[2011 Flying Solo] New York City - Day 4－Library Owl

2nd Oct, 2011

Today's plan:

Lower East Side (for the free historic tour) → Times Square Visitor Center (for laying my hands on more information and coupons)

(The free historic tour is a definite go-for to understand to history of Lower East Side.)

The train station at Hicksville, NY, where I started my day during my stay in NY.

Well, as one may see, this is definitely not some kind of 5-star platform, but Hicksville is a pretty large and heavy-trafficking station on Long Island. Most trains stop at this very station.

Although I'm not at Times Square, the ads for musical shows could still be spotted easily (or one might say, "everywhere") on the platform.

A very important reminder is that never ever to start one's solo day in a big city on a holiday. The downside for relying on public transportation is that there are fewer buses and trains during holidays. One need to walk a lot instead. Furthermore, some NYC subways are suspended during weekends for maintainance or construction. I almost ended in Brooklyn if there wasn't a nice gentleman kindly offered to take me to the platform back to Manhattan, and told me which stop I should get off later.

Nonethelesss, I did make it to the gathering location at Katz's Delicatessen for Orchard Street Walking Tour. It's a free tour that is sponsored by the Lower East Side Business Improvement District, which is held every Sunday at 11AM through April to Novemeber. For more information concerning walking tours, check out http://www.lowereastsideny.com/

Katz's Delicatessen is famous for its Pastrami Sandwich for meat lovers. But for some, their slogan "send a salami to your boy in the army" might be more intriguing. The delicatessen is also known for its famous appearance in When Harry Met Sally, starring Meg Ryan. According to our lovely tour guide, there was a mistake in the movie scene. It is known that people sit in the middle of the deli need to serve themselves while the movie appeared the opposite.

Russ and Daughters is famous for its bagels with smoked salmon. People line up outside the store during lunch hours.

Some old buildings right across the street.

Lower East Side is one of the older district of New York. There are 4 dominant immigrantion groups there: Irish, German, Southern Italian and East European Jews. The first 3 groups came first around 1830s (the first tsunami of immigration), while East Europeans came around 1870s (the 2nd tsunami occurred around 1880). The red bricks houses around the area were the housing projects in order to improve the poor living environment of immigrants. For more information concerning tenements and its history,

Red Square, built in 1989, serving as an high-end/luxury appartment.

What is fun about the Red Square is not they have a Lenin Statue right above its roof, and the clock on top has weird number arrangements. It is said that the building was built in the age of Irony. As a result, the Lenin statue serves a reminder of the working class history in lower east side. To be more specific, Lenin and the communists stand for working class, but the building is actually for middle and upper classes to live in. Get the irony?

The tour guide let the bunch of us there, and since she doesn't have the permission to get us inside for a tour, we just stand outside the glass windows of the lobby and admire the art works inside. We even had strict order that one can not linger out side the entrance, but had to walk pass like normal passers-by.

Back to the arts, the Red Square has hired local artists to decorate the lobby and the sidewalk. For instance, a local artist, Johnny Swing, designed the lobby's sculpture under the concept of river and its underwater scenery.

The Blue, orignally named in French, La Bleu, was named in English since the building is situated on US soil. It is said that on a fine day, one can see 5 different shades of blue glasses that assemble the outer wall of the building. Here is a New York Times article about the building: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/04/rising-above-the-lower-east-side-in-a-hue-of-blue/

The church served as public bathroom around 1905 according to our guide.

This building was known as a public school for working class immigrants and their children. They only provided education up to 8th grade.

Our guided tour ended at the tourist centre of the Tenement Museum.

An intersting statue outside a restaurant at Lower East Side.

Museum at Eldrige Street Synagogue

It's a Jewish Snyagogue. The topper floors were closed down for years. Until the 1980s, a NYC professor came for research, they rediscover the hidden beauty. Since then, the community raised money to rebuilt the Snyagogue and now it reopen for public service.