In the last few days of the run Sarah and I managed to hit a couple of places in NYC that I’d never been to: the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building.

We made it to the latter shortly after sunset, in between our last show and the festival’s closing party. The view was stunning but sad. From that high up it really strikes you that Manhattan is an island, and not a very big one at that. The Brooklyn bridge stretches out on the left and the Statue of Liberty is a pinprick that seems only a stone’s throw away on the right. All around you’re surrounded by buildings; to the north are a few distinct ones, and you can see a hint of Time’s Square, but aside from that it’s just a mass of short blocky buildings piled around narrow streets at right angles, stacked up on top of each other with the same orange light peeking out of millions of square windows; like a dimly phosphorescent cubic coral reef.

Urban alienation and melancholy aside, I really just wanted to share these panoramas. The first one is from Sunset Park in Brooklyn, near where we were staying (see if you can spot the Statue of Liberty!). The second is of the Manhattan skyline, taken from Liberty Island.

I’m going to post a more comprehensive summary of the whole FRIGID festival experience in the next week or so. So far, suffice to say that our houses improved, but not by much, we had a lot of fun at the late night events, met some really cool people, and nabbed an Audience Choice Award.

But I’m still glad to be home.