January - Peril in the Frozen North to Splendifferous Days in The Big Apple

Art and Paul decided to spend some time at "The Winter Palace" in Brooklin and I decided to horn in on the fun. They left right after the first with the dogs and I headed out a few days later.

Luckily my drive to a friend's house in northern Vermont was uneventful. I say "luckily" because inept work at the Subaru dealer in Raleigh left me without brakes. Luckily because I was at my destination.  Luckily because I was in Vermont, where every third car is a Subaru, many as old as mine,so they had the parts almost on hand and installed in less than an hour. The local mechanic was so amazed by what he saw that he took a picture of the brake caliper hanging by the hose. That's brake fluid all over the tire.

My overnight stay in Gorham, NH on the way to Maine was made the more thrilling by the -18 degree temperature and the 35 mile an hour wind. Your nose could fall off.

The new house proved to be quite winter-worthy even in the face of some very cold temps. Several of our friends there were either knocked out or on the recovery from some sort of cold thing, but we did get together with some of the others, so we didn't lose the thread of any of the major gossip headlines. I think these two snaps speak to the kind of weather we had. Just enough snow to be pretty, followed by bright blue skies.

Next stop - several splendid days staying with Chad & Matt in Jamaica Plain. We ate and drank and talked and laughed, both at home and in restaurants.  Chad arranged an after-work cocktail party in honor of my visit held at a bar named in honor of.....wait for it....  Carrie Nation the hatchet-wielding, anti-alcohol radical. Called herself a bulldog for Jesus.

There were ten of us in an enormous bar with who knows how many rooms. It was fun having my niece Emma and husband Andrew  join the fun with some of Chad and Matt's always delightful tribe.  After a few drinks several of us adjourned around the corner to the bar at the Omni Parker House and had a bit of a supper including the eponymous rolls.

Maggie Hunt and I had a fun lunch with Yo-Yo Ma at B&G Oysters. OK, he was a few tables away.  But the lunch was fun.  I wish I could retell one of the stories I heard, but think it best if it's told as part of a fiction. Return to Colony perhaps.

What followed for me was several action-packed days in the city with two names. The last several years I've been invited to tag along with Art and Paul and Karl and Katie for a long weekend of New York fun. This year my buddy Tom invited me to extend my time and stay with him at his great apartment. The intersection where he lives is either 110th & Adam Clayton Powell Jr Boulevard or Central Park North & 7th Avenue. Guess which he prefers.

One day I walked 110th Street from the Hudson to the Harlem. West of Broadway the street is lined with lots of pre-war giant apartment blocks, some with wonderful decorations. That's me waving in the doorway.

   

Here we are crossing Broadway, where the street name becomes Cathedral Parkway as it passes close to St. John The Divine.....and the high rise built on the Cathedral's unused real estate.

Cathedral Parkway becomes Central Park North at Frederick Douglas Plaza which is also the northern end of Central Park West.

This wonderful quote is part of the plaza.

THE TYPES OF MANKIND ARE VARIOUS.  

THEY DIFFER LIKE THE WAVES, BUT THEY ARE ONE LIKE THE SEA.

You can then walk just inside the park for several blocks.

 past Tom & Paul's....

and the frozen Meer...

until we reach Duke Ellington Square at 5th Avenue....

which immediately becomes......

which marks the beginning of what is now called Spaha by real estate agents and called Spanish Harlem by the rest of us.

This is Park Avenue where the trains to Grand Central have come above ground.

Another name for the neighborhood.

And at the east end of 110th, gigantic modern apartment towers hanging on the edge of the Harlem River Drive.

Before we leave 110th, here's a snap taken from the apartment during the same week.

My, how I love being in The City. There could be so much to say about any given five minutes, but I'll just go through the week with one or two of the highlights of each day.

SATURDAYArt & Paul & I met  for a splendid, quiet, elegant  time at one of Art's traditional favorites,

Picholine.

SUNDAY

Matinee of "The Curious Incident of the Dog in Night-Time". Every person I know who read the book said they were sure they could never make a play out of it. Well, I haven't read the book, and they did make a play of it. One-word review...."Breathtaking". 

Afterwards, in company with Stephen Pascal, we adjourned for a bite and some chat to 

You don't necessarily go to Sardi's for the food, although I do go for the Steak Tartar and the well built cocktail. You go because you can relax surrounded by theater/New York history. Stephen has traveled in some of the more rarefied atmospheres of The City, so always brings something fun to the conversation.

MONDAY

Matinee of the movie "Boyhood". One word review ..."Touching"

A bite at Fiorello's, which has become our default restaurant near Lincoln Center.

Overheard along our banquette: Two women, one with a baby, talking about the father of the baby and his disapproval of her relaxed control of said baby, "Well, I don't know what he's complaining about. I never let her near the harpsichord."

Evening performance of "The Bullpen" , a one man show performed by the author, who inhabits 18 characters, mostly locked up, involved in two trials. One-word review..."Extraordinary!!"

TUESDAY

While Paul & Art were up to their own diversions, I took myself down to Grand Central for an Oyster Pan Roast at The Oyster Bar and walked The High Line, which is a spectacular re-imagining of industrial waste, in this case abandoned elevated train tracks.

Karl and Katie got to town and we all attended "The Merry Widow" at the Met. And while it's always great to be in the house, and yes the singing and yes the orchestra, still, the One-word review...."Meh"

WEDNESDAY

Prime seats for "The Book of Mormon". It was right on the edge of painful to laugh that much for that long, but it's the kind of pain I can live with. One-word review....."Everything-I-want-in-a-musical."

Follow theater like that with a meal in this room and you will have had a pinnacle New York day.

The pool

The Four Seasons

THURSDAY

Tom finally had some time in his schedule, so we went to see "Birdman". After attending several live shows already, it was quite fun to peek behind the curtain, albeit through a somewhat surreal lens. One-word review....."Interesting".

FRIDAY

The day was occupied by the walk across 110th. I think you could do something like that on every block of this awesome island. 

Friday night the Metropolitan Museum is open until 9PM

This area in front of the Museum is now the David Koch Plaza

I went there in particular to see

  Thomas Hart Bentons America Today Mural

City Life and Subways

is one of nine large panels, framed and sectioned with aluminum.

SATURDAY

Matinee of "A Beautiful Day in November on the Banks of the Greatest of the Great Lakes"

These actors prepare for and serve a dysfunctional family Thanksgiving Dinner 

without a single prop or piece of funiture

with a set that is the window you see here and another one just like it above it.

The seating is like a sports event.  The floor in front of the two windows, where most of the action takes place, looks like a basketball court, and while the family is  working its way through every mini-crisis ( add a leaf to the table?, where's the special dish? what do mean she's coming?), in the window above sit two men dressed as sports announcers, calling each of the "moves".  One-word review......"Funtastic" 

Evening performance of "It's Only a Play". An updated Terrence McNally classic with, as is apparently necessary, a star studded cast. A play about a play seemed an excellent finish to the week, and was.   Even if a performance or two seemed phoned in, the One-word review..."Irresistible"

The next morning I decided to skedaddle in advance of the Blizzard of the Century - which missed The City.

By the end of the week, which was also the end of January I was into my four day drive to Arizona, almost all of it on Intersate 40. Aside from the much needed respite with Fred and John in Albuquerque, the countryside went by in a 75 MPH blur, but I do remember the states by the billboards I saw.

North Caroline - Tobacco & Furniture

Tennessee - Loretta Lynn & Horses 

Arkansas - Guns & Jesus

Oklahoma - A new Nation & A new Casino every 50 miles

Texas - Loans for farmers & Special seeds

New Mexico - How many miles/hours to Gallup, Winslow, Flagstaff & How many motel rooms each one has.

Arizona - The distance to natural amazements. Meteor Crater,  Petrified Forest, Grand Canyon.

I hope you've enjoyed traveling along.