Lunch in New York with Alexander Hamilton

One of the most famous things about New York - and one of the things I've been enjoying the most - is its food scene. You can get some very expensive food here, but you can also get some very cheap food (my lunch today for example was a slice of pizza twice as big as my head, which cost me only $1). You can find any type of cuisine in the world - in my time here so far, I've had Italian, Chinese, Middle Eastern, Japanese, Jamaican, and Ukrainian (at Veselka, a place I wanna go back to asap so I can do a blog entry about it!). And the best part is that no matter where you are in the city, there's usually at least one food cart nearby, so you never go hungry! I was reluctant to eat at one of these at first, since my mother always used to call them 'roach coaches', but god is it convenient, and they're actually usually really good!

Yesterday, for example, I had a job interview only two blocks away from the American Museum of Natural History (which is also gonna be a future blog entry) and afterwards, feeling peckish, I got a potato knish from a food cart and started wandering through Central Park, stopping to eat in the shade of a statue of Alexander Hamilton.

(I wish I could say it was a complete accident that I ended up at this particular statue but I will be honest with you guys - I was totally looking for it.)

It's a beautiful statue, you guys. It's carved entirely of white granite, and portrays Hamilton in his prime. The sculptor, Carl H. Conrads (of Hartford, CT if the little tiny inscription on the corner near where I sat is correct) really sculpted his jawline well. If that's a weird thing to notice, oh well, because I noticed it. The statue was gifted to the park by Hamilton's son, John C. Hamilton (the same guy who crossed out the words on that infamous Hamilton-Laurens letter where Hamilton is talking about his dick) in 1880.

I sat in the shade of that statue of my favourite founding father and ate my knish, people-watching for a bit. A father and son passed me by - the father murmuring to his son "he was a great man," presumably talking about Hamilton - and somewhere nearby, someone was playing live jazz music. And I was struck by how much what I was doing, in that moment, was such a uniquely New York experience. The food cart knish, a food probably originally brought to the city by immigrants... the jazz music, reminiscent of the twenties, one of New York's most shining decades... and Hamilton himself...

He doesn't have any really big monuments like the other founding fathers do. Washington has the Washington Monument and Mount Vernon, his face is on Mount Rushmore, and the entire U.S. capitol is named after him. Jefferson has the Jefferson Monument and Monticello, and he's also on Mount Rushmore. Benjamin Franklin has the Franklin National Memorial in Philadelphia. Even James Madison has the James Madison Memorial Building.

Alexander Hamilton doesn't have anything like that, but in a way, New York City is his monument. The hustle and bustle of the city's commerce is a fitting monument to how he shaped the nation's financial system. The city's rainbow quilt of every possible nationality is a memorial to his roots as an immigrant. His memory is all over this city, which is as fast paced as his incredible mind.

And I get to take part in it.

-Nym-