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Airfare was cheap (JetBlue) and work was slow (i.e., I’m
available), so I planned my East Coast Tour ’03, a 10-day fest
of good friends, good drinks, good food, and good (and bad) art,
all amidst the coldest temperatures the East Coast has seen, in,
oh, about 30 years or so. Yippee!
I first visited my friend Theresa, her husband Quinn and
their 16-month old son, Sam in Philadelphia. Suffice to say the
weekend was a whirlwind of high-tech baby toys, excellent tropical
drinks and something called the Please Touch Museum, which Theresa’s
young niece has disturbingly dubbed the “Please Touch Me.” We laugh.
Anyway, basically a glorified playground, the Please Touch (Me)
Museum offers hands (and mouth) on lessons in the not-so-finer points
of agriculture, public transit, great works of children’s literature
and most importantly, shopping. As Theresa and I tried (in vain)
to prevent Sam from ramming his miniature cart filled with plastic
pears and pork chops into the shins of unsuspecting “tall people,”
we mused on the exhibit’s double message — as it purports to
teach basic survival skills, does it not also form good little consumers?
Of course, all of this is perhaps totally ridiculous in the wake
of a careening toddler with a piece of plastic pizza in his mouth.
For me, a lesson in childhood development: at 16 months, “make-believe”
has yet to acquire significant meaning.
I then returned to New York, where, when not out shivering,
I gladly holed up in my brother’s over-heated apartment. I must thank
everybody who came out to see me on “bar night” at Swift’s Hibernian Lounge
(a very nice place to have a beer and a chicken pot pie, I might add).
The true measure of friendship: when people you haven’t seen in over a
year will brave sub-zero temperatures to have a drink with you and a bunch
of other people they’ve never met. It was great to see people from all
different places and periods of my New York life intermingling in one
dark smoky place.
New York never fails me when
it comes to excellent culinary adventures. Although I definitely have
my old-time, must-eat favorites, I discovered a bunch of new delights
this time around. Here are the culinary highlights, some old, some new:
Mini Banana Cream Pie from De Roberti’s.
The perfect little round pie crust filled with creamy banana custard (studded
with chunks of real banana) and topped with whipped cream and three chocolate-coated
banana slices. An old East Village favorite of mine, kindly procured this
time by Aya, creator of excellent potato salad.
An Pan (red bean buns) from Panya.
Impossibly fluffy and
filled with sweet red beans. Yummy.
Basiled Ham @ Zen Palate.
My all time favorite vegetarian
dish. Scott says, “I can’t believe it’s not ham!” I also especially like
the white conjex, which is just like chewy egg white, and those little
yellow fruit thingys - are they kumquats?
British Burger @ Noho Star.
Now, I’d never been to this
place before, deeming it too posh from the outside (and with too trendy
a name). But this burger is excellent! A huge patty with Stilton, bacon
and cucumbers on a toasty, slightly greasy bun. Totally satisfying despite
the arctic winds blowing in from the un-curtained door.
Pierogis and Christmas Borscht @ Veselka.
What would a
visit to New York be without a stop at Veselka? Full of chewy, cheesy
dumplings, Christmas Borscht is better than the regular kind (even sans
pork!) and pierogi are the perfect starch to ward off cold weather paralysis.
Thus fortified, Joanna and I waddled (she’s pregnant, I was just full)
all the way down to the Puck Building for the Outsider Art Fair (see below).
Veggie Dim Sum @ Vegetarian Dim Sum
(Sadly, I have no idea
what this restaurant on Pell St. is called, except that it has a big sign
outside that says “Vegetarian Dim Sum,” so it must be the place). My all
time favorite is the turnip cakes (again, better sans pork!), but the
spinach dumplings (despite their lack of fake meat) are also excellent
as well as some mochi-like fried rice cake pocket things that I’d never
had before. Also better for the company - a gathering just like old times
with Kelly, Dan, and special guest little Soo.
Pizza @ Grimaldi’s.
My brother and Aya took me to Brooklyn
to visit Jacques Torres Chocolates (purportedly serving hot chocolate
to rival Juliet Binoche’s in Chocolat), which, sadly (take note) is closed
on Sundays. As a consolation prize, we had lunch at Grimaldi’s, which
I’m ashamed to admit I had never visited in all my time in New York. I
can’t decide which was better, the light, yeasty, super-thin crust, or
the fresh, tangy tomato sauce, but let’s just say we were glad we didn’t
have to choose.
Hamachi Toro @ East on 3rd Ave. & 26th.
There is more than
one “East” in the city, but this one has a conveyor belt. And I don’t
just mean at the sushi bar -- this place has a conveyor belt around the
WHOLE restaurant. Sushi and accompaniments truck on by one by one like
good little soldiers while you make your selections. If you miss something,
don’t worry, it’ll be by again, albeit a few minutes older. Plates are
color-coded to indicate price. You can also order directly from the menu,
whence came HAMACHI TORO. I didn’t know hamachi (yellowtail) had toro
(belly meat), but it’s just like eating butter, I swear.
If you’ve read this far, you might also be interested in
some of the other stuff I did in New York. Of course nothing matches the
primacy and universality of food talk, but I did see a good movie, and
some art.
Cinematic Highlight: 7th Street by Josh Pais @ Cinema Village.
This video documentary is an intimate, personal portrait of a few square
blocks in Alphabet City, centered around 7th Street between C & D. Pais
grew up in the neighborhood and has created a touching document of the
pre-gentrification East Village. Insightful and humorous interviews with
friends and neighbors are interspersed with personal recollection and
vintage photographs, tracing the neighborhood’s evolution from turn-of-the-century
Jewish ghetto to 60’s boho artist community (Marcel Marceau in the living
room!), to the uneasy mix of bodegas and boutiques it is today. A run-in
with a local drug dealer forced Pais to stop filming in the mid-90s, but
Giuliani’s 1998 war on drugs put the dealer in the pen and allowed Pais
to finish his movie by 2000. The gap in time actually makes the movie
more impactful, as we see the ultimate take over of the neighborhood by
the gentrifying forces of developers and young suburbanites with scads
of money. Sadly, my brother and I (as former denizens of 7th Street) must
identify with the invading forces in this story, or as my brother put
it quite eloquently, as eco-tourists, come to admire the colorful local
environment that our very presence displaces and destroys.
I also went to see some art. Funny how I never bothered
with this while I lived there…seems it’s too difficult precisely because
it’s so easy. All thanks to Kelly (of Kelly and Charley's Art Recs) for the excellent recommendations and the excellent company.
The Outsider Art Fair @ The Puck Building.
I’d never been to this fair before, even though Joanna (whose father-in-law
is the Fair’s organizer) has graciously invited me in past years. This
year I’m glad I took her up on it. Outsider Art is loosely defined as
art by people who are blissfully unaware of the conventions of that nether
region commonly called the “art world.” The category includes work by
the mentally ill, developmentally disabled, hermits, recluses and the
just plain eccentric. It also includes works that could be termed “folk”
art, although picking Colin’s brain for a clear distinction proved fruitless
(due to the slipperiness of the terms, of course). Suffice to say, “Outsider”
is a provisional term that is somewhat problematic, but clearly delineates
something people recognize as demonstrably different from the “insider”
art that fills museums & galleries. (Although “Outsider” art is now included
in many museum collections, and a large private collection just went up
for auction at Christies. Hmmm).
All I can say is that knowing that it’s
“Outsider” definitely affects your reaction to the work. Aware that the
brightly colored scribbles or rough-hewn wood carvings are not intended
to be self-consciously child-like or pretentiously rustic, you approach
the works with a refreshing sense of wonder and openness. You’re not looking
for the punch line or some clever, ironic commentary; you’re -- dare I
say, it? -- utterly charmed. Of course this naked fascination always treads
dangerously close to condescension. “Oh, isn’t it CHARMING that this crazy
person in Vermont creates such wonderfully naïve crayon drawings?” Perhaps
our admiration for this work has less to do with the art itself than with
our own fantasies of some raw, unmediated experience of the world that
is clearly inaccessible to us as jaded, self-styled urban dwellers. What’s
more, if we didn’t know that the artists are “outsiders,” would we see
the work in the same way? Intentionality rears its ugly head once more,
and it seems to be the only thing that stands between an insider and an
outsider. Of course all of my mental machinations were stopped cold in
their tracks by the sudden appearance of David Bowie (!) which made me
run around like a school girl in a tizzy just to get a glimpse of his
eminence.
Erik Benson @ Rare Gallery.
At first glance, Benson’s Colorform
style paintings looked a little too Wallpaper magazine for me, but on
closer inspection, I found them both quietly beautiful and ingeniously
constructed. Benson pours acrylic paint onto sheets of glass, lets it
dry and then cuts and peels the paint strips off like so much fruit leather.
The pieces are then applied in small strips, rectangles and polygons to
large canvases in order to literally build up images of modern construction
sites, high rise buildings, water towers and even a masterfully executed
roller coaster. The collaging of the small pieces of paint mimics the
process of building itself, and provides a new twist on “painting.” On
one canvas, the pieces are cut into individual “bricks” and collaged together
to represent -- what else? -- a brick wall.
Walter Martin and Paloma Munoz: Travelers @ P.P.O.W.
A
wonderful series of custom snow globes foregrounds the morbidity inherent
in our desire to preserve and commemorate. Each snow globe contains a
perversely morbid scene, albeit rendered in an almost cheery retro-50s
style. Suicides, car crashes, and other disasters are quietly buried under
a soft, silent coating of artificial snow. In filling the snow globes
with such quietly perverse scenes (in place of the usual happy souvenir
moments), Martin and Munoz subvert our expectations, creating a surreal,
Edward Scissorhands sort of alternate reality. The miniature dreamscape
becomes a nightmare. (I’ve been reading Celeste Olalquiaga’s The Artifical
Kingdom: On the Kitsch Experience, -- does it show? -- which contains
an extensive analysis of the snow globe and its place in history as one
of the first mass-produced “kitsch” objects to be endowed with personal
sentiment, precisely because its role as souvenir in part assumes the
passing of the thing commemorated.)
Yayoi Kusama @ Robert Miller Gallery.
I love Kusama’s work,
so I’m biased. There was a long line to get into a one-person-at-a-time
installation that I just did not have the patience for, but I loved the
infinite neon ladder -- a ladder shape traced in neon lights, ascending
and descending endlessly, courtesy of two opposing mirrors -- a cheap effect
perhaps, but kind of neat. Another fun piece was the gigantic disco ball
installed at the angle of a world globe. Need I say more? Some might say
it’s too facile, but I loved it.
Andy Goldsworthy: Passages @ Galerie Lelong was, well,
underwhelming. Purportedly a commemoration (do you notice a theme here?)
of site-specific works he has completed in the East, Midwest and West
of the United States, the 3 sandstone “cairns” (basically large, ziggurat-like
piles of rock) intersect with the walls and columns of the gallery space,
which I suppose is what makes the piece “site specific.” Oh well.
Inigo Manglano-Ovalle: Purgatory @ Max Protetch.
Hey, I like art with complex references as much as the next person,
(see my review of Sam Durant’s retrospective
at LA MOCA) but there is a point where you just want to hit
the “I don’t care” button and scram. This show was it. Here’s a
quote from the show’s press release: “Purgatory’s centerpiece, Cloud
Prototype No. 1, is a large-scale titanium cloud sculpture whose
form is based on an actual cumulo-nimbus (or supercell) thundercloud
modeled by the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University
of Illinois. Working with the architect Douglas Garofalo, Manglano-Ovalle
has converted the numerical data scanned from an existing 50 kilometer
wide thundercloud, and then scaled it down to be digitally sculpted
by computer-controlled milling machines used by the automobile industry
to prototype new car bodies.” Manglano-Ovalle has the audacity to
combine this uber-cloud with a quote from the Bhagavad-Gita , and
references to Dante and Robert Oppenheimer. Can you say, “boy art?”
Can you say, “So what?” I’m sure there’s a good idea in there somewhere,
but I can’t see it for the large silver storm cloud.
I hate to close on a negative note, so I’ll add a little
bit of personal wisdom gained this trip. I found myself experiencing all
kinds of weird geographic dislocations in New York this time around. Unfailingly
they occurred in Starbucks and Barnes & Noble, where I would for a split
second think that I was back in the Bay Area where such and such restaurant
or café was just around the corner (while it was really 3000 miles away).
These kinds of generic consumer spaces probably trigger that kind of thing
all the time, but I couldn’t help thinking that it was also me, that now
somehow I have two homes whose geographies are constantly merging and
mixing to create some new place: New Francisco or something. Anyway, this
realization also led to much fruitful musing, not the least of which resulted
in an art piece (horrors! Sharon is making art again?) which will be shown
at a group show my friends Sheila and Leanne are organizing in Leanne’s
palatial Victorian flat in March.
I will leave you with one more slightly less realistic
thought (and don’t forget, you heard it here first!). When the teleportation
revolution happens, wouldn’t Starbucks be the perfect place for the local
teleporter? There’s one (or more) in every city, and it’s much more convenient
than the airport.
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