We arrived late on July 19th.
The next morning we had a late lunch at the Pepe Giallo. An older woman seated next to us told her friend an anecdote about Leonard Cohen and why he always wears suits and never jeans, while they enjoyed a non-kosher lunch of prosciutto.
Thursday we met up with B’s friend B and visited the galleries in Chelsea. I found Richard Serra’s work in the Gagosian gallery to be the most spectacular and outrageous. What do you say to gigantic slabs of rolled and forged steel as Gesamtkunstwerk? I forgot to ask to see a price list.
However, when I looked at a digital painting by Zara Hadid at another gallery, that struck my fancy, I made the mistake of asking for the price. The young lady at the desk replied, “I’ll get you someone to talk to.” That was a signal that I wasn’t going to be able to afford it. $50 000.00. B suggested that I make an offer. I wonder if I could have talked them down to $5000.00?
Later in the evening, dinner was served to us on paper plates at a little pizza joint in Greenwich Village. From there we visited Pravda, a martini bar done up in the old soviet aesthetic. Pravda’s dynamism however, seems to have been a lot shorter lived than the USSR. It used to be the Hip spot back in the mid 90s. Hip today, a fashion faux pas later todayl!
Friday was another gallery day. We visited the Met, followed by the Neue Gallerie and the Whitney. Visiting so many galleies and museum all in one day leaves one feeling overwhelmed. You need days to properly see the works in each one. The Met had works by Picasso, Miro, Hopper, Schiele, Chagall, Matisse, Monet, Manet, Van Gogh and sundry very famous others. The Whiney has collections by Americans such as Hopper, Warhol, Rauschenberg, Koons, Cindy Sherman, Pollack and De Kooning. Definitely a sensory and cultural overload.
Dinner that night was at a place called VYNL, a tribute to the days when we purchased our music on 12” vinyl disks. The menus were inside old doulble LP jackets. My menu was inside the Beastie Boys Licensed to Ill record jacket.
Saturday afternoon was spent at the MOMA. More spectacular art! You can’t visit New York just once. It helps if you live in Toronto of course. It also helped tremendously that B’s friend C managed to get us into all these fabulous cultural institutions for free. Thanks C! New York is EXPENSIVE.
Saturday night we put on our finest and went to a wedding reception in Brooklyn. It took place on the roof of an old factory building with the view of Manhatten you see below.
Hmm, did I leave something out?
1 comment:
wow--you've been doing a lot of posting sam! i'm going to have to work through this bit by bit.
it is fun to recognize the person under the initial--i.e. i know C... :) hi C! for example i know that C used to work at a museum and now she works at a university.
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