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A Day in NYC
Thursday, 19 July 2018 11:45Last week I made the trek down to NYC so I could see the David Bowie Is exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum before it closed. Unfortunately, by the time I got around to getting tickets, only two weekdays were left, so the initial plan of going with my dad ended up being a bust, as too many people on his team were already on vacation so he couldn't get the day off on such short notice.
Made the slightly dubious choice to drive to New Haven, and then take the Metro North rail into the city - while this was probably the best option at the time (because the only audio the truck has is CDs and there's only so many times I can listen to my tiny CD collection on repeat), I would probably not do it again - driving in close enough to get on the subway would be both faster and most likely cheaper ($20 parking + $35 for off-peak round trip Metro North ticket). And my return train had a mechanical issue that meant they couldn't run at full speed, so a two-hour train ride turned into three instead.
I decided that while I was down there, I was going to see how much other stuff I could cram in, so my first stop was the Garment District. I've never actually been to the NYC Garment District, so the closest thing I had to compare for expectations was Nippori Fabric Town in Tokyo. Which was... largely close, but with the greater differences between the culture of Tokyo and NYC at play. Which is to say, I was expecting the narrow aisles and shelves and shelves of fabric rolls, but not the lack of organization or labels and pricing on a lot of stuff. I did find some spandex for a friend, though, and I could see myself coming back for really specific color matching or odd notions. I was expecting to be wowed by some of the popular trim stores, but the stock was mostly the same as stuff I can find on Taobao but at 10x the cost. I also ducked in to a small Chinese bakery I passed and got two BBQ buns, a red bean bun, and a bottle of Coke for the princely sum of $4.80, which was my lunch for the day.
After that, met up with the guy I'd sold my dad's exhibit ticket to on CL, who actually had the same first name as my dad, and looked kind of like a short Al Gore. He navigated us over to the museum, which saved me the headache of trying to figure out transit maps, heh.
The exhibit itself was pretty amazing - I'm definitely glad I made the effort to go down. There was a big audio-visual component (unsurprising, given Bowie), which included a headset that had some sort of location-link set up? Guessing either through GPS or RFID tags. So the audio changed to match videos that were seeing or songs that displays were talking about as you moved around the exhibit. It was the entire top floor of the museum, and there was a sort of labyrinthine quality to it, where there wasn't always a clear single path to follow through - I don't know if it that was intentional or not, but it seemed fitting, given the many facets of his life and work. I hadn't actually realized how much input and design work he did for his tours and albums, as well as the breadth of his artistic talents - there were paintings, sketches, and photographs he had done along with stuff more directly related to his music. Also, he apparently trained as a mime, which is a weird sentence to write about anyone in 2018, but does help illuminate some of the performance-art aspects of his work.
Unsurprisingly, as I am a textile nerd, my favorite thing was all the stage costumes they had on display. I really wish that photography had been allowed so I could make a record of it for myself - there were some that I was 100% like 'I want this on my body', heh. Of course, they also had the asymmetric knitted catsuit which is not any more attractive in reality than in photos (but I accept that the 70s and 80s were a different time, when it comes to fashion). Also, dude was small - my height and decidedly thinner - which I was not expecting.
After leaving the exhibit, I headed out to check out a big goth store in hopes of finding some accessories to go with a dress I had, which turned out to be a bit of a let-down - mostly just cheap costume-quality stuff. Wandering over to the Evolution Store was more fun, even if I didn't end up buying things - lots of neat scientific ephemera and art items that really highlighted the beauty in natural objects. After that was Book-Off and then Kinokuniya, where I discovered that Kodansha has been publishing English volumes of the new Cardcaptor Sakura, so I promptly bought all the ones that were out. Then a quick sushi dinner, and it was back on the (very slow) train towards home.
Made the slightly dubious choice to drive to New Haven, and then take the Metro North rail into the city - while this was probably the best option at the time (because the only audio the truck has is CDs and there's only so many times I can listen to my tiny CD collection on repeat), I would probably not do it again - driving in close enough to get on the subway would be both faster and most likely cheaper ($20 parking + $35 for off-peak round trip Metro North ticket). And my return train had a mechanical issue that meant they couldn't run at full speed, so a two-hour train ride turned into three instead.
I decided that while I was down there, I was going to see how much other stuff I could cram in, so my first stop was the Garment District. I've never actually been to the NYC Garment District, so the closest thing I had to compare for expectations was Nippori Fabric Town in Tokyo. Which was... largely close, but with the greater differences between the culture of Tokyo and NYC at play. Which is to say, I was expecting the narrow aisles and shelves and shelves of fabric rolls, but not the lack of organization or labels and pricing on a lot of stuff. I did find some spandex for a friend, though, and I could see myself coming back for really specific color matching or odd notions. I was expecting to be wowed by some of the popular trim stores, but the stock was mostly the same as stuff I can find on Taobao but at 10x the cost. I also ducked in to a small Chinese bakery I passed and got two BBQ buns, a red bean bun, and a bottle of Coke for the princely sum of $4.80, which was my lunch for the day.
After that, met up with the guy I'd sold my dad's exhibit ticket to on CL, who actually had the same first name as my dad, and looked kind of like a short Al Gore. He navigated us over to the museum, which saved me the headache of trying to figure out transit maps, heh.
The exhibit itself was pretty amazing - I'm definitely glad I made the effort to go down. There was a big audio-visual component (unsurprising, given Bowie), which included a headset that had some sort of location-link set up? Guessing either through GPS or RFID tags. So the audio changed to match videos that were seeing or songs that displays were talking about as you moved around the exhibit. It was the entire top floor of the museum, and there was a sort of labyrinthine quality to it, where there wasn't always a clear single path to follow through - I don't know if it that was intentional or not, but it seemed fitting, given the many facets of his life and work. I hadn't actually realized how much input and design work he did for his tours and albums, as well as the breadth of his artistic talents - there were paintings, sketches, and photographs he had done along with stuff more directly related to his music. Also, he apparently trained as a mime, which is a weird sentence to write about anyone in 2018, but does help illuminate some of the performance-art aspects of his work.
Unsurprisingly, as I am a textile nerd, my favorite thing was all the stage costumes they had on display. I really wish that photography had been allowed so I could make a record of it for myself - there were some that I was 100% like 'I want this on my body', heh. Of course, they also had the asymmetric knitted catsuit which is not any more attractive in reality than in photos (but I accept that the 70s and 80s were a different time, when it comes to fashion). Also, dude was small - my height and decidedly thinner - which I was not expecting.
After leaving the exhibit, I headed out to check out a big goth store in hopes of finding some accessories to go with a dress I had, which turned out to be a bit of a let-down - mostly just cheap costume-quality stuff. Wandering over to the Evolution Store was more fun, even if I didn't end up buying things - lots of neat scientific ephemera and art items that really highlighted the beauty in natural objects. After that was Book-Off and then Kinokuniya, where I discovered that Kodansha has been publishing English volumes of the new Cardcaptor Sakura, so I promptly bought all the ones that were out. Then a quick sushi dinner, and it was back on the (very slow) train towards home.
