Cental Park and Harlem

Central Park and Harlem

Fall 2009 in NYC

Here's what I'm looking forward to over the next couple of months, in no particular order.

Vermeer's Milkmaid at the Met
- It's just one painting, but it's iconic, and I'll be there anyway to see Robert Frank.
*check*

Philip Seymour Hoffman - Othello - Public Theater
- Not gonna happen. Tickets are nearly impossible to get.

The Informant
- Good cast. Darkish comedy. Should be good.

Fatty Cue
- BBQ and bourbon in Billyburg.

Deitch Projects
- A really cool gallery that I've been meaning to check out.

Where the Wild Things Are
- I'm not buying the outrageous hype, but I do like Spike Jonze. His first commercial film was the music video for Sabotage.
*check*

The Road
- One of my favorite books by one of my favorite authors. Do not ruin this Hollywood.

New York, I Love You
- Paris, je t'aime is one of my favorite films of all time and New York is my favorite city. This shouldn't be too hard.

Robert Frank: The Americas
- I love photography and America history.
*check*

Kandinsky at the Guggenheim
- Abstract awesomeness.
*check*

Mitchell Algus Gallery: Paintings and Works on Paper
- I don't know much about this, but it looks like a cool show at a cool gallery.

Sarah Anne Johnson: House on Fire
- I read about this in New York Magazine. It's not at the top of my list but I wouldn't mind checking it out.

30 Rock
- Along with The Office, Sunny and South Park, one of very few consistently funny sitcoms.
*check*

It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia
- So far, so good. I'm not sure how the noose scene at the beginning of episode 3 was allowed on TV.
*check*

Curb Your Enthusiasm
- How can you not watch the Seinfeld reunion within the show?
*check*

Sufjan Stevens at Bowery Ballroom
- $15 tickets. Tiny venue. Should be an excellent show.
*check*

Inside the Artist's Studio: Chuck Close
- Probably the thing I'm most excited about on this list. A once in a lifetime opportunity to see one of my favorite artists. And I'm not even half as pumped as Tray Funk is.
*check*

Sufjan Stevens: BQE
- This could be an interesting film/album combo.

Monet's Water Lillies at the MoMA
- I loved the Water Lillies exhibit at the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris and I'm hoping this is similar.

30 for 30
- One of my favorite writers, Bill Simmons, has been working on this series for the past 3 years. 30 mini sports documentaries by 30 acclaimed directors.
*check*

Bacon and Klimt

I made a very enjoyable solo visit to the Met on Sunday - throw on some music to drown out the ambient noise and you're good to go.

The Francis Bacon retrospective is only there until August 16th, and it's well worth a look. Bacon's work is intensely melancholy and haunting. Check out Painting and Head VI for a good sampling of his style.

I then headed a few blocks north to the Neue Galerie, which houses a collection of Austrian and German modern art. I've always enjoyed Gustav Klimt, but after seeing several of his works up close, he may be my all time favorite. This small museum houses the famous Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, which sold for $135 million dollars in 2006. Stunning (the painting and the price tag).

Check out the list of the most expensive paintings of all time.

New York City Homicides

Back to back map posts. Whatever.

This is a pretty cool interactive map from the Times that allows you to filter homicide incidents by month, age, weapon, race, etc. I'm happy to see that there haven't been any murders in my zip (10009) since last year, although back in the day I heard the Mackerill and Gas House gangs used to bring the ruckus.

French on US

The feature length content in Harper's Magazine has been hit or miss the last couple of years, but I consistently enjoy the short stuff at the front - the Index and Readings. This month, I was struck by a snippet by French essayist Charles Dantzig entitled “Liste des Américains," from his Encyclopédie capricieuse du tout et du rien, published in France last winter by Grasset &
Fasquelle. The encyclopedia explains the world in a series of 800 lists."

They are a people without balconies. Yet they cannot help interfering in other people’s business, according to the Protestant custom. And on courthouse steps one sees people brandishing signs that say, as if they knew, GOD HATES ABORTIONISTS. It is a country fascinated by lust.

Americans spend less time arguing over things than over the right to speak about those things.

It is the only country in the world where no one remains a foreigner. A person can go by the name of Zgrabenalidongsteinloff and no one will raise an eyebrow. “In New York there are no impossible names,” as I was told by a novelist whose name
raised the eyebrows of elegant racists in Paris. This is what makes everything possible. They walked on the moon because they are the moon. One admires their courtesy.

Anecdotal generalizations like this are usually specious and almost always obnoxious, but I found Dantzig's observations both insightful and charming.

His entire list is well worth reading, but unfortunately I can't link to it because it's behind a subscribers-only wall.

High Tension

In 1974, Frenchman Philippe Petit illegally erected a wire between the World Trade Center towers and proceeded to tight rope walk between the structures.

This feat required incomprehensible levels of luck, determination, imagination and skill, and the story is beautifully told in the 2008 documentary film Man on Wire. Petit is charming and his enthusiasm is infectious; it takes but a few minutes for the viewer to become completely engrossed in his grand scheme.

A few things:

• The footage of the towers doesn't seem sad or eery at all. The event being chronicled here is so lighthearted and beautiful that it overshadows the grim reality of the WTC's demise.
• Petit and his crew amassed a brilliant collection of photographs and video back in 1974 that are used to great effect in this film. There's enough footage (original and reenacted) for plenty of cuts and pans so that the movie moves along at very energetic clip. Really entertaining film making.
  
• How? It's unfathomable that a person could tightrope walk 110 stories above the streets of Manhattan, yet Petit's breezy conviction makes the event seem magically simple. It's just a man on a wire.

Really an excellent film and worthy of the Best Documentary Academy Award it received.

Gallery Night in Providence

I enjoyed attending Gallery Night when I lived in Rhode Island, but since I've moved away I haven't been in a couple of years. If you're local I would highly suggest you check it out.

Now that I can compare Providence's Gallery Night to the one in Chelsea, I can say that my former capital city does an excellent job. The scale is obviously much smaller and the crowd in Manhattan is a bit more swanky and fervent, but Providence has an art scene to be proud of.

Meet the Mets

It's not that I'm not having an awesome time here in New York, it's just that this weather has been so disappointing. Like U.R.I., everything about the city changes when the thermometer climbs above 70 degrees. People are happier, girls look prettier, and life just seems so much more fantastic than it did during the winter months. Thanks to a couple of days last month where the temp peaked around 78 degrees, I have tasted the glory that is New York in summertime and now I want it back.

Today we're in the middle of one of the worst rainstorms in recent years, and I haven't been able to leave the house all day. The roof of my apartment is leaking in two places, there's water seeping into the basement, and from what I've heard, parts of downtown Hoboken are submerged beneath 3 feet of water. This needs to stop.

Anyway, despite the horrible weather today, yesterday was reasonably warm and sunny so we decided to check out a Mets game. We found some guy on craigslist who has season tickets but can't go to Friday night or Saturday games because he's an Orthodox Jew who strictly observes the Sabbath. Basically, because this guy can't handle money or produce a flame from sundown to sundown, we scored season tickets for weekend games - we've already locked up a Mets vs. Yankees game.

Since Fenway has been my only MLB experience, I was under the impression that all stadiums featured uncomfortable seats, impossible to obtain tickets, and outrageous prices. As it turns out, you can get tickets to just about any Mets game, whenever you want for like 5 bucks. After going to Shea, which is not a great stadium by any means, I can now say with conviction that we NEED TO BUILD A NEW FENWAY!!! Going to see your favorite baseball team should not seem like a great privilege, which is how I feel on the rare occasion that I win, scalp or am given Redsox tickets. Going to a game should be fast and simple. I'm going to a Padres game in San Diego in two weeks and I'm sure that seeing that stadium will reinforce my feelings about Fenway.

So anyway, the game was nothing special - the home team lost 6-2 at the hands of the lowly Washington Nationals. And also it was pretty chilly. But Kramer met us at Shea and he did some world class heckling - which is something I greatly respect.

Check out the pictures from my first trip to Shea. I've captured the entire experience, starting with retrieving the tickets from the Upper West Side, and then taking the 7 Train to Flushing.

More posts and pictures when the weather improves. Unless you want to see some shots of my leaky ceiling.

Meet the Mets