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| Kitchenette, 156 Chambers St. |
There is no place like it,
no place with an atom of its glory, pride, and exultancy. It lays its hand upon
a man's bowels; he grows drunk with ecstasy; he grows young and full of glory,
he feels that he can never die. ~ Walt Whitman
The amazing thing about
New York is that you can get lost here and nobody notices ... neither our
bi-racial family nor J's androgynous looks garner much attention except
occasionally from some obvious tourists.
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| R at Kitchenette |
We were waiting for J
& S to come down from Long Island so we took a long leisurely stroll
through City Hall Park and made it over the the site of the World Trade Centre.
The site remains unfinished although there is a new sleek looking Freedom Tower now where the twin towers once stood.
Across the street is St.
Paul's Chapel (209 Broadway), built in 1766, which with its tiny graveyard and
simple unadorned structure inside has become a memorial for 911. The memorials are still
intact ... the chapel was crowded - feeling more like a museum than a place of
worship.
We went to Penn Station to
pick up the offspring and girlfriend and made our way, by subway, to the
Metropolitan Museum of Art (1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd St.) to see the PUNK: Chaosto Couture exhibit. We walked through Central Park in a blistering heat ... the
park was crowded and joyful with everyone enjoying the sunshine - sunbathing,
playing baseball or basketball, riding bikes - to get to Fifth Avenue.
As dazzling as the Chaos
to Couture exhibit was with dozens and dozens of vintage punk and punk-inspired
couture designer clothes, I was a bit disappointed - I wanted to see a more
varied mixture of media rather than just the clothes and very short clips of
punk rockers performing that were projected on the wall.
We arrived there much
later than I hoped and with half an hour to spare I was absolutely determined
to see the painting Madame X (a portrait of Parisian socialite Virginie Amelie Avegno Gautreau) - I had tried in the past and was unable to find
it on my first try a few years ago. This time, different Met staff members kept
telling me the wrong info and floor to search for it. Then at 5.20p (the museum
closes at 5.30p!) I found her! And she is every bit as beautiful in person as
she is in print.
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| Virginie Amelie Avegno Gautreau |
Gautreau came to regret
the portrait as it caused a great deal of speculation about her morality (that
dropped strap!) and she was rumourred to have had numerous affairs. But I finally got to spend five minutes with her and then was shooed away
by the security guard.
We wanted to take J and S
to a great Italian place called Luzzo's (211 1st Ave. between 12th &
13th St.) in Tribeca. The service was unexpectedly indifferent but the food
delicious. Two of us ordered pizza, two of us ordered gnocchi - the portions
were generous and the leftovers much savoured the next day.
We dropped the girls off
at Penn Station just utterly exhausted from the heat (as they must have been)
and returned to our hotel room to watch The Killing and Mad Men ...
Something happened during
one of our many subway trips - I believe it was on the way to breakfast. We
came across a homeless man sprawled across several seats, asleep. It was
unpleasant for him (I'm sure) and distressing for the inhabitants of that
subway car. People were crowded as far away from him as they could be. No one
knows how to respond in these situations.
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