Fridays

On Fridays I hear people at work say "T G I F" and I feel like saying "T G I Have a Job." This Friday I rode my bike down to my new job at the advertising agency. This Hudson River Park used to be a deserted parking lot. People were opposed to this park. Why? Because it ceded power over the land to the Port Authority which can do what it wants. So far I haven't seen any bad developments, and this park is a spectacular improvement over a deserted parking lot. These trees get bigger every year; that's the beauty of trees!

This is one of the views from the offices where I work, with the Hudson River and New Jersey beyond. I walk around all day amazed by the views.


After a week of work and a trip to the gym I decided to treat myself/us.

To cupcakes and roses. I won't tell you how much four cupcakes cost, you'll think I'm insane. But that's the point of a treat isn't it? Extravagance. Soon there will be a cold glass of pinot grigio, and sushi, delivered, and we'll be on our way to a happy holiday weekend.

Treat yourself too, and have a happy Memorial Day.
BB

Poor Bell

Bell is saying, "What happened?"

We took her to get spayed on Tuesday, and she came home with this cone on her head which deters her from scratching the incision for ten days. But the poor thing! She's walking into furniture, and dragging the cone through her food. We're just following doctor's orders.

The vet calls it an Elizabethan collar, so it least it sounds nice.

Readers are asking, how is your other cat Rose? She's good; she has become accustomed to the kitten and I think even enjoys her company at times. But we have noticed that when Bell is in duress, like now, Rose hisses and growls, and generally gives her a hard time.

Chanel Resort 2010

Style.com reports that the new Chanel Resort collection was shown last week in Venice. Three hundred guests sat in wooden deck chairs on the Lido as waves lapped the shore. Karl Lagerfeld's collection was inspired by Venice in the earlier part of the last century. Style.com says that beginning in 1919, Coco Chanel visited Venice for almost ten years and there met Diaghilev, the creator of the brilliant Ballet Russe dance company. The clothes in the collection are a poetic rendering of the period but are modern too. I love clothes that don't really have a specific era -- that go back in time and can be worn in any period, and that's what Lagerfeld accomplished beautifully here. Navy blue and white has always been a favorite; once I had a great navy blue striped long-sleeved French sailor's shirt with a boat neck that I bought on Nantucket. I don't see them any more; back in the day you could get them at L.L. Bean and Army/Navy stores.
The Chanel collection started with a group portraying the mother and children in Death in Venice by novelist Thomas Mann, and then went on to a procession of timeless outfits creating a romantic Venetian dream that evokes Henry James and John Singer Sargent. 

A Trip to the Farmer's Market

I went over to the Farmer's Market at Union Square on Saturday. The construction going on there still has the popular and crowded market squished into a small and uncomfortable space. I asked a woman in the market information booth when the construction will be done, and she replied, "Last week." It's supposed to be completed already... Hopefully it will be finished soon.

I took a canvas tote to the market for shopping because I don't like coming home with seven plastic bags that could possibly be floating around in the ocean for the next three million years. Here is my tote, with Bell inspecting.

This is what came out of the bag:

Phlox, which smells wonderful and is such a pretty light lavender color. To me it's a Swedish color.

English ivy for the container garden out front. The leaves are edged with white. I think I have said before that I like plants with variegated leaves because the white edging gives the leaf definition so you can see the shape better.


A bunch of arugula. I love the bitter, earthy taste of arugula.

Two bags of mixed lettuces. This is the first week that I saw lettuce at the market, and I have been waiting for it patiently. You really do learn about seasonal crops when you shop at the farmer's market.

Asparagus. Yum. I got our vegetables for the week, all from local farms.

A successful trip to the market.

Picasso in Chelsea

Gagosian Gallery
I went to see the Picasso show now up at the Gagosian Gallery. Wow. What a treat.

The show was curated by John Richardson, the Picasso biographer and Vanity Fair writer, and it features 50 paintings and 49 prints from the last decade of Picasso's life, from 1962 to 1972; Picasso died at 91 in 1973. So this is the work of an artist in his eighties. You might think that paintings by an artist towards the end of his life would be dark and gloomy and morose as he contemplated the great unknown but this work is the opposite of that. I personally am not a huge fan of all of Picasso's paintings; some of them are a little pointy and sharp and almost violent for me, but these paintings are colorful and round and full of great joy. I really was astonished.

The show is called Mosqueteros, or Musketeers, because it includes paintings of matadors and circus performers and entertaining characters like that.

Buste
The colors are light and bright -- pale green, yellow, beige, not tones that I associate with Picasso. Thick brush strokes celebrate the glorious qualities of paint.

Femme
There is a happy sense of playfulness. Here is a woman teasing a cat. The cat looks like it was rendered in about eight brush strokes -- quick, light, fun.

Femme Nue Couchee Jouant avec un Chat
There also is a short movie to watch of Picasso in his studio. He is wearing a yellow v-neck sweater, red pants and a brown and white scarf at the neck. (I had a yellow v-neck sweater like that once from Brooks Brothers -- it was a gift from my friend Abby. I wonder if they still make them.) You get the sense with the paintings and the movie that the artist is really enjoying himself and revelling in his mastery. Picasso was creating these pleasures up until he died; what a great way to go out. This show is at Gagosian until June 6th, and it's on 21st Street so don't go the 24th Street Gagosian Gallery like I did. And of course its free. Only a few of the works are for sale so this show is a labor of love for the gallerist. Thank you Larry Gagosian!

A Mother's Day Moment

During the middle of the service at our great church Judson Memorial on Sunday there came a point when assistant minister Michael Ellick introduced soloist John Cormier who would sing a song – Stevie Wonder’s “I Just Called to Say I Love You.” The minister invited people in the congregation to get out their cell phones and call their mothers and we would all sing with the soloist. Unfortunately I left my phone at home (who needs a cell phone in church?) but people all around snapped out their phones and called their mothers: “Hi Mom, I am in church and am supposed to call you so now hold on and listen to this.” People ran up to the altar table with an arm out-stretched holding up their phone to the soloist. We all sang and the singing got louder and louder so that all the mothers on the other ends could hear. Up at the altar table were young and old, men and women, gay and straight singing out to their mom with the congregation behind. Little silver cell phones twinkled in the light, reaching out love to mothers across the land. Ain’t technology great? It was moving to watch as it unfolded – an unexpected, unrehearsed moment of pure joy.
And next year I’m bringing my phone.  

Life on the River

Today was a beautiful day to run along the Hudson River. It was cool and white clouds skittered past the bright sun. People were talking on their cell phones making Mother's Day calls: "Are you having a nice day?"


The ad agency where I am working is on the 36th floor of the silver building on the left with the flat top downtown. A plain exterior but fantastic glass offices inside and amazing views.


The white building in the center here on the West Side Highway across the street from the Hudson River was featured in an interesting story this week in The New York Times. The couple who lives there have seven children and have renovated eleven properties! And now the whole family is signed up with the Ford Modeling Agency. Energetic New Yorkers! The building was once the site of a bicycle shop.


When TD and I moved, we looked at an apartment one block south on the West Side Highway. We thought it would be neat to live on the river, but the highway was noisy; you don't think of that part. Maybe this family has soundproof windows. You can read the The New York Times story here.

A Trip to Elizabeth Street

My cousin Erin invited us to a wine bar on Elizabeth Street last night to celebrate her birthday. You remember Erin; she is my god daughter, and organized our family Christmas party in a restaurant in Park Slope, Brooklyn, this year. When Erin was born in Albany, New York, I was going to law school there. I ran over to the hospital to see the infant, and I was her first visitor. And twenty-seven years later, here we are, celebrating on Elizabeth Street in New York City.

Before the get together, TD and I wandered along Elizabeth Street which is in Nolita, "north of Little Italy." It's really east Soho. Erin lived on Elizabeth Street before she moved to Park Slope, and the street has lots of great charming shops.
Eleven is a cool vintage store with clothes for men and women.


Billy's Antiques and Props on Houston had horror masks and dummies inside.


The yard of the Elizabeth Street Gallery was full of architectural remnants.


We had a little something to eat at a restaurant on Spring Street called Bread. I love eating outdoors. Mobs of people passed by on the narrow sidewalk; kids, tourists, people walking home from work. A man sat at the next table with a big dog named Maggie. I had a salad and a pasta with pesto and asparagus.


It felt like being in Europe. As dusk fell the cornices on Spring Street stood out against the darkening sky like sculptural setpieces.


We toddled on to Xicala Wine Bar to have a drink or two with Erin. She was already ensconced with her beau Andrew and some friends. More of her friends came in, from childhood, high school, college and work. We were introduced to her friend Lauren DeJulio. When I was growing up my uncle Brian, Erin's father and a lawyer in Albany, had a posse of cool friends, and one of the sweetest and nicest was John DeJulio. When my grandfather died in Albany, John offered that my siblings and cousins and I could all sleep in his big house. Lauren is John's daughter, and although she was six or eight at the time, she remembers us all camping out. Lauren's mother now lives on Martha's Vineyard, and Lauren lived for some time in Paris, so I got to talk with her about two of my favorite places on earth. Here are Lauren and Erin:


We left three hours later. It was fun. Erin is out and about, enjoying life in the city, making her godfather proud. Happy birthday Erin.

A Trip to Dumbo

When TD and I moved off of Jane Street, our former neighbor Ted Burrows said to me, "It's fun to move -- you make new friends!" And he was right. In the building that we moved into on 15th Street lived a couple April and Matt, and we became friends before they left the building to move to DUMBO, the cool neighborhood in Brooklyn Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass. You remember April -- she became a buddy of my niece Jane's and we ran into her on Fifth Avenue. TD and I have kept in touch with April and Matt, and visited them last night.

The shot above is the the view out of their living room of the Brooklyn Bridge and Manhattan beyond -- also spectacular at night.
Here are Matt, April and TD enjoying the view.


We had a plan to walk up to Vinegar Hill and go to a new restaurant there, Vinegar Hill House. Vinegar Hill is a street of nineteenth century store fronts that have been left virtually untouched. The restaurant is a hip hangout and has garnered good reviews for its food so we were all looking forward to it. On the way up to Vinegar Hill we passed the Manhattan Bridge.


We stepped into the popular one room restaurant which was packed. Luckily we immediately commandeered a table for four. I loved the decor -- boho hippie chic, rough country luxe. Antiques, plants, paint peeling on the walls, filament Edison light bulbs, that sort of thing.


Orchids in little ceramic pots, votive candles, and water in glass bottles.


Food was good. Service was not. Boo! There is nothing worse in a restaurant then feeling that you have been forgotten about because you're kind of trapped there at your table and social convention dictates that you can't stand up and wave your arms around and go, "Hello! I ordered a cocktail 40 minutes ago!"

So. They need to work on that.

April said, "Let's go to our apartment and have dessert." Back we went down the hill.


Out of her pantry April pulled:
Grapes
Strawberries
Shortbread cranberry cookies
Japanese chocolate sticks
White chocolate
Japanese chocolates with grapes inside
Ice cream sandwiches

I said, at our house you'd be lucky to find a Peppridge Farm cookie.
We had a glass of red wine. It was grand.

The Buckleys Three

My heavens, it was 90 degrees today in New York City. It must be a record for April the 27th. And I loved it. I rode my bicycle over to the Hudson River and ran along the park. The river park was packed with New Yorkers, pale-skinned, emerging from a hard cold winter.

Then I bicycled to the Chelsea Piers gym and went swimming. I love summer weather, I really do.

Another pleasure of the day was reading an excerpt in The New York Times Magazine from a new book by Christopher Buckley about life with his parents, Pat and William F. Christopher was their only child, and the book, called Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir, will be published in May.

Christopher Buckley, age 4, with his parents.

Christopher's mother Pat Buckley, a legendary figure in New York society, died in April, 2007. After that, I wrote an article about her great style for Bergdorf Goodman magazine. For that piece I talked to Christopher on the phone and his daughter Caitlin who spoke at her grandmother's memorial service; father and daughter were both charming. Eleven months later William F. Buckley died, and my heart went out to Christopher who lost both parents within one year. Now Christopher, an accomplished writer, has authored a book about his parents and The Times excerpted it today. It's a fascinating portrait of two complicated people. I loved the part about how Pat used to tell fibs, like claiming that the Queen and King of England stayed at her family's home in Vancouver. You can read the story here, and listen to an audio slide show of Christopher talking about his parents -- don't you love the internets? Here is the story I wrote about Pat Buckley, below (click to enlarge). Her style was her art and she was truly an original.