Tag: nyc

• France, New York, France Again

  

  For the record, everything I have done in the last four years has been happenstance.

  When I go back home, sometimes people ask me questions like, “So are you still interested in getting in the fashion industry?” and I get totally confused… when have I ever been interested in fashion???

  Then, I remember. Back in high school I wore pink every single day and had a rather aggressive plan in place on how to become the next Vogue editor and live a Carrie Bradshaw life on the streets of New York.

  

  I did get accepted to NYU, which was admittedly part of the #lifeplan. The added caveat in my acceptance letter that said I was going to spend my first year in Paris was definitely not.

  It was probably the day I saw the word “Paris” written on the acceptance email that I developed a more “go with the flow” attitude towards things. I still remember the exhilaration, confusion, and final shrug of “ok, cool,” I went through before accepting. (You just don’t turn a year in Paris down, right? If anyone needs life advice about whether or not they should go to Paris, call me up and I will tell you what to do, which is to say yes.)

  Going to Paris before going to New York had an interesting affect on me, and if you interviewed a few of my fellow Paris buddies, they might say something similar.

  I used to think that NYU was like my ticket to New York. Go to school there, get a job there, stay there and conquer it. Now, I’ve realized (and this may sound dumb, but I did have to actually come to a realization) that a city is literally just a location. A group of buildings, people, cars.

  Sure, cities have individuality, but the idea that New York is somehow one of the best is flawed. And it shows how little I knew about myself back then, that I thought I would be able to stay in one place for more than a few years at a time.

  This long-winded jumble of thoughts is to say that, I’m going back to France next year.

  

  It feels good to say. Nicely circular.

  I’m going to be teaching English in Caen (a port town in Normandy). While I have very little experience teaching, I thought I would regret passing up the opportunity. I want to use the year to strengthen my own French skills, relax a bit (New York is stressful, ok?), think, decide what’s next.

  I have a feeling I will come back to New York. I especially fell in love with my neighborhood in Queens this year, and would like to spend more time there.

  But for now, I need a bit of an adventure to keep me on my toes.

  July 12, 2017

  Caen, College, France, new york, new york city, Normandy, nyc, NYU, paris

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• C’est Fini

  

  A common theme at NYU graduation ceremonies is the anecdote of that infamous first week: the wide-eyed freshman moving into their dorm in the big city, exploring the bustling Washington Square Park with wonder, meeting everyone on their freshman dorm floor and immediately becoming friends only to never speak again after Welcome Week.

  I don’t have the same memory.

  Looking back on my first week at NYU I see instead a vision of me, sweatily dragging two huge suitcases through Gare de Nord in Paris with a kind stranger from Iceland, waiting in a long line for taxis behind a group of British tourists, walking back and forth on rue Oberkampf in Paris’ 11th arrondissement trying to find the entrance to my building, hungrily eating the tiny cookies left for me on the desk in my studio room, and then collapsing on my new bed, excited but overwhelmed.

  Reading my first blog post from Paris, I am astonished at Younger Lily’s ability to jump into that life with such… flexibility.

  “Today marks my first full day in Paris and already, it has been a little adventure,” I wrote. “Having awoken with no food in my kitchen, I wandered out onto rue Oberkampf and found a boulangerie to get a croissant.”

  I remember this morning so well. The street was quiet. The sky was a blush color. The croissant was perfection. I felt a little sad, a little scared, but the walk I took that morning was peaceful enough to make me more excited than anything else.

  It took a bit of time, but I eventually went from walking around the streets of Paris alone, to exploring with the friends I have kept throughout my college career.

  

  And while I’m so sad to be saying goodbye to some of those people, I feel like I am in a similar headspace as I was when I first flew to Paris: a bit scared, but ready to start new. Also props to NYU, for helping me make friends from around the world. I now have places to stay (or friendly tour guides) in several countries if I ever visit.

  Here’s a few photos from the crazy, exhausting, but fun graduation week:

  

  Reunited & it feels so GOOD!

  

  Spending time with Judes.

  

  Figuring out how to make my hair look good with the cap.

  

  Family.

  

  NYU.

  May 28, 2017

  College, Graduation, new york, new york city, New York University, nyc, NYU, NYU Paris, paris, University

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• Is Chinatown the new arts district?

  

  Chelsea’s gallery district has reigned as the heart of the city’s contemporary art movement since the late 1990s.

  But could skyrocketing rents, coupled to the availability of cheaper options in other parts of the city, mean the district is losing some of its cachet with gallerists?

  An August 2016 report by StreetEasy found that real estate prices near the High Line had increased by nearly 50 percent since the park’s opening in 2011.

  Longtime Chelsea gallerists have recently made the move to the Lower East Side (Danziger Gallery and CRG), and new galleries are skipping over Chelsea altogether and setting up shop downtown (Magenta Plains, for example, which opened on Allen Street, just north of Broome Street, last year).

  Gallerists have also set their sights on Chinatown. Marc Straus, who has been collecting art since he was in college, opened his gallery at 299 Grand St., near Allen, in 2011.

  Straus is now planning on tearing down three nearly 200-year-old buildings at 282-286 Grand St. that he also owns and developing an 8-story luxury condominium building with an attached 6,000 square feet of gallery space on their footprint.

  Read the full story–>

  April 20, 2017

  art, chelsea, chinatown, City, Gallery, Gallery District, new york city, nyc, Politics, Urban Planning, Zoning

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• Smelling Green

  Move over Chanel No. 5: artist and chemist create money fragrance

  

  Mike Bouchet’s latest “sculpture” fills all 45,000 cubic feet of the white-walled, concrete-floored Marlborough Chelsea art gallery.

  There’s nothing to see.

  But don’t let the bare walls confuse you: the art is the smell. For his latest exhibition, entitled “Tender,” Bouchet has created the smell of money.

  Read the full story: http://www.chelseaclintonnews.com/local-news/20170207/smelling-green

  February 10, 2017

  art, chelsea, journalism, new york, nyc, NYU, writing

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• Story Day

  On the tail end of a week of disappointment, my professor declared it to be story day. In the library of the journalism building, where the tall windows showed the sprawling East Village and let the setting sun fall on our heads, each one of my classmates stood up and told a true story about themselves. Most were funny anecdotes, some horrifying in their hilarity, others touching and sweet.

  Actually, all were touching because they made me laugh, or smile, or gasp in shock. They distracted me with reality. Because they were so real. Like the way my professor always says: “You can’t make this stuff up.”

  What felt really good was that space of trust that we created. To tell a story, you are becoming vulnerable, offering up a piece of yourself. And, at least according to my professor, that helps you to become a good writer. If you offer something, so will other people. That’s when you get those gems, the ones you stick in your story that show humanity the way it really is. Without shame.

  

  November 11, 2016

  Class, journalism, new york, new york city, New York University, nyc, NYU, Story, Story telling, University, writing

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• Haiku Wednesday

  Spent too much money
  At Union Square Green Market
  to cheer myself up.

  November 2nd
  made true with apple cider
  and a fresh made pie.

  Nearby a band played.
  For a second I re-fell
  in love with New York.

  

  November 2, 2016

  fall, Haiku, new york city, November, nyc, poetry, Union Square, Union Square Green Market

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• Socrates Sculpture Park Thoughts

  When commuters come into Manhattan for work, its population of 1.6 million people doubles to about 3 million. During the weekday work hours, the other boroughs (Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx, and Staten Island) empty out. Queens loses about 353,000 people.

  353,001 if you count me, a recent addition to the Queens commuter population.

  

  When I’m done with my classes for the day, I go underground and get on the N train with everyone else. I fight for a seat and pull out my book. The train heads North, speeding underneath the city just to the southwest edge of Central Park, where it takes a sharp right across town and goes in super-speed underneath the East River. Finally, the train emerges onto an above-ground platform, winding its way through the taller buildings in Long Island City, the Manhattan skyline in the background. It feels like coming up for air.

  

  These days, the sun is always just starting to set when I get up and out of the city. The interior of the subway car, which seems oppressively lit with fluorescent lights when it’s underground, takes on the purples and blues with the sunset as a backdrop. Sometimes I do my school reading, but lately I’ve been using the commute time to read for fun.

  

  I’ve heard that Astoria, the neighborhood in Queens where I live, has the largest Greek population outside of Greece. I feel some of the Mediterranean vibes when I get off the subway. Down the street from my apartment, people sit outside at a cafe for hours ordering more coffee when they run out, smoking cigarettes, speaking English, Greek, Turkish, Spanish, other languages I can’t recognize.

  At the edge of Astoria, by the riverside, is Socrates Sculpture Park. It’s a good place to watch the sunset and think about stuff.

  

  October 16, 2016

  Astoria, blog, Manhattan, new york, new york city, nyc, queens, Socrates Sculpture Park, writing

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• Truth-telling, witchcraft, bread-and-butter

  Friday night Judy and I were having a slumber party. Yes, it is possible to have a slumber party with someone you already live with. Just add: face masks, wine, deep talks. Eventually we ended up sprawled on Judy’s bed, reading through our old journals which were both hilarious and illuminating.

  Things are different since the year Judy and I met in Paris and since the year we shared a tiny dorm room on 14th Street. The world, and our place in the world, has changed rapidly, a nicer way of saying we’re seniors now and are freaking out about it. But as I read through my Bridget Jones-esque writing from the last couple years, it became clear that some of the qualities that make me into the person I am have so far stayed the same.

  Take this story that I wrote sophomore year as example:

  Tuesday May 5th, 2015

  Truth-telling, witchcraft, bread-and-butter

  I stole Judy’s pen. I am writing with said stolen pen right now. The thing is this pen is exactly like a pen I had a few months ago. So really… whose pen is it? Maybe we just switched pens? Maybe she didn’t notice her number 1 pen was missing? Maybe she did notice and just didn’t say anything? I used this very stolen pen while sitting right next to her and she said nothing.

  Maybe this pen has become shared property kind of like the little pile of hair ties that sits on the edge of the sink in the bathroom. Truthfully, I never intended for those hair ties to become shared property. They’re Judy’s hair ties. I only use them occasionally and only because my hair tie — which was blue so it had a distinction from the others which are black — went missing. Much like Judy’s pen has “gone missing.” Only I don’t think that Judy is now in possession of my hair tie because I asked her about it and she said she didn’t know where it was, so obviously somebody who isn’t Judy has stolen it and is using it. That same somebody probably switched our pens too.

  I bet that somebody is a leprechaun or a small pixie. It’s my fault really. Everyone knows that small pixies eat warm-ish butter and yet I still leave our butter to sit out in the cupboard instead of in the fridge.

  The thing is, I love toast. And putting hard, unspreadable butter on a piece of bread is literally the worst thing ever. So I leave it in the cupboard to get to room temperature spreadability. And before you start to think about possible unsanitariness I will tell you that you are wrong and that leaving the butter out is perfectly safe, thank you very much. Except for the possibility of a butter-eating pixie infestation.

  —

  I will never not desire room temperature butter. And it makes me happy that Judy and I are still friends, roommates, excessive tea-drinkers. That we still learn from each other, inspire creativity in each other. And that our new apartment in Queens always smells like lemon and toast.

  

  October 3, 2016

  blog, creative writing, food, nyc, queens, writing

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• Haiku Wednesday

  On the fire escape
  the rain soaked through our t-shirts.
  There was a new wind.

  The wind continued
  through the night, and that morning
  it seemed fall was here.

  I cut my own hair,
  to change like the season did.
  but it’s uneven.

  

   

  September 28, 2016

  blog, Haiku, new york city, nyc

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• One Summer Day

  Judy’s kitchen has a max capacity of 2 people. But that’s okay because it was just the two of us on a stifling hot Saturday when we thought we couldn’t go to the beach because it was going to rain so instead we made desserts.

  Lots of desserts.

  

  

  

  Our initial plan was to make a bunch of pastries and sell them at our own lemonade stand like we were kids. Well, actually our initial, initial plan was to go to the beach. But there was the possibility of thunderstorm, so instead we decided on four recipes: a strawberry cake, lemon bars, showgirl cupcakes and an orange syrup cake.

  

  So it turns out that baking non stop for 5-6 hours is pretty tiring. By the end, it was too dark to go sell the pastries at our homemade lemonade stand, so suddenly Judy and I had a lot of dessert for just two people.

  But there was something about having the product of a hard day’s work be as tangible as a variety of baked goods that made the work worthwhile.

  So far, my summer is a lot like that day. Working hard, but feeling good about it. Soaking up the warmth, riding my NYU bike, smelling the trash that is marinating on the hot sidewalk, reading books, hanging out with my new roommates Holly & Carolyn (who are really cool & nice & fun & wanted me to write about them on here).

  

  And now, I have a week left in the Trash City before I head out for my Real Vacation.

  XOLily

  June 25, 2016

  baking, journalism, new york, new york city, nyc

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