Tats and Tenements:A Summer's Day in the City

In spite of a nearly empty nest, rare is the Saturday where the stunningly patient and mighty fine SML and I find that we have absolutely nothing on tap. Today was one of those Saturdays, and with the Boy shilling shirts for the day at the Old Gravy, it only seemed reasonable that we should make a day of it. And we made a day of it in New York City. As did about 1,000,000 other people. The City was a madhouse in the best sense of the word.

Our destination was the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. What an amazing place to get your history freak on! But before we did that, since it is physically impossible for me to go the City without several food stops, we got off the train and went to Katz's Deli, that famed temple of pastrami on rye. Although  the guys slicing the pastrami and corned beef first language is Spanish, not Yiddish, they know what they are doing. See the evidence below:

Pastrami like this needs to be loved and I, for one, I love it.

After satisfying our stomachs, we descended on 103 Orchard Street, to satisfy our minds. The museum, through its various tours, affords visitors the opportunity to step back in time and get a sense of what immigrant life was like (by and large, it was rough). We took a tour into two apartments of families from the 1860's and 1930's and it was fascinating to get a sense of the lives they lived. They were not easy by any stretch and it was compelling to see, how on the whole, how the immigrant experience today isn't all that different.

Anyway, with the history freak fed, it was time to explore as we made our way uptown. I was loath to take this far too touristy selfie, this happened:

Where King Kong did his thing in the background 

It was a glorious summer's day and it allowed for an observation. The warmer temps mean all kinds of poor clothing choices that revealed the scourge of really bad tattoos. I'm talking sleeves, legs, faces, capped with bad weaves in a lot of cases. At every turn, we saw worse art covering far too much physical real estate. It's just got to stop. 

New York City is a glorious train wreck, tats and all. It was great to be in the City with someone who has made my life better for nearly twenty five years now. Yeah, it's been a good day.