I Don’t Like Nostalgia Unless it’s Mine
Should that Lou Reed quote read instead “I don’t like nostalgia (unless it’s mine)”? But it is sort of this trip,it is sort of this travel diary blog. I wonder if he said it sober? I mean, I’d like to…
Cathedrals of Broadway
The picture at top, Florine Stettheimer’s Cathedrals of Broadway, 1929, (cropped by WordPress, I’m not clever enough to know how to prevent that irritating preset), part of four “cathedral” paintings, I only came across by accident: In the interest of…
Your Huddled Masses Yearning to Breathe Free
What a glorious fall day. I cut through Central Park to the Upper East side; my ticket to the Met Cloisters yesterday gave me three days of visits to the Met. Today, en route to the Breuer at Madison and…
The Odour of Chastity
Domingo Zapata at 1 Times Square. Is anyone looking up? Tuesday morning started dull and grey, warm to almost muggy, eventually clearing. After breakfast I walked over to the NY Public Library for the J D Salinger exhibit. Never before…
Across 110th Street
The Bronx is up. The Battery is down and the Bronx is up. I was thinking about that days ago. I was thinking about that when Criterion streamed a restored version of On The Town (Frank Sinatra bored, Comden and…
I Happen to Like New York
I’ve never arrived in NYC on a Saturday evening. That was a trip. But I’ve definitely never arrived at Penn Station, which is the Madison Square Garden subway stop, on a Saturday, with a UFC fight on tap, for which…
Substance is Style
So it goes; another spectacular trip down. Spettacolare. Didn’t ever post any pics of the Yard hotel, bar and restaurant common areas. Bric a brac meets shabby chic meets a reactionary aversion to minimalism meets hoarding meets collectible obsession. Hats…
God in the Middle & Verdi’s “Ugliest Opera”
We didn’t go to a church today, literally, but we did go to the high temple of opera. More on that later. First, let’s go to a museum of a church! Diptych of the Five Parts from the 5th century…
Plastic Dynamism, Synthetic Definition and Historiographical Taxonomies
It was all art, all day. All art baby. Cans of Love in Preserve art. You might not even see a church in today’s post. Mid 20 c Morandi. Early 20 c Kandinsky. We did a tour of the Museo…
Old News & Other Oxymorons
We checked into a quirky hotel in Milan. Make of it what you will, it’s not run of the mill. Rooms have a theme; ours is hunting lodge. Go figure It’s enough to make you go ethical vegan. We have…