On the fourth floor of the MoMa, the white walled room is empty. Most people are elsewhere, sucked into Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”, or called to attend Munch’s “The Scream.” Before fame’s gravity can dissipate, its victims must hold aloft cameras, jostling for a memory of having photographed a work of art.

But those few that mingle here, only hesitantly step onto the 10′ by 26′ steel plate lying on the floor. Who has walked on a Richard Serra? It’s an opportunity the threat of the sibling plate secured to the ceiling can’t dissipate.

Only in NYC, can I walk through the center of a giant letter X and have so much fun.

A 40 minute train ride away, Fort Tryon Park perches atop uptown Manhattan. Beginning a leisurely walk towards the medieval art housed at the Cloisters, the bright sky, ultimate frisbee game, and the smell of trees make the New York of the last month seem a distant dream.

Back in the late 1920s, Rockefeller financed this park for the MET. At the height of simple extravagance, he donated 700 acres of waterfront to the city of New Jersey, so that no development would spoil the park’s view.

Though the cityscape is missing, this place is just as embedded in NYC history, founded on old money. But strangely, I feel more welcomed, more at home.

A nocturnal arc, The Lincoln Center spills inviting light from 6 stories of floor to ceiling windows. Well dressed figures congregate in dark backlit crowds at its doors waiting to be carried away for an evening, saved from the wrathful deluge of a night without music.

The walls of the Alice Tully Hall are warm space ship walls that have been constructed to sculpt the space as much as the sound. One of the doors of the strange craft opens and a man in a Vivienne Westwood suit walks on stage.

Jean-Yves Thibaudet’s virtuosic performance of Debussy is an other-worldly wave of soft and percussive impressionism and just another night in New York.

Last night walking south on 5th Ave, I passed the NY public library and crossed into a three block radius where the street lights slept below the dark canyon walls of deserted buildings. It was a different world where people lit their paths with flash lights and police stopped the car headlights so you could cross the dark street.

And then as quickly as the world arrived, it departed, taking with it its hint of trepidation and leaving you back on the brightly lit strip.

South of 14th is the same other worldly pitch with the night time appearance of a ghost town.

New York post Sandy is momentous to behold.