Last weekend Collin Murray and I meandered our way through SoHo in the hopes of stumbling upon Little Italy. Our first sign that we were getting close was an enormous red, white and green metallic banner complete with streamers above the street that said "Welcome to Little Italy"...and just like that we were there. Literally, we went from being in posh, ridiculously overpriced SoHo to being in lovely Little Italy. I will leave that adventure to another blog because to be honest, I need to go back and take more pictures so that you really get a sense of the quaintness and the charm of the place and instead, I'm go to show you a small buffet of Chinatown.
Just as we had stumbled upon Little Italy, we also stumbled upon Chinatown; one ethnic landscape trickles into another and you go from looking at Italian signs to Chinese characters very quickly. There was a really interesting energy in Chinatown; it was hurried and felt a little disorganized and perhaps that has to do with the fact that you really did feel as though you weren't in New York anymore but we instead that you were walking down a street in a Chinese city. It felt disorienting and almost a little uninviting but at the same time, it was an amazing sensory experience. From the atrocious smells to the many different textures of herbs, spices, fruits and vegetables that lined the street, I just had to embrace being a tourist and take as many pictures as I could before being pushed off the sidewalk.
I wasn't brave enough, and neither was Collin, to go into any of the markets -- maybe next time -- but we did walk the length of Chinatown and see a lot of neat things. Below are some pictures of our brief tour...be glad you don't have the ability to smell my blog...
Roasted poultry and what is presumably pork...?
Bulk dry goods on the sidewalk, there were many stores with exactly this type of set up all within about two blocks of one another
A fish monger and his market. If you imagine him with a cleaver in his hand it makes the photo a little more exciting but you can only imagine this because as I was trying to take pictures of this man working, I was screamed at in Chinese by another man, presumably the worker's boss, and I was unable to capture a cleaver action shot!
Fish on display on the sidewalk. Smelly and gross and unsanitary and enough to make Collin Murray swear to never eat seafood at an Asian restaurant in New York...
Well I remember you guys telling me on the phone about your adventure walking through Chinatown and Little Italy last weekend and your comments about the smells. It does appear that those odours had a lasting affect based on this blog.
ReplyDeleteI kind of know what you are talking about because the Lucky Market in southeast Calgary isn't the cleanest smelling supermarket around either. There are unique odours that you can sense depending on where you are in the store. So I can only imagine what it is like walking through a whole section of the city.
So if you want to divert the attention of the blog from food to comments about your wanderings in the Big Apple every now and then, you won't hear any complaints from me. Loved your description of last weekend's adventure! So I can't wait to hear and see more about Little Italy.
Maybe on your next trek down there you two will be courageous enough to venture into some of the markets and actually sneak a picture of the fishmonger and his cleaver in action.
Great pictures once again!
And then you go through Chinatown and suddenly, you're in the Bowery. Once upon a time children, it was skid row heaven. Now it's filled with the beautiful people. Nothing is sacred. The hobos have been pushed to Flatbush.
ReplyDeleteWait... am I in New York now or did I never leave Hong Kong?
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