Manhattan

By request, here's a post about my life in Manhattan. Your welcome mom.

Sam and I live on MacDougal Street. It's only eight blocks long but it has quite a history. Matthew Broderick, Eleanor Roosevelt, playwrite Eugene O'Neill, Louisa May Alcott (who wrote Little Women while living on out street) and Bob Dylan all lived on the street at one time. Famous visitors include JFK who gave his first presidential campaign speech on our street; Miles Davis, Tennessee Williams, and artist Jackson Pollock who all used to hang out at the San Remo, where Gore Vidal once picked up Jack Kerouac; Ezra Pound, e.e. cummings, and Ernest Hemingway met regularly at a tavern on our block; Andy Warhol got in a fight with Bob Dylan across the street; Jimi Hendrix gained fame by playing at a club here; and numerous modern comedians including Jerry Seinfeld, John Stewart and Collin Quinn regularly perform at the Comedy Cellar (which I love) a block away. More history of MacDougal Street can be found here.

The picture is of the street during a sunny summer morning. Most of the shops are closed and it looks like a quiet street in the big city. It's completely misleading though. Like most of the streets in Greenwich Village, MacDougal's shops only start to open around eleven in the morning and it doesn't get busy until about five at night. Some nights it seems like all of lower Manhattan is trying to cram themselves onto the sidewalks in the village. Often on weekend evenings, people are forced to walk on the street because the sidewalk is too crammed with pedestrians. Every bar, of which there are plenty, has people spilling out its doors to takeover the sidewalk, especially in the summer.

Our apartment, on the fourth floor of a walkup building, is small, and this is, perhaps, an understatement for those of you living on the West Coast where land is plentiful. The entire place could easily fit in many of your living rooms. The building itself is an old tenement that has been renovated. The picture at left shows our living room (the futon at the bottom right of the picture), dining room (out kitchen table, which requires one of us to sit down and pull the table towards himself before the other one can sit down), our study, and our kitchen. The front door is just to the left of the desk. The bathroom is through the door to the left of Sam. It's really too small to even take a picture of, but, just to give you an idea, let me tell you that I can sit on the toilet, wash my hands and put my feet in the shower at the same time.

The whole place is kind of a mess (Sorry mom). "A place for everything and everything in its place" really only works if everything has a place.

I think the kitchen is the worst part. It's so small that cooking anything is a big chore. We often have to expand onto the table to be able to cook because the little counterspace we have is taken up by our microwave. The gas stove is fun though, and we have a full size fridge which not everyone in Manhattan does. We also have high-ceilings and big windows, which is nice.

This is the bedroom and the rest of the grand tour. Behind the curtain you can see the bottom of our Manhattan Lock, a big metal gate meant to protect against intrusion from the fire-escape and also hideously ugly. We never open that curtain. All our other windows look out on brick walls (though we can see part of a tree through some of them), but at least they let a little light in.

The real highlight of the apartment is that it is so close to the law school. We can leave the apartment and make it to class in less than five minutes. That's about all it has going for it though.

Of course, this setup is only temporary. I'm really looking forward to moving back to Seattle where there is more space and a lot more trees. Living in New York has been a good experience, but it's nowhere I would want to stay.

In other news, I found out the other day that the Firm is going to fly me back to New York in March for an orientation. I'll have to miss a couple of days of class, but it is totally worth it to see Sam.

Visas and Housing

On Tuesday I went to the Belgian embassy in midtown and picked up my visa. I was quite impressed with my first brush with the famed Belgian bureaucracy and found it almost totally painless. Some of the paper work was a bit tedious and, I thought, unnecessary. For instance, does the doctor really need to verify I don't have ebola before I am issued a visa? If I did, I'd almost surely be dead before I could use the visa anyway. That said, picking up my visa was a snap. The Consulate is located on the 26th floor of an office building. The office was smartly and simply decorated, and, best of all, there was no line. I walked in, told the woman behind the glass I was there to pick up my visa and gave her my i.d. She had all my papers rubber banded together right there on her desk. She slid the bundle under the glass, and I left. In and out in less than two minutes. I hope the rest of the trip is that easy.

I also think I've found a room in Leuven for the semester. It's small but cheap and just a short walk from the law school. Luckily, a girl from my international law class is from Belgium and her sister, who goes to Leuven, is subletting her room this semester while she is in France. At 230 Euro a month its a steal. Pictures below. The decorating is not really my style, but I'm sure I'll adjust.

The price includes broadband internet access, which is great. Sam and I both got webcams for Christmas and plan to keep in touch over Skype. If any of y'all have a webcam or even just a microphone and speakers, let me know. Skype will let me call you for free.

I'm really not into the flowers everywhere, but whatever.

There's a sink behind the screen. I share one toilet, a shower room and a kitchen with four other people, all Belgian students. Two of them are law students.

The red dot is the approximate location of the room and the green dot is the law school. The girl I'd be subletting from says it's about a seven minute walk. (You can click on the map for a bigger picture)
Well, that's about all that's new for now. I've been writing a lot in my spare time, reading and cooking for Sam almost every night. I know he'll do the same for me someday (right sweetie?). Hope everyone's doing well.

Rest of the Trip

Let me fill you in on the rest of our trip. Wednesday morning, we got up early (well, 9:30 is early for a vacation) and went to breakfast with "the girls", Kim, Shayla and Roxanne (Pictured on the left with Sam) in Ballard at the Wild Mountain Cafe. The food was pretty good and the service was great. On the ride back there was some craziness with the blond Marilyn Monroe wig that Roxanne had in her trunk from Halloween. Sam requested I not post the pictures, however, so you're out of luck there. Anyway, we all had a good time as usual and the morning ended up being much too short.

Sam was going to coffee with a friend of his, so I had him drop me off at Discovery Park in Seattle's poorly-named Magnolia neighborhood. I really wanted to get out into nature before going back to the concrete jungle that is my current home. I took a lot of pictures, and I've posted the highlights below

The 534 acre park is rather hilly. This was near the entrance to the park. All of the other "stairs" I encountered were just steps dug out of the dirt and reinforced with boards to prevent erosion.

Some remnants of the parks origins as a military base are still visible. These were the houses of officers and still house the few remaining servicemembers based at Fort Lawton. Though it seems the base will soon be completely closed.

Another remnant of the base is the dingy old chapel near the officers houses. The brush around the chapel is overgrown, but it looks like it might still be used.


When officers lived in those houses they certainly had an incredible view of the Sound and the Olympic Mountains beyond.


Trails crisscross the grassy hill below the officers houses leading to more expansive views of the sound.


A couple of trails wind down through these bluffs. This was my favorite part of the hike. Not only was it downhill, it was also very isolated. For a few minutes I got to feel like I was out in the woods instead of fifteen minutes from downtown Seattle.


South Beach, at the base of the bluffs, was picturesque. Providing stunnging views of Mount Ranier.



At the other end of the beach, stands the West Point Light House. Built in the 1881, it is the oldest light house on the Sound.


Anyhow, the park was very pretty, and I captured a lot of it with my camera. At least enough to get me through the next month in New York.

That night Sam and I grabbed dinner with our friend John (Pic on the left). After dinner, I left Sam and John to go meet up with my friends Courtney and Carmen again, this time at Madison Pub, a gay bar in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood. After hanging out there for a while we went over and checked out Purr, a new addition to the bar scene in the neighborhood. When we were finished, I met up with Sam and we headed home.

The next night I got together with my very good friends Tymberly and Tristan (pictured below). They were up from Portland because Tym had an interview at UW's Nursing School today. I'm hoping it went well and that they move to Seattle this summer. It will make me want to move back to Seattle even more.

We went to Blue C Sushi for dinner since Tym had never been. After swinging by the Chapel on Capital Hill for a couple more drinks, we dropped them off at their hotel early and went home and packed. Our flight left at 8:00 this morning so we had to get up at 5:30. Luckily, our friend Billie offered us a ride to the airport or we would have had to get up even earlier to take the shuttle.

We made it back to New York in one piece, though the ride was a little bumpy. Sam still managed to sleep through all but the last thirty minutes of the flight. It's good to be home, though I already miss Seattle.

Catching Up

I've never been very good about keeping in touch. So I always find I have a lot to catch up on when I visit old stomping grounds like Seattle.

On the 30th I got to hang out with a lot of the brothers from my old fraternity, Delta Lambda Phi. Tom, one of the brothers, had a potluck at his parents house in Redmond. It was great to see many of my old brothers and meet a few of the new ones. My "Little Brother", Eric, was there, and I really enjoyed catching up with him as we find it impossible to keep in touch.

Yesterday, I got together with my friend Kristen (pictured at right, much to her dismay). We went to lunch at the Thai-ger Room in the U-District. I think we were both craving it because it's hard to get good Thai food in New York and, I'd imagine, nearly impossible in Colorado where Kristen is now living. After that we grabbed some bubble tea on the Ave before going to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I thought this movie was the best one yet, though Kristen, who has actually read the books disagrees.

After Kristen dropped me off I got to do a bit of reading. I'm currently wading through Knife of Dreams, the 11th tome in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. It seems like his books keep getting progressively less interesting, but after getting through ten of his books, I am too invested to quit before finding out how the epic ends.

Later that night I went out to Sushi with my friend Courtney. We went to Blue C, which isn't the best sushi joint in town but is certainly the most entertaining to visit. The sushi is moved around the restaurant on a shiny metal conveyor belt and you can make your selections as it passes or order directly from the chefs. Court and I have a good time when we go, and this time wasn't any different.

Then we went to pick up our friend Carmen (on the right with Courtney) and go drinking. We went to the People's Pub in Ballard, a fine establishment that Courtney and I used to visit on a regular basis. After allowing Carmen and I to get a bit soused, Courtney drove me back to Sam's grandma's house.

Today's been a bit slow, which is to my liking at the moment. I got up around 11 and did a little more reading. Then I went to pick up Sam, who had been busy catching up with his old friends in the student government at UW. Now we are at Zoka, a local coffee shop we like. We are taking Sam's grandma out to dinner later and will probably call it an early night. Tomorrow we are both getting together with more friends, and in a couple of days we head back to New York. I'm not looking forward to going back, but it will be nice to be back in my own bed and my own space. Everyone has made us feel so welcome, but there is something about one's own home, even if it is in New York that feels ... well, homey.