Part of an occasional series
Out doing photography last Friday for my Postcards From Home project. I started in Chelsea, on Ninth Ave. and W. 18th Street, where I went for an appointment, and since it was early morning, took myself off to Florent for breakfast afterwards. This is not a part of Manhattan that I know very well. I've been an East Side girl mostly from my jobs and association with NYU. My brief foray into the west side while working at Matthew Bender wasn't very happy; the Penn station area in the late 80s was nasty and offputting. And I occasionally visited Jen when she lived in the illegal 5th floor walkup sublet in the West Village and in Hell's Kitchen (exactly three times, until I had to call her from a crack-vial-and-syringe-infested phone booth to have her let me in), and I visit Laurie on the Upper West side, too. But my shrink's office was in London Terrace and that's when I started to get interested in Chelsea. The Meatpacking District, just south of Chelsea, is a complete mystery to me, since it's been an industrial area full of after-hours and gay clubs until the last couple of years.
It's been a while since I explored a new part of the city and I've got the blisters on my feet to prove it. But the blisters were worth it. The day turned out to be full of magical and amusing little moments, and I got some great pictures. Walking around with a camera makes you look at the city in a different way: always framing shots in your head. I'm much better at taking place shots than people shots, but I try not to lose sight of them, either, since the buildings are just the backdrop and the real entertainment is what's walking around in front of it.
Florent, where I had breakfast, is an old and typical kind of NYC diner, with a venerable history and a French twist to the menu. On the specials board were Flo's Tips for local shows, a snide and bitter bit of doggerel commenting on the Bush regime and Madonna's vanity as well as the Hudson River manatee (I kid you not) and an obit for Willie Ninja, who invented "vogueing." Breakfast was perfect. You wouldn't think you could ruin two eggs over, easy, with bacon and homefries (a treat I seldom indulge in anymore), but Mayrose managed it a couple of weeks ago, so this was both a pleasure and a relief. (I've totally given up on Mayrose. I've never had a good meal there. How do they stay in business?) The eggs were just the way I like them, the bacon was thick and crispy without being burnt, and the homefries (to my cholesterol count's horror and my tongue's delight) were red potatoes sauteed in butter. Yum! With fresh OJ and tea, I was set for the day.
From Gansevoort I walked back to 9th Ave.and walked a little uptown to 14th St.to start taking pictures. On my way, I ran into the first amusing moment, which consisted of one of the skinny neighborhood hipsters wearing a very old-fashioned cut suit, something from the 50's, in grey sharkskin, with a white button-down shirt, skinny black tie, black oxfords, and nerdy black framed glasses. Not just retro but nerdy retro: his tie was tucked into his pants (beneath a black belt), his pants were four inches too short and showed bare ankles because he was wearing shiny grey footies instead of socks. Ironic Devo escapee meets 1952 IBM refugee.
I love costumes.
On the corner of 14th Street and Ninth Ave., I took this: 
What I liked about this shot was the black and white against the red brick, the low rise and the high rise, the new and the old, which makes for such an interesting contrast in this neighborhood. The Meatpacking District is still in the throes of being redeveloped and hasn't been completely overtaken by luxury high-rises yet, or had all of its original industry zoned out of the area. So there's still a great mix of hipsters, blue collar guys, restaurants, warehouses, club kids, and boutiques—a bit like pre-luxury loft Soho. 14th Street and the avenues are already pretty well colonized, but the smaller side streets like Gansevoort are still cobbled and pretty gritty. Hopefully it'll stay that way for a while, though it does scare me that the area's got its own website. That was the death knell for Williamsburg too.
While I was waiting to cross the street to continue east, Ray Kottner's free cab passed by me. I recognized him immediately because he was driving an old Checker, the kind you never see anymore, and his sign said "free." I looked inside (he was slowing for a light) and sure enough, there he was. I nearly ran after him to say hi, and then thought, Naaaah, he won't be amused. Why spoil it? I've written about him before, and there are other people who've caught rides with him and written about it too. It was just a kick to see him still tooling around. Not that the world necessarily needs more Kottners, since we seem to be a pretty crotchety tribe. It was just nice to see another one in the city besides me.
One thing about being anywhere outside of midtown or the financial district before noon is that half the businesses are still shut up tighter than a Republican's bank vault. Busboys and maintenance guys are hosing down sidewalks in front of their businesses and the air smells of wet cement. The streets look sleepy and deserted and everyone is yawning. You can tell a lot about an area from the business hours it keeps. A while back when Paul was here, we wandered down to Soho after dinner in the East Village, intending to do a little window shopping, and found everything closed at 8 pm. When it was an artists' enclave nothing but the galleries closed until at least 9, and often 10 or later, the way they still do in the East Village. Of course, they don't open until 10 a.m. at the earliest, often noon. But now Soho runs to the rhythm of tourists, not artists. That's another way in which the Meatpacking District has that pre-condo feel: it's still obviously a late-night area with the club kids just coming home at 6 or 7 (hence the all-night diners like Florent and the plethora of places serving breakfast).
And, like the old Soho, where I used to run into David Byrne, the occasional celebrity is sneaking out in sunglasses hoping nobody else will be up to ID him. I could be mistaken, but I think after leaving Ray on Hudson, I passed Brad Pitt going the opposite way. Or maybe it was just his stunt double. I thought Brad was taller. But he was instantly recognizable the way Kevin Bacon was in Madison Square Park with his film crew a couple of weeks ago (possibly for Death Sentence). So who knows? Everybody looks taller on film. So my celebrity siting score went up two in the last two weeks. Come to think of it, I left Eric Bogosian off that list too. But that was ages ago.
Speaking of closed businesses, I wandered down Greenwich Ave. to Tea and Sympathy to find it closed, too, which was annoying since I'm so seldom in that area and I'd wanted to pick up some more PG Tips and maybe some Cadbury chocolate or MacVitties Digestives. What's with this? They're not even open for Elevensies! I guess I'll have to go to Kalustyan's on Monday.
Nor was Three Lives & Co., one of my favorite bookstores, open at 10:30 a.m. But I did get two good photos for the book project:
Then it was on to the Blue Note, on W. 3rd Street, just off Sixth Avenue. I'd remembered it being on the Avenue, but I guess I was thinking of the now-closed Sweet Basil (which has become Sweet Rhythm) on Seventh Avenue. I did eventually stumble on it as I walked down W. 3rd. By which point I was pretty well stumbling, period. The Blue Note pictures weren't that exciting, so I'm not posting them.
I pressed on, looking for an open cafe. La Lanterna, just off Washington Square Park, was also closed at that hour, strangely enough, so I resigned myself to head over to the nearest Star*uck's. But on the way, I took this, thinking it might be my last chance before the park renovation:
I walked through the park, where I used to hang out a lot when I was still going to NYU, and it's definitely looking a little the worse for wear. I hope they don't change it too much. It's still a beautiful park with a lot of character. Making it all symmetrical and perfect would just ruin its character. I particularly hate to see it changed too much since I have some great memories associated with it. For one thing, somewhere out there, in some photographer's files, is a picture of me walking through the park that was later turned into a greeting card. It's also where met a terribly sweet maintenance guy who worked at NYU. We sat on the fence and talked about books and school and drank cheap champagne in the sun and when he found out I was a history student, he insisted on giving me one of the books he'd picked up that day from a vendor. That's when I began to realize that New York was nicer than anybody in the Midwest suspected. I also saw (twice) a great production of Midsummer Night's Dream, lit with flashlights, staged all around the park with the audience following the actors to new locations for each scene. And then there's Master Lee, who Jen blogged about a few weeks ago.
Finally, a couple of miles on a roundabout trail from where I'd started out at W. 18th Street and Ninth Avenue, I dragged my sorry, footsore self into the Star*ucks that used to be the Riviera at Astor Place. And lo! the Cube was back! Cleaned and greased and ready to shelter the derelict and form a backdrop for earnest NYU film students, both of which it was doing. It's a nice, gritty contrast to the smooth, impenetrable glassy facade of the Sculpture for Living behind it, about which several real estate reporters and blogs, even Curbed, are very snarky. The New Yorker can go on all it wants about how wealthy this area is, but it's got more than its share of the down and out and the middle to lower income too. Not to mention unruly students.
Case in point, the slightly crazy guy in Star*uck's who was playing musical chairs with himself as I was sipping my chai and watching the denizens and the weird reflections in the Sculpture for Living's facade. I was sitting in the glassed-in area near the street (the front of which is under construction and makes it look like the place is closed) when he came wandering in and headed for a seat behind me, then changed his mind, whirled and went for one nearby then spun again and lunged for one two tables away, then went back and forth several times before settling into the one nearest where he'd entered, where he sat for a minute then disappeared. Everything he was doing screamed OCD, poor guy: gotta touch that chair! gotta touch that chair! gotta touch that chair! One more time! okay! And no one to get him meds. I'm sure the folks in the Sculpture for Living wouldn't be amused. But Astor Place is just one big performance space, even for the unintentional or compulsive performers. But then, the folks in the 39, $2 million+ apartments in that highrise are right next door to the Public Theatre. In more ways than one.
Comments