Farmer Simon goes to the big city

Now I’ve been to New York many times before, but this was the first time I had culture shock.

Every Saturday I work the farmers’ market in nearby Norwich. So last Saturday I got back to the farm, hopped in the shower and then hopped in my car to head south. The 300 mile ride to NYC gets progressively more urban and with it a concomitant stink and ugliness. Man have I missed urban life. Five hours later I got out of my car in Queens and within five minutes I was at an outdoor dance party with 2,000 people at the MOMA, shaking my skinny little limey ass to deep house mixed in with a little drill and bass. Or maybe it was just Chicago house and down tempo. I might have to look it up on the internets and get back to you.

Most of the people in the area around the farm tend to be older and married or 18-year old Dartmouth students. Imagine my delight then to be surrounded by more beautiful people than you would see in a lifetime here in the Upper Valley. Just hours before I was listening to my co-workers discussing the best type of gun to dispose of the cauliflower eating woodchuck that lives on our farm with. Now here I was at the epicenter of urban hipness. And the best part about it, I kind of fit in. It being summer and all, everyone is wearing a t-shirt and shorts and fashion doesn’t really count. The dance floor was so densely packed too that no one could even tell if you were doing a hippie dance. Even though I haven’t listened to the Dead or Phish in over ten years I still feel like always be a recovering hippie dancer. Better to hide in crowds and take it one step at a time.

The dance party ended at nine and then it was off to a house party. Or should I say a roof party. People hanging out on a roof, talking to each other, eating food, drinking beer and talking about San Francisco. That’s right San Francisco. For some reason almost all the people at the party had lived in SF at some point or other and had come back to NY and found others of their ilk. I even felt a little pride at being more of a SF native than some of them. “Oh you were only there for two years, huh. Oh me well on and off for about twelve years or so.”

That’s six times longer than some of those posers. I am pretty shy at parties and I did my usual act of pretending to look at stuff from the roof, drinking copious amounts of beer, and walking incessantly from room to room as if looking for someone. I made it until 2:30 am and then Brooke and I rode our bikes home drunk through the deserted streets of Brooklyn. Helmets tightly fastened of course. That was my latest night of the summer by more than 3 hours!!!

The next day I rode about 30 miles through Manhattan and watched a free hip hop concert in Central Park. Even though I love living in the country I need to have urban fun more than once every four months. To be continued (hopefully soon). The next blog will be about farming I promise.

Farmer Simon

PS - Here's a list, I almost forgot. Eleven books you should read. AKA my favorite books. In no order except the first. This was really hard because all of my books are in a basement in Berkeley and i needed a visual cue.

1. Midnight's children - Salman Rushdie
2. Good scent from a strange mountain - Robert Olen Butler
3. Self-Help - Lorrie Moore
4. Motherless Brooklyn - Jonathan Lethem
5. Wind up bird chronicle - Haruki Murakami
6. Love in the time of cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
(this is the best love story ever written)
7. Poisonwood bible - Barbara Kingsolver
8. Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
9. Everything is illuminated - Jonathan Safran Foer
10. High fidelity - Nick Hornby
11. Son of a circus - John Irving