Walking Off the Big Apple

New York, in Vintage Black and White, and Photography Posts on Walking Off the Big Apple

2009-07-13T10:53:00.010-04:00

Some see the world through rose-colored glasses, but many of the city's most famous image-makers prefer to see New York in black and white. Street photographers, portrait photographers, documentary photographers, photojournalists, almost every variety of shutterbug finds a soft place in the heart for black and white film. You remember film. Photographers Diane Arbus, Weegee, Paul Strand, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Margaret Bourke-White, Garry Winogrand, Edward Steichen, James Van Der Zee, Helen Levitt, Berenice Abbott, Lee Friedlander, Gordon Parks, Alfred Stieglitz, and many others selected and shared with us impossible, scandalous, mundane and beautiful moments of the city's story. It would be entertaining to select the most famous photographs of New York or of New Yorkers, but near the top of my list would be Alfred Eisenstaedt's "The Kiss at Times Square," the one of the sailor kissing the nurse during a V-J celebration on August 14, 1945, or Diane Arbus' "Exasperated Boy with Toy Hand Grenade," the disturbing image of a boy in Central Park from 1961.

Black and white photographs cut to the chase, drawing attention to content, composition, and always, the value of light. Shooting images in black and white, as opposed to color, makes amateur photographers like myself connect to a tradition of fine art photography. I remember a two-week stay in Paris many years ago when I took pictures in color for the first week, but for the second I switched to black and white film. I still value many of these latter images of Parisian places - a windy street in the Marais, a cafe on the Left Bank, or a walkway in the Place des Vosges, and I hardly know where I've stashed the color ones.

Yesterday, I spent three hours in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, mainly to see Roxy Paine's Maelstrom on the roof, the New American Wing and a small number of exhibits - Augustus Saint-Gaudens, The Pictures Generation, 1974–1984, and yes, a photo exhibit of Paris, Napoleon III and Paris. I didn't bring a conventional film camera, only a digital point and shoot, but I did recently install the "Vint B&W" app on my iPhone and wanted to try it. The images turned out just OK, but they bore me less than the color ones I took with my digital. The black and white vintage qualities automatically date the images, like I was there not yesterday but in 1959. I was OK with that.

A Selection of Photography-related Posts on Walking Off the Big Apple

• The Lomo/Leica Walk
• Walker Evans, a Block on E. 61st Street in 1938, and a Visit in April of 2009
• The Flâneur's Sketchbook and Camera
• How to Take Better Images With the iPhone 3G Camera
• Making My Own Manhatta (on Paul Strand)
• William Eggleston and Alexander Calder at the Whitney (Note: If you work in color photography, study Eggleston)
• Earning Her Wrinkles: Rosalind Solomon at Silverstein Gallery
• Capturing the Big Mo: Michele Asselin's Photographs of Mike Huckabee
• The Intrinsic Beauty of Gotham in the Falling Snow
• Diane Arbus and the Hotel Chelsea Walk: No Freaks, No Punks

Images by Walking Off the Big Apple from July 12, 2009 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art made with the Vint B&W app for iPhone3G. Click on an image to enlarge. When I illustrate future posts, I'll try not to bum myself out if the pictures are in color.

American Cultural History on Walking Off the Big Apple: A Chronological Guide to a Selection of Posts From the Last Two Years

2009-07-12T12:27:00.010-04:00

Over the course of the last two years writing Walking Off the Big Apple, and it's been two years this week, I realize that many posts situate themselves in a category that would best be described as American cultural history. While I spend most of my time on contemporary issues and urban matters, I often explore topics in the history of visual and performing arts, literary history, and architecture.

When I'm out looking for the past, I often find that historical walks find their way into current preoccupations. For example, last fall when I was trying to recreate the fictional world of Lily Bart and her creator, writer Edith Wharton, the Wall Street collapse drew immediate parallels with the writer's time. Even seeing an art exhibit on Babar drew parallels with the Gilded Age.

To better understand the city involves being able to perceive the layers of its history, so when I'm out walking I often chase the furtive shadows of the past. I've put together a chronological guide to a selection of posts, approximately 42 of the 700 on this site, thinking it would be useful to share with student types and with readers who may see old posts that they haven't yet read.

1600s
• The "fresh, green breast of the New World- Mannahatta/Manhattan
• Towards a New Amsterdam: Celebrations of Henry Hudson

1810s
• Washington Irving's Solitary Walk through Christmas

1850s
• Before the Whale: Ishmael Takes a Walk in Manhattan

1860s
• Walking Broadway With Abraham Lincoln: The Visit to New York for the Cooper Union Speech
• Living Now in the New York of the Gilded Age: Inheriting the Built Environment of the Nineteenth Century

1890s
• Reservoir Dog: New York's Demon-Cur of the Winter of 1893
• Charles Hemstreet's Nooks and Corners of Old New York: Lessons in Mortality
• Tribeca Living: A Building for Chocolate and One for the Wool Trade

1900s
• New York 1900: Edith Wharton and The House of Mirth
• A Walk for a New York Christmas: O. Henry and "The Gift of the Magi"
• Henry James' Uneasy Homecoming to Washington Square

1910s
• Fifth Avenue and the High Road to Taos: Mabel Dodge and Flannery O'Connor
• Harvey Wiley Corbett and the E. 8th Street Apartments
• The Woolworth Building
• 1917: Trotsky's Flâneur Boy Wanders Downtown
• Focus on POTUS: The Two Washingtons of the Washington Square Arch

1920s
• A Visit to Astoria, Then & Now: The Marx Brothers at Paramount Pictures and Notes on Contemporary Attractions
• Making My Own Manhatta (on Paul Strand)
• New York's Theater District: The Legacy of the Golden Age, A Walk and a Map
• The Marx Brothers on Broadway, & Notes on New York Theatres in the 1920s
• From The Great Gatsby: Nick Carraway's Walk
• Walking New York: Theodore Dreiser on St. Luke's Place

1930s
• Lessons from the Days of the "Empty State Building"
• The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The Daily News Building
• Walker Evans, a Block on E. 61st Street in 1938
• The Light in Edward Hopper: The Sunny Side of the Great Depression

1940s
• Flannery O'Connor's Six Months in New York City

1950s
• Mapping Holly Golightly: Walking Off Breakfast at Tiffany's
• Places From The Bell Jar: Sylvia Plath's New York
• The Classic New York of Mame Dennis
• Garbo Walks: Into the Modern

1960s
• JFK: The Presidential Candidate From the Bronx
• The New York Hotel That Looks Like It's in Miami
• Freewheelin' Jones Street

1970s
• After Walking, A Place to Sit: Greenacre Park, E. 51st

2000s
• Walking Off the Wall Street Bears: A Subprimer (November 2007)
• After the Closing Bell, A Protest Against the Wall Street Bailout (September 2008)
• A Timely Visit to The Museum of American Finance
• Follow Your Money: The New York Financial Crisis and Walk
• A Stroll Down Pennsylvania Avenue
• J.P. Elephant: Drawing Babar at The Morgan

Images by Walking Off the Big Apple.

The "fresh, green breast of the new world" - Mannahatta/Manhattan

2009-07-10T14:41:00.006-04:00

A particularly noisy robin lives near me, perched somewhere in a sycamore tree on the east side of our building. Already sensing the light of day and anticipating the morning, the bird chirps incessantly through the hours of nautical and civil twilight until shortly after the sun rises. At this time of summer, on the island of Manhattan, the tweeting often begins around 4:20 a.m. and continues until 6 a.m. I've heard the bird for a long time now, and only this week, while out on the first dog walk of the day, have I seen it with my own eyes and caught it in its song. While I live on the west side of the building, facing the sunset over Greenwich Village and the Hudson, I wonder how anyone on the east side of the block could sleep through this incessant chirp.

Yesterday, while visiting the enthralling exhibit, Mannahatta/Manhattan: A Natural History of New York City at the Museum of the City of New York, I thought about my bird when I came across the following quote from an early visitor to Manhattan, dated 1630, and posted on a gallery wall: "Birds fill the woods so that men can scarcely go through them for the whistling, the noise and the chattering.” Adjusting to life in Manhattan most always involves coping with an often-discordant symphony during the early hours, but I never realized until now that the earliest visitors and residents may have also suffered from lack of sleep.

What a beautiful place this Mannahatta, the verdant paradise Henry Hudson and fellow sailors came upon almost 400 years ago. Switching from audio to visual for a moment, the visual aspects of the exhibit at the museum, with several geographical sections including Inwood, Foley Square, Turtle Bay/Murray Hill, Harlem, and Times Square illuminated in their own display, are stunning in their virtual renderings and computer simulations of the bygone natural world. Explaining that the pre-neon Times Square, for example, was a natural draw with its convergence to two streams, it's no wonder that we continue to assemble there. Now the lawn chairs make more sense.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's famous quote from The Great Gatsby, one of the most beautiful passages in American literature and that adorns one wall of the exhibit, speaks to the imagined awe of the explorers' first encounter.* The exhibit could have shamed us for our crass destruction of such a beautiful environment, but the organizers take a different route. Instead of bemoaning the lost Eden and advocating its return, the exhibit, curated by Eric W. Sanderson of the Wildlife Conservation Society at the Bronx Zoo, aims to heighten awareness of the theme of diversity throughout the area's history. At the time the Dutch arrived, the place had already lost its Eden qualities, as the small native-American population cleared and rearranged the land for their own purposes. Yet, here were hundreds of species of plants, fish, reptiles, birds and mammals living in a hilly-forested place with many islands and streams and in several distinct ecosystems. In time, a great diversity of ethnic groups and nationalities would come to live here and rearrange the landscape.

Like the two New Yorkers stumbling across the mythical Scottish village of Brigadoon in Lerner and Loewe's 1947 musical, it is still possible to encounter glimpses of Mannahatta now and then. In fleeting moments, a walk down Minetta Street in the Village, for example, feels like walking beside a stream. Of course, it should. Minetta Brook, from the Dutch Mintje Kill meaning "small stream," once flowed there, part of its wandering course from 23rd Street down to the Hudson. In most parts of the city you can watch volunteering native plants push up through cracks in the pavement or between cobble stones or from under the tracks on the High Line. Even in the elaborately landscaped and affected "natural" parts of Central Park, in the Ravine and the Ramble, the original Mannahatta makes an appearance here and there. The birds know where to find it, and they'll let others know the location by their sounds in the twilight.
__________

Images: above, computer simulation in exhibit; below, NW entrance of Central Park by Walking Off the Big Apple, Thursday, July 9, 2009.

Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth Avenue (link to website)

Mannahatta/Manhattan: A Natural History of New York City
Through October 13, 2009

Also recommended: Amsterdam/New Amsterdam: The Worlds of Henry Hudson
Through September 27, 2009

Dutch Seen: New York Rediscovered
Through September 13, 2009

* "And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes - a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder." - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, 1925

For more on The Great Gatsby and New York, read the related entry on Nick Carraway's Walk.

From The Great Gatsby: Nick Carraway's Walk, A Slideshow and A Map

2009-07-08T08:51:00.005-04:00

The New York zeitgeist this summer seems interested in revisiting F. Scott Fitzgerald's acclaimed masterpiece, The Great Gatsby, first published in April 1925. Director Baz Lurhmann has bought the rights to make a new film version, the radio program Studio 360 recently featured an in-depth look at the acclaimed novel, and even the Mannahatta/Manhattan exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York, the one that investigates the island's verdant Eden, prominently features a quote from the book on the wall. One reason for the resurgent interest is Fitzgerald's vivid portrait of New York culture during the Jazz Age, a time that invites a comparison with the city's most recent boom years and its subsequent loss of relative affluence. Beyond this interpretation and the literary ones mentioned by your high school English teacher, the book makes a good summer beach novel, with its breezy Long Island setting, reckless drivers, and endless cocktails. So much for Prohibition.

When he's not pulled into Jay Gatsby's magnetic vortex, Nick Carraway, the book's narrator - a budding 29-year-old bond trader (surely he would be a hedge funds guy in a contemporary remake) and a Yale man, spends most of his summer of 1922 working in the city. Toward the end of Chapter 3, he explains, "Most of the time I worked. In the early morning the sun threw my shadow westward as I hurried down the white chasms of lower New York to the Probity Trust." Much like the author Fitzgerald, Nick is the kind of walker-voyeur type who watches the world with dispassion but with a keen sense of observation. He spends lunch with coworkers dining "in dark, crowded restaurants on little pig sausages and mashed potatoes and coffee."

Nick's description of his evening routine is brief, but his words are geographically specific enough to follow in a real life New York context:

"I took dinner usually at the Yale Club—for some reason it was the gloomiest event of my day—and then I went up-stairs to the library and studied investments and securities for a conscientious hour. There were generally a few rioters around, but they never came into the library, so it was a good place to work. After that, if the night was mellow, I strolled down Madison Avenue past the old Murray Hill Hotel, and over 33rd Street to the Pennsylvania Station."

On a recent summer evening much like the narrator describes, I traced Nick's walk from the Yale Club to Pennsylvania Station. Circumstances of weather and the long days of summer sunsets over the Hudson do not change, but the built environment has changed greatly from 1922 to 2009. The specters of the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building, two towers constructed in the years following the novel's publication, followed me on my walk, as if they were looking over my shoulder. And while I tried to erase these immense stalkers from my virtual sight in order to imagine Nick's walk, I also faced the challenge of adding to my imagination two monumental buildings that he saw and that are no longer there - the Murray Hill Hotel, a grand rococo hotel dating from 1884, and Pennsylvania Station, the glorious Beaux-Arts monument from 1910 by McKim, Mead and White.

The reserved and handsome Yale Club still stands, just west of Grand Central Terminal at 44th and Vanderbilt. Arriving for the walk via the 6 train, I quickly fell into the mood of the Jazz Age upon seeing professionals of our era sipping, as advertised, "Cocktails from another era" at The Campbell Apartment. At the Yale Club, a light was on upstairs, as if Nick was still there studying his investments, and a short time after an alum emerged from the gilded-hued revolving door of the Vanderbilt street entrance. I walked the block west to Madison and proceeded south, noticing that the land slightly declined with these blocks. Those familiar with the novel will be amused by the presence of so many optical shops along the way. Shades of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg!

View From The Great Gatsby: Nick Carraway's Walk in a larger map

The Murray Hill Hotel, the 600-room hotel that once stood at 112 Park Avenue at East 40th Street, was modern for its time and popular with the city's elite at the turn of the century. The wealthy residents of Murray Hill convened in the lobby to smoke cigars and drink coffee. One notable habitué was J.P. Morgan, the powerful financier, who died in 1913. Walking south on Madison, Nick would have strolled past Morgan's home and library at the southeast corner of 36th Street. With just the mention of Murray Hill, Jazz Age readers of The Great Gatsby would have understood Fitzgerald's implicit reference to the world of the old rich. Jay Gatsby, by way of contrast, was nouveau riche.

Turning on 33rd St. and walking west gradually opens a sportier and a shadier world - Jack Dempsey's Pub, followed by peep shows and a neon sign advertising "Live Girls." The route opens onto the crossroads of Herald Square to the north and Greeley Square to the south. A statue there of Horace Greeley, editor of The New York Tribune, invites another literary connection to Fitzgerald's novel. Greeley's most famous dictum, "Go west, young man!" echoes the novel's western-versus eastern moral and cultural themes.

Reaching 7th Avenue, Nick would have passed on his left The Hotel Pennsylvania, a great columned hotel built in 1919 by the Pennsylvania Railroad and designed by McKim, Mead & White. Like the demolished Penn Station across the street, one that gave way to the eyesore known as Madison Square Garden, this structure, too, faces an uncertain future. Leave Nick here to catch his train, and walk one more block west to 8th Avenue to see the enormous Corinthian colonnade of the James A. Farley Building. New York's main post office, another monument by McKim, Mead & White, was built in 1912 and when opened in 1914 was known as the Pennsylvania Terminal. Plans are on the drawing board to convert this space into a new entrance for a renovated train station, but the complexities and debate over the Garden's future has left development of this area of the city in limbo. While we continue to debate the uses of real estate, Nick Carraway has probably slipped off to West Egg. Who knows? He may have already gone home to the Midwest by now.

Additional Notes:

• Link to Studio 360's excellent broadcast about The Great Gatsby.
• See Berenice Abbott's photographs of the Murray Hill Hotel, 112 Park Avenue at East 40th Street, demolished in 1947, on this page of the website of the Museum of the City of New York.
• See images of Penn Station, a glorious Beaux-Arts monument from 1910 by McKim, Mead and White, on this page at NYC-Architecture.

Images in slideshow by Walking Off the Big Apple from Monday, July 6, approx. 8:20 p.m. - 8:45 p.m.

Sunday Excursion on the 5th of July: Bicycling Off the Big Apple

2009-07-05T20:22:00.004-04:00

After a relentlessly long and rainy June in New York that seemed to literally dampen summertime spirits, during a time that has many questioning how they can personally manoeuvre this changing urban economy, following what must be an unusually dark, often bizarre and fast news cycle for the summer, the dawn of a serene 4th of July weekend seemed like a gift from the heavens. Saturday was a tad breezy, but our city managed to get through the whole day and into the night for the spectacle of fireworks on the Hudson and the opening of the Statue of Liberty's crown without one drop of rain. Given our state of mind, it felt like a miracle.

Sunday the 5th turned out even more miraculous weather-wise - low humidity with a cool morning with the clearest of skies. After walking the dogs, I felt an instant urge to see the city. Many residents had abandoned the city for beaches, and while most Sunday mornings prove a quiet time, I knew the moment of this particular Sunday morning, the 5th of July, provided a rare time to sail uptown on a bicycle with hardly a soul in sight. While I may have enjoyed a walk uptown equally as well, I woke up craving a jaunty and faster pace. Looking at the blue skies from my balcony, I wanted to get to Central Park as fast as possible, and without resorting to waiting for a train in a dark subway station below the earth.

Under this cloudless blue sky I biked straight north via 6th Avenue, stopping rarely, but after 49th St., I was forced to weave slowly and carefully through a group of vendors setting up a street fair for the day. Reaching the park, I cruised around at a slow pace, choosing to let the serious cyclists (the guys with striped jerseys and the gear) speed around me. I dismounted and walked my bike up The Mall, stopping and gazing for a few minutes on the lovely Bethesda Fountain down below me on the terrace. On 72nd Street, I found the bike route that directed me home, to the west and to the southwest, to 59th Street and Broadway.

View Cycling Off the Big Apple: From the Village to Central Park in a larger map

A bike ride from Washington Square Park uptown to Bethesda Terrace & Fountain in Central Park and then back again takes in an impressive number of New York attractions, especially for the return trip downtown via Broadway and Fifth Avenue. On the way up, I passed by Chelsea, Bryant Park, the Theater District and Radio City Music Hall. On the way home, I sailed through Times Square and Herald Square and then past Madison Square Park where I had a good look at the oncoming Flatiron Building, and then I soared down Fifth Avenue to the Washington Square Arch. At the end of this modest 7-mile ride, I felt triumphant, as if the Arch marked my own finish line of the last stage of the Tour de France.

I have played my share of video and computer games over the years, but riding a bicycle through Times Square on a Sunday morning seemed so surreal that I can only compare it to simulated virtual reality. With the newly-painted bike paths, riding a bike through this electric part of Manhattan is not only easy, but it's encouraged. Seeing this part of the city by two wheels is nevertheless a strange excursion, because the cultural history of New York has little reference to experiencing Times Square and the theater district in quite this way. Reading the city's cultural and literary history prepares us for taxis, limos, cars, cigarettes and cigars, engine exhaust, dressing up for the play, pretty women and handsome men in elegant clothing, martinis and doorman, someone opening the car door, the city at night. We don't yet have a body of literature that includes, for example, episodes like biking past the Palace Theatre at 10 a.m. on a Sunday holiday morning and crashing into a set of disposable lawn furniture. I'm sure that will come.

Images by Walking Off the Big Apple from July 5, 2009.

A Visit to Astoria, Then & Now: The Marx Brothers at Paramount Pictures and Notes on Contemporary Attractions

2009-07-02T11:38:00.014-04:00

The Marx Brothers at Paramount Pictures

In 1929, in the wake of their stage successes, the Marx Brothers signed a five film deal with Paramount Pictures. During their stage run in Animal Crackers at the Forty Fourth Street Theatre, the Marx Brothers traveled to Paramount's New York facility in Astoria to film The Cocoanuts, their previous Broadway hit. Paramount had built the facility in 1920 as a convenience to New York-based actors who could not leave town. Monta Bell, the production head of the Astoria Paramount studios, assigned the script to Robert Florey, the director. When Florey asked about shooting background shots in Florida to "open up the production," Bell declined the request, commenting that it was pointless to shoot realistic scenes for a movie in which one of the lead actors insisted on wearing a fake moustache.

With the picture entirely shot on the sound stage, the resulting film is quite static, although watching The Cocoanuts gives a good sense of how the musical may have appeared on the Broadway stage. One peculiarity of the filming, according to Florey, was that the sound stage was "so drafty that everytime someone came in or went out the scenery would shake." (The Marx Brothers Scrapbook, p. 116) The shakiness is visible in the movie. Florey said that the greatest challenge was keeping the wayward brothers within the sights of his camera. The Marx Brothers weren't able to see the opening of the film at the Rialto Theatre (Broadway and 42nd Street) because they were still in the midst of their Broadway run. Their mother, Minnie, attended the opening and reported that everyone laughed.

With Animal Crackers a hit on Broadway and The Cocoanuts a top grossing picture, the brothers commanded salaries of several thousand dollars per week. Sadness would soon come, however. In September of 1929 Minnie died. In October, they watched their money disappear in the stock market. Groucho lost the most money, Harpo lost some, and Chico, who always was in trouble with gambling debts, had little left to lose.

In 1930 the brothers went back to the studios in Astoria to make the film version of Animal Crackers. The director, Victor Heerman, brought some discipline to the production, an order lacking in the free-for-all of The Cocoanuts. The movie did well, as predicted, and after they toured Europe, the Marx Brothers made their big move, away from home in New York to Hollywood. The era of New York film production was winding down anyway. The great Marx Brothers pictures of the early 1930s would follow in quick succession- Monkey Business (1931), Horse Feathers (1932), Duck Soup (1933), and A Night at the Opera (1935). Though they made new lives on the West Coast, the brothers never shed their New York-born characters.

Visiting Astoria

The building that housed the soundstage for the Marx Brothers' early Paramount pictures in Astoria was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976, and the following year the studio reopened again. In 1982 real estate developer George S. Kaufman and some celebrity partners took over the lease. The sprawling Kaufman Astoria Studios (34-12 36th Street; website) functions as a major site for film production on the East Coast.

View A Walk in Astoria in a larger map

To visit the studio and nearby attractions, take the R train to the Steinway stop. Walk a few blocks south along Steinway, a major business street with low-lying buildings that evoke an earlier postwar era, and turn right on 35th Ave. Keep walking, and you'll soon see the newer studio buildings on the left. Walk past the Museum of the Moving Image and at the corner of 35th Ave. and 36th St. (confusing, yes?) see the old studio building. Across the street from the studio, check out the impressive new modern building for Frank Sinatra School for the Arts, an academically rigorous school founded in 2001 by Astoria native and famous crooner, Tony Bennett, in honor of his pal.

By all means, visit the Museum of the Moving Image, an entertaining interactive museum that inhabits the former site of the Kaufman Astoria Studios. In October 2008 the museum launched an ambitious expansion program, so the only part available to the public during the construction phase is the permanent exhibit, Behind the Scenes. But the history of film production and distribution visually demonstrated in these exhibits on the 3rd and 2nd floors is well worth the suggested $7 admission price. The exhibits of motion picture cameras, projectors, and sound equipment (television also), props, and costumes are fascinating, even for those versed in the history of the moving image, but the many interactive features make the experience fun and enlightening. Choose various soundtracks for Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, change the chroma key for your own photo op, or create a flip book. Discover and explore Tut's Fever Movie Palace, an art installation and functioning theatre designed by Red Grooms and Lysiane Luong that serves as an homage to the art of cinema. I wasn't looking for them, but I found the Marx Brothers inside the movie palace also.

It's pointless to travel to Astoria without eating. With its international population, the cafes, street vendors, and restaurants of Astoria are well-known. A large Greek population supports some of the city's best Greek restaurants. Venture up and down Broadway or Steinway and find a variety of kebabs, empanadas, French diners, and so forth.

Museum of the Moving Image
35 Avenue at 37 Street
Astoria, NY 11106
Tuesday through Friday, 10:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.
Suggested Admission: Adults: $7.00; Members/children under 8: free

Images: screenshots from The Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers; images of Paramount Studio building, Frank Sinatra School of the Arts, Tut's Fever Movie Palace, and kebab street vendor on Steinway by Walking Off the Big Apple. Look for more pictures on Flickr WOTBA.

This post also functions as one in a chronological series about the Marx Brothers in New York. To see other posts in the series, follow this link.

New York's Theater District: The Legacy of the Golden Age, A Walk and a Map

2009-06-30T09:10:00.012-04:00

Even without a ticket to a Broadway play, a walk around New York's theater district can reveal the story of the American theater. In this relatively small piece of real estate, landmark plays and musicals unfolded on the stage and enriched individual lives. Here, decade after decade, actors, playwrights, producers, directors, stage managers, and the millions of theater fans who love them have assembled at this brightly-lit location for shows such as A Streetcar Named Desire (Ethel Barrymore Theatre), West Side Story (originally at the Winter Garden, now in revival at the Palace), Oklahoma! (St. James Theatre), Waiting for Godot (John Golden Theatre), A Chorus Line (Shubert Theatre), Born Yesterday (Lyceum Theatre), Death of a Salesman (Morosco Theatre, destroyed 1982), and thousands more. Stretching north on Broadway from Times Square and concentrated between 8th Avenue and Broadway, the Theatre District and its historic venues constitute a living museum of drama and the stage.

"Again at eight o'clock, when the dark lanes of the Forties were lined five deep with throbbing taxi-cabs, bound for the theatre district, I felt a sinking in my heart. Forms leaned together in the taxis as they waited, and voices sang, and there was laughter from unheard jokes, and lighted cigarettes made unintelligible circles inside. Imagining that I, too, was hurrying toward gayety and sharing their intimate excitement, I wished them well."

- from The Great Gatsby (1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald

During the decade of the 1920s, people took the theater seriously, and many Americans beyond New York were intimately aware of the plays, actors, and theaters of the New York theater world. The demand for tickets led to a surge in theatre construction. During the 1927-28 season, over 260 productions debuted on Broadway.

View New York's Theater District: The Legacy of the Golden Age, A Walk and a Map in a larger map

The map above (click and enlarge for details) lists many of the existing Broadway theaters that were constructed in the first decades of the 20th century, culminating in the feverish boom during the Golden Age of Broadway in the 1920s. With the arrival of the Great Depression, new construction ceased, and many theatres were converted to movie houses. While many theaters from the era have since been demolished, some of the famed theatres on Broadway have been restored. A few are in need of serious repair. Recent productions continue to add to the individual and collective legacy of these remarkable places, with new plays and musicals speaking to the concerns of our own era and revivals celebrating Broadway's history.

Readers interested in exploring the theatre district may want to wind back and forth through the numbered streets from south to north, beginning on W. 42nd Street. Theatres in the West 50s were once considered the fringes of the district, as theatre constriction most often followed a trend northward. In the 19th century, the fashionable playhouses were centered toward the south near Madison Square. Noted on the map, too, are some spots of leisure that were born in those glory days - Sardi's, Gallagher's Steak House, and the pleasures of conversation at the Algonquin.

Images: top, New Amsterdam Theatre on 42nd St., bottom left, the Barrymore Theatre; bottom right (top) Belasco Theatre, (below), theatres on 45th Street. by Walking Off the Big Apple.

See many more photos of the theatres in this set on Flickr WOTBA.
Related posts: Walking Arcades of the Theater District and The Marx Brothers on Broadway, & Notes on New York Theatres in the 1920s

The Marx Brothers on Broadway, & Notes on New York Theatres in the 1920s

2009-06-28T17:51:00.013-04:00

This post is the fourth in a series about the Marx Brothers in New York.

After playing the Palace Theatre, the pinnacle of the big time, the Marx Brothers drifted about on the lower rungs of the vaudeville circuit following a series of contractual disputes with the powerful moguls, E.F. Albee, and then the Shuberts. Fortune changed with their major Broadway debut on May 19, 1924, a stage review titled I'll Say She Is. Compiled mostly of recycled routines and music numbers, the play nevertheless showed off the talents of each brother.

I'll Say She Is played at the Casino Theatre, an extravagant theatre located near the intersection of Broadway and W. 39th St. Built in 1882 and designed by Francis H. Kimball and Thomas Wisedall, the theater boasted a facade showing off an eclectic mixture of Islamic and Gothic details. The circular corner tower was particularly eccentric. In their survey New York 1900: Metropolitan Architecture and Urbanism 1890-1915, Robert A.M. Stern, Gregory Gilmartin and John Massengale describe the Casino as "a theater with an exotic, individualistic, even hedonistic character that exemplified the values of the Cosmopolitan Era." (p. 206)

In his memoir (Harpo Speaks), Harpo writes that he had long anticipated the opening, as the show had been in tryout for a year and a half. The routine of the road was getting old, and the Marx brothers threatened to quit the road shows unless the review opened in a theatre in New York. They got their wish, though they believed their manager were just humoring them. Harpo was glad to finally be home in the city - his mother and father had rented a place on Long Island, and he spent his days at Lindy's or Reuben's. "I was back with my own people," he writes, "who spoke my language, with my accent - cardplayers, horseplayers, bookies, song-pluggers, agents, actors out of work, and actors playing the Palace."

The show was a smash success. In his review of the play for The New York World, legendary theatre critic Alexander Woollcott singled out the silent one for the most praise, calling Harpo "a shy, unexpected, magnificent comic." He describes the funny eldest brother "as a craft comedian with a rather fresher and more whimsical assortment of quips than is the lot of most refugees from vaudeville." So taken was Woollcott with Harpo that the big portly critic bolted into his dressing room the following evening and told Harpo he was the funniest man he's ever seen on a Broadway stage. The two became great friends, with the critic inviting the clown to join his legendary vicious circle at the Algonquin Hotel. Harpo joined the Round Table.

The success of I'll Say She Is led to more famous Broadway triumphs with The Cocoanuts and then Animals Crackers. The Cocoanuts, a zany production about the Florida real estate boom, with music and lyrics by Irving Berlin, opened on Broadway on December 8, 1925 at the Lyric Theatre on 42nd Street. The theatre, built in 1903 and featuring sculpture in a Renaissance style, was originally planned for opera productions. The Shuberts took it over for their lighter theatrical purposes. Later, the Lyric suffered the same fate as many other venues in the 1930s when it was converted into a movie house. It was later shut, with parts incorporated into the Hilton Theater. After the show closed its run in August of 1926, the Marx Brothers took The Cocoanuts on tour. In 1929 it was made into a motion picture, billed as "Paramount's All-Talking-Singing Musical Comedy Hit." The brothers didn't have to travel far for the filming. In 1920 Paramount Pictures built a studio in Astoria, Queens, New York to be near the Broadway theater district. The Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers (1930) were both filmed at what is now known as the Kaufman Astoria Studios.

The Marx Brothers were unable to attend the film premiere of The Cocoanuts at the Rialto Theatre on Broadway and 42nd Street, as they were playing that night in their third and final Broadway show, Animal Crackers. A musical built on a thin plot of an African explorer (Groucho as Captain Spaulding) attending a party in his honor (hosted by the great Margaret Dumont as Mrs. Rittenhouse) while a valuable painting goes missing, Animal Crackers opened on October 23, 1928 at the Forty-Fourth Street Theatre. A Shubert house, the Forty-Fourth Street Theatre was located just off Broadway and had opened in 1912 as the New Weber and Fields Music-Hall. Animal Crackers was one of the theater's most successful productions until the advent of World War II. The New York Times bought the theater in 1940 and tore it down in 1945 to make room for its postwar expansion.

The 1920s on Broadway constituted the so-called "Golden Age" of the Broadway theater. Many new theaters were constructed along the Great White Way during the boom years of the 1920s, serving a burgeoning number of actors, designers, playwrights, critics, directors, and production companies seeking stardom in New York. The stage in New York was spectacularly successful financially. During the 1926-1927 season alone, over 260 shows opened on Broadway. By comparison, during the 2008-2009 season, 43 new productions opened.

"Strange figguhs..."

But wait, am I intruding?

Images: Broadway Theatres, c. 1920, and Casino Theatre, c. 1900, from The Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Detroit Publishing Company Collection; image of Hilton Theatre by Walking Off the Big Apple; YouTube clip from Animal Crackers (1929).

Note on clip from Animal Crackers: Strange Interlude, a play by Eugene O'Neill and produced by the Theatre Guild, opened at the John Golden Theatre on January 30, 1928. Actress Lynn Fontanne played the featured roll of Nina Leeds. Contemporary audiences for Animal Crackers would have been familiar with Broadway culture and would easily readily understand Groucho's parody of O'Neill's internal monologues and the play's production history. Strange Interlude won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1928.

To read the other posts in the series, click on The Marx Brothers.

For much more on the theater district, see the post New York's Theater District: The Legacy of the Golden Age, A Walk and a Map

Moveable Feasts in the City: New York Food Trucks and Carts

2009-06-24T17:12:00.012-04:00

My lunch yesterday consisted of one pollo asada taco, small but tasty, and for dessert, a mini-wafelini. The taco consisted of chopped grilled chicken with a dash of pico de gallo and a creamy avocado sauce served on a couple of soft corn tortillas. The mini- wafelini was essentially a little piece of waffle on a stick tucked between slices of banana and strawberries. Both were delicious, and each came from a different food cart or truck parked on separate streets south of Houston Street.

The latest craze in gourmet street food may be found in other cities throughout the country, but the phenomenon has garnered lots of attention of late in New York. While eating at food carts is nothing new in the big city, the availability of gourmet quality food and adorable desserts has added an extra amount of fun to New York street life. In the past, I've frequently bought coffee off the Mud Truck, a movable coffee bar with a particularly nice brew, and near to home, I often pick up a cup of coffee and a pastry from a friendly guy with a cart on W. 4th Street. Buying food on the go is especially nice when I'm headed to the park with dogs.

This summer, the Cupcake Stop arrived on the streets, parking often on Fifth Avenue and loaded with mini and normal size cupcakes, and now the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck has made its dramatic entrance. Because so many of us are acting like screaming teeny-boppers at their very sight, I'm sure more entrepreneurs are thinking of new additions for our burgeoning culinary street life. The new brand of food trucks and carts are especially welcome in New York, a place where too often the only portable fare comes in the form of lukewarm and disappointing hot dogs. I often feel bad for poor tourists who are forced to sustain themselves in Central Park on hot dogs and ice cream sandwiches alone. But in addition to these new dessert trucks that serve up red velvet cupcakes and cha-cha ice cream, mobile culinary units like the Calexico Carne Asada Cart and the Rickshaw Dumplings Truck feature substantial and delicious food. By pairing their offerings with seasonal fare from fresh fruit stands it's possible to eat very well on the streets of the city.

The Calexico Carne Asada Cart, winner of the 2008 Vendy Award for street food, has achieved such a success that they've opened a sit-down place in Brooklyn this week. I mostly visit their cart when it's parked near the intersection of Wooster and Prince in SoHo, though the wait can be 15 to 20 minutes. The California Mexican food they offer reminds me of some of the places I liked in Austin (Guero's comes to mind), and between Calexico and Pinche Taqueria, an unmovable but small place at 277 Mott St., I feel I have met my Mexican comfort food cravings close to home.

For sweets, I recently tried out the new Big Gay Ice Cream Truck. The beauty of this operation is with its operator, a charming man named Doug, and the variety of toppings for soft serve ice cream. Doug recommended that I try vanilla with a blueberries and saba reduction, and this combo hit the spot. I look forward to going back and trying other flavors. I'm also fond of Van Leeuwen Ice Cream, especially their pistachio and ginger flavors.

Many of the new food cart and truck operations take advantage of social media, namely Twitter, to alert potential customers of special locations and giveaways. Here's a partial list:

Calexico Truck: Twitter: @CalexicoCart
Wafels & Dinges: Twitter: @waffletruck
Cupcake Stop: Twitter: @CupcakeStop
The Big Gay Ice Cream Truck: Twitter: @biggayicecream
Cravings Truck: Twitter: @nyccravings
Dessert Truck: Twitter: @desserttruck
Le Gamin Truck: Twitter: @legamintruck
Rickshaw Dumplings: Twitter: @RickshawTruck
Treats Truck: Twitter: @TheTreatsTruck
Van Leeuwen Ice Cream: Twitter: @benwvl
Cupcake Stop: Twitter: @CupcakeStop
LCB Burger Truck: @LCBBurger Truck

For further reading about New York food carts and trucks:

• "Foodies Flock to Twitter-Friendly Carts" from NBC New York

• See other carts and trucks throughout the country with Twitter accounts on List of Street Vendors Using Twitter from Serious Eats

• New York Magazine. Grub Street: Street Fights: Food Carts and Trucks vs. the Brick-and-Mortars

Images: Calexico Cart, Big Gay Ice Cream Truck, Cupcake Stop, Wafels & Dinges.

The Marx Brothers in New York: Interlude - On Groucho Walking

2009-06-22T12:55:00.008-04:00

This special new series about the Marx Brothers in New York continues this week, following the brothers into a career in Broadway and into the movies, but first I would like to take a little time to discuss Groucho's peculiar way of walking. Sometimes described as a "lope" or "stoop," Groucho's silly and often lecherous walk became just as an important part of his persona as his glasses, eyebrows, cigar and greasepaint moustache. He didn't walk this walk all the time, but as you recall from the films, Groucho would often bend his knees and lean forward as he proceeded from point A to point B. To imitate Groucho properly at a costume party, it's important to get this part down.

• Groucho explained that it was simply a bit of inspired improvisation. From the book Hello, I Must Be Going by Charlotte Chandler, he says, "I was just kidding around one day, and I started to walk funny. The audience liked it, so I kept it in."(pps. 153-154) Chandler adds a funny comment by the inimitable Oscar Levant, who commented on Groucho's walk, 'I wouldn't stoop so high.' On the other hand, the Wikipedia entry on Groucho suggests a more deliberate satire: "The exaggerated walk, with one hand on the small of his back and his torso bent almost 90 degrees at the waist was a parody of a fad from the 1880s and 1890s. Then, fashionable young men of the upper classes would affect a walk with their right hand held fast to the base of their spines, and with a slight lean forward at the waist and a very slight twist toward the right with the left shoulder, allowing the left hand to swing free with the gait." Well, well. As much as I would like to believe the Wiki explanation - and madly so, really, because Groucho would have been making fun of a flâneur fashion, I think it's more likely an adaptation of the kinds of exaggerated walking gestures Groucho would have seen in melodramas.

• Walking like Groucho, bending the knees slightly and leaning forward, proves to be a good strengthening exercise. Try this at home (or while walking along E. 93rd St.), and you'll feel a good stretch of the quads, hamstrings, and ankles. The Groucho walk is so effective that it's been recognized and so named in exercise literature. For examples, see these pages in the book, Walk Yourself Well by Sherry Brourman and Randy Rodman, and the instructions on this webpage, "Exercise: Groucho Walk" from Stack Magazine.

• For her book, Hello, I Must Be Going, Charlotte Chandler interviewed the aging Groucho Marx while she accompanied him on his daily walk around Beverly Hills. Walking around Beverly Hills is a bit unusual in itself, because Southern California is a car culture, but Groucho used the occasion to meet social needs, to greet people, friends and strangers alike. In addition, he was aware of the perils of aging. Chandler writes, "His appreciation of physical well-being had been enhanced by the negative blow of seeing about him so many friends becoming much less physically fit than he was." Chandler leaves out an additional explanation for Groucho's walking routine. Walking around Beverly Hills may be unusual, but not if you're someone accustomed to walking around an older city, for example, like New York, the Marx Brothers' home town. Walking around New York is perfectly normal, even for the most reclusive of celebrities.

• I must share one additional item on Groucho walking, a news bit dating from the spring of 2003: "Researchers Say Elephants Walk Like Groucho Marx," April 05, 2003 in LA Times.

Well, it's "a gala day" in Freedonia!

Images: frame shots and You Tube video from Duck Soup (1933).

To see other posts in this special Marx Brothers in New York series, follow this link.

The Long Road to The Big Time: The Marx Brothers Play The Palace

2009-06-18T16:04:00.011-04:00

This is the second in a series about the Marx Brothers in New York. See the first post A Walk in the East 90s: At Home with the Marx Brothers and "the Brownstone People."

Before their debut on Broadway and success in the movies and television, the Marx Brothers spent years on the road in the vaudeville circuit. Run by powerful impresarios such as B. F. Keith, E. F. Albee, the Shuberts and later Martin Beck of the Orpheum, the circuits ran their diverse groups of acts through towns big and small across the country. "Small time" acts played several times a day in converted theatres and for little money while "medium time" acts played for more money and in more established venues. The pinnacle of success was to play in large theaters in the big cities and for big money contracts. Theater managers watched the audiences respond to the acts, and if the performers proved popular and met success at the box office, they would promote the entertainers to better theaters and better pay. Playing the big theaters in the big cities was considered hitting "the big time."

In the spring of 1907, Minnie Marx, a classic stage mother with aspirations to the big time, sent her boys Julius (Groucho) and Milton (Gummo) to Ned Wayburn's College of Vaudeville at 143 West 44th Street in New York. Wayburn, a performer turned producer and teacher, had already established a successful dancing school. A reporter for the New Jersey Sun attended an evening performance at the new vaudeville school, calling all the performers "perfectly fine." The review mentioned the presence of "the Marks boys" as well as "the Astaire children" (Fred, 8, and his sister Adele, 10). The two brothers, along with a girl, sang in Atlantic City as Wayburn's Nightingales, but soon thereafter Minnie assumed the management of her boys' careers, and thus began a seemingly endless remaking of musical and comedy acts. Additional non-family personnel would come and go. Over his protestations that he couldn't sing, Harpo soon joined them. In October of 1909, Minnie decided to move the boys and her husband and sister (excluding her wayward eldest Chico, who had gone into vaudeville on his own, playing piano in a duo and apparently adopting an Italian persona) to Chicago. The family would live away from New York for ten years, but they would return for visits.

Essentially ripping off the idea of a Broadway musical titled School Days that had opened in 1908, the Marx Brothers created a production called Fun In Hi Skule. The show represented a shift away from a music-centered act toward one that played up the comedy. Groucho portrayed Herr Teacher, a strict school master with a heavy German accent, and the show made much hay out of every available ethnic stereotype. Over time, Fun In Hi Skule evolved into Mr. Green's Reception, with Chico joining Harpo and Gummo as students in the schoolroom. Groucho's turn as a professor in these "tabs" or tabloids would influence many more famous skits to come. The Marx Brothers took the ever-changing school room routine on the road for seven years, playing to increasingly enthusiastic audiences in Boston, Tusacaloosa, Ann Arbor, Denison, Ada, Youngstown, or wherever they found themselves.

In 1914 their uncle Al Shean wrote a new review for his nephews titled Home Again. Requiring a large cast of 15, the musical comedy was structured in two acts and set in New York. The first act was set on the piers of the Cunard Line, and the second at the villa of the main character (Henry Schneider, played by Groucho) on the Hudson River. The script of Home Again has not survived, though there's every indication that the comedy was not scripted much at all, benefiting from improv, sight gags, and the brothers' general gift of anarchism. Though Uncle Al had given him only a few lines, Harpo nevertheless stayed on stage without saying much, making most of his mute presence.

Home Again provided the ticket to the big time. Opening at the RKO Royal Theatre (423 Westchester Avenue at 3rd Avenue, demolished in 1962) in the Bronx in February of 1915, the show was a hit. A review published in Variety had praise for each of the brothers, especially for "Arthur" (born Adolph): "This Arthur Marx is marked as a comedian for a Broadway show, just as certain as you are reading this." A week later, Home Again opened as the beginning of a vaudeville program at the Palace Theatre in Times Square. Within the week, the act moved up the bill, so that by the end of the week, they were closing the show. Billboard noted in its review of February 22, 1915 (by that date they were in the 4th position), "Their tabloid ran forty minutes, and during that time the audience was either rocking with laughter or electrified with applause."

At any rate, the Marx Brothers were playing New York City's Palace Theatre, the premier venue of the Keith-Albee vaudeville circuit. They were back home in New York and playing the Palace. They had hit the big time. In 1919, four years later, the family moved back to the city. Broadway would come next.

This is the second in a series about the Marx Brothers in New York. See the first post A Walk in the East 90s: At Home with the Marx Brothers and "the Brownstone People."

Images: top: lobby lights, The Majestic Theatre, New York; middle: the former location of Ned Wayburn's College of Vaudeville (143 West 44th Street), demolished, now the Millennium Broadway Hotel; bottom: Times Square and The Palace Theatre (if you can find it!) at 1564 Broadway. The Palace was built in 1913 (same year as the demolished Royal Theatre in the Bronx) by Martin Beck, but Beck lost control of the theater before it opened. In its vaudeville days, the Palace ran two shows per day at $2 per show. Many consider the death of vaudeville to date from 1932 when the Palace converted into a movie theatre.

But wait, how do you negotiate a contract?

To see other posts in this special Marx Brothers in New York series, follow this link.

A Walk in the East 90s: At Home with the Marx Brothers and "The Brownstone People"

2009-06-15T14:40:00.014-04:00

This is the first of a series of posts about the Marx Brothers in New York.

At the turn of the twentieth century, after moving several times, the Marx family finally settled into the fourth floor of a tenement at 179 E. 93rd St. One of the brothers, Adolph, later described the area as "a small Jewish neighborhood squeezed in between the Irish to the north and Germans to the south in Yorkville." Ten family members lived in a handful of rooms, dependent on the meager earnings and cooking of their father, Frenchie, a native of Alsace-Lorraine and an incompetent tailor. The family spoke a dialect of low-country German, and Frenchie often found new customers based on his understanding of "Plattdeutsch." Minnie, the mother, believed that the best way to climb out of poverty was to put her younger brother and her five sons on a theatrical stage. In a role reversal, the father stayed home to do the domestic chores.

While his brothers Leonard (Chico), Julius (Groucho), Milton (Gummo), and Herbert (Zeppo) played or went to school, Adolph (Harpo) learned to read by studying street signs and to tell the time by looking at the clock on the tower of a brewery at 93rd St. and Second Ave. His grandfather, Minnie's father, told him about the Torah, taught him to speak German, and passed on stories of his own early days as a ventriloquist and magician. His wife played the harp, and after she died, the instrument sat in the corner of the grandfather's room.

Groucho recalled that the grandparents couldn't find work: "For some curious reason there seemed to be practically no demand for a German ventriloquist and a woman harpist who yodeled in a foreign language." In his memoir, Adolph (Harpo) talked about getting the harp repaired and learning to play it, but he ended up spending more time with his delinquent brother Chico. Groucho tells the story in the memoir, Groucho and Me, that the harp disappeared one day, and everyone knew to search the pawn shop on Third Avenue. That's where Chico traded to pay his gambling debts.

View Carnegie Hill & Yorkville: A Walk in the East 90s in a larger map

In Memoirs of a Mangy Lover, Groucho tells a funny story about Chico's stay in a city in the South. His brother had gone on the road to play night clubs in order to pay off some gambling debts. Chico befriended the mayor of one city, an Italian-American, who loved Chico's big personality, mistaking Chico's famous Italian shtick for the real thing. The mayor implored Chico to stay, promising he would set him up as an overseer of the city's brothels. Groucho writes, "But Chico never told the mayor that he born in Yorkville in New York City, a neighborhood that was not only Italian but almost a hundred per cent German." It was time for Chico to press on to Birmingham, but he told Groucho later that he often reflected on this other life.

While visiting 179 E. 93rd St., on a quiet and pretty block between Lexington and Third Avenue, it's hard to get a sense of the bustling tenement neighborhood in which the Marx Brothers lived. Today, it's possible to walk down the street and see some of the houses still standing. Though gentrified long ago and missing some of the anchors of the old German Yorkville, the block is nevertheless vulnerable. A quick look east shows the encroachment of imposing condominium construction that threatens to take over the block. For these reasons, the neighborhood association has been rallying support to save the Marx Brothers' house. The members are asking the city's Landmark Commission to extend the Carnegie Hill historic neighborhood designation to the east, encompassing the block and therefore affording them the same protections. On the south side of the block one sees some pretty houses, but a few on the east side have already fallen to new development. (see note at end for more info about the preservation efforts) In his autobiography, Harpo commented on the difference between their house and the nicer ones across the street. They would call these neighbors "the Brownstone people."

During the youth of the Marx Brothers, the west-east numbered streets of the neighborhoods and even the blocks within the streets were ethnic-specific. In Harpo Speaks, Harpo noted the dangers of running into "Other Streeters," as he called them, without bringing something "to fork over for ransom" when caught by Irish or German kids. When quizzed about his block, he would confess, "Ninety-third between Third and Lex." "That pinned me down," he said. "I was a Jew." Harpo took the rough treatment in stride, however, reflecting later, "It was all part of an endless fight for recognition of foreigners in the process of becoming Americans."

To escape the poverty of his block, Harpo walked four blocks west to Central Park, "safe territory for lone wolves, no matter what Streeters we were." Along the way, he encountered the homes of the wealthy. Like in the Marx Brothers' youth of the early twentieth century, walking west toward the park today from 1st or 2nd Avenue often signifies greater affluence with each block. The Yorkville neighborhood is just several blocks from the mansions that constitute Museum Mile, the great palaces that now house the Jewish Museum and the Cooper-Hewitt Museum and so forth. Though the residents of the mansions along Fifth Avenue (see the Loew House at right) yielded power in their day, it can be easily argued that the poor boys on a certain block on E. 93rd made the longest lasting, and certainly the funniest, contribution to cultural history.

Wandering west and east through the East 90s allows a sampling of several different genres of architecture, some delightfully surprising, others mindnumbingly oppressive. Be sure to check out the three wooden frame houses as noted on the map, especially the Richard Hibberd House (right) at 160 E. 92nd St., built 1852-53 and once home to Eartha Kitt. The well-known 92nd Street Y is in the neighborhood. President Obama lived at 339 E. 94th St. in the 1980s. Two restaurants - Fetch and the Barking Dog, attract those who like to dine outdoors with their furry friends. The subway at 96th St. (6) on the Lexington line affords easy access.

But, where's the seal?

"I still talk with an East-93rd-Street-New York accent. - from Harpo Speaks, by Harpo Marx with Rowland Barber (Limelight Editions, 1961), explaining what his voice sounds like.

Images: 179 E. 93rd St., picture of Marx Brothers, c. 1917, towers east of 3rd Ave. & E. 93rd St., houses facing 179 E. 93rd St., Loew House, Richard Hibberd House. "Where's the Seal?" is a scene from Horse Feathers (1932).

Note: For more information about this valued landmark, see the website Save Marx Brothers Place.

To see other posts in this special Marx Brothers in New York series, follow this link.

Walking the Rails Above Death Avenue: High Noon for the High Line

2009-06-09T15:52:00.005-04:00

In the genre of the western, the advent of the railroad marked the transition of a community from a wild natural order to a state of organized civilization. When steam engines replaced horses and the stagecoach, other things followed - lawyers and sheriffs replaced anarchy, and schoolmarms took the place of saloon girls. More railroads began to link region to region, culminating at places like Promontory Point in Utah, in moves that signified national aspirations to empire. Soon, trains engendered their own myths and legends. Bandits held up trains, villains strapped girls to the track, and in the 1930s vagabonds and hobos jumped the cars to vague destinations. So deep is the romance of the rails that kids like me, growing up on stories like Gertrude Chandler Warner's The Boxcar Children, fantasized a life on the tracks and looked for adventure in the right of ways on many a train track.

During the 1840s, the city of New York mistakenly allowed the building of train tracks along Manhattan's West Side. Soon after, trains and street-level vehicles collided in frequent accidents, leading the Eleventh Avenue freight line to be nicknamed "Death Avenue." To provide more safety, the West Side Cowboys were formed, a contingent of several men on horseback who rode ahead of the trains to signal their arrival. In the 1930s a large project to reconfigure the West Side included the relocation of the dangerous tracks to an elevated High Line. Furthermore, the trains could move through factories and warehouses, delivering and picking up supplies. The trains hummed along until they faced competition with interstate trucks, and the southernmost section was torn up in the 1960s. The last train moved through in 1980.

Robert Hammond and Josh David, two West Side residents who shared a vision of repurposing the space as an elevated walk, formed the Friends of the High Line in 1999 and subsequently raised millions of dollars necessary to realize the dream. (See article from NYT, July 2008 ) For years now, many New Yorkers have highly anticipated the moment of its unveiling, to view Manhattan and the river from this new venue and to see out the work of the design team led by James Corner Field Operations and Diller Scofidio + Renfro. The moment is now. Phase One, the section from Gansevoort to 20th Street, opened to the public this week.

View The High Line in a larger map

The slideshow follows the path from the entrance at Gansevoort and Washington Streets up to West 20th Street. Among the highlights - the plantings of native species, the walkway's serrated plank design, artist Spencer Finch's temporary installation, the sundeck between 14th and 15th Streets, and the 10th Avenue Square, a place that includes an unusual amphitheater as well as surprising views of the Statue of Liberty. The High Line offers particularly good views of Frank Gehry's IAC (CEO Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg are major High Line backers) and its neighbor, Jean Nouvel's 100 Eleventh Avenue, along with the Empire State Building, various industrial oddities, boats in the Hudson, and near the end on W. 20th St., the General Theological Seminary.

As a boho hobo, I have always believed that the act of bumming along the railroad tracks should be interrupted at some point with the serving of cookies and slices of leek and cheese pizza. So, naturally, I was delighted to encounter the presence of carts from City Bakery and its sister, Birdbath Neighborhood Green Bakery, at the entrance and in the not-too-challenging section of the path entering the Chelsea Market.

If the arrival of the railroad in the western signifies the arrival of civilization and its discontents, the deconstruction and renovation of a rail line should symbolize a counter trend - a return to wild beauty and natural balance, and to the more gentle pounding of the earth, even far off the ground, by ordinary feet.

Walking up from the South Village to the High Line and then all the way to W. 20th is a fer piece. But near 23rd Street and 8th Ave, take a staircase down, and you can most often find a train to bring you back.
_____________
The High Line opens every day from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Enter at Gansevoort and Washington streets. See the official High Line website for much more information, including a timeline of its construction, key events, and archival photos of West Side Cowboys.

Picture show images of the High Line by Walking Off the Big Apple, Monday, June 8, 2009. Photo of hobos by unknown photographer, in the collection of the Library of Congress.

Aernout Mik at MoMA: Something is Happening Here, But I Don't Know What It Is

2009-06-08T15:38:00.007-04:00

Last weekend, when I stood for two hours with a crowd behind barricades watching the Secret Service and police accompany the First Couple's motorcade to the restaurant on Washington Place for date night, I thought about the video installations I had seen earlier in the week at MoMA by Aernout Mik. Like the Dutch artist's works that recreate and loop recognizable but ill-defined moments of a mediated police state, the action that I saw before me seemed equally generic. A helicopter flies overhead. Secret service personnel in suits, some with sunglasses, scan the crowd. The police stop a guy on a bicycle. Another lets a few residents and diners through the barricades. Car doors open and shut. If anyone has spent some of their lives watching breaking news on television, the unfolding crisis often contains within its boundaries long passages of lull and boredom. The events on Washington Place could have been the spectacle of any leader of a powerful state arriving at a previously undisclosed destination.

"Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?"
- Bob Dylan, Ballad Of A Thin Man, 1965

The exhibition of Mik's installations at MoMA, each individually sited within the museum in its own spatial configuration, invites a new look at broadcast news, as we've come to know it, and the types of spectacle crises we've come to accept as situation normal - crises of state legitimation, terrorism and civil disruption, boundary disputes and immigration, student unrest, and so forth. The action of these recreated spectacles does not begin and end as a traditional narrative; rather, the events loop, always seemingly on the verge of a high-end dramatic moment but then falling away again into repeated moments. The videos are silent, focusing our attention to contemplate the architectural space and the location of cameras. With Vacuum Room (2005), the surveillance cameras play an important part of the piece. When I was watching the President's security entourage, my consciousness had been heightened by seeing Mik's work, and so I easily located the security cams outside buildings.

The exhibition at MoMA is spread out throughout the museum, and each re-situates the viewer within the space. The configuration of aforementioned Vacuum Room, a multi-camera investigation of a political crisis, mirrors the sense of being in a chamber, while a new commissioned work on two screens, Schoolyard (2009), is sited along the corridor leading to the museum's cafe. Beyond the schoolyard, looking down at the edges of the screen, the viewer can see MoMA's own yard, the Sculpture Garden. Particularly effective is Scapegoat (2006), a one-screen installation evoking the tensions of a long hostage episode. Mik's videos allow and even encourage the viewer to scan the scene for clues and information.

The video below, produced by MoMA in conjunction with the exhibit, features the artist explaining the work (and he's very forthcoming, unlike many artists), and it shows how the museum has set up the installations.

So many of the scenes and images of this artist's videos have sadly become an unexamined part of our visual landscape. By looking at them, however, and reflecting on how we've come to see events of the world through the eyes of video cameras, the more likely we'll question our equally important assumptions about how we define reality.

Aernout Mik continues at MoMA through July 27.
Video from MoMA.
Image at top right by Walking Off the Big Apple.

The Early Bird Gets the Picture of the Duck in the Fountain

2009-06-07T06:44:00.008-04:00

From Summer 2009

Morning larks in the city enjoy a rare peace and quiet that night owls frequently miss. Early Saturday morning, while out with the dogs in Washington Square Park, the big dog became obsessed with something in the fountain. So, 'twas a duck. Make that two ducks, a Mr. and Mrs. Duck, although the male duck flew away for awhile, like guys will do in the Village, leaving Mrs. Duck to circle the fountain and occasionally quack. As more Villagers arrived in the park, the pair took flight, perhaps for the more open waters of Central Park. Night owl shutterbugs missed this photogenic moment - a picture of a duck in watery reflection within the arch, a hint of the city's most famous skyscraper beside her, the silhouette of a swan.

Image by Walking Off the Big Apple. More in a set on Flickr WOTBA.

Related news item: "Darker outlook for night owls, study finds" (msnbc.com)

Towards a New Amsterdam: Celebrations of Henry Hudson's Voyages to the New World for the Dutch East India Company

2009-06-05T19:01:00.005-04:00

In 1609 Londoner Henry Hudson, hired by the Dutch East India Company to find an easy passage to China, sailed his ship, the Halve Maen, into New York Harbor and then up what is now known as the Hudson River. With no China in sight, he had to turn back. Hudson's 3rd voyage allowed the Dutch to claim the region and to establish fur trading. The rest is history.

"Sept. 12, 1609. Very fair and hot. In the afternoon at two o'clock we weighed, the wind being variable, between the north and the north-west; so we turned into the river two leagues and anchored. This morning at our first rode in the river, there came eight and twenty canoes full of men, women and children to betray us; but we saw their intent, and suffered none of them to come aboard us. At twelve o'clock they departed. They brought with them oysters and beans, whereof we bought some. They have great tobacco pipes of yellow copper, and pots of earth to dress their meat in. It floweth south-east by south within. - Robert Juet, crewman aboard the Halve Moon, Henry Hudson's Third Voyage to the New World."

400 years have passed since these moments, and New York and Amsterdam are celebrating all year. The culmination of the celebration will take place in September, but many special events and exhibitions are ongoing. Explore more at these websites:

• Henry Hudson 400: Celebrating the history of Hudson, Amsterdam, and New York.
Download their walking tour of 17th Century Dutch New York, the New Amsterdam Trail, for a self-guided tour of sites in lower Manhattan.
• NY400 Events: Holland on the Hudson
Note: NewYorkology has the skinny on the flotilla this weekend.
• New Netherland Museum and Half Moon

Also note the exhibitions at the Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth Avenue:
• Amsterdam/New Amsterdam: The Worlds of Henry Hudson
Through September 27, 2009
• Mannahatta/Manhattan: A Natural History of New York City
Through October 13, 2009
• Dutch Seen: New York Rediscovered
June 10 - September 13, 2009

Coming up this weekend on WOTBA: A review of the video installations of Aernout Mik at MoMA. If you're wondering, the artist is Dutch, born in 1962.

Jazz & Culinary Notes: Pianists, Guitarists, Saxophones and Cupcakes, All Close to Home

2009-06-03T18:12:00.006-04:00

Some of you may have noted infrequent postings of late, but my excuse was that I was attempting to take a vacation. I didn't plan an ordinary holiday - the kind that requires packing a suitcase and going somewhere, but I did feel a need to be less busy for awhile. The plan failed. One of my dogs got sick, and my spouse was in Argentina. The little guy is better now, and the spouse is home, but the sweet aging terrier and the vet had me scurrying around the neighborhood most of the last two weeks for special foods and supplies. I coped with this unpredicted development by spending some time with friends, watching the American Ballet Theatre Gala, seeing the Aernout Mik exhibit at MoMA, visiting the Jazz & Sketch night uptown, waiting for the First Couple to come out of Blue Hill, lounging in Times Square, shopping for summer clothes (mostly at UNIQLO), taking pictures of sad bicycles, and getting my hair done (Sam Brocato, formerly Oscar Bond, on Wooster). The rest of the time was spent in dog land, mostly at the park. Not so bad, really.

Walking around the Village while on errands, I glanced at posters in the club windows and couldn't believe how many amazing musicians are lined up for gigs in the neighborhood. Gato Barbieri, for real, at the Blue Note? And then Ute Lemper a few days after at Le Poisson Rouge? People may complain that Greenwich Village isn't the same as it was, and of course that's true in many respects, but we have serious jazz here, and I don't need to walk far to enjoy it.

MUSIC CALENDAR NOTES

Here's just a sampling of some musical events in or near my Village neighborhood in the coming week. Please visit the website links included here to survey their extensive music calendars. Though the city has lost its JVC Jazz Fest, the music still plays.

• Through June 7. Guillermo Klein y Los Guachos. Argentine pianist based in Barcelona and his ensemble play at the Village Vanguard, 178 Seventh Avenue. http://villagevanguard.com/

• Thursday, June 4. Bill Sims, Jr. and Chaney Simms. Terra Blues, 149 Bleecker St. http://www.terrablues.com/

• Friday, June 5 - Sunday, June 7. Gato Barbieri, tenor saxophone. Blue Note, 131 W. 3rd St. http://www.bluenote.net/newyork/index.shtml

• Saturday, June 6. Brazilian Bossa Jazz on Saturday Nights at Zinc Bar, 82 West 3rd Street. Featuring Marianni: Sultry Sounds of Bossa. http://www.zincbar.com/

• Sunday, June 7. Every Sunday. Klezmer Brunch, City Winery, 155 Varick St. Tickets: $10, children 13 and under free. http://www.citywinery.com/

• Sunday, June 7. Todd Sickafoose’s Tiny Resistors at 55 Bar, 55 Christopher St. 9:30 p.m. Free. http://55bar.com/

• Monday, June 8. Ari Hoenig Group "Punkbop" at Smalls, 183 W. 10th St. Tickets: $20. 10:30 p.m. and midnight. http://smallsjazzclub.com/

• Tuesday, June 9. Ute Lemper plays Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker St. http://lepoissonrouge.com/

See many more jazz event and club listings at gothamjazz.com

CUPCAKES & CULINARY NOTES

Street vendors of the creative variety are increasingly trolling the streets of Gotham. Today, I visited the first day of the CupcakeStop Truck, a high-end cupcake mobile that was parked on Fifth Avenue between 13th and 14th Streets. http://www.cupcakestop.com/

Also, while out and about the last two weeks, I gathered some formal and informal dining notes:
• Good black bean burritos at Doja (14 W. 4th St.).
• Split an appetizer and entree at Lure Fish Bar (142 Mercer St.) for economical fine dining.
• Martini at the Temple Bar (332 Lafayette St), as only they can make them. Convenient break from pressing dog errands, as it's next to Happy Paws.
• Breakfast at Le Pain Quotidien, corner of Fifth Avenue and 8th St.
• LaGuardia Place, the name for the blocks of West Broadway from Washington Square South to Houston Street, is home to several good restaurants. I enjoyed shrimp avocado rolls at the reliable Marumi, an affordable prix-fixe breakfast at Favela Cubana, and Cashew Chicken at Rhong Tiam.
• A wonderful chicken taco from the Calexico truck on Wooster and Prince St.
• Special Pondicherry extra spicy dosa at NY Dosa, a truck parked on Washington Square South.
• A mini red velvet cupcake at the Cupcake Truck.
• There are also rumors of the impending roll-out of A Big Gay Ice Cream Truck.

So, obviously, it's possible to eat well in New York no matter what's taking place, even from a truck, and to listen to world-class live music without venturing north of 14th Street.

Images by Walking Off the Big Apple. I'm coming back, slowly but surely. Some reviews of museum exhibitions are in the works, and I'm feeling a special extended walk coming on.

A Special Date Night in the Village: The First Couple Dines at Blue Hill

2009-06-01T10:58:00.006-04:00

Those of us who gathered along Washington Square West at the intersection of Washington Place early Friday evening made our own fun as we stood patiently waiting for a glimpse of the special guests. After hearing a little earlier the helicopters fly over and then the sound of police sirens, I had a hunch that President Obama and the First Lady were somewhere in the neighborhood. I walked over to the park, and sure enough, a crowd was gathering at the aforementioned intersection. It was quickly determined that the First Couple had chosen Blue Hill, an elegant but unpretentious restaurant that emphasizes fresh seasonal food, for dinner before heading to see a Broadway play.

For two hours, while the couple dined inside, we watched the slow and deliberate motions of the New York police officers and Secret Service personnel as they worked to keep us in line. Much attention was directed toward the heavily-armed men and the suited men from the Secret Service. All wore ear pieces, maintained a look of cool and calm, and in general, lived up to what we think of Secret Service from the movies. Our own New York police officers outwardly showed more humor with the assembling crowd, as they're accustomed to humoring us.

Standing around for two hours waiting for some sign of the First Couple to emerge from the restaurant created the condition that any little thing could be a source of amusement. When the group of Secret Service guys in the van rolled up one of the tinted windows, part of our group made audible sounds of disappointment, and when they rolled the window back down, it was greeted with cheers. Mostly we just chatted with one another about the restaurant, the circumstances of us being there, or how one of the suited Secret Service members never moved. We all enjoyed the low passing of an NYPD helicopter and another incident when a guy obliviously drove his bicycle into the intersection before being stopped.

Two hours later, as the sun was going down, a roar rose up from the crowd. In the middle of Washington Place, a couple of figures moved quickly to an open car door, and if we didn't blink, we could see the friendly and familiar wave. Then the entourage headed west to Sixth Avenue and up to Broadway where other crowds gathered to greet the Obamas at the theater.

Walking home, I thought how lucky I was to live in an historic neighborhood in which the First Couple chose to dine, how I'd seen the President speak at the park in late September of 2007 when he was a candidate and how much his life had changed. For most people, going out to dinner doesn't require that much fire power. Nearing home, I passed by on the sidewalk the singer Tony Bennett who was out strolling with a friend. He looked really good and had on a handsome tan suit. It was back to normal life in the Village.

Image by Walking Off the Big Apple, May 30, 2009.

Drawing Sessions: The Walk-In Ateliers of New York

2009-05-28T19:10:00.007-04:00

An accomplished figurative artist friend came to visit this week, and it was quickly decided that we should spend a night drawing from life. While she has taught life drawing for many years and shown her work in solo exhibits, I'm am occasional sketch artist, coming late to drawing but with huge enthusiasm. Tuesday night's session of "Jazz & Sketch" at the Society of Illustrators (link below) perfectly fit our needs - a beautiful setting in the society's home on E. 63rd., one with a rich artistic and social history, the exquisite additions of live jazz and a cash bar, excellent models, and a congenial atmosphere. I can't wait to go back.

Several individuals, societies, and studios in New York host walk-in ateliers, sessions of three or so hours with an emphasis on figure drawing with live models. While many follow the traditional format of short poses followed by increasingly longer poses, some sessions emphasize one or the other. Drawing, like exercise, usually involves a kind of warming up - in this case, getting to know the model's individuality as well as loosening up the hand and getting to know proportions. As anyone knows who has attended these sessions, the work can be challenging and intense. Even when the sessions are accompanied by nice people, drinks, and live jazz, the actual process of translating what one sees with the eye to lines on the paper can feel like a workout. Life drawing sessions are not a walk in the park but they can be immensely rewarding.

For art-minded visitors to New York, I highly recommend supplementing gallery and museum visits with a drawing session at one of these studios. Each possesses its own culture, traditions and atmosphere, most often a reflection of its founders, history, and neighborhood within the big city. For art travelers, attending a drawing session is one of the best ways to get inside the life of the city. These walk-in ateliers require no advance planning or reservations, except where noted, but you'll need to bring your own materials.*

Like anything, instruction and years of practice make a difference in competency levels. Like life, many people in the room display high levels of talent while others hope to meet those levels one day. After all, many of us move to New York to test our competence by playing with those who are at the top of their game. It's like learning to play tennis with someone who is better at it. But the baseline, so to speak, is the relief and joy of finding yourself in the same room with people who love art so much that they know it's not a game. It's life.

Spring Drawing Studio
64 Spring Street (Soho) (212) 226-7240
The busiest of the life drawing studios, founded by Minerva Durham in 1992. Sessions every day, and six evenings a week. $14 per session. For those starting or getting back into drawing, take Minerva's introductory classes, "Learning to Draw the Figure."

Society of Illustrators
Sketch Night: Jazz & Sketch, Tuesdays & Thursdays, 6:30-9:30 p.m. Admission $15, $7 Students with ID.
128 East 63rd Street (between Park and Lexington Avenues)

Salmagundi Art Club
walk in art classes
212-255-7740
5 weekly classes
Monday sketch class live model 7 to 10 p.m. $7 without instruction/ $11 with instruction.
Wednesday night long poses 6:30-10:20 p.m. $10 without instruction/15 with instruction

Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School
every other Saturday, from 4-7 p.m.
The Slipper Room on the Lower East Side.
167 Orchard St @ the corner of Stanton
$10 in advance. $12 at the door. Most fun!

National Arts Club
Drawing Class
Every Monday night, 7:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.with Mark Milroy
Contact: thestudio@markmilroy.com
Live model drawing for artists of all levels. Bring your own materials. $10 per person.

Chelsea Sketch Group
136 West 24th Street
Director: David Klass
One long pose $8.00/session
Wed. 7-10. at 10 p.m.
A small group meets every Wednesday. Male and female models alternate week from week.

The Project of Living Artists
30 Bushwick Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Established 1969 by Joseph Catuccio
Model Sessions: Saturdays - Year-round 10:30 am to 2:30 pm
718-388-6708 for more information.

Also read the 2006 NYT article, "Life Lessons: A Beginner’s Guide to Walk-In Art Classes" August 18, 2006.

* See The Art Supply Walk from 2007 on WOTBA

Images of short poses by Walking Off the Big Apple. May 26, 2009. Note: The earliest posts on this website were accompanied by drawings. This summer, to celebrate the second anniversary of WOTBA, I will return to drawing on occasion.

Welcome to Times Square. Please Have a Seat.

2009-05-25T14:39:00.009-04:00

From Summer 2009

This morning the crews put out lawn chairs for visitors to Times Square to sit back and enjoy themselves for this Memorial Day. On one block were these colorful chairs, the kind most associate with the backyard picnic, and on another were lounge chairs, the kind you adjust to lie back, catch some sunshine and look up at the sky. Normally I avoid this pocket of urban insanity, but beginning with this weekend, the famous sections of Broadway through Times Square and another from Herald Square to Duffy Square have been turned into a pedestrian mall. Today at any rate, the street became the city's big neighborhood block party. As I have been writing for nearly two years about the pleasures of seeing the city on foot, I looked forward to this day. It was a great morning, clear skies and perfect temperature, to walk the two miles from Greenwich Village up to Times Square, and it was great, once there, to find so many places to finally sit down and rest.

Read more about the street closure in the article from the New York Times,"No Vehicles, but Plenty of People on Broadway."

Image of Times Square, May 25, 2009, by Walking Off the Big Apple. More on Flickr WOTBA. See an earlier entry on Times Square from April 2008.

Into the Memorial Day Weekend

2009-05-22T17:26:00.004-04:00

The time has come to start the summer, and a hot day today in New York serves as a sneak preview for coming attractions. Walking Off the Big Apple is taking the long Memorial Day weekend to see museum exhibitions, explore new vistas, and to map out exciting summer adventures. See you soon.

Opening Day at Washington Square Park: Thoughts and Images While Strolling

2009-05-20T11:17:00.003-04:00

Around 8 a.m. on May 19, 2009, park workers started pulling down the chain fences surrounding the newly renovated sections of Washington Square Park, including its signature fountain, and early risers in the Village streamed in. Several were out on morning walks with their dogs. I happened to be there, too, killing time before my dog's vet appointment, and quite stunned when I saw neighbors stroll past the fountain. Many looked like convalescents taking their first steps in a garden they only half remember. As my dog and I joined them, curious to explore new paths, shady places, expansive paths, and new plantings, I felt like I was walking into a long boarded up room. I think we were in shock. Whatever I thought about the park's new design quickly became sublimated by the pleasures of just walking through the park again. The northwest section and the fountain area had been closed a year and a half, a time that has felt like forever.

I still have thoughts and opinions about the new design. Throughout the pitched design battles, I took a wait-and-see posture, willing to give the newly configured park a chance. I was never part of the school that the park redesign was unnecessary, searching to justify the status quo through invocations of Dylan. On the other hand, I liked the idea of the fountain remaining where it was and off-kilter, not for the sake of disliking symmetry, but more for the symbolism of entering the Village and its winding streets. Self-styled bohemian traditions of the Village do not conform to an imposed order from the outside, and in that sense, I embraced my neighbors' righteous protests. Some of their good ideas made their way into the new design. I still looked for a fresh face for the park that would instill a source of neighborhood pride.

During the time this part of the park was closed for renovations, neighbors huddled under the trees in the eastern section, and trees provided a lot of privacy. So it was a shock to walk into the open fountain plaza, as it feels so public and so far from private. As the day went on and more people arrived with cameras, the sense of looking and being looked at grew more acute. The park's formal design elements, especially the promenade leading west from the fountain to the west, looks late 19th century, the heyday of the strolling flâneur, and these elements enforce the notion of the public space as public spectacle. I felt under dressed.

Escaping the gaze of the public, it's easy to find the gently curving path that flows along the north section of the park from the Arch west to MacDougal St. Shade plants such as hostas and foam flowers look lovely in the plantings in this area, and with the hotter weather approaching, this section will be most welcome. But there's also a shade too much contrivance about this area, I think, largely due to the new evergreen trees, and the design shows too much of its hand. Yet, I'm attracted to the leafy green and may find myself here most often. The passive lawns look attractive, too, for resting, but I'll need to leave the dogs at home.

The fountain is glorious. Running from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. each day, the water features look stunning, and though I had doubts about its new alignment with the Arch, the more interesting alignment of the fountain, it turns out, is with a new exposure to the west. With the plaza raised to a higher grade, it's possible now to see all the way up Washington Place to Sheridan Square and vice versa. Getting off the 1 train at night, you can see the glow of the fountain and the arch in the distance. Glamorous yes, and it feels like home.

Images of Washington Square Park, May 19, 2009, by Walking Off the Big Apple.

WOTBA New York Events Calendar: Howdy, Sailor! Edition Monday, May 18 - Monday, May 25, 2009

2009-05-18T14:05:00.004-04:00

Hard to believe that next Monday, May 25, is Memorial Day. On Wednesday, Fleet Week begins and with it a multitude of events to welcome service members to New York. See the link for Fleet Week below for more information.

• Monday, May 18. American Ballet Theater Opening Night and Gala. 6:30 p.m. The Metropolitan Opera, Lincoln Center. Standing room tickets ($30) available today by phone and at the box office. The First Lady, Michelle Obama, will be in attendance.

• Tuesday, May 19. Joey Ramone's Birthday Party. 8 p.m. Fillmore New York at Irving Plaza. 17 Irving Place. Tickets: $25, $30.

• Tuesday, May 19. Allen Toussaint's The Bright Mississippi Band at the Village Vanguard, 178 7th Avenue South, through May 24.

• Tuesday, May 19. The New American Wing opens at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

* Wednesday, May 20. FLEET WEEK May 20-26, 2009 Parade of Ships 10:30 a.m. See schedule of events at the Intrepid Museum website.

Also related: South Pacific, a revival of the 1949 musical, is still playing at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center. The exhibit, Treasures of a President: FDR and the Sea, is on view at the South Street Seaport Museum. (museum website)

• Wednesday, May 20. Francis Bacon: A Centenary Retrospective opens at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. For a comprehensive list of summer art openings, see this recent post on WOTBA.

• Wednesday, May 20. A new exhibit titled Négritude opens at Exit Art. 475 Tenth Ave. From the press release: "an experimental multi-disciplinary exhibition at Exit Art, explores the visionary 20th century political and artistic movement of the same name — coined by the Martinican poet, playwright, and politician Aimé Césaire in the 1930s — which flourished among Black intellectuals in post-World War I Paris and later spread to Africa, the United States and the Caribbean." Opening: Wednesday May 20, 7-10pm. Through July 25, 2009.

• Thursday, May 21. Hector Del Curto and Eternal Tango Orchestra. 6:00–9:00 pm. (6:00–7:00 pm DJ Set & Lesson; 7:00–9:00 pm Live Music). WFC Winter Garden.

• Thursday, May 21. ANAGLYPH TOM (TOM WITH PUFFY CHEEKS), a film by Ken Jacobs. 2008, 118 minutes, video, 3D. Anthology Film Archives. NY Theatrical Premiere Run. Ken Jacobs will be present for a Q&A after the 6:45 pm show Thurs May 21.

• Friday, May 22. Night at the Museum. Flashlight adventure tours of the American Museum of Natural History. 5:45 p.m. - 9 a.m. Cost: $129 per person, includes snacks, light breakfast, IMAX film and more (Members: $119 per person)The catch is that you have to be between the ages of 8 and 12.

• Saturday, May 23. Steve McQueen Festival (May 20-26) at Film Society Lincoln Center screens Love With a Proper Stranger at 6:30 p.m. Following is a Q&A w/ Neile McQueen Toffel. 1963 film with on location shots in New York.

• Sunday, May 24. The Bangles. 8 p.m. B.B. Kings Blues Club, 237 W. 42nd St. Tickets: $28

• Monday, May 25. Memorial Day.

Image: Sailors on leave on Bleecker Street during Fleet Week, 2008, by Walking Off the Big Apple.

Weekend Trifecta: A Park, A Bike, and A Dance

2009-05-17T19:43:00.003-04:00

For those of us who frequent Washington Square Park, the first phase of the park's redesign, a subject of heated argument, looks like it's drawing to a close. The newly-designed northwest quadrant, along with the massive moving and reconfiguration of the central fountain, will open once again to the public this coming week. It's been long in the making, and though the park looks more formal and polished than it has in years, I would like to give the park a chance to prove itself. As the workers test the fountain, set in the remaining pieces of granite, and pick up the stray newspapers that have blown over the fences, the anticipation has become acute. I'll be delirious to explore the park again. My guess is that some of the apparent formality of the park will diminish rapidly. As soon as the visitors stake out favorite places on the new benches, sprawl out on the newly seeded lawns, or when my dogs find something interesting under a well-planted hosta, the park will have to cope with less-than-perfect creatures of all sorts.

NYC is celebrating Bike Month in May. After looking at the many new bike paths the city has been installing along the streets and fantasizing about breezing along the waterfront on two wheels, I bought my first bicycle in thirty years. I plan to ride it as soon as I overcome my fear. I have no plans at this time for a companion site, Cycling Off the Big Apple, as I think the helmet makes me look less than perfect.

While shopping for a bicycle on Saturday, I became distracted by dance. In Chelsea, I passed by the Joyce Theater on 8th Avenue, a venue favored for dance, and a little later I walked by the Dance Theater Workshop on West 19th St. Since I have plans to attend the gala opening of the American Ballet Theater (ABT) at Lincoln Center on Monday, I thought a dance walk might be a good idea. And then quite serendipitously, I turned the corner on Broadway only to bump into the annual Dance Parade. Group after group celebrating world dance traditions glided and spun down Broadway and down University Place and then east to Tompkins Park - belly dancers, Mexican folklorico, cajun, square, contra, ballet, alternative movement, jazz-inspired, African, and many more varieties. All made the spectators smile. While watching the parade on University Place, I saw many workers abandon their positions in nearby restaurants to come to the street and shout and cheer on their favorites. (See more Dance Parade images like this one on Flickr WOTBA).

On Sunday, I accompanied friends to Bay Ridge in Brooklyn to watch the Norwegian-American Parade. Apparently, parades are plentiful in New York at this time of year. While we were walking to the subway at Union Square we caught some of the Veggie Pride Parade.

Images by Walking Off the Big Apple.

New York Museum Exhibitions, Summer 2009: A List, with Openings in June, July and August

2009-05-14T12:03:00.024-04:00

Some people plan trips to New York based on the appeal of blockbuster museum exhibitions, especially the ones that gather work under the same roof for a brief amount of time and that will not likely occur again in one's lifetime. That's a good reason. The less-passionate may find in the publicity surrounding a major exhibition a convenient excuse to visit the city, trafficking in the status of seeing the exhibition once back home. That's OK, too. Whatever works. Looking back over my life, now roughly the same age as Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum, the site for a major review of the famed architect, I can easily summon memories of museum exhibitions that have expanded my vision of the world. Among them I count an Edward Hooper exhibit organized by the Whitney, Mexico: Splendors of Thirty Centuries from 1991 (at the Met, but I saw it in San Antonio), a Renoir exhibition in Paris' Grand Palais, Pompeii A.D. 79 at the Dallas Museum of Art, a Whitney Biennial in the early 1980s I saw with my mother, and an exhibition of Robert Motherwell prints in Austin. I could go on about memorable exhibitions from the past. But, I also count life-changing some that I've seen in New York over the last two years, including Seurat's drawings at MoMA and Jasper Johns' Gray at the Met. The summer exhibition schedule in New York promises many more opportunities for inspiration.

What follows is a list of selected (meaning, not all) summer museum and other art center exhibitions opening in New York City in June, July, and August of 2009, along with continuing exhibitions that open in late May. I have starred * my recommendations.

American Folk Art Museum, 45 W. 53rd St.

The Treasure of Ulysses Davis
Through September 6, 2009

Kaleidoscope Quilts: The Art of Paula Nadelstern
Through September 13, 2009

Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, New York:

Reflections on the Electric Mirror: New Feminist Video
Through January 10, 2010
Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, 4th Floor

* Yinka Shonibare MBE
Through September 20, 2009

Frick Museum, 1 East 70th Street:

* Portraits, Pastels, Prints: Whistler in the Frick Collection
Through August 23, 2009

Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Avenue (at 89th St.):

* Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward
Through August 23, 2009
A blockbuster for sure! With lines going around and around and around.

International Center of Photography, 1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street:

* Avedon Fashion: Photographs, 1944–2000
Through September 6, 2009

David Seidner: Paris Fashions 1945
Through September 6, 2009

John Wood: Quiet Protest
Through September 6, 2009
Part of the larger NYU Grey Gallery retrospective. See listing below.

Jewish Museum, 1109 Fifth Avenue at 92nd Street:

They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland Before the Holocaust
Through October 01, 2009

Reclaimed: Paintings from the Collection of Jacques Goudstikker
Through August 02, 2009

The Danube Exodus: The Rippling Currents of the River—by Péter Forgács and The Labyrinth Project
Through August 02, 2009

MAD (The Museum of Art and Design), 2 Columbus Circle:

Klaus Moje: Painting with Glass
Through September 20, 2009

Object Factory: The Art of Industrial Ceramics
Through September 13, 2009

Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue:

* The Pictures Generation, 1974-1984
Through August 2, 2009

Roxy Paine on the Roof: Maelstrom
Through October 25, 2009 (weather permitting)
The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden
One of the happiest days in the New York year is the day the roof garden opens at the Met.

* The New American Wing
now open

* Francis Bacon: A Centenary Retrospective
Through August 16, 2009
Prepare in advance. A major exhibition.

Napoleon III and Paris
Through September 7, 2009

* Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul
Through September 20, 2009

MoMA (The Museum of Modern Art), 11 West 53 Street:

Stage Pictures: Drawing for Performance
Through August 24, 2009

* Aernout Mik
Through July 27, 2009. WOTBA Review

* James Ensor
Through September 21, 2009

In & Out of Amsterdam: Travels in Conceptual Art, 1960–1976
July 19 - October 5, 2009

Morgan Library & Museum, 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street:

New at the Morgan: Acquisitions Since 2004
Through October 18, 2009

* Creating the Modern Stage: Designs for Theater and Opera
Through August 16, 2009

Pages of Gold: Medieval Illuminations from the Morgan
Through September 13, 2009

Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth Avenue:

* Amsterdam/New Amsterdam
The Worlds of Henry Hudson
Through September 27, 2009

* Mannahatta/Manhattan: A Natural History of New York City (See WOTBA Review)
Through October 13, 2009

* Dutch Seen: New York Rediscovered
Through September 13, 2009

National Academy Museum, 1083 Fifth Avenue:

Reconfiguring the Body in American Art, 1820–2009
Through November 15, 2009

Neue Galerie, 1048 Fifth Avenue:

Focus: Oskar Kokoschka
July 16-October 5, 2009

The New Museum of Contemporary Art, 235 Bowery:

The Generational: Younger Than Jesus
Through July 5, 2009

Intersections Intersected: The Photography of David Goldblatt
July 15 - October 11, 2009

Emory Douglas: Black Panther
July 22 - October 18, 2009

New York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West:

Landmarks of New York
Through July 12, 2009

Harlem: Photographs of Camilo José Vergara, 1970-2009
Through July 12, 2009

New York University, Grey Art Gallery, 100 Washington Square East:

* John Wood: On the Edge of Clear Meaning
Through July 18, 2009

Whitney Museum of American Art, 945 Madison Avenue At 75th Street:

* Claes Oldenburg: Early Sculpture, Drawings, and Happenings Films
Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen: The Music Room
Through September 6, 2009

Photoconceptualism, 1966-1973
Through September 20, 2009

Dan Graham: Beyond
Opened June 25, 2009

* Highly recommended. Images by Walking Off the Big Apple: top, view from roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; middle, Guggenheim Museum, bottom, New Museum of Contemporary Art.

Visiting New York on a Monday and want to know which of these museums are open? Link to post here.