Adopt A Neighborhood - Astoria

May 24th

For a long time people have been bugging me to run an AAN to Astoria. I suspect it's because they wanted an excuse to sit in the beer hall, but I did manage to squeeze a bit of culture into my troops along the way. Our first stop was the Noguchi Museum. This institution is dedicated to the life and sculpture of Isamu Noguchi and it is well worse the trip off the beaten path. I was happy because the tour we received was really exellent and the art was "man friendly" for dad.

(This is not one of Noguchi's sculptures but something we saw in the hood that looks like a deranged Shrek. )

Our second stop was a brief walk through Socrates Sculpture Park. This landfill come community sculpture garden was hosting lessons on how to turn plastic bags into kites.

The third and most popular destination on the tour was an afternoon hang out at the Bohemian Beer Hall. Primary goal - get Dad tipsy and people watch! As predicted, Martin and dad got along famously. They bonded over Martin's immature attempt to take a photo up a lady's skirt. (Good thing mom doesn't read this blog!)

Secondary goal - eat sausage.

We were pleasantly surprised to see there was a Czech and Slovak festival all day complete with dancing, old man umpah band, and musical hats (similar to musical chairs). My favorite part about all these explorations is bumping into all the unexpected local happenings such as this.

And big big big thanks to Kevin and Nicole who got inside the garden early enough to secure us a table and fight off the chair poachers! They even taught us all how to play some game called Mexican Train with dominoes.

After many beers, we strolled down to Astoria Park for the sunset. I got some nice photos of the Triborough Bridge and upper Manhattan skyline. You can see the full set of photos here.

We strolled through the nicer section of Astoria on our way to a fabulous Greek dinner and the best bottle of pino I've ever had at Mezzo Mezzo.

Funny how all the culture, good food, and scenery were forgotten at the end of the night in some good old fashioned drunk silliness. Dad agreed that if I was ever in jail, it would probably be Martin's fault!