We Had a Spectacular New York City July

And now: a post about “everything” Liz and I did in July — you may get to the bottom of this post and say “Really? That’s everything you did in July? Seems like a kind of short post for all of July?” Well, guess what? It isn’t ALL of July! We had two important sets of visitors come visit and they each deserve their own great big blog post! And a few other adventures of ours from July deserve their own posts — especially the adventure that didn’t take place in New York at all (are you excited to find out about that??) — Ok, so, for now, Let’s Go! Here’s “everything” we did in July!

JULY 1: You know we love a walk! You know I love overdoing it with an itinerary! Liz had wanted to see Chinatown so I was like: “Ok, what if we walk the High Line, then visit some Chelsea art galleries, then walk through the West Village (where you might find a new favorite pair of pink boots), then walk through Soho (stopping at Baggy, among other stores) and THEN walk through Chinatown?” She agreed. So we did all of that and, predictably, by the time we got to Chinatown we were pretty worn out. BUT not too worn out for some dumplings! (BUT probably too worn out for the noodles we had after the dumplings.)

JULY 4: Ohhh boy, Cornelius had a visitor! Look at him looking at it!

Also July 4: Again, we love walks! So we planned up a very ambitious 4th of July walk up the Hudson. Our ambitions got the best of us, and it was hot, and there were tons of bugs, so we walked about a little more than a half of what he planned to walk, but still made it from our house up to Hastings on Hudson — which, if that had been our original plan, would’ve sounded like a pretty ambitious plan itself! We walked through all sorts of neighborhoods, really learned a lot (particularly about Yonkers), it was fun! And hot! And sweaty! And buggy!

July 6-10: Final visit from Mom, Dad and Emily, to be posted separately

July 12-16: First visit from Katie and Carolyn, to be posted separately

July 22: Cornelius was being photogenic in the living room.

July 25: A grand day out! You know I often say I’ll go to the beach once a year, and this year we decided to really make that day count! (Meaning -- We have a car! Let’s use it!)

First we headed to one of our favorite places there is, Roll n Roaster in Sheepshead Bay, the ultimate fast food time machine and roast beef experience.

This is how I feel when my Roll n Roaster sandwich is all gone:

But this is how I feel when I discover there’s a Brigham Street in Brooklyn and it’s RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER from Roll n Roaster!

From there we drove over to the beach, the Jacob Riis Beach, and walked up the beach a bit, probably not all the way to Fort Tilden, but away from the majority of the beach goers. It was very nice at the beach and then the storm clouds rolled in. And shortly after we retreated to our automobile and drove off for our lunch/dinner, the rains did come quite heavily.

We lunch/dinnered at L&B Spumoni Garden, one of the city’s most magnificent treasures—and now it has a cameo in the new Ninja Turtle movie!

July 26: We went to the Bronx Zoo! It was So Humid! And Crowded! But still, it’s fun! Look at the great reptile photos I got!

July 27: Patricia invited us over to Governor’s Island for a Nature Walk. The nature walk took place on a part of the island I had never been to before, way past the new glamping resort and up on the manmade hills they’ve made that now blossom with native and invasive species, bugs, and sheep aplenty. Post walk we foodtrucked at the old part of the island before returning to the island where we live. Manhattan.

July 31st: One More Walk! Not ones to leave goals incomplete, Liz and I took the train up to Tarrytown, the original goal destination of our July 4 hike (ambitious, right?!) and walked down to Hastings on Hudson from there. It was much more pleasant weather this time! Tarrytown was found to be nice as always and we were walking along the road until we got to a path that took us by Lyndhurst Manor Castle and then behind other fine Hudson River homes. Nice walk, nice time, nice July!

June Appendix: We took a trip to the American Museum of Natural History

June 30th: On this fine day, Liz and I went to the American Museum of Natural History to have a look around. Here’s just a bunch of photos of what we saw (plus the occasional Liz-pic). A highlight was checking out the new Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education and Innovation expansion of the museum (pretty sure you’ll know it when you see it) which is mostly a big empty atrium. Also very liked was the new Hall of Gems and Minerals. Very easy to say “I gotta come back and take a closer look at this!”, a little trickier to actually do that.

Coming Soon . . . July and the July Appendices!

We Had a Wonderful New York City June

June 7: A big, big day. The day we loaded a summer’s worth of stuff up into Liz’s car and drove over to New York City. With a cat in the car! He was pretty well behaved, although irresistibly compelled to head for the pedals beneath the driver’s feet. But we made it to the smoke covered city (after a little stop at the amazing Vince Lombardi rest stop) nice and easy and started up our New York City summer . . . as you see below, Cornelius got right to his usual tricks (though he did not care for how loud Inwood was compared to Hardest Heights)

Also of important note, Night One in the city and we had Visitor One of the summer — BYU friend, neighbor, and roommate Brandon! He was in town with his family and came up to 207th street say hello all on his own. A much appreciated visit, a big instance of things not changing so much over the 20ish years since we last saw each other.

June 8: Getting right to New York City business, we head to the Met on one of the last nights of the season to catch a performance of the Magic Flute. Gotta make sure Liz sees those chandeliers rise up while we can! — And I always enjoyed a trip to the Met, it would be hard for me to figure out how many times I went there as a New Yorker . . . here let me take a second to count (this is a list where I’m not doublechecking any names or spellings): The Little Mermaid Opera 2 times, Tales of Hoffman, Don Giovani, Rigoletto, Marriage of Figarro, Madame Butterfly, The Rosencavalier, the one about the Carmelites…something this one time at Christmas…2 ballets…ok honestly pretty sure went to more than 10 operas there but that’s what I can think of right now. I know I went by myself at least one time, with friends at least 4 times, with my Dad (+/- additional Barnes family members) at least 6 times…okay that only adds up to 11 . .. ANYWAY — Always glad to visit the Met, what a blessing.

June 9: We’re on the road again! This time headed to Rochester, along the way we enjoy a totally cool visit to Watkins Glen (which is a gorge). I visited Watkins Glen when I was 14 and am glad to say is still a great place to walk all around, up and down, left to right and right to left.

From Glens to Groves … approaching Rochester we realized we were driving right by Palmyra so we thought we better have a look. You might not tell from these pictures, but most of them were taken from the Sacred Grove, which it turns out you can just go into at like 9 o clock at night even though everything is closed. Hadn’t been here since I was 14 either, still holds up!

June 10: So why were we in Rochester! For the annual convention of the Mormon History Association, of course! At which I was presenting my Finnegans Wake paper, like I had done in Logan a few weeks before. This Mormon History convention, it’s like a real convention! So many people, so many panels, so many vendors. If you have even the mildest interest in ever attending, I suggest you really ought to go. And if you have the mildest interest in presenting, I suggest you submit! It’s fun!
I only tuned up my talk a tiny bit, but I think I delivered a much better presentation than I did in Logan . . . but great news, I’ll be presenting in Logan again at the beginning of October, so you still have a chance to hear what might be my best presentation yet (or ever?) of this material — I say “ever” because I think I’ve given this presentation enough, time to focus on publishing AND preparing the next presentation. Something new!
Oh and maybe you can tell from these photos, maybe you can’t, but I attended this one panel where a presenter was speaking about LDS cinema and showed a clip from/spoke for a moment about my brother Greg’s Sundance winning short. Barnes boys taking over Mormon History Association Convention!

June 13: Well here’s something pretty cool … Friend Alexis hooked us up with tickets to the premiere of Asteroid City and Liz and I decided we were not against showing up early to watch the celebs arrive.

Bryan Cranston was the first to arrive, extremely friendly to the crowd, he walked around shaking hands and giving friendly greetings to everyone and sharing an exchange with anyone who talked with him. NBD at all to get the selfie.

From then most of the stars cruised right in or spent a little bit of time with the people right at the entrance, but still, pretty fun to be there (and even more fun to leave the line and go inside and watch the movie).

Below: Adrian Brody, Jeff Goldblum making a real Jeff Goldblum appearance, Jason Schwartzman and Wes Anderson, Maya Hawke, Jeffrey Wright Wright, Scarlett Johansson, Greta Gerwig, and Noah Baumbach.

June 14: Cornelius and I enjoy some bonding time while Liz zips home to Columbus and back — look at her and the cat, so happily reunited! Also, apparently I went to Times Square while she was gone? Probably to see a movie.

June 20: Liz sings in New York at Silvana in Harlem. She’s a big hit! It was great!

June 21: Here’s a few photos from a severely under-photographed trip to Six Flags Great Adventure — we made quick work of the under-attended park that day (or perhaps it made quick work of us? — our resistance to dizziness isn’t what it used to be!), getting in rides on the Runaway Mine Train, Nitro, Jersey Devil, the Dark Knight, the up-in-the-sky swings, El Toro, and the Harry Houdini House (WOW!) by 2 or 3 and saying “You know what? That was good.” and heading out to eat a late lunch at Chili’s and watch Elemental at an AMC somewhere in New Jersey.

Visitor Number Two: Former New Yorker Dave was in town for business and stopped by our crib before taking us to dinner at Taqueria Emilio’s. It’s a fine thing to get to visit with Dave again.

June 23: On a cloudy, misty, foggy day we venture out to Long Island City to visit Matthew Barney’s studio where his latest major work is on display. It is . . . a football game? Re-enacted in the studio, filmed, and shown there. Art! It’s wonderful stuff. From there we walked up to the Socrates Sculpture Park which we found to be a little under-sculptured, but always nice to have a look at.

June 26: This is just a picture of what I looked like when we were at home, eating dinner, and talking about a book someone had given us.

June 27: Liz’s boss was in town from Ohio with family because her daughter was singing at Carnegie Hall. We ate pizza with them and then Liz watched the performance. Imagine how cute that second pictured would be if my Ricoh understood that people standing right front and center in front of it are what it should focus on!

June 28: Liz had her second NYC gig of the summer, this time at the Rockwood on the Lower East Side. She sang so great that night! Those people walking by on the street truly did not know what they were missing.

June 29: Looks like I went down to Midtown that afternoon and sent resumes out from the Library as a nice little change of scenery. I imagine I went to a movie after this.

I’ll be back soon to post pictures from our Amazing New York City July!