So on
Monday, just to remind us we were heading back to London in two days time, it
decided to pour with a kind of rain that can only be described as torrential.
Because we hadn’t brought our swimmers and snorkel we ditched our plan to walk
The High Line and consoled ourselves with a serve of blueberry pancakes from
the Clinton Street Bakery on the Lower East Side.
Tori had told us about this
place and we were under strict instructions not to be swayed by anything else
on the menu as it would only lead to order envy. Pancakes and ONLY pancakes. And
so we did as told and predictably Tor was right. We probably didn’t need the
chocolate and peanut butter milkshakes that we ordered with them but it was in keeping with the chocolate salty
sweet theme of calorie badness we’d established earlier in the trip at the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck. Faffing about under awnings and trying not to get any
wetter than we already were we then headed to MoMA to meet Bethany, whose convenient
membership meant it was five and not twenty bucks to get in.
MoMA is
the only museum open on a Monday and so it was predictably busy but we had a
good couple of hours breezing through the major art milestones of the 20th century – Pollock, Picasso and the pop boys, including a rare chance to see
James Rosenquist’s room installation billboard-esque painting F-111 from
1964-65. This extraordinary painting, that I remember studying in high school,
is a brilliant damnation of what the artist has described as “the collusion
between the Vietnam death machine, consumerism, media and advertising.”
 |
| James Rosenquist, F-111, 1964-65 |
The
F-111 was a fighter-bomber plane developed and paid for by US tax dollars during
the Vietnam War and in Rosenquist’s immersive painting parts of the impressive
fuselage pierce through a series of disconnected commercial images that bear
increasingly sinister overtones the longer you look at them, from a mess of
visceral spaghetti to a young blonde innocent under a hairdryer that looks suspiciously
like a missile-head - all in bright cheery hues. It’s an iconic work that was first exhibited in 1965 and to
see it here was kind of awe-inspiring.
 |
| Doris Salcedo, Atrabiliarios, 1992-93 |
 |
| Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled (Placebo), detail, 1991 |
We did
the Cindy Sherman retrospective in a tidy 15 minutes, Bethany and I spending most
of it putting out masters degrees to good use and discussing everything she’s made
since about 1980 in a derogatory fashion. It wasn’t great. But we then had a
pleasant 15 minutes twirling through the gift shop - of course – and so despite
the soggy nature of the day it was good mix of food and culture and set the
scene quite nicely for dinner that evening.
Several
people had told me about Beauty & Essex and I’d booked us a table at this
Lower East Side establishment several weeks ago. Lovely Boy wasn’t too happy
about having to put a shirt and his Going Out Shoes on for the occasion but I
assured him he’d be in good sartorial company once we got there. And as per, I
was right. Beauty & Essex is as regarded for its menu as it is its
location, at the back of a very cool pawnshop.
You enter the storefront,
selling antiques, old jewels and assorted musical instruments and head through
an unassuming back door and into the bar. A huge chandelier hangs from above
and plush dark sofas entreat you to sit back and get smashed on a roster of
killer cocktails. Thankfully we had but one drink here before being seated in
the restaurant, beneath beautiful old light fittings and a huge glass atrium
roof.
The food
is a tapas-style sharing menu in a range of culinary styles. We had five plates
between us and it’s no exaggeration to say that each of them was exquisite and
if the moment was in animation our eyes would have been consistently out of our
heads in delight and ohmygodness. Tuna sashimi, beef carpaccio, braised short
rib tamales, oven braised chicken meatballs and grilled cheese, smoked bacon
and tomato soup dumplings that were so ridiculously good we had to order a
second helping.
And for dessert - warm cinnamon sugared donuts full of hazelnut
creme and raspberry jam respectively, delivered in their own beautifully
designed box. Holy hell they were good. I’ve had a lot of world-class meals in
mind (yes, El Bulli, Fat Duck, I’m looking at you) but this was up there with
the best. Great cocktails, incredible food, good service, in a brilliant,
quirky, cool but not pretentious environment. We couldn’t have asked for a
better penultimate New York night. Oh, and I forgot to mention the free
champagne bar in the ladies bathrooms. Yes, seriously.
 |
| Side dishes as accessories #love |
Tuesday
was our last full day and thankfully the rain had all but disappeared, leaving
a humid, temperamental, cloudy sort of mess in its wake. In the morning we set
off for the financial district once more, this time to visit the WTC Memorial.
I remember acutely being here in November 2001, about to start my internship
and feeling intensely the grief, vulnerability and horror of New Yorkers
everywhere. I also remember wandering around this area and trying to absorb the
enormity of what had happened here and standing with great sadness in front of
the fences of Trinity Church, overwhelmed as they were with photographs,
tributes and missing person posters. Just two years earlier I’d stood at the
foot of the twin towers and marvelled at their architectural bravado. Now, well
it’s hard to get your bearings amongst all the construction but in the middle
of all this rebuilding is the memorial plaza and the two reflection pools –
this strange oasis amid the chaos.
I wasn’t
sure what to expect from the visit but I’d followed the controversy and ongoing
debate around the design competition for years and was curious to see it. The
two reflection pools that sit in the footprints of the two towers are enormous,
nearly an acre each, and incredibly deep. The second drop in the middle is so
deep that you can’t see the bottom, no doubt a deliberate part of the design.
The flowing water, the space, the depth all brought a beautiful gravitas to the
encounter and I was both moved and impressed by the poignancy and simplicity of
the space.
There was no one way to read these gaping holes, that so many people
feared initially would be read as unhealed wounds, but the flowing water had a
meditative, soothing quality and a life force that gave space to reflect but that
also gently insisted on the inevitable moving forward of time. The bronze lip
around each of the pools is etched with the names of all those who lost their
lives that day, in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
Some people had left
flowers and messages but largely they were unadorned. Rows of trees offer shade
and space to sit and while it’s currently ensconced in fences, when the
surrounding buildings are completed it will be open to the surrounding streets
and accessible from every side and its significant beauty will be fully
realised. I’m really glad we went to see it and gladder still that politics,
religion and frightening ideologues were so deftly negotiated (or indeed
avoided) to create a space that can be interpreted, respected and remembered by
everyone in their own way.
If the
WTC Memorial offers one way to reflect on Manhattan’s architecture – past,
present and future – The High Line is another. The initiative of a group of
conservationists, architects, historians and local residents, The High Line is
a public park built along an historic above ground freight rail line that tracks down
10th Avenue.
It opened in 2009 and was extended in 2011 and now runs
from W30th St all the way down to Gansevoort St in the Meatpacking District.
The old rails are visible most of the way and it’s been beautifully restored
with a wooden walkway whose width oscillates between the buildings and gardens
of wildflowers the whole length. There are benches for birdwatching, a
dedicated stream for cooling your feet and art installations along the way –
from billboards to sound pieces to a very unique zoo and a very naked peeping
man, the last two unofficial contributions…
We had a
gorgeous stroll down these 20 blocks despite the malevolent weather above and
Lovely Boy rewarded himself with beer and bratwurst at the Standard Hotel’s
biergarten at the other end for a walk well done. If we hadn’t lost the best
part of Monday to the weather I’d have loved to have spent some serious time
around Chelsea and the Meatpacking District but all we got was a walk along 14th St towards the subway. Something else for the Next Time List…
 |
| Spot the naked waving man... |
 |
| The High Line Zoo |
Getting
back to Brooklyn we ambled along Smith St looking for Brooklyn bargains and
working up an appetite for dinner. I was seriously tempted by the blackboard
offer out the front of Beauty Bar – 10 bucks for a martini and a manicure but
hard liquor before 6pm is never a good idea, even when the bar is exceptionally
cute and the seats are old 1950s hairdryers. Next time.
 |
| The view up 10th Ave from The High Line |
We’d
saved Calexico, an award-winning Mexican joint for our last dinner – another
food truck turned permanent residence in Red Hook but getting there, we were
told there was a half hour wait for food and no-one, including the staff,
seemed to have much of a clue what was happening. Which is a shame, as the
guacamole was excellent and bode well for a good meal. Giving up after 40
minutes of mild confusion we went back to the Mexican place of our first
evening and had a grand time eating too many mouth-watering soft tacos and
enchiladas before rolling home yet again.
By the
time our last day rolled around all of Lovely Boy’s list had been ticked –
hotdogs, baseball, Times Square, Rockefeller Centre and the rest of the Big
Buildings, Central Park, the High Line, the WTC Memorial and shitloads of
Mexican food. I still had a couple left, chief among them the Guggenheim. They
were mid-instal of their next major exhibition so tickets were half price -
which made me twice as happy as the exhibition I wanted to see was the
Francesca Woodman retrospective anyway.
 |
| Francesca Woodman, from the House series, 1976 |
Woodman was a young American
photographer working in the late 1970s and early 1980s who tragically took her
own life at the age of 22. I can’t remember the first time I saw her work but I
was drawn then, and again now, to her haunting images – studies of the female
form, explorations of constructed and emotional spaces and self portraits that
in retrospect perhaps offer a beautiful and desperately sad insight into her
imminent fate as she seems to fight to disappear into herself and her
surroundings.
 |
| Francesca Woodman. |
Another
obligatory spin through the gift shop, we then headed back to Brooklyn to check
out deKalb market. DeKalb Market is a unique mini market metropolis made out of
old shipping containers. It’s a mix of food, design, vintage and homewares and
I can imagine when the weather is a little brighter the crowds descend on this
place – but on a wet Wednesday afternoon we had it basically to ourselves.
Lovely Boy stalked the food while I went in search of last minute Things I
Didn’t Know I Couldn’t Live Without. Which, it turns out, was a vintage bauble
ring.
By now we
only had a couple of hours left before we had to leave for JFK which meant time
for one last thing: a visit to the Brooklyn branch of David Chang’s Momofuku
Milk Bar. We’d planned to swing by here for dessert the night before but having
gorged ourselves on Mexican it seemed insulting to partake of world famous pie
and not enjoy it. And so we went back for some candy bar pie. Think chocolate, gooey
toffee, nougat, chocolate cookie crust and pretzels on top. It was so fucking
delicious we couldn’t even stop to photograph the experience for posterity once we'd opened the packaging.
It was an
appropriately sweet ending to our brilliant, inspiring, memorable week.
Getting
back to London was totally tiresome but serendipitously I managed my third
celebrity sighting in the dying minutes of our trip, clocking Clive Owen as he
sauntered through customs at JFK. Holiday well done. See you again soon New
York. Yes?
