Daycare gates ny: Best Childcare Provider in Gates, NY

Опубликовано: July 28, 2023 в 9:24 am

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Категории: Miscellaneous

Best Childcare Provider in Gates, NY

Rise Above WeeCare

Daycare in
Rochester, NY

(585) 312-3198

Hi! We’re Rise Above Daycare and we’re a home daycare providing childcare to families. Our goal is to ensure children reach their developmen… Read More

$112 – $223 / wk

6:00 am – 6:00 pm

Racquel’s Daycare

Daycare in
Rochester, NY

(585) 460-3661

Hi! We’re Racquel’s Daycare and we’re a home daycare providing childcare to families. Our goal is to ensure children reach their development… Read More

$248 – $310 / wk

7:00 am – 5:00 pm

Thank You for the Joy Family Childcare WeeCare

Daycare in
Rochester, NY

(585) 252-5232

Welcome to Thank You for the Joy Childcare WeeCare! We offer childcare for families looking to provide their child with a loving and kind en… Read More

$266 – $333 / wk

6:30 am – 7:30 pm

Delia’s Daycare

Daycare in
Rochester, NY

(315) 660-1894

Welcome to Delia’s Daycare! We offer childcare for families looking to provide their child with a loving and safe environment that’s just li. .. Read More

$200 – $212 / wk

5:30 am – 6:00 pm

Curenton, Imawney Daycare

Daycare in
Rochester, NY

(585) 449-4955

Curenton, Imawney offers safe, loving childcare in the Rochester area. Kids learn through curriculum-based, educational activities. The faci… Read More

$227 – $258 / wk

7:00 am – 5:30 pm

Pequeños Soñadores WeeCare

Daycare in
Rochester, NY

(585) 326-9819

$130 – $167 / wk

7:00 am – 5:00 pm

Baby Love WeeCare

Daycare in
Rochester, NY

(585) 326-9202

Welcome to Baby Love WeeCare! We offer children a nurturing and loving environment that’s just like home. At our home daycare, our goal is t… Read More

$135 – $360 / wk

7:00 am – 12:00 am

Monarch Montessori Daycare LLC WeeCare

Daycare in
Rochester, NY

(315) 502-3689

Welcome to Monarch Montessori Daycare LLC! We offer childcare for families looking to provide their child with a loving and kind environment… Read More

$258 – $320 / wk

5:30 am – 5:00 pm

Weiland Woods Playcare WeeCare

Daycare in
Rochester, NY

(585) 684-3737

Hi! We’re Weiland Woods Playcare and we’re a home daycare providing childcare to families. Our goal is to ensure children reach their develo… Read More

$284 – $310 / wk

7:00 am – 5:00 pm

Poo Bear WeeCare

Daycare in
Rochester, NY

(585) 257-2911

Welcome to Poo Bear WeeCare! We offer childcare for families looking to provide their child with a loving and safe environment that’s just l… Read More

$389 / wk

6:30 am – 6:00 pm

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  • Q: Can my child be picked up from home and dropped off at a babysitter or daycare? Or picked up at a babysitter or daycare and dropped off at home?

    A: Yes, but this must be the same arrangement for five days a week. Fill out a Transportation Request Form and submit it to the Transportation Department.

     

    Q: What if my child’s babysitter is outside of the attendance area for the elementary school they will attend?

    A: Transportation will be provided to and from a New York State registered babysitter or daycare if they are within the Gates Chili School District’s attendance area. A list of registered babysitters and daycares is available.

     


    For specific information about the SAFE Program, contact the Town of Chili http://www.townofchili.org/working-for-you/town-departments/recreation/after-school-program.

     

    For specific information about the GAP Program, contact the Town of Gates https://gatesrecparks.org/Default.aspx?id=12

     

    If you are a parent or caregiver who needs childcare, please complete this parent need for child care survey. Based on the information you provide about your job, employer, number of children, and financial need, the OCFS may be able to help you find the child program you need.  

     

    If you are interested in helping support your community by helping to keep local child care programs operating-especially to care for children of health care and other critical workers, please complete this Survey for Current Child Care Workers. Your responses will be shared with local child care programs that are in need of staff.

    *The surveys are in English, they are currently being translated, translations to follow. 

     

    Additional Resources: 

    Office of Children and Family Services: https://ocfs.ny.gov/programs/childcare/

    Link to the YMCA Emergency Child Care: www.emergencychildcareny.org 

    Monroe County Childcare Subsidy Assistance

     

Daycare Providers in the Gates Chili CSD – August 2020




















  • DAYCARE NAME

     

    CONTACT

     

    LICENCED?

     

    ADDRESS

     

    ZIP

     

    PHONE

     

    DESCRIPTION

    Abbott Family Daycare

    Kyle Abbott

    No

    14 Shetland Trail

    14624

    732-0591

    Family Daycare

    Generations Daycare

    Dir. Resielyn Ewell

    Yes

    2400 Chili Ave

    14624

    247-3490

    Daycare Center

    Imagination Childcare Academy

    Erin Medlar

    Yes

    230 Coldwater Rd

    14624

    413-3948

    Daycare Center

    Kradle To Kradle Daycare

    Kimberly Kradle

    Yes

    6 Sesqui Dr

    14624

    247-7731

    Family Daycare

    Legette Family Daycare

    Jessie Legette

    Yes

    20 Pyramid La

    14624

    503-5035

    Family Daycare

    Loving Touch Daycare

    Dir. Stephanie Schreiber

    Yes

    395 Spencerport Rd

    14606

    429-5110

    Daycare Center

    Mannara Family Daycare

    Valerie A. Mannara

    Yes

    19 Tarrycrest Ln

    14606

    429-5071

    Family Daycare

    Mommy Care

    Christina Morabito

    Yes

    991 Chili Ctr

    Coldwater Rd

    14624

    478-7550

    Family Daycare

    Northstar Christian Daycare

    Beth Porteus

    Exempt

    332 Spencerport Rd

    14606

    247-8620

    Daycare Preschool

    Nero Family Daycare

    Shannon Nero

    Yes

    12 Iland Dr

    14624

    429-7247

    Family Daycare

    Viola Espada Daycare

    Viola Espada

     

    146 Rossmore St

    14624

    683-0787

    Family Daycare

    Wallace Family Daycare

    Julie Ann Wallace

    Yes

    34 Laredo Dr

    14624

    781-4588

    Family Daycare

    YMCA Daycare

    Michele Beikirch

    Yes

    920 Elmgrove Rd

    14624

    341-3278

    Daycare Center

    Connie Groome

    Connie Groome

    No

    39 Tarrytown Drive

    14624

    615-1468

    Family Daycare

    Jean Osterling

    Jean Osterling

    No     247-0784 Family Daycare

Alexander Sirotin: Attraction “Gulliver’s Gate”.

The largest among the smallest

Posted by:
April 15, 2017

Alexander Sirotin

New York, USA

Categories:

Unusual

In New York, in the area of ​​Times Square and Broadway theaters, a new entertainment and educational attraction called “Gulliver’s Gate” has appeared. Here, in just two or three hours, you can travel around the world, visit Paris and Rome, St. Petersburg and Moscow…

…So, through New York, we enter the gates of Gulliver. We feel like Gullivers in the country of Lilliputians, because we see the world in miniature. We can examine in detail the Brooklyn Bridge, the buildings of the Guggenheim Museum and the Central Station – Grand Central.

In London we see not only iconic buildings, but here we can meet the Liverpool Four – the Beatles. There they are crossing the street… In Athens we see the Parthenon and the Olympian with a torch. In Italy, the Colosseum.

Some group is trying to straighten the falling Leaning Tower of Pisa. In general, this exhibition has a lot of humor, music, lighting effects and all sorts of surprises. For example, here in a special laboratory with the help of 3D printing technology, anyone can create a mini copy here. It’s like the Mini-Me in the Austin Powers parody movies.

… And here is one of the authors – Michael Langer:

– All children love to play with small cars, puppet animals, soldiers and other toys that, through miniature copies, introduce the child to the world around them. In childhood, we built houses from cubes, from Lego, from improvised material, and life in them according to our imagination. And so my partner Eyran Gazit and I decided to return ourselves and return others to the ideal world of childhood, to build mini-cities without crime, without slums, without wars. Designed and built.

– Who decided which countries and which cities to include in this show? Did you have art advice?

– Almost 800 artists, modellers, engineers, electricians worked on the realization of our project with Eyran. These people made their proposals, added something. So you see the result of the creativity of a large team.

Each section was created in the geographical area that needed to be depicted. For example, the New York section was built in New York, the Russian section in St. Petersburg, the European section in the Italian city of Rimini, and the Israeli section in Israel. Therefore, it was possible to create not only pictures, but to convey the unique atmosphere of each country.

– However, many countries are not represented here…

– Everything is ahead. We’re just getting started. “Gulliver’s Gate” will be constantly updated, new countries and cities, new buildings will appear. The project is designed for at least 15 years, and we want the audience to come back here again and again. No one can say: “We have already seen everything there and do not expect anything new.” There will always be new. According to our concept, there should always be something left unfinished, because cities such as New York or Moscow are constantly being built, new unique buildings, new parks appear, and this should be reflected in Gulliver’s Gate. We will change a lot in accordance with changes in the real, big world.

– Are there advantages to a small world over a big one?

– Of course. For example, it is hardly possible in the big world to see all the architectural features of the building of the Guggenheim Museum. From the street, you can only see the front or side of the house, while at the mini-exhibition you can see the entire building. So is the Rockefeller Center or the Central Library building. Here you see them from a different angle and discover their beauty.

One of the most interesting parts of the mini-world is Russian. Red Square, St. Basil’s Cathedral, a government limousine heading for the Spassky Gate, accompanied by secret services… St. Petersburg with the Admiralty, Rostral columns and the Neva ice-bound.

All this is done by Russian masters such as Alexey Ershov. He was sent to New York from his native Veliky Novgorod to assemble, connect and adjust all units.

– Set up, connect – the work is easy, because everything was perfectly prepared back in Russia, perfectly packaged, – he says. – The whole model was made in St. Petersburg on Tsvetochnaya Street, at the grand layout.

– It’s a good idea for the designers to convey the feeling of Russia through the snowy winter, the winter holidays season.

– Yes, everyone who sees the Russian model comes up to me and says it’s great.

When I asked about how many masters – the descendants of Lefty, who shod a flea – worked on mini-Moscow and mini-Petersburg, Alexey answered:

– Approximately ten people, no more. Because effective management selects effective performers.

Alexei expects to stay in New York as long as he is needed for maintenance of the Russian section. Since the contract for renting the premises for the exhibition was concluded for a decade and a half, Ershov hopes that he will be provided with work for a long time.

– An eye and an eye is needed. If there is an influx of visitors, it will be necessary to look after, perhaps to restore something.

The authors and managers of the project assume that the influx will be large and up to three million people will visit the exhibition in a year. It is the world’s largest indoor exhibition in miniature. It occupies a gigantic area of ​​almost 50,000 square feet. More than 300 mini buildings, and more than 1,000 mini trains, cars, ships and planes fit on this square.

Exhibition initiator and co-author Eiran Gazit is an Israeli army veteran who retired with the rank of major after 14 years of service. According to him, he had long dreamed of doing something very peaceful, very far from the army and secrecy. Inspired by the Madurodam park in The Hague, which shows the Netherlands in miniature, Eiran Gazit created such a park in Israel, near Jerusalem.

For the new New York project, he partnered with Michael Langer, head of Brooklyn-based real estate investment firm E&M Associates, without whom Eyran Gazit would have struggled to raise $37 million for the project.

The exhibition space was found in an 18-story building that was formerly occupied by the New York Times paper mill and the Jekyll and Hyde Club restaurant. Not so long ago, the building was acquired by the Kushner Corporation, which belongs to the family of Jared Kushner, husband of Ivanka Trump and, accordingly, son-in-law of President Trump. “Gulliver Gate” leased the first and second floors.

Eiran Gazit and Michael Langer are idealists. In their utopian mini-world, planes don’t explode, trains arrive on schedule, there are no protests, no refugee camps, no political battles. Little people rush to work, relax in parks and on the embankments, listen to music.

This exhibition, according to its creators, will be on a par with the main tourist attractions in New York.

Green New York. How to collect mushrooms in the “stone jungle”

Today, as part of my podcast “Alexander Genis: a view from New York”, we will go for a walk through the green New York, which exists contrary to popular belief about the “stone jungle” of Manhattan.

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Green New York: Mushrooming in Manhattan

by Radio Liberty

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Asphalt – glass.
I go and call.
Forests and blades of grass
– shaved off.
North
from south
are avenues,
west from east are
streets.

The author of the remarkable New York cycle, including the poem “Broadway” just quoted, was a great master of hyperbole. Chukovsky spoke about the still young Mayakovsky, that he looks at the world through a telescope (in contrast, the critic added shrewdly, from Akhmatova, who uses a microscope).

The greenery of European cities is a by-product of civilization

Arriving in New York, Mayakovsky described not what he saw, but what he knew about the city of skyscrapers. Because of this, he ignored everything that did not fit into the familiar formula – for example, Central Park. The neglect of details also caused another almost comical mistake in the best of Mayakovsky’s American poems “Brooklyn Bridge”:

0097 others –
hungry
long howl.

From here
unemployed
to the Hudson
threw themselves
upside down.

Vladimir Mayakovsky in New York. Photo by David Burliuk

As everyone knows, even those who have only heard of the most famous bridge in New York, it spans the East River, the East River. In order for the “poor unemployed” to get from the bridge to the Hudson, they, like a demon, seagulls or angels, need to fly across the whole of Manhattan.
And yet, the banal and incorrect idea of ​​New York as the notorious stone jungle, which Mayakovsky approved, lives in the collective consciousness of compatriots – and frightens them. To refute this cliché, today we’re going for a walk in green New York.

But first, it must be said about what distinguishes the New World from the Old in this landscape area as well.

The greenery of European cities is a secondary product of civilization. Every square there is a churchyard. The roots of trees growing on the rich humus of culture are entangled in the ruins of cramped medieval life. But in America, as it often seems, and sometimes it happens, nature was simply fenced off – with a fence, a street, a city. New York did the same with the magnificent Bronx Botanical Gardens.

I must confess that during the days, weeks, months of the war, this wonderful establishment serves as an oasis of escapism for me, where it is best to admire the change of seasons. The seasons endow the confused soul with harmony. Everything here happens by itself, and we can only enjoy the elegant metamorphosis of nature, indifferent and beautiful. She lives separately from us, allowing herself to be admired.

Exhibits of the exhibition of orchids. Photo by Irina Genis

As New Yorkers do every year at the orchid exhibition in the Botanical Garden. To put it bluntly, this is the most snobbish event on the city’s secular calendar. The circle of orchid lovers includes the rich and famous. This hobby is expensive and “pedigreed” like horse racing. Therefore, at the exhibition you can meet ladies in inventive hats, gentlemen in bow ties, old ladies in veils and other fauna from good society and the past.

The general atmosphere of “Belle Epoque” is exacerbated by the scene: a greenhouse, which was built a hundred years ago according to all the rules of Victorian engineering skill. Openwork like the Eiffel Tower, the greenhouse is its own world under the roof, a refined world that is much better and certainly more beautiful than ours.

The Bronx Botanic Garden’s greenhouse. Photo by Irina Genis

The forest that has never been cut down serves as a monument to America as it was before the arrival of the whites

But as soon as we go outside and delve into the garden, we will find a purely American rarity. About a quarter of the garden is the last virgin forest in New York City. Understanding the value of this fossil miracle, botanists carefully surrounded the thicket along the banks of the Bronx River with paths, leaving everything as it was before the arrival of the whites. This primeval, never-cut forest serves as a monument to America as it was before the arrival of the whites.

Another equally unusual prehistoric museum can be found in the south of the island, in the heart of Greenwich Village. This fenced patch of fossil greenery carefully preserves the island’s original landscape.

After spending the first third of American life on the northern edge of the island, I thoroughly studied its forests in the Inwood region. Deer, hares, foxes of amazing beauty and their victims pheasants live here. My wife and I quickly discovered the benefits of such a neighborhood, and in the early years of American life, missing the Baltic forests, we gathered mushrooms here in the fall, including my favorite chanterelles, and in May, my favorite flowers, lilies of the valley.

But, of course, the main wonder of New York is its great Central Park.

Central Park is unique in design. A neat rectangular park of three and a half square kilometers stretches over fifty blocks. Starting at the statue of Columbus on 59th Street, it stretches to the Harlem entrance on 110th Street. But penetrating the city, Central Park does not belong to it, because it lives in harmony only with its own aesthetic laws and philosophical theories.

When the park was invented, the New World was not only new, but also untamed. In the Wild West, which began, as arrogant residents of Manhattan still believe, on the other side of the Hudson, mustangs galloped, bison roamed, scalps were taken and cowboys drove around.

Mustangs were only admired by New Yorkers at the zoo, bison were valued for their smoked tongues, scalps were looked at in museums, and cowboys were only read about in westerns, which were novels until they hit Hollywood.

See also

Treasure Island. Cycling through Manhattan

Like a theater within a theater, Central Park exaggerated nature

Therefore – in the greenhouse conditions of cramped Manhattan – Central Park was supposed to become the Wild West for the internal use of the townspeople. It was artificial, but a real reserve of virgin America. Like a theater within a theater, Central Park exaggerated nature. Enclosed in a stone box, she blossomed into a paradise, neglecting price and benefit. Not like Disneyland with its caricatured geography, not like the National Parks with their untouched beauty, not like romantic gardens with their poetic arbitrariness, but like a life-size model of the New World. Strictly inscribed in the correct figure, the park demonstrates its intentional origin. But the nature that got inside lives in freedom. In lined-up Manhattan, Central Park provides a refreshing respite from geometry.

This contradiction reflects the unique character of New York. He easily manages without the weapons of state building – the main square, such as Krasnaya in Moscow or Tiananmen in Beijing. In New York, this square is replaced by the Great Clearing of Central Park.

Great Clearing of Central Park

The further we go into the park, the deeper we plunge into the past. The monuments of the spirit are replaced by boulders left by glaciers. And right there, almost rivaling them in age, is the oldest attraction in New York. This is the Egyptian obelisk “Cleopatra’s Needle”. He had aged less in three and a half thousand years than in the last fifty. But now it’s been cleaned of the city’s soot, and it’s as good as new.

Approaching it, I always increase my pace out of impatience, although I understand that, having lived for 35 centuries, the obelisk will be waiting for me. The last time, staring at my favorite monument, I did not notice the frail bespectacled man and almost knocked him off his feet.

“Idiot,” his wife hissed, holding me by the floor, “you want to deprive us of Woody Allen.

There were always other celebrities in Central Park. Most often – Jacqueline Kennedy, who loved to walk and run around the reservoir. Now this circular path bears her name. Another first lady, the ex-wife of former President Sarkozy, liked our park so much that she exchanged both Paris and her husband for it.

One of my favorite American novelists, Scott Fitzgerald, was among Central Park’s ardent fans.

We settled a few hours from New York, and I found that every time I arrived in the city, I immediately drowned in the chain of events. But one thing remained undeniable: that moment of absolute peace when you drive south through Central Park in the dark, to a place where the light from the facades of 59th Street begins to break through the trees. Before me was my lost city again, serenely wrapped in its mysteries and hopes.

Scott Fitzgerald, who dedicated a real pean to 1920s New York, rightly noted the feeling of peace experienced by every pedestrian, cyclist or rider (but not driver) who enters or drives into the park, leaving behind him a thundering “midtown “, the noisiest part of the city.

New York is very difficult to surprise, but Christo managed

Central Park experienced its finest hour, stretching for 16 February days, in 2005, when Christo took over it. The same New York artist of Bulgarian origin who wrapped up the Reichstag, curtained the mountain gorge and installed umbrellas on both sides of the Pacific Ocean. At that time, Central Park became the object of his monumental fantasy, along the paths of which 600 assistants of the artist placed seven and a half thousand gates decorated with bright orange plastic.
New York is very difficult to surprise, but Christo succeeded. It took 21 million dollars, five thousand tons of steel (one-third of the Eiffel Tower by weight) and one hundred thousand square meters of orange nylon.

Action Christo “Gate” in Central Park

The orange gates, reminiscent of Japanese torii, have turned the winter landscape, which means black and white, into a color movie. Gently following the relief, climbing the hillocks and descending into the clefts, man-made sights did not compete with nature, but removed it. The wind, inflating the curtains, molded them into mobile sculptures, reminiscent of orange waves, sand dunes, or colorful dreams. After all, they, too, can neither be recounted in words, nor considered in reproductions. Even the best panoramic photographs do not convey the impression of Christo’s “Gate”. It’s like dancing by correspondence: the magic of presence is lost.

crowd of onlookers turned into columns of pilgrims

I have never seen a park so beautiful. Feeling the fleeting significance of what was happening, the New Yorkers passed under the “Gate”, muffled voices, as if they were participating in a temple procession. In fact, it was so: the crowd of onlookers turned into columns of pilgrims.

“Gate”, of course, had nothing to do with the first Ukrainian Maidan, which ended with the victory of the people just a month before the opening of the Hristo happening in Central Park. But looking in New York at the apotheosis of the orange color, which has become a symbol of Ukrainian freedom, I could not help but recall the Orange Revolution in Kyiv.

For me, Central Park is inseparable from my closest friend, a wonderful artist, master of words and virtuoso of scissors Vagrich Bakhchanyan. He lived a stone’s throw from the park, and we often walked along the endless alleys. Vagrich knew every path by heart, every tree and every creature by sight.

In art, Bakhchanyan preferred a minimal shift separating pathos from parody. The most famous example is the Lenin cap on the poster of his work. Pulling it over the leader’s eyes, the artist turned Ilyich into an urka.

Vagrich Bakhchanyan in Central Park. Photo by Irina Bakhchanyan

Vagrich professed the same minimalism in fishing. Not recognizing a fishing rod, he always carried a fishing line with a hook in his pocket and threw the tackle wherever he had to, but always with success. Most often, in the same artificial lake that wraps around the already mentioned Jacqueline Kennedy path. Previously, the approach to the lake was guarded by a multi-meter wire fence. Once the city used this water, now it is used by gulls, frogs, fish and, until Bakhchanyan died. Deftly tossing the hook over the fence, he dragged white perch, fattened without fishermen. Vagrich also picked mushrooms in the park, and in the summer – berries for jam. Climbing into the thickets of Shakespeare’s hill, where all the plants mentioned by the bard are planted, Bakhchanyan composed his absurd and very funny texts.

Bakhchanyan has not been with us for many years, but we can talk to his faithful companion, friend and widow (terrible word) Irina Bakhchanyan,

What was Vagrich’s relationship with New York?

Vagrich had an inexhaustible interest, he wanted to know everything about all the artists

Irina Bakhchanyan: Vagrich treated everyone very attentively and with great benevolence – if only they didn’t get killed. When we arrived in New York, we found that many things were not very beautiful. We had such a mayor who spread terrible filth and crime in the city. But the city itself was big and the people were quite nice.

Vagrich immediately opened his large Armenian eyes with pleasure and began to look around, seeing a lot of interesting things. So he saw that he lived right next to the Metropolitan Museum, which you could go to as much as you wanted. (At that time you could even pay one cent, they were impudent. No, no, not Vagrich.) There were all the galleries around, if he wanted to see something, he could go from 92 to the very bottom, to the Village and see everything – which, by the way, he did: weekly he went around his favorite galleries, which he was interested in seeing.

Irina Bakhchanyan

Alexander Genis: I remember that Vagrich took me to all the New York galleries, and I was amazed that he knew literally all the New York artists, he was perfectly familiar with all American contemporary art. When did it start, back in Russia?

Irina Bakhchanyan: This is a good question. Vagrich had an inexhaustible interest, he wanted to know everything about all the artists. But when he arrived in New York, he could already meet them personally, of course, with those who were still alive at that time, here it was possible to find new friends. In those years, life was very active – without strict rules. Many galleries exhibited a huge number of new artists, and there was always an abundance of work. There was always something new to see. Therefore, he had a dual interest: not only to see the work, but also to see the people, the creators, so to speak (such a pompous word), to meet the authors.

I remember one day he came home on one of his regular walks in Madison and brought a large postcard, beautifully printed. In my opinion, it was an exhibition of one of the founders of pop art, Jim Dine. Vagrich says: “Look who I saw!”

On 57th Street he met, but did not talk to Yoko Ono and Lennon

It began with the fact that on 57th Street he met, but did not talk to Yoko Ono and Lennon, they obviously always walked there. Then he turned, went further along Madison, walking toward him, surrounded by a gang of some “thugs” Truman Capote. Of course, Vagrich could not miss this, he began to speak with him in the language he could, which made Capote incredibly delighted. He began to explain to his guys accompanying him: “Look, even a Russian knows me.” That is, he was very pleased with this circumstance.

Further Vagrich goes up Madison, and the sculptor Louise Nevelson was at that time, I don’t know what she was doing there, but just in case, he began to find out something from her, some creative secrets, and asked her sign too. It all happens on one piece of this Jim Dine printed postcard. There is a postcard, by the way, sometimes I look at it and remember this day very well right away.

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Alexander Genis: I remember how we walked with him and saw a man in a huge white fur coat, which, I must say, is very unusual in New York.

Irina Bakhchanyan: It must have been a bear.

Alexander Genis: No, it was Keith Haring who painted graffiti. Vagrich hugged him and said: “Brother!” They really liked each other.
Ira, Vagrich said: my Winter Palace is the Metropolitan Museum, my Summer Palace is Central Park. What did these two New York attractions have in common, next to which – a few blocks away – you have lived in America all your life?

Irina Bakhchanyan: These attractions were united by one name: Vagrich Bakhchanyan. Both of them welcomed him with open arms. You could go to museums as much as you wanted, look at anything. And you could also see a lot of interesting things in the park.

Alexander Genis: How did you spend your time in Central Park?

he was very careful and very polite with nature, and with the animal world, and with people too

Irina Bakhchanyan: The ritual walk usually took place on weekends, because on weekdays I had to go to the office. Our park usually started on Saturday morning, the earlier the better. I bought the New York Times on the way, we sat down near the lake, right behind the monument to Hans Christian Andersen, looked at the newspaper, read, Vagrich looked for something from the pictures. They admired the boats, watched the eagles nest in the house opposite this lake, then went somewhere else. The usual path led around this lake from all sides, then it was already possible to return home.

Alexander Genis: What is the most amusing episode connected with Vagrich and Central Park?

Irina Bakhchanyan: The thing is that he was very careful and very polite with nature, and with the animal world, and with people too. So I remember the only time he ran into a problem. It happened when, near this very lake, we saw a bird entangled in a fishing line on a tree. Of course, none of us could get past this one, Vagrich began to get it out and untangle it, she pecked at him, left marks on his fingers. Of the other living creatures, there were only raccoons, but they were very voracious, you always had to be very careful with them, no matter what they grabbed.

Alexander Genis: But did you save the bird?

Irina Bakhchanyan: Yes, of course.

Alexander Genis: Tell me, is it true that once Vagrich was mistaken for Pablo Picasso?

the coachman began to shout directly from the goat: “Hey, Picasso! Picasso!”

Irina Bakhchanyan: Yes, there was such a case. Vagrich participated in the filming as the protagonist of a short film, which then grew and turned almost into a biopic, the film “Vagrich and the Black Square”, which was shot by Andriy Zagdansky, a Ukrainian director. Vagrich read some of his texts to him, and read, and read, and read. Nearby, a Japanese woman who spoke exclusively in Japanese had already managed to adapt to him and somehow stick to him from some side, but she really liked Vagrich. They talked about something for a long time. And at that time they were passing by, because this is such the most famous road in the park, carriages pulled by horses were passing by. The driver, also dressed, by the way, rather unorthodoxly, in a top hat, in some kind of waistcoat. He saw Vagrich in a striped T-shirt, which in this outfit was very reminiscent of Picasso in the famous photograph. This driver began to shout directly from the goat: “Hey, Picasso! Picasso!” Such people were bound to somehow attach themselves to Vagrich, not to say stuck.

Alexander Genis: A wonderful New York story, very similar to New York, where every driver knows Picasso by sight.

Alexander Genis: Well, now it’s time for a surprise that ends each program from the “My New York” cycle. Today I will talk about the newest and most original park in the city, which has become the second – after the Statue of Liberty – a landmark in New York. This is the High Line Park, which allows you to admire New York from an unusual point of view.

High Line. Park on rails

At first glance, the High Line is just a narrow green strip that stretches over three dozen Manhattan blocks. But at a second glance, it is a masterpiece of conceptual architecture. Its authors call their idea “borrowed landscape”. Not so much by changing as by rethinking what has already been done, the park takes on a different dimension of the urban landscape. I would call it elevated.

To appreciate the audacity of the undertaking, one must hate overpasses just like all New Yorkers. Their shallow (no match for Moscow) metro is trying to jump out of the ground like a devil and rumble over the heads of defenseless citizens. Shaking the body and shaking the soul, the train rushes along the bridges that disfigure New York, like a mezzanine – a manor apartment.

“There were mezzanines, there will be a mezzanine,” announced the designers of the High Line, deciding to create a park from the unsightly waste of the industrial past.

Unemployed rails imperiously but imperceptibly guide the traveler, turning the walk into a procession

An abandoned overpass with rusty rails annoyed the city fathers for thirty years, until one of them, Mayor Giuliani, decided to demolish it. Oddly enough, the eccentrics, who found these ruins picturesque, stood up for her. Another mayor, Bloomberg, agreed with them, and soon the High Line itself went into operation, and built us. The unemployed rails imperiously but imperceptibly guide the traveler, turning the walk into a procession. Walking along the sleepers, because there is nowhere else, we obey the measured rhythm of the spectacle, which changes with every step.

There is something of a ritual about it, as if Stonehenge had been spun and pulled out. There is something in this from the parks of Versailles, which subjugated the nature of geometry. There is something of a romantic garden in this, which poeticizes even artificial ruins. But mostly New York.

A pathological exhibitionist, this city craves to be seen and is meant to be seen at all times and from everywhere. For a New Yorker, there is nothing more precious than the view from the window. Actually, the High Line turned out to be so successful because it offered Manhattan a new movable frame, which updated the hardened scene. Walking through the park, we look at the city not from the gallery, not from the stalls, but from the mezzanine: far enough not to mix with the crowd, close enough not to miss a single detail.
All of them seem unusual, because we ourselves found ourselves in an altered – uplifted – state. Skyscrapers are visible from the knees. Cars flaunt their roofs, passers-by their hats, the hills open up beyond the Hudson.

But, to be honest, the most interesting thing is to look into other people’s windows. The path leading through residential areas does not allow, but forces to spy. Others might be embarrassed, but New York City is an extrovert on steroids, so property prices immediately shot up in the real estate market with park-facing windows. Some of them were decorated with luxurious curtains, others, on the contrary, abandoned them altogether, the third put up his portrait so as not to lose the attention of tourists even when the owner is not at home.

Quickly learning the benefits of the view from above, the artists battle for the right to get on the huge billboard that the park director rents out to the most original ones.

But what impresses the High Line most of all is that in the process of converting the nasty ruins into a fashionable attraction, almost nothing has changed. The same unprepossessing flora sprouted through the applied soil, persistent and stubborn, like all living things in New York, decrepit iron, bent levers, a scattering of pebbles. The designers have preserved every rusty detail, urging us to admire the industrial era that replaces the melancholic antiquities of the Old World in America.

You have listened to the new episode of my podcast “Genis: A New York Perspective”. In it, we took a walk through the green New York to get acquainted with its parks.