A tale of two city...parks

I was supposed to be in Philadelphia today, helping out the Obama campaign, but due to a scheduling gaffe, I won't leave until the morning. Sorry Barack! In any case, instead of wasting the day away, I decided that I would meet with a friend downtown, and go to see the movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall, or whatever the titular character's name is. In any case, as this is one of the first jacket-less days of the year, I asked myself: Why not take a nice walk, instead of going on the dark, dank subway system? What's more, I was awaiting a phone call from friends, and how could I get the call if they decided to call while I was underground?

I made up my mind. I would walk to Union Square, where I was supposed to meet my friend, R. As my residence is in Harlem, a long walk was ahead of me. Instead of walking straight down Lexington, I made the decision to walk through Central Park, and then walk from 59th Street to Union Square.

Having resided in New York for nearly six years, I thought it was high time that I should take a walk through Central Park. Of course, I've been in Central Park countless times, but always in this or that spot: the frog pond, the great lawn, watever, and then out again. I've never walked from 110th to 59th, the northern and southern borders, respectively.

There was, as it turns out, good reason. This park is less a beautiful nature preserve than a maze, made all the harder to navigate by the countless tourists. (Why do they come to the park? Where most of them are from, there actually is nature. I would think that the vast majority of people in this square would be New Yorkers that felt a primal yearning to be somewhere near a tree. Why come from Nebraska or Kansas or Oregon or wherever to be near a sad attempt at nature, when that is the one thing they can actually see at home?)

I went up hills, down hills, around hills. After walking for quite a long while, I came to a fence, something which, I might add, does not occur in the natural settings that the above-mentioned Nebraska types would find. This fence impeded my progress to such an extent that I had to back track almost to where I entered the park. Then I found the right path, and came to a reservoir that had a nice little path around it. Unfortunately, some power-obsessed park official decided that there is a rule that you must walk around the reservoir counter-clockwise, and this direction was posted on signs nearly everywhere (these signs, of course, are also not part of the natural world). Unfortunately, as the direction I needed to go was clockwise, and going the other direction would have put me many...blocks? Are there blocks in parks?...out of my way, I had to backtrack yet again.

As I trekked on, I realized that the blossoming trees, which I thought were rather pretty at first, were not helpful. They put their pollen into the air, as is their right, to such an extent that it seemed to coat my mouth and face. As a person who suffers springtime allergies, I was not amused.

As I walked further along, there were more and more...and more...people. More people than I generally have seen in the park. I noticed that some where wearing shirts with pictures of the Bishop of Rome, and realized that there were must have been thousands of pilgrims out to see the pope, or at least where the pope had just been, near Saint Patricks.

So I left the park and got on the bus. Even now, I still have not walked North/South or South/North across the park. At least I've rid myself of the desire.

In any case, after a while, I stepped off the bus and walked over to Union Square Park. This place I like a lot more, as it does not bother to make any pretense of being "natural." It is mainly cement, with buildings all around, and a few trees and statues.

When going from the first park to the next, it becomes quite apparent how different they are, not just in terms of their setup, but also in terms of their denizens. Whereas the former is mainly full of tourists from other states or countries (all taking several million photographs of each other, so that they can go home and show them to their friends: "Look! See? That's me, in front of the tree! That's a real New York tree!"), Union Square's residents are insane political activists, slightly less insane political activists, people who are strangely affectionate, people selling random things, farmer's marketeers and their customers, and people who pass by and enjoy looking at the people in the previous categories. (I would place myself in the latter category, for the most part. But who knows? Maybe I could make money growing and selling pumpkins.)

While waiting to for R., I was able to witness a short stumpy man yelling at a tall stumpy man for photographing the former without permission, a group of somewhat deranged people nearly come to blows with a farmers' marketeer--he committed the offense of asking them to be nice--and the same group taunt park security for being "fascists"(somehow, they equated asking people to not fight with putting people into prison camps). Also, there was the man who seems to have been there for at least the better part of a decade shouting for a "proletarian revolution."

At leat it was warm out, and the movie was good.