Tuesday, November 12, 2019

My weekend in New York City

The iconic New York skyline
My grandmother has lived in New York City for decades, and I have had the amazing opportunity to visit her a couple of times every year (I even lived with her during my internships in college). I never make it up to NYC as often as I'd like. But this past weekend, my grandma wasn't the only thing bringing me to the Big Apple: Dartmouth was playing Princeton in a football game inside Yankee Stadium. I wasn't going to miss that!

I took the Vamoose Bus up to New York last Friday, a trip which took nearly six hours due to rush hour traffic (the Lincoln Tunnel is the worst!). But I took the LIRR for the first time to Flushing from Penn Station, and that was super-easy. Since I got in so late, I only got to hang out for a little with my grandma, as well as my dad and uncle (they went up for the game, too).

Billy's was packed with Dartmouth alumni! I've never seen so much green before!
Saturday was the big day: game day! Dartmouth (Alumni? Athletics? unsure) reserved the entire space at Billy's, a bar right across the street from Yankee Stadium. The place was huge, and good thing: there were probably 1,000 alumni there! I was disappointed that I didn't recognize anyone, but my dad and uncle found fellow classmates. The place was so packed; once we found a comfortable corner on the patio, we just stayed out there. I had forgotten how many beautiful people go to Dartmouth: all of the younger alumni at the event were gorgeous! Everyone was so excited, and that school spirit never dies for any of us who truly bleed Green. Even though I only knew my dad and uncle there, it was still a lot of fun to be around that happy energy.

The game celebrated 150 years of college football. Both teams were undefeated, so it was a big game!
We then headed over to the stadium. Of course Yankee Stadium can hold 54,000 people, and while a lot of alumni were there, the place still looked pretty empty, since there were only a couple thousand people there at most. But at least there was more green than orange in the audience!

My dad and me at the game. Pretty cool to see a football game inside a baseball stadium!
I haven't watched any football (college or pro) all season, so it was exciting to see a game live. There were some great plays (a few interceptions), and we won the game! I would have had a good time either way, but winning is so much more fun than losing! (*Want more details about the game? See the links at the bottom of this post.)

After that, my uncle and I went to an after-party of one of his classmates. I didn't know anyone there, but I was classmates with the hostess' son (he was in Mexico City at the time). It was fun chatting with people, but since they were older, we didn't have too much in common. I was ready to head home after the long day. But it's always nice to be invited to a party when they don't even know you!


Despite the late night, I headed into the city early the next morning. I caught a Statue Cruises ferry from Battery Park to visit Liberty Island. I wanted to see the new Statue of Liberty Museum, which only opened this past May (I learned about it when I was reading about Diane von Furstenberg in Harper's Bazaar magazine, since she helped do a lot of the fundraising; she herself is an immigrant, so it's a cause that is close to her heart.). I didn't know much about the Statue of Liberty, just that she was a gift from the French and that she's green because she's made of copper. So I learned a lot at the museum! I highly recommend the museum!

Here are some fun facts:

-While the Statue was given as a gift by the French, France fundraised for the statue's creation (in part to reinvigorate the ideals of democracy in France). In return, the US fundraised for the pedestal that she would stand upon.

Here are some models of the designs of the potential pedestal.
-The statue is made up of hundreds of pieces of copper that have been hammered out into really thin sheets of metal. They are all connected around a stainless-steel (originally iron) skeleton designed by the same man who created the Eiffel Tower. In the photo below you can see the seams between the multiple pieces of copper "skin."


-The Statue of Liberty stands for many things in our culture, many of them contradicting. On the one hand she stands for freedom, equality, and the American Dream (i.e. anyone who comes to America can make a better life for themselves). On the other hand, she was built when women still couldn't vote and slavery had only recently been abolished in America (and African Americans still didn't have equal rights), so a lot of people felt that the statue was a hypocrisy.

At one point her torch was made of stained glass, but the light never shown brightly from it. Now the torch is covered in gold leaf instead.
-This poem, written by Emma Lazarus, a Sephardic Jewish woman, sits at the base of the statue:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"


Of course I got suckered into going into the gift shop. I bought a unicorn (who looks like a pig) and an ornament.
I took the ferry back to Battery Park and quickly looked around Castle Clinton. It was historically a fort, which then was transformed into a theater, and then was an immigration office, then an aquarium, before finally being restored to its original form.


After such a busy weekend, I was pretty exhausted by mid-day. So I was able to switch my return bus from 5:00pm to 1:30pm, which was so much better. I grabbed lunch at a street stand (as you do in New York), and the trip home was so much faster (I was home by 5:30pm). It was nice being able to get home early and do some laundry, make some dinner, and relax before the start of the work week.

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