Owner: Walking Off the Big Apple URL:http://www.walkingoffthebigapple.com Join Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 18:02:22 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: Walking Off the Big Apple is a walking guide to daily life and culture in New York City with commentary on art, New Yorkers, neighborhoods, cuisine, architecture, and culture.
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Earning Her Wrinkles: Rosalind Solomon at Silverstein Photography (A Review) 2008-03-06 12:18:00 Looking at photographer Rosalind Solomon's well-composed black-and-white self-portraits – the wrinkles around the mouth, her puffed eyes, the wild gray hair, ample sagging breasts, and the age spots that she presents to the world, I thought anyone mired in our youth-obsessed culture needs to visit this solo exhibit at Silverstein Photography in Chelsea and ask themselves honestly if they would have the guts to pull off anything as real as this body of work.Two fingers on my mouth, one of several imposing self-portraits dating from Solomon's residency at the Macdowell Colony in 2002, says several things. Raising her fingers to cover her mouth and staring straight into the camera, she shows us the gesture of silence. Be quiet. Don't speak. Two fingers on the mouth can also be a thinking p Read more:Earning
University Place: Pedestrian, Yes, But in a Good Way (A Photo Essay) 2008-03-05 15:42:00 University Place
, a relatively short street in lower Manhattan, links Washington Square Park to the south with Union Square to the north. A thoroughfare frequented by NYU students, neighborhood residents, and office workers, the street enjoys a democratic mix of bars, coffee shops, diners, restaurants, boutiques, laundries, shoe repair shops, florists, and even a bowling alley. A few haunts of old New York can be found along in here - the Knickerbocker Bar & Grill, a favorite of the late Brooke Astor, and Patsy's, one of Frank Sinatra's preferred stops for pizza pie. Residents try to keep straight three similarly-sounding places - Café Spice, Space Market, and Spice.University Place is pedestrian in both senses - it's an ordinary street, nothing to write home about, but it's also a g Read more:Pedestrian
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Letter to the Editor - Greetings from the Ormskirk Chapter 2008-03-05 08:39:00 "Hi.I, too, have been bestowed an unexpected (and slightly alarming) honour by the SFSF gents; presidency of the local chapter, in my case Ormskirk, a market/university town near Liverpool.I found your great site via The Flâneur and am enjoying exploring it.You might enjoy mine: an account of a long, episodic walk I'm doing between two piers and back to my place of birth: 'd like to install a link to yours if that's OK?All the best,Roy"Editor
's Note: As Chair of the New York branch, I heartily welcome Roy to La Société des Flâneurs Sans Frontières (SFSF). As Roy indicates, the hono(u)r is thrust upon us by somewhat mysterious gentlemen who dwell within the higher strata of the organization. Part Dan Brown, part La Rochefoucauld, our benefactors uphold the best of the flâneur traditio Read more:Chapter
, Greetings
, Letter
Walking News: British Man Gives Up Trek to India Because He Couldn't Speak French, and Other Stories 2008-03-04 10:59:00 For my irregularly-scheduled roundup of walking headlines, I would like to share these choice stories from the global highways and byways:• Try this, sir: "J'ai faim." A British
man planned to walk to India
with no money to prove a point, but he gave up in Calais because he couldn't speak French
. See UPI story here.• Hey, man, I own this shopping mall. Mall walkers at Jefferson Valley Mall became upset when the mall managers changed the opening times and shut off the mall's second floor. See In Curbing Walking
Sprees, a Mall Sets Off Protests by Kate Stone Lombardi, NY Times. March 2, 2008.• Be careful walking down an unfamiliar hill in the dark. "How a walk in the dark changed my life" by Geoff Strong from the February 20, 2008 edition of The Age in Melbourne, Australia is a chillin Read more:Stories
Coloring in the Lines: Color Chart at MoMA 2008-03-04 07:53:00 After visiting Design and the Elastic Mind at MoMA last week, I wandered into ColorChart
: Reinventing Color, 1950 to Today in the nearby galleries on the sixth floor. The exhibit features 44 contemporary artists who've explored the possibilities of color as a readily-available commercial product. The earliest work, Marcel Duchamp's painting, Tu m' from 1918, presents a cascading spray of color samples and establishes the thesis sentence for the exhibit.Artists include Robert Rauschenberg, riffing on Duchamp and using paint right out of the can, Dan Flavin, the master of the florescent tube, and Sherrie Levine, borrowing LeCorbusier's palette in the same way she borrows everything. After seeing Jasper Johns: Gray at the Met, I found it humorous to come across a series of his numbers in liv Read more:Coloring
, Lines
Monday Roundup: Chelsea Planning Tip, Whitney Biennial, Green Peppercorn Sauce, and Other Items 2008-03-03 12:18:00 Visiting Chelsea
. Maybe the following quick Descent Into Art Hell in Chelsea has happened to others: I hate when I'm in Chelsea and I've just realized I wanted to visit a particular gallery but it's four streets back now and I walked right past it earlier and I don't feel like trying to find the stupid door on the self-important gallery anymore and I hate looking at art in this part of the neighborhood in the first place where there are hardly any trees and curse the person that thought warehouses and factories for baking cookies were good places to view art and where there's no place to sit down and it's kinda far from the subway and I don't feel like going back there now. I'm going home.Golly. WOTBA needs some HELP. Look at that little girl on the horse. She looks like she's spoiled and Read more:Green
, Items
, Monday
, Whitney
We're Not All Like Dubya: A NY Map for Texas Independence Day 2008-03-02 07:59:00 Not all Texans are like the former governor of Texas
who currently serves as President of the United States (324 days left, and counting). I have to explain this difference when I meet some New Yorkers and they find out where I'm from. I, for one, prefer to think that the Texas Man, if we're talking gender, is better represented by Robert Rauschenberg, Freddy Fender, Terry Allen, Luis Jimenez, Tommy Lee Jones, Willie Nelson, Bill Moyers, Buddy Holly, Kinky Friedman, Tommy Tune, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Rip Torn, and Alvin Ailey than by Dubya
. Call it Texas pride. I, as Texas Woman, like to think that I follow in the kick-ass traditions of Ann Richards, Barbara Jordan and Molly Ivins, women who made some horse sense of politics.Today is March 2, Texas Independence
Day, the day to commemorate the
Letter to the Editor: The Not-So-Pink Building 2008-03-01 05:48:00 "I tried to leave a comment on your blog, but I'm not so good at figuring out how to do that.Anyway, I just wanted to say that your article on the pink building inspired me to go out yesterday in the cold and see it for myself. It doesn't look as pink or intrusive as I thought it would. In fact, it blends in surprisingly well with the neighborhood, except for its height, of course. It is rather interesting actually. Certainly makes a statement of some sort. There are quite a few other pinkish colored buildings around, which I never would have noticed if I hadn't been put in a "pink frame of mind." I'll attach my photo, which I think renders the color much like I saw it yesterday.Thanks for the great blog. I have discovered new places because of it."Stephanie LukePhoto of Julian Schnabel's Read more:Building
, Editor
, Letter
Feed Your Head: Design and the Elastic Mind at MoMA (A Review) 2008-02-29 19:15:00 A few months ago, when I read that a certain type of printer was capable of producing three-dimensional objects, I had a hard time getting my head around the idea that I could print out a lost toothbrush. I completely forgot about the invention until I came across some of the printed objects in MoMA's new head-blowing exhibit, Design and the Elastic Mind. Now that I better understand the technology that allows me to print out an attractive bowl for the table - it involves resin and layers, I think I want a 3D printer in the worst way.The exhibit at MoMA, some of it interactive, does toy a bit with this sort of high-tech consumer fetishism, but its deeper motive is to explain the more profound intersection of design and science through the lens of "elasticity." Defined in the exhibit as "th
Roundup: The Plaza Hotel, Sondheim's Seurat, the Texas Primary, and the Upcoming Gelato Showdown in the Village 2008-02-27 09:50:00 As I gather my thoughts about the Chichester Festival Theatre's entertaining production of Macbeth that I saw last night at BAM, I would like to pass on a few updates and news items:• I've now assembled all the posts from The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect self-guided walk onto new pages and placed them under the list of walks on the site's sidebar. I've added a small slideshow of more images of the buildings.• The Plaza Hotel
reopens Saturday, March 1, and I look forward to visiting. I've been meaning to comment on the story, "It's Lonely at the Plaza Hotel," by Christine Haughney from the February 17, 2008 edition of The New York Times. Apparently, the new condo owners are lonesome, as not everyone can afford a place in their legendary hotel. The story quotes one woman who told Read more:Gelato
, Primary
, Showdown
, Texas
, Upcoming
, Village
Jasper Johns: On the Cold Gray Stones (A Review) 2008-02-25 09:32:00 “Break, break, break,On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!And I would that my tongue could utterThe thoughts that arise in me.” - Alfred, Lord Tennyson"JasperJohns
, the seafaring stranger," I thought. The sea kept sweeping through the galleries during my visit to Jasper Johns: Gray at the Met - images of a drowning poet, symbolized by Periscope (Hart Crane), Tennyson, the Poet Laureate who lived on the Isle of Wight, and the bridges, evoked by the Catenary series, leading voyagers to the edge of the sea. Johns has lived on many islands - Manhattan, the island, Edisto, the haunted sea island off the South Carolina shore, and the island of St. Martin, one of Johns' homes. Even circumstances of Johns' friends bring to mind the sea - Bob Rauschenberg, a child of Port Arthur, Texas, on the Gulf, Read more:Stones
More Scenes From the Snowstorm: Central Park, February 23, 2008 (A Slideshow) 2008-02-23 14:03:00 The Jasper Johns exhibit took me to the Metropolitan Museum of Art this afternoon, but the snow took me to Central
Park. After looking at all of Johns' gray artworks inside the museum, I decided to take a stroll and surround myself with the bright white of the fallen snow. At some point, I wandered into a wild...dare, I say, mad?...tea party, as you will see. Maybe I just fell into a rabbit hole.
Read more:Central Park
, February
, Slideshow
"Things the Mind Already Knows:" The Drawings of Jasper Johns (A Review) 2008-02-21 13:36:00 Forty of JasperJohns
' drawings of the last ten years, currently on exhibit at Matthew Marks (522 W. 22 St.) in Chelsea, recommend themselves on so many levels that it's hard to know where to begin. I was struck not just by his continuing obsession with the images he's made famous over the years but by his obvious love for drawing and drawing materials. He's said this before, but it's clear he loves seeing how his targets, flags, numbers, etc. change from one medium to the next, how they emerge so differently on various material surfaces. He makes them all look new.As much as I like looking at Johns' canvases, I love seeing these images played out on paper, created with all sorts of combinations of ink, acrylic, pencil, graphite, watercolor, etc. Artists with a large body of drawings gain
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The Walk, and a Map 2008-02-21 07:07:00 Visiting the four major building projects of architect Raymond
Hood - the Daily News Building, the Radiator Building, Rockefeller Center, and the McGraw-Hill building, constitutes a pleasurable midtown stroll of approximately 2.5 miles. I'd throw in another mile for wandering around Rockefeller Center.I haven't included Hood' earliest project here, the renovation of the small building on Bleecker Street, on this map, because after repeated alterations throughout several decades, the building is undistinguished. On the other hand, I enjoy shopping at the new art supply store that occupies the space (the other storefront occupant is the ubiquitous Duane Reade).The walk presents opportunities to explore other landmarks along the way, including Grand Central Station and the New York Public Lib Read more:Architect
"Mrs. Clinton, of New York" 2008-02-20 08:38:00 The august New York
Times, keeping to its long tradition of referring to news subjects by the titles "Mr." and "Mrs.," refers to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton
as "Mrs. Clinton, of New York." As I was reading this morning's NYT front page account of Senator Barack Obama's impressive margin of victory over Senator Clinton in yesterday's Wisconsin primary and Hawaii caucuses, I thought, "Wow. "Mrs. Clinton, of New York. - That's her problem right there."The Times keeps the style of Mrs. consistent, as far as I know, throughout the paper. Scanning other political stories of the day, I can read, for example, the account of Mrs. McCain's smackdown of Mrs. Obama. I'm still a little shocked, however, when I read the title Mrs., especially before the name of a woman who, though married, exercises
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: Final Thoughts 2008-02-19 13:59:00 Raymond Hood did not live to see the completion of the vast Rockefeller Center complex. An untimely death in 1934 at the age of 53, he had suffered from rheumatoid arthritis. His architecture practice had already slowed down, largely due to the economic effects of the Great Depression. He worked on a project to house the poor, but the finances for the project didn't materialize. More shocking, he received a letter threatening to kidnap his children. Gravely concerned, especially at the time of the Lindbergh tragedy when others received such threats, Hood sent his family to Bermuda and followed them a short time later. Upon hearing the news that the perpetrator had been caught, he collapsed, and after returning to his home in Stamford, Connecticut, he never regained full health.Rockefeller Read more:Architect
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The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: Rockefeller Center 2008-02-19 09:27:00 Walking the long cool dimly-lit black and gold power corridors of the GE building in RockefellerCenter
, beginning my journey at the west entrance on the Avenue of the Americas and moving toward the east, I feel like I've fallen into a liminal pre-death dream state, a wandering soul pushed toward the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. The cool black hallways and the low lighting, the main source of which are illuminated numbers, discourage sounds above a whisper. "Shhhh....that's NBC over there...and look!, over there - if you've been good in your mortal life, you may ascend to the Rainbow Room." The darkness continues unabated, enveloping the visitor with the signifiers of a higher power. This must be the work of a medieval-loving man of great largesse, I think, someone who has in Read more:Architect
, Raymond
FOCUS on POTUS: The Two Washingtons of the Washington Square Arch 2008-02-18 10:33:00 Officially, it's still called Washington
's Birthday, though President's Day has become the accepted name, mostly as a way to include President Lincoln.The day's meaning usually signifies a break from work or school or the arrival of a sale. In the United States Senate, however, there's at least one formality. One senator is selected to read Washington's Farewell Address. The practice began in 1862 as a way to cope with the dark days of the Civil War.This morning I visited the statues of the two Washingtons - the military George and the civilian man of peace that grace the north side of the Washington Square
Arch in Washington Square Park. Sadly, in the ever increasing disruption caused by the renovation of the park, the arch itself is now inaccessible behind a metal fence.The arch served t
Luc Tuymans' Wonderful World of Painting (A Review) 2008-02-17 10:36:00 Belgian-born artist Luc Tuymans (b. 1958) brings his painterly virtuosity to the kingdom of the mouse in his new solo exhibit, Forever, The Management of Magic, at David Zwirner. The image fragments of Walt Disney's electric magic empire, painted here like faded film stock in the blues and mauves of cotton candy, conjure a dusty collection of peripheral memorabilia. With these eight wonderful paintings and a side room of gouache drawings, Tuymans opens up a service entrance to the back lot of utopia. No mice here, this is Walt, the utopian urban planner, the maestro of the energy-draining world of tomorrow, the extravagant Robert Moses with electric turtles. Pay no attention to that man that Tuymans has almost cropped out of the painting.Wonderland, one of the two largest paintings (at 138 Read more:Painting
, Wonderful
, World
Walking News Week in Review: The Sustainable Flâneur and Other Top Stories 2008-02-15 09:55:00 Strolling Device Converts to Electricity and Thusly Saves the Planet from Environmental Destruction (Discovery News)Mechanical engineers have found that a wearable knee device can turn any flâneur into a self-sustained power house, charging up our cell phone or whatever powered device we may be carrying in our Vuitton bag. So great! And we thought we were only good for drinking absinthe in cafés.The Mayor of London Wants People Out Cycling and Walking
(The City of London)Ken Livington, the Mayor of London, announced plans to invest 500 million pounds in new expenditures to get folks in London out of their motor vehicles and into the open air. The pedestrian plans call for better signage to help navigate pedestrians from one place to another.A Guy Who Calls Himself Fellow Human Walks and Read more:Stories
, Sustainable
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The McGraw-Hill Building 2008-02-15 07:51:00 The McGraw
-Hill Building
at 330 West 42nd Street, built in 1930, is unusually blue-green. In fact, architect Raymond
Hood's use of glazed terra cotta tiles in shades of blue-green constitutes one of the most ambitious applications of this material in the history of architecture.A splendid example of the streamlined moderne style, the McGraw-Hill Building, built on a steel frame skeleton, sports plenty of light along its striped exterior and linear decorative stripes throughout the lobby.Many architecture historians consider the McGraw-Hill building to embody the transition from Art Deco to the International Style largely due to its lack of ornamentation. Hood was a follower of the modernist master Le Corbusier, especially in his advocacy of a city of towers, and, certainly this building Read more:Architect
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The News Building 2008-02-14 10:23:00 In 1919 Chicago Tribune co-publishers Joseph Medill Patterson and Robert R. McCormick couldn't agree over the content of the newspaper, so they decided Patterson should start a different newspaper in New York. Inspired by the popularity of a London tabloid, The Daily News emphasized photography, celebrity news, and a focus on city politics. New York commuters loved the paper because it was easy to hold and read on a subway.John Mead Howells and Raymond
Hood, the architects of the Chicago Tribune building, were tapped to build the new building for The Daily News. Patterson initially wanted a large enough facility to hold the paper's staff and printing facility, but Hood talked him into the lucrative proposition of building an office tower on top. It hadn't occurred to Patterson that he coul Read more:Architect
, Building
Walking Off Tribeca and Remembering Mostly Lunch 2008-03-11 15:50:00 When I returned from my long walk and lunch in Tribeca
today, I felt over-stimulated but more tired than usual. Traveling can be both stimulating and exhausting at the same time. Beyond the physical demands of exploration, an encounter with new sources of stimuli can induce mental fatigue. Walking
around unfamiliar streets takes more work than the ones you already know.Some of my haphazard impressions of the day in Tribeca:enjoying the facades of the buildings along White Street;the glimpses of the Hudson River and all that blue;Duane Street and its gentle and elegant restraint;the jarring presence of neo-Brutalist towers juxtaposed with more human scale nineteenth-century buildings;a painter putting the finishing touches on a propped-open door of Robert De Niro's not-yet-open Greenwich H Read more:Lunch
, Remembering
Walking Off Tribeca: Starting at Square One 2008-03-10 16:36:00 The Square
Diner at the corner of Leonard and Varick in Tribeca
smells of strong coffee and a hot griddle full of pancakes. Housed in one of the last authentic rail cars, with a ceiling of handsome wood paneling and a row of wide sliding windows facing the street, the diner is the kind of place you trust for breakfast and where catsup is comfortably within reach.This morning, after I sat down in a booth in the Square Diner, I ordered the big breakfast to which many of us have grown accustomed - two eggs, bacon, toast, New York-style breakfast potatoes, and lots of coffee. The meal didn't disappoint, and while drinking the last cup of coffee I turned to look out the window to look at what was happening on the street.Across the street I could see a little sliver of a park with a handful of t Read more:Walking
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