June 29 [Sunday]......Pride Week / Central Park
Today is the annual Gay Pride march down 5th Avenue as part of Pride Week 2003. As we live in Chelsea we are right amongst it, so only had to walk over one avenue to be able to watch the parade. It's a smaller version of Mardi Gras, but it does cover a lot more distance from what I could tell, oh and there is no Kylie music playing.

We walked along 5th up towards Central Park where Anh was supposed to meet up with My Trieu for a bus tour. I headed further over to Central Park for an extended walk.
I spent around 2 and a half hours walking through the park, it is so huge with such a wide range of activities going on. Here's a run down:
Starting in the southern end at The Pond, people laze around on the grass in front of a small lake. Past that is Wollman Rink which is a ice skating rink in winter and what else but an amusement park in summer. There is a small zoo east of this but I haven't seen it yet. Next is another big field section called Sheep Meadow, I walked through it trying to dodge all the frisbees being thrown around. Frisbee was one of the most popular activities in the park today. After the Meadow was some croquet fields and lawn bowls. I then headed west over to Strawberry Fields which is the John Lennon tribute garden and close to where Yoko still lives, on the way, passing the Bandshell where I think they have Shakespeare in the Park performances. I walked from there through some paths winding amongst the trees and around the edge of The Lake. In this area you can totally forget you are in NYC. By this stage I was near 79th street, and emerged at Belvedere Castle. It had a nice view over Turtle pond (lots of big turtles in there) and to the Great Lawn which is where I ended up walking to next. By now you get the idea that everything has some grand name in Central Park. Baseball or softball is very popular in the park also and there are plenty of baseball fields that looked like a look of fun.

I went as far as 86th street when I got to the Jacque O Reservoir, walked around the jogging track and started back south. This was still only around half the length of the park, it is that big. Coming back there were a block of basketball courts and then one of the weirder things I have seen, an open-air roller disco. The twist was it had a majority of people there who were anywhere between 40-60 years old either rollerblading or rollerskating. Many looked like they never left the Seventies. Several were doing tricks, including a 50yo man who skated while balancing 3 bottles of water on his head. Wish I had my camera. The last place I stopped in at was an area called Rumsey park where they hold mostly free weekend concerts called SummerStage and it draws quite large crowds (several thousand). Well, that was my walk around Central Park - if you are coming here, you should save half a day to take a good look through it.

June 26 [Friday]......Real Estate Variances / Cold Stone
Anh started a temp job today at a Real Estate management company. Let's just say that she's not too enthralled by the variance analysis work!

We went to dinner at Republic Noodles at Union Square which was very crowded and noisy and followed that by a visit to the newly opened store, Cold Stone Creamery where they mix icecream desserts for you.

June 25 [Wednesday]......Arrival of My Trieu
My Trieu, one of Anh's former Adelaide workmates, visited us tonight as she is here in New York for the week. My has been on an extended holiday where she has travelled to Italy, Greece, UK, Paris and now the US. Tonight she came over amongst other things to cook some authentic Laksa, Anh's favourite meal.
One of the places Anh & My visited during the day was the tourism center where they take your picture and 5 minutes later it gets shown on one of the billboards at Times Square in a little animated sequence. So they both had their faces up on the billboard for a few minutes.

June 24 [Tuesday]......WWE Wrestling Part 2
WWE are still in town & tonight is the taping of WWE Smackdown! Many like myself bought tickets to both shows. The big names appearing tonight includedthe McMahon family, Rey Mysterio, Billy Gunn, Torrie Wilson, Ultimo Dragon, Matt Hardy, Tajiri, Eddie Guerrero, Rowdy Roddy Piper, Undertaker, Brock Lesner, Kurt Angle, Big Show and the greatest ever, Hulk Hogan in his Mr America persona, who the crowd went absolutely nuts for.

June 23 [Monday]......WWE Wrestling Part 1
Tonight I went to the taping of Monday Night WWE Raw at Madison Square Garden. It was a sellout and a spectacular event live which lasts over 3 hours. Some of the stars tonight were Kane, Triple H, Booker T, Scott Steiner, Chris Jericho, Dudley Boyz, Sgt Slaughter, Stone Cold, Mick Foley, Shawn Michaels, Ric Flair & Goldberg.

June 20 [Friday]......Mike Tyson Goes Nuts
Crazy Mike Tyson was arrested after getting into a brawl at a Marriott hotel bar tonight. The bar is actually across from the complex where I work and we were out at the same place the previous day for lunch.....pity we missed the action.

June 15 [Sunday]......What not to say to the Hell's Angels
Glorious day in New York City today. The plan was to take a walk around the Lower East Side and East Village areas which we haven't to date. These are some of the more suspect areas at night that you wouldn't want to walk alone in. We first stopped at a Chelsea flea market to look around which is always interesting what pops up. Basically vendors fill trucks from garage sale in Jersey or Long Island then sell it for 10x that price at Manhattan flea markets where New Yorkers still think they are getting a bargain.
Next was a subway trip to 2nd Avenue where we started walking, ending up at the famous Katz's Deli. This is the largest and busiest Delicatessen in NYC that I know of and is famous for a scene out of "When Harry Met Sally" that was shot there. The lines are long for food and it is nothing to rave about. Junior's in Brooklyn is far better and has NY cheesecake 3 times the serving size. For those from outside the US, it is still worth seeing Katz to understand this concept of "deli food".

From there, we walked toward Alphabet City (named from Avenue A, B, C that is there) and ended up at the dog run at Tompkins Park. Dog runs are such a bizarre New York sight, a fenced in area where owners can take their dogs to run free with other dogs and non-dog owners have to stay outside and watch over the fence. You are hard pressed to see any dog that is not a pure breed. The other weird fact is that the vast majority of the dogs don't bark at all, they are very quiet.

Next we walked up St Mark's Avenue, stopped in at some vintage clothing stores (which there is no shortage of in the East Village) before happening upon the entrance to the Hells Angels NYC clubrooms. I quite liked the big entrance door that was painted with the logo etc and decided it would make a good photo. I took it, then found that one of the bikers on the other side of the road wasn't a big fan of people taking photos. Maybe he was intimidated or just didn't have any backup but we got out without any major trouble!

By then it was late afternoon and we walked back all the way to Chelsea, stopping only for a smoochies icecream on the way. As many people have commented before I definitely found that you can be in another part of Manhattan literally blocks away and look around and think you are in a different city completely there is such a different feel to some neighborhoods.

That night, rollerhockey was on again at Chelsea Piers. For the 2nd week in a row the game went into overtime and we scraped out with another victory. I took a huge bump in the game in a collision and almost got knocked out as my head hit the concrete ground quite heavily and my back slammed into it as well. Should be back ok for the next game when House 4 resumes at top of the ladder.

June 14 [Saturday]......Havana
Today was week 2 of my painting course and have started another piece.
Tonight we went down to a cuban restaurant near Union Square called Havana Central. Afterwards we walked around Union Square where there are always big crowds of people just hanging out no matter how late it is. Went to go to the trendy "Coffee Shop" but didn't stay long as it was too crowded.
Finished doing some final work on my latest video production earlier today which has been the biggest and hardest to date.

June 11 [Wednesday]......Anh is put to work
Well thank heavens, Anh's work visa card has now arrived so she can look for work....

Get to work Anh!!

June 10 [Tuesday]......The 3 Hour Mile
The second Tuesday of June each year is the Museum Mile Festival. This has been going for 25 years and 9 of New York's famous museums on Fifth Avenue are open to the public in the evening with the street closed between 82nd & 104th street. There are music performers, food and street art. Anh & I went up there after work and in the couple of hours we had we stuck to 2 of the best, the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met) and the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum. In reality you could spend the best part of a day at each of these alone so we looked at only a few exhibitions out of the huge collections on offer.

Currently the Met had a large Spanish painting exhibition, some artworks from around 4000 years ago and my favourite, a large Monet collection. Over at the Guggenheim we only had time to look in the main hall at the Matthew Barney: The Cremaster Cycle exhibition. This was a huge installation over the entire 8+ floors which spiral around the main hall.

After closing, we walked over to Central Park around the jogging track circling the Great Reservoir. Plenty of people were out jogging but as it was all but dark by then, it was surprising that so many people were there given it hasn't been the safest place at night especially for women to be alone.

Moving back to the Upper West Side we walked back to Broadway and had some traditional diner style burgers at Arties's Deli, followed by late night low-fat icecream from another little place on Broadway. Low-fat icecream is very popular here and replaced frozen yogurt as the hip thing to have. Some nights at home we order take-out ice-cream from a place near us called Smoochies and they deliver it to our door.....mmmmm.

June 8 [Sunday]......New York Breakdancing
After a lazy morning, Anh & I hungered for some laksa which is a little harder to find here so we went to a Malaysian place in Chinatown. Being a nice day out, we walked back via Broadway through SoHo. Once we got to Union Square there was a big crowd gathering around a breakdancing troupe doing a performance so we went to watch. It was very impressive and done in the Michael Jackson "Bad" videoclip style of "break-fighting".

Later that night was time for my roller hockey down at Chelsea Piers complex. After some recent rained out games this was good to be back and our team, House 4 triumphed yet again taking our record to 5-1 in a thrilling match that we won only in overtime.

June 7 [Saturday]......Painting week 1
This week I start a 6 week oil painting course being held at a university on 13th street on Saturday afternoons. I bought all the supplies, paints and canvas last night. Perhaps being a little blind to my actual talent level, I enrolled in the Intermediate Oil Painting course so I wouldn't be stuck with all the mongers in the basic course, despite the fact that I have only painted with acrylics before. Each session goes for 3 hours and today was a good start off week despite the fact that it rained all day outside. Luckily the university is only one subway stop from our apartment. The class has 8 or so people with a couple of oddballs. I was worried about one lady who painted a picture of a psychiatrist session that looked very realistic. Another woman only wanted to be taught how to copy some famous artist's style.

That night we traipsed out in the rain to see "The Italian Job" a remake of a 60's heist movie which was very clever and fun.

June 1 [Sunday]......Fire in the Street
Woke today at 6am from the loud noise of contant mini explosions in the street below. Sounded like a full out gunfire battle before looking out to the street below where there was some type of fire coming out of a electrical section under the road. Something was setting off loud explosions and flames were coming out. Before long there were 3 Fire Engines, some NYPD and the street was blocked off. Would have gone down to the road to take pictures but it was 6am Sunday so just went back to bed and as with all the other noise you get from living in the city, just ignored it.

May 31 [Saturday]......Museum of Natural History / Nemo
Weather was expected to be bad again, with some rain this weekend, so we had decided to take our first trip to one of the museums on the Upper West Side. Catching the 1 train up 7th Avenue we switched over to the C train which took us to the entrance at 81st Street of the American Museum of Natural History.
The first tour we saw was the Vietnam exhibition. The museum is huge and it can be quite easy to get disorientated. We wandered through some of the dinosaur displays, pondered the origins of the ice age & Anh seemed fascinated to touch a fossilized dinosaur egg. It was then time to leap back 13 billion years over at the Rose Center for Earth & Space to trace the history of the universe from the big bang. They have 2 great space shows at the Hayden Planetarium that I can't wait to go back and see some othertime. Topping that off was a close look at some moon rocks and another display about the earth's surface and volcanos.

After a quick walk past a tree that was 1500 years old and some rainforest displays it was over to the Milstein Hall of Ocean Life which was one of the best displays with very life-like creatures. After a good 3+ hours there we probably only covered half of it and none of the Planetarium shows so a trip can't be rushed, we'll take in the rest on another day.

We stayed on the Upper West Side for dinner over at a Vietnamese cafe where they sure pack em in. Meal just average. We took a walk around the neighborhood between Columbus & Broadway, despite the rain before stopping in at Starbuck's. Anh now finally admits they make the best coffee in New York.
To finish off, we took in the late session of the new Pixar animated movie Finding Nemo. Pixar make the best quality animated movies by far and this was no exception. Highly recommended.