NYC Then and Now

Azalea and 54 Below

Happy birthday to ME! When in doubt, think about dessert first.  Charlene,my friend and "blog boss" (she talked me into writing this blog), wanted to catch up and celebrate my birthday in some way. We decided to go places we hadn't been before.

First stop was Azalea, a lovely Italian restaurant hiding in plain sight in the theatre district. The food tasted as wonderful as it looked. The photos are by Charlene who also writes the Street Art blog in this group. It was fun to go early (5PM) and enjoy some extra attention before the place totally filled up. It also seems like a great place for small groups.  I noticed over a dozen people thoroughly enjoying themselves on the way out.

 

Then, it was on to 54 Below, a great cabaret space below what used to be Studio 54. Broadway star Rebecca Luker sang known and unknown songs by Jerome Kern. I also saw how the P G Wodehouse lyrics to the song Bill inspired the Tom Lehrer song She's My Girl. 

We ate at Azalea. Thanks to Theater Development Fund tickets, we had no cover or minimum but I must say that everyone around us seemed to be enjoying their food and drink.

 

Daniel Cainer - Limmud Catskills NY - London Cries - Cornelia St Cafe 5/9/13

I first heard Daniel Cainer at a Jewish Learning conference sponsored by Limmud NY in the Catskills in January 2012. This year's conference I am sure still had the energy but lost the Catskills nostalgia.

Back to Daniel. I am a sucker for accustic guitar players who can sing, write lyrics, and have great voices and stories to tell. See my prior post about David Roth and Phil Ochs.

Recently, Daniel made a video called London Cries. Honestly, while it is a great detour to London, I think an equally great NYC video could be made with the song as sound track.

Daniel will be performing at the Cornelia Street Cafe tomorrow Thursday May 9, 2013 at 6:00 and I am going to go and listen. I hope to see you there.

Tribeca Film Festival 2013 - reviews 1

While the administration of Tribeca needs to rethink their ticket buying system for next year, the six films and two shorts programs I saw were well worth the time spent.

Herblock  - Oh how I wish our local paper carried his editorial cartoons when I was growing up. This portrait of a voice for the common man in the last century is a MUST see. I hope it ends up in theaters and on PBS ! I know I need to read more about him.

I Got Somethin' to Tell You - see above. While we had many comedy records at home, I missed out on Moms Mabley although I did see her on Ed Sullivan. She was the First female comedian. Fun film. She was a different kind of social commentator and very much revered by the comedians of our day.

Dancing in Jaffa - Getting Israeli Jews, Palestineans, and Christian kids to dance with each other(?) was the dream of ballroom champion Pierre Dulaine. Great premise and after he spent a great deal of time hitting his head against a wall so to speak, it worked. Hopefully this will show up at the Jewish Film Festival and the Lincoln Center Dance on film festival. This is a must for my ballroom dance friends.

Out of Print - a well made documentary on subjects near and dear to my heart: Publishing -self and traditional, libraries, shelf life of information, books and the Internet. I recently took a tour of the Brooklyn Business Library and remembered how comforting it is to search through well curated stored information. On the other hand, when I think of the amount of great and horrible information I can access from my cell phone, the mind boggles. I hope this film will make it to PBS so it can be seen by a larger audience.

Michael H: I saw this documentary because I had seen Amour by accident and I thought it was incredibly well done. I thought this documentary was interesting - especially the shots of shooting his older films. He is brilliant but honestly, there is too much gratuitous violence for me. Great documentary but I will never knowingly go to another film of his.

Stand Clear: Really interesting. At some level this is a modern day version of The Little Fugitive. Instead of a young child running away to Coney Island in the 50's, an autistic young teen runs away and lives in the subway for several days. This story was (at first) very loosely based on a real story.

Life got a little complicated for the film maker when Hurricane Sandy showed up 3/4 through the filming.  This is not unlike the literary challenge that author Pete Hamill had when his New York story Forever was finally ready to go to the publisher on Sept 10, 2001.

Like many NYC works of film fiction, those of us who live here know that some of the locations make no sense but the film still works. The last place the teen is seen before Sandy is in a subway near the Cloisters which is about as far away from his home in Far Rockaway as one can get by subway. I won't give away the end.

 

May 2013 - so much is going on (1)

MOMA's Weimar festival continues until the first weekend in May. The Tribeca Open Artist Studio tour is the first weekend in May. It is a great opportunity to see how artists live.

For those of you who want to walk "all around Manhattan" the 2013 Great Saunter on May 4th provides you with that opportunity. More of my back story to this walk can be found here.

Sunday May 5th brings The Five Boro Bike tour from Bike New York. I volunteered on this for years and I even rode a 10 person bike in it once. (NOTE - the ride is still on although some pyro technics at the start have been cancelled and there will be increased police presence.)

On the 5th, I will be heading to the NY Botanical Gardens early in the morning to walk a 5k to raise funds for psoriasis research. I signed up for this walk last year but when I broke my wrist a few days before the walk, I didn't do it. This winter, I went to the Gardens for the Train Show with the Guides Association and I vowed to return and do the walk this year.  You can support my effort  on my personal page.

Speaking of Gardens, I recently went to visit the Brooklyn Botanic Garden after a visit to the Brooklyn Museum with the Guides Association.  If you want to make your trip a day and an evening event, I would go to the Garden on Saturday May 4th and then continue into the Museum for First Saturday.

There is another (CRF) cause related fitness event on Saturday May 5th that will make Times Square busy early in the morning. It is the Revlon Run/Walk for Women.

If any of you locals want to volunteer and receive passes to New York Fringe Festival Performances or work (for little money) the Fringe NYC annual Job Fair will be held on Sunday May 5th. I was pleased to discover at a FODOR's New York Travel Board meetup that one of my readers has enjoyed volunteering at the festival for a few years. She found out about the festival from my many posts over the years. I may volunteer this year too.

More to come. I've only gotten to May 5th and I haven't even mentioned Cinco de Mayo.

 

April 2013 - Tribeca Film Festival - MOMA Weimar Touch

In March, I had more tour work and much less time to post. I hope work will get in the way of some of the movies I'd like to see this month but these festivals represent a small set of the great movies you can see in April that are not being advertised on your commercial TV screens.

The Tribeca Film Festival starts April 17 but single tickets will be available to American Express Card holders starting Tuesday April 9th. (If you can't make it to NYC some of the films will be streamed during and after the festival. I have written many posts about the Tribeca Film Festival in past seasons. Here is one of them. (NOTE - the Tribeca Open Artist Studio Tour aka TOAST will take place the first week in May this year.

The Weimar Touch festival at MOMA is another reason to think about buying a MOMA membership.

On April 22nd the 9th NYC Downtown Short Film Festival begins. It is a less expensive off the beaten track very NY alternative to Tribeca.

The Film Society of Lincoln Center is honoring Barbra Streisand this month.

For uptown edgier films near some great dining visit the Maysles Cinema.

In Brooklyn, BAM has one of many great independent film centers.

For great films in Greenwich Village head to Film Forum or the Independent Film Center.

Enjoy!

A Quiet Wedding....

in a Grand Central space.  Where was I when I spotted the happy couple?

This post is dedicated to the folks who come to the Trip Advisor New York City forum looking for interesting places to get married in New York and....

to my Texas dance tour by subway group who wanted/needed down time at their hotel after a wet soggy day taking a statue harbor cruise and visiting the 911 memorial and before going to dinner at Bubba Gump's and going to see Wicked.

I got to see Quartet at the Paris (a lovely one screen movie theater) while they were at Wicked. (I saw Wicked many moons ago). They saw a great musical. I saw a fun film directed by Dustin Hoffman who I saw  direct Death of a Salesman for a community theater in the next town in NJ and perform off Broadway before The Graduate.

Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Commemoration - March 2013

March 25, 2013 will be the 102nd anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. One of the ways people are remembered is via the Chalk Project. The name of each person lost in the Triangle Fire, their age and their address is written in front of their building (or where their building formerly was).

Last year I watched my friend Charlene Weisler chalk remembrances of two people who lived in the East village.

 

 

Then, I searched for some of the sites up in East Harlem. What was once a tenement in East Harlem is now a community garden. The woman in the 2nd picture, Malinda Futrell, is the head of the garden behind her. She did not know the history of the fire. Now she does.

The official commemoration will take place at noon on March 20th Washington Place near Washington Square this year. Chalking will happen on or just before the actual anniversary on March 25th. If you are here exploring look at the Chalk map and find some of the sites. Pause. Say a prayer. If people wonder what you are up to, explain. They probably do not know or do not remember.

For more information, see my posts from the Hundredth Anniversary and my account of the day in 2011.

 

Metropolitan Museum of Art - spring 2013

So many exhibits and so little time. I just want to mention 3 that will be very popular this spring.

Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity just opened. Before you enter, there is a quote from Manet that I will paraphrase. He said that when painting women (my addition...with their clothes on) they should be dressed in the most up-to-date fashion. Seriously, when the Met takes costumes out of the closet and displays them with relevant art, the results are always, fun, educational and exciting.

I said to a guard that this exhibit will draw great crowds when word gets out. She said it will be really crazy when both this exhibit and the upcoming Punk exhibit are on together and near each other in May.

While looking for links, I discovered the Street exhibit that is opening tomorrow. Must see it soon. Met membership has its rewards.

If you are visiting, remember that the Met opens at 9:30. That is my favorite time to visit.

 

The NYC Black History Month tour might be over for 2013 but...

 all the places on the route and many more are available to be seen year round.

First the end of my visits. I did show up for the Seneca Village tour in the pouring rain and there were 2  Central Park volunteer docents  waiting for me and quite willing to do the tour. We waited for others but when no one showed and I told them I could do the tour at another time. Shortly after they left, fellow tour guide Kevin showed up but we will each do the tour another day.

On Tuesday, I encouraged tour guide Gordon L to join me on my journey to Sandy Ground (this link will also get you to many more African American history sites in NYC) in Staten Island . I took my first ride on the Staten Island Railroad and we did get to see some effects of Hurricane Sandy along the way and we chose to walk 1.5 miles from the train to Sandy Ground. Parts of the road had no sidewalks. Staten Island was a visit to the burbs. Many homes, many cars and no one on the streets.

But, the Sandy Ground Historical Museum is a gem and Sylvia (see left), our guide, is a descendent of the orginial settlers of the first free Black community in the U.S. The pictures around her are members of her family. We also saw a video segment that had recently been broadcast on ABC's Here and Now about Sandy Ground. There were special exhibits about the Underground Railroad and Sandy Ground's connection to it. I am really tempted to return for their annual barbecue festival but you should visit sooner.

We took the S74 bus for the very long ride back to the Ferry Terminal. We passed Historic Richmondtown and several interesting parks and cemeteries. We also saw an incredible variety of Staten Island housing. Garages are important. Sidewalks are less important. We went over highways and passed shopping centers. It was almost like being in New Jersey.

Wednesday I headed for a program at the Schomburg library given by artist and children's book illustrator Bryan Collier. His talk about becoming an artist and creating children's books touched the children and the adults in the audience. I would love to use his book Uptown as the basis for a family tour of Harlem. Visit in the next couple of weeks to see the current exhibit about Emancipation. The exhibit about Africans in India will be on until July. After the lecture, I spoke to a woman outside about my trip to Sandy Ground. She was planning to go too after seeing the piece about Sandy Ground on Here and Now.

I will provide more warning if this special Black History Month tour is repeated next year. NOW on to March!

Detour AZ - Musical Instrument Museum

Sometimes I actually leave NYC and head to relatives in Arizona. One of my favorite tourist attractions near Scottsdale is the Musical Instrument Museum or " the MIM".

Much as I love the my home town musical instrument collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Musical Instrument Museum in the middle of the desert is New York boy Tony Bennett's favorite too. There are instruments from all over the world and whenever you are near an exhibit, you will hear the music of that exhibit in your earphones. Some of the exhibits are hands on. When I was there last September, they also had amazing Butternut Squash Scones in the cafe and their gift shop had lots of wonderful music related things. I would love to attend a concert in their auditorium one of these days.

 

 

When I was there, they were creating an exhibit about hip hop music in New York. Those of us who live here and play host to visitors always wonder where they get their perceptions of NYC. We know that crime shows are partly to blame. But....there has been no graffiti on the subways for years and yet that is how the Musical Instrument Museum chose to portray NYC.

 

If you read this in Arizona, come visit NYC and take a ride of the subways of today.