Back to NYC

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 26^th floor penthouse apartment we'd rented on W. 52^nd. 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 5^th 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 4^th floor where the more contemporary stuff was. After the 5^th, it seemed a bit vapid, as if all the exploration we had seen on the 5^th 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 5^th 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 46^th between 5^th and 6^th 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.