Text: Julie Schwietert Collazo
Photo: Francisco Collazo
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Municipal buildings are like cemeteries, I think: We tend to avoid them unless we have some inescapable business there.

I don’t know why this is, though; as with cemeteries, the buildings where formal business is conducted tend to harbor ambitious elements of art and design that are rarely in evidence–at least not in quite the same way–in our more quotidian spaces.

Last night, we attended a talk sponsored by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council as part of its “Access Restricted” series of “nomadic lectures” about the law. The setting was the New York County Supreme Court, a grand, landmarked building whose entryway leads into a rotunda painted with a mural depicting seminal figures and moments in legal history.

Rotundas… you’ve probably never seen a travel article about them, but this is at least the second one I’ve seen (the first being the rotunda of the Capitol building in San Juan, Puerto Rico, a gorgeous mosaic also depicting an epic sweep of history) that has caught my attention and held it, almost distracting me from whatever I was supposed to be doing. There’s so much happening in this mural; I could look at this tiny detail of the scene unfolding beneath Lincoln’s leg for at least a day:

There’s no drum roll and take-away here. Just this: don’t overlook the obvious in your search to find something extraordinary.

More photos of the Court are here.

Text: Julie Schwietert Collazo
Photo: Francisco Collazo
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To be fair, we can’t complain about the winter.

The almost daily blue skies made the hard season bearable.

But still.

The sound of bird song outside the living room window last week and the crocus and daffodils pushing their way through the soil were welcome signs of the new season.

We opened the window, sat Mariel on the sill and watched as birds flitted in and out of the tangle of ivy that creeps up the wall.

Laura Kammermeier said this is a red-winged blackbird. I don’t know how I’ve lived 32 years without noticing one.

We’re not the only ones with spring on the brain. Here are a few friends meditating on the seasonal change:

Elizabeth Eslami: Birds and Other Miracles of (Western) America

Lola Akinmade: Postcard: Palm Fronds and Psalms

Linda Golden: My First Spring in Two Years

Text: Julie Schwietert Collazo
Photos: Francisco Collazo
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I may be wrong, but I’m willing to bet that most visitors to Washington, D.C. don’t make it across the river to Anacostia.

Though it’s designated as an historic neighborhood, Anacostia is down on its heels. As we were driving through, Francisco said, “No way! That guy’s selling crack in broad daylight!” And then, just up the hill, “That guy’s carrying a gun! I just saw him wrap it up in a plastic bag.”

Anacostia’s difficulties are well-documented. The neighborhood has been described as one of the “most impoverished and polluted neighborhoods in America,” and as you look at debris that blackens the shore of the Anacostia River, you’re not inclined to dispute that claim.

But like any place, if you’re willing to look hard enough, you’ll find something to counteract the narrative of devastation and destitution.

In Anacostia, that something is Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum. It may seem an unlikely place for a museum, just a few paces up the hill from a community recreation center, its parking lot marked with the sign “Park Here At Your Own Risk.” We wouldn’t have known about it had I not read about the museum in Smithsonian Magazine.

The reason we detoured through Anacostia on our recent drive from South Carolina to New York was because we wanted to see the exhibit “The African Presence in Mexico: From Yanga to the Present.” Francisco and I have long nurtured our mutual interest in all things Afro-Latin, and were excited to see a US museum take a similar interest.

We were full of ourselves when we arrived, fairly certain we knew a great deal of what there is to know about the African diaspora in Mexico, sure, at least, that this general interest exhibit wouldn’t be likely to teach us much new.

We were wrong.

The exhibit, in both English and Spanish, is exceptional, simultaneously ambitious in what it wants to convey and concisely curated in order to deliver maximum impact. Whether you know a lot about the subject or nothing at all, the exhibit is presented in such a way that both types of visitors will be deeply satisfied.

Highlights included large-format photographs by Agustin Casasola, with this photo of a female Afro-Mexican soldier from the Revolutionary Period so compelling that I would have bought it on complete impulse had it been at a gallery (and had I had the money).

Other take-aways?

*The Underground Railroad actually had at least one stop in Mexico. The first “freedom station” on the Underground Railroad that has been identified outside the US is that of Mazamitla in the state of Jalisco. Slaves who escaped and fled to Mexico were given citizenship by the Mexican government and were granted land rights in Coahuila, where a significant Afro-Mexican community remains today.

*The Mexican Postal Service issued a stamp honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. a full 10 years before the US postal service did so.

*Langston Hughes wrote his first piece of published prose in Mexico- Mexico Games. But damned if I can find it in print anywhere.

The exhibit runs through July 4, 2010, which somehow seems fitting. Entry is free and the museum is open 7 days a week.

Text: Julie Schwietert Collazo
Photo: Francisco Collazo
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Though it was published in 1949, E.B. White managed to observe New York timelessly in his lovely little 56-page book, Here is New York

There are so many observations that resonate with me, and one of them is White’s taxonomy of New Yorkers. As those of us who live here know, there are different kinds of New Yorkers: (1) the ones born and raised here, whose roots are so stubbornly planted here you couldn’t pay them to live anywhere else; (2) the commuters, who just experience New York during the day; and (3) those of us who moved here, those of us White refers to as “settlers.”

White recognized that each of these types of New Yorkers gives New York something. The “natives,” he says, give the city “solidity and continuity”; the commuters give it its “tidal restlessness”; and we settlers, well, we give the city a passion akin to the “intense excitement of first love,” each of us “absorb[ing] New York with the fresh eyes of an adventurer….”

As I wrote the other day, those fresh eyes grow cloudy after a few years, as the city that was so exciting and so new becomes Chipotlicized and every corner has either a Starbucks, Duane Reade, or Chase Bank.

Sometimes, you just have to remember to look up.

A shop making and selling hand-rolled cigars on the second floor of a building near 34th Street

Text: Julie Schwietert Collazo
Photo: Francisco Collazo
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We never leave home without the camera.

It’s heavy, with its extra battery pack and additional lenses, but Francisco always says, “I know I’ll miss the million dollar picture the day I leave the camera at home.”

We are going out to do errands: buy shampoo and conditioner, mail letters and check our box at the post office on 34th Street and 8th Avenue, stop by the library to pick up some books for research, drop off some donations at Goodwill. It’s a day that has the first hint of spring in the air… one of those days when New Yorkers aren’t exactly sure what to wear– some have on shorts, some still sport winter coats.

It’s lovely, but I don’t expect anything out of the ordinary.

34th and 8th isn’t off the beaten path. Macy’s– “The World’s Largest Store”–is a block away on Herald Square, which is only slightly less crowded than Times Square. It’s at least as commercial: all the chain stores are here– H&M, JC Penney, K-Mart, Borders, Old Navy. With the exception of the one block stretch of Korean restaurants on 31st off 7th, the food in this neighborhood is unremarkable, one indistinguishable pizzeria after another, tucked alongside souvenir shops selling tacky Statues of Liberty, plastic snow globes, and New York themed t-shirts that no New Yorker would ever wear.

After you live anywhere for a while, your eyes adjust and start to glaze. It doesn’t matter how extraordinary, how vibrant, how vital your hometown is, it eventually takes on the sheen of the familiar. You start to believe in its static predictability, to feel certain that you’re tough to surprise and delight. After 10 years, you think you’ve seen everything, and so that’s one of the reasons why you travel.

And then you turn a corner, look up, and realize that even the Empire State Building can look new again.

There’s a lot on 32nd and 7th that’s been razed. Right now it’s a raw hole, littered with the detritus of demolition, exposing the backsides of two adjacent buildings that have been abandoned. It’s protected from the curious and the devious by a chain link fence and a wooden barrier pasted with advertisements about Absolut’s new acai berry vodka and television shows I’ve never heard of.

A year from now, maybe less, the hole will be filled and crowned with a skyscraper, new “luxury condominiums,” probably, the latest in a series. Its windows will glimmer and throw off sunlight in great, gleaming arcs.

You won’t be able to see the Empire State Building. Or maybe you will, but just its tip. You defnitely won’t be able to see it from this angle, seemingly dissolving into a far more modest building to the south.

“Hey, stop for a minute,” I tell Francisco, who’s pressing through the crowd of workers hurrying for the train at the start of rush hour. “Have you ever seen the Empire State Building from this angle?”

Click. A change of lens. More clicks.

We turn the corner and look up. “Have you ever seen that?” I ask Francisco, pointing to the second floor of a building where an old sign advertises hand-rolled cigars made with Cuban seed. It seems like Havana, not New York.

Click.

We’re satisfied, snapped out of our usual way of seeing Manhattan, our vision reframed.
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How do you see your hometown with fresh eyes? Share your thoughts in the comments.
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To see more perspectives of overlooked New York, visit our NYC Scenes set on Flickr.

This post has been entered into the Grantourismo-HomeAway Travel Writing Competition.