Life in the arts

In my never-ending quest to make it appear that I have an interesting life, when in fact I mostly spend my time going for a walk, going to the gym, watching time disappear through my laptop, and eating at the same two sandwich shops, today will be a catalog of my artistic endeavors for the week.  Paltry though they are.

Sunday Lynda and I went to the Gem Faire and as usual, I got carried away.  I have possibly the most well beaded closet in the world, since mostly I buy stuff and then never make anything.  But I have fun buying.  Who wouldn't love this?

I did make a couple of necklaces after I came home, and got a couple of shoes for Babes, but mostly all the bead stuff is still sitting on the card table, where I have a working space of approximately 36 square inches (for those of you who don't do higher math like I do, that's a space 6" by 6").

My only non art event for the week was the fun trip we made to the factory stores at Vacaville to go to the prestigious Fresh Choice restaurant.  Well, okay, so the place isn't prestigious, but what's better than that is that it's a get together with my remaining three best friends from high school, and we meet there because it's halfway between our various homes.  And they'll let us sit there all afternoon.  And while we're sitting there, we can keep going back to the buffet table, so that lunch goes on for 3 hours, and seems to involve multiple desserts.  We have a great time, because when you get older, it's really nice to have someone that connects you back to your youth, especially if, like me, you don't have any living relatives.  This time we shared baby pictures, which were all new to us, because we mostly met in 7th grade. 

But back to the high-flying art.  Thursday is Hot Lunch in the park.  This is a free concert at lunchtime, acoss the street from Hot Italian.  Hot Italian is a relatively new restaurant in midtown with a rather limited menu -- no spaghetti at this place -- but using quality and fresh ingredients.  They serve most of their dishes as either salads, pizzas or panini.  Hmmm, I seem to be confusing food with art.  I suppose they are both rather intertwined, the same way functionality and design are on Mac products. 

But back to the high-flying art.  Thursday is Hot Lunch in the park.  This is a free concert at lunchtime, acoss the street from Hot Italian.  Hot Italian is a relatively new restaurant in midtown with a rather limited menu -- no spaghetti at this place -- but using quality and fresh ingredients.  They serve most of their dishes as either salads, pizzas or panini.  Again, I digress.  This Thursday's  group featured Gillian Underwood, who I managed not to get a picture of, but here's the  rest of the band and the crowd. 
Anyway, it was fun, relaxing and good music.  And we had a nice Hot Italian box lunch and it was free!

I've been suffering a little bit of cat withdrawal since we came back from Martha's.  Her two cats are so nice, and Julia, in particular is demanding but funny and adorable.  As we were walking over to Hot Lunch in the Park, we met this cat with a remarkably similar look and personality to Julia -- came right up to us on the street and demanded to be petted.  I thought I hadn't seen any cats here in California with Julia's particular fur type, grey striped with an undercurrent of red, but this cat had the same fur, and relatively similar markings.  Not to mention a very similar personality. 

And my final foray into the arts today was to participate in the Run for the Arts, an annual event to raise money for the arts.  About 1200 people signed up, though the highest number I saw on a jersey was 1012, but lots of people only sign up to donate.  I managed to finish the grueling 5K in 52 minutes, coming in in 840th place.  Some of these are runs and some are walks -- this was advertised as both, but clearly there were a lot of runners.  I was definitely a walker.  And in my defense, I will say that I stopped at a garage sale along the way.  There were some 15-year-old ballet dancers in front of me wearing tutus and they were just too cute for words.  Every time they got to a mile marker they would do cute ballerina stuff around it, or they would walk along and then do a few jetes eleves so it was fun just being around them.  I had planned to walk with Gaeann from CALS, but I couldn't find her when I got there.  They also had lots of booths of various arts organizations, some giving away tickets to their upcoming productions, some just advertising, or the fun one, a booth where they let you play handchimes.

Since my head was completely in the clouds from all my high artistic experiences, I did a really dumb thing.  I let Mike borrow my car and he didn't put the cover on it, so I had to wash it.  Hate, hate, hate that job.  Decided I'd also wash the cover.  It can only be washed with the hose, and then you have to hang it up to dry.  Normally I do this with two ladders, since I don't have a solar laundry drying device.  However the cover is getting old and is rapidly approaching equal parts duct tape and fabric, and anyway I was too lazy to get out the ladders, and it was pretty hot, so I thought I'd just rinse it off and let it dry on a sunny spot on the grass.  So I put it on the only sunny spot on the grass and hosed it off.  Which, of course, made the grass underneath wet, and therefore no longer a good place to dry the cover.  DUH.  So then I had to take it across the street, where I was worried someone would come by and steal it.  Then I was able to use the matrimonial air motion device which got it dried a little faster.  At least I'm done with those two jobs for six months. 

SUNDAY, SWEET SUNDAY

Aside from the fact that I finally had to mow the lawn today (after only a month, but who's counting?) we had a pretty nice day.  I started out with my six-mile walk, stopped at the farmers market on the last leg and got some good veggies so I can implement my vegetable-friendly, low fat diet.

Then we went to the Antique Faire, which is every second Sunday under the freeway, and since it's only three blocks from the house, it seems downright unneighborly not to go.  And I really scored.  I got this wonderful, unfinished quilt that looks a little like a crazy quilt in small doses, but is more of a pattern quilt.  I'm going to recover the window seats that are basically a moth magnet.  The window seats as they are, are really wonderful, we had them made out of an oriental rug that was in kind of bad shape, but they attract moths to beat the band.  This quilt is more satins and silks, and since no one sits there, it doesn't really matter if it's more fragile than the wool.  Actually the wool is more fragile, because of the damn moths.   Of course, a person couldn't possibly be satisfied with just one thing at the antique mall.  I was kind of looking for the old lucite and bakelite buttons and stuff, but didn't find anything I really loved, and so actually didn't buy anything. 

Then I saw this old a.m. radio.  We used to have one on the top of our refrigerator when I was a kid and I always remember my dad listening to a show called MacElhattan in the morning.  The show even had a little theme song which I think was to the tune of Yankee Doodle Dandy, but I could be wrong about that.  Anyway, I had looked at one of these radios in NY, and they wanted $165 for it, and of course having tubes and such, it was quite heavy and not likely that I even wanted to carry it around all day in NY, much less drag it home.  And here was this one for only $20.  Whoopee.  It only gets AM, so I will probably never listen to it, unless of course they put MacElhattan in the morning back on instead of lunatic right wing Republicans.  It looks cute, though.  Now all I have to do is get a 50's refrigerator to go with it.  Actually, they do make new ones that have the 50's style but have separate freezing compartments and self-defrost.  But I think the $20 radio is a big enough investment.  Of course to get the appropriate look, I'd have to take all the magnets and notes off the refrigerator, and while that might happen for about 15 minutes, it's never going to be long term with me. 

My final win of the antique show was this Elmore Hubbard (not to be confused with L. Ron Hubbard of Scientology) scrapbook.  Last year we went to East Aurora NY and went to an elderhostel about Elmore Hubbard and Roycroft and early Arts and Crafts in the U.S.  Elbert made a fortune telling people to live good lives and be moderate and value the arts, even though he had a long affair and fathered a child with a woman not his wife and otherwise did quite a few racy things.  The scrap book is in mint condition, and was printed by Roycroft Press.  I have a couple of other smaller Philistine magazines that I bought in NY which will kind of go with it on the coffee table whenever the coffee table isn't covered with tea pots, harp tuners, music and reading glasses. 

The other thing I saw at the antique fair that I really liked and think I would like to put in the upstairs sunporch after we get the windows done is this cool little rattan love seat with leather seats.
But I didn't buy it today.  I'm waiting to see if we EVER get these windows done. 

Of course, the trip to the antique market didn't help my diet plans at all, because naturally we had to eat.  And you know the kind of food is available at places like that.  Actually we had a delicious pulled pork sandwich, but I doubt that it's on anybody's list of low-fat or healthy, or diet food. 

Also this weekend, and also really quite close to home, so again, we had to go just to be neighborly, was the Japanese food festival.  This is an annual event and fundraiser for the Buddhist church and a lot of fun as well.  We had planned on skipping it because it's usually very crowded, but decided to go at the last minute.  They were out of chicken teriyaki, so we ended up getting shrimp and vegetable tempura.  It was really wonderful, very crispy, not greasy, but again, not on anybody's list of healthy or low-fat food.  Since we got there towards the end of the three-day event I bought a couple of raffle tickets, since the first prize was $5000.  Believe it or not, I didn't win anything! 

HOME AGAIN

We're back in Sacramento.  It was a wonderful trip and we had lots of fun.  It's good to be home, though, and the weather has been wonderfully cool which has truly been nice after how hot it was in New York.  Even though we live on a busy street, it is also much quieter here.  You don't notice it all the time in NY, but when you leave, you realize how it was never even remotely quiet.  Even in the apartment with theAC on, you could hear the AC, and you could hear the great big AC that cools the gigantic building next door.  Martha's building is old so everyone has window air conditioners.  The building next door, which is 23 stories high and must have about 10 apartments per floor, has central air, so it makes a lot of noise, and puts out a lot of heat on the return vent in the sidewalk. 

Anyway, we have been trying to be a little less on

the couch potato side since we got back.  Thursday

Tim and Lynda were showing at a trunk show at the

Crocker as part of their Thursday Art Nights, so we

went over there. 





The event was really pretty nice. 

We had dinner at the cafe and they had a really

good band that played big band music, some swing,

a little jazz, and a little early 60s rock.  

And then, amazingly enough, we dragged ourselves off the couch

again tonight and went off to see a few galleries at Second Saturday.  I

met an old co-worker from the Legislature at a gallery we had never

visited before, but which I definitely want to visit again.  Loved the

work of Jeffrey Devore.  Here's one of his pictures from the Temporary Contemporary Gallery website, but he had lots of works there, and most of them had many more figures.   They were really quite wonderful.  A lot of them were of places in Sacramento, and I almost thought I'd see myself schlepping through them with my backpack and floppy t-shirt.  He seems to have chosen hipper people than I to use in his paintings, however.  Of course that could be me waiting for the bus.

Also went to Blue Moon, Fe, and Fouts Galleries. 

We have totally learned to stay away from the 20th St. galleries we used to like to ride our bikes to, because there are just too many people who aren't interested in art but just in partying. 

A DAY AT GOVERNOR'S ISLAND

Yesterday we planned to go to Governor's Island with Martha, but she was not feeling well, so we ended up not going.  Fortunately for her, as it turns out.  We went today and had a wonderful time, but there was a LOT of walking and few places to sit and still fewer restrooms.  All important things for people our age.
Anyway, I'm starting this out with a happy picture of us on the ferry going to Governor's Island.  We decided that this was the trip we thought Staten Island would be but which it so definitely wasn't.

Governor's Island started out as the residence and political center for the Governor from  from England before the revolution.  After the Revolutionary War, it was eventually ceded to the U.S. Government and was a military base, changing in the 1950s or 60s to a Coast Guard station, and now given back to the City of New York.  It's served by a free ferry that runs every half hour each way -- about a 7-minute ride.  The island is only open Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  They have lots of things for kids, a number of permanent buildings, some of which have been converted into art galleries and are there all the time. 

mass yoga

On of the special events there today was some sort of an all-day yoga event.  There were several large areas where people were doing yoga in enormous groups.  I think that at least 300 people were there for the yoga, but the place is quite big, so it didn't seem crowded. 


The next place we went to after watching the yoga was to have lunch,
of course.  There was a nice place that was near a combination sculpture and play area.  It was made up of large sculptures that kids


 were encouraged to touch and interact with, but at the same time not climb on.  But really there weren't a lot of children there, considering the weekend had sort of been billed as for children.  So we interacted with the art, but didn't climb on it because we were being good boys and girls.  The following pictures are various things that were in the kids' sculpture area:  An inflatable fish, trees with knitting around them, (the knitting was done with plastic from plastic bags) a stealth bomber made of something covered with green indoor outdoor carpet, and a giant thing I can't name that was made out of a gazillion bottle caps and looked like beads from a distance. 


stealth bomber




inflatable fish



knitted tree trunks

After our quickie lunch, we moved on to another part of the park where there were buildings with art galleries and the like.  One of the things that is going on for the summer is an electronic art show.  There were several variations on this, but the pictures are of something called Blue Images or something.  We went into a church, and they had curtained off the front of the church and there was this hanging cloth sculpture.  The way to view the art was to put this cloth sculpture on your head (they had little caps like they use in hospitals for you to put on your head), and sit on this lighted box and watch the screen.  I found I could also see my hand shadow on the screen, which is why I'm waving my arms around in these pictures.  It was pretty interesting.  I look like I'm sitting up on something, but it's actually flat, but lighted up.



his master's voice

  Another part of the island had some sculpture.  I'm posting some pictures of that. 


rock sculpture, i.e. painted rocks



the set

figures

Another interesting thing they had was a lab for kids which apparently runs during the week.  While we were there they were showing a video (uncompleted as yet) of a claymation project the kids had done.  They made the sets and the clay people and then did all the posing of the clay features for the video.  It was quite good but their computer guru wasn't happy with it yet and hadn't posted it to their blog.  Here's a picture of the set and the figures. 

And finally, there was a building which housed a painting program for kids.  The most interesting thing about this, is that there was such a program under the auspices of the WPA back in the 30's and they still had some of the kids' paintings from the 30's with the subject matter "my life in NYC" and they had them hanging side by side.  In this fairly bad photo, the pictures on the top are modern, the pictures on the bottom row are from the 30's.  We noticed that in general the ones from the 30's weren't as bright.  Because the world wasn't, or because they had a limited palette of paint?  Or both?

We stopped at Trader Joe's on the way home and made it to the apartment just five minutes before it started pouring down rain. 

Tomorrow I want to go to Rockaway, which you can actually reach on the subway line, but which John is somewhat balking at, because apparently you can walk to a beach where people surf from the subway.  There was an article in the paper that mentioned a couple of people who go out there on the subway and surf before they go to work.  Of course one of them was a chef, so presumably he doesn't go to work all that early, but it still seems like a lot of work.   The pictures in the paper didn't exactly show giant waves.

GLASSES AND POP-UPS

Today is Thursday and my new glasses arrived. We went down to the 
Village to Artsee Eyes to pick them up but they weren't right. Well, 
they were okay if I wanted to hold them up a half inch to read. Cute 
Jason, my personal optician, fooled around with them a lot then finally 
told me he had another set of lenses and he'd fit them out while we 
went to lunch. Before we left, I thought I'd check out some sunglasses.

I didn't get them, though. 

We went back to Murray's Cheeses and bought a figgy 
Elvis sandwich -- chunky peanut butter, Brie, fig spread and bacon, 
grilled -- and ate it sitting in Sheridan square.  I wanted to buy a t-shirt

my new glasses



 there, because they have shirts that say "you have a friend in Cheeses" but I didn't.   It's a nice cool day  and pleasant outside.
After lunch we went back to Artsee Eyes and he had redone the lenses. 
They seem to be good now. I took them with me but have to go back to 
get the real ones with the coated lenses on Monday.

Paul Schaffer

While we were there Paul Schaffer came in to pick

 up some glasses. I  think he's famous for being in some famous 60's band, but to me he's 

famous for being the band leader on Dave Letterman.   And for wearing cool  glasses on the show.  I had been a little ticked off at this place because I

didn't exactly feel they were falling all over themselves to make me happy, but then I realized that everyone in the store didn't drop what they were doing to wait on Paul Schaffer -- who I stared at blatantly because I couldn't actually see him in my new glasses when I

first put them on, and didn't even recognize him until he started talking. 

From there we went to the new Guggenheim popup on the lower east 

side. It's an urban workspace that just opened yesterday and will 
close in October. It's built in an unused space from carbon fiber, and
meant to be impermanent.  When we arrived they were playing a game

about rating cities, or deciding what a city should be.
 There were lots
of young 30-ish people involved,
presumably aspiring actors or just
regular unemployed people. 

The game was done sort of like a chess
board and as you answered
questions you moved the pieces representing
money, transportation, liveability,
sustainability and archictecture forward
or backward.  It was kind of an interesting game.  You can find it at this link.

 From there we walked up to the east village,had 
coffee and just watched people. I love some of the styles people wear  just because they pay so much attention to an outfit but I never can get my camera out in time.

I didn't do the blog last night because Martha & I stayed up talking 
forever and I was too sleepy.


But yesterday we went to midtown and 
listened to an outdoor concert of African/Carribbean music. It was 

really nice music and pleasant to sit around listening
and watching.   And then a little van came by and unloaded 
60 cases of Coke in those cute new aluminum bottles.  And they were 
giving it away. You know how I love anything free, no matter how 
inconsequential. 


 We came home and fixed ravioli for dinner and then 
went to an early music concert sponsored by GEMS, Gotham Early Music Scene.
Apparently early music people in new York have always felt a bit 
dissed by the Boston establishment. I guess it's a my-bow-is-bigger-
than-yours kind of thing. Anyway this group put on a 4-concert series 
and we went to the last two. They were both wonderful, and I had a chance 

to chat with Julie Andrijeski, who taught a dance workshop and coached an ensemble I played in at Vancouver Early Music two years ago. We also met Gene, who seems to be the brains behind GEMS, which is in fact  a booking agency for  arly music groups in NYC.   He is a friend of  Martha's and gave us a ride home. I wouldn't exactly call it harrowing, but it was definitely exciting. He told us he loves to drive in NYC that  he considers it like a video game where obstacles like
pedestrians and taxis pop up randomly and your job is to avoid them without stopping.

Back to today, we went out to dinner at Acqua, which used to be a fish restaurant, but is now a Mediterranean place.  Martha's niece came tonight, she's visiting overnight, so we have a full house, but she'll have to leave tomorrow. 

And here it is almost 1 a.m. again, and I'm the last person awake in the house. 

A CATCH-UP DAY

 We are just hanging out today.  It's a really nice day, so not hot in the apartment, and we decided not to go all over town today.  Partly because we want to go to a concert at 7:30, and the vagaries of restaurant service being what they are, we decided to fix dinner at home.  Also, this concert takes no reservations of presale tickets, which means we have to get there early.  And getting the three of us to do anything very timely, especially when it involves a crosstown bus and subway connection, needs to have a lot of extra time built in. 

Martha took us to Paris this morning.  That's the name of her gym, and she and I went swimming and John got to work out.  So he slept away the afternoon in the chair. 

Nothing we did today generated any pictures, so I'm going to put some older ones I didn't have time to add before. 



maple cotton  (cotton candy from maple sugar) and dancer doing a publicity shot



rowing pond in Central Park

Falconer statue in Central Park

Small middle building is where hawk's nest is

Hawk's nest (on top of arch)

Pale Male is a famous hawk in NY who built a nest on a tony building on the east side of the park.  The management took the nest down, but bird lovers picketed the building until they removed the barriers to nest construction and the hawks came back.  They are now into several generations.   

Spices at street market.  Smells wonderful!

Quilt made from a pattern that's for sale in this shop

OUR MAHVELOUS TRIP TO STATEN ISLAND

Leaving Manhattan

We've never been to Staten Island before so we thought today would be 
a good day to go. We'd take the ferry, go to the beach and take in the 
cultural attractions. Snug Harbor seemed a nice choice-- lush grounds 
a Chinese garden and neat old buildings which were dormitories for 
sailors starting in about 1833.

Taking the ferry was fun because being ona boat is always fun. There were approximately 7000 people getting on the ferry, 5000 of whom were kids on summer camp field trips.  Charming as they were, they were not quiet. 

When we 
got off we knew the bus to take to the beach and the bus to take to 
Snug Harbor. So we decided to go to the beach first. We stopped to ask 
the friendly Staten Island volunteers for information.
Me:  do you have a bus schedule?
FSIV  No. No bus schedules
Me:  Do you have an island map?
FSIV. Here
Me  Do you have any suggestions for interesting things to do on the island?
FSIV  Most things are closed today.
Me. I'm going to south beach. Do you know of any interesting attractions nearby?
FSIV  You'll have to look at the map and decide for yourself..  Maybe you'll find something.

So off we headed to South Beach.   The bus ride was about a half hour and passed through some really shabby parts of the island -- or maybe it's all like that. 

South Beach, Verrazano Narrows Bridge

South Beach is a very long beach which has just been improved by the addition of a boardwalk.  Just a boardwalk.  Boards and stuff.  There was a snack bar selling only hot dogs and hamburgers and ice cream, and a monumentally over priced restaurant.  Then there was a boardwalk for as far as you could see.   The best part of the beach view is the Verrazzano Narrows bridge.  Californians, stop whining.  The toll on this bridge is $13!!!
No waves in the ocean here, a few people sort of listlessly paddling around in the water.  Definitely not the crowds at Coney island.   Turns out that this is quite near a waste treatment plant that had a fire two weeks ago that befouled water all around southern Manhattan.  I knew that had happened, I didn't know until John was reading the paper tonight that this is WHERE it happened.  This may explain the lack of people at the beach on a hot day.

Anyway, we left the beach after about 45 minutes, for lack of interest.  The other place on our agenda was Snug harbor, touted on the web site as an up-and-coming place with guest facilities, lovely gardens, and other amenities.  I swear when I looked at the website that the place was open on Monday, but apparently that's in the Staten Island parallel universe.  The grounds were beautiful, but not only was the place not open, of the four buildings there, only one was in any kind of habitable condition.  I've added a picture of it through a closed door.  And it would have had cool air conditioning inside, and there would have been bathrooms, and probably a gift shop and interpretive exhibits.  Looking through the windows of the other buildings, you could see garbage and junk in some, construction debris in others.  I'm sure someday it will be a nice place.  Snug Harbor Cultural Center

Quite frankly, we couldn't leave Staten Island soon enough, but we had to wait another 30 minutes for the bus that comes every twenty minutes.  And to add insult to injury, while we were waiting, no fewer than 7 buses with "Not in Service" signs went by, in both directions.  I can only assume from this that passenger service is more of a hobby for the drivers on the island, and the rest of the time they just drive the buses around for fun. 

The ferry ride back was nice, though, and we made a stop near Union Square on the way home to buy cheap wine at Trader Joe's  Martha took us out to dinner tonight at Saigon -- the restaurant, not the city.

Bonus picture:  Where does it look like this picture might have been taken?  Somewhere in the middle east?

No, it's the Staten Island Ferry bus stop