So when we last left off (and apologies for the lack of postings, it seems that now that I’m basically making my living as a blogger, that the blog where I got my blogging start as fallen to the wayside, hélas!), I had just arrived in Paris and spent a rather jet lagged day journeying around the city. Well, I got a whole night of sleep and felt millions of times better, but still woke up obscenely early. Since the apartment we were staying in was only a five minute walk from Pére Lachaise Cemetery, one of my favorite places to explore in Paris, I decided to go for a morning walk.

I’d never been in the old cemetery quite so early, just after its gates opened, and found that it was mostly full of old French men reading newspapers and eating croissants on benches, not really paying much mind to my ambling walk through the tombs. As the morning burned on there were more and more tourists, but for much of the walk I had the place to myself. Here are some of my favorite photos from the excursion:

This is a memorial for two balloonists who perished while trying to fly up too high. I wrote about their whole story here for Atlas Obscura.

The insides of the narrow mausoleums could be a bit unsettling.

Was this one the most unsettling?

Yes, it was.

Here is the grave of Felix Faure, once the president of France. I believe that’s the French flag draping over his body.

Some rather beautiful cats call the cemetery home.

This is the entrance to the “Aux Morts” (“To the Dead”) ossuary, which acts as the cemetery’s catacombs.

A shrouded angel (even the wings are covered, I think) grasping some cattails. Death keeping a hold on life? I read that the cattails are also a symbol of salvation.

This is the two-story 19th century columbarium. I heard that Maria Callas is interred here, but in the hundreds of plaques I did not see her.

I think this ill-looking face is supposed to be one of mourning, but it reminds me of Jacob Marley, a character who absolutely terrified me as a child with all the chains and  face wrappings.

I don’t think there is much kneeling going on in these mausoleums anymore. I read that there are only 30 year leases that have to be renewed on gravesites (if not renewed, you go to that ossuary), but many of these seem to have been long forgotten by families.

A bat!

This was something I had not seen before: a gravesite shaped like a military tent!

Graffiti at Jim Morrison’s well-traveled tomb. This is as close as you can get due to barricades. Although there was no guard there to stop you from jumping over…

This bas relief certainly caught my eye! It turned out to be on the tomb of Robertson, a famed innovator of phantasmagoria. I also wrote about this tomb for Atlas Obscura, so check it out and read about the conjuring of fake 18th century phantoms!

Robertson was also a balloonist.

After spending the morning wandering, I headed to a cafe for some much needed coffee. I love many things about Paris, but the constant proximity of cafes with strong coffee is definitely a highlight. That and the dense cemeteries for exploring, of course!

As you may have guessed, I have returned from Paris! It was a great two weeks of exploring. I thought I would quickly post some photo highlights from my first day. I took an overnight flight from NYC direct to Charles de Gaulle, which seems like a great idea, right? That way you don’t lose a day. You do, however, lose a night of sleep, which definitely hit me about 3 pm when I found I was falling asleep standing up. However, there is luckily an abundance of tiny, strong coffees in Paris and I made it through to a decent hour.

I also forgot what a nightmare those Paris subways can be with luggage! How in the world did I manage with my giant suitcase when I went to study abroad and later moved there? I was younger then… well, not by much actually, but I guess memory is doing a good job of erasing the boring, unpleasant parts. Anyway, I did make it to the apartment I was renting with a couple of friends and we then went for some exploration by foot. We started near Pere Lachaise Cemetery and made it quite far, all the way to the Jardin du Luxembourg, with much wandering in between. Here are some photo highlights:

I’m not sure how I never noticed this before, but all over Paris are these water fountains with drinkable water that were installed back when such necessities were scarce.

This appeared to be an even older drinking fountain. Although now it’s just a seating alcove, I suppose.

Place de la Bastille looked lovely. I gave a pretty incoherent impromptu talk to my friend on the taking of the Bastille here that was when I was breaching into jet lag exhaustion. I’m sure it got the point across…

I happened upon some Victor Hugo street art! (The photograph at the top of this post is by another awesome street artist, Fred le Chevalier.) This Hugo stencil was quite near the Victor Hugo Museum in the Place des Vosges, so of course we stopped inside to see the old Hugo residence with his questionable decor choices. (In one room, a carpet is on the ceiling for some reason.)

Walking in the Marais we also saw a pretty brazen space invader. He’s not even trying to hide!

I feel like this craze for putting locks on bridges is really getting out of control. This bridge is now more locks than bridge. Some people even put whole bike locks on the structure, which had then been covered with more locks by later visitors. Out of control!

This space invader, however, seemed ready to unlock all those locks!

I happened to be walking on this bridge later in my visit and stopped to check my map. An older French woman came up to me and demanded: “Did you do all this?” and gestured to the locks. I said no…

Our extensive walk ended at the Jardin du Luxembourg, where kids were pushing sailboats in the fountain with sticks.

I know I’ve been slow blogging here, but I have been writing. If you want some immediate Paris adventures, check out these posts for Hyperallergic and Atlas Obscura:

Le Corbusier’s Villa la Roche

The Paris carnival arts museum (Musée des Arts Forains)

The Balloonists of Pere Lachaise Cemetery

The Museum of Everything

Fred le Chevalier’s Parisian street art

Arno Kramer at the Musée de la Chasse 

Eileen Gray at the Pompoidou

Tomorrow I’m flying out to Paris for a two week adventure! I haven’t been to France since I moved back to the United States in 2009, so I am eager to explore. (Although a bit worried about how rusty my French has gotten!) While I’ve over there, I’m hoping to write some stories for both Hyperallergic and Atlas Obscura, so check in there for updates and expect many photos on my return!

While New York is an epic and fabulous place, it’s good to get out every once in a while, so recently I took a weekend trip to Washington, DC to visit friends and explore. I hadn’t been since I was quite young, so it all felt new, although with some vague memories in the background. One of the best things about DC is that you can visit all the Smithsonian museums for free, so of course I had to visit the Natural History Museum. Here are some creatures that caught my eye, including this elephant in the rotunda, which when it was installed in 1959 was the largest taxidermy animal displayed in any museum. Its eyes are hand blown glass.

I think I’ve gotten a little spoiled with natural history museums, having visited so many beautiful locations with 19th century dioramas, but there were some interesting displays here, even if they lacked something in aesthetics.

I don’t think it quite counts as creature, but this deep sea exploration device certainly had a lot of personality.

Here is a life-size model of a North Atlantic whale. It was installed in 2003 and replaced an early 1900s model of a Blue Whale, which unfortunately seems to have fallen apart and had to be “discarded.” Oh, what I would give to happen upon that in some junkyard…

But even better than a whale model is a real coelacanth  the fish once thought extinct that is now known to still dwell in our oceans. It’s displayed here with a baby coelacanth.

This is a Triplewart Seadevil, a deep sea angler fish, preserved in a jar. It has a rather tough name for a small, squishy fish, but it’s what it was called when people found them floating in the ocean and were totally baffled by their strange shapes.

The Smithsonian has many impressive squid to be seen, including multiple giant squid, such as the above and another held in a 1,500 gallon tank.

Here is another squid, much smaller.

And here is a fossil of a squid, from the Jurassic Period.

I just made it to this room with a mammoth and Irish Elk when the museum announced it was closing…

And that meant the end of my visit! I did have time to see the highlights like the Hope Diamond and Dom Pedro Aquamarine, and other objects not photographed here. As always, I love going into an unfamiliar museum and losing myself in the collections. Of course, this was not my only Smithsonian stop in DC, so watch here for more!

You close your eyes and imagine walking in a forest to a tent, and inside the tent is a present, and inside the present is… what? Well, I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise, as you kind of have to be at a Music Tapes performance to really appreciate their ability to immerse fully grown adults in worlds of childlike fantasies, although fantasies which are tinged with something dark that lurks just outside the red and yellow walls of their pop-up circus tent. That darkness comes from their haunting lyrics over a deceptively simple layering of instruments that the Music Tapes, led by former Neutral Milk Hotel member Julian Koster (who’d actually sold his Neutral Milk Hotel Aeroplane Over the Sea banjo to fund the circus tent tour), along with Elephant 6 collective member Robbie Cucchiaro (who also sometimes played with Jeff Mangum’s band), have perfected. They’ve been a part of the Elephant 6 group since the 1990s and sound a bit like if you had an orchestra that suddenly found themselves with only a handful of members and a pile of instruments like saws and singing televisions to try to rebuild their music.

Earlier this month on February 2, I went to the Music Tapes’ “Traveling Imaginary,” their current roving performance/storytelling event supporting their new album Mary’s Voice, at the Church for All Nations in Manhattan, presented by Wordless Music. On entering the church we immediately saw a circus tent taking up much of the space, and were all encouraged to try our luck throwing a penny (while blindfolded) at a bell. If you won, you got a prize (like an old key). Julian Koster also gave a solo performance on his saw atop a rolling piano before we finally all crowded into the tent. Then they set off on a rambling set mixed with stories about a mysterious game called “Evening” that you play in your sleep as a child, and a poor clown and cow performing in a circus. It all sounds kind of silly, but the band is so committed to the whimsy that you end up falling for it, too, cheering for a fellow audience member to guide a snowman’s hand to throw a snowball through the moon (I’m not making any of this up and, no, there weren’t drugs involved). A seven-foot-tall metronome even backed the band, and an automaton-organist played along.

I’d seen the Music Tapes before when they opened for Jeff Mangum at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, a performance that made me fall in love with their music, the giant set pieces and creative instruments somehow not feeling like gimmicks and their scrappy sound being as engaging musically as it was endearing. I have a ticket to see Jeff Mangum this coming Friday, and I hope to make it and see the Music Tapes open for him again, although seeing them in their own environment of the circus tent was something special. When we left the venue a soft snow was falling on the New York streets, and the fragments of lyrics from their song “Takeshi and Elijah” came into my head: “somehow we all played in musical bands/that toured through the lands/oh, they will wake you/and cover your form with old clothes/oh, they will take you into their arms/tell them the secret to snowing,” and I thought about the fake snowy glitter that had fallen in the tent and tried to evoke for us the same magic.

From another performance of the Music Tapes’ in another of their favorite venues: a stranger’s living room near Christmas:

One of NYC’s most glorious icons turned 100 earlier this month with a whole day of festivities. I stopped by Grand Central Station to celebrate the transport terminal’s centennial on February 1, when its always-crowded main hall was absolutely packed with brass bands, ballroom dancers, a Grand Central-themed cake, and, of course, the commuters wondering why this was all happening.

While the train center’s official name is Grand Central Terminal, most everyone calls it Grand Central Station, which was the name of the transit hub it replaced in 1913. Around 150,000 people flooded in on its opening day, and there was almost universal love for its soaring Beaux-Arts design and stately halls. The original 1871 station had to be replaced after steam locomotives were banned from the city (a gruesome train collision in 1902, in which two trains “telescoped” and killed 17, played no small part in the renovation and rebuild).

At the time it was built, it was the largest train station in the world. (It has long been surpassed, and I think Nagoya Station in Japan is currently in the lead.) It’s still the grandest in New York, and one of the few of our transit centers that is actually a beautiful place. (Sorry new Penn Station and Atlantic-Pacific,  you’re sort of dreary.) One of its most stunning features is the terminal clock, which, since its four sides are made from Tiffany glass, is estimated to be worth millions. There’s also the starry mural above with its zodiac constellations, illuminated by bulbs that have to be replaced from the attic, which is almost 50 feet above the floor.

If you weren’t able to make it to the birthday (which also included snacks at 1913 prices), there’s a wonderful exhibition called Grand By Design on the station in its Vanderbilt Hall through the middle of March. There are all sorts of centennial events throughout the year (I’ve personally most excited about Nick Cave’s soundsuit horses), so I’ll have to keep an eye out during my commutes.

I love New York in snow, and this past year winter barely arrived, so I was excited to see snow in the forecast last week. It was only a dusting, but in the morning I visited nearby Green-Wood Cemetery to walk through the grounds glimmering with snow. Here are some of my photos from the winter morning, before the flakes melted away and the paths were trodden down with visitors.

By the way, if you want to join me on some winter cemetery exploration (who knows, maybe we will get more snow and sun), I’m leading a visit to Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery next Sunday with Atlas Obscura. The theme is “The Awful Dead,” so we’ll be visiting the graves of some of the coldest hearts (for winter, of course) of mob bosses, murderers, and just horrible people, and also stopping inside the usually off-limits catacombs. So sign up!

Walking on the Lower East Side in dreary weather, I decided to take shelter inside the Eldridge Street Synagogue, a place I have long meant to visit. The gorgeous building was originally constructed back in 1887 and was the first synagogue to be established by Eastern European Jews in the United States. While for around five decades it was thronged with people, a dwindling congregation in the neighborhood resulted in the main hall that you see above being abandoned in the 1950s. An extensive restoration that started in the 1980s brought it back to its old world glory and it was reopened to the public in 2007, still operating as an Orthodox Jewish synagogue, but also serving as a historical site as the Museum at Eldridge Street. The last of the restoration details was finally finished in 2010.

The synagogue looms quietly among the low tenements and bustling businesses on the edge of Chinatown. The stately architecture is a mix of Gothic, Romanesque, and Moorish (especially in the interior), with rose windows and ornate details within and on its brick and terra cotta exterior. It was designed by two German Catholics, Peter and Francis William Herter, who went out to build other structures in the area as a sort of extension of the style of the synagogue, so if you keep an eye out on the Lower East Side you might see some tenement buildings with the Star of David or other synagogue-like touches. Overall, it feels like a very proud building, and it was built to be a testament to the hopes for the future of the immigrants in the new world and the strength of their beliefs.

There are guided tours, but I was there late in the day so I opted to wander around on my own. Much of the wood in the building has been their for over a hundred years, and you can see in the wear of the staircases, benches, and floors the phantom movement of the thousands who have been there before.

From the second story, which is the section for women during Orthodox services, you get the best view of the absolutely stunning stained glass window that was part of the restoration. It’s a celestial swirl of stars created by artist Kiki Smith with architect Deborah Gans, and seems to absorb the star details on the painted ceilings and shades of blue in the smaller stained glass and then project it all back in a way that’s strangely galactic and entrancing.

It’s hard to imagine how transporting it would have been to be a newly arrived immigrant in chaotic and grimy  19th century New York and to suddenly step into this soaring room of arches and swelling space rising to 50 feet at the highest dome, and gas-lit chandeliers hovering above their heads. Even today it feels like you are suddenly somewhere else in the quiet peace only interrupted by the creaking of the old floorboards.

I definitely recommend a visit to the Eldridge Street Synagogue, especially if you are looking for an escape from the cold winter days into warm place where you can stare into a cosmic portal spiraling above a 19th century relic of New York’s rich history.

The holidays can be quite magical in NYC, and one of the most wonderful of the annual traditions is the appearance of the Nostalgia Train, which the MTA releases along the M line for a few Sundays from late November until the end of December. And as we are a city that can’t pass up a good opportunity for a party, on one December Sunday a group of jazz bands hoped on the train for the day and were met by revelers dressed in their vintage finery to match the spirit. Me and Elizabeth made it on the last ride of the day, so here are some photos!

We boarded the train on the LES and rode all the way to Queens and back. It seemed like the train was going faster than even the new trains that I ride everyday, but that could also have been an illusion caused by the rumbling noise through the open windows.  The above train is from the 1930s and has wicker seats and ceiling fans.

Here’s one of the bands that was playing on board among the crowd. I couldn’t get a good photo, but they even had a singer on an old microphone. There was also a singing trio of women in another car, and some people were dancing and trying to keep their balance as the train flew down the tracks.

There was also a train conductor to announce when the train was ready to depart, and I suppose to assure people who had no clue why a vintage train was suddenly appearing at the station that it would indeed be making its stops and not time traveling into the past.

If you’re in the NYC area next holiday season, definitely keep an eye on the subway platform for a ghost of transit history. I hear there is also a Nostalgia Bus, although it probably doesn’t have room for jazz bands with stand-up basses. The MTA with the Transit Museum also sometimes has vintage train rides to Coney Island and other places throughout the year, and you can always stop by the Transit Museum for some stationary vintage train exploring. (You can check out some of my photos from the museum here.)

The current art experience transforming the Park Avenue Armory has people swinging through the air in the massive drill hall’s 55,000 square feet, with a giant swath of fabric billowing in the center of it all. It’s called The Event of a Thread and is by the artist Ann Hamilton. I’ve been three times since it has opened (I always must take the visitors to the best in NYC immersive art) to relax under the mesmerizing white sheet or soar on one of the creaky wooden swings.

When you enter the installation, you see two people reading into microphones with pigeons on either side. Their voices are being transmitted to speakers contained in paper bags around the room that look like sack lunches someone has forgotten. If you get to the installation about 20 minutes until it closes, an opera singer steps out on a balcony and sings, and then the pigeons are released to fly to their coop suspended above the hall. It is really quite beautiful. The recording of that song is then played when the installation opens the following day.

The people on the swings definitely dictate the dynamic of the space. Once I went and it was mostly children, making it feel like a dreamlike playground with lots of gleeful screeching. However, when it’s mostly adults, people who probably haven’t been on a swing in years, maybe decades, it gives it a whole different feeling of nostalgic joy.

At the opposite end of the room from the readers is a writer at a table who is scribbling out a response to what is happening in the hall. They can see the installation reflected in a mirror above them that tilts with a swing. I wish I could have applied for this position, just look at the awesome fuzzy coat/cape the color of pigeon feathers they get to wear!

One of the most amazing parts of the installation is the way the 42 swings are connected to the ceiling, in this really complicated lattice of chains and weights. There are even a couple connected accordions wheezing up there to give it a sort of strange soundscape. The lighting is also a great detail, with a long rectangle illuminating the exact path of each swing. At the end of the day, all of the light in the armory gets quietly darker except for those oblong forms on the floor.

While The Event of a Thread would be lifeless without the swinging people, I think the best place to experience the installation is beneath the cascade of white fabric. Looking up is entrancing as it is pulled this way and that in an erratic flow depending on how high the people are soaring on their swings. On a busy day, a whole herd of people are collapsed there, with some of the paper bag speakers transmitting the rambling narrative of the speakers, who are reading poetry, philosophy, scientific texts, and other selections. It’s all very meditative.

I’m excited to see what 2013 brings to the Armory, as I was continually impressed with what I saw there in 2012, including Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s The Murder of Crows, Tom Sach’s Mission Mars, and Philip Glass’ Another Look at Harmony. If you happen to be in NYC this week, you have until January 6 for The Event of the Thread. Pictures don’t really do it justice, but hopefully if you can’t make it, this recap gave you a bit of the ethereal experience.