I Love New York (in small doses, every so often)

Nick Walker, Love Vandal at 17th and 6th Ave, Manhattan Image: MuzikAnimal

A couple weeks ago an NYC business trip came up for Ilise, conveniently adjacent to a weekend, so I tagged along and we made it a party. We’ve learned over time that our best Big Apple strategy is to schedule just a few things, avoid overdoing it, and leave the rest up to chance. I must say, it worked like a charm this time!

• 4 days/3 nights  
• 1 Broadway show (Fun Home – dark but funny and excellent)
• 1 dynamite Jazz at Lincoln Center concert – a 14-piece band playing the Ray Charles Songbook with featured vocalists Diane Schuur and the Raelettes. You can watch a high quality webcast of the event here. Highly recommend!
• 2 restaurants I’d be happy to visit again: Colicchio & Sons Tap Room (Chelsea) and Gabriel’s (Columbus Circle) where the personable host is almost more delicious than the menu
• 1 new favorite cocktail spot: Bookmarks Lounge on the 14th floor of the Library Hotel on Madison Avenue. There’s a clubby library theme indoors and two small outdoor patios perfect for sipping lovely craft cocktails and admiring the nighttime skyline

We also enjoyed 2 uniquely NYC experiences, both even better than anticipated:

Chelsea Gallery Crawl: Went for the fabulous new Cindy Sherman exhibit at Metro Pictures. Stayed for:  

• David Hockney’s Yosemite Suite of iPad drawings at PACE
• Richard Serra’s large steel sculptures at the Gagosian Gallery
• Desire Obtain Cherish’s show titled Servant to Infinite Distraction at the Unix Gallery – Lovely floral still life designs which upon close viewing reveal  that they’re made of colored pill capsules 

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Also worth noting:

• Songs and the Sky: An Exhibition of Art + Music at the Bruce Silverstein Gallery
• Leda and the Swan – Hyperrealism courtesy of Carole Feuerman at the C24 Gallery
• And the list wouldn’t be complete without the taxidermy wolves posed in an action diorama in the entry to Jim Kempner Fine Art. The installation by Andy Rosen is titled UNPACK.

Still more art: The next day I amused myself at MoMA while Ilise worked, and was especially moved by a powerful installation titled the Mapping Journey Project by Bouchra Khalili which uses video clips of migrants telling their stories while outlining their journeys on a map. 

Click on the photos to enlarge them and read the captions.

The 2nd Annual Harlem Eat-Up! Festival held in Morningside Park featured an abundance of food and wine tastings, cooking demonstrations, artistic and cultural presentations, and more. The event’s chief organizer is Chef Marcus Samuelsson who was everywhere – introducing guest chefs on the demo stage, directing traffic for the booth vendors, and posing for selfies with his many adoring fans.

We saw a cooking demonstration with Chef Aarón Sanchez who brought helpers onstage including his mama and a child who had appeared on the TV show Chopped Jr. And another one which paired master mixologist Karl Franz Williams with TV personality and everyone’s favorite homegirl, Carla Hall. They were delightful! We even heard a Hootie Hoo!

Click on the photos to enlarge them and read the captions.

All in all, we had a wonderful time at the Harlem Eat-Up! Festival. If you’re in town mid-May next year, make it a point to attend, you won’t be sorry.

As for us, it was a most excellent weekend, capped off with people-watching on a lazy afternoon in beautiful Bryant Park before heading home. Thank you, NYC! We’ll be back again soon because we just can’t stay away. 
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Banksy & Colossal Media's I Love NY Mural Image: Original Anthem