Yale Update #1 - Booking New York

 Before heading up to Yale for the summer, I spent five days in New York City with my partner, C.J. We stayed at The Amsterdam Inn on the upper west side. It's very cheap for New York, just under 100 dollars a night. This is the floor map on the back of our room's door. Our room is the one with the dot. It was just a bit too small to actually take a picture of the room, so I took one of the map. Did I mention that it was cheap?

C.J. is an artist and a big fan of both Medieval European art and of textiles.  This means that whenever we go to New York we visit the unicorn tapestries at The Cloisters.  This is not sacrifice for me at all, since I enjoy the art there and they have a very nice cafe/garden where I can sit and draw while C.J. gets his fill of tapestry.  You can see my sketch in the picture to the right. 

  

I made a conscious decision not to go to the Strand Bookstore this time. I've been to it on all of my three previous trips to New York City -- it's huge, it's wonderful but to be honest, it's not really my kind of store. I'd much rather go to a smaller bookstore, one that's comfortable for browsing and much more likely to have six or seven books I've never heard of but look so interesting I have to buy them.  I tend to walk out of The Strand empty handed and I think it's a bit pricey for a used bookstore.

Unfortunately, I also made a conscious decision not to buy any books this time either since  I'll have the Yale library at my disposal all summer long. On Broadway, just across the street from Zabar's is Westsider Rare and Used Books.  More used than rare, but lots of good stuff.  I found many titles from England which haven't made their way to the left coast, at least not to the used book stores I go to.  Westsider is a small store but the books go all the way to the top of the twenty foot ceilings.  You have to use a ladder to get to the ones on the high shelves.  I bought one book.  C.J. took it back to California so I can't check the title but it's by Jane Gardem who wrote The Queen of the Tambourine.

A surprise treasure is the bookshop at the Tenement Museum in the Lower East Side.  If you've not been to the Tenement museum, I highly recommend it.  They've preserved a mid-19th century tenement and offer several different guided tours of the apartments which are furnished to reflect different periods of time and different waves of immigration to the U.S.   It's fascinating, and their book shop is wonderful.  There is a focus on immigration and the immigrant experience, but I found an autographed copy of The Thing Around Your Neck and had to have it.  I'm a Chimimanda Adichie fanboy.  If you're out there Chimimanda, I still want to interview you.  I don't mind that you never replied to my email. 

The Housing Works Bookstore/Cafe on Crosby St., not too far from the Tenement Museum, is a used bookstore junky's paradise.  They've an excellent cafe and a wide selection of top notch books in great condition and at excellent prices.  Better than what I'm used to paying in California.  Their wifi is free with a 1.50 dollar purchase.

Much of New York is a bargain.  The books, the breakfasts.  We found lots of museums with free nights and pay what you want polices, and once we gave up on getting a ticket to a Broadway show, we were able to see four Off-Off-Broadway shows for under 110.00 dollars for two.

Now, C.J. is back in California and I'm at Yale.  The Yale bookstore is a Barnes and Noble.  It's a very good Barnes and Noble, but still.  I was hoping for something else.  And so far, there are no bargains at Yale.  New Haven is turning out to be much more expensive than New York.