Strawberry Fields Forever

This past Saturday, October 9th, would have been John Lennon's 70th birthday. As he is such a huge musical icon and influence to many, I was sure New York would be doing something to commorate this occasion. That morning I heard on the Today Show there would be a screening of a documentary called "LennonNYC" in Central Park. The screening was to start at 7:00pm, doors opening at 6:00pm. I talked to my friend Stephanie (who also recently moved here for grad school. We were in A Christmas Carol together at Wayside Theatre in 2000 and then went to college together) and we decided to meet up go check it out that evening.

Around 5:00 Stephanie and I met on the F platform at my stop and headed up to the park - we were supposed to enter at E. 69th and 5th. As we got further into the park we could see a line formed. Looked like we were in the right place! We headed over and walked to get in the back of the line. We walked and walked and walked. Remember when I mentioned the forever lines before? This truly was a forever line in every way shape and form. We walked down toward the bottom west side of the park and NEVER FOUND THE END OF THE LINE!! People must have been lined up since the previous morning, seriously. After much walking Stephanie and I decided we'd walked long enough, probably wouldn't get in even if we did find the end of the line and could just catch the documentary when it airs on PBS in November.

It was dinner time so we took our picnic dinner over to the Sheep Meadow. We found a really beautiful tree to sit under to enjoy our food, catch up and do some fabulous people watching. Eventually the sun went down and we got a little chilly so we decided to move on. I felt that since it was such a big birthday for John (Mr. Lennon? I've never referred to him as anything but John Lennon) we should at least head over to Strawberry Fields to see what was happening over there.

WHAT A GREAT IDEA!! We were over by the Cherry Hill fountain and could already hear people singing the chorus of Hey Jude! We continued our walk and encountered about three or four separate crowds of people singing songs by The Beatles. Each group had a few people with guitars and some brought other instruments as well. Loads of people were just singing. We finally got up to the Imagine mosaic and it was so full of people you could barely walk around it. Stephanie and I stopped for a little bit and sang along.

A group of fans jammin'.

The crowd gathered at Strawberry Fields.

Right down the hill from Strawberry Fields someone had made a memorial site on a rock on the side of the hill. There were lots of flowers, pictures, candles and notes left there. It was much more quiet there with fans just taking a moment to reflect.



After awhile the crowd got even thicker and the evening got even colder. On top of all of that, which actually wasn't that bad, Stephanie and I each had some school work that still needed to get done so we decided to head home. As we were leaving the park, I saw something that caused me to do a double take. Could it really be? It was! John Lennon was giving an interview to a reporter! Well, an impersonator anyway.



So what's really crazy... I decided to use that picture as my picture of the day for my 365 Project. As I went to label what number day it was, I discovered it was picture #70. My 70th picture for my project was of a John Lennon impersonator on what would have been his 70th birthday. That's a little weird.

That being the 70th picture also means... happy 70 days living in NYC to me!!