Small World

Kirk having a cappuccino

at Small World Coffee

Another venerable Princeton "institution" is Small World Coffee on Witherspoon Street, half a block across from the main gates of Princeton University.  Many PU alumni cherish fond memories of countless hours spent there, though its reputation in the annals of Princeton lore is only half as old as that of PJ's.  Despite the ever-expanding presence of Starbucks all over the country to, as it were, monopolize American's love affair with specialty coffee drinks, similar Indie-style coffee houses have been cropping up around college towns--places like Volta in Gainesville, Pourhouse and Runcible Spoon in Bloomington.  From the point of view of a self-styled coffee aficionado, I'm afraid I'd have to give Volta a slight edge over Small World, though some of my readers may not agree with me.  However, there is an unfortunate downside to Volta - it is not only that it's not within walking distance from UF campus, but that it's located inside a downtown parking garage, though for some people, the last may constitute a part of its charm.  

In addition to hosting research seminars and workshops, Princeton University during the summer months is also a popular destination for summer camps, mostly sports-related, and international tourism, mostly from Asia.  Bus-loads of tourists, from China, Korea, and Taiwan, are dropped off on Nassau Street every morning.  The phenomenon can probably be explained by the fact that there is a kind of long-held mystique, a result of their worship of over-achievement (remembering Tiger Mothers), in the minds of Asian people about the Ivy League Schools in the U.S. and Princeton University, with its "monkey imitation of Cambridge," as uncharitably characterized by Bertrand Russell, is probably billed as the epitome of the Ivy League school. 

And, troupes of kids in gear for such East-coast, "elitist" sports as field hockey and lacrosse, as contrasted with football and basketball in SEC schools, are also common sights on Princeton campus, as well as groups of prospective students and their parents shopping for the best ROI (return on investment) college.  It has always puzzled me to hear that young people and their parents shop around the country for specific kinds of "college experience" when deciding which university to attend--witness the stories on the various college ranking categories on Huffington Post - the top 10 Hipster, Friendliest, Nerdiest, Trendiest Colleges, etc.  (By the way, Princeton University, whose graduates enjoy the highest mid-career earnings with an average salary of $130,000.00, ranks number one among the "best-paying colleges" in the country.)  In contrast, in most Asian countries, there is no "shopping" involved: the college one gets into is determined by one's test scores from the National College Entrance Examination held once a year; the same is true for the High School one attends. 

Heat Wave

Ah... Just what I needed!

Hogwarts Express

Princeton Station

Joy catching the Dinky

Another claim to fame of Princeton University, which is also evidence of its privileged background, is that its campus has been served, since 1865, by a commuter rail line, known as the Dinky Line, dedicated exclusively to bringing passengers back and forth between Princeton University and Princeton Junction, located about 3 miles southeast of Princeton, where one can catch a train to Newark, New York City, and other destinations on the Northeast Corridor Line.  The five-minute train ride in a two-car, clunky, antiquated train seems to take one back through time; for every freshman coming to the university for the first time, whether from the States or a foreign country, the experience on the Dinky is an indispensable part of the initiation process, like taking the Hogwarts Express to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.  Aside from its nostalgic quality, the train service is very reliable, convenient, and economical - round trip fare to Penn Station, New York, about a 90-minute ride from Princeton Junction, is $33, which is really unbeatable for practically a door-to-door service.  (In spite of New Jersey Transit's effort to "derail" the train service and replace it with a bus system, and PU's own proposal to move the Princeton Station 460 feet south of its current location on campus to make way for a new arts complex, sparking outcry from locals, students, and alumni alike, the train will continue its time-honored service for the foreseeable future.) 


Speaking about trains, our experience riding the commuter trains to New York and back for the first time deserves a brief mention here.  On our trip up there, upon sitting down in the crowded car where everybody seemed to be wrapped up in his or her own private world accessible only through ear-buds, we heard a couple of loud, angry, New York style, shouts of "Q U I E T !!!  THIS IS A QUIET CAR!" directed to an innocent-looking guy saying goodbye to someone on the phone.  We looked at one another, were glad that we didn't commit the faux pas of opening our mouths inadvertently, and rapidly scanned the car to locate a sign which might identify it as being a "Quiet Car." To our complete mystification, we could not find any.  I figure that keeping one's mouth shut on a long commuter train ride is probably the best policy, especially during the morning commutes to work when almost everybody is, understandably, in a bad mood.  


We were also confronted with a series of mysteries on our return journey from Penn Station.  After a frantic search to locate the NJT lines, we found ourselves in a hall with a series of closed, narrow, double doors, identified by what looked to be platform numbers above them and a couple of TV monitors which supposedly would inform one which platform to go to board one's train. There happened to be a group of foreign teenagers, apparently over-stimulated by a day's fun at the great metropolis, scattered on the floor in front of each pair of the doors, singing kumbaya and generally carrying on without regards to the world around them.  To our dismay we found that platform information, as if with the intention of causing havoc, was withheld from passengers until a couple of minutes before boarding time.  We parked ourselves in front of one of the doors, chosen at random, and I eyed the narrow double doors uncomfortably, anticipating the stampede to come when the platform information was announced.  All of a sudden, a roar of "number 9 [3/4]" erupted from the group of kids, a mad dash toward a stairway somewhere ensued, away from the doors marked "9", leaving a few old folks like us standing in front of the number 9 door looking bewildered. These turned out to be doors to small elevators which would take one directly down to the designated platforms.


After boarding the train, it soon became apparent that there was no A/C at all and that nobody was observing the silence etiquette, perhaps because it was not a "Quiet Car" or that it was so late that nobody cared.  At various stops along the way, the conductor repeatedly instructed the disembarking passengers to move to the very front of the train as only the door on the first train would open to allow passengers to get off.  Why it had to be so was quite unaccountable.  Later we learned from a conductor collecting tickets that we were in the only car in the mighty long train where the A/C was not working, but he said he would "reset it" when he "got a chance." It got intolerably hot instead, and we finally moved to a different car, a long way from where we were, to the front of the train.   When we finally arrived at the Princeton Junction, thinking that we were well positioned to be near the doors which would likely open, we were told, as if by a sheer caprice, that all doors would open at that station.  We ended up getting off at the far end of the platform and had to march a long distance to get off and on to another platform to catch the train back to Princeton.


P.S.: I wonder whether our next train experience will be less mysterious.  
P.P.S.: I just went to the station to take a picture of the Dinky and was alarmed to find that it was out of service.  Could it be that its demise is drawing near?
      

Start spreading the news ...

Our first excursion to Manhattan was exploratory in nature, to get our bearings, so to speak.  Greg, Kirk, and I made the trip last Friday with some trepidation, for the last time any of us visited the Big Apple was in the last century.  For people like us who have been living for the past 20 years or so in small towns where the extent of public transportation consists of under-utilized city buses with limited routes at infrequent hours, having to navigate through the immense network of New York City's subways and cavernous train stations is a daunting undertaking.  But our fear was somewhat alleviated by the thought that we were armed with the super-intelligent, hand-held personal assistant devices, also known as, iPhones.  A word of caution about relying exclusively on these devices is that they inevitably run out of juice before the day is out.  Fortunately, I had our day's adventure pretty well plotted out beforehand and Greg possessed a hard copy of our itinerary which he consulted efficiently, well before we were able to power up our phones to look for answers.


As usual, my itinerary for visiting any city is planned around selected buildings or sites with architectural significance.  For this trip, I chose to see the following: the new Restaurant Pavilion/Lawn at the Lincoln Center Plaza by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the Apple Store on the 5th Ave., MoMA's 2004 Expansion by Yoshio Taniguchi, the New Museum by SANAA, and High Line Park on the west side of Manhattan.  With the exception of the Apple Store whose transparent glass cube is undergoing reconstruction and was completely shrouded when we got there, our architectural expedition was a success.  All these structures have been well documented so I'll just say a couple of things about each here.

Restaurant/Lawn @ Lincoln Center

I thought the solution of using a twisted parabolic roof to create two distinct public spaces - a restaurant and a lawn -  on the same footprint inside the existing Lincoln Center Plaza was very clever. The highest portion of the lawn offers a view to the surrounding streets and buildings which is not possible on the original flat plaza surrounded by tall buildings on all four sides.

Glass Cube beneath

Apple Store shrouded

  

All the action inside the Apple store is taking place under ground beneath the seemingly empty glass cube. The place was jammed packed with people like sardines in a can.  I wonder what the posted maximum capacity is there and if anybody is keeping a count of the total number of people crowded inside the underground space at any one time.  I literally had to drag Kirk out of that high-tech candy shop.

Sculpture Courtyard @ MoMA

I barely recognized MoMA in its current expanded configuration.  The addition definitely gives the museum a sense of lofty spaciousness which it lacked before and its style recalls the Gallery of Horyuji Treasures, designed by the same architect, which we visited in Tokyo. 

New Museum

The New Museum by the Pritzker Architecture Prize winning Japanese architect team SANAA is located on lower east side of Manhattan, in a somewhat rundown area (on Bowery and Prince) amidst restaurant supply stores and empty storefronts.  The building is made up of seven pristine but helter-skelterly stacked white boxes, like a frosted layered cake about to tumble.  Curiously though, it does not look out of place among its considerably older, grimmer-looking neighbors.  I think the fact that they all seem to be leaning ever so slightly in a disorderly fashion appears to tie them together.

High Line 

The High Line Park is probably one of the most successful urban renewal projects in recent U.S. history. The idea of creating a park out of abandoned, elevated railroad tracks was brilliant.  And taking the self-seeding vegetation which grew on the abandoned tracks as an inspiration for the landscape planting design was another stroke of genius.  The result is a lively strip of pedestrian park lined with benches and delightful wild flowers and grasses.  Its success has given rise to new upscale apartment buildings along both sides of the park.  I was told that it is especially pleasant to walk there in the summer evenings, watching the sun set on the Hudson River.  

Space to pause and gather

Wild flowers galore

Elevated above traffic

End of Section 2 where one can
see the existing, still-abandoned
track with wild vegetation

Bench designed as if it
were peeling off the
linear pavement

Well-utilized birdhouses

Desire Lines

Several of us have noticed a couple of interesting phenomena about the buildings on the Princeton campus, namely that 1) they are curiously devoid of any identification, either attached to the buildings themselves or by signage and that 2) there is usually an opening, often arched, somewhere on the facade of each building which allows one to pass through and continue on one's walk, whichever direction one happens to be heading to. The first seems to convey a kind of covert message to the effect that "if you don't know the names of the buildings, maybe you don't belong here."  It has perhaps an unintended effect of intimidating campus visitors who are not properly initiated.  

Desire Line

The second phenomenon which we observed has to do with the ingenious way the buildings and their interconnected paths are laid out on the campus.  As long as one has a sense, however vague, of the direction one needs to go, there seems to be a path already laid out, through a series of openings on buildings one after another, which will lead one to one's destination.  More often than not, the paths take a diagonal direction, instead of a parallel or perpendicular one, with respect to the buildings around them.  


As buildings are usually laid out in an orthogonal fashion, the diagonal line is the shortest distance between any two corners in a rectangle.  If you'd look closely on any campus ground, you'd likely see "unplanned" paths on the grass or ground, worn thin and smooth by students, collectively but without coordination, crisscrossing and taking the shortest and the most direct route from building to building between classes. This phenomenon is referred to as "desire lines", the traces of natural pedestrian patterns on the ground - something I learned from a Landscape Design course at UF, the truth of which has been born out over and over again by my own observation.  An experienced landscape architect will often come back to the site where a new building has been erected after a lapse of some time to find the traces of desire lines and then make adjustment to the pedestrian paths to conform to those lines.  What's ingenious about Princeton's campus plan is that all the desire lines seem to have already been paved, as if laid out that way in the first place. But, more than likely, some campus planners had gotten wise to the phenomenon of desire lines during its 265 years of history and paved over all the dirt paths worn in the grass.

Traditions and Breakthroughs in Princeton

Marija @ bent spoon

Greg at PJ's

Palimpsest at PJ's

On our first morning at Princeton, Greg took us to PJ's for breakfast - the only place he knew where one could get, what he was pleased to call, "an honest breakfast" in Princeton. It is said to be "a venerable, cultural Princeton icon for over 35 years" according to its website, and has been extremely popular with students and alumni, as can be attested by the repeatedly carved and carved over, palimpsest-like, tabletops.  
Another favorite local hang-out is an artisan ice cream shop called Bent Spoon.  The varieties of ice cream and sorbet flavors which they offer seem to be limited only by one's imagination and willingness to experiment.  The olive oil ice cream, however, was not a big hit with the crowd when we were there yesterday.

Lewis Library

As I was driving down Washington Road one time, I noticed a pile of irregularly-formed roofs out of the corner of my eye and a thought flitted across my mind that it might be something by Frank Gehry that I just passed.  (You'll get the picture once you click the link to Google Images on F.G.)  I looked it up as soon as I got back to the dorm, and sure enough there is indeed a Frank Gehry building, the Lewis Library, on campus.  It is hard to say whether it is a sore sight or a sight for sore eyes, but its unconventional building form is definitely a departure from the prevalent Collegiate Gothic style of buildings on campus.  I took a thorough walk around the outside and inside of the building yesterday, trying to determine its merits and demerits, vis-a-vis its intended function, i.e., a research library.  For the former, I think he created some brightly-lit, plushly furnished study spaces, classrooms, and offices, all with interesting views, on every floor of the library.  The students and researchers are truly privileged to be able to work in such a "happy" environment as this. 

"Tree House" - 2nd  Floor

Common reading area - 2nd Floor

For the latter, on the other hand, it seems to me that he has once again applied his signature formal language to yet another building type, which he manages somehow to claim to be an architectural expression developed as a response to the specific visual context of the surrounding buildings - to be a good neighbor, as it were.  (See article.)
Gehrey said that he'd like the building to inspire the researchers to think outside of the box.  My sense is that in some spaces in the building, the visual "noise" gets so loud as to be a distraction from serious studying.  

Lobby

Reading Area - 4th floor

Color reflected on
metal wall panels

Side Entrance seen from
inside Richard Serra's
sculpture

Serra's sculpture
seen from above

   

Summer Camp

Scully Dorm, Princeton U

We arrived at Princeton University yesterday evening after a 12-hour drive from Bloomington.  Kirk is here to attend the 2nd half of a NEH Seminar on Quine and Davidson for the next three weeks and we are put up in one of the student dormitories on campus.  The setup at the Scully Dorm is quite minimal, reminiscent of an economy lodge in one of the National Parks. Despite my Boy-Scout-ish trait of general preparedness, I did not foresee some of the contingencies which we would be facing here, e.g., there is no provision for soap in the bathrooms or cheap hangers in the wardrobes, etc.  I have a feeling that the next three weeks here will be like going to a summer camp, not that I've been to one.  I plan to spend some time exploring the town and taking day trips to New York by train. 

Wisteria House Design

Just launched a website, Wisteria House Design, to test the water for hanging out my own shingle.  I'm targeting the timid home owners who are toying with the idea of doing some remodeling work on their houses but don't know where to start.  I used one of the pre-built layouts from Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 to put the website together and it is still very much a work in progress. I'll welcome any input you have to jazz it up a bit.  

One Year Anniversary

Breakfasting @ Sunroom

It was today last year when we signed the paper and took possession, in a way, of our house in Bloomington.  When we got here, wide-eyed and bushy-tailed, fresh from the Title company's office, we discovered that the front door was not locked (properly), and had probably not been locked for the past two months after the previous owners moved out.  At least it boded well for the neighborhood, for that meant the likelihood of crime was pretty low.  As other than what we brought along in the car all our earthly possessions were still being transported to us, we went out to the Mall and bought a tea kettle and an air mattress, hoping that would tide us over till the moving van arrived.  Coming back from the Mall, to our great surprise, we found that we could not open the door with the keys given us at the closing!  After a couple of phone calls, we got a hold of our realtor, who got hold of the sellers' realtor, who came to open the door for us.  We learned that we were handed the wrong key!  A couple of days later, during the 4th of July weekend, after the movers had unloaded all our boxes, the A/C quit working!  Well, that was the beginning of our adventure in Bloomington; the rest is history.  Now that we've been here a year, I've gotten used to the mysterious sound of creaks, moans, and groans coming from some hidden parts of the house and the rumbling sound of the dehumidifier transmitted through the walls to the bedroom from the basement every so many hours. But, overall we are very happy with our house, especially during this time of the year.  The temperature has been in the mid 70's to low 80's, and frequent rain showers help cool the air and quench the earth.  After removing some glass panels in the sunroom, we've been having our breakfast and dinner there almost everyday.


We spent some time yesterday afternoon weeding in the back yard.  It seems to me, now, that weeding is a more monumental and overwhelming task than shoveling snow.  How soon we forget!  The power of human effort is inconsequential in comparison to the tenacity of nature.  Weeds, or what we take to be weeds, grow, like wild mushrooms after rain showers, in every nook and cranny.  If they are not pulled up religiously, they are apt to take over one's entire yard and turn it into the setting of "One Hundred Years of Solitude."