After a nice dinner at Peter Luger and a few drinks in the lower east side, we went back to Harlem, drank some coffee and drove to da Bronx. It took a lot of effort to stay past 3am.

We visited the Fulton Fish Market a couple of years ago, and when they decided to move the facility to Hunts Point, people didn’t know if it was going to be a good thing or a bad thing. Seeing how much bigger the space was, I doubt any of the dealers complain now. The 400,000-square feet space along Food Center Drive cost about $86 million to create, but it’s so vast, clean, well-lit and seemed like a much better space than what they had at Fulton Street. Plus, they’re a few blocks away from the cooperative market which sells meat and other produce, so one can make a trip and buy everything he needs.

It was like walking into a large freezer. The place was buzzing with the beeps from the forklifts and the hustle of the fishmongers and dealers. Most of them only sell wholesale, but one guy let us buy two yellow tail snappers for $11, which is definitely cheaper–and fresher–than anything I can buy in Chinatown for the same price. Besides, I rarely see whole yellow tail snappers in stores.

Related post/s:
Hunts Point Fish Market photos on Flickr

The clouds finally lifted after seven days of rain and mist. We all woke up to the sun shining through our windows. Just in time, too, because this is our last hurrah for the summer. It took a while for us to get ready because of last night’s festivities in a few Fort Greene bars and a copious dinner at Blue Ribbon, but we were out the door by 1pm.

The drive to Storm King was beautiful. It was as if the trees were greener than they usually were; as if they were celebrating the end of the torrential rains. It was cool enough to keep the car windows open and have Arctic Monkeys and Jurassic 5 blasting through the car radio.

At Storm King, we parked our car and had a quick picnic with our Cuban sandwiches courtesy of El Partido in Washington Heights. We moved the car to the second parking lot afterwards and started our walk through the museum. The 500-acre open space in itself was a lot to take in. The oats, alfalfa and buckwheat plants are starting to take over the fields–part of the museum’s efforts to reintroduce grasses and wildflowers after the land became susceptible to invasive plants.

The sculptures made us feel insignificant. When you walk around them, you feel like there is nothing else to think about except for how tiny you are compare to everything else that concerns the rest of the world. It was tiny bit of a humility lesson, really.

The Dr. had been there before. He showed me his favorites which became mine, too, especially the Richard Serra “forks” jutting out of the small hills. My brother and I had the urge to climb the sculptures, but alas, we didn’t let our Filipino-ness embarrass him.