{"id":1747,"date":"2022-07-05T12:56:44","date_gmt":"2022-07-05T12:56:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mochiandcolleen.com\/eagleledge\/?p=1747"},"modified":"2022-07-05T12:56:46","modified_gmt":"2022-07-05T12:56:46","slug":"ambiana-mochis-big-city-adventures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mochiandcolleen.com\/eagleledge\/?p=1747","title":{"rendered":"Ambiana & Mochi’s Big City Adventures"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Berkley College Of Music Song Writing Camp<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Ambiana headed to Boston on Tuesday for an overnight song writing camp at the Berkley College of Music in the Back Bay. She stayed in a dorm with 2 other girls and took classes in song writing and production over the next 5 days. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Three Days in NYC <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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My friend Tami McCann from Girdwood Alaska whom I’ve known ever since I first lived there in 1992 treated me to a two night stay VIP concert package for the band Walk Off The Earth at Carnegie Hall in NYC this week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DAY 1<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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I left Vermont at 6:45am on Wednesday and drove to New Haven CT where I parked the truck and took the train into NYC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The VIP package included 2 nights at the Sheraton Times Square, I walked there from Penn Station and met Tami already in our room on the 10th floor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Mochi & Tami<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tami and I remarked on the fact that 95% of our friendship took place hanging out in her house in Girdwood and here we are in NYC!!! We caught up for a bit then she headed off to Brooklyn to visit a friend and I headed north through Central Park to check out some art galleries on the Upper East Side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The weather was cool and drizzly and I bought a panini on my way back through the city as I walked 20 blocks to the 7pm showing of TITANIQUE<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The show is a mash up of Celine Dion songs and the movie Titanic done in a super gay campy drag style. The premise is that Celine Dion interrupts a tour group in the Titanic Museum and reveals what really happened on the ship with the twist being that she Celine Dion was Rose. It was funny and hit all the right notes in the film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After the show I walked back uptown to the hotel through Times Square. There are weed shops every block and weed trucks selling edibles on every curb. The streets were packed with people all from out of town taking in the spectacle that is NYC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The M&M store has to be the stupidest store I’ve ever seen and embodies all that is wrong with our world. It sells every imaginable item emblazoned with the M&M logo and characters as well as bulk M&Ms<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Imagine all the $$$ wasted on stuff bought in this store, then realize that 99% of all the stuff we buy is similarly ridiculous while people sleep in the streets, go hungry, and suffer while the planet heats up, the oceans are dying and the Earth is an over crowded mess. We have the resources to make it right but rather buy an M&M onesie for our kids<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DAY 2<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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I woke up at 7am and ran four miles up, around, across Central Park and bought some fruit for my breakfast. Tami and I then joined the other VIP guests and took a bus to Chelsea Pier for our Harbor Lunch Cruise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The food was surprisingly good and afterwards we headed up on deck as we cruised down the West side of Manhattan on the Hudson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We passed this really cool park built on piers shaped like what looked to me like tulips and headed down to the tip of the island.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The boat circled the tip and turned around under the Brooklyn Bridge which Ambiana, Gaelen and me walked across probably 10 years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We then cruised by Lady Liberty before heading back up the Hudson to where we started. It was a nice way to look at the city and gave me some ideas about what I wanted to see on Friday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MOMA<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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After the cruise Tami went back to the room to nap while I went up the street to MOMA<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There were some very beautiful artworks on display. A woman on the cruise suggested I start on the 5th floor and work my way down so that is what I did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This looks like a chair of dicks<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Art? Really?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Picasso<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Storm by Edvard Munch 1893<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It was worth the $25 to get in just to be able to gaze upon Van Gogh’s Starry Night<\/p>\n\n\n\n

F.I.T. Murals<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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By far the best art I saw while in NYC was on the outside walls of the Fashion Institute of Technology in Chelsea. The theme seemed to be the past 3 years of the pandemic. This is what art is; a response and reflection of the current state of the world, and here it was on full display to all passerbys for free but because they were not in a museum behind a $25 admission fee no one seemed to notice them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Before the show at Carnegie Hall Tami and I got a $8 slice of pizza and I headed back into Central Park to check out the Disco Oasis Roller Rink.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Needle Skyscrapers<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The show started at 7:30pm, we had 5th row seats in Carnegie Hall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Walk Off The Earth has a very passionate fan base and they really seem to love their fans. They played a lot of covers and medleys, sang a song counting to 100, did a medley of 50 Beatles songs in 4 minutes and closed with a ukulele version of AC\/DC’s Thunderstruck<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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They even had this crazy guitar\/bass\/ukulele\/drum made for them and four band members crowded around it and played a medley of tunes on it. The show was good but was over in 80 minutes and we headed out into the NYC night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Times Square<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Mochi in NYC<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Day 3<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Sleeping in NYC is hard as it never gets dark and street noise is constant. I was up at 6am and out on the streets by 7am. I bought a Citi Bike Day Pass and hopped on a bike at %7th and Broadway and peddled West to the Hudson River Greenway where I cruised down the West side of Manhattan on an exploratory ride.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Little Island<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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My first stop was Little Island off of 14th street which we glimpsed from the boat yesterday on the cruise. It is such a beautiful and interesting looking pier park that I had to check it out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Walkways wind among landscaped and vegetated areas, there are 2 amphitheaters performance spaces and beautiful views of the city and Jersey across the Hudson<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hudson Yards<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Back on the bike I rode north along the greenway to 30th Street where I disembarked beneath an elevated walkway and explored the Hudson Yard development,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Lots of big beautiful buildings and retail shops plus The Shed. A movable canopy art space that was not open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Also not open but impressive anyway was the Vessel, a staircase entwined sculpture that looks super fun to climb once it is re-opened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The High Line<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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I then took a 10 block walk on the High Line, an elevated train track that has been converted into a landscaped walkway that extends for 25 blocks south into Chelsea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The path winds between some pretty impressive looking apartment buildings designed by renowned architects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Met<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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After the High Line I got back on the bike and cycled back to the Hotel to meet up with Tami and have breakfast. Our plans were for the MET and she was meeting friends there at 1:30pm. It being only 11am I got back on the bike and cycled up the East side of the park weaving among tourists, pedestrians, other bikers and cars to get to the MET at 82nd and Park Ave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The MET was packed but it is so vast it can handle us all. I love the Egyptian wing. It amazes me what humans were like and doing 5,000 years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I love the temple area, the glass walled room echoes the splendor of the Egyptian temple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I visited William again.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I next headed all the way across the MET to sit for awhile in front of my favorite painting, The Storm<\/em><\/strong> by French artist Pierre-Auguste Cot painted in 1880. I first came across the painting in the Autumn of 1987 when I was living in NYC after graduating from BU the previous Spring. It spoke to me of my most inner most longing, to find a mate to flee with, flee out into this wonderful mysterious beautiful world full of wonder together supporting and sheltering each other from the occasional storm. Looking at it now 35 years later I see me and Colleen in this painting and am able to tell the 22 year old me that stood in this place with such longing in his heart that his dream upon gazing at this ethereal painting has been fulfilled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I then moved on to the American landscape paintings of the Hudson River School and found several painting by Thomas Cole who’s studio in upstate New York I visited last summer with Gaelen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This is a painting of hikers on the summit of Mt. Mansfield, the highest peak in Vermont, in the late 1800’s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A sculpture of an Indian girl with a crucifix. I think it was meant as salvation for the maiden but I see it as cultural genocide<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Central Park<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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After 3 hours and miles of walking in the MET I left and slowly made my way south through Central Park back to the hotel where we stored our backpacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Back to Hudson Yards<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Tami stayed at the museum and had dinner with her friends so I grabbed a falafel wrap on the street and hoped back on the bike and rode back to Hudson Yards where the base of the Vessel was now open so I could at the least go inside it if not climb it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Back to the High Line<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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I then walked the High Line for 15 blocks to the hostel where we were spending Friday night and checked us in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I took a shower, changed clothes and headed out into Chelsea the Find the Irish Reparatory Theater which was 2 blocks away to see “Belfast Girls”<\/strong><\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The play was the story of five Irish women on a ship bound for Australia during the famine. Ireland could not feed all it’s people and Australia had too many men so the English Parliament took advantage of these circumstances to rid Ireland of what it saw as an undesirable element by sending young orphaned women many of whom were prostitutes out of the country. The play was very good, featured some fine acting and a song or two and during the curtain call the actresses held up a sign reading “my Body, My Choice” which was the only public mention I heard all day as The Supreme Court had just overturned Roe V. Wade earlier in the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Day 4<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Out Train was at 10am and I was up and out of the hostel at 7am I walked up to Penn Station and took a detour to circle the Empire State Building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Penn Station<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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NYC receding out the train window.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Picking up Ambiana in Boston<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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We picked up my car in New Haven CT and drove to Boston where we parked at Alewife Station and took the T<\/strong> to the Back Bay and the Berkley College of Music to pick up Ambiana.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ambiana had a great week at camp, made lots of friends, ran on the Esplanade, explored the city, took cool composing and arranging classes and left really inspired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Mark and Erika were in Boston visiting BU and Harvard and they met us at India Quality Restaurant in Kenmore Square. I recognized it immediately having walked past it a zillion times during my college years but never went in. It was also right next to Nuggets my all time favorite record store which I went into a zillion times during those same college years and I ducked in again and the same guy was working behind the counter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The food was excellent as was the company and afterwards Mark saved us an hour by driving us to Alewife and the truck. Three hours later we were home in Worcester walking up to the house through a yard full of flickering fireflies, the peepers in the pond serenading us home!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A short film of my NYC Experience<\/h3>\n\n\n\n