Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Day 4: Columbia University and Yankee Stadium

[posting a day late because we got back so late last night]

Tuesday was a full day. Started on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, across the George Washington Bridge, then down the West Side Highway to 95th and back up Riverside Drive towards Morningside Heights. Stopped for a quick look at my old apartment building at 102nd and Riverside, it's being renovated now, but I was able to show Josh my old bedroom window.

From there up to Columbia...a quick look at Barnard from where we parked, then through the main gates. The entire main walk was torn up and was being replaced, first time since the 1950s! Kind of disappointed for a few minutes until I started showing Josh around, then everything came rushing back. We did a pre-tour in advance of the official sessions, starting with the main activity of Columbia students: sitting on the Low Library steps.



I first sat there when I was 15.

Columbia may not be the largest campus but it certainly is pretty and one of the best spaces in New York City. Here's the main walk looking over South Field towards John Jay, the large building, my sophomore dorm.



We wandered through the main campus and over to east campus, where the School of International Affairs is located. Josh convinced me to look up my old apartment roommate [and best man] John Micgiel, who is now a professor and Director of the Institute on East Central Europe [a position once held by Zbigniev Brezhinski before he was National Security Adviser and Secretary of State]. We made our way up to his floor and stuck our heads in his office, where he was just starting to eat lunch. "Hey John." "Yes, can I help you?" "You don't recognize me, do you..." "No, no I don't..." "It's Kurt!" "OMG WTF etc etc." We hadn't seen each other in almost 20 years, but after a few minutes it was just like being back on that blue couch at 299 Riverside Apt 8E. Except John's a bigshot now. But I know better. Josh was pretty amused by it all.



When we left John to his sandwich, we headed down Amsterdam Avenue to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. The inside was mostly closed because they were cleaning smoke damage from a fire in 2001, but it was nice to see that the stonecutters are once again making progress on the outside...here are some new carvings on the southern portal. I remember them starting the neighborhood stonecutter apprenticeships in the 1970s, and those apprentices must now be masters.



Across the street...I couldn't believe it...the Hungarian Pastry Shop and V&T's Pizza were still there! The pastry shop was like an original Starbucks, only better. We all used to go there to treat ourselves to Capucino's and rich pastry and smoke filterless Gauloises and talk about the books we were reading...about anything really. Spent hours there. And V&T's was a real restaurant with the crankiest old waiters. "I'm not bringing your pizza until you finish your salad. Your mother may not be here but I am."



But the biggest treat for me was back on Broadway...no, not Tom's Restaurant of Seinfeld fame, but Amir's Falafel...a block away from the original, the new one run by a nephew, but the exact same falafel that tasted the exact same way as when I ate it for lunch almost every day thirty years ago! And Josh even liked his hummus and chicken platter. Kind of made up for the rest of the neighborhood being turned into fancy sidewalk cafes and the like.



After lunch we headed back to campus for the official info session and tour. The info session was excellent, the assistant dean of Admissions got it exactly right. I knew a little more than the tour guide, like the fact the Alma Maters left arm had been blown off in the 1968 riots, but what the heck. It was great being inside Butler Library again [the large building below] and the two dorms I lived in the first two years on Campus, Carmen Hall and John Jay. The sample room they showed us was in Carman, and I was able to show Josh where my suite had been on the hallway [Room 1101] and where my bed had been in the suite.



We had taken some other pictures earlier too...Josh in front of Philosophy and Rodin's The Thinker...



...and me in front of Hamilton Hall [Alexander Hamilton of course], home of Columbia College, and the English Department, and the building in which I took a lot of my classes.



In typical Columbia fashion the tour went late, so we had to scramble to our next destination, Yankee Stadium, for the game against the Blue Jays. Wouldn't have been my first choice but we drove through Harlem across 125th Street and then across the Willets Avenue Bridge...part of the education I guess. Yankee Stadium was where I saw my first game, with Mickey Mantle playing...dozens of games with The Record...and now Josh was finally here, ready to get a Yankees cap.



We stopped at the monuments before we took our seats...is there a sports franchise anywhere with such history?



Seats were pretty good, close to home plate and not too far up.



And the game featured several possible future Hall-of-Famers...Derek Jeter, Frank Thomas, maybe Roy Halladay and Alex Rios [still young], and of course...ARod, here driving in a run in the first inning.



We stayed until the bottom of the eight when the Yankees went down 2-1...wanted to make sure we wouldn't be stuck in traffic for hours with another busy day on Wednesday...and the Yankees tied in the 9th and rallied to win 3-2 in the 10th...but in very unexciting ways, so we didn't feel like we missed anything. Back to the hotel in New Jersey, and to bed.