france used elba

and new york uses roosevelt.

Being a lovely spring day today, I planned a bike trip up and over to Roosevelt Island. I was eyeing it during a lunchtime walk the other day and decided it needed some investigation. There's gotta be something interesting about every chunk of land in new york, right?

The bike ride was successful. Made it to Roosevelt Island, Astoria and back - all without getting killed (which I consider a victory whenever biking in Queens). What was disappointing, however, was Roosevelt Island. Let's just say it was a let down.

With a history of housing prisons, hospitals, and psychc wards*, the creepy nature of the place wasn't too surprising. Built up in the 1970's with an excess of cement and right angles, it has the feel of olympic park in montreal in the dead of winter.

I guess this is where the explanation of creepy comes in. It was quite. Too freakin' quiet. For anyone living in new york, at any given time you should hear a bus, a subway, a siren, people talking loudly... etc. I biked all the way around the island and only overheard a few words from the seemingly mute passersby. In addition, I'd like to add the intriguingly communist quality of the island. Now, of course all the residents need the basics - grocery store, pharmacy, hardware store.. etc, but with an island that is only 800ft at its' widest point, there isn't much room for competition. When you go down "main st" you see posted all the stores, the "hardware store," "video store," "flower shop".. and it goes on. The lack of competition in itself is just totally bizarre to one steeped in capitalism.



Go back? Hmm.. something tells me the "chinese restaurant" there doesn't really deserve a visit. That, and getting that close to the east river will probably give me cancer.

*The renegade female journalist Nellie Bly spent a few months there as a research project to see how the committed were treated. This is relevant only because I was in an original production of a play titled after her, where I graced the stage with a flashy metal grin. I'm sure it was sillier than I remember.

Just what we all need...

$6.99 for 1 (one) sliced bell pepper in a package.

No, really.

I was going for a walk today during my lunch break and discovered "Really Cool Foods," which was in fact, less cool than they'd like you to believe.

First, the store is located on the Upper East Side, so one must take the level of absuridity with a grain of salt. However, this was just silly. Prepackaged fresh foods, some sauteed with a little olive oil, or roasted, are at your convenience in clean, well designed contemporary packaging. Great, right? Well, sure, if you'd rather pay $8 for 2 servings of grilled tofu (for those of you who are not regular buyers, an entire package goes for $2ish).

The upside to this is that they give out free samples. Now, we all know how wonderful this is, especially those of that frequent Wegmans on a Saturday, or visit a craft fair just for the samples of home made jams. I had a lovely tapas-styled lunch with a handful of seventy-somethings. Free gourmet food, and with only a few glares from employees.

I'll stop now, as to spare you and not reiterate what's already been said here.

critically yours,
sarah

I'm Different, Just Like Everyone Else

The more I think about it, I was probably better off staying in Geneseo. With only a few thousand people, it's a hell of a lot easier to be different.

So I graduated, moved to New York, got a "job", and started a blog. I bet that if I surveyed half the people I see a day, an alarming percentage could rattle off the same chain of events. None-the-less, I persevere.

My first thought was that this would be a great format for ranting and writing, and of course a way for people who don't see me very often to read what the observation du jour is (because you really care, right?). My second thought was that this is completely excessive, so let's leave it at that. Either way, this is one degree more valid than facebook.

Let's see where this goes.