Saturday: A Day of Much Perfection

[serinde]

...in spite of it starting at 5am, for to drive Steve to the airport.

I met elibalin at South Street Seaport at 1pm (after a few errands, false starts and minor setbacks); our quest was the eponymous museum, which I'd passed by a thousand times and never visited. Boy, had I been missing out. There was all the expected seagoing impedimentia--which I will make a side note could use much better curacy; most items had little to no provenance--which was well enough in itself, but there were also various special exhibits of great interest to us. One was a photographic record of the Lower East Side neighborhoods that Robert Fucking Moses *ptui* bulldozed to make more ugly box-housing and highways that accomplish nothing; another was on Irish-American boxers, of all things. It contained the decomposed right arm of a boxer of the 19th century. Long story. Creepy. But nifty. These were the kinds of things I expected to see at the Museum of the City, and didn't; I'm just glad I could go somewhere for 'em.

Sorrows and vexations:
1. The usual moment of silence for the passing of the North Star.
2. The realization that that had just been the first salvo in a war of cultural heritage: Every interesting, cool store on that strip has been replaced by some chain store. INCLUDING THE SEAPORT MUSEUM STORE afkfhjlf;jdskfda;s. Which is now a Met Museum store; and okay, yes, those are nifty, but if you want to buy something from the Met you can just hop uptown and GO TO THE FUCKING MET. The Seaport Museum store carried all sorts of cool, interesting, unique articles; things you can't get anywhere else in the city, as far as I'm aware. Not to mention it'd be nice to get some stuff associated with the exhibits we'd just seen--! There was a video playing in one of the halls, of which the film itself had been taken during the Peking's passage around Cape Horn in 1929, but the audio commentary was added in 1980 by a fellow who'd been a very young sailor on that cruise, telling you what the heck you were looking at. I was eager to pick up a copy for Steve--he'd love it--but no. Not Yours.

We did not, alas, have time to look at the other galleries & ships, other than the Peking, they have around the area because we had to walk west to participate in a spot of merry chaos. It was grand and delightful and good-natured and everything I could possibly have hoped for. Afterwards, much tuckered out, we hied ourselves to Tea and Sympathy for a well-deserved pick-me-up, then went our separate ways. I came home, fell down a bit, then picked up sweh for joyous snuggles and movie-watching. And so, to bed.

Comments

[sbp.livejournal.com]

I read that as a Mets Museum store. You could just hop uptown and check out a ball game instead.

Think Tea & S is one of my sister's favourite places.

[heliumbreath.livejournal.com]

I saw that Peking video several years ago, and remember Mystic Seaport being mentioned as the place it had been obtained. Still haven't made it down that way myself, though.