Manhattan May 2004

No one would ever go to Kearny as a tourist because you're only 8 miles from Manhattan where everything is. But if it were isolated, the way for example Asheville is, it would be a Mecca: many Portuguese restaurants, perhaps not as good as the ones in Newark's Ironbound but still good; a Spanish internet cafe; a Portuguese cafe with delicious food and coffee [but no atmosphere]; a Scottish delicatessen selling haggis at $8.99 @ pound; a Portuguese supermarket selling Polish bread that is almost the same as German Mischbrot; that same supermarket where I bought fresh and ready-ripe to eat apricots for 1/3 the cost of the unripe ones which turn to mush that Safeway and Giant are selling here.

A plan to go to Hoboken for lunch with several relatives didn't work out and just my sister and I went.  We went to a relatively new restaurant near the Lackawanna Terminal, Wolfgang Puck Express. Its part of an upscale chain that is remotely connected to Wolfgang Puck and maybe to his frozen food company,

It's on the main floor of an office building at the edge of the park that's replaced the American Export Lines piers and has a view across the river tio Manhattan. It's set up like a cafeteria: you order your food, are given a buzzer / timer [which in our case didn't work] and when it rings you go pick up your meal. The menu was relatively small and was basically fusion food leaning to Asian and Italian. I had a variant of Pad Thai and my sister a linguini and seafood dish. The interior has bright colors, hard walls that resonate with any sound, all in all it looks like an Italian cafe in Germany bloated to 4 or 5 times its regular size.

As I'm writing this, I realize it sounds bad. But the food was far better than ok although not great; the view was very good; the service was strange, like being in an expensive McDonalds where you get your own soda or iced tea from a dispensing machine. 

While we were there the place was relatively empty -- but noisy. There were two or three groups of young mothers with toddlers, and infants who were having a variant of girls' day out and play dates. The children weren't especially wild or loud but the acoustics of the place - everything is hard and sound-reflecting - made it extremely noisy. I'd guess it would be really bad at 5:30 or 6 with a lot of twenty year olds stopping off from the Tube station on their way home.

After walking around the park and enjoying the views for awhile, we  drove around the back side of Hoboken along the Palisades, stopping at a very large supermarket where my sister wanted to pick up some things. We also drove by the Congress Street / 9th Street trolley stop which is going to open in the fall. One entrance is on the top of the cliffs at Congress Street in Jersey City [the corner where the 15 and 19 busses used to turn off] while the tracks are in Hoboken at the bottom of the cliffs and this elevator connects the two entrances. 

I took my sister home to Kearny and then drove back to the river, checked in to the Candlewood on 2nd Street, washed and started out for Manhattan. 

This year is the centenary of the opening of the NYC subway system and there is a series of museum exhibits running throughout the year. The one I went to today was "Subway Style" and focussed on the design of the subway and its components: signs, cars, seats, turnstiles, stations, mosaics, lights, etc. It's in the lobby gallery of the UBS Building [I think United Brands like ] on Sixth Avenue near 51st Street. 

I took the Tubes from Exchange Place, it's about a 2 block walk from the hotel, went downtown and then took the E Train up to 5th Avenue. The exhibit's really well done and very interesting. 

The red thread running through the exhibit was the contrast of three styles: that used at the beginning of the subway period with the IRT and the BRT which they categorized as "Beaux Arts"; then came the "Craftsman" of the Dual Contracts; then the Streamlined Machine Age of the IND; the breakdown of styles dribbled off after that but it looks like Post WW2 was style was cheap and slapdash until the 1980s and 90s when a mixture of a new streamlined style and a retro style going back to the originals started up. 

Some things that caught my eye were  the car seats changing from rattan to plastic/vinyl; the cars that had been designed for the Second Avenue Subway but never built, the Art Moderne of the IND lettering; the issues of the Subway Sun and Miss Subways. The first time ever I saw the official IND coloring code for the colored tiles that you use to tell what station you're at without having to read the sign with the station name. Unfortunately it was in a glass case and there wasn't any way of taking a clear picture of it. 

One of the things the exhibit pointed out was the disappearance in the last 20 years of vending machines [peanuts, gum balls, candy bars] and scales on the station platforms and mezzanines. It wasn't until that was pointed out that I suddenly realized: yes, they're all gone.

After the subway exhibit I decided to walk down to the Dahesh Art Gallery on Fifth Avenue for their exhibit  "Visions of the East at La Scala and The Metropolitan Opera". But the building - the ornate Scribner's store - was covered with scaffolding, the gallery was gone and the doorman said he knew nothing about it. [I found out later it moved to a new location on 580 Madison Avenue at 57th].

It was very late afternoon, the play I was going to wasn't until 7:30 and the temperature was almost 90 so I didn't want to walk much more. I decided I'd have a cup of tea and read a newspaper in a fancy tearoom. 

First I went to the Takashimaya Department store but it was 5:31 and their tea room had closed at 5:30. I did get a sample of their Lady cake which costs $60 per cake. I also decided there was only one thing in the department store I would take for free, not buy; it was a small $10,000 dining room table. Walking further up 5th to Bergdorf Goodman I learned their tea room had shut down for the day and I finally wound up at the Hotel St. Regis around 61st or 62nd. 

The hotel's famous for its full formal tea which was over but I actually wanted just a cup of tea and a cool quiet place to sit and read. They told me I could have just tea in their rotunda room and I did so. A pot of Darjeeling tea with all the decorations was $6 + $4 tip but I figured I was renting a cool quiet reading space and didn't mind paying it. 

When I sat down only two of the 10 or 12 tables were occupied. But then people slowly drifted in: very bosomy women in their 20s wearing formal gowns with plunging necklines and backlines. The conversations were switching from French to English and back and I found out I was in the middle of a publicity shoot. The women were lined up on the curved grand staircase that descends to the room for about a dozen shots. I thought that was it, but then more and more people came in; the men in black tie the women in floor length gowns [at 6:15 PM]. I should have made my own photographs while the professionals were making theirs but decided that was too low class.

in the room in the hotel was although unusually darken and a very strange painting hanging over the curving descending stay away

I left the hotel around 6:30 , passing many more black ties and floor length gowns walking into the hotel and intended to walk downtown to the theater on 14th Street. But the heat got to me and I didn't want to get all sweaty rushing down to 14th Street on foot,  so I took a Madison Avenue bus down. A  very pleasant, outgoing  and helpful Chinese bus driver  whose English announcements were unintelligible.