NYC is, arguably, the capital of the
world, at least until Beijing takes over. Our good friends James &
Lisa, artist and novelist, respectively, had never been there and
were eager to experience it. I, on the other hand, had visited many
times and Frieda had grown up there. Consequently, we had for some
time entertained the fantasy of going with them and showing them
around. So when Lisa recently signed with a NY agent who inked a
2-book deal for her, it gave us the incentive we needed to plan a
whirlwind trip.
We took the red eye on Jet Blue Sunday
night and arrived early Monday morning. It required an hour and a
half to get through the traffic from JFK to the 26th floor
penthouse apartment we'd rented on W. 52nd. It would've
taken longer but the driver knew all the back streets. After
checking out the spectacular view, I fell into bed and took a nap.
The rest of the crew, too keyed up to sleep, took a taxi to Trader
Joe's to buy supplies. When they returned we had a light lunch and
then headed over to the Neue Galerie on the east side of the Park
near the Guggenheim where James, very much interested in the Vienna
Secession and Klimt in particular, wanted to see “The Woman in
Gold,” a painting notorious for its history and 2006 purchase price
of $152 million, a record at the time. Both he and Lisa were quite
taken with this painting, a portrait of Klimt's friend, patron and,
perhaps, lover Adele Bloch-Bauer, but there were other Klimt
paintings and items of interest as well. It turned out to be a
better experience than any of us had anticipated. After the tour we
found our way to the Fledermaus Cafe, a recreation of a Viennese cafe
of the era in the museum, where I had a Milchkaffee and strudel and
James had a Klimttorte and we all discussed our favorite exhibits.
Refreshed, we took a leisurely stroll
across Central Park, past Cleopatra's Needle, to the West Side and,
as Lisa is a Beatles fan, Strawberry Fields. The weather was overcast
and cool but at least dry. The Dakota, where Yoko still lives, was
sheathed in scaffolding, apparently undergoing some maintenance,
perhaps a facade scrubbing.
Tuesday Frieda brought pastries up from
a little shop downstairs and then we headed off to the MOMA where we
went directly up to the 5th floor to see all the heavy
hitters. It was awesome to see so many major masterpieces of modern
art, paintings seen dozens of times in art books over the years, now
right in front of you in all their life-sized immediacy. An item
like “Starry Night,” for example, which you're used to seeing the
size of a playing card, is suddenly a yard square, with the frenzied
brushstrokes still roiling the surface. In another room one of
Monet's “Water Lilies” paintings 7 feet high sprawled 42 feet
along one wall, so gigantic you felt you could just walk into it and
get lost. There were stunning works by Picasso like “Seated
Bather” and “Girl in a Mirror,” and the mesmerizing 7 by 10
foot “Dream” by Henri Rousseau. And then there were provocative
works by artists not so famous, like James Ensor's “Masks
Confronting Death.” Altogether a dazzling surfeit of riches. I
kept running from one to another like a kid in a candy shop, unable
to impose any order on my viewing. When I got to the end and ran
into Frieda she said she'd had the same problem, so we went back
through in the opposite direction pointing out things that maybe the
other had missed. After finding James & Lisa we all went down to
the 4th floor where the more contemporary stuff was.
After the 5th, it seemed a bit vapid, as if all the
exploration we had seen on the 5th had left the Western
imagination exhausted, there was nowhere else interesting to go other
than novelty for its own sake and the tedium of shock. Or maybe it
was just we who were burned out, like after tasting a lot of wine
your palate goes stale and you just can't tell what's good and what
isn't anymore.
We walked down 5th Avenue
past St. Patrick's Cathedral to Rockefeller Center, stopping at a
street vendor for a knish along the way. Then we headed for Grand
Central, stopping again for pizza at Brother's on 46th
between 5th and 6th where they sold 2 slices
and a soda for $2.99. At Grand Central we had a devil of a time
trying to get a cab: there were plenty of them but they were all
occupied. After almost resorting to Uber we finally found one to
take us to the Folk Art museum which was showing a number of outsider
artists, including Joe Coleman and Adolf Wolfi. From there we walked
down Columbus past Lincoln Center to our apartment.
After some relaxed conversation over
champagne about our day, we set off for Becco's in the theater
district where we had a reservation at 7:30. It was good we did as
the place was jammed, even though it was Tuesday, and the food was
exceptional. Afterward we went next door to Don't Tell Mama for
drinks and some informal cabaret. I had an excellent vodka stinger,
a charming after-dinner cocktail that put me in a good mood, but
Frieda found the main singer's voice annoyingly nasal. Also, Lisa
was starting to come down with a cold, so we left earlier than I
would've chosen to.
In the morning James & Lisa headed
off to see Lisa's agent while Frieda and I walked to a restaurant in
the Time Warner Building called Landmarc for the most amazing pain
perdu I'd ever had: deliciously moist and eggy on the inside,
crisp and sweet on the outside. It was marvelous. Her nephew's wife
had turned her on to it on her last visit. Downstairs at Whole Foods
we got some Petit Suisse, a yogurt-like cheese treat common in
Europe but hard to find in California, even at Whole Foods there, and
after dropping it off in the refrigerator at the apartment, grabbed a
cab to go meet James & Lisa. We picked them up near the Flatiron
Building and had the driver drop us all at Washington Square Park.
The plan was to amble through the West Village to Chelsea Market and
the High Line, but the women got too chilled by the wind whipping
down Greenwich Avenue so we cut the walking tour short and caught a
cab home. After talking things over, James & Lisa headed for the
Met, which was on their list. We, on the other hand, were tiring of
museums and it seemed to be warming up so we strolled along Central
Park West some distance and then cut over to Broadway where,
eventually, Frieda found a cafe she remembered atop the Fairway
Market. Burgers were decent there and I had a milk shake to
compensate for the great one I had earlier intended to get at the
dairy store in Chelsea Market. Then we walked over to the Magnolia
bakery to get some cupcakes, a favorite treat of her nephew's wife.
We were planning on having dinner at their place and thought that
would make a nice dessert.
James & Lisa got back to the
apartment shortly after we did and, after an appropriate exchange of
information about our respective afternoons, we all walked over to
the nephew's place on 61st. After dinner James & Lisa headed
back to the apartment while Freida and I strolled up 52nd to a Cuban
cafe called Victor's where we had the best mojitos we'd ever tasted.
We had 2 apiece and only stopped because the place was closing.
Thursday we went up on the roof where
you could look in the opposite direction from the view we were used
to in our apartment, toward the Hudson. We would have had lunch up
there but it was too cold to stay. After pastrami sandwiches from
Artie's deli, we packed our bags. The car picked us up at 3 and
took 2 hours to get through horrendous traffic to JFK airport. Every
time I go to NYC, or anywhere else, actually, that I've been before,
the traffic seems worse than the last time. The world seems quite
noticeably now to be filling up with more and more people, moment to
moment.
