Category: New York

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WHO WERE YOU 20 YEARS AGO?

A couple photos of Najma, taken in the apartment we were living in on 9/11/2001, in Hoboken, New Jersey. The bottom shows the phone (a landline, remember those!) on which I tried in vain all throughout that day to call relatives and coworkers letting them know I was okay. Both landlines and cell towers were awack for a while. Fortunately we had the internet and I ended up communicating with people by email. One of my most solid memories from that day is an email from my boss letting us know everyone in my office – two blocks from the World Trade Center – was accounted for and okay.

I was walking to the PATH station to take the train across the Hudson River into the WTC when the first plane hit. I watched everything from across the water before walking back home, in a daze. In addition to getting that email from my office, my other strongest memories of that day are waiting in my apartment building to hear all of my neighbors return home – thankfully they all did, and Najma continually sitting in the front window, ears perked up, looking in the direction of the WTC. She clearly knew something was up. But she was a cat, so of course.

Anyway, over the last twenty years I’ve written about that day so many times, I thought this year I’d reflect more on who I was twenty years ago than where I was. The pandemic has made me reflect repeatedly over the past year and a half, so it seems natural on this anniversary.

Twenty years ago today I was a newish lawyer working my second real law job, as an appellate public defender in lower Manhattan. I was living in Hoboken, New Jersey with a Russian blue mix I’d adopted from the ASPCA, whom I named Najma, after a fellow law school student. I was two years into the job and beginning to fit into it. I loved researching and writing briefs, hated oral arguments in court. I still loved books, primarily fiction, and as busy as the job was I still entertained dreams of a writing career. I remember that night the Brown University Alumni Club (I’d gotten my masters at that school), which I’d recently joined, was to have its inaugural meeting. Of course it ended up being postponed. But I would go on to befriend several people in that group who worked in publishing. Some of them tried to convince me to go into a publishing career, which, after much deliberation, I decided I couldn’t afford to do with my student loan debt and my desire to live without a roommate. That remains my greatest regret. My only real regret, actually. But I don’t want to harp on that.

Four months after that day I decided life was too short and I needed to start on that writing career, no matter how busy it would make me. I began classes at Gotham Writers Workshop in the Village, and started my first novel. I later got an agent and had my first, and likely only, experience with traditional publishing. I ended up indie publishing it and it won several awards. I left the public defender job about seven years later, and with it, the legal profession. I embarked on a writing career, penning articles for online magazines and eventually a blog that become popular in the dance world, before publishing six more novels. I now have a seventh on the way, whose main character is actually Najma, the Russian blue cat I lived with all those years ago. Though she passed away in 2005 of a congenital heart condition, she’s never really left my life.

It’s funny thinking what my 9/11/2001 self would have thought of what her life became 20 years later. She’d be shocked, that’s for sure. She would never have thought she’d return to the desert, live outside of a big city, buy a house, and have, instead of cats, dogs, one of which is a Belgian malinois / German shepherd mix! A large dog who kind of looks like a coyote? Never! She never would have thought she’d publish romance novels set in the world of ballroom dancing. She was so into “literary fiction.” And she’d never danced anything but ballet as a child! But would she be surprised to be writing a novel in which Najma is one of the two main characters, about a woman her age who’s left the law to begin a cat cafe? Probably not so much, although she’d be sad to know Najma is no longer physically with her. And she wouldn’t have known what a cat cafe was 🙂

She definitely could have imagined she’d become an animal advocate, since one of her favorite classes in law school was animal rights law, and she’d always loved animals. She easily could have imagined she’d write fiction about animals.

Hey, maybe I’ve actually come full circle, writing a series involving animal characters and using some of my criminal procedure background.

Anyway, enough navel gazing. If you’ve stuck with me this far, thank you! It’s good to reflect sometimes on who you once were and where you’ve come in order to chart a course for what’s ahead. On this most solemn of days, I wish you peaceful thoughts and happy continuing progress on life’s journey. I wish you all the excitement for life and hopefulness for the future that I felt at that stage of my life, and that, yes, despite the pandemic and the threat of climate change, I can’t help but still feel today.

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The Death of New York City Cat Girl

I think we “animal people” grieve so much when a beloved pet dies because a part of us dies with them. At least that’s how it’s always been for me. The part of me that died with my dear Katusha, who passed away a month ago from cancer at only eight years old, is the New York City cat girl. So I’m still grieving for the loss of my kitty, as well as the loss (at least for the time being) of that part of myself.

I adopted Katusha seven and a half years ago from the Los Angeles County shelter when I lived in West Hollywood, years after I’d moved out of New York. I’d wanted a friend for my cat, Rhea (whom I did adopt in NY, and who passed away two years ago, also from cancer). So I never actually lived in NY with Katusha.

Even so, after she died, I realized how much she actually was the quintessential New York cat. She was perfectly content to stay inside, never tempted to venture out, unlike Rhea and Najma, who were my NYC kitties at various stages of my life there. She would have been perfectly happy to sit in the bay window, looking out at the birds and the people, the way she did at the patio window looking out over our West Hollywood deck, to cuddle in my lap while I read on the couch, and to snuggle up with me in bed.

I keep thinking how different our lives would have been if we (she, Rhea, and Sofia, the chihuahua mix we adopted in LA) had moved back to NY after leaving California, instead of Arizona. I grew up in Phoenix but hadn’t lived there since graduating college.

I’d left New York in 2011 after having lived there for nearly two decades following grad school. I didn’t intend to leave forever, but just to take a break. I was sick of all the noise, sick of tourists who’d largely taken over Manhattan, sick of the lack of space and the increasingly unaffordable rents. Also, I’d written a dance blog, and I’d self-published my first novel. The blog became rather popular among the dance crowd, and the novel did reasonably well for a self-published book in 2009. New York being the epicenter of traditional publishing, and still in the midst of the 2008 recession, the increasing popularity of eBooks and the advent of online journalism, the city just seemed to be seething with very angry displaced publishing execs and writers. As basically an indie journalist and author, I really felt a lot of their venom directed at me. I just needed a break from the hostility. Los Angeles was a big city where I could still find the legal work I’d been supporting myself on while writing. San Francisco culture would probably have been more akin to New York, but I couldn’t afford that city. So I chose LA.

I loved West Holllywood but hated LA. West Hollywood, being smack in the middle of Los Angeles, meant I couldn’t venture out of my little cocoon without some degree of stress. And I had to venture out often, for things like work and friends who wanted to go to the beach, and shopping, etc. We had a nice big apartment between the Sunset Strip and the gay bars of Santa Monica Boulevard. It was a crazy fun place. I adopted Katusha as a friend for Rhea, and then, seeing all my neighbors with dogs and missing my little childhood terrier mix, I decided to adopt Sofia, a chihuahua mix.

Five years later I was really sick of all traffic, the lack of public transportation, lack of parking spaces, lack of culture, and lack of affordable property to buy (in my income bracket anyway). I’d thought of returning to New York at that time, and, being honest with myself, I’m not completely sure why I didn’t. I think I just wasn’t ready yet. I remembered the lack of space in New York and I now had three animals, including a barky dog. I wanted to try home ownership. I wanted a back yard. There definitely wasn’t as much traffic in Phoenix as in LA, and there was even more space. Plus, an aunt in Arizona was sick and had no one to care for her. So I packed up the fur kids and moved one state over, back “home,” instead of back across the country.

We rented a condo until I had enough work experience in Arizona to qualify for a mortgage. And then we found my dream home. It was a little out of the city, close to the open desert and south of Phoenix, en route to Tucson, the city where I’d gone to undergrad and which held very good memories. Funny but what I really loved about the house was the parts of it that resembled my last apartment in New York, on the Upper West Side. Part of the house was two stories, so we had a cathedral ceiling on one side, perfect for my little art collection. But the builders had left one of the upstairs rooms open-walled, so our living room was basically two stories, giving us a balcony that I knew Rhea would love, as she had our NYC loft balcony. And I was right. That little gymnast cat loved to run up the stairs and hop through the balcony bars onto the top of the bookcase.

I loved the whole house but especially the upstairs room I used for my writing loft, the sun room with floor to ceiling windows facing the back, and the side patio where I could see both the front and back of the house simultaneously. Rhea loved the balcony, Sofia loved the fig tree out back, under which all kinds of creatures would shade themselves, and Katusha loved the big walk-in closet in the master bedroom where she could cocoon herself among the footwear (her foster mom had named her Cinderella because of her fondness for fitting herself into various shoes!).

Rhea died of cancer about two years after we moved in. It was horrible, as death of a beloved pet always is, but I think hers was made worse because of what she meant to me. With my New York companion now gone, part of my New York self was gone as well. I put her ashes on the top of the bookcase near the balcony.

I began volunteering at the local SPCA and decided to adopt another dog. We had a big backyard now and a large house, so we could have a large dog. I’d never had a big dog but my mom took care of several labs and I became very fond of one of them on my visits to her. Anyway, long story short, I ended up not with a lab but with a German shepherd Belgian malinois mix. I’ve grown to love Irina fiercely, but our lives together have not been without lots of drama, mainly due to the fact that I am not an experienced dog handler and she is a dog who needs just that. Anyway, love is love. It took some time for the other animals to get along with her, but due largely to the pandemic when I worked remotely from home and spent a lot of time acclimating them, we eventually became one big happy family. And then Katusha got sick.

The pandemic (by which I mean not worrying about getting sick but being home all the time and thinking about my life ad nauseam) followed by Katusha’s illness really made me question what I was doing in Arizona and whether we wouldn’t have been better off in New York. That saying “you can’t go home again” – it’s real. First, would the cats have both gotten cancer? Were their cancers caused by the Arizona sun or air or water? The vets assured me they were not. Second, Arizona not being as big of a legal market as New York and LA, there’s not as much paying work here, which can be unsettling to say the least. And of course there’s nowhere near the culture available in New York.

I miss my life as a dance blogger. I miss the ballet, the theatre (Broadway, off-Broadway, and off-off-Broadway), the wine bar around the corner from my apartment (can’t remember the name but can remember right where I always used to sit), Fiorellos after the ballet, watching Yankees games at The Emerald Inn, the cafe on the Hudson River, Brighton Beach boardwalk, Lincoln Center, Strawberry Fields, 57th Street, Dance Times Square, the Algonquin lounge, the New York City Bar Association (yes, I have fond memories of that as well, perhaps ridiculously), the Center for Fiction, the Strand and St. Marks Bookshop. I miss my friends. For weeks after Katusha’s death all I could think about was what if I’d moved back and lived there with her, writing at my desk with our view of Columbus Avenue out the bay window, her wrapped around my feet, cuddling on the futon with her while I read. Would I have been happier?

(Above: Rhea in the bay window of our old apartment, 71st Street and Columbus right after I adopted her in 2011; below, Lincoln Center, 9/11 memorial dance performance, 9/11/2011).

Of course, if we’d have moved back to NY instead of Phoenix after leaving California, we never would have lived in this house I so love and that Rhea and Katusha so loved and that Sofia so loves, and that is now so full of memories – most wonderful, some painful.

And we would never have adopted the crazy, playful, always-excited, always getting into something, often barking to let me know the neighbor is in his back yard, always pulling on her leash, but always available for cuddles whenever I need her to be, our sweet, kind of scary-coyote-looking but always lovable “desert dog”.

A few nights ago I had a dream that really made me think all over again about my life and helped me put things into perspective.

When I first moved to New York in the early nineties (I feel so old!) I had a friend whose father was a doorman in a nice Upper West-Side apartment building. (I don’t have a picture of him, but the below picture is of me with the doorman in the building I lived in at the time, 1993.)

One day the friend and I were out and about in the city and we had to visit her dad so she could get something (keys I think). Anyway, while we were in his building, a very elegantly-dressed elderly woman emerged from the elevator and walked through the lobby, full of energy and spark. My friend’s dad greeted her, wished her a happy birthday, and helped her into the cab he’d hailed for her. She was very sweet and thanked him profusely. After she took off, he told us she’d just turned 97. I remember thinking how wonderful that you could live to be such an age in such a big city and do so with such vigor and glamour. This was back when New York was expensive but not exorbitant like it is today, and you didn’t have to be an investment banker to afford a small place.

So my dream was weird, as dreams always are. In it I was somehow that woman. Obviously I was much later in my life than I am now. But it was me. And I was living with a cat and a small dog. They weren’t exactly Katusha and Sofia, but they inhabited their essences, you know what I mean? In the dream I knew it was them, basically. I was happy looking out my window over Lincoln Center (which was based on the apartment of another friend I met later), waiting to go somewhere.

But then in the dream for some reason I started to remember the big “desert dog” I’d had long, long ago, whom I couldn’t bring with me here. I saw her always-happy face. And remembered her silliness and constant excitement over her ball and her tug toy. And her barking. And her leash pulling. And her antics. And my always unsuccessful attempts to control her.

And I missed her so badly it hurt. I missed her and our lives back in the desert house with the back yard so very much.

I woke up in a sweat. And I realized I was happy here. Even though I loved my life in New York as the cat lady, the dance blogger, the girl always about town, I really loved big crazy dog and our lives in the desert. And I wasn’t ready to leave it yet.

(Above: with Najma, my first NYC kitty, in my Upper West-Side studio loft, around 2004.)

After I woke I started to think about the things I love here: the Desert Botanical Gardens (specifically, seeing Ballet Arizona perform there, and bring-your-dog days), the Heard Museum (of Native American art), the Poisoned Pen and Changing Hands bookstores, the galleries of Old Scottsdale and Roosevelt Row in downtown Phoenix, the Musical Instrument Museum, moonlight walks and wild yoga at The Southwest Wildlife Conservation Center, all of the wonderful animal sanctuaries, Saguaro National Park, trips to Sedona and Verde Valley wine country, the DeGrazia Studio in Tucson, the Tucson Festival of Books, walks with the dogs around the lakes in my neighborhood, plays at Tempe Performing Arts Center, dining on the canal at Olive and Ivy in Scottsdale, road trips back to LA to see friends, hanging out with friends here, particularly all those I’ve made volunteering with animals and in my romance and crime writer groups.

Maybe someday I will go back to New York. Maybe someday I’ll be that elegant old lady with the sweet petite fur babies in her one room apartment excitedly sprinting through a lobby on her way to her cab (or self-driving Uber, or Jetson air mobile?) ready to be whisked off to the ballet or a play or reading or restaurant for birthday dinner. But for now I’m happy in my desert house with my desert life as a “desert dog mom.”

Sorry, this was navel-gazing to the max! But writing often helps to me figure things out. So if you got this far, thank you for indulging me 🙂

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Measuring the Passage of Time

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It’s that time of year again when I do my annual link to my favorite essay ever, by Colson Whitehead. Every year that I read it again, I find something different to focus on. Now, probably because this September marks ten years since I lost a beloved pet, four years since I moved from New York to California, and over two decades since I originally moved from the west to the east coast, for school, I think about the passage of time when I read it, how that’s measured, which for me, is by my memories, and my surprise at how things have changed.

For some reason, his mention of the travel agency caught my attention this time. I remember the place I used to use in Greenwich Village. It was a chain but I can’t remember the name of it. I remember a green awning, and that it was down the street from a good cafe and a few blocks down from a Barnes and Noble and a Cohen’s Fashion Optical – the first place I worked at in NY. I remember the colorful brochures and the lobby chairs that resembled a row of airplane seats where you waited to speak to an agent. The place was always packed. I remember booking trips to Russia and Prague, and cruises to Nova Scotia and Bermuda in that little agency. I remember the agent with the short blonde bob and English accent selling me on an inexpensive “floating hotel” docked on the Neva river in St. Petersburg, and promising me the boat wouldn’t “cart me off” anywhere overnight. And I remember the big buff agent who cruised to Puerto Rico every year with his boyfriend convincing me to splurge on a room with at least a porthole (instead of an inside apartment) on my first ship. It’s been over a decade, I think, since I’ve booked any other way than through Expedia or Kayak, etc., but I remember certain special little things about the people who helped me plan my trips and that little storefront.

Whitehead’s main point is how place is different for everyone, depending on experience and memory. I don’t think that is more true anywhere than L.A. Everyone here seems to have an entirely different experience of this city. But that is definitely a topic for another day. I just started a crazy gig and have been working long hours. This will have to be it for now. Goodnight, and have a peaceful 9/11.

Above photo taken two days after 9/11/2001 at Union Square in NY.

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Table of Silence Project, 9/11/2011

Here are some photos I took of the Table of Silence Project, performed on Lincoln Center Plaza this morning at 8:20 in commemoration of the tenth anniversary of the 9/11/01 attacks. It was about half an hour long, was choreographed by Jacqulyn Buglisi in collaboration with Italian artist Rossella Vassa, and used 100 dancers, some from her dance company, Buglisi Dance Theater, and some from other companies and from Juilliard. The dancers were accompanied by a small band, consisting of a drummer, a flutist, a small choir, and a woman with a wind instrument that looked like a handmade blowhorn. I thought it was really beautiful.

Go here to read about the project’s conceptualization. It’s to be performed in other cities as well throughout October.

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“You Are a New Yorker When What Was There Before is More Real and Solid Than What is Here Now”

It’s time for me to post a link to the Colson Whitehead essay that I link to every day this year, from the 11/11/01 “Rebuilding New York” issue of the New York Times Magazine. I can’t resist. It will always be my favorite essay about New York, and it always makes me cry. Usually makes me bawl actually. I don’t think I should read it this year though. It’ll make me not want to leave New York…

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My 9/11/2001 in Photos

Here are some photos I took shortly after 9/11/2001. The first few are of Union Square, where people – mostly young people – were holding candlelight vigils and making art and debating – not arguing, but just talking seriously about what had happened without blame and anger. It was my favorite place to go in those days following the attacks.

The view from Hoboken, New Jersey, where I was living at the time.

You can see some of the Air Force jets that were patrolling the skies for days after.

I went back downtown about a week later to prepare myself to return to work the following week. I worked two blocks away from the World Trade Center.

This is downtown, very close to ground zero.

Buildings were covered with debris and glass from windows and doors was shattered. People were putting up little signs in the windows and writing in the dust.

In the photo above, the flag is draped over the front of the New York Stock Exchange.

The following weekend I saw a man in Central Park playing guitar and singing John Lennon songs. A group of people gathered to listen.

People were trying hard to return to normalcy, by jogging, rollerblading, just taking walks in the park. But I think we were all really shell-shocked.

A photo from 2000. My friend was visiting from Europe and we went to the top of the Empire State Building. You can see the twin towers in the distance.

A photo from 1996. My mom is up in the South Tower’s observation deck looking out at the Statue of Liberty.

I took this picture, of the North Tower, in 1997.

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My Own “Goodbye to All That”

I copied this post from my lit blog, Literary Aperitif (hence the mention of the Sweet Melissa :)). I decided to copy it here to explain (kind of) my decision to leave New York this fall. More on that later. I still plan to cover the dance scene, just the L.A. one!

Not that Joan Didion’s writing could ever really be characterized as “sweet” but Pier 1 Cafe on the Upper West Side, at the Hudson River, is one of my favorite places in NYC (or at least it used to be), and thus seemed to be the perfect place for me to go when I wanted to re-read her 1968 essay “Goodbye to All That,” about her decision to leave New York. I needed to contemplate my own reasons for wanting to leave this city, that I once found so electrifying. The Sweet Melissa (prosecco, peach schnapps, and a splash of orange stoli) is simply what I always have there (though the bartenders seem always to forget how to make it).

When I first read “Goodbye” (which is in her essay collection Slouching Toward Bethlehem), I was new here, and very in love with New York. I really couldn’t understand a word of that essay – emotionally, I mean. It’s funny, but re-reading it, I still don’t understand her exact reasons for becoming so disenchanted. Nor do I understand my own. She opens with the words:

It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends. I can remember now, with a clarity that makes the nerves in the back of my neck constrict, when New York began for me, but I cannot lay my finger upon the moment it ended, can never cut through the ambiguities and second starts and broken resolves to the exact place on the page where the heroine is no longer as optimistic as she once was.

She goes on to talk about that exact moment when NY began for her. I remember my moment with clarity too. It was May 1993. I’d just received my masters from a school in New England and I’d decided not to continue on with the PhD. But I didn’t really want to go back to Phoenix, where I’m from. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, just knew that academia was not for me. A friend of mine from grad school had a summer job on Wall Street and invited me to stay with him. We sublet his friend’s East Village railroad-style apartment.

We drove down from Providence, Rhode Island. My belongings consisted of two suitcases of clothes and a backpack of books. After we unpacked the car, we walked around the corner of Avenue A to St. Marks Place, the busiest street in the hood, in search of food. We ended up at a cozy-looking fifties-style diner called Stingy Lulus, with shiny red glitter-covered seats and the most beautiful entertainer I’d ever seen – a statuesque black drag queen with sky-high cheekbones and a gorgeously rich, deep voice. And he wore bright red pumps that reminded me of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. And, cliche as it is, I did have a little laugh to myself: you’re not in Kansas anymore! My New York began with that drag queen.

Nowadays, you might, might find such a thing in a tourist spot. Probably not. But this was not a tourist spot. The park at the end of the block – Tompkins Square – was gated shut at night and surrounded by police in riot gear. There’d recently been a squatter’s riot in the area. People sold crack on our doorstep. My friend suggested we abide by Abbie Hoffman’s dictum and be polite and say “no thank you” to them. He also gave me strict warnings not to walk any direction but west – we were surrounded by very bad neighborhoods: Alphabet City, the Lower East Side, and Kips Bay. Only the west village was safe to venture into. I was simultaneously terrified and thrilled.

Eighteen years and eight apartments later, both of those feelings are gone. My only real fear is that I’ll get hit by a car. Seriously. It seems there are more drivers in Manhattan than ever before and they have no respect for the law – not to mention human life – whatsoever. I subscribe to the Gothamist daily and it seems that every other day there is a report of a pedestrian death due to a vehicular assault. In doing research on NYPD for an upcoming book, I read Paul Bacon’s memoir, Bad Cop, and he said something like 75 percent of all drivers he stopped as a traffic cop turned out to be driving with suspended licenses. I dunno, to my mind that’s pretty astounding.

But the bigger problem is there is no thrill for me anymore. Haven’t seen any theater, any dance, been to any restaurants – haven’t really experienced anything for the better part of a decade that really made me feel the way that drag queen did. Which leaves me complaining ad nauseam about things that bother me – noisy neighbors, lack of space, lack of peace and quiet, year-round unpleasant weather (freezing all winter, rainy and humid all summer), exorbitant rents that skyrocket even during a serious recession, once New York phenomena – like the Halloween parade – overtaken by tourists and thus beyond borified. (I don’t know if it’s a word but if it isn’t, I just made it up.)

A friend recently asked me whether I think it’s more me or the city that’s changed. I’m not sure. Probably both. I don’t remember drivers being so horrible for one thing. This is, of course, the most pedestrian-friendly city in the U.S. I also don’t remember neighbors being so noisy. Everyone in my building used to abide by the 85 percent carpet rule (or, if they didn’t, they at least didn’t stomp around in hard-soled shoes all night) and no one blasted music after 11:00 on week nights. Of course this building used to be filled with young professionals who worked 14 hours a day and then partied outside at bars in their free time. Our shoe box apartments were just for sleeping. Now it seems all the studios in my building are inhabited by couples – and even one by a family with two children (which makes no sense to me at all) – instead of single people. Because there are so many more people here, it’s all the noisier. But a lot of the things – like noise and lack of space – probably didn’t bother me as much at the beginning because I was just so excited to be a New Yorker. They came with the package. The fascination far outweighed the annoyances.

All I know is that I need a break. At least for a while. I have two months before I leave and I’m already having bouts of sadness. New York will always be the place where I first felt inspired and then compelled to write. I’ll continue to write about this city, just from L.A. As one friend said, “perspective.”

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PORTRAITS IN DRAMATIC TIME on Lincoln Center Plaza

Here are some photos I took of David Michalek’s current installation, Portraits in Dramatic Time, shown nightly on the facade of the Koch Theater at Lincoln Center Plaza. Above is (SLSG favorite) ballerina Alessandra Ferri, apparently in the ending scene from Romeo and Juliet. Commissioned for the Lincoln Center Festival, Portraits is similar to Michalek’s earlier installation from a few summers ago, Slow Dancing, which I wrote about here.

Unlike Slow Dancing, the only two dancers (at least that I’ve seen) in Portraits are Ferri and classical Indian dancer, Savitry Nair, above. To me, Nair was the most mesmerizing, I think because of the intricate (and to me exotic) movements she was making with her hands, but also because of the intensity of her eyes. Patti Lupone (below) was a close second.

Besides the two dancers and one diva, the others seemed to be all theater actors. Like, Slow Dancing, Michalek filmed the actors in a short scene, then slowed the movement way way down for greater dramatic effect. At least that was the intent. I’ve only watched a couple times, and plan to go more, but, as with Slow Dancing, I have mixed feelings. I think Portraits may be able to attract a larger audience than Slow Dancing due to the greater fame of the stars filmed, and Michalek did for the most part choose dramatic scenes, such as the one below of Alan Rickman throwing a glass of water in anger.

Not all of the scenes are quite as action-packed. You’re often looking more at the intricate changes in facial muscles as the actors go from one emotion to the next. I felt like watching Marianne Jean-Baptiste read a letter and Lili Taylor converse with her daughter provided real lessons in acting.

But in other scenes, even if there was some kind of drama, I didn’t always understand what it was about, or the characters’ relation to one another, and consequently I failed to be as captivated by the mini narrative as I would have liked.

Watching and listening to others on the Plaza, I felt like I wasn’t alone in that thought. The big screen captures your attention but oftentimes fails to keep it. Of course I really wanted to shout at people who were only glancing at Alessandra before passing!

I said this with Slow Dancing, and I’m pretty sure these films are moving faster than the original Dancing films, but I still think they’re going just a bit too slowly. It would also provide variety to rotate more between performer-types – like dancer, actor, diva, dancer, actor diva, etc. But as I said, I saw mostly actors here. I also noticed, though, that there are many performers listed on the show’s website that I didn’t see, and I’ve gone on two different nights so far and have seen many repeats, so I don’t know if all of the listed performers are appearing right now…

Anyway, imperfections aside, it’s always wonderful to have something to go to Lincoln Center for and now that ballet season is over, it can be depressing around there. So I’m very thankful for this installation. Perfect for summertime, sitting near the fountain or at the little cafe in front of Avery Fisher Hall, sipping wine or eating Gelato. This is the best part of living in NYC, imo.

Portraits shows nightly through the end of July. For more info, go here and here.

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Codfish “Caviar” in Koreatown

Despite the heatwave, last night my friend and I went to Koreatown for some Korean barbecue. I ordered a dish that looked interesting, which was translated as “Codfish caviar and clams.” Hehe, my friend surmised that perhaps caviar meant the entire reproductive organs of the fish. I looked again. It was rather veiny, did kind of look like a uterus and ovaries. It certainly wasn’t what I was expecting – which was roe about the size of salmon! I tweeted a picture and a Twitter friend told me they actually are eggs, along with the egg sac. His father has them all the time, he said. Funny, I thought I’d tried practically everything, but apparently not! Anyway, they didn’t really have much of a flavor to me, but their consistency was similar to English pudding.

Also ordered a glass of plum wine, not realizing I’d get the entire bottle. Even I couldn’t polish off the whole thing 🙂 Best thing we had, imo, were the spicy little sausages, right at the front of the bottom picture. Delic!

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Ground Zero, May 2, 2011

I couldn’t resist spending an hour down at Ground Zero today. It was crowded, mainly with people taking pictures, many of whom appeared to be tourists, and reporters  – loads and loads and loads of them. Above photo is taken at the entrance to the cemetery in the back of St. Paul’s Chapel, where a man was singing John Lennon’s Imagine, and another man was holding an American flag above him.

Inside the chapel grounds.

Across the street, outside the construction zone where the memorial’s being built.

You can’t see but the man in blue was holding a photo album of his pictures of the World Trade Center taken both years before 9/11 and that day. He saw some young people wearing anti-bin Laden shirts and seemed intent on showing them just what was lost.

Someone photoshopped this picture of the Statue of Liberty holding bin Laden’s head instead of her torch and pasted it onto this street sign.

A big line of press tents and camera vans from all major TV networks.

Construction underway, with new glass on one of the buildings. The memorial is set to open this year on 9/11.

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Maira Kalman at the Jewish Museum

Last week my friend, Alyssa, who’s an independent art curator, invited me to an art / law celebration at the Jewish Museum. The Jewish Museum really knows how to put on a party! They had the most splendid array of hors d’oeuvres, two big carving and sushi stations, and a full bar (not just wine and champagne). I hadn’t been to the Jewish Museum since I saw a Marc Chagall exhibit there I don’t know how many years ago. So, in between nibbling on mini Tuscan pizzettes and sipping Glenmorangie, I wandered into the main exhibit, which is currently featuring the work of Maira Kalman.

Kalman’s mainly a painter and illustrator but is also an essayist and performance artist; kind of an artist at large. She illustrates a lot for the New Yorker. The top picture is from an illustration from that mag.

I really love this one, though. It’s called Grand Central Station. I love it because it evokes the kind of sentiment I was going for in the closing line of Swallow (which I’m not giving away 🙂 )

Then I came across a couple of illustrations of dancers, which of course excited me.

I don’t know who the dancer in the first illustration is, but the bottom is of Pina Bausch. The little explanatory caption below the illustration said that Kalman had a deep admiration for Bausch, got along well with her, and, before Bausch’s death, had wanted to collaborate with her on a dance.

As I walked through the exhibit, I happened upon a couple of sets of videos. In one Kalman, who seems to be quite a character, was collaborating on a performance piece with Nico Muhly and an opera star (whose name I forgot). Muhly was his usual slightly whacked self. Fun! Kalman’s also been involved in a lot of social projects, such as helping to design and create art work for a new library in Harlem. And, much of her work features her dog (below).

Hehe, I was so excited when I saw this. I actually have this picture, clipped from a old New Yorker copy, hanging above one of my bookcases at home. That’ll teach me to look at the name of the illustrator more often!

Anyway, it’s a very good exhibit, and I recommend it. It’s at the Jewish Museum through the end of July.