Have you ever had a day where you feel that you just need to get out of the city? Well taking a mini day trip to Dia is the perfect thing to remedy such urges, and the best part is it is simple and easy to plan! From Grand Central Terminal you can purchase a day-travel package to Beacon Station, New York, with a Dia Museum ticket included for just $30. Metro-North trains run up to Beacon every hour so you don’t have to panic about departure times.Don’t let yourself be fooled by this seeming long train ride. Boarding the train is the beginning of your day trip. Metro-North trains travel at high speeds across the countryside. Within minutes of your departure you will come above ground, wave “goodbye” to the grit of Upper Harlem and cross into the shockingly picturesque countryside of New York state. Merely minutes outside of the city traffic you pull into the small Riverdale station composed of a single concrete platform. Directional signs offer two options: “To New York City” or “Outbound”. As you are not in an Archie Comic you remain on the train heading outbound past Yonkers, The New York City Water Refinery, The Domino Sugar Factory and out into the trees which grow up the sheer face walls of the Hudson River Valley. Out, out, out you travel on the whirring train until the conductor finally crackles the words “Beacon up next” over the quieter-than-a-loud-speaker-microphone.
You fall out of the train into the scene of a small town. Lilly-pads float in algae-fresh water, while kids run up and down the open wooden piers unchaperoned over the river. Before you Canadian geese unconcernedly block the road; the line of three cars behind them do not honk nor attempt to run them over, but rather seem content waiting for the geese-crossing to take it’s course. A small green sign points you up the hill to Dia. Like any good New Yorker you look about for a taxi to take you up that hill, but seeing none set off on foot. Dia sits in the valley of hill you just climbed; it is a long low brick building dwarfed by it’s carefully pruned shrubbery. The sight of a parking lot filled with trees and cars, along with a stretching green side lawn offers startling evidence of rural-life to the city dweller.
When the square Dia pin is safely attached to your shirt you are finally allowed to step inside this temperature controlled space. Here the world shifts for you. This seemingly low-lying building belies the vast spaces it harbors inside. Old, warped wooden floors give off a loved smell of wax, as the white studio-style walls almost blind you with their simplicity and cleanliness. The curator has planned every inch of this show wonderfully. Each artist has received an area larger than your entire apartment for their pieces and for their empty space, (a necessity between the pieces of this magnitude).
The main hallway presents itself with a view of Knoevel’s work, while Flavin’s neon lights hum in the next corridor over. Gerhard Richtor presents “mirrors into life now…” or “doors into the world beyond…” with megalithic gray mirrored glass wall-mounts, LeWitt’s drawings of the “Simple and Super-imposed” force the viewers head into a mathematical place, in an unequivocal cry for consolidation between the right and left sides of the brain, while Bourgeois harbors the darker upstairs to herself, presenting some of the most disturbing pieces of the show with her “nightmare” and “the-self” exploration. Richard Serra’s cast walls will form a pit in your stomach, thinking about the sheer weight of such metal and the delicate balance it is suspended from. You will pray there is not a strong breeze as you stand directly in the center of Tilted Arch, straining your ears against the new sound barrier you crossed upon walking into this piece. You will also find yourself guilty of attempting to breath normally as the humidity in the air expands to about 35% within the iron walls.
The museum should take you about three hours to walk in total, after which a brief lunch (packed from home or purchased at the museum bookstore) in the side gardens among the sun and shrubbery will fortify you for the next phase of the trip: the exploration of small town Beacon.
Beacon is one of those towns where Main Street is actually the main street. At the far end of Main-the public library can be found, as well as the city’s grocery store and one tiny take-out Chinese restaurant. But what this town really has in abundance is artists and tourist supplies. Store fronts boast windows full of nick-knacks meant to temp the Dia-Day goer: A Harley-Davidson/Spiritual Healing store offers Palm reading for $10. A local Ice Cream store sells hand-made Popsicles (all created from locally-grown fruits and vegetables except for the Peruvian Lucuma pop, marketed as “the OMG good pop”). All You Knead, is the local bakery, Foxy’s hair salon, the main barbers and Max’s on Main is the main pub of the town, Max is the owner and bartender.
After a few drinks, (Max will always buy back the second beer) and a tour of the refurbished fire-house, now a glass-blowing studio (one has to wonder what happens if there is a fire?) it is time to head back to NYC and reality. If you time it right you can catch the inbound express train which delivers you back under the starry roof of Grand Central Terminal in less that thirty minutes. But remember this is a day trip, don’t be in such a rush to leave that you do not stop to swing for a moment at the river-side park, nor should you skip the chance to purchase some bazooka bubble gum from the Kicks-for-Kids toy store on the corner (Bazooka comics are as bad today as they were in the 80’s and 90’s). Finally you should never turn down a ride to the train station from Marty, a local restaurant owner who owns a white Mercedes Benz, even if the station is less than a five minute walk away…
Coming back to New York City will be just as wonderful as you had hoped. Now you are back on your own turf, after a day of playing the tourist it is nice to be a “local” again. On the ride home you will hop subway, perhaps you will help a lost tourist or new-comer to the city with some directions, then you will get off at your stop and as you climb the stairs into your own apartment allow the thrill of having so many people around you sink in. New York is not the small town where everyone knows your business and says “hello” as you walk down the street. This is the city where everyone works to know who they want, and does not have to care about anyone else. And that is the perfect way to live.
intrepid trekking 
