i was sitting in mcsorley's. outside it was New York and beautifully snowing.

Yesterday I had the privilege of drinking at the oldest Irish tavern in New York City (McSorley's Old Ale House opened in 1854) with a few classmates from my program.

McSorley's serves only two types of ales, light and dark (don't make the mistake of asking for something in between!) and they're both priced at a very reasonable $4.50 (each order is two half pints). Yum!

The place is gritty. The floors are covered in sawdust, gruff Irish waiters and bartenders take your orders, and walls are plastered with aged newspaper articles, artwork, and memorabilia. Everyone from Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, to Woody Guthrie, and John Lennon, have stopped for a drink here.

Mcsorley's also has the infamous distinction of not allowing women to drink there until 1970! Thankfully now, all are welcome to enjoy their tasty ale, which poet e. e. cummings famously described as "the ale which never lets you grow old."

To cap off the night, I had some of McSorley's famous cheese platter, which consists of a package of crackers, sharp cheddar cheese, raw onions, and some extremely spicy hot mustard that can be found on each table in a beer mug.

Cheers!

Check out McSorley's official website.

Here's a link to e. e. cummings' rambling prose poem, "i was sitting in mcsorley's".

New York is for foodies

Taking the subway in New York has become second nature to me. The jargon, thank goodness, is no longer an alien language, I no longer color code the different lines like I do in Montreal (taking the green or orange line) but rather, for example, take the '7' and transfer to the '1' uptown to get to Columbia. I also feel quite comfortable going to places I've never been to before.

Yesterday I made my way to the Lower East Side and explored East Houston Street which divides the Lower East Side and the East Village. I passed by Yonah Schimmel Knish Bakery, a fixture for more than ninety years and just down the block was the Sunshine Cinema, constructed in the 1840s and later used as a boxing arena and Yiddish vaudeville theatre. Today it shows indie films.

I couldn't stop for a movie or for mouth-watering knishes because I had one purpose: Katz's Delicatessen. Well past its 100th birthday and still packing 'em in for pastrami and corned beef sandwiches. Surrounded by photos of the famous: Al Gore, Jerry Lewis, and even (shudder) Pauly Shore, it seems like everyone's been here. One table in the middle of the dining room has a not-so inconspicuous sign hanging over it which says, "When Harry Met Sally... Hope you have what she had", commemorating Meg Ryan's fake big-o from the film, When Harry Met Sally.

I, however, couldn't eat a pastrami sandwich, not after experiencing Schwartz's world renowned smoked meat sandwiches in Montreal. That would just be wrong. Instead I was hankerin' for one of Katz's infamous spicy hot dogs, slathered in sauerkraut and hot mustard. Along with a Dr. Brown's Black Cherry Soda, steak fries, and a mountainous plate of cucumbers and pickles, I had my long-awaited spicy dog and scarfed it down with gusto. My pilgrimage is now complete.

Grant's Tomb and a New York rat

Anyone else think October and November went by extremely quickly? Now that it's December, I have one more week of classes. It's hard to believe. Yesterday I had some time to kill so I visited the General Grant National Memorial (commonly known as Grant's Tomb) which happens to be near Columbia campus. Ulysses S. Grant was the 18th President of the United States of America and the leading Union general in the American Civil War.

The interior was inspired by Napoleon's tomb at Les Invalides in Paris - like Napoleon's tomb, I think the coffins look like chocolate pralines. Surrounding the building are curved mosaic benches that seem totally out of place with the formal architecture of the tomb. I thought they were designed by Antonio Gaudi but in fact they were inspired by the Spanish architect and
really by the Chilean-born Brooklyn artist Pedro Silva. The mosaics are really weird, depicting subjects ranging from the Inuit to New York taxis to Donald Duck.

I stopped to have a bite to eat on one of the colourful benches and witnessed another first: a New York rat. I was starting to eat a home-packed sandwich when I noticed something crawling in the grass and bushes nearby. I thought it was a squirrel but when it emerged from the grass I quickly realized the furry creature was way too big.

How would you react in this type of situation? I didn't scream or anything - as long as we weren't "hanging out" on the bench together I was fine - but when we made eye contact, the rat, who was more frightened than I was, scurried away.

I came out unscathed from the encounter but as long as I don't run into any C.H.U.D.s in New York, I think I'll be all right.

Back in New Haven

My visit to Montreal was quick but great fun. It was a blast seeing my friends and family. I enjoyed some theatre: saw The Satchmo' Suite and my mother invited me to Michel Tremblay's Assorted Candies; tried a couple of new restaurants: Chine Toque and Nonya, the only Indonesian restaurant in town; and experienced the craziness of Expozine.

This year's Expozine was packed and I grabbed as much swag as I could. I was overwhelmed by the sheer amount of people in attendance. Not bad for an 5-year old event.

I picked up Susan Elmslie's QWF award winning book, I, Nadja, and Other Poems; Catherine Kidd's much-anticipated, Bipolar Bear; and Dreadful Paris by Melissa A. Thompson; along with a variety of other knick-knacks. It was also nice to chat with people I haven't seen in a while, like Sherwin Tjia, Jon Paul Fiorentino, and Laura Roberts.

It was strange to commute into New York this morning after having almost a week off but I'll be done school soon. In fact, I'll be back in Montreal in approximately three weeks. I'd better go off and get back to work so I can end the semester with a bang.

Maryn and Hugh Grant

Well, not exactly. Maryn and I spent Saturday in New York and started the day off going to Madame Tussauds. We had recently seen the 1933 movie, Mystery of the Wax Museum starring Fay Wray and thought it would be a blast to see some actually wax sculptures. I've seen the Madam Tussauds in London when I was younger but Maryn had never been to one.

From contemporary pop-culture icons like Paris Hilton - with, how shall I put this, pokey nipples showing through her blouse, Brad Pitt and his baby, Oprah, and even Britney Spears with a disturbingly realistic heaving chest to artistic figures and world leaders like Salvador Dali, Ernest Hemingway, Gandhi, Pope John Paul II, and Bill Clinton; Madame Tussauds had them all.

Later, we went to see two Vaclav Havel plays: Audience and Protest, which are being performed for the Havel Festival in honour of his 70th birthday and his current residency at Columbia University. I am performing a scene from Protest for the final project in my acting class so it was interesting to see how this performance group's take on it.