Trip to NYC + Day 1

Wednesday I went up to Brooklyn to visit Start, an AMAZINGLY gifted poet and also one of my closest friends for the past 5+ years (here's his myspace and wordpress websites).

On my first full day in the city we went to The Tenement Museum . The museum educates the greater masses about immigrant life in NYC, roughly between the mid-to-late 1800s up through the economic hard times of the Great Depression, through guided tours. The tours take place in an old tenement building on the Lower East Side (Orchard St) where former residences have been designed to period. You can choose from several tours: you can take a guided neighborhood walk, listen to a Jewish family's stories of getting by during the Great Depression, learn about immigrants in the old garment industry, or hear the stories of Irish immigrants.


(I snagged this from the museum's website)

We did the tour called "Getting By" about an Italian and a Jewish family living on 97 Orchard St during the tenement heyday and then during the Great Depression. There were a couple of audio tapes featuring a quirky-yet-adorable woman reminiscing on her younger days in the tenement; singing songs on her mother's bedroom chest and listening to Italian music on the radio... over-all a good time. Only $13 for the tour.

Thursday night, Start was a featured poet for a Brooklyn College event. I'm including a short bio that I asked him to email me. Please look him up (websites above) and see his shows if you're in NYC.

Start is a poet/performer/grad student who believes that these 3 roles have a symbiotic relationship in his life. After being raised in the biggest city in the great bluegrass state of Kentucky and spending years around the greater Cincinnati area, start relocated to Brooklyn to pursue dreams of better, more efficient poetry as well as a master’s degree in psychology. He believes in the power of tattoos, dictionaries, and thesauruses, and is working for the day he and friends set up an incredibly multi-purpose non-profit organization.

Also present at the event were Mahogany Browne and Jive Poetic, Friday and Wednesday night slam hosts respectively at the famous Nuyorican Poets Cafe... good poetry and and free pizza. I was a happy camper!