New Year, New Home!

First off, L'shanah tovah! Rosh Hashanah ("Jewish New Year" for all my goy friends) starts tonight!

Second off, I am no longer crashing on my cousin's couch or Sarah's floor - I got a place of my own! How did I do it, you ask? Here are my steps to finding a home of your own on the East Coast:

1. Schedule an apartment viewing in Queens. Go to it. Have the guy promise to call you back.
2. The guy never calls back? That's fine. Schedule another in Brooklyn.
3. They want you to sign a lease you're not comfortable with? It's okay. Brooklyn is huge. Try another one.
4. Too expensive, huh? Let's give Harlem a shot.
5. They picked someone else? Try a few more places in Brooklyn.
6. Rejected, rejected. Get stood up once. Try Harlem some more.
7. Rejected, rejected, rejected.
8. Break down. Cry. Then get back on Craigslist.
9. Give up and move to New Jersey instead.

I'm being somewhat facetious. Truth is, the place I found is in New Jersey. In fact, it's in Weehawken, just a short walk from where Alexander Hamilton was shot. My story begins where his ended. Poetic, isn't it?

But I don't feel as if I failed in any way. Actually, for how much shit New Yorkers give Jersey? I love it here. I love the house I'm staying in - it's an old (supposedly haunted) Victorian boarding house that has been converted to apartments. Sarah saw it and agrees it's perfect for me.

And as my boss said, "new year, new home!" It's a fitting time to move into such a lovely place. And it's actually really close to Manhattan - check out the view from the front porch:

A ten minute bus ride through the Lincoln Tunnel, and then I'm in the middle of Times Square. (I hate Times Square but it's a convenient transportation hub...) And, you know, I've always dreamed of someday living in a Victorian house. I just never expected it would happen at this point in my life.

Now, obviously, for privacy reasons I can't show you what the outside of the building looks like. Rest assured it is very cute. However I can give you a small home tour...

Exclusive Tour of Van Cortlandt House

On Monday, courtesy of the New York Adventure Club (which I of course joined as soon as I heard about it, even if I cannot afford to go to many of their events), I took part in an exclusive tour of the Van Cortlandt House, the oldest house in the Bronx and one of the oldest in NYC - it dates back to 1748!

Because this was an exclusive private tour for the club, we got to go behind gates and ropes and actually into the rooms (my history buff self was thrilled) as long as we promised not to touch anything, and everyone was super respectful and actually honoured that promise (my former tour guide self was more thrilled)! There was a lot to take in, so I took a lot of photos, but I will try not to overload this entry with them and only post a few of the many many photos that were taken. Hey, if you wanna see more of the house, plan a trip to the Bronx to see it, as it's really quite nice.

Nathan Hale Day

 Today is the 240th anniversary of the death by hanging of patriot spy Nathan Hale. And while I'm no stranger to doing private little memorials to the deaths of historical figures, I was pleasantly surprised to find that while Hale (whom I have written about on this blog before) isn't terribly well remembered back in California, here in New York every year a group called the Sons of the Revolution does a little commemoration for Hale every year on this day, which is officially Nathan Hale Day. Of course as soon as I found out about it, I knew I had to go, just for the chance of celebrating Hale with a group of people who respect the man as much as I do.

The event did not disappoint.

Nym's Guide to Colonial New York

To the shock of absolutely no one who has ever even glanced at this blog, I am a fan of early American history. We're talking the Colonial days, the American Revolution, and the years of the first few American presidents. There are entire posts on this blog devoted to me fangirling over Alexander Hamilton and Nathan Hale. And so it shouldn't be surprising that one of the things that excited me most about New York is that it dates back to Colonial times, and there's quite a bit here left over from the late 1700s. I mean, Alexander Hamilton lived here. I would know, I went to the man's house.

I think he and I may have had the same favourite colour.

I haven't made it to every single spot of New York with colonial significance - I have yet to visit Green-Wood cemetery, for example, where the Battle of Brooklyn took place. I also have a private tour of the Van Cortlandt Mansion planned (thank you New York Adventure Club!) and I'm going to a Nathan Hale memorial event on Thursday. But I have been to quite a few...

The American Museum of Natural History

 
I've dreamed of visiting this museum since I was, like, six. And on Monday I finally had the opportunity to go. I got there right as it opened, walked in, and lived my childhood dream...

I visited the American Museum of Natural History, the museum where I would most like to work someday.

(I took tons of pictures, you guys. It was so hard narrowing down which photos to use in this entry, there are at least 200 more that are just sitting on my phone.)

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-

...Hello, New York!

It's taken me awhile to get time type this with how cuckoo-bananas the move has been (and also because the room I'm staying in for the week doesn't have wifi) but I've made it! I'm here! Living in New York City!