Home Alone II

It's Sunday night, Raych is on her way to Brooklyn with Jess for an Oscars party, and I finally have a chance to update this page.

We've been adjusting to Eastern Standard Time very slowly. Today we woke up at 1pm, which is 5am Sydney time. But on Friday we slept through until 3. This is the view from Matt's apartment in 121st St.

And this is Matt himself. He says 'hi'. All seems well with him, except he's real busy with school.

We caught the subway to Times Square to get something to eat. The subway, like the rest of New York, is pretty much how you imagine it. It's funny how we know this city better from movies and books better than LA despite Hollywood being on the other coast. Anyway, Raych stopped me taking photos on the subway just yet, in case someone pulls a gun when the flash goes off. Later in the week.

There's not much to say about central Manhattan that pictures can't say with more economy than words. So here we go:






































Manhattan is really easy to find your way around in, thanks to the grid road system. Streets go east-west, avenues go north-south. The only thing to worry about is whether you are facing east or west, north or south. So when Raych had to go east to her drinks at the United Nations, we ended up halfway to the Meatpacking District, west. It was the first of many 180 degree turns. Then I had to find an internet cafe to find the address for my seminar. It was in the Meatpacking District. So I got a lot of exercise on Friday. Here's Times Square on my way back through.

The seminar with David Harvey this weekend was postponed, so for me it was cancelled. But he still did a two-and-a-half-hour lecture Friday night and it was great. It was based on his new book, A Short History of Neoliberalism. Some of the most interesting stuff was on New York in the 1970s, when the city went bankrupt. That sparked an escalation in the city's dangerous reputation (when the police and firefighters' unions facing cutbacks handed out leaflets at the airport about how likely tourists were to get mugged) and a big PR campagn to revive NYC through tourism (when the I heart NY T-shirts were designed).