Rhapsodies in August: Boozy Brunch on a Pier, Followed By a Walk on the High Line

BROOKLYN, N.Y.—"Brunch."

I've heard this word a lot, especially in New York, where a lot of people take the idea of weekend brunches seriously indeed, planning their Saturdays and/or Sundays around this middle-of-the-day cross between breakfast and lunch. Sometimes brunches in New York often include a certain amount of booze to go along with it—preferably something tropical like, say, sangrías or margaritas. And, of course, a brunch in New York ideally ought to have a social component to it.

Despite the fact that I've lived in New York for close to two years now, I have rarely taken part in this classic institution known as the "boozy brunch." So, when a dear grade-school friend of mine from East Brunswick, N.J.—now living in Singapore, currently visiting the United States with his girlfriend—told me he wanted to come visit me in New York on Friday, I figured I'd use this opportunity to not only partake in a "boozy brunch," but to finally visit yet another New York destination that I've only read/heard about previously: the High Line.

But first, food!

Well no, this isn't food; it's a picture of a ship, duh.

Way on the west side of Manhattan, a ship called the Frying Pan is docked. But this is no ordinary ship; this is one of 13 lightships that still exist in the U.S.—lightships being floating lighthouses that were meant to help other ships navigate at nights. After what some believe to be a broken pipe led the ship to sink sometime in the 1980s and spend three years at the bottom of the Chesapeake Bay, it was salvaged and restored to something close to its original appearance. It now rests at Pier 66 in Manhattan—and, most importantly, its bottom floor has been transformed into a popular bar/nightclub, one that many of my friends have visited but I had not.

I was hoping to be able to finally check out the Frying Pan with my two guests on Friday afternoon—but alas, the ship itself was closed for a photo shoot going on at the time. Still, I can't say I feel too disappointed; I ended up getting a chance to have one of those boozy brunches in the bar & grill situated next to the ship on Pier 66. And I mean, look at this view of the Hudson from where we sat!

And look at this dessert!

This is called a chocolate tuxedo bombe. It has strawberry sauce and blueberries on it. It was scrumptious.

Afterward, I convinced my friends to come visit the High Line. The High Line, for those of you non-New Yorkers who haven't heard about it, is basically a strip of former New York Central Railroad property that was recently converted into a linear park extending from Gansevoort Street to West 30th Street. Again, I keep hearing great things about it, but hadn't checked it out at all until I got the idea to try to get my guests to come with me to visit it on Friday.

Actually, I only ended up walking about four blocks of the 16 or so that constitute the High Line—but hey, even within those four blocks, we were treated to sights like this...

Look at all these plants as we made our way up the stairs to the High Line itself!

...and this:

The High Line is known as much for the public art—including this face of a North Dakotan Native American courtesy of flypaper artist JR—that can be glimpsed along its linear path as for the green-filled path itself

And finally, two last photos of the High Line, just because:

Taken earlier in the day, just before I met up with my friends for brunch, this suggests something like a living canvas up on the High Line

A straight-ahead view of the High Line. Hey, look, my friends are right in front of me! Hi, Adam and Keren!

So those were my big non-cultural explorations this past weekend. What's next on my list? Heck, I don't even know that yet. I guess you'll all have to just watch this space, won't you? (If you care to do so, of course.)

Suggestions welcome, by the way.

Rhapsodies in August: Stepping Foot Into Citi Field For the First Time Ever

BROOKLYN, N.Y.—This past Friday, I filled in one more recreational blind spot by taking a trip to Citi Field for the first time ever to watch the New York Mets take on the Atlanta Braves.

From the 7 train to the stadium

Actually, this technically wasn't my first time at Citi Field. On Oct. 30, 2010, I was one of many who went to Citi Field early in the morning to take a bus provided by Arianna Huffington to head over to the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert-hosted "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear" in Washington, D.C.—but I never actually went inside the stadium. On Friday, I finally went inside.

It is indeed quite the beautiful ballpark—not that I have much context when it comes to U.S. ballparks, being that the only previous ballpark I've been in was the old Yankee Stadium maybe 10 years ago to see a regular-season Subway Series (New York Mets vs. New York Yankees, for those of you outside of New York) game. But, I mean, I think these photos speak for themselves:

Our view from the Left Field Landing

The much-maligned Jason Bay. Well, at least he made one or two good defensive plays

The much more celebrated David Wright on the plate. Unfortunately, he hit into an inning-ending double play at this at-bat. It was just one of those nights for the Mets.

Time to stretch!

As for the game itself...well...it was nothing if not brisk (it ended up lasting about 2½ hours). But then, that's because the Mets managed to muster up just about no offense against Braves pitcher Paul Maholm. The Braves ended up shutting out the Mets, 4-0.

If it was me 10 years ago watching this game, I might have cared more. But my days of carefully following professional baseball pretty much ended when the Mets started to suck after the hope they instilled in fans with their World Series appearance back in 2000. Maybe one of these days, I'll actually get back into baseball.

For now, though, I'm at least grateful to have finally gotten a chance to check out Citi Field. I hope it won't be the last time!

Certainly, I hope it won't be the last time I get to do this there:

Rhapsodies in August: Walking Along the Old Croton Aqueduct

BROOKLYN, N.Y.—In the midst of what turned out to be a busy, busy July, I resolved to make August not only a month of (some) rest, but also one in which I would de-prioritize artistic consumption somewhat in favor of indulging in different forms of recreation: hikes, walks in the park, trips to the beach and so on. As I thought more about this idea, I started to realize that, even though I've lived in New York for close to two years now, there were a lot of things that I still hadn't done. New York has a lot of beaches, for instance, but for the most part, I haven't gotten around to visiting any (well, other than that one time I dared to go to Coney Island on New Year's Day of this year to participate in the annual Polar Bear Club swim). Same with the High Line, Governors Island, Citi Field, City Island, and so on and so forth.

So I'm declaring that August will be the month where I make an effort to fill in some of these recreational blind spots. And since I have this blog, and since this blog is called My Life, at 24 Frames Per Second, I figure I might as document some of these explorations here—for your entertainment, I guess.

First on my list: going upstate to do some nature-walking, which is exactly what I did this past Saturday, taking a Metro-North train to Tarrytown, N.Y., in order to do some hiking along the old Croton Aqueduct Trail. (I got the idea from this article from the site DNAinfo.com, by the way.) Armed with two bottles of water, sunscreen lotion and an umbrella (weather reports had indicated a chance of rain that day), a friend and I braved hot and humid temperatures and lots of sweat in order to walk five hours, more or less, from Tarrytown to Yonkers along the trail of the old Croton Aqueduct—New York's main source of clean drinking water from the completion of its building in 1842 to 1959.

Along the way, I took a handful of photos on my iPhone:

Tarrytown claims Legend of Sleepy Hollow author Washington Irving as its native son; thus, you'll see evocations of Sleepy Hollow every so often—like here!

We had to go through the grounds of Lyndhurst Castle—the hunk of awe-inspiring Gothic architecture you see above—to get onto the trail. It was very much worth the detour, though!

There was a short side trail at a certain point called the "Quarry Lane Trail"—taking you to a stone-arch bridge underneath the Aqueduct that still stands today—that we decided to check out. Somewhere around there, this photo was taken (hi, Mónica!).

For all of our effort and strain—plus an annoying bee sting for me—we were rewarded with this shimmering view of the Hudson River overlooking the Greystone Metro-North station. All in a day's work—or, rather, walk!

What will my next recreational adventure be? You will all just have to come back and find out, now won't you?