Here and There

Sunday began early by New York standards, with breakfast (not brunch) at Balthazar. in SoHo. I used to work around the corner on Broadway, but in all the intermittent years, had only tried their coffee.

We waited until the café turned over into a full-scale restaurant, and I ended up having a savory, buttery egg, ham, and gruyere crepe. Besides being overpriced, this place was worth it.

Tartine in San Francisco makes better croissants, but you know what, I wasn’t in San Francisco and I often think comparisons of the two cities are unfounded. I’m just homesick, maybe.

Then on to the American Museum of Natural History and the exhibit on Darwin. The show wasn’t too impressive, and the tourists were mostly European, Indian, and Asian (American being the type to avoid particularly). It laid out Darwin’s ancestry, early life (further proof that it’s okay to fuck off in school), early adult hood, and voyage around the world on the Beagle. I learned that the young old man had a problem with seasickness and, eventually, homesickness. But the good ship docked, he was like a kid in a candy store. He was already formulating his theory on the voyage, and each new discovery helped him unlock another door into the “more-mysterious-than-god” phenomenon of evolution and the interconnectedness of life on earth.

Of course, it’s all rubbish, right?

No, but I breezed through the rest of the enormous AMNH collection, which more or less amounts to a zoo whose guilt springs from the fact of taxidermy and colonialism, not necessarily the present conditions of the animals.

I learned that crocodiles are birds’ closest relatives on earth.

After a brief recovery in Theodore Roosevelt park, we trekked south for lunch at Café Habana. Finally had a Cuban sandwich (pork, ham, and cheese). Pretty damn good.

After that, the women I was with did some shopping, I did some reading, and we made our way to Chinatown for ice cream at (where else?) Häagen-Dazs, which of course is huge out here.

Then we attempted to go back to Delancey Lounge, whose cover we found out was $10. No thanks.

And we ended up at a bar in my old neighborhood (Lower East Side) whose name I’ll have to get later.

Now it’s back to the land of street urination and public pot smoking. I’m homesick, so I’ll ruminate on the overall trip later.

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