June 26, 2005NYC - Days 8 -12It doesn't take long for the novel feeling of being a visitor to be replaced by the mundane feeling of being a resident. One can only spend so many nights in a bed and bathe so many times in a shower before each becomes as familiar as his own. I'm at that point. That's neither a bad thing nor a good thing - one is not preferable to the other - but it has impacted how I've spent the past four days. A visitor spends his hours visiting points of interest. A resident spends his free hours socializing with friends and watching movies. A visitor experiences the world as a string of destinations. A resident as a string of experiences. During these past four days I've seen almost no landmarks and have done very little, where doing something is measured in terms of ticket stubs and photos taken. But I’ve nonetheless managed to have more intense experiences than any others I've had on this trip. Three experiences in particular - spaced no more than one a day - are The Banquet, The Dakota and The Crusade. The Banquet I was walking south on 9th avenue, returning from an excursion to the diplomatic residences on the East Side, when I passed The Grand Sichuan restaurant. Of the scores of "Chinese" restaurants in this section of Manhattan - at least one a block - this was the first one to strike me as something more than Canto-American Barffet. First off, there was the name - Da Sichuan. Then there was the wooden facade, large round tables inside. The menu seemed authentic enough, and there were reviews pasted to the windows confirming my hunch. This was a real Sichuan restaurant. I made a reservation for 8:30 the next day, and went back to the apartment to invite my hosts to a Chinese banquet. They, of course, accepted. The next morning I went back to order the evening's meal (as one does when hosting a banquet). I'll spare you the menu details, but I'll say that we had a full spread. Six dishes, soup, dessert and a delicious bottle of Wuliang Ye. The food was 98% authentic, and was well received by all. The Baijou was 100% authentic, and was...well, we had the customary san bei and called it an evening. Truthfully, the shot glasses were huge by baijiu standards, so we probably really had liu bei, but in three drinks. I thought it was classy stuff, but Tom and Arian's shoulder convulsions after each swallow said otherwise. I guess it's an acquired taste. It was great to have a real Sichuan meal again, but even more rewarding was watching the logistics of the meal - dishes served at a reasonable pace, chopsticks to prevent speedy eating, baijiu to lubricate the conversation - transform what elsewhere might've been a hurried ingestion of sustenance into an evening of good company. The Dakota Yesterday I watched two movies, Rosemary's Baby and Imagine, a movie about John Lennon. Two movies in one day might seem excessive, but Tom and Arian were stricken with the after-effects of baijiu and Sichuan food, and thus were in no hurry to leave the house. Moreover, it was muggy and stale outdoors, which deterred us all from hitting the streets.
John Lennon lived in the Dakota and was killed on its sidewalk while returning home late one evening. Both events are understandably large parts of the second movie we saw that day. That is to say, in one day we inadvertently saw two movies which feature the Dakota as a place of grave misfortune. We had to see this place for ourselves. Tom and I set out for the Dakota at 4:30 pm, but through a very random, incidental set of circumstances, didn't actually arrive there until 1:20am. A full yellow moon, no one on the streets, this massive, mysterious building with gargoyles and iron gates flanked by gas candelabras. I was glad to leave.
Today was the last day of Billy Graham's last crusade. I was there. I have a lot to say about this, but I'm going to save it for later. I'm tired of writing. |
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All text & photos Copyright © 2003 Andrew
Criss
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