To celebrate Valentine’s Day a little late and to take advantage of Aimee’s February vacation, we headed to New York City for a long-planned three-plus day trip this weekend. The coinciding appearance of The Gates was a bonus incentive, and we also looked forward to our first visit to the new MoMA (and to the newly-engaged George and Anne). We returned this afternoon, educated, entertained, and nourished in that particular New York way.
This trip was the closest we’ve come in awhile to being long enough. We were almost at the point where we felt like checking email and other daily routine things, as opposed to being so fully immersed in the vacation that we did things in that always-on, vacation kind of way. For the most part, we felt like it was a brief trip, but for a second there, we felt at home, finding our way back to the I-N-N each night and getting used to New York parking rules. It was a little too long to do a blow-by-blow, but I’ll give some highlights and photos.
Day 1: Early morning at the Gates. A once-in-a-lifetime experience, both interesting and humbling.
It was bitterly cold and occasionally windy, but the clear and sunny weather made the experience a real pleasure.
The park was more populated than it otherwise would have been at 9:30 on a cold Saturday morning in February, but still pretty empty. We wandered through the gates, noted their varying widths, and picked them out through the trees and across the expanse of the park. While the gates had been installed the previous weekend, we had the privilege of being able to watch a single replacement gate be erected and unfurled. Just as we were leaving out the east side at the Met, we saw one of the grey-vested volunteers go running towards the exit, where a team of seven volunteers was busy taking down a gate with a broken hem. We watched as they uncapped the arch and replaced the cloth, bore the faulty piece away, erected the structure once again, and unfurled the new gate, with its tell-tale creased pleats.
Next up, MoMA. The verdict: stunning, absorbing, and completely wall-to-wall packed. Without the ability to skip the block-long line, I don’t know if we’d have made it, but as it was, we were exhausted after a 2 1/2 hour trek through all five floors. We’ll have to do it again soon, and take it in smaller doses.
We saw a lot of everything, it seemed, including the Gursky photo that headlined the last exhibition we saw there in 2001 (and now adorns the wall over my desk, in somewhat reduced dimensions). Also excellent, later that afternoon, the Mapping Sitting exhibition at the Grey Gallery at NYU, especially the 4000+ passport photos tiled on the wall.
That evening, we headed for dinner at Bistrot Margot, a narrow and impossibly long French restaurant in SoHo, and then made our way to the Carnegie Club for a wonderful Sinatra show by Steve Maglio. It sounds corny, and potentially disastrous, but it was really quite wonderful. The eleven-piece band plays great arrangements, and Maglio sings songs Sinatra made famous in a way that evokes Sinatra without aping him.
It was a surreal arrangement: we sat in the first landing of a staircase up to the second floor of the club, a licensed cigar bar near Carnegie Hall. Even more strange, I think they were probably the best seats in the house.
Day 2: Brunch in Brooklyn with a bunch of friends at Lauren’s house, then off to the bocce court at Floyd, NY (the bar, not the town) for some elementary lessons in the game from Alex and Peter. In the afternoon, we headed for the Museum of Radio and Television, where we’d been meaning to visit on many occasions, but the viewing stations were all booked and the “museum” aspects were pretty small in number: one room, two hallways. We’ll plan ahead next time, and hope we can watch those old “3-2-1 Contact” episodes we’d been looking forward to.
We met Brian in the Village for a little chat, and then had a delicious (and strange) dinner at a cozy Italian restaurant in the West Village. The restaurant was mostly empty when we arrived, but soon enough we found ourselves unable to avoid overhearing the conversation of a soap-opera star (thanks to Aimee’s deduction skills) and her soap-writer friend, as well as watch helplessly as an old man took a tumble into a chair and bled somewhat profusely in the entry to the kitchen. A really weird evening.
Day 3: A road-trip to Hoboken and Jersey City, followed by a drive the long way around southern Brooklyn to Coney Island. All three destinations were pretty desolate; the home of Frank Sinatra was very strange, indeed, and the home of the first recorded baseball game was barely noted.
That night, we met George for dinner and drinks, and though we were sad not to be able to disentangle Anne from her family engagements, we heard all about the Proposal in Paris, and it was great to see Geo as always.
Day 4: After checking out this morning, we had our traditional pre-departure breakfast at Grey Dog, and then enjoyed a visit to the Cloisters for the first time. An oasis of calm overlooking the Bronx and the George Washington Bridge, it was full of interesting little tidbits of medieval art and architecture.
