Ok, so, in the nature of full disclosure, I will admit, right off: when I found out that we were going to NYC, the absolute first thing I thought of was seeing the Ghostbusters' firehouse. The first thing. And then that, naturally, informed the rest of my trip planning: we'd search out a few (but not all--I'm nothing if not reasonable) of the other places from Ghostbusters on our way to do whatever other fabulous things we'd have time to do.* So: once we'd cabbed it into the city from JFK (past the Men in Black flying saucers in Queens!), checked in to our hotel and dropped our stuff, and finally, grabbed a quick slice of pizza (as one does in New York!), the first stop--as it was closest to home base--was the New York Public Library!
Listen! Do you smell something?
We went inside, too--it's impressive there, as well--but for me, the lions were what I was there to see. Next, since we were in the neighborhood, Grand Central Station. Which is, as the name would imply, grand.
One more thing I should 'fess up to at the outset: Art Deco was my first design love--even before Art Nouveau--and New York City is insanely jam-packed with it. So you're going to see a lot of that here, alongside the Ghostbusters nonsense.
Deco!
More Deco!
And then there was this beauty on 42nd Street between Grand Central and the Chrysler Building...
...which might just be my favorite building in the world.
Hello, gorgeous.
It's just so flawless and streamlined; probably the most iconic example of its genre, and utterly magnificent. (Fun fact: these nickel/chrome "gargoyles" were designed as a nod to hood ornaments, and the brick patterns to the right of this echo the cars [complete with metal hubcaps] that Walter Chrysler was manufacturing at the time.)
The famous eagles up on the 61st floor. These were also designed to mimic hood ornaments; to symbolize the age of flight and the technological developments of the age; and/or to represent the bald eagle. (Or so I read.)
The only part of the Chrysler Building open to the public is the lobby...
...so in we went. I couldn't get a great photo of the Art Deco mural on the ceiling, but the elevator doors were something else.
The inlay on these is amazing.
As we really hadn't made any plans for that first afternoon, Mike convinced me that we should go up the Empire State Building, something I was avoiding due to its reputation for having a terrible, terrible wait time. Pro tip: visit the Empire State Building on a rainy Wednesday afternoon in March, and you'll breeze right in. (The down side is, the view isn't maybe the absolute best best that it could be...)
Hello, Manhattan.
Ahhhhh, there's that spire. Love. (Just learned this: the Chrysler Building was the tallest building in the world when it was completed in 1930--a title it lost eleven months later, when the Empire State Building went up. It's still amongst the top 10 tallest buildings in the city, however.)
I'm told the Statue of Liberty is out there somewhere.
Sooooo many water tanks!
Back down in the lobby, the extraordinary mural of the building itself, from 1930.
Next stop, the Flatiron Building! So neat.
Passed this on the way to dinner. Doesn't look like a Home Depot in any neighborhood I've ever lived in...!
From there, we headed to dinner at the marvelous Mira Sushi & Izakaya, where we shared plates of beef bulgogi tacos; spicy, seared scallop tostadas with yuzu sauce; some spicy waygu sliders; and their Crystal, Magic Dragon, Volcano, and Phoenix sushi rolls, ALL OF WHICH WAS SPECTACULARLY GOOD. (Good find, Mike!)
On the way home, I discovered that, apparently, the Empire State Building looks like this at night. Festive.
The next morning, we headed over to the Chelsea Market for coffee (and so Mike could check in at the YouTube office, which is in the same building, lucky!!)...
Amazing building packed with amazing food and gorgeous little shops.
...and then to Times Square, 'cause that morning's rain had burned off and we had some touristin' to do.
Thar she blows. Wasn't looking for anything special here; just wanted to see it. (And, in all honestly, was hoping to be assaulted by the Impractical Jokers, but no such luck.)
Anyone up for Michael Scott's favorite New York slice??**
Then, we went the teensiest bit out of the way to tromp along Central Park for a while, to this:
Dana Barrett's apartment!
To which, of course, they added several stories and a whole lot of weird architectural mumbo jumbo at the top for the movie. (Comparison shot about halfway down this page.)
We also strolled past the Tavern on the Green, where poor Louis got turned into a Terror Dog ("Nice doggie...maybe I got a Milk Bone..."), but as the glassed-in part of the restaurant was all covered up with construction, you'll just have to know that the place was in our hearts, if not our viewfinders.
I've gotta say, even with the fog and zero leaves on the trees, Central Park is still something really special.
Next, a quick swing past 30 Rock...
...over to St. Patrick's Cathedral, the single and only sight I'd seen--and even then, only from a distance--on either of those first two disastrous visits to the city.
Not to sound snobby, but I'm gonna: I've gotta say, for a neo-Gothic cathedral built in the New World, and in the 19th century, no less, daaaaaaang. This place is impressive and does not lack for detail or for elegance.
Stumbled past this beauty on our moseyings...
...as well as this temple to Art Deco, which was, alas, closed for renovations. (Whyyyy??)
Next, it was back to the hotel for a little scrubbing up and dressing up, because dinner, on this particular evening, just so happened to be an early one (by design) at Eleven Madison Park, the current number-one restaurant in the world. Yes, we went there, and it was a magical and surprising evening, on many levels. For one thing, all of the food was entirely approachable; there were no weird towers or constructions requiring disassembly, careful consideration, awkwardness, and/or utensil acrobatics in order to eat them; all the silverware we had was identifiable and useful; and all of the dishware was simple white raw porcelain (nothing weird or unsteady). For another, for a place with this caliber of reputation, the atmosphere was utterly delightful: there was zero stuffiness, and plenty of laughter and conversation in the room, which was quite elegant, but still comfortable. (I think this sort of ambiance is particular to American Michelin-starred restaurants, and I adore it.) The service, of course, was impeccable; our water glasses were never more than half empty, even after we paid the check, and every single waitperson who stopped at our table knew everything there was to know about everything we ate. Price-wise, sure, it wasn't the cheapest meal of our lives, but it was cheaper than a lot of restaurants that aspire to be this good. (I know. I've looked.) Also interesting: obviously, there was no a la carte menu, but within the tasting menu, there were several courses with a few options, which made the meal more fun in that we could try more things. All of which, naturally, were divine. (Well, except my venison, but I think that's just 'cause I'm not a fan of venison. Shoulda gotten the vegetable dish, but I was trying to be nice to my husband, and ordered one of the two things he wanted, so that he could have the other and try both. Aren't I grand.)
I didn't take so many photos because I was trying to just soak it all in, but here's one of the caviar dish, containing sturgeon caviar, smoked sturgeon, smoked ham, hollandaise sauce, and a pickled quail egg, served with the TINIEST ENGLISH MUFFINS EVER. (Srsly, those things were one bite, max, but they encouraged you to make tiny sandwiches with this dish. Such a delight.) (Extra bonus: we got to take those tins home at the end of the night, and inside was an accordioned paper cut-out with the menu printed on it. Clever.)
This may have been, collectively, our favorite course of the evening. The bowl at the bottom contains a slice of portobello mushroom and a black truffle-cream-stuffed cremini mushroom, both of which were braised in that broth inside a pastry shell, the very thin, cracker-like lid of which was carefully removed and spread with a black truffle cream and covered in grated Vermont cheddar to produce that "pizza" in the center of the table. (Got all that?) I don't even like mushrooms, and I find truffles to be entirely overrated, but all of this was exquisite. Would eat again, anytime.
Obviously, there were many other courses, all of which were amazing and excellent, but it would take up just a ton of space here to type it all out, and frankly, you're probably not that into reading about it all anyway. (If you are, though, ask me about it sometime. Ooh, and forgot to mention: at the end of the night, when they gave us our menu tins, they included canisters of homemade granola for the next day--"We give you breakfast, too!" Unreal.) And if you want to know what I thought of the whole experience, I'll sum it up thusly: number one on paper, and number one in my heart.
Madison Park looks like this on a foggy night. Also magical.
Afterwards, I suggested (as a joke) that we stop in at a psychic--their little shops are, in fact, everywhere in this city--and Mike, full of good food and wine, said, "OK!" and grabbed my hand and dragged me in to the nearest one. Where a very earnest and nice lady told me, as she ran her crystal pen-thingy over my palm, that she saw 4 children in my future, and that I should start being more "selfish" at my job, because they just don't appreciate me appropriately. Um. I didn't have the heart to break it to her that A) that's four children too many, and B) I haven't been employed for a year or seven now, but I did like one of the other things she said: "Last summer took, but this summer will give." At least the first part of that is already true: in a rather terrified state, I went to the emergency room twice last summer while Mike was out of town, and spent actual months, and underwent lots of very unpleasant testing, trying to figure out why I couldn't swallow or breathe correctly...so this summer basically has to be better than last! (Vigorously knocking on wood.) Or at least, that's how I'm choosing to look at it. Nailed that one, psychic lady.
The next morning we grabbed some coffee and headed for a tour of Rockefeller Center, which has an artsy, philanthropic, show-bizzy, story, but its main appeal, for me, was that it is chock-full of Art Deco pieces. Yes, please.
Not on the tour is Radio City Music Hall, but the outside was impressive enough for me this time around.
"Drama" medallion on the outside of Radio City, by Hildreth M. Meire, 1932.
1250 Avenue of the Americas: obviously, home of The Tonight Show, but also the amazing "Aspects of Mankind" carvings by Gaston Lachaise, from 1935, as well as, in the loggia, over the entrance, the large and ornate mosaic, "Intelligence Awakening Mankind," by Barry Faulkner, 1933.
And the perfect Art Deco numbering, as well. (Loooooooove.)
Massive "History of Transportation" mural by Dean Cornwell, 1946, in the lobby of 10 Rockefeller Plaza. (This thing actually wraps around three entire walls of this lobby.)
"Sound," "Wisdom," and "Light," at the main entrance of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, 1933.
The rather stunning, stainless steel, "News," 1940, above the entrance to 50 Rockefeller Plaza.
Escalators in 19 West 50th Street.
"Atlas" (1937) across from St. Paul's, at 630 Fifth Ave.
Murals by Jose Maria Sert in the main lobby of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, "Man's Triumph in Communication" (left), 1933; and a small part of "American Progress," 1937. (The entire lobby and and two large hallways extending off of it are done up in these murals. It's incredible.)
After our tour, we headed upstairs to check out the view from 30 Rock's observation deck.
Our guide had said that a some Art Deco buildings included elements inspired by ocean liners, and from the top of 30 Rock, I found one. Neat.
Mostly, it was still pretty cloudy up there...
...but you could kinda see Central Park, although only if you peered between some obnoxiously tall (and ugly) buildings, and now only if I pump up the contrast a ton.
Next, we enjoyed a really lovely lunch at the adorable little Match 65 Brasserie (our waitress was French!), and then headed to the main branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art for an afternoon of art and archaeology. We sorta meant to steer around the Greek and Roman sections, since we've seen a good deal of those things a little closer to their respective homes, but it didn't work out that way. The ancient stuff always gets me, man. (Only slightly apropos here, let me just say the breadth of the Met's collection cannot be overstated. I've done my absolute best to show here a representative sampling of what we saw, and have edited this way down, but there was so much amazing stuff there! So...I'm sorry. Many museum photos lie ahead.)
Bronze Corinthian-type helmet, Greece, 600-575 BC.
The better part of an actual Etruscan chariot unearthed in central Italy, from about the 6th century BC.
Seriously, the amount of this thing that survived, and the detail on it, are just breathtaking.
Made our way through ancient Western Europe and over to Oceania! Here, the huge ceiling of a ceremonial house created by various clans within the Kwoma people of northeastern New guinea.
Look at it. So stunning. This was created in the 1970s.
This thing made me laugh, the look on its face...! It reminds me a little of the Gorgs from Fraggle Rock, but in real life, it's a slit gong from New Guinea, made in the 1960s. (Interesting tidbit: these are some of the largest free-standing instruments in the world and were used both for musical purposes and for communicating between villages, sometimes even between islands.)
Some of the artifacts in this exhibit were unbelievably large. These two canoes (the front one ceremonial, created to be used only once for a boys' coming-of-age ritual) were made by the Asmat people of Irian Jaya, New Guinea, also in the 1960s. The rear canoe, which is almost 50 ft/15 meters, carries 20 people, and was so long I really couldn't get a photo of it that showed how impressive it really is.
Moved on from Oceania into the Americas, and these looked very familiar! Ancestral Pueblo/Anasazi pots from Arizona or New Mexico, 1100-1250 AD.
We were lucky in that our visit coincided with an exhibit on "luxury and legacy in the Ancient Americas", so we got to see lots of fantastic artifacts from Central America. This is a funerary mask (and a rather large one at that--28 inches wide) from the Lambayeque culture of Peru and dates to somewhere between the 9th and 11th centuries AD.
This was astounding: woven textile from Peru, dating to between 450 and 175 BC.
This rather stern little dude is a masked chieftain pendant from the Tairona culture in Colombia, made sometime between the 10th and 16th centuries. Apparently, only a chieftain, nobleman, or shaman as powerful as the one depicted in the pendant--as demonstrated by his headdress, nose/lip/ear jewelry, belt, and armbands--was qualified to wear this.
Mayan stuff! Large ceramic vessel from Mexico, 7th or 8th century AD. (There is speculation that this cup, because of its size and depictions of similar vessels in Mayan art, was meant to be placed on the ground as the receptacle into which drinking chocolate was poured, from some height, in order to make it frothy!)
And then Africa! Ceremonial Janus mask meant to ward away evil; created by the Senufo people of Cote d'Ivoire, 19th to mid-20th century.
Incredible wooden cross carved by an Ethiopian master craftsman during the late 15th/early 16th century.
Ugh, this one's out of focus, and I apologize, but I wanted to show this off. The Met has an amazing collection of these brass palace plaques from Benin, all of which show various officials in the hierarchy of 16th- and 17th-century Beninese royalty. The style was to depict people of lesser importance in a smaller size, so the small figures at the top are not children, but lowlier officials! (These plaques were fascinating and beautiful and there were a LOT of them, but I somehow did not get a single good photo. Booooo, glass cases and reflections and general incompetence.)
Next up: modern-er art! An awesome little "Bluebird" radio from 1934.
I actually remember reading about this sculpture in Art Appreciation in college. Brancusi's "Bird in Space," 1923.
Awwwww, Norman Rockwell! "Expressman," 1924.
Faberge: more than just eggs! Here, a cigarette case from St. Petersburg, late 19th century.
An entire bedroom plus antechamber from Palazzo Sagredo in Venice, around 1718. (There are whole rooms from buildings all over the world in this museum. It's insane.)
Helmet for foot combat during a tournament! Probably English manufacture, from 1510, and belonged to a member of the retinue of Henry VIII.
Speaking of whom: the Met has components from no fewer than 3 of Henry VIII's suits of armor. This was his field armor, probably from Italy, from around 1544. Mind blown.
Fear the bunneh! Japanese helmet from the Edo period, 17th century.
Gorgeous steel and gold cuirass, probably of Indian manufacture, late 18th or early 19th century. (The inscriptions refer to "God as the God of light; the rewards He will give His servants; and His punishment of unbelievers and evildoers." Thanks, Met website!)
One of only a handful of elephant tusk swords (!!) still in existence. These are from India, and were used on the ends of battle-elephants' tusks for actual combat sometime during the 15th through 17th centuries. (For real. That is a real thing.)
Naturally, they also have an Egyptian temple here. This is the temple of Dendur, completed in 10 BC, and it's one of the ones rescued from flooding, and then gifted to countries that helped out, when the Aswan dam was built!
The Egyptian artifact collection here is massive and impressive, but you've seen a lot of that stuff from me, so I'll show you something a little different: these lovely blue-painted ceramics from near Luxor, Egypt, made around 1417-1379 BC.
As one might expect, there's a huge collection of American art here, too. And ohhhhhhh, Tiffany. Be still my little Art Nouveau-loving heart. "Autumn Landscape," by Agnes Northrop for Tiffany Studios, 1923-24.
And last, but not least, probably the most famous thing in this museum: Emanuel Leutze's "Washington Crossing the Delaware," 1851, with a couple of real-live people thrown in for scale. (This thing's huge.)***
Having museumed ourselves out, for the time being, we hopped in a cab to Brooklyn and to dinner at Fette Sau with some Zürich friends who were also in NYC at the time. And while Fette Sau's BBQ is, in fact, very good, I don't think it lived up to the hype--but that could also be because you can't reserve there, and so just have to wait in line and hope that you can find enough empty spots together to seat your whole group, all of which I'm too old (and, let's face it, far too impatient) for anymore. (I've been to exactly one restaurant in my life where it's been worth such a wait, and this wasn't it.) Although, to be fair, we did end up having a wonderful evening with lovely friends and some really outstanding BBQ beans (lovely and creamy, not too sweet, and they put the burnt ends in!!).
Also on our tray: house-made pickles; a mustard-based potato salad (far superior to mayonnaise, always); broccoli; a pretty decent white sauerkraut; brisket; ribs; pulled pork; and smoked sausage. (The only meat item I liked better than what Mike can produce at home was the brisket, and I think that's only because I liked their seasoning a little better. My man can cook.)
Well. At this point in time, any sane and/or economical person would have easily concluded a post on three days' worth of activities, but not yours truly. Oh no. Impossible.**** And so, for now, I will draw New York City to a close, but up next is part 2: an utterly excessive food tour in Queens; miscellaneous sites around the city; still more food; and--shockingly--more of the Met. Coming soon.
*I maintain, at all times, a rotating "Top-Three-to-Top-Five Favorite Movies" list in my brain. Guaranteed to be found on that list, always, are Talledega Nights, Dumb & Dumber, and--as is now patently obvious--Ghostbusters. The original, of course, although that should go without saying.
**We were not. We're just die-hard fans of The Office.
***Does anyone else here feel like maybe the Met should be paying me some sort of marketing commission? Or at least offer me free tickets the next time I'm in town? I'm doing a great job of talking them up...
****Yet another confession: once I figured out this was going to be two separate posts, I added more. I just can't help myself.
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