Last Saturday
May. 14th, 2010 12:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sub_dividedMy great-aunt Susan and I went to Brooklyn to see my cousin Sam's art exhibit.
Susan was unusually timid when she asked whether I wanted to go - lots of "perhaps"es in the email -- and she also asked my mother, first, if I'd be interested. My mental conception of my great-aunt is of this very strong-willed person who just assumes the cooperation of others, particularly of younger family members. But recently she's felt less physically able and this has shaken her confidence somewhat, I guess. She wanted me to come along as an escort because Brooklyn is "too far". I like Susan so I said yes right away.
I thought "too far" was a joke, but it did turn out to be pretty difficult to get to the exhibit. ^^; First of all, Susan had written down the directions, but because she never takes the subway she had written them down as "get off the J train at this street," and not "get off the J train at this stop." Secondly, the J train doesn't even run on Saturdays.
So we took the 4 instead, thinking we'd go to the stop where the J and 4 split and then take a cab the rest of the way. However, cabs are much scarcer in Brooklyn. No one was stopping to pick us up.
"We'll ask for directions!" Susan said. Privately I was skeptical, because Brooklyn is geographically huge. I suggested that we ask a bus driver. This worked out well: all the drivers knew all the routes, and we were able to take two buses to the neighborhood of the exhibit.
After that everything went smoothly, except for the part where the bus passed our cross street without stopping and was headed at a very steep diagonal to our street. When all the hipsters got off the bus, I insisted that we get off, too. From there we walked back about five or six blocks to the exhibit.
On the way home, we called a cab.
To make a long story short, we finally arrived at the exhibit, I said hi to Sam, and Susan was vocally skeptical of the artistic merits of his installation piece, which was going to be a stack of cardboard with paper whorls "buried" in it, like sediment layers, until the stack fell over, and then it became a metaphor for the artistic process. XD;;;
Trip highlight: every time we passed a Starbucks or a Macy's, Susan would exclaim: It's been Manhattanized! Brooklyn has been Manhattanized! To which I would say, but Susan, Brooklyn is a part of America...
When I told R this story, she said that the best thing about living in Brooklyn or Queens is that it frees you to consider all the events, restaurants, and neighbourhoods located OUTSIDE of Manhattan. Manhattanites have a very locked-in mindset, she says.
Susan was unusually timid when she asked whether I wanted to go - lots of "perhaps"es in the email -- and she also asked my mother, first, if I'd be interested. My mental conception of my great-aunt is of this very strong-willed person who just assumes the cooperation of others, particularly of younger family members. But recently she's felt less physically able and this has shaken her confidence somewhat, I guess. She wanted me to come along as an escort because Brooklyn is "too far". I like Susan so I said yes right away.
I thought "too far" was a joke, but it did turn out to be pretty difficult to get to the exhibit. ^^; First of all, Susan had written down the directions, but because she never takes the subway she had written them down as "get off the J train at this street," and not "get off the J train at this stop." Secondly, the J train doesn't even run on Saturdays.
So we took the 4 instead, thinking we'd go to the stop where the J and 4 split and then take a cab the rest of the way. However, cabs are much scarcer in Brooklyn. No one was stopping to pick us up.
"We'll ask for directions!" Susan said. Privately I was skeptical, because Brooklyn is geographically huge. I suggested that we ask a bus driver. This worked out well: all the drivers knew all the routes, and we were able to take two buses to the neighborhood of the exhibit.
After that everything went smoothly, except for the part where the bus passed our cross street without stopping and was headed at a very steep diagonal to our street. When all the hipsters got off the bus, I insisted that we get off, too. From there we walked back about five or six blocks to the exhibit.
On the way home, we called a cab.
To make a long story short, we finally arrived at the exhibit, I said hi to Sam, and Susan was vocally skeptical of the artistic merits of his installation piece, which was going to be a stack of cardboard with paper whorls "buried" in it, like sediment layers, until the stack fell over, and then it became a metaphor for the artistic process. XD;;;
Trip highlight: every time we passed a Starbucks or a Macy's, Susan would exclaim: It's been Manhattanized! Brooklyn has been Manhattanized! To which I would say, but Susan, Brooklyn is a part of America...
When I told R this story, she said that the best thing about living in Brooklyn or Queens is that it frees you to consider all the events, restaurants, and neighbourhoods located OUTSIDE of Manhattan. Manhattanites have a very locked-in mindset, she says.