a day with Jack

Jack is my 16-year-old nephew who lives in Massachusetts.  He’s a great kid.  Smart. Intuitive.  Easy.  Interesting.  And a talented photographer.  He is visiting me for the weekend, and our plan is to explore New York with our cameras.

I pick Jack up near Penn Station Friday night.  The bus is an hour late.  By the time we drop his bags at my apartment and have dinner, the night is over.

Saturday is a perfect fall day.  Cool.  A little overcast.  Great for taking pictures.  Around 11:30 Jack and I are finally ready to leave.  Except I can’t find my glasses.  We look everywhere.  No luck.  And then I remember.  I had tossed my glasses in a grocery bag earlier this morning after buying some bagels. Problem is that after breakfast I had thrown the bag down the garbage chute.

Aziz, our doorman/handyman, unlocks the compactor room.  There we search through garbage and find the Agata bag with my glasses in it.  This is not how I had envisioned my day with Jack starting.

Halfway to Central Park I realize I’ve forgotten my camera.  First my glasses and now my camera.  I can’t imagine what Jack must be thinking.  Neither one of us wants to turn back.  We decide we can share one camera.

Although the leaves haven’t turned, the park is beautiful.

Jack

We end up at Columbus Circle, where we take the subway to 23^rd Street.  Our first stop is Pace Gallery to see an exhibit on Irving Penn’s photography.  Although the neighborhood we pass through to get to the gallery is seedy, the gallery itself is pristine.  We both feel inspired by Penn’s genius.

From Chelsea we take a bus to the outskirts of Greenwich Village.  

And then we walk miles and miles for the next four hours.  West Village. Village. Soho. Chinatown. Little Italy. Soho again.  East Village.  And back to the Village. In between we take lots of pictures.  Jack’s focus is primarily on unusual car or car features, architecture, and city streets.  

I like the eccentric people we see, such as these two.

Washington Square Park

Resting on a hydrant near Soho

We eat early at Slide (excellent) and are home by eight — exhausted, but sated, after a day well-spent (and hopefully long-remembered).