Baldness, Blindness and Burns: The Day Nature’s Elements Attacked Me.
Field Trips
Traveling with kids in and around New York
Firsts
I miss running. Not training, or exercising. The running you do because you have some energy to burn and 40 minutes before you have to be anywhere.
I ran like that once this spring, just as Central Park’s blossoms peaked. It revived the buzz that brought me out to The Jacqueline Onassis Reservoir the first time I ran – here or anywhere. The buzz that set in motion a small addiction.
That first run was at the end of our first New York winter. I had that New Year’s feeling that brings with it the need to move. I ran faster than I could sustain for a full loop, as if shaking three months of red wine and apartment living from my legs and six months of first impressions through my system. My headphones crackled with the dry air but I left them on with Chris Martin wailing to St. Peter about ruling the world. A school group huffed past in the four-four time of long distance pacers as I ran under a half-pipe of cherry blossoms, which all but closed out over the fence.
I rounded the eastern edge and stopped short. The sun had paused behind the chunky pre-wars on Central Park West. Squares of sunset appeared like dropped stitches through the silhouetted El Dorado. Its rosy light skidded across the reservoir, into the upper-storey windows of Fifth Avenue behind me. Then the sun shifted. Dusk settled and darned the El Dorado’s western facade. I moved on.
I could have cried. Maybe I did. Only for a second but there probably was one tear that fell warmer than the ones already tickled out by the snapping wind.
I had to come back. Another loop, a longer path, more hills. Running gave me time in the day that didn’t exist before. It gave me a different view of the city. A soundtrack. By the the Fall I had paces to set and finish lines to cross. I even had other exercises to do to help me run! It could have been a slippery slope towards the squads of watery-eyed fresh-air junkies huddled over post-run coffees at Joe.
But it wasn’t the running. When I went out again recently, this time in the thick of the season, I realized it was just New York’s goading promise: Stick around for one more twilight. One more spring, autumn, dawn or dusk – those firsts you come to rely on when you’re away.
Roller-dancers herald spring in Central Park
Central Park has been showing signs of spring for some time now. Bulbs have been pushing up through snow and then dry grass since early March, a few tree blossoms began tentatively budding last week and the lawns and playing fields were opened for the season over the weekend.
Whatever nature says, spring in the park isn’t official until the Central Park Dance Skaters Association roll up for its first dance of the season. On Saturday, around 40 skaters, 20 or so dancers, a dj and a crowd of toe-tapping spectators welcomed the season in true New York style. And now, spring has sprung!
It was all about the flow…
And the fashion. A sight for sore eyes after being shrouded in grey puffer coats for five months.
It was about limbering up and getting back into the swing of things.
“It’s always been about having fun,” club president Rob Nichols said, as he stopped by to check that everyone was.
He was keeping a hawk’s eye on the dj, the hula-hoopers just outside the barricade who come to share the music and work on their own routines. He was ensuring that spectators didn’t walk through and break anyone’s stride and that the one-person parade he dubs “Chiquita Banana” didn’t get in the skaters’ way.
According to Rob, going with the flow takes some scheduling. Skaters have been dancing in the park long before this group formalized. They became an association and fought hard to keep their spot in the park when they got swept up in Bloomberg’s licensing frenzy of the late 1990s. They won, and the CPDSA now holds three permits for every meet: A monthly Special Events Permit, which comes with the ubiquitous metal barricades and gives the skaters their stage – just south-west of the Bethesda Fountain, off the 72nd Street transverse. A weekly, $50 Amplified Sound Permit, which allows for djs like Saturday’s DJ-e, who didn’t miss a beat. And a TUI, a Temporary Use Permit that allows the group to fundraise for the former two.
DJ-e with “staff” Rob Nichols keeping an eye on things
Rob had it all in hand. The dancers, skaters, onlookers perched on the rocks above the pop-up rink and the hula-hoopers… all had a ball.
Music flow: Joan Warburton showed onlookers how to keep hoop maneuvers in time with the music.
Whether you dance, roll, dress up or just need something to put a spring in your step, stop by for a dose of amplified sound and color. Dances are held every Saturday and Sunday and public holiday Monday over summer. 2:45 to 6:45.
Confetti time
Whether it’s shredded evidence or a wish for the new year, confetti now comes loaded with expectations.
out with the old…
For New Yorkers with excess baggage to shed before leaping into the New Year, there’s nothing like a good public shredding, or even better, a sledge-hammer, to clear the air. Yes, a quiet moment to mentally let go of what ever ills are holding you back would do the trick. Or a few deep breaths and a long hard look at yourself in the mirror. But where’s that broadway moment, that catharsis we’ve come to expect?
In Manhattan, that painful break-up, the shameful court battle and that embarrassing ‘reply-all’ email, are all best purged as part of a public celebration with hundreds of strangers (who can’t take sides).
Divorce papers, a paid off student loan, medical records and Hurricane Sandy insurance correspondence all turned to ticker-tape after being zipped through the shredder on December 28th, during The Times Square Alliance’s annual Good Riddance Day. With a rubber sledge hammer and an industrial sized dumpster also at your disposal, no embarrassment or irritation was too large. If you could carry it, you could dump it.
My plan was to go down to watch people shed the detritus of 2012 and then go into the Times Square Visitors Center’s Wishing Wall, to see what they were looking forward to for 2013. Unfortunately, with temperatures inching down to zero and two children in tow I couldn’t wait around in the plaza for the hour before the shredding. My wad of unconfessed receipts, plus those I’d ‘fessed up to but rounded down, would remain on my conscience for another year. Paltry baggage, I know, but shredders look fun.
In with the new….
We did however get to the Wishing Wall, a permanent pin-board that collects wishes from January 1st to December 31st every year. Wishes are collected every few days throughout the year and added to the confetti to be released over Times Square when the ball drops.
Air Worthiness Test: NYE host Allison Hagendorf released confetti from a Times Square office window yesterday. (photo from NBC’s Photoblog)
Whether all those of hopes and dreams are destined to soar for hours or be spiked on a stiletto, they’re another great testament to the city’s unique offer of anonymity through public exposure. No one knows who you are but potentially thousands know that you’re luckless in love, for example.
There were the confident wishers, those who went for specifics….
“To become a successful host/ actress with lots of money”
“To get into Princeton”
Then there were the truly hopefuls: Keep it general and it’s bound to work out in some form …
“To go on a date.”
“I hope I’ll smoke less and do more work.”
For the most part, the confetti categorized itself neatly into those three universal aspirations: health, wealth and finding love.
Wherever you are on Monday night, I wish you all of the above. If you happen to be in Times Square before the street sweepers early on Tuesday morning, and if your name is JB, look down. Someone with hasty handwriting wants you to marry them in 2013!
Supersized Art at Storm King
George Cutt’s Sea Change, the only motorized sculpture at the 500 acre Storm King sculpture park, twists and turns silently on itself like skeletons of two fern fronds. Calder Hill is stamped with Alexander Calder’s trademark geometric shapes, in bright red steel set against the green lawns leading up to Museum Hill. Down in the South Fields, behind the mirror-fence, a deer pauses to stare in at Zhang Huan’s huge Three Legged Buddha, whose face is half-submerged in the grass.
Whispering into Buddha’s ears
Emerging from under the spindly white steel web of Kenneth Snelson’s Free Ride Home, two very loud children roll down a steep hill, giggling hysterically while gathering momentum.
The Free Ride Home
There was no need to shush them. This was interactive art appreciation at its best. In fact it would have been remiss of us not to scramble up a leaf-covered hill in the North Woods and run, whooping down the other side – if only to be stunned into silence by the implausible balancing act of Menashe Kadishman’s Suspended.
“Suspended”
Set in the lovely Hudson Valley, an hour and a half north of New York, it’s a day-trip that puts art and nature in a whole new perspective as you run, walk and ride bikes under and around the more than 100 sculptures from artists including Mark DiSuvero, Andy Goldsworthy and Alexander Liberman.
The great climbing hill in the North Woods
We managed to go last week just before it closed for the season. It will reopen on April 3rd, 2013. It’s impossible to imagine the park and its sculptures in anything but the burnt light of a Hudson Valley Fall. But we will be first in line in the spring to let it surprise us all over again – and to check on our own contribution to the park, a small shelter of fallen branches along the South Fields path called Surface, 2012.
Liquid Light: William Lamson’s “Solarium” was part of this year’s Light and Landscape exhibition. Each pane of glass in this hut was filled with caramelized sugar.
If you go
We took a day-trip package with Coach USA’s Shortline Bus from New York’s Port Authority Bus Terminal. The $45 ($22.50 for kids aged five and over) covers bus trip and the $12 entry fee ($8 for kids) to Storm King. Getting there was a breeze as the bus takes you directly to the door but with a 5pm pick-up time it’s not the most flexible option when you’re traveling with kids. I recommend a Zipcar rental for this trip.
Our Highlights
Sea Change
Sea Change is mesmerizing. I was drawn in by its graceful swerving arc through the air and Ruby loved the shape of “antlers”, made by the two poles as they swerved apart.
The Three Legged Buddha: To all three of us, it looked creepy from afar but up close, its head looks like its basking in the sun, with half its face submerged in a still pool.
Mozart’s Birthday: Henry loved this enormous Di Suvero sculpture of industrial beams and a brushed steel pendulum. And that it came with a rubber mallet. Hit the brushed steel gong to make music.
Momo Taro: Isamu Noguchi’s quiet white stone carving tells the story of a Japanese superhero, a little boy with superhuman strength who was found inside a peach. Children are encouraged to climb inside the peach – reappearing with superpowers is optional!
Fallen for jazz
The first Jazz & Colors Festival brought a string of small musical miracles to Central Park on Saturday. Just five weeks after they were given permission to go head, the organizers of this pilot event found 30 ensembles and scattered them throughout the park. In glades, atop bridges, next to playgrounds and by the roadsides we found them, each group offering its own spin on the same 18 jazz standards. The result was as promised – a whole new landscape painted 30 different colors of Fall.
All the ensembles, mostly trios and quartets, worked through classics like Billy Strayhorn’s Take the A Train, Fall, by the Miles Davis Quartet and Charles Mingus’ lovely Nostalgia in Times Square.
If you were on the East side and you timed it just right, you could, for example, see Marc Cary stationed in front of the Jacqueline Onassis Reservoir at East 90th Street, play Scrapple from the Apple on his Melodica (blow-organ), then make it to the lawn between the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the hot sugared nuts vendor, for the Roy Campbell Tazz Quartet’s own Scrapple –on trumpet.
Our tour began at the West 85th Street playground where the Jason Kao Hwang Trio were wrapping up Autumn Serenade and launching into Goodbye, Pork Pie Hat. This was song no.7 of nine in the first set, so we were off to late start. We headed north and reached 90th Street as rockjazz pianist Elew was in the final throes of his own raucous rendition of Pork Pie Hat.
It’s hard to pass by a grand piano in the middle of the road and a small crowd had amassed around the charismatic quartet. After setting the scene he promptly silenced it, with a quietly soaring version of Rodgers and Hart’s Manhattan.
Joggers, dog-walkers, families with strollers, tourists – no-one within earshot escaped the reverie. Elew (Eric Lewis) muted his piano keys like guitar strings and leaves skittered up the road in the breeze to accompany the rustling snare. The bassist found his moments and gently interceded. Innocent passers-by, pulled out of their afternoon by the lull, failed to pass by.
It ended too soon. A whoop went up from the crowd and like that we were all released back into our day. Next came John Coltrane’s Blue Train then intermission. We paused to check out the quidditch match (yes really!) on the lawn and spent the rest of intermission at the 100th Street playground.
Travelling with children, you learn to recognize when you’ve seen “the one” – that thing that allows you to leave peacefully if there’s a mutiny. I had my highlight and was happy to roll with the punches from then on. As intermission ended we decided to cross over to the east side and make our way down to the Naumberg Bandshell in time to see the Mingus Big Band finish up the second set. We would see what we would see along the way.
Even on bikes and carrying a few leftovers from our Halloween stash, we were never going to make it from 85th Street up to the Harlem Meer to see Marika Hughes and Bottom Heavy or down to Pinebank Arch to see Lakecia Benjamin and Soul Squad. We saw seven of the 30 groups, for about a half to one or two songs each – it was more than enough for each of us to go home with a buzz.
Ever the romantic, Ruby was taken by the atmosphere on the carriage bridge between Cedar Hill (our sledding Hill) and the Alice in Wonderland statue (the best climbing spot in a park full of non-climbing trees). She became besotted with Sharel Cassity Quintet’s Skating in Central Park,. Henry’s favourite was the terribly cool, “anchor-shaped” electric violin played by Jason Kao Hwang. And the afore-mentioned blow-organ – he’s all about process!
Without really trying, our timing was perfect. We reached the Mingus Big Band at 3:40, just as the pre-dusk cold started to creep in. After spending the afternoon hanging out with little clusters of impromptu audiences, the three of us stopped paying attention when we joined the huge stationery crowd at the Bandshell. However we still got our big finale as Empire State of Mind closed the set. The crowd went as wild as a jazz crowd can.
On the way back to our exit, we met a friendly drum teacher watching the lake. Like nearly everyone else in the park that day, she had stumbled upon this fantastic free event. Between her and a few other walkers stopping to compare who saw whom play what, it was unanimous: On Central Park’s busy events schedule this one was a keeper – well timed, well-managed and well worth adding to next year’s calendar now.
Special Places
It’s been a while since I’ve tended my blog. Unlike my houseplants, I hope it’s hanging in there! I’ve been busy being with my mum, who is staying with us this month.
Last week we checked off one of the few things on her ‘to-do’ list and went to the theatre district.
I took her to see Peter and the Star Catcher at the intimate (by Broadway standards) Brooks Atkinson Theatre on 47th Street. The actors were fantastic, the play was great – a kind of scripted theatre sports of a kids story for adults (it’s about how Peter Pan came to be). Then she took me to Sardis. The theatre district stalwart would not have been my first choice but for mum, it was part of a package. She and Dad had been when they came to New York in 1998.
“I’d just love to Go to Sardis and See a Show while I’m here,” she told me several times before she came.
“It doesn’t matter which show.”
At 9:45 we walked into an almost empty restaurant. Most of the staff were hanging around the Little Bar, a cloak-room/ entry-way/ bar at the front, watching Obama’s second debate with Romney while a handful of diners finished up their theatre-district dinners. The huge round room was carpeted red, lined with dark red wood-panel walls crammed with characatures of broadway actors. It was just the way she remembered it.
We sat at the table in the back and mum looked over my shoulder to where she and dad sat last time. An older couple from Texas were shown to a table so close, the four of us felt we’d been dumped on a communal table, which was odd considering the empty restaurant. But they were enjoying each other’s company so much it was hard not to enjoy theirs. Full of contentment and southern charm and with their Lion King Playbill between them, they only stayed long enough for a glass of wine each and a dessert for the wife who was celebrating her birthday. They were having a wonderful evening and so were we.
Our supper: a more-than decent malbec, oily and too-rich french onion soup and an entirely forgettable dessert, was probably the best either of us will have this visit. Special Places being what they are, it was never really about the food, or even the place. I wish dad could have been there as well, or in my place (there’s a long post about U.S health insurance, to tackle another time). I’m sure mum and dad both do too, but we walked out to the cab-flagging frenzy on 8th Avenue and I felt that between the three of us and 14 years, it had been a great night.
By the time we left, the restaurant had filled almost to capacity with the post-show crowd, half of them tourists ticking off their New York guide book’s ‘must do’ list, some of them older New York show regulars, who come because they’re regulars, and a few like our new friends from Texas, who will go home and remember where they sat when they had that lovely evening at Sardis.
The big apple: beyond the bridge
We left Manhattan!
This is the third time in three years we’ve hired a car to take our weekend excursions beyond the bridges. That’s a pretty poor record and one we only think of remedying in spring and autumn – those very short windows between long, extreme seasons. Before you know it, it’s too hot to bother or too cold to contemplate.
Exit over the Hudson. The GW Bridge
So, in 10am Saturday-of-a-long-weekend traffic, our rental car crawled up the Henry Hudson Parkway before crossing the George Washington Bridge to New Jersey and the other, non-Manhattan New York. We were headed upstate to New Paltz, a quaint town at the foot of the Catskills, full of olde worlde charm but kept vibrant by the State University of NY campus. In October it’s full of students and day-trippers, up for all the pick-your-own orchards.
The 1.5 hour drive to the well-named Apple Hill Farm took us nearly three, thanks to the long weekend traffic and a misunderstanding about which town we were in when we rang to ask for directions…
“The Shop-Rite’s on your left? McDonalds up ahead on your right? Just keep heading south for around 15 minutes and turn left off Route 32.”
We were pulled up across from a Shop-Rite, with McDonald’s just up ahead on our right. In a completely different town (Newburgh). What are the odds? It took another 40 minutes or so of back-tracking up and down Route 32, with a few accusations of “bad googling” from the driver to the navigator and lunch time came and went. But leftover birthday cake made a good enough lunch and when we finally found the farm, the rest of it grew on trees.
Apple Hill is a no-frills operation on the side of the road. Just turn up and pay $10 for a peck, $20 for a bushel and fill them up. Its concession to city-tourists is the hay-rides between the roadside and the orchard at the top of the hill. As far as the kids were concerned, a peck-bag each and a hay-ride was all you need for an “awesome” day out.
A race up the hill, past the Macoun, Jonagold and Crispin, which had all been picked early due to the unseasonably slow onset of a cold snap, and everyone disappeared into the trees to find the perfect apple.
Pre-picked. Thanks to an early season
The early apples go into big crates, lined up along the crest of the hill. It can make picking feel a bit like shopping, except that everyone’s so helpful. And so diligent with quality control!
We finished just as the weather turned, and autumn officially set in for the year. Then drove the ridiculously short and simple four minutes into New Paltz and sat, somewhat stubbornly given the brisk change, outside at the Harvest Cafe. There we had the best burger this side of the Minetta Tavern. Lunch at 4:30pm after running around an orchard all afternoon is bound to be good.
Eating apples straight from trees was good. Just getting out of town was good and our timing was perfect. With Halloween looming, the apples will be gone when the leaves peak in a couple of weeks.
Even getting lost on the way there wasn’t so bad – it meant we were outside during the hour in which the season, quite literally, snapped after that final little warm spell flickered out on Friday. The sky darkened and the wind whipped up as our beautiful apples bounced around the boot on the way back through the Hudson Valley.
Within reach. Red Delicious
Ruby dragging her half-peck of perfect apples.
DUMBO
Brooklyn Bridge walk turns into a DUMBO feast. Sunday 16/9
Smorgasburg!
What a find!! Just stumbled upon a Mindil beach markets under the Brooklyn bridge. Tucked between the brick arches of the historic tobacco warehouse just behind Jane’s Carousel, and DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass – the neighbourhood’s official name!). If only we could photograph smells. Columbian arapa, filipino spring rolls, watermelon limeade to start.
We were aiming for a non-food centred weekend but this wholesome Sunday walk across the bridge is about to turn into a very long progressive lunch. It’s nearly always about the food. “Smorgasburg”, the offshoot of Williamsburg’s Brooklyn Flea, runs every Sunday until November 18. They could have stretched it one more weekend for a Thanksgiving leftovers barbecue. Pulled turkey rolls anyone?
writing home 