Art and Architecture

Welcome to dispatches from NYC, round three. It was a great day here today. Warm, but not uncomfortably so. I started my day with a trip to one of my old NY favorites, The Adore on 13th street. That's right people, I actually spent some time writing today. Not enough to feel confident that I'm going to have something to turn in on the 10th, but I'm having fun with it.

Then it was off to this fantastic place. I love MoMA. AND! I got to meet three people I love there too. Dad couldn't get enough - he looked at nearly every single picture, and went in to every room on every floor. Way more than I can handle. I get visual overload, so I tend to pick four oor five paintings to really look at, and then I skim the rest. Today it was the Matisse room for me. One thing I liked about MoMA today was that they seemed to really have a lot of unusual pieces out. By that, I mean paintings that are quite different from what you've come to expect of certain famous artists. There was a Monet done in the colors of fall leaves, a completely different palette than you expect to see from him, and the Matisse room had pieces that were more abstract than his gorgeous but almost cartoonish paintings of beautiful women or that one I love of a window with a desk in front of it.

It was fun to look at the architecture exhibit with our father the architect, of course! Allison was a very attentive student.

Afterwards, we meandered down to the cafe for a little late afternoon pick-me-up. Mmm... affigato - vanilla gelato with a shot of espresson poured over it. So delicious!

Favorite Places, Favorite People

There's still a lot I haven't written about from the NY trip. Both of the trips, really. That's how New York is, there's no way to fit it all in. I never see all the people I want to, or eat all the meals that I'd like to... hey, by the way, are we turning into a food blog? No fair! How am I supposed to play when my diet just makes me look like a big jerk? Writing about the carbonara I'm dying to try at Prune just doesn't really seem right when there's no pasta in your life...

But that's not what I was going to say. I wanted to say more about these visits, and how great it has been to see all my favorite New York people. All the love made every day feel like one of those days when the sun is shining and you walk into Freeman's and they seat you at that great table in the window and bring you something lovely in those old fashioned champagne glasses. Favorite places are like favorite people in that they both make you feel like there is nowhere else in the world you would rather be. Which explains why I've made Allison go back to Freeman's with me at least three times in the last two months. Hee!

Love you Ali!
H

Life Imitates Art

I lingered in bed a long time on my last morning at the Bowery Hotel in New York. The night before, we had sipped cocktails in the lobby with Keats and his entourage while a little parade of celebrities made their way through the lobby, still dressed in their finery from the Met's Costume Institute Gala. We saw this dress and this couple and I rejoiced over the way Eric swooned at seeing this dress. Okay, maybe it wasn't just the dress he was happy about. I saw the wearer of said dress at the front desk several times during my stay and she was smiling and sweet seeming each time so I encourage those of you who have crushes on her to just go right ahead and keep on crushing. Just don't forget what her last boyfriend looked like, boys. In spite of my extreme sophistication, I still think that seeing celebrities is part of the fun of New York. Let's all try not to get too cool to enjoy that.

The day before, Pam and I saw these two on the street, in those very outfits, I believe, and I very nearly got a paparazzi shot of my own when they walked through the frame of a photo I was taking of graffiti. They looked hungover and in love, that classic combination for a couple kids in their 20's. Walking through Central Park later, Pam and I decided that really they should wander up there and be in love on the grass instead of walking around SoHo wondering which shops weren't too self-conscious to patronize.

Today I recreated my last morning at the Bowery Hotel by staying in bed reading poetry until check-out time. Then I ate a boiled egg on an english muffin, had a cup of tea and watched Mansfield Park on DVD. Don't hate me because I'm lazy. I wasn't always this way.

I did have a glimmer of hope for myself today when I got an email from Barb with a little pep-talk about the writing. She has a good point when she recommends not missing an opportunity to have ten great readers take a look at your work. Surely I've got a short story in me somewhere... really short.

XOXO
H

Repeat Offender

the notorious Mars Bar

Number of trips to Freeman's this visit: 3
Number of times I went to the Tasting Room Wine Bar for a latte: 5
Number of Grasshoppers consumed from Liquiteria: 3
Number of Sunday brunches eaten at Prune: 2
Number of days that included the purchase of a pair of shoes in SoHo: 3

If you live in New York and missed me this visit, I think you'll know where to find me next time!

It All Still Looks Civilized at 8 PM

Allison

Keats and Amy

Eric

Ben

True confession - when I heard that some folks I know from high school were opening a tequila bar, my reaction was pretty much "Meh." Most of us have some kind of liquor we've had a bad experience with, and for me, it's tequila. And hey, when I knew Pat and Dylan, they weren't exactly the connoisseurs of fine liquors. OE and Mad Dog were more like it.

Barrio Chino is really something else though. The little plate they serve you with your tequila shot, with it's little glass of spicy tomato juice and refreshing slices of jicama, is so appetizing that I felt compelled to indulge in a little sip. Still, I was happy I had gone for the Coconut Mojito, and Allison was over the moon about her fancy non-alcoholic limeade. All week she's been trying to get bartenders to serve her up a creative n/a and until Barrio Chino, soda with a salted plum at the little Japanese bar was the closest she had come. Since that tasted like Alka Seltzer, the creativity points didn't really add up to much.

The food is outstanding, and rivals Carta de Oaxaca in Seattle, which is saying something, I think. I could eat that ceviche every night, and even though we were going out later for a dinner I knew would be fantastic, I couldn't resist stealing little pieces of steak from Ben's plate. Points for decor, too - I love all the lanterns, the gold wall and the big communal table.

But of course, the best thing was the company. They laughed at me a little for all the photos I was taking, but check out those portraits! I think my persistence paid off.

NYC ABCs

Just a few more photos for you today. It's a little hard to want to stay inside and post things on the blog when it's close to 80 degrees out and there are cute boys calling me saying "You, buck naked, Brooklyn, NOW!". Just kidding. Mostly. No, I am going to Brooklyn to see the boys I spent most of the summer after my sophomore year in high school with, but I am not getting naked any more than I am doing Jager shots, no matter how hot it gets here, and no matter how much peer pressure they apply.

Famous last words, right? Ha. No, I do think this is one resolution I can stick to.

My Kind of Marathon

Pam and I went to Coast of Utopia yesterday. We arrived at 11 AM and walked out of the Vivian Beauont Theater somewhere around 11 PM, with large sighs, utterly satisfied. It was a tremendously moving experience, and I couldn't possibly do it justice here in the few moments I have before Sunday brunch in the east village, so I will just say - it is surely one the most beautiful things I have ever seen a group of human beings do together.

I hope wherever you are there is something to cause you to ruminate on beauty, art, and love.

Oh Damn I Forgot To Water the Window Boxes!

Also forgotten? My address book, so if anyone out there expects to get a postcard, you might want to send me your address. I love to send postcards.

I've been trying to figure out what else I've forgotten, like sandals and really I could have used one more pair of jeans and the flats I brought are totally useless since they gave me a blister in about twelve seconds flat. But then I talked to Pam on the phone, and she told me that she packed hardly anything, because after all, being in New York is really about New York, not me, not the jeans or flats or even the postcards.

And the truth is, it's pretty easy to be in the moment and let being in New York be about New York when you are staying in a posh hotel in your favorite neighborhood, and when you are a girl who LOVES hotels. I love hotels! And the Bowery Hotel is lovable.

Look! Adorable little toothpaste container! Those keys that you leave at the front desk when you go out! In the little boxes! Delightful. And a good-looking lobby with a bar where they make sure they have tables for those of us who are staying at the hotel. Makes me feel a little smug, to be honest.
After lounging in my hotel room, Allison and I went over to the place where they have the best lattes in the East Village, and had some luscious snacks, including a duck terrine and their special homemade pickles. God, I love pickles. They had cucumber pickles, green tomato pickles, green bean pickles and okra pickles, all with unique pickle flavors, one with a little curry, one with a slightly asian flavor, one with some spice... delicious.

Before I let you go, I do want to say yes, I voted for Joseph and his cute nursery, let's all vote for him! Go Josey Ladd!

And Now We Return to Our Regularly Scheduled Programming

The original title of this post, which I was tinkering with... well, really, trying to find the point of, when the power went out last night, was "Goodbye to All That", which is the title of an autobiography by Robert Graves, but also, appropriately for me, an essay by Joan Didion, about being being young in NYC. I like Joan Didion for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that she seems to always include a description of what she was wearing. I don't mean that in jest, since that seems to me a way for a writer to try (probably in a futile way) to describe her own skin, to try and ground you in the self she was at that moment. But back to the post...

Today's gratuitous ranch shot

You can see what kind of day we are having here from the photo above. It's the first day of hunting season, so the dogs are inside and the horses have been let into the front yard to graze around the house. It's also Gary's last day here, so I put So Far in the CD player in my car and made a trek in to town to give him a little time along here, and to get a few groceries and a latte.

I ended up sitting at the coffee shop with my latte and a magazine that featured a couple pieces about Gondry's new film - the Science of Sleep (which I was sorry I didn't get to see before I left town). I was the only customer in the place, most of the time, and the two guys working there alternated between sitting down the bar from me and puttering around. Eventually a group of 3 girls, about 7 or 8 years old, came in and tramped upstairs and sat on stools overlooking the coffee shop, chattering away like little birds.

While I was there, they had a satellite radio station playing, and I heard an announcement that the station was going to broadcast the "historic final show at the legendary club CBGBs". Richard and the Dictators are playing, of course. I can't say that I'm going to miss CBs, since even if I lived in NY, I probably wouldn't spend a lot of time there. Still, when Kirstin and I first moved to NY, it was sort of this planet that our lives revolved around for a while. We rarely went in to the actual club. Instead we spent a lot of time at the CBs annex next door, playing pool on their crooked table and putting on whatever grungey stuff was in the jukebox back then. I was 20, and I bet there was some Alice In Chains in there somewhere.

The first bartender we made friends with was the guy who took us into Elizabeth NJ to get tattoos, but you'll hear about that later, no doubt.

The second and third bartenders we... I'm not going to say "made friends with" here, that would be an overstatement... instead I'll say, heckled regularly, turned out to be our first NY boyfriends.

Kent gets a mention here because he was also the person who inadvertently got me my bartending gig in New York. He made me a regular at a little bar around the corner from CBs, where he would sometimes go with the other CBs folks after their shifts ended.

Photo by Cat Sparks

For years I've struggled to write about this place. When I looked on the web for photos, I found descriptions like this: "If Satan were a whore of a bar, that bar would appear in the form of [this] bar." and "Go ahead, drink yourself to death! Everyone else here appears to be." The phrase "Daycare for Drunks" used to be painted underneath the name of the bar on the outside.

Still, we had the best jukebox there. I would go in at the start of my shift and put on "Helplessly Hoping", Patti Smith - "Kimberly", Jimi Hendrix - "Three Little Bears", Rolling Stones - "You've Got the Silver" and the song that, in my mind, was the anthem of that bar, Blind Faith's "Can't Find My Way Home".

It was a tiny place, only one bartender at the bar, with a bar back who sat and looked out the window and drank coffee, keeping an eye out in a way that only a regular would be aware of. My regulars were some of the most broken but also the sweetest people I have ever come across, which was good for a barely-21-year-old who thought she was messed up. It was impossible not to see how I looked to them - shiny and young and only passing through.

There was almost always someone who insisted on walking me home after my shift ended. The guys would take turns - when it was down to just a couple of them, they would check with each other to see who would stay until the end. We'd link arms and walk up the street together, but it was sometimes hard to tell who was walking who, given how challenging it is for someone who has spent the night parked in front of a tumbler of Jack Daniels to put one foot in front of another. Most of the drinks I poured were straight shots of Jack, in a quantity that any other bar would have called a triple. The second most common was vodka cranberry, but the cranberry was really just a splash. Most of the rest of the drinks were Budweisers, from the bottle, no tap.

I loved it there. When I left, everyone signed the little journal I used to write in when there wasn't a drink to pour. The regular I mentioned in a post back in August used to send me long rambling letters, unsigned, for years after I left. I still walk by when I'm in New York, just to see it, but that's definitely a time in my life that's gone, so I never go in.

The place has stuck with me though, and it's what I was thinking about today, when I thought about CBs closing, and things that are gone, and things that we turn into legends for ourselves. Mars is one of mine.

That thing that sometimes happens when I just let some thoughts show up on the page

Hi there.

I think this might be the first ever Malcolm sisters together photo... no, wait, there was the hungover in our pajamas photo back in July, so this isn't really the first photo of us together on this blog. It's too bad the blog doesn't have a photo album feature so that those of you who find the text a bit slow can just click on pretty pictures.

I was browsing through photos for the blog today, and kept coming back to anything that was taken in NY of course. One thing I always say about 9/11 is that I knew my sister who lives in NY was okay, because the Towers were hit just after 9, and I wasn't really sure she even got out of bed that early. It's a joke, but seriously, it was sort-of nice to think that you were probably just leaving the apartment, even though it makes me sad to think of you and Eugene looking down those long avenues to where all the smoke was coming from, and to think about the police barricades that blocked off lower Manhattan, stopping just 2 blocks from where we used to live, with you on the inside and so many of the firefighters from the station we walked by every day never making it back up there again.

This photo was from the NY visit with Elvis. I guess it was spring of 2004. Not a visit I remember with a lot of fondness, not, of course because you weren't great company, Allison, but it certainly wasn't my finest moment, nor the finest moment of my traveling companion. I'm not sure I had ever stomped up to a bar to flip my boyfriend off before. I know I haven't done it since, and I'm pretty damn sure I won't be doing it again.

But since it's just you and me here, I have to say, if he didn't deserve it then, he sure did later. The problem with him though, was that 15 minutes later, he was in a taxi eating a falafel that was so spicy it was making him cry, and whine like a baby, which was pretty funny considering how he looked in those days, and when I said "Why don't you stop eating it then?", he said "I'm not going to let this falafel lick me!" and we both laughed, and one of our favorite recurring jokes was born.

Laughter through tears, my favorite emotion - isn't that what you always say, Mom?

Except, of course, that I prefer to cry because I'm laughing so hard, not laugh in spite of crying so hard. I bet mom also prefers the laughing too. Unless she's at a movie. She likes those tear-jerkers. Or used to.

What does all of this have to do with 9/11? Well.

Well.

Just grief is all. Life is sort-of full of unresolved grief, isn't it? Thinks that there is no fix for, that we don't have much choice but to feel sad about. 5 years ago seems so long ago, and just yesterday at the same time.

I'm glad that a lot has happened in the last 5 years. At the same time, in some ways, I'm still orbiting around the same places. When I heard about the Twin Towers falling, I was standing in Caffe Lladro, at the bottom of Queen Anne Hill, on my way to work at a biotech company, in HR.

This morning found me standing in Caffe Fiorre, on top of Queen Anne, on my way to work at a different biotech company, still in HR. The coffee shop is nicer, the coffee is better, if more expensive, and as I've said here before, the baristas are my favorite baristas ever. I think the biotech company is more promising too.

So, those things are sort-of the same, but back in 2001, I was living in the house I owned in Ballard with Karl, and that seems like a very long time and a different life ago. I find it a little comforting that it was so close in time - I like the idea that 5 years down the road might make certain aspects of this time seem so far away, while keeping lots of the good things the same.

Anyway, the grief is still there. I hear the 9/11 stuff, and as much as what it all turned into irks me, it still makes me cry, I think about the city I lived in, the one that still keeps you, and it is easy to tear up. I was there the first time the towers were bombed, probably more than 10 years ago, and I remember the people streaming out of the buildings with their mouths and noses balck with soot from breathing the air in a building that was on fire. What I thought of in 2001 was all those people not coming out. That's all, just not coming out.

There isn't a fix for that kind of grief. There isn't a fix for losing someone you love, no matter what you lose them too, whether it's a plane through a building, or alcoholism, or one of the diseases these biotech companies are trying to cure, or just plain old incompatibility.

I don't like that part of living. I don't like it, but what I know 5 years later is that, like it or not, I can live with it. And there's something to be said for that, and for the fact that even after several of those unresolvable losses, on any given day, I am usually just as happy getting up in the morning and starting the day with a visit to a Seattle coffee shop as I was on any given day 5 years ago. And if 5 years down the road, I can still say something like what I'm saying today, that's good enough for me.

Love you Ali, and I'm glad you're here.

Wait wait wait!

I'm still trying to catch up to the Continental email from a few days ago. Luckily, the picture I was thinking I would post is actually in the same vein as your baby post today.

Check it out - Manitoba, subject of the Page Six link from the other day, and his son, Minitoba (aka Jake, a fighter's name, of course).

So, the Continental is going under? Well, in the 90s that was definitely the East Village bar that, in my opinion, had the bleakest aura. It was a bit better when Todd Youth was there, bartending or keeping an eye on the door, wearing his white creepers and seeming like he was the kind of guy who would keep an eye out for you, which he did for me one night when the frat guys got a little too close for his comfort. But generally, it was a railroad flat of a bar, dark and grimy, and the kind of place you would only go right when the band was going on, never before, never just to drink. Unless you were broke and someone was slipping you freebies.

I used to go in to the Continental to bring the bar manager cat food. He was Pauly's roommate, and a mess of a guy, barely coherent most of the time, even though somehow people knew he was smart, or used to be. He kept a kitten at the apartment for a while, and it was pitifully small, so I would bring these cans of cat food for him, since I didn't trust this guy to feed the cat. Then one day the cat was gone. I never knew what happened to it. Pauly refused to pet the cat, or like it because he said "It's just going to be gone soon anyway." And he was right.

The best thing that I can say about that particular bar manager is that he led to one of my favorite NY stories - the time I walked through Pauly's living room at 2AM and much to my surprise found Joey Ramone parked on the couch.

But your post, and the link to Page Six, and some other recent events in my life, have left me thinking about Richard, who I hope will not sue me for posting this. If anyone was going to sue me for posting about them, it would probably be Richard, since if we were having a "Heather's Most Famous Ex-Boyfriend" contest, he would win, hands-down. Dictators? Manitoba's? And I guess recently, sometimes, MC5. In 2004, when the lead singer for Guided By Voices asked the crowd at Bowery Ballroom who the last good NYC Mayor was, the answer he liked was "Handsome Dick Manitoba!"

But Richard didn't start out famous to me, even though he'd been famous to the East Village for decades. When I met him, he was one of the downstairs bartenders at 2A. Richard was the guy who made Whiskey Sours from scratch, such good, good Whiskey Sours. So, it's ironic that I've always sort-of thought of him as the guy who saved me from the Betty.

Richard came along at a time when I was spending too much time on bar stools, drinking too much whiskey, and failing to toughen up even though I was frequenting some places that really called for that. I think hanging out with all the tough guys only made me more tender by contrast. Before Richard, I loved Pauly, who had reached a point in his life where he thought it made sense to be the kind of guy who smoked even in the shower. Then there was Darren, who said "I never argue. I never argue, because I'll only argue when I'm right, and if I'm right, the argument's over" and meant it.

So Richard, it turned out, was a relief. He was a bartender, but a sober bartender, and in general, irrepressibly good humored, even when he had every reason not to be. He was kind and paid attention, and loved good food and wrestling. Pro-wrestling, people. And he was the only person who I EVER saw have the pull with Rizzo to get in to Green Door free (and he was plus at least two, since I know you were with us, Ali).

Some things I remember:
- Most of the time when he saw me come in to the bar, he would say "Heather WEIN-traub!", a reference to Mean Streets. He loved Scorcese.
- One night we were going out, and I wore something a little more bare than was my habit, and he looked at me and said "Are you trying to get me into a fight?"
- Eating at the old Odessa, where he knew all the waitresses, before they renovated it and made it so damn bright you could have done surgery in there
- He used to work the door at Niagara (which was called something else in those days) and I thought he looked cute all bundled up in his leather jacket with a hoody AND a hat.

So, even though he wasn't famous to me, I loved Richard, and I still feel some gratitude to him for showing me that the East Village could be a different kind of place. One where a sober bartender could also be a punk-rock, bar-owning, east-village-ruling celebrity, the kind who cares about being loyal to his friends and is good to his girl. But the guy I loved was always much more Richard than Handsome Dick Manitoba.

In spite of that, I would be lying if I didn't admit that it was fun when Jason (who still holds the title of the man with the most astounding record collection I have ever seen) said to me "You realize you are dating a punk-rock legend, don't you?"

I didn't really at the time, but it sure seems a whole lot more clear now. To me he was a good guy who helped make it clear to me that maybe it was time for me to change what I had been thinking of as my New York Ways. And I did.

Hey, Ali, how could you forget The Ex-Husbands? But that's a whole other story...

XOXO HM