Puerto Rican pride, Eva Hesse and Dorothy's birthday

This past weekend held the city's annual celebration of Puerto Rican pride. Dorothy (who turned 25 while she was visiting), Eliza and I found ourselves in the thick of it up in Spanish Harlem on Saturday afternoon.

MTV2 tried to interview us, but found this guy instead:

We walked,

And stumbled upon Central Park's Conservatory Garden on 104th Street at 5th Avenue, where we witnessed a private wedding under a willow tree.

This is our new favorite spot in the city.
After stopping in the garden, we walked down to the Eva Hesse sculpture retrospective at the Jewish Museum (free on Saturdays in honor of the Sabbath!). Pictured left, Eva Hesse's Repetition Nineteen III (1968). The whole installation is a lovely, calming and pristine exhibit, filled with the artist's interest in randomness as it affects work, and tactile, real media (e.g. latex, string). I enjoyed it very much, though I didn't know anything about the artist beforehand. Eliza did.

On the subway later to the Lower East Side, this service car passed through the station at 125th Street. Anyone have any idea what the praying mantis is about?

Anyway, the point of this post is that there are plenty of fun, free things to do in New York City this summer, and somehow I needed a good friend visiting from Boston to open my eyes to most of it. Happy Birthday, D!

Photo of Repetition Nineteen III from http://nymag.com/arts/art/reviews/16994/index.html.