SUNDAY IN CENTRAL PARK

This isn't the only thing we did today, but I'm just going to upload a few videos andr that  pictures, because there's not much to say.  I think some of them have sound, and you might even be treated to me singing, I don't know, because the sound is so low on this computer that I can't hear it.t decided
Anyway we spent the day at a flea market and mostly at central park   So thats all there is to today's actions,

Oh, and we found the hawk's nest at E 73rd st next to the park.

FLEA MARKET DAY

We got up at 7 a.m. this morning, mostly because we get up when the cats want us to, but that's another story.  Anyway, we were on the road by 8:45 to the famous 26th St. Flea Market in Chelsea, which was very disappointing.  We had seen this on a program on PBS about fabulous flea markets, and when we got there it was reallyl lame, about 15 vendors and mostly crap.  We walked around for awhile and were ready to leave by about 9:30.  As we were leaving I realized we wereb betwee 5th & 6th , and the flea market was supposed to be between 6th and 7th.  So we went down a block, and lo and behold, there was "The Garage flea market." 

It's on two floors of a garage.  I don't know if the garage is still there during the week, but it's a pretty big flea market on the weekend.  We spent about two hours there, saw a lot of interesting things, but didn't buy much of anytthing. .   And if that wasn't enough, there was a Goodwill right across the street.  To give you an idea of rents, that which is $4 in thrift stores in Sacramento, is $8 in Manhattan.  And the store is much smaller and has less merchandise.than any in Sacramento.

This being New York, there are many women who show up, even for a flea market, dressed to the nines.  Some of them aren't anything anybody I know would ever wear, but some are really kind of cool.  The woman in the red and white outfit had done some really interesting work on the white overblouse which she bought at a reseller on 73rd.  I've been to the shop where she bought it and it's a combination of resale and some new stuff. 

 We didn't really do much more today.  On our way back to the subway, we took a slight detour through the bead district because I wanted to buy some satin cord.  You really can't believe the bead shops here.  Some of them are more like a place that caters only to the trade, others are sort of more like the kind of store that caters to crafters like me.  John was a trouper and never griped about  anything all day long.  My payment for this is that I agreed that after we go to the street fair on Columbus tomorrow morning, we will spend the day relaxing in Central Park and I won't keep nagging him to move on and do something else. 

Our big exciting Saturday night was to have dinner at Cafe con Leche (the Cuban restaurant we love) and come home and do laundry. 

AN ADVENTURE

We had a really slow day today.  In fact, we didn't even get up until quarter to 12.  Don't even know why we slept that late.  We had the door shut, because it was very hot, and the cats want to come in and out, but they can't when we have the AC on, so Julia spent a lot of time overnight pounding on the door and crying. 

We took a short trip this afternoon down to Gramercy Park which the hoi polloi like us cannot enter.  This is where the Vanderbilts, or Astors, or somebody else really rich, built their houses after they moved uptown from Greenwich Village.  Took a little walk through Union Square, checked out a gigantic shoe store, and came home. 

We had already decided that we were going to go to a concert called Brazilian Baroque at the Brazilian Endowment Association tonight.  I looked it up on our trusty subway map, and it seemed pretty easy to get there.  But just as a backup, I did a Google map and an MTA map.  Both of them suggested it would take 45 minutes minimum to get there.  About the time we started out, it started pouring rain, and I mean pouring.  By the time we walked the three blocks to 96th to get the crosstown bus, my jeans were soaked -- as in wring them out soaked.  Of course by the time we  got over to to the 6 subway, it wasn't raining anymore. 
After we got to 52nd on the subway, we walked over to the concert venue which was across the street from the Brazilian embassy.  The room the concert was in was a basement room about the size of our living room.  The musicians wanted the AC turned off for the concert, so they turned it off and opened the door.  Zing went the tuning on the strings.  So they closed the door and turned the AC back on.

I think perhaps it should have been a clue that there was wine compliments of the band.  The band consisted of a cellist, a double bass player, a flutist, two guitarists, a violinist, and a baritone (singer).  The biggest ensemble was the baritone, the bass and the cello.  There were three pre 1700 pieces, none more than 32 measures long.   One  guitar player was really good.  The one who played the early music wasn't.  He also sang with one of his pieces.  He apologized for his Spanish.  Spanish?  This was supposed to be Brazilian.  And his singing was much worse than his Spanish anyway.  There were three composers who had modern works performed, also very short, and the composers were there.  The best one was a violinist, and his piece was really interesting and well performed.  The 8 p.m. concert didn't get started until 8:24 and was over by 8:53.  I know why they tried to liquor us up first. 
After the show we stopped at a tapas bar called Solera.  We had bravas and a tortilla and some really good rioja.  Then we went back to the subway, where John had some kind of a problem with his ticket, and once you've used it, you can't use it for another 15 or 20 minutes, so we decided to walk up to the 59th Street station, and by the time we got there we decided to walk back over past the park and get on a very crowded 1 train and came home.  And that's our exciting day.

Tomorrow is flea market day.  There are a number of cool flea markets around town tomorrow, we hope to hit more than one.  The big one is the 26th & 6th one.  Also, I think people are coming to practice tomorrow, so we have to get out butts out the door. 

In NY, they are trying to get people to quit drinking bottled water and drink NYC's fine water.  This is a picture of the moveable water fountain brought to Union Square.  The other picture is of a woman getting her hair cut by someone who looks like a homeless man, also in Union Square.

Sorry there aren't many pictures today.  The battery on the camera died.  I'm charging it up now.

Museums we have known and loved

Started off the day at the Whitney museum. Their best show right now 
is works of Lyonel Feininger.  He was an American who lived in Germany 
and was considered a German expressionist. He was also a cartoonist 
and did some illustration.

We walked past Central Park trying to find the hawk Pale Male, but I now see why the books describe looking for them in the winter.  Hard to see high up on the apartments from across the street with the leafy trees.  So we gave up and took the crosstown bus to the Folk Art Museum.

  This used to be a 4 story museum down on 53rd next to MOMA, but which has moved over to Columbus near Lincoln Center.  Their entire display area consists of about 15 exquisite quilts.  They have a lot of stuff, especially a lot of quilts, but in fact, only have display area for about 15 at a time.  The picture is my favorite.  It was listed as a crazy quilt, but it's so much more.  The designer is Mary Ann Crocker Hinman, who I would suggest was more of an artist, but being a woman, was restricted to doing her art with quilts. 

grocery cart escalator

The rest of the day was a farmer's market, a trip to Trader Joe's (new in Manhattan last September).  It's a complete madhouse, and being Manhattan, it is on two floors, which means they have a separate escalator for the grocery cart.  I've never seen this before.  One of the clerks told us that when they opened this store, the former Californians who came in had tears in their eyes and were wild with excitement.  They don't have wine, though, because the archaic liqour laws of NY say that if you have a chain of stores, you can only have wine in one of them. 

lines in TJ's

So for the second night, we ate at home.  Amazing. 

Sorry I don't have anything more exciting

FOOD DAY

As we got ready to leave home this morning I realized that I had left  my visor somewhere last night & by a process of elimination it  was Gandhi's. So after breakfast we headed to the village to get it. I  know it's dorky, but it really makes the day more comfortable. It was there. We walked around Greenwich village for awhile looking at all 
the super expensive shops and then decided to go to the world trade center site. As we were walking from the subway to the WTC area we went by this place in lower Manhattan.  A giant Amish market. I thought it might have the cool Amish stuff we've seen in the stores in Lancaster PA and thereabouts, but it turned out to be just a sort of Amish version of Zabar's.  So the picture is all there is.

We went on to the Trade Center area and found that they have a preview there of what the memorial is going to be but it wasn't open & the memorial itself won't open until September 
11.  The construction on the new World Financial Center is moving 
right along. The building in this picture is now about half as high as 
it's going to be. There is a hood deal of construction going on, 
because other buildings were damaged as well.
With no museum or memorial to visit, we were forced to go to Century  21 which is a HUGE discount department store. There is really cheap  stuff, like things that are damaged, and deeply discounted designer stuff. But it's actually overwhelming for someone whose comfort level  is a medium-sized thrift store.




Flatiron building

 Once we left there we had lunch and then took the subway to 23d St in  the flatiron districy to go to Eataly, a new eatery and food emporium.  Think Harrod's food hall where everything is Italian. 
We had a ciacollata and a gelato, no surprise there, looked at all the 
food-- again, the place was overwhelming. Lots of stuff that looked 
good but could I bring it home?  Probably not. So we came home with 
our purchases in our bellies.

John had a backache, so we came home after Eataly go and had dinner here!  This is only the second time we've eaten in the apartment since we got here.  The first time it was leftovers from Saigon, this time is was takeout. 
After dinner I went to Thalia, which is also known as Symphony Space.  It's a small theater just two blocks away, and they have been hosting part of a summer singing program where you can pay to go sing with professional singers and members of, at least tonight, the Riverside Chorale.  We sang the Bach B Minor Mass, which clearly wasn't written for a giant chorus, and not for amateurs, but it was fun anyway.  I didn't embarrass myself, but I really couldn't get the Latin words all that well.  I was okay with the notes, and there was no complex counting involved in the alto part.  But I'm not a singer by a long shot.  The soloists were mostly good -- I thought the tenor had a bit of trouble with the high notes, and the amateur singers were remarkably good.  But then, this is New York.

A VACATION TO THE ISLAND (ROOSEVELT, THAT IS)

Roosevelt Island cable car

cable car coming

A beautiful day today and we decided to go to Roosevelt Island.  Roosevelt Island is an island in the middle of the East River which at one time housed a mental institution at one end, which is still there but not in use

Roosevelt Island from Tram



Queensboro Bridge




U.N. from Roosevelt Island

 for that purpose.  Other than that, it's housing.  But the cool part is that it's reachable by air tram.  Apparently it's the only commuter tram in the U.S.  And you can ride it for a regular subway card ride.  As it turns out the ride is the big deal -- once you get there and admire the views of Midtown on the East Side which are quite nice, there's little if anything to do.  But I have a bunch of pictures and even a little video.  

After we left Roosevelt Island, we went to Greenwich Village because I found a new, even cooler glasses place than Jeffrey's Manhattan Eyeland.  This place is called Artsee Eyes.  They basically have all the frames in drawers which they will show you personally with a lot of advice.  I was helped by Jason, who is a real hottie.  I'm sure he came to NY because he's so cute, and this job is only until he makes it big on the stage.  Anyway, if you voted on other glasses, I went with something entirely different and didn't remember to get any pictures.  They have red and brown and bigger glasses area than what I have now. 

After glasses shopping we walked around the Village a bit and stopped in to a happy hour -- mostly for the AC because by this afternoon, it's getting pretty warm again. 

Dinner was at an Indian restaurant called Gandhi's.  I've put a picture of it here which I took at the time of day we seniors like to go have dinner.  By the time we left, the place was full.  We didn't have a big meal, just biryani and chicken masala, but we got complimentary rice pudding and Indian tea. 

After dinner, we of course stopped once more at GROM, the gelato place, because after all, it was on the way back to the subway, so we had to have some.  After we gorged once more, we headed home.  Stopped by the drugstore on the way from the subway to the apartment, and just as we got about a half block from the apartment, it started pouring rain.  One of those things those of us who live in Sacramento never think about happening. 

Tomorrow we have to get up early because the cleaning lady is coming. 

A NEW YORK DAY WITH NICE WEATHER YAY

First pair

What an amazing difference.  Today it was only about 80, if that, and delightful.  

Second pair

I decided it was a good day to visit Jeffrey's Manhattan Eyeland, my favorite glasses store in NYC and tried on a few pairs of glasses.    I haven't ordered anything yet.  I like most of these, but I've already set the bar pretty high on glasses.

 Comments welcome.

Third pair

Fourth pair

After the big shopping spree, I came back to the  apartment and played with the cats -- they absolutely love one of those fishing line toys that acts like a bird.  They are both good catchers.  We went to a cafe and had a nice lunch, then down to Times Square to get tickets for Priscilla Queen of the Desert.  And of course as long as we were down there, we should go check out the bead stores.  Hard to believe I'd be interested in that.  There are so many bead stores around 7th Avenue, that's it's just like heaven for me. If you look closely at this picture, you'll see three bead shops in a row.   John was a good sport, also because he got to stand around and oogle cute NY girls.  We went to Pret a Manger (which we think is an English chain because that's where we first saw it, to have coffee, and there were a whole bunch of girls speaking French.  They seemed to be on a tour or something.  They looked just like NY women of that age -- 20-something, except they were all wearing athletic shoes, and NY women would apparently rather die than go out in athletic shoes, unless they are on their way to the gym.  For as much as they walk, I can't understand how their feet can stand it. 

So we came home, had a meal at home, and then went to see Priscilla, which was really fun.  These are pictures I downloaded, since you can't take pictures in the theater.  But  these pictures are pretty tame.  Priscilla only got one or two Tonys, but one of them was for costumes, and frankly, I can't imagine how they could possibly have given the Tony to anyone else.  There were so many cute little things in the show, like a time when there were a group of tourists, and the Scottish tourists came out in the dance number doing Scottish dances.  The guys in the ensemble were wonderful, and it was just a really fun show. 

And finally I'm adding a picture to show why you don't actually want to live here.  I cut off the bottom of the sign, but I think it says Exotic cars add'l $40.  I have no idea how exotic the car has to be. 

Escape from the heat

Today we are in east Hampton visiting our friends Laura and Sandy. They have a wonderful house on a gorgeous, might I say backbreakingly beautiful lot. I say that because it's a huge lot by my standards and most of it is planted with interesting things. We got up at 6 am to go to Penn station to take the train out here. Once they call the train, about 400 30-something beautiful bodies make a mad rush down the stairs to the platform and cram themselves onto the train. We old farts really felt our age amongst all that beautiful flesh. We did NOT feel bad plunging our elderly half price-paying butts down on the only available seats though. We had to change trains at Jamaica station but even after that we were halfway out to east Hampton before we could sit together, 

Indian Wells Beach as a watercolor

Laura met us at the train and we started a whirlwind tour of the area. She first cleverly told us to use the machine to buy our return tickets for Manhattan, and then took us to a produce store with really good bread and veggies.  We went to their house, where Sandy cooked us a fabulous breakfast, and then spent the afternoon  looky-looing at homes of rich and famous -- Jackson Pollock lived just down the road from them-- and visiting this wonderful garden called Longhouse.

   We spent about three hours there. Lovely gardens. The designer of the house and gardens was a textile designer, Jack Larsen.  He was originally from Seattle and was a friend of Chilhuly so there are a number of Chilhuly installations there as well as some really interesting sculpture by other artists.

Alex, John, Laura & Sandy

For dinner we went to Sag Harbor which is another delightful town very close to East Hampton and had dinner at an adorable rstaurant called Il Capuccino. The food was yummy and more importantly they had garlic bread with about a pound each of butter and garlic. 

Sag Harbor as a watercolor

After dinner we walked around the town and went to the harbor. From a distance, I thought there was a ferry in the harbor but it was a yacht, one of several.

Sunday we got up at 9 and went swimming.  It was so wonderful to be in the water.  We swam on the bay side of Long Island, so there was very little current.  The water was cool enough to be refreshing, but not cold.  I didn't have to keep swimming hard, but could just float and relax.  Heaven. 

After swimming we went back and Sandy made us another delicious breakfast with broccolini and scrambled eggs.  And more good bread and California Humboldt cheese, which we'd never had before.  Laura said we needed to go back on the 2 p.m. train, which I thought was excessively early, but it was a good thing we did, because it was very crowded again, and the people who got on at the next stop had to stand up.  And this was a double decker train with at least eight cars.  This is a line of people buying tickets back to NYC.

Fortunately, when we got back to NY it is nowhere near so hot as when we left.

I posted some of my pix as watercolors today because after all, we were at an area ripe with artists. 

HEAT WAVE DAY 5

Will this heat ever end?  Today it was 105 or 103, depending on who you listen to.  But we had a plan.  Once again, it involved scurrying from AC to AC.  We started the morning by going to the bagel shop, Tal, and getting bagels and sitting there for about an hour.  Then we headed out to SoHo. to check out a jewelry shop that seemed like it might be a place that would take my Babes.  It so clearly wasn't that I didn't even try.  John was wearing his Chalk it Up shirt (of course, since he brought at least three of them with him) and we happened upon a chalk drawing on the sidewalk, so took a picture. 

It was  a killer hot wait for the subway -- cars are nice and cool but the stations are hot, hot, hot.  Anyway, once we were in SoHo, it was still hot, so we shopped in a lot of places we might not ordinarily shop in, athletic clothes, super expensive baby stuff, photography, and so on. 

While we were walking, we heard a lot of noise and could see some giant inflatable rats down the street.  By giant, I mean about 20 feet high.  And there was endless noise from horns, the kind you squeeze a bulb to make a sound, whistles, etc.  It turned out that this was a labor dispute about the remodeling of some building.  I tried to get pictures, but could only get one rat in the picture at a time.  You can see John across the street holding his ears.  It was really awful.  I don't leave home without earplugs so I had mine in. 

We had lunch, then left SoHo, because it was just too hot to walk around shopping, even though the stores were nice and cool.  Anyway, the second part of our daily plan was to see a movie that was opening today.  We went to a movie that opened today.  The theater was crowded and cool but not so cold I had to put a sweater on.  As hot as it is outside, they can't even get buildings that cold here.  Anyway, the movie, "Sarah's Key" was absolutely wonderful.  It was partly in French, partly in English, and just really tugged at your heartstrings.  By the end of the movie, I think half the people in the theater were crying.

The next part of our plan was to go to free night at MOMA.  My god, it was a total madhouse.  We stood in line for 15 minutes to check my very small backpack, one much smaller than other people were allowed to take into the museum, but I'm not pissed off about it.  It was cool in there, in spite of the fact that there must have been over a thousand people in the museum.  I don't think we were ever in a room with fewer than 50 people.  They also didn't have much of interest there except the things I've seen there before -- the Impressionists and the Picassos and especially the four Kandinskys. 

Coming home we thought we'd take the bus, but after waiting for 20 minutes, it turned out the bus we were waiting for was some fancy-schmanzy express bus that our ticket wasn't good for.  While we were waiting, we noticed that one of the pedicab drivers was so busy flirting with some girls who were trying to hail a taxi that he almost got run down by the bus that wouldn't take us. 

We wandered down to the next bus stop and discovered a subway station we had previously never noticed, so we took that home -- though we had to walk from Park West to Broadway.  The good news was, we went past the only Cafe con Leche that's still open -- the one at our end of Amsterdam closed -- so we had a nice dinner.  Plenty of fried plaintains to up our potassium. 

On the way home from the restaurant we passed what you would think was a typical New York summer sight.  A fire hydrant opened up.  The water coming out was really cool.  I was ready to totally jump in, but I restrained myself.   

SAME HEAT DIFFERENT DAY

It's fortunate that New York is the most exciting city in the world, because otherwise I would think I was in California for the heat -- except for the fact that it's also humid. Things are so well air conditioned -- and we do scurry from place to place to sit in the AC, that when you go in somewhere for awhile -- espcially a bus or a grocery store, when you come outside, your glasses fog up!!!
Anyway, today we thought we'd go to MOMA, come back and feed the girls, then go to the Jewish museum which was closed yesterday. There was a concert tonight, so the plan was to go to the museum about 5 p.m., buy tickets for the concert tonight and stay for the concert. Except the concert was sold out.
So we started off to the museum anyway, because we really wanted to see the Cone sisters collection. They were part of a very rich Jewish family in Baltimore who made their money in textiles. They were the biggest supplier of goods to Levi Strauss, and they made uniforms.

There were thirteen children in the family, and two of the sons were the ones who made all the money. Two of the sisters, Etta and Clarabelle were very close. Clarab

elle was a doctor but the two of them traveled widely and collected art. The collected a lot of Picasso, and Matisse, but they had a giant collection. They were friends with Gertrude Stein and her brother Leo, and their tastes were similar. Etta may have been a lover of Gertrude Stein's, but their relationship soured after Alice B. Toklas came along, and Etta was not happy to be in Gertrude's company after that. Anyway, it was a really good exhibit. There was a second exhibit of mostly drawings by the illustrator Maira Kalman, whose name I didn't recognize, but whose work is quite familiar. She does almost primitive looking line drawings usually with printing on the paper that looks handwritten.
When we left the Jewish museum, it was after 4, so we thought we'd do a quick stop at the Guggenheim.

But we were met by the sign we keep seeing:

So we moved on to the Met, where we mostly went inside to get into some AC. The perceived temperature here today was over 100. It's now after 10 p.m. and still feels like it's over 90, and the computer sitting on my lap isn't really helping.

But I digress. By the time we finished the bookstore at the Met, it was after 5 -- too late to go to MOMA, so we decided to go have dinner at Saigon where they are in the third year of a labor dispute which the restaurant says is over and which they have printed letters all over the front of the building from the labor council saying it is, but there are still lots of pickets outside. We did go in, so I guess that makes us scabs.
On the way home, I wanted to try this drink I read about called French lemonade. It turns out it's $6 for a liter bottle, though it does taste pretty good. I thought while I was in the grocery store I'd take a picture. This is how all grocery stores in Manhattan look. They have narrower than normal carts, and if one of them is in the aisle, anybody else can't get by. But by and large, most people don't use grocery carts anyway, because they just don't seem to buy that much food at a time, I guess.

Tomorrow we're going to try to find this interesting one-of-a-kind locally crafter jewelry store in SoHo, depending on how hot it is, and we may go to a movie in the afternoon. Then we plan to go to free Friday at MOMA.

Museums and Musicals

Some days I feel so tired, in part because I can't seem to sleep at night. At least some days I can sleep, but it takes me an hour or more to fall asleep. And then I just feel exhausted the next day, at least until we leave the apartment.
Once we finally got on the road today, we thought we'd go to the Jewish museum and the Cooper Hewitt. Both are within a block of each other on 5th Avenue, in the Museum Mile. Except when we got to the Jewish Museum, it was closed because they're closed on Wednesday. We will go back tomorrow, because they're having a concert there tomorrow night with a Czech Klezmer band (I think) which looks like fun.
All was not lost, though, because we decided to go on to the Cooper Hewitt. John was feeling particularly clever because he remembered to bring his Smithsonian card and figured he could get into Cooper Hewitt for free. Except it's closed for a two-year renovation and we could only visit the garden.
Not to worry, though, we decided to go on to the Met, look at the vendors outside (seems like nothing ever changes there) so we decided to go on in and check out the pastel portraits. They were really interesting. It's amazing how much detail they got with pastels. We thought we'd go up on the roof, but at 4 o'clock they apparently don't let anyone new up there. So after a tour of the gift shop, we caught the cross-town bus home so we could have something to eat before the evening and then feed and play with the girls.
The Europan "bakery" is right around the corner from Martha's, and therefore is a place we often get a quick bite. They have everything -- salads, pastries, bagels & fixin's, breakfast-type food, pizza, roast chicken, panini, and probably other things I've never noticed.
We had tickets for Book of Mormon tonight, which is a really funny musical. Doesn't beat up the Mormons anywhere near as much as I suppose they think it does, but it does have a lot of profanity, etc. in it. It realistically describes the cult's more bizarre beliefs and has what I would consider great scenery and production values, even though I don't have much taste in musicals, as I will be the first to admit. It was a near sold out house, as close as I could tell. As usual, i thought it was WAY TOO LOUD, but I expected that and took ear plugs with me.
After the show we went to Roxy's and had chocolate raspberry hazelnut cheesecake. I later thought I should have just had the plain, but it was good.