Pride Parade 2014

This is another parade that I had never been to in over 10 years of living in NYC. I'm very happy I made it.
                                                                   

This is the map I used to get there courtesy of these guys 

And these are some of my favorite pics

 I consider circumcision barbaric so I was happy to see this float go by.

 This is the Housing Works float. You can't help but admire that all they do is fight AIDS and AIDS stigma.

 This guy has a Jamaican flag, which is interesting because Jamaican's are notoriously homophobic. I'm not sure if he was showing that there are gay men in Jamaica, or if he was protesting Jamaican's treatment of gay men since he had some fliers.

                                                                  A queen I presume.

 Some sexay mens :0

Here is a link to more pics

116th Street Festival and the Big Apple Barbeque Block Party June 7, 2014

I am in love with Puerto Rico, despite having only been to the San Juan area. Three times! And despite having been in New York for 11 years, I have never been to the Puerto Rican Day Parade. Yeh, I still haven't been. I went to Govenor's Ball on Friday and was dead tired on Saturday. I knew I wouldn't be able to do anything as strenuous as standing to watch a parade go by and fight to get between barricades and scream as floats go by and I found out that there would be no food. Fail. I needed some mofongo like a sunburn needs aloe vera.
So I did some light research and found out that the day before that is the 116th street festival which is really a street fair and food would be there. I opted for that experience. I took the 4 train to the 6 and got off at 116th Street. Then I needed a Capital One bank so I could buy a big ass piña colada. I had to walk 5 blocks down and across and back up only to find out they were selling the piña coladas in the pineapple for $20. WTH? No thank you said my money and I instead bought a watered down, no coconut milk included cousin to a piña colada piña colada. Disappointed I turned to food and was rewarded with a Canoas. Yum yum yum!

These dancers were great but more experimental and not traditional at all.

 

Street baricades

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 Later I moved on to the Big Apple Barbeque Block Party at Madison Square Park. From my research on Chow.com the best way to approach this is to get in line for the out of town BBQ spots, which makes sense. Why stand in line for something you can get any old day? I got there late but there was a band performing country tunes and people laying on the grass and people buying and drinking beer but there were only a few places that were still serving food -most were closed and you could see them cleaning up after themselves. Apparently they move on to another town the next day. Dinosaur BBQ was still serving but I am not a fan so I skipped the everlasting line.

                                                           
                                                            Man putting rub on pig

                                                             

A half pig being grilled. First time sight for me.

 

 Welcome sign

 

People lined up for finger lickin' BBQ

 

And that was the end of a Saturday well spent!Sunday I recovered and watched the Puerto Rican Day parade on TV.

Morgan Library, April 27, 2014

Today I went all out with cooking. I made stew peas, beef soup that really turned out to be pumpkin beef soup (slight fail), rice and peas, and curry chicken back. For money purposes I have decided to learn to cook a few items that I love to buy on the road as we say. I soaked the peas overnight and then pressured them and then split them into 3 portions and continued. 
Things to complain about-despite using some of the fat from the beef, the pumpkin overwhelmed the beef flavor in the soup. Upon further research it seems I should have used a piece of beef with bone in it. Oh well, next time.
Anywho, after this, I was dead beat but wanted to go see the Little Prince exhibit at the Morgan Library because my coworker' wife works there and she made costumes for the kids to act out the story. When we got there we saw the entrance fee was $18 but we were told that in 40 minutes it would be free to view Mr. Morgan's collection. We decided to walk around and come back at 4pm. 
Once inside we made our way to the Little Prince Exhibit by way of the section we were actually supposed to be in.

Very exciting exhibit. I'm not gonna lie, I never read the book but I sold hundreds over the 3 years I worked at Barnes and Noble. You don't expect booksellers to read every book they recommend, do you? I love seeing writer's work throughs. The stops and starts, and changes, and sometimes the huge differences between the original idea and the final boo. Loved, loved, loved it!