Monday, May 6, 2019
We
had some good eats this weekend that are worth reporting. Saturday
night, joined by intrepid fellow travelers Jill & Steve, we
celebrated Erev Cinco de Mayo at Fonda Chelsea, 189 Ninth Avenue,
a contemporary Mexican restaurant. The food, variations and updates on
familiar themes, was quite good. I started with Ensalada de Aguacate y Zanahorias,
"avocados, roasted carrots, toasted pecans, soft goat cheese, sprouts
and bibb lettuce drizzled with a lime mustard vinaigrette" ($11.95) and
had as a main course Pollo Norteño, "boneless
guajillo marinated chicken tossed with melted Chihuahua cheese, served
in a skillet topped with chiles serranos 'toreados' and cured red
onions, with warm hand pressed tortillas" ($23.95). Only the hibiscus
margarita was frozen ($15), the several other varieties served straight
up. In this case, the frozen margarita was sufficient to warm me up.
Sunday,
we went to a catered event at Lincoln Ristorante, 142 West 65th Street,
on the grounds of Lincoln Center. We had eaten there before, but today
we each had a superlative meal, even though we were in a crowd of
almost 90 people being served simultaneously. After passed hors
d'oeuvres and drinks, we all had Insalata di Rucola, arugula, toasted
walnuts, red onion, with Meyer lemon vinaigrette, and rigatoni with
spring vegetables (asparagus and peas). I chose the beef, Filetto
Mignon, a nice chunk almost rare. Everyone else at the table had the
fish, Orata alla Griglia, grilled fillet of sea bass, delicious
according to my date. The meal did not ultimately rise to perfect,
however; the dessert did not contain chocolate.
. . .
. . .
Sunday
and Monday, my mobile telephone rang several times with calls from
Sierra Leone (232 21 001963 and 232 21 001492) and Lithuania (370 650
17642 and 370 650 19682), none of which I answered. However, if I were
still awaiting my luggage from Casablanca, I might have picked up, in a
fit of optimism.
When I saw
the first call, I was reminded of a comment by Henry David Thoreau, who
retreated to Walden Pond near Concord, Massachusetts to escape the
onrush of civilization emanating from Boston. "We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to
Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to
communicate." What might I hear from Sierra Leone, or what of interest might I convey to them?
. . .
. . .
Most of you are far too young to be concerned about the following: "Of the 30 most populous cities in the United States, New York has the
largest share of households of renters age 60 and over — 572,132, to be
precise." And, their share of the market has been growing. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/
There
is the convenience of moving or staying close to friends, families, the
Metropolitan Opera, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New York
Mets. The economics may also prove favorable, assuming some capital
gains from disposing of residential property. Using
that equity to finance a comfortable, if overpriced, lifestyle as a
renter might be preferable to keeping it tied up in real estate that
eventually might pass to an ungrateful nephew last sighted in Santa Fe,
New Mexico.
. . .
. . .
A practical
reason to rent, not buy, if you are making a move in or around the Holy
Land is the high cost of real estate. This article shows that the
Manhattan market has become a parlor game for the over-rewarded.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/
"[T]he high cost of land combined with easily available capital made building anything but the highest-end properties unappealing to investors and developers" in the last two decades goes the explanation.
. . .
My
dear friend David McMullen teaches history at the University of North
Carolina-Charlotte, site of the latest (as of now) campus killings. He
had left his classroom one hour before and was safely home, this time.
Here is his commentary soon after the event. https://historynewsnetwork.
. . .
. . .
If
you lack a college degree, go job hunting in Toledo, Ohio, Anchorage,
Alaska or Des Moines, Iowa, but avoid Washington, D.C., New York and Los
Angeles according to this survey. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/
Or stay put, take opioids and vote for someone who does not represent your interests.
Tuesday, May 7, 2019
Ever
reliable Wo Hop, 17 Mott Street, hosted Michael Ratner, Mark Nazimova
and me for lunch today. Soup (two hot and sour them, one egg drop me),
fried crispy noodles, boneless spareribs, shrimps with lobster sauce
over shrimp fried rice and honey crispy chicken put us in such a good
frame of mind that we were willing to answer Jerry Nadler's subpoenas.
. . .
Not
24 hours after I cited my friend David McMullen's account of the UNC-C
campus shooting, there was a fatal school shooting outside Denver. Is
this a great country or what?
Thursday, May 9, 2019
I may have been too busy eating, but the news of the remake of West Side Story by Steven Spielberg has just caught up with me.
I've
seen the movie a couple of times over the years and I saw the play on
Broadway late in its original run. As is the case more often than not, I
preferred the play to the movie, which unfortunately cast two
non-singers in the lead roles. However, I maintain a sentimental
attachment to the movie primarily because of its opening scene, the
stylized confrontation of the Jets and the Sharks, choreographed by
Jerome Robbins. The scene takes place on a pile of rubble, which allows
the respective gang members to jump in and out and up and down as they
demonstrate their mutual animosity.
This was real rubble, not some Styrofoam construct on a Hollywood sound stage.
It resulted from the demolition of residential and commercial buildings
to be replaced by Lincoln Center and adjacent properties. The pile of
rubble sits on the actual fictional location of the story on Manhattan's
West Side. More important, the pile of rubble sits on the ground upon
which the Palazzo di Gotthelf would later rise. Neither a Shark nor a
Jet, I remain devoted to this turf.
I
feel less conflicted about the remake in process. Is this trip
necessary? -- the question that was asked of civilians during WWII to
encourage the conservation of fuel. Remakes, just like adaptations of
plays and books, too often are inferior to the originals even with the
technical improvements that come with the passage of time. The only
aspect of this effort that interests me is the employment of Tony
Kushner to write the screenplay. Kushner, Oscar nominee, Tony winner,
Pulitzer Prize winner, is my neighbor and he too lives above what was
once only a pile of rubble.
Speaking of Tony Kushner, this evening we went to a production of Caroline, or Change, a play with book and lyrics by Tony Kushner. It centers on a young Jewish boy and his family's black maid and the racial climate surrounding them. It is set in Lake Charles, Louisiana in 1963 at a time when Kushner was living there as a boy.
Besides the evident challenges of the material, we were drawn to this performance at the Astoria Performing Arts Center, 21-12 30th Road, Astoria by the casting of our friend Scott Mendelsohn as the boy's father. He and the entire cast were first-rate and we hope that this run is extended beyond the end of May. I may have to hang out in the lobby, cornering Tony when he comes down to walk his poodle. That has to be more effective than a "like" on Facebook.
No comments:
Post a Comment