NEW YORK SUMMER

Carol and I love the free summer events in the city. It's one of New York's ultimate paradoxes, in that people often complain about how you need a lot of money to enjoy the city. Maybe that's true for the fall, winter and spring. In the summer, poor bastards can enjoy free yoga lessons, Shakespeare in the Park, indie bands in Brooklyn, the Philharmonic in Central Park and outdoor movies just to name a few.

Last night we went to one of the better summer events that we've ever experienced. An outdoor showing of "Wall Street" on Pier 1. Pier 1 juts out dramatically from the Manhattan side of the Hudson stretching desperately towards Jersey. The views were spectacular, the weather was reminiscent of late September and the event wasn't particularly crowded which is a nice contrast from the night before. On Tuesday night we went to hear the Philharmonic in Central Park. It made for nice picnicking, but the insanely large crowd made it hard to listen well. Unless you have someone stake out a spot at the Great Lawn at least two and a half hours beforehand, you're not going to get a very good spot. Pier 1, in contrast, has a much smaller crowd (less than 500) so it's easy to secure a good spot 30 minutes before the movie starts, or even just minutes before.

The outdoor movie series theme was New York, New York. So they've been showing movies about New York from different eras in time. New Yorkers love movies about New York. Some of them laugh along with scenes that have local references. Thing is, the scenes aren't particularly funny. Which leads me to believe that they're laughing in a "look - at - me, - I - get - the - local - reference" way. My guess is that those folks haven't lived in the city long enough.