Photoville

Every September, Photoville pops up in Brooklyn Bridge Park. "Is it indoors or outdoors?" R asked. "Both, kind of," I said.

The exhibition is set up in (and sometimes on the sides of) shipping containers. It runs for two weeks, asking only a $3 donation, and is the perfect excuse to spend a sunset down by the water. R and I went on the last night this year, after an attempt last weekend got rained out.

Photoville

Free art is a marvelous thing. Spend $25 to get into MoMA, and you feel obligated to spend the entire day. Which you can't, because after two hours in a museum your brain turns off and all you want is to sit the hell down and have a beer. With free (or, let's say, up to $5) art, you can to take it as it comes. Spend ten minutes in one shipping container, breeze by others without a glance, go off and grab some pizza and ice cream across the way and come back: it's all good. It gives you art without the guilt -- art for the sheer pleasure of it, as it should be.

And Photoville puts on a good show. There's a wide range of styles and subjects, with work from everyone from NY Times photographers to middle school students. In more than one shipping container, you'll find something you like.

Photoville shipping container

As it happened, we didn't get pizza or ice cream this time. Instead, we headed up the hill to Madiba in Fort Greene, where we'd been once before for a World Cup match. (We hadn't eaten anything then, as the match (USA vs. Ghana) was a total madhouse. For any Ghana fans, apparently a South African restaurant was as close as they could get.) A $3 beer special made our drinks decision easy, and then I had the bobotie while Richard went for the oxtail potjie. Good stuff, and a nice atmosphere. Madiba has languished on my list of places to try for many years now, but, now we've broken the seal, I suspect we'll be back soon.

MAP
RECIPE: Chai. Because sometimes coffee isn't where it's at on a Sunday morning.

Origin Story

New York and London. I grew up in New York and visited London on my very first trip abroad, when I was 9. I went again when I was 20 and spending my junior year abroad in Edinburgh, and again when I was 25 on my way to and from a drive around Wales.

I've always liked London. It's the only place I've made it a point to visit more than once -- not because I don't also like other places, but because there are just so damn many of them. London, though, never felt like a foreign city; I never felt like a tourist there. London felt like home; of course it was a place I came back to.

I suppose part of it is that everyone speaks English, but that's true too in Dublin, Sydney, Auckland, San Francisco -- plenty of cities that I've visited and like or dislike to varying degrees. What really counts isn't language, but soul. New York and London are kindred souls; they feel right together. If you ♥ one, I can't see how you wouldn't ♥ the other.

And then there's Richard. He's London, I'm NY.

We met in 2012 at Cycling for Libraries. I came from NY, he came from London, and we cycled through Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia with 100 other librarians from all over the world. Two months later, we got married. One year later, he got his green card and moved to NY, and we've been here together ever since.

NY♥London, going strong.