New York City, 2009
I wanted to see the Gothic
Dark Glamour exhibit before it closed, so I set aside a weekend and
went to NYC. Cris's sister was out of town and generously allowed us to
apartment sit for her. :)
Fri Jan 30/09
I love taking the train to NYC, I just go straight from work to South
Station, meet Cris there, and get on the train. He'd accumulated some free
miles while consulting in NYC and used them to half the price of our
tickets. We made a bee line for the quiet car and settled in for a
relaxing trip to NYC. We'd each grabbed something to eat before getting to
South Station, I should have taken Cris up on his offer to get me a bento
box when he got one for himself, but he let me nibble at the unagi when my
sandwich didn't prove as satisfying as hoped. :) We were pretty tired by
the time we got to Penn Station, navigating the subway to his sister's
apartment was a bit of a mental challenge, but we got there eventually.
Unfortunately, there had been a mix up and a note hadn't been left saying
that we should get the spare key, but Cris was able to convince the
doorman that we were legit and we were soon settling in upstairs. I don't
think I did more than drink some water, take a shower, and collapse in
bed.
Sat Jan 31/09
I had a bit of toast before we set out to meet up at Le Pain Quotidien with a high
school (?) friend of Cris's. I let them play catch up while I fortified
myself for the day to come, though I didn't get my wished for pancakes -
the menu leaned more toward sandwiches. From there it was on to the museum
at the Fashion Institute of NYC for the Gothic: Dark Glamour exhibit.
Gala and Janette were running on goth standard time, so Cris and I went
through the "Art of Seduction" exhibit (corsets! 20's dresses!) and most
of the gothic exhibit before they got in touch. The exhibit had a
wonderful presentation, with castles and dungeons and a mad scientist's
lab, and great pieces, some of which I'd seen on friends or at the MFA's
fashion exhibit a while back. :) I was making notes and doing small
sketches as things would especially inspire me. Cris and I had time to
wander over to the Borders and browse for a bit, and then we went back to
the FIT to meet Janette and Gala as they arrived. We chatted for a bit, I
got a mix CD from Janette, made plans to meet up later that evening, and
she directed us to the $5 bling store nearby. :) They eventually went in
to view the exhibits and I dragged Cris to Jewelery Plaza at Broadway and
Harold Square. Oh, my, accessory heaven. I just barely stuck to my $20
budget and came out with a stack of cool stuff: a cherry print scarf to
match a sun dress I have, a very heavy beaded wrist cuff, a bracelet with
a large black stone to match a necklace that my sister gave me, a neat
silvery/black dangly necklace to fill out low necklines, a long strand of
fake silver pearls, and maybe one other thing. I was trying to focus on
art deco/1920's style things for an event I'm attending in July, and I
made out like a bandit. :) Cris picked up some really nice cufflinks,
nabbing the only set that I'd want to get for myself, but he promised that
I could borrow them as I'd let him borrow my old cuff links. :)
We were getting a bit peckish, so we headed over to Chickalicious Dessert Bar where I
had a divine earl grey panacotta with meyer lemon. I'll definitely treat
myself to another stop there, it isn't quite the oasis that the Wild Lilly
Tea Room was, but close. :) We had a bit of time before our reservation to
meander our way to Ushiwakamaru,
revisiting the sushi bar that we'd loved on a previous trip. I splashed
out for the $100 prix fixe meal and it was wonderful. :) It was also
pretty relaxed, so I think we were right on time to head straight to Bflat for drinks where we'd planned to meet
Janette and Gala. They arrived soon after our first drinks did, I started
with a Moment's Notice (sake, plum, and lemon) and gave the bartender the
recipe for a Red Rot for my second drink. You know you're becoming a
cocktail snob when... :) It was good to sit and chat in a relatively quiet
venue, it didn't get very crowded until we were ready to leave around
11:30pm or so (which in retrospect makes sense, it's NYC). From
there, it was an hour and a half long subway ride to get back to the
apartment due
to random line closures and re-routings.
Sun Feb 1/09
Toast again to fortify myself for the subway trip up to Cafe Sabarsky to meet Raul for
brunch at 11. We arrived first and were warned that we had to order
immediately as the kitchen was closing, so since I was extremely hungry, I
put in a request for food and tucked in when it arrived, throwing manners
out the window. :) He did get there in time to order as well, and I was
happy to nurse my expensive pot of tea while he finished up eating. We all
walked over to the Guggenheim and
I finally got to visit this museum for the first time. The main exhibit
was The
Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, and it had some
beautiful and moving pieces in it, as well as some impenetrable ones. :)
There was a line rigged up so a suspended cart could descend from the top
of the museum to the lobby around the spiral ramp, ringing a bell
occasionally and then dropping cut up books at the bottom. Some of the
pieces seemed to incorporate calligraphy for calligraphy's sake. There was
the obligatory white on white piece. There was a record of a performance
art piece by Tehching Hsieh where he dressed in a worker's uniform and
punched a time clock every hour on the hour for a year. At first
I was dismissive of it, and then I started to get sucked in, looking at
the posted time cards, seeing the notations for why he'd missed an hour,
watching the time lapse video of snapshots taken each hour. He shaved his
head at the start of the year and let it grow out over the 12 months to
form a visual record of the time passing. He's done some other one year performanes, this
one was apparently from 1980-1.
After that we grabbed a snack from Dean and Delucca and ate on a bench in
Central Park, watching cyclists and joggers go past. :) We also doubled
back to a chocolate shop that we'd passed on our way to brunch and I got a
white hot chocolate with meyer lemon (I may be slight obsessed with meyer
lemons now). We made our way back to the apartment, and I spotted a really
neat designer dress in the window of Boutique Elle on Lexington (a
green fitted dress reminiscent of spring, with texture provided by
different types of fabric, including a neat netting overlay) that made me
want to make something inspired by it but in black. We packed up our stuff
and then stopped in the Candle
Cafe for food (mmm, peanut stirfry on soba noodles), and then made ou
way back to Penn Station for the train home. Which was delayed about an
hour, that wasn't fun, standing around in the overly warm station watching
the delays mount up 10 minutes at a time. :/ But we got into the quiet car
again and once we were going, it was a quick trip.
Back to my diary page.