At 5 p.m. we are in Central Park.
My friend Marilen Clemente lives a few blocks from here. We haven’t seen each other in three years, the last time being at the tail-end of a very cold winter on the other side of the Atlantic, where our week of touring was spent laughing and taking a gazillion pictures.
Now I am in New York. In a hotel that I booked online because the pictures looked good and it was two blocks from Macy’s — but nobody really says anything about the smell, do they? I arrived the night before and slept for eight hours, trying to recover from a sickness that knocked me down for a week in Manila.
Feeling much better the next day, I walk over to Borders bookstore and Korea Town where I have a huge lunch, and then take a cab to Marilen’s apartment on the other side of Manhattan. She tells me over the phone to wear comfortable shoes so I put on my favorite running shoes and a hoodie dress for a tour of her backyard.
I’ve been to Central Park a few times before, mostly to run and twice to eat at Tavern on the Green, but I have never really seen it with somebody who knows it. Like most New Yorkers who are lucky enough to live near the park, Marilen treats it like her own great lawn, watching concerts there with friends or having a picnic.
She takes me to the Pond. I take out a Sony Ericsson K770i, the Cyber-shot phone that I’m road-testing, to take pictures. For the next 24 hours, this little violet phone that feels so light in my palm will record our day in New York.
The Pond is bordered by trees and shrubs, and surrounded by benches. It’s a nice, warm afternoon and people are reading on park benches or rollerblading. Marilen says just give New Yorkers a little sun and they will take their tops off. As if on cue, we walk past a woman in a bikini, sunbathing on the grass, reading a book, and oblivious to everyone else.
Near East 74th Street is one of the park’s most beloved landmarks: a bronze sculpture of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, commissioned by philanthropist George Delacorte for his wife Margarita. Alice and her friends are having a party atop a giant mushroom, where kids and adults climb up to have their pictures taken. Nearby is the sculpture of Hans Christian Andersen reading an enormous book with a duck at his side. We want to climb up his lap, but a man and woman have appropriated the space for themselves and refuse to move.
We pass by other attractions: Shakespeare Garden, where only plants mentioned in his plays are planted, including primrose, wormwood, quince, lark’s heel, eglantine, flax and cowslip; the Loeb Boathouse and Restaurant, where you can watch the sunset and people enjoying a boat ride. The Bethesda Fountain and Terrace with its “Angel of Waters” sculpture; the Naumburg Bandshell, where musicians from Duke Ellington to The Grateful Dead and Bon Jovi have performed throughout the years.
Our last stop is Strawberry Fields, where some hippies are shooting the breeze and fans of John Lennon are laying flowers on the marker “Imagine.” A few steps from here, you can see his apartment, The Dakota, where he was shot on Dec. 8, 1980. A year after his death, the city council designated the 2.5-acre area between 71st and 74th Streets as “Strawberry Fields.”
This area of Central Park is shaped like a teardrop.
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We meet Marilen’s friends for tapas at Union Square, the place where Broadway and the Bowery come together. But first, Marilen takes me to Adidas, the brand that always leaves me bankrupt, and then to Barnes and Noble, the biggest branch in the city, which looks like a firehouse station with its red brick walls. We walk over to an outlet warehouse of sporting goods and make fun of some sexy shirts — what is so sporty about that?
The Filipino couple I am introduced to have been living in New York for several years. Like most Pinoys living abroad, they know half of what’s currently going on back home but are caught in that inexplicable vortex of time when they left the country.
The husband turns to me and asks: Kumusta na si Kuya Germs?
I really, really have no idea.
* * *
The next morning, I wake up Marilen and tell her I’m going for a run in Central Park. I feel rusty, tired and lazy. The park is obviously a favorite place for runners with its thousands of trees and winding paths and water. The last time I ran here was in March near the Reservoir with Myrza Sison of Marie Claire magazine. We got lost and we ended up walking for two hours trying to find our way back to the right side of town. Back then, Myrza and I spotted a very fit African-American granny who was speed-walking…well, she was jiving actually or hip-hopping, pumping her shoulders and bending her knees while walking — like she had a boom box on one shoulder.
This morning, 15 minutes into the park, I spot Hip-hop Granny again — still jiving, still wearing all black.
And I am still huffing and puffing.
* * *
She bought them from craigslist.com — our tickets for the men’s doubles finals and women’s semis at the US Open.
Craigslist is like ebay, a network of online communities founded in the San Francisco Bay Area with free classified ads for just about anything — homes, concert tickets, apartments, pets, furniture, clothing, jewelry, books, and people. Most transactions are cash basis. The seller comes to your house and you pay for your goods. Sometimes you get burned, other times you get a bargain. Our tickets are a bargain at $50 each, originally priced at $75.
That’s how many people find their apartments in New York — through online networks. It’s amazing how apartment hunting takes up most of the conversations around here. How much is the rent, how did you get it, how much did you pay the broker? Only here can you ask a perfect stranger such questions and it wouldn’t be considered impolite.
What do you want to do? Marilen had asked me when I was still in Manila.
Something I haven’t done before, I e-mailed back.
So here we are at Grand Central Station, where author Elizabeth Smart once sat down and wept and wrote her poetic prose about her love affair with the poet George Barker. People are coming and going, and I take pictures of them.
We meet Marilen’s girlfriends — both doctors — and have brunch. Then off we go to Flushing Meadows in Queens.
Our seats are way up at the $254-million Arthur Ashe Stadium but you can see all of the action happening on court. The atmosphere is like going to the movies — you get to load up on junk food and soda with all the concession stands — except the sun is unbearably hot.
The men’s doubles go on and on, and when brothers Bob and Mike Bryan finally win, the red carpet is literally rolled out and the flags and the trophies are in center court in a flash. And then it is the women’s semis: Jelena Jankovic vs. Elena Dementieva; Serena Williams vs. Dinara Safina.
Something must be said about what they’re wearing: They’re all so cute and feminine. Even without Maria Sharapova, it is still a fashion moment. My favorite is Jankovic’s yellow Reebok dress with a blue ribbon at the waist and white trim; Dementieva is wearing a white Yonex sleevelss top and black skirt; Williams is in a red Nike dress (when she came out of the pit she was wearing huge hoop earrings and carrying a big-ass Nike tennis bag); and Safina is in a pink Adidas dress.
The first match is slow with Jankovic challenging every other call (she wins in two sets), while the second match is fast and all power. At first we think Dinara has got a fighting chance, and then it turns out that Serena is just warming up and she attacks with so much speed that, from where we are sitting, we sometimes can’t see the ball but just hear it being whacked back and forth.
Throughout the afternoon we are complaining about the sun. Where are the clouds? How horrid we must smell! Would they toss us out of the stadium if we opened an umbrella? (We didn’t have one actually.)Why isn’t there shade in our part of the stadium? We are all burned, notwithstanding the high SPFs of our sunblocks.
After Williams wins (she defeats Jankovic in the finals two days later), we make our way back to Manhattan. In Marilen’s apartment, her friends call her up — they are trying to find an apartment with an oven because they need to cook for a party that night — while I have to go back to Chelsea.
She puts me in a cab and we say our goodbyes.
Next time, next time you’re in town…she says.
It was just a little over 24 hours and I got to do so many new things…I say.
The next day, Hurricane Hannah makes landfall. It is a gloomy day in Manhattan. I look in the mirror and laugh at my sunburn.
I miss the sun.
* * *
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