Metropolitan Diary

[elleng]

The Guggenheim
Dear Diary:

My first day as an intern at the Guggenheim Museum was my third day in New York City. Fresh off a plane from Scotland, I had rented a room at the 92nd Street Y because I didn’t know a soul in town.

My internship supervisor took me to lunch to celebrate my first day, and while we were in line getting our food we met a tall, shy man, a former intern. When I sat down at a table, the former intern did too.

My supervisor got up and went to another table to talk to some colleagues. The former intern, Austin, and I struck up a conversation. Eventually, we became part of a gang of friends that summer.

After the internship ended, I was hired full time, and a year later Austin became my roommate. Two years after that, he asked me out on a date, and three years later, we were married.

The group of friends I met that first summer came to our wedding and have remained our New York family ever since. These friendships are now two decades strong. I think of them every time I am in the Guggenheim’s rotunda.

— Michelle Millar Fisher

The Band Shell
Dear Diary:

Earphones in and sunglasses on, I was power-walking home through Central Park.

Suddenly, I noticed an older couple waving at me. It turned out that they were lost. They unfolded a paper map and asked for help finding Naumburg Bandshell.

I squinted at the map, nodded as if I understood it, then pulled out my phone to check Google Maps. As luck would have it, we were heading the same way, so we decided to walk together.

They were off to hear an orchestral ensemble, and their faces lit up when I mentioned that I played the viola in a graduate medical student orchestra.

When we got to the band shell, they surprised me with an extra ticket and insisted I join them. At intermission, we discovered that we lived just a few blocks apart on the Upper West Side. We shared a taxi home, and over an impromptu dinner, a friendship took shape.

A year and a half later, we still gather for dinner, a reminder that some of the sweetest connections are the ones that come unexpectedly.

— Mollie Hobensack

Unacceptable
Dear Diary:

I went to a new bagel store in Brooklyn Heights with my son.

When it was my turn to order, I asked for a cinnamon raisin bagel with whitefish salad and a slice of red onion.

The man behind the counter looked up at me.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t do that.”

— Richie Powers

((HAHAHAHA!!))

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/04/nyregion/metropolitan-diary.html

[fierywoman]

1. Oh! TY!

[marble falls]

2. Between Metropolitan Diary, the Crossword, the coverage on Notre Dame rebuild, the two columns ...

... about ethics - a subscription is well worth it.

[snot]

3. Fwiw, here's one from my own last visit to the Guggenheim:

the show was marvellous, and after I arrived, I was excited to learn that the open hours would be extended because of a projection due to be screened on the exterior of the building at 8pm that evening. So I took my time inside the building, then asked a guard if he could recommend a nearby restaurant for an inexpensive meal before the projection began. He said no, but I could have a pizza delivered on the sidewalk outside the building, & gave me the name of the place that would deliver.

So I ordered a pizza and waited on the sidewalk until it arrived, and then looked for a place to park myself that would have a good view of the projection. Others had the same idea, but there was one bench with an empty space in the middle. My pizza was larger than expected, so I invited my benchmates to share.

While we waited for the projection to start, I got into a great conversation with one of them, a curator based Asia and who had just seen the same show at the Guggenheim. It was a perfect day.

I started visiting NYC back in the 70's, and I've always have wonderful adventures there, although the city's changed greatly since then (it's now more sanitized, homogenized, Disney-fied, 1%-ified).