Busking in New York

Finally I like New York (I particularly liked the "Let us cater your next affair" note that Joris found)!! On Friday evening a group of us decided to walk through Harlem to find something to eat! That was interesting! We ended up at Amy Ruth's which served lots of very sweet food. The menu explained about Amy Ruth ... apparently "Amy Ruth Moore Bass was a devout Christian Woman. She was a native Alabamian, the wife of Elijah Bass Sr., the mother of 10 children; 7 daughters and 3 sons; the grandmother of 12 grand-children. She was a farmer, a gardner, the world's best cook and a very friendly person." Rutger ordered a beer and was told that they didn't serve that sort of drink here. He got given an iced tea. The food was big! One guy had a waffle covered in maple syrup and a single chicken leg on it! I had a very tasty catfish.

On the last day the conference finished at lunch time and Joris and I headed off for a very interesting afternoon and evening. We first walked through central park (getting lost in the process), went to the Apple Store (very impressive) and tried to find the Gene Frankel Theatre. We had spotted this theatre company on the web and (at least I) assumed that they would be a big company producing something like a broadway show! Our first sight of the "theatre" made us realise that this probably wasn't true. It was somebody's house. We bought our tickets and then continued walking South. We walked down Wall street and then to the water edge. Oh, I forget that walking to the theatre took us through China town and Little Italy which were both great to see. We also ambled past the place of the 911 attacks on the World Trade centre. There was a large building site.

It's going to be a tad difficult to describe the show. We saw Ivanov by Chekov. This was a typical, Russian, miserable play, but performed so amazingly well. There were probably about 20-30 people in the audience and we all sat around the edge of the room. Throughout the performance the actors would come and sit in empty chairs next to us. We certainly felt as if we were part of the production. Joris had to shift hurriedly in his seat at one point otherwise he would have ended up in a very steamy embrace. "We are all heroes at twenty, ready to attack anything, to do everything, and at thirty are worn-out, useless men." Oh dear. "There are a great many things a man cannot understand. Any girl would rather love an unfortunate man than a fortunate one ..."

Maybe it was the result of the play, but coming out in the evening and walking down the sidestreets near broadway did make Joris and I think that New York was an example of a post-apocalyptic city! Look at the photo of the smoke stacks. It's incredibly eerie.

Anyway, it was getting late and so we decided to take the New York subway back to the hotel. We went down and got chatting to an old black guy who was busking on his violin. He asked me to have a go and so ... I did. I played terribly, but did get quite a few people to turn around and laugh at me. Then Joris had a go and had his first violin lesson!