New York City 2013

Our trip to Beacon was in the middle of a spring vacation we made to Manhattan to visit our friends Sandor and Yalli, and their countless wonderful children. I expected some budding trees but we were too early and the town was experiencing a cold snap. I was surprised that i actually had a better time using my phone to take pictures most of the time than i did my camera, which i rarely brought out with me.

Some things you can see in New York City

The US Post Office and the Empire State Building. The post office is huge, and if it's in your way it takes a long time to walk around it.

We spent a good deal of our time navigating around on public transportation and cabs. In the evenings we typically ate great food. Really good food. In fact WD-50 was one of the best meals i've ever had. It was certainly the most interesting. Jacob's Pickel's had fantastic grits, among other things.  Chickalicious expanded my horizons on how good desert could be over six courses. I believe Pies and Thighs had the best fried chicken i have had in a restaurant. Gordon Ramsey's London was a serious disappointment. Other good restaurants of note were Artie's Delicatessen (pastrami and pickels), Burger Joint (atmospheric dingy late night grub hidden in a fancy hotel), Chop Shop good Asian fusion, Cafe Lalo (good food and from You've Got Mail), Magnolia Bakery, (good cupcakes, etc.) Doughnut Plant (even better doughnuts), etc...  And of course i gorged myself on bagels and salmon from Zabars. We ate at both John's Pizza and Patsy's Pizza. They were both great, but i think i actually liked Patsy's better.

The Chelsea Market shopping area was right across the street from a really good coffee shop on 15th street called Blue Bottle Coffee, next to the Highline.

Brooklyn. Looked like where you lived in the last GTA game.

But the most incredible thing i did was a complete surprise. Sandor told us simply that "there was a show going on that might be pretty neat" and wanted us to meet him downtown. The show is called Sleep No More and was created by an English company called Punchdrunk. It's the most amazing “interactive” performance art I have ever seen, and I really do hope I can see more of their work in the future. I recommend doing an image search on google if you want to get an idea of what it looks like. If you care more than the rest of this post is about my experience in the hotel. Otherwise you can stop reading now.

As Neil put it, on his roof, if you don't live in Manhattan you can see Manhattan.

Maree has a drink at Neil and Tara's place. Their cat says "soon."

Maree, Yalli and i took a cab to an unremarkable area of town where there was a small line of people outside a somewhat unusual door. Inside we had to give up our coats and bags before wandering up dark stairs and folding corridors, whereupon we emerged in a dimly lit, slightly misty, red toned 1920's speakeasy. We were immediately greeted by a very polite couple in appropriate garb offering us absinthe or cocktails, a single playing card and a simple venetian mask.

We were encouraged to hang out. There was  stage set up for what looked like jazz music, so i was ready for a good time. Every few minutes people with certain cards would be led out of the room. When it was our turn and we found ourselves on an elevator, let out separately on different floors. We were instructed to wear our masks, not to speak to anybody from that point onward, but otherwise to do whatever we wanted, follow whoever we wanted, leave whenever we wanted.

Maree is waiting for a delicious 6 course desert at Chickalicious.

Great doughnuts at the Doughnut Plant.

I quickly found myself alone, wearing my mask, in a long room lined with a row of free standing porcelain bathtubs. The room was pretty dark but the bathtubs were lit from above, some half full of dirty water, some with not only water but also cloths floating in the water. On the walls above the tubs were patient records. On the other side of the room a door led "outside" to an extensive stick maze lit up in blue light. In the center of the maze was an arched gate with some kind of goat idol in the middle. And so it went...

We went to several museums, but i'll get to that in the next post.

Everything was detailed beyond the quality of a movie set, accompanied by ominous music playing everywhere. I thought this was pretty cool. At first I just wandered around, enjoying the amazing detail in every room and trying to piece together the puzzle. But after ½ an hour on an exquisitely detailed floor that represented a cobbled street with strange shops on either side, i began to encounter "characters" and other observers.

These “characters” seemed to have their own individual routines, roaming from room to room, often with a tight crowd of onlookers following their every move. At times the characters would interact with each other, and it was these scenes that made me realize there was some larger story going on. The scenes between characters might involve a romance, fighting, an argument, a large banquet and ball, or a crazy pagan techno orgy. It might be just two people or nearly a dozen. What happened next was up to you, because after these keystone scenes the actors disbanded to continue on their own individual story arcs in other parts of the hotel. Who you chose to follow determined your experience in the long run.

We spent a lot of time in the subway, but whenever possible i travelled by web slinging.

But there was even more to it than that. If you closely followed the characters they might, at times, choose to interact with you. At one point I had been trying to find out what happened to this pregnant woman's baby. I had seen that at some point the baby is dead or sacrificed and I wanted to know what happened to lead up to that tragic ending. The play repeats itself three times during the night, I believe, and I had seen what I thought was the climax pretty early on in my adventures. I followed the pregnant characters until when she was resting on a couch she asked me for help getting up. There were maybe six or seven other observers in the apartment. When I took her hand she led me to a hidden door across the room. Upon passing through the door she immediately locked it tight, cutting us off from everyone else.

I'm amazed how in certain parts of such a dense city they can cram in massive infrastructure.

We took a tram ride over to Roosevelt Island. The ride is so short i don't think it was worth the effort of getting there.

I found myself in a kind of cult closet. She removed my mask and made me kneel before a holy book from another country and place my hands on the script. Meanwhile she whispered strange stories in my ear about what I used to do as a kid, getting into trouble at school. She said she used to tell me this story every night before bed and would rub salt behind my ear. Then she literally rubbed a bunch of salt behind my ear. After that she made me get up and she tore out the page from the book i'd placed my hands on. She folded it into a cone and made me hold it while she filled it with more salt, telling me I had to take care of it. We heard a racket outside. She said people were coming for her and we had to leave.

She opened the door and took off running. I tried to follow but when I made it to the stairwell I ran into a crowd of people and didn't know if she went up or down. I lost her. I found out later from Sandor that she was murdered in a forest not long after.

Highline Park is really cool. You can walk for a mile on an old elevated railway that has been remodeled and vegetated.

I stayed in there for nearly three hours before I was overcome by hunger and thirst. I felt the pressure of the people I had come with and was imagining them getting pretty irritated waiting around for me. But when I made it back to the lounge it was like stepping out of one dream and into another. A good jazz band had started playing, most of the crowd was lounging around enjoying the music. It all seemed like a regular bar where everyone was having a good time. You would never guess there was a surreal 5 story horror hotel all around the place.

Some views from the Highline.

I spontaneously attended an international photography show. It was in a really cool building called the New York Armory, and had prints priced up to half a million dollars.