Sunday was a day of champion wandering by me and Hap. I remembered that I love this partnership because Hap is undaunted, like me, by logic or practicality, which can be crucial when it comes to successful meandering.

In the continuing theme of church wandering, I tried, tried, tried again to get up into the bell tower of Riverside Church. I’ve been trying to get back up there for five years! I thought this was the day, but I was wrong. It’s been closed since 2001, and remains so. The claim is that it will reopen next Spring, a claim that I’ve heard before, guys… Nonetheless, we got to linger around the fringes of the Ethiopian service, an otherworldly mixture of wonderful incense and singing. The Riverside Church visit concluded our tour of colossal socially just churches. We also visited Grant’s Tomb, and after seeing how huge the sarcophagus is, I think that the answer to the bizarre question Who’s Buried in Grant’s Tomb might be: lots and lots of people. G’damn they’re huge!

This was a day of buses. We took the scenic route (actually, I guess all day was the scenic route) Riverside bus down to the Upper West Side, stopped in at Barnes and Noble, so I could get replacement copies of my fave NYC pocket map, and then meandered our way down to Bleeker and spent the rest of our day there. I was a little dismayed, in retrospect, to find that I forgot to eat pizza all day long. That is a terrible gaffe which I shall attempt to make up for in our remaining days. In place of pizza however, Hap and I found piroghes. Also, I found a Kathi roll at Indian Bread, which I had to invest in, though it had been mere moments since downing a piroschke.

My favorite thing in NYC has always been standing around. This is an art that is not so appreciated in smaller cities, where standing around seems to draw attention and sometimes even suspiiicion. Not in NY. I got a prime opportunity to hone my standing around skills while hap procured some new Chucks. I held down the standing around duties.

After that, the day rather whirred by. Always lots of great discussion, though, and some reverie over Danish Modern design ended up dovetailing nicely with a visit to Moss, where you can definitely get a better fork.