Granted I never go there. Never went there. Didn't have the desire and certainly didn't have a reason to. It's a HUGE mall.
Only this mall is one floor with two narrow sidewalks. At one point Ben saw the huge Scholastic Store and exclaimed with some urgency "Mom, look! We can go in there for a while." - like we were seeking shelter from the shadow of a soon to be cresting tsunami. A tsunami of shopping people.
So why was I there? Well, I took Ben to the Museum of Cartoons and Comics. It's on the 4th floor at 594 Broadway. The whole musuem is basically a large room with a permanent collection on one side and an exhibit on the other. It was okay. Not well curated. Lots of illustrations and flat screens with cartoons from across the decades playing. It's a small space so it's hard to distinguish who is saying what from what t.v.
Of course that didn't stop Ben from sitting in front of an episode of teenage mutant ninja turtles and falling into a trance state. He mentioned how much he enjoyed watching "vintage cartoons" like that.
For the record. I totally missed the whole Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles era. Yet another cultural void I share with my son.
I think I want to move to Concord, Massachusetts and become a Transcendentalist.
7 comments:
Hey E.V.I.
I was in your neck of the woods today. Ironically, I thought of heading down to SoHo -- and I'm glad I thought better of it. I'll take the East Village any day.
Sometimes, SoHo can be a little too "precious" for me.
Hi Michael - I must confess - - Soho has never been my bag. Even Tribeca feels more natural - because it's still a neighborhood.
When you get below 5th Street and go west after second avenue - is that still considered East Village? To be honest - I never hung out there because I'm too friggin lazy to walk that far without a reason. I cut through there on my way to Soho on Satureday. Huge amounts of city blocks have been knocked down and replaced with ugly ass modern buildings - and those motherf*ckers are getting closer and closer to my street!
Hi E.V.I.,
I think it's still part of the East Village. I have to confess that I hate the term East Village, mostly because it was coined by greedy real estate brokers trying to sell a neighborhood.
Still, someday, when I win the lottery, I'm gonna move there in a flash. I would love to buy the building my dad was born in, at 409 E. 6th, between 1st and A. Who knows, it could happen...
Unfortunately I got to share the Ninja Turtle experience with my boys (Batman also but that was kind of nostalgic.) The worst one was Power Rangers. But I do like the term "vintage cartoons" :-)
Those Power Rangers drive me crazy. They have a tv show on cable that my son sometimes watches. Do you ever notice that everything seems to be taking place in the parking lot of a corporate park somewhere in California?
I too can barely walk the streets of Soho for longer than five minutes without wishing I had some place of hiatus to get away from the tourists or wanna-be hippster/fashionista locals that I swear only go there to advertise themselves.
The East Village on the other hand is my favorite area of Manhattan. UWS for a relaxing, lunch-with-the-parents day, West Village for a Sunday once in a while, but every other day, the East Village is it; I rarely leave it really.
I thought power rangers were over by now. I guess some "greats" will never leave us alone.
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