Heading back to WI

And remembering what I did in New York.

I’m sitting at LaGuardia wondering why my flight hasn’t started boarding – but they’re only 5 minutes late so far.

Ah – looks like passengers are disembarking thru our gate so that must be why.

I kind of told you about Thursday. The best flight I could find was out of Milwaukee at 6:20 AM. The flight attendants kept thanking us for getting up in the middle of the night to fly with them. It was kinda bumpy, and they never even served the complimentary pretzels and drinks and coffee, but it meant we landed at about 9:30. Got a cab into Manhattan, with a real NYC driver who took me thru Harlem, with the view of the dead Pathmark, and was on the Upper West Side by 11:00.

I dropped my bags at Jenny’s store (West Side Kids) and we got breakfast at a place a few blocks away, I think this joint. I had a fancy egg sangwich, with crispy shallots and bacon tomato jam, that was more tomato than bacon. Then I walked through the little tulip garden and went to the Met, where I successfully used Jenny’s ID to get in as a resident for $10. I looked at guitars & daguerreotypes.

I started getting really droopy – getting up at 3:30 will do that to you – so Jenny gave me instructions & her metro card for getting to her and Jared’s place in Riverdale on the express bus, that I got at the stop by the Natural History Museum.

I sorta collapsed on the couch in the sewing room that would later be turned into my bed and then took a shower and revived enough to go get dinner when Jenny got back around 8:30. We went to Moss Cafe featuring local, vegan, and kosher food. I had the fish tacos with tofu instead of fish and Jenny & Jared both got the grain bowls.

In the morning Jared drove us to the upper west side. Jenny was going to work and I got out at 95th and took the train to near the Whitney where I met John at a coffee place, where he’d been waiting for me and being tormented by ’80s music: The Church & the Cure.

We walked around on the High Line, went to David Zwirner, where they had a big show of Josh Smith and Joan Mitchell. That’s at the Chelsea galleries, we didn’t get to London for William Eggleston, or the Upper East Side for Chris Ofili. We went past The Vessel, corporate art that John thinks is a monstrosity – which it is, I guess, I read that it was designed to be Instagram-able, and it’s across from a mall of really high-end shops. After that we took the subway to the New Museum, and saw Jeffrey Gibson, and Nari Ward, and Adelita Husni-Bey, whose exhibition was called Chiron, and consisted of sheer fabric printed with texts of immigration law and TV screens. I liked Nari Ward’s sculptures made of junk – the first one we came to was a piano covered with keys, metal house keys. I also liked the name of the exhibition, We The People, spelled in shoe laces. And the graveyard of strollers.

One of the reasons I met up with John in person is so he could give me a pass to go out to Frieze, the big art show the gallery he works for was at. We thought we’d take the bus from the Guggenheim, but it was going to be a 20 minute wait so we decided to take the subway to the city bus. First we walked a little too far to the subway – Jenny made the same kind of miscalculation that I do – not wanting to go down to go up, the more northern subway stop was actually farther away from where we were than the southern one, like 9 blocks instead of 3. I didn’t say anything because she’s the lifelong New Yorker and I’m just a tourist, and more steps. Then it took us a bit to find the right bus stop, after we came up from the subway in Harlem right by that dead Pathmark. And on the bus was an uneasy mix of art show people and regular New York people. Like the guy with the camera who wanted to take a picture of the guy peeing in the street, and when the peeing guy wanted to pull his pants up first, photog asked another guy in a hoodie if he could take his picture instead. Hoodie said no, rightly – photographer was rude. And as we were walking from where the city bus dropped us off, to the entrance to the fair, the Guggenheim bus went by.

It was exhausting – 22,000 steps that day. When we left near the fair closig time, at 6:45, we were really glad the Guggenheim bus driver let us sit on the bus for the 15 minutes before he took off. And that the bus heat was on. There was more work by Jeffrey Gibson and Nari Ward at Frieze – We The People in Spanish. Jenny, who studied African American art while getting her MA in art history was like this is cool, but yea, white people, don’t hurt yourself patting yourself on back that’s there’s so much work here by people of color. John was a little more optimistic that he sees people closer to his age not seeing the difference anymore – it just the work that’s important (as Andy would say), regardless of color of the skin of the person who made it.

We had dinner at San Matteo, their new bigger one at 81st & 2nd. Antipasto platter with smoked burrata and their special sandwiches, panuozzo, with pork and greens baked into pizza dough, and I had an actual pizza with broccoli di rabe and sausage, very fennel-y. And two glasses of wine, which might’ve been a mistake but I enjoyed it. John found a bar to watch the Bucks game, and instead we met for brunch at Jacob’s Pickles on Saturday morning – hot chicken and pickles.

Saturday was much less walking. After brunch, John and I went to the Union Square Greenmarket, then he went back to his hotel to crash for bit, and I walked part of the way back uptown. Past the Flatiron Building, to catch the train at Times Square. I sat at the NYPL branch and read until Jenny got off work, then we went to Westchester County to see an early show of the Aretha Franklin documentary. Home for San Matteo and Jacob’s Pickles leftovers for dinner, and that was my last night in the big city.