Ideoblog

Goodbye to New York

Tomorrow is farewell to NYC where we've been since last August. It will be hard to live without

• My favorite movie theatre.
• The world's best pizza.
• My morning run along the Hudson, turning around when I saw the lady.
• Looking out the window.
• The subway (stand clear of the closing doors!)
• The cheese.
• The gelato.
• The restaurants (that's going to have to be a whole other post)).
• Broadway (that too).
• Chelsea.
• The park.
• The old buildings.
• The new buildings.
• Shopping.
• Always a poet ready to help.
• Listening to music (especially jazz).
• Finding suprising things in the East Village, Governors Island, Staten Island, the jail,
• The odd pedestrians.
• My neighbors.
• The art museums (especially this one).

Thanks to my hosts at NYU Law who welcomed me and made it all easy.

The other WTO

Well, I thought, as long as I'm at NYU this year I may as well read about what's happening elsewhere on campus. This week's New Yorker, under keywords including "professors" and rest rooms," describes Professor Harvey Molotch's course on The Urban Toilet.

On the syllabus is some writing by Clara Greed, aka "Dr. Toilet," of the other WTO (i.e., the World Toilet Organization). The students' projects include "a comparison of Starbucks bathroom use across neighborhoods" and a "plan to study bathroom graffiti."

Molotch, who is 68, was planning to visit a club called 49 Grove in the West Village. He was concerned he was too old. “If I tell them, ‘I just want to look at your toilets,’ I wonder if that’ll help or hurt.”

A New York picture

I've been using my year in New York to take lots of pictures, planning to post the more interesting ones. I promise no misty pictures of the Statue of Liberty. 

My first thought on walking across the Brooklyn Bridge today: Wonder if anybody is going to jump off.  Most of my pictures were as trite as this thought.

But this one is interesting.

A couple of minutes later this person jumped.

At about the same moment there was a motorcycle accident on the Brooklyn side of the bridge. 

Every kind of emergency vehicle converged on the scene, sirens blaring, blades whirring.  A biker remarked as she passed us on the bridge:  Welcome to New York.