18th April 2019

It’s our last day and we packed up the yucky room and took our suitcases to the porter for storage. Our flight is at 11pm, so we have a full day. If I can just get Andrew to not leave for the airport 5 hours before the flight then we can fit loads in!

This year, it is the 50th anniversary of Sesame Street. I have been following them on social media for a while, as I really have a weakness for all things Muppet. I found out that there was an exhibition in Queens celebrating the early works of Jim Henson. So that was a must! We planned our route, and took the subway from Penn to 14th street (Uptown) and the M line to Steinway Street in Queens. The neighbourhood wasn’t altogether pleasant, it didn’t feel completely safe, and we felt like we stood out by looking at our map or phone, so we tried to look like locals and purposefully walk in one direction. The purposeful walk can be used in all situations where you think you might be called out for something. Such as, needing a wee when out running ... purposefully striding into a bar or restaurant gets you swiftly to the loo and out again without any questions. Useful survival tip that one.

After a few minutes we had purposefully strode to the MOMI (Museum of the Moving Image). You would think this a rather odd place to have a museum. Not much passing trade and not many people that would venture to Queens. It is, however, there for good reason. It is in the former building of Astoria Studios - basically the east coast headquarters of Paramount Pictures. It is the first museum in the US devoted solely to the art of film. It is also the home of the only backlot in New York. Come to think of it, some of the surrounding area did look like the film set of a rather scary crime movie, but not sure that was entirely intentional.

By coincidence, there were two exhibitions on at the museum which ticked boxes for the Bryans. Firstly, Jim Henson, and secondly, the evolution of computer gaming. It was going to be a long visit then.

The Jim Henson exhibition was fascinating. He had a whole life before the muppets and Sesame Street. He had always been a puppeteer, but had also written comical cartoon strips. He invented Kermit the Frog in 1954 as part of a short sketch show for TV that he wrote and performed with his wife. The Muppets began their life by appearing on other TV shows, and also commercials. He set up Muppets Inc. in 1963, and his wife gave up work to look after their 5 (!) children and was replaced by Frank Oz (a more familiar name).

Sesame Street was actually the idea of a company called the Children’s Television Workshop, which had seen the work of the Muppets and wanted to collaborate for an educational programme. This is where characters like Elmo, Cookie Monster and Bert & Ernie started to appear.

The exhibition was excellent. Teeming with treasures from his own estate, hand drawn comic strips, puppet plans. Actual puppets of Kermit, Miss Piggy, Elmo, even Big Bird (who was huge). There were so many scripts and even fan letters that he had kept. A real insight. Sadly he died at 53, from a treatable illness that he neglected to seek help for.

At the end, you could watch a full length episode of the muppet show. It all brought back many happy memories for me, as I was a huge fan and still am.

The next floor was all about film, and how moving images have changed from the Zoetrope (a bizarre word I always remember due to countless trips to the Bethnal Green Museum from age 5-10), to the blockbusters of today. We got to try out dubbing over voices to famous films and adding sound effects. It was really good fun and there was so much more to it than we had thought. There was a whole section on make up, which I found really interesting.

The final floor staged the computer game and animation area, which wasn’t really my thing, but Oliver and Andrew loved it. Starting from Pong tennis on the ZX81 right up to the current craze of Fortnite. I have to admit that it’s come a long long way in a short time, and the graphics in games around sports make the characters look completely real.

After a few enjoyable hours, we made our way from MOMI and started thinking of our next place to go. Since we had been 24 hours without a pizza slice, we made a little hunt for a pizza place and found one on our way to the subway. Retro Pizza was not a patch on Joe’s, but filled a hole.

We took the subway back to Penn and then another subway to Brooklyn. High Street subway stop. The subway system is a little odd. It goes up and down Manhattan, but hardly across it, and it goes over to Brooklyn and Queens on the other side of the East river, but there’s very little that joins those two. So a trip from Queens to Brooklyn involves going back to Manhattan and out again. Fill the gap MTA!

We were taking this subway trip to a) sit down and b) because it is the closest to the Brooklyn side of the Brooklyn Bridge. The walk along this bridge is an absolute must. And if you can do it from the Brooklyn side then you are facing the stunning Manhattan skyline the whole time. A great deal of the Bridge extends both sides of the river, so you end up walking a lot of it before you are really feeling that you are on a bridge. And it is windy. Always. It is 5,989 feet long. That’s a long time to be in the wind.

The wind. New York is a windy old city. It’s that grid system. Quick lesson - before the grid system, New York was a bit of a mess. People just building things where they felt suited them. Once the immigration boom started they had to think fast on how to maximise space. So they grid system was invented. Most of the first parts of NY can still be seen in the south of Manhattan. But from 14th street upwards it gets a bit more organised. There are 12 main “avenues” running east to west. 1st Avenue on the East and 12th on the west. Avenues have an even spaced between them. Streets cross the avenues from 1st in the south all the way up to 155th in the north. They are equally set apart making it easy to imagine how far you need to walk from one place to another. Clever. I once read that the grid system was intended to take the east river wind and blow through the streets as a kind of air cleaning system, but I can’t find any reference to that despite much Googling.

Back to the bridge. The reason for this subway choice was that there is a small pedestrian stairway that you can climb up to cut off part of the bridge that is over the road, making that start of the walk much easier. We got to the top of the stairs and Oliver literally stopped in his tracks with a “woooah”. It is quite a sight on your first time. There is traffic underneath you, and the walk is on rickety old boards. There is a cycle lane and a pedestrian lane, and woe betide any pedestrian that crosses into that bike lane. The punishment from an angry cyclist ranges from an angry bell ring, to a swear word to a sharp elbow.

We walked at a leisurely pace, taking pictures of the jaw dropping structure and the skyline, I don’t think that you can ever become blasé about that view.

The walk took about 40 minutes, and we caught a subway back uptown to the leafy outskirts of Central Park. Just a quick stop to take some pictures of the stunning Romeo and Juliet statue by the Delacorte theatre, which my parents love. It had been an overcast day until we crossed the bridge, and then the sun came out. The bluest of skies for my pictures of the statue.

And there we finish. Just the subway back to the hotel, the subway and LIRR back to JFK airport for our flight home.

Oliver has loved his first experience of New York. I’m pretty sure it won’t be his last. Fingers crossed I will be back one day too.

Thank you New York, for your mix of crazy people and lovely people, and for all of your diversity - we had an absolute ball.