I went up to New York on a weekend in early April 2003 to visit my friend Amy, who's teaching at NYU, and to see a taping of The Daily Show.  On the one full day I had to explore, a snowstorm engulfed the city all day long, which forced me to conquer my irrational phobia about the NYC subway and also produced some very nice photos.

Gandhi in Union Square

The Korean War Memorial in Battery Park

The Daily Show taping was great fun, and I highly recommend it.

I also went to the Museum of Sex, which starts out being all educational and interesting (detailing the sexual mores of New York throughout its history and generally doing a good job of linking the sexual subculture with the culture as a whole) and then, when it hits the 1960s or 70s, devolves into full-on porn.  And as I went on a weekday morning, in a blizzard, there was hardly anyone else in the museum, and they did a pretty good job of spacing themselves out, so when I reached the porn section, I was alone... except for the security guard.  I didn't want to look all prudish and horrified in front of him, but I didn't exactly want to linger over the porn under his leering eye, either, so I affected a museum pose of thoughtfully furrowed brow and slow yet constant pace.  I feel compelled to mention to everybody the nude photo of Yul Brynner and the preserved human penis (even the penis museum in Reykjavík doesn't have one of those!).  People must ask about the penis a lot, because both the printed material and the audio tour make a point of noting that it's not an uncommonly large one, it just looks that way because the entire muscle is preserved, not just the part that extends outside the body.  Looking at it did cause King Missile's "Detachable Penis" to get stuck in my head.

The museum shop strikes out -- I can think of all kinds of unusual, fun products they could have created based on the exhibits, but instead they stocked up with the kind of smutty crap you used to find in Spencer Gifts: penis-shaped pasta, raunchy joke books, etc.  The only decent souvenirs were the postcards:

Amy also took me to the Strand, which was dangerous -- like I needed to add to my to-read pile of books at home.  But I mention it here in case you don't know about it -- great place to shop for books at good prices.

And to close, here's Amy in her office.

 

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