Tinasbeen

Whirlwind Weekend

Bill and I had a busy weekend, with visitors in town every day. It's always nice to have an excuse to check out new things! Though unfortunately we didn't have time to squeeze in visits to the Newark Arts Council's Gallery Crawl on Friday night or Open Studio Tour on sunday - maybe next year: http://www.newark-opendoors.org/.

Friday started for me with the second meeting of the Institute's Heningburg Fellows program, a meeting where civic leaders who work on a broad variety of issues - development, schools, green space, health care - come together to talk about their experiences in and their ideas about Newark. Check out our website here for a list of current fellows and a description of the program: http://65.36.189.169/iecme/?section=events&fuse=main&id=57.

That evening Bill and I met up with friends from Roselle Park for a quick bite at Riviera - a bakery on Ferry that turns out to have pretty tasty grilled sandwiches. They were on their way to the opening night concert of the New Jersey Symphony at NJ Performing Arts Center, where they have a subscription for the season - $95 for 10 shows, not bad: http://www.njsymphony.org/Tickets/Subscriptions/Newark.htm.

We spent the evening at home, though since i had an early appointment at the Institute to talk to students at the Saturday Academy program, which brings high school students from Newark onto campus to take morning courses on topics like Student Movements in the 60s and Slave Narrative and American History: http://65.36.189.169/iecme/?section=events&fuse=main&id=59 .

I was there to see if any of the students were interested in helping work on a documentary about high school students' experiences with the Newark riots that I'm putting together, and had quite a few sign up - should be a great experience all around.

But I had to get back home quickly for a visit from my aunt, after which Bill and I walked down to Riverbank Park to catch the end of a "vintage baseball game," sponsored by the NJ Historical Society, in which the teams wore vintage uniforms and played by 18th century rules: http://www.jerseyhistory.org/news_detail.php?recid=97 For instance, no one but the catcher wore gloves, and the umpire wore formal clothing and stood behind the pitcher - interesting.

That was followed by a (LOOONG) trip into Manhattan to meet Bill's friends for dinner at Cafe Mozart (tasty, but they put a white curly wig on you if it's your birthday - scary): http://www.cafemozart.com/ and some drinks and a few rounds of Connect Four at Dive 75: http://www.divebarnyc.com/dive75.htm - not really a dive bar, but ok anyway.

Somehow we managed to get up the next morning to meet up with friends visiting from Philly, who came up to check out the comics exhibit at the Newark museum. We had a terrific and very reasonably priced lunch at Seabra's Marisqueria: http://www.njdiningguide.net/Seabras/lunch.html. Two of our visitors were from Greece, and said the food and the neighborhood reminded them of being there.

Then we headed over to the Newark Museum, where we checked out the fantastic exhibit on the history of comics: http://www.newarkmuseum.org/comics/, running now through January 28. The Newark Museum has half of the exhibit, and focuses mostly on newspaper comics; the Jewish Museum in NYC has the other half, and focuses more on comic books: http://www.thejewishmuseum.org/

I think we got the sweet end of that deal - my favorite by far were the amazingly detailed and beautiful pieces by Winsor McCay, who's best known for the "Little Nemo in Slumberland" Sunday comics. We also got to see a lecture from the editor of the star Ledger, writer Pete Hamill, and artist Jules Pfeiffer, who had an interesting discussion about the pieces in the exhibit and their own memories of comics.

After some delicious desserts at the reception afterward, my friends headed home and we went back to our apartment to get ready for our next visitors - friends arriving the next day from England on their way to NYC and Boston. Fortunately, we were all in the mood for a quiet day at that point - though they insisted on taking me out to dinner at Boi Na Brasa, a rodizio restaraunt in the neighborhood that's recently been
written up in both the New York Times and the Village Voice: http://www.villagevoice.com/nyclife/0611,sietsema,72498,15.html

We all slept in the next morning, understandably.

posted by Tina @ 12:29 PM