A Sunday across Bridges, Boroughs and Class Borders

Sunday is God's day. If you're a Christian of course. Im Jewish, which means it should be Friday night thru Saturday, and if you're a Jehovah's Witness, there are no holidays because every day is God's day, but that's not the point. Sunday is supposed to be a day off. And if you work freelance, like I do, actually having Sunday off is a special blessing, so I decided I was going to make this one count.

I was going to bike across a bridge I'd never biked before, and go to a museum I'd never been to. I met up with my friend Marin, who has become my defacto sunday biking buddy, as well as my closest friend in contrast to our height differences (6' 5" to 5' 2"! Whoa.) and after tea at her house in Greenpoint, we decided it was time to saunter across the North Pole of Brooklyn to the strange, alien land of Queens via the Pulaski Bridge. That was easy pickins. Then came the Queensboro.

The Queensboro bridge is a long freakin' bridge, and if you want to bike across, you have to enter from QB Plaza NORTH at about 27th ave. Plus side is, it's much less steep than the Williamsburg.

Anyway, once on the Manhattan side, it was a harrowing trek through traffic to get ourselves to 38th and Madison where in classy, high-brow New York fashion, locked our bikes up to a sign-post and finagled a free admission (I love having an NYC Sightseeing License) into the

J.P. MORGAN LIBRARY.

For those unaware, J.P. Morgan was the richest man in the world for much of the late 19th century, through the early 20th. Inflation adjusted, richer than Bill Gates. Hyberbole adjusted, richer than GOD. In 1873 he saved the United States from bankruptcy with one really, really big loan. He was also a fatty with a big, honkin' swollen red nose. Kind of like an evil capitalist Santa Claus with a big moustache and no beard.

He also travelled all over the world collecting rare and beautiful books and artifacts which he kept in his private library, which are now on display. Morgan believed in things like reincarnation and that the spirits of mighty Kings and Pharaohs inhabited modern-day men like himself, which I could understand. Looking at all the proles and plebians swarming every inch of the city, It made sense that he thought himself a God amongst men.

The library was beautiful, as well as his study, preserved in it's lush red-velvet and Baroque painted ceilings, but there's only so long you can stare at really old books and paintings before you get the point. The main lobby had been completely modernized with wood panelling and glass elevators and in the upstairs room was an exibit on Bob Dylan on loan from Seatlle's Experience Music Project. I don't exactly see Bob Dylan and J.P. Morgan sitting down for tea and a jam session, but the exhibit was nice.

Okay, we've satisfied our intellectual pursuits for the day. Where's the beer?

We biked ourselves down 2nd ave, and after a delicious and very healthy brunch at Kate's Joint (ave B and E 4th) Marin informed me of her woe at not making it to the very last show at CBGBs which was that very night.

Ugh. Enough with the CBGBs already. It was a landmark in music history that had it's time, made its mark, left its legacy and remained true to it's cause and substance, and now its OVER ALREADY!! The Bowery has transformed from Satan's Circus into the heart of BoHo chic and the fall of CBGBs in the face of all of those god-awful high-rise condos was an inevitability. There are other urban conservationists that claim that we should have landmarked it and turned it into a museum. This would have been a much greater travesty than seeing it shut down.

It's a punk-rock club, not the Morgan Library. The Morgan Library is where you go to look at old relics of history. CBGBs is where you go to drink and headbang yourself into blissfull oblivion, which is exactly where CBs is now.

So, after flagilating myself with my bike lock sarcastically, I went inside, had a beer and had one last photo taken of myself and Marin at the bar, giving the one fingered Punk-Rock salute.

J.P. Morgan is dead. Long live J.P. Morgan.
Punk-Rock is dead. Long live. . .ah, F%*# it.