non-profit community groups was formed in 1999 to save the structure and transform it into an elevated park" (ENY 84).
Our next stop were the galleries of Chelsea! The art was beautiful and very creative and outrageous. I could not believe that people would spend that much on art. I don't care how much money you have, think about how many starving children could be fed with that money, I just find it strange. The gallery I like the best was the Jack Shainman gallery. The art was by Nick Cave. I am a big animal lover so I found it really cool how he incorporated dogs into his works of art! The works in this gallery are called "Rescue" and they are basically dog statues sitting under elaborate works of art. They were really beautiful and interesting and I liked them a lot!
Next we went to the Jefferson Market Garden. This market actually used to be a courthouse! It "is one of the few high Victorian Gothic style buildings remaining in Manhattan" (ENY 90). And my absolute favorite part about this building is that it inspired the famous Disney castle! Next we went to Washington square park! Before this course I honestly had no idea how many beautiful parks reside in New York City; Washington Square Park would be one of them! There is a tree there that is 300 years old that used to be used to execute people (ENY 95). Even though this is kind of creepy, it was cool that such a beautiful place also had a historical background. There was also a structure called the Washington Arch built by Stanford White. Immediately, it reminded me of the Arch De Triumph in Paris (but much smaller).
Next we went to the Merchants house that I though was going to be an old boring house to walk though, but I was totally wrong! Once I found out that the house was haunted, it caught my interest immediately! It was a federal style house built in 1832 (ENY 99). The family that lived in the house had eight children and many of them died there. There have been reports of people hearing footsteps, light streaks in photographs and people have even seen people who were well, no longer people. I found this all very cool, however I would not was to spend a night there alone! As we left we walked by Cooper Square and got to peak our heads in. It is an architecturally beautiful building! We ended out day on St.Mark's place by the big gay ice-cream shop. I thought it was a really cool place to hang out. Today was a great day and I can't wait for next week!
Next we walked over to the HighLine! It was really something. It is a park built on the above ground platform of an old freight line. It was very busy that day with lots of people buzzing around. Although it was a little too crowded for my liking, it was still an awesome experience. It was beautiful to see all of the plant life growing on the once freight tracks.There was also art spread though out the platforms. My favorite was a vintage paintings with bright colors showing the symbolic kiss of the sailor and his girlfriend and the end of World War two. At some points in the park, you could even still see the tracks! "When the high line was threatened with demolition, a non-profit community groups was formed in 1999 to save the structure and transform it into an elevated park" (ENY 84).
Our next stop were the galleries of Chelsea! The art was beautiful and very creative and outrageous. I could not believe that people would spend that much on art. I don't care how much money you have, think about how many starving children could be fed with that money, I just find it strange. The gallery I like the best was the Jack Shainman gallery. The art was by Nick Cave. I am a big animal lover so I found it really cool how he incorporated dogs into his works of art! The works in this gallery are called "Rescue" and they are basically dog statues sitting under elaborate works of art. They were really beautiful and interesting and I liked them a lot!
Next we went to the Jefferson Market Garden. This market actually used to be a courthouse! It "is one of the few high Victorian Gothic style buildings remaining in Manhattan" (ENY 90). And my absolute favorite part about this building is that it inspired the famous Disney castle! Next we went to Washington square park! Before this course I honestly had no idea how many beautiful parks reside in New York City; Washington Square Park would be one of them! There is a tree there that is 300 years old that used to be used to execute people (ENY 95). Even though this is kind of creepy, it was cool that such a beautiful place also had a historical background. There was also a structure called the Washington Arch built by Stanford White. Immediately, it reminded me of the Arch De Triumph in Paris (but much smaller).
Next we went to the Merchants house that I though was going to be an old boring house to walk though, but I was totally wrong! Once I found out that the house was haunted, it caught my interest immediately! It was a federal style house built in 1832 (ENY 99). The family that lived in the house had eight children and many of them died there. There have been reports of people hearing footsteps, light streaks in photographs and people have even seen people who were well, no longer people. I found this all very cool, however I would not was to spend a night there alone! As we left we walked by Cooper Square and got to peak our heads in. It is an architecturally beautiful building! We ended out day on St.Mark's place by the big gay ice-cream shop. I thought it was a really cool place to hang out. Today was a great day and I can't wait for next week!