Westchester Send-Off Party: August 20, 2006

This past weekend I attended the send-off party for incoming students in Westchester County, NY. It took place at the home of Ari (AB ’96) and Michelle (MBA ’01) Weinberger in Scarsdale. I had a really great time meeting incoming students and their parents.

I left on Sunday, August 20, the day of the party, on a 9 AM flight out of O’Hare (which meant that I had to wake up at 6 AM just like a regular work day), and arrived in New York at around noon. I took a cab to my hotel, the Cosmopolitan in Tribeca - not a great hotel, but cheap and close to public transportation and the Brooklyn Bridge. Companions on my journey included a number of CDs (Sufjan Stevens, Matmos, and Owen Pallet, among others) and Raymond Chandler’s The Little Sister.



One of my favorite things to do in New York is to walk around, and I always love to spend a big part of my first day walking around the city, usually listening to a good album. To kill some time before my train up to Westchester, and to find some lunch, I set off towards Canal Street, always a-bustle on a Sunday in New York. I crowd-wove for a few blocks and then stopped in and grabbed a sandwich at Dean & Deluca, after which I jumped on the subway and headed up to Grand Central. Caught the 2:23 train up to Scarsdale and spent a considerable amount of time being distracted from my reading by watching Harlem, the Bronx, and Westchester pass me by. One of the things I’m continually amazed by during my travel (professionally and personally) to New York is the plethora of hulking brick buildings built to accommodate the post-war population boom – a phenomenon that, given Chicago’s ample space, we didn’t really experience. Also, bridges. But more on that later.



I made it up to Scarsdale safe and sound and cabbed it over to the Weinbergers. I didn’t catch any pictures of the event because I was having such a good time talking to incoming students, their parents, and even a fellow alum or two. Parents wanted to know about what their kids would do after graduation, and what I thought of our new rank in the US News and World Report; students wanted to know what I thought of their dorms. I was pleased that the incoming students in attendance enjoyed talking to each other, and their excitement at their upcoming journey was infectious (and made me a little nostalgic). A representative from the Newberger Hillel Center was on hand, and he and I spent some time talking about the ways our offices can talk to each other more. All told, it was a really great party, and I can’t say enough how much it meant for me, and for our office, to be a part of this transition period where prospies become students (and eventually, very active alums!).

After I came back into the city I went for a run, since I’d skipped my usual Saturday run. Being something of a creature of habit, I’m very used to my route here in Chicago, and I was a little nervous when I started out from my hotel, especially because blocks in NYC are comparatively shorter. Then I realized that I was close to the Brooklyn Bridge, which I’d never walked across. I ran on over to the bridge and managed, with a little bit of stopping and starting, to get across and back. It was a gorgeous day, about sunset, and the bridge was full of people, and it was one of the coolest jogs I’ve taken in some time. I wish now that I'd taken my camera.



Of course I never visit New York without taking a trip to the Strand, and after I’d recovered from my run I took the train there and picked up Cormac McCarthy’s The Crossing and Richard Yates’s Revolutionary Road, the latter of which was recommended to me by a colleague here in the office. After that I walked over to the East Village for dinner at Three of Cups, a favorite Italian restaurant of mine. I definitely recommend it to any of you who are in the area. The service is a little spotty, but the quality of the food definitely makes it worth a trip. A quick cab ride later, I was back in my hotel and settled in for the night.

I grabbed this shot as I was on my way to LaGuardia in a cab. It’s the sun rising over Brooklyn as I crossed the bridge:



Stay tuned! I’ll update with more travel stories as fall progresses.