Urban Agenda New York City

The Empire State Building

Steals the Show Since it opened in 1931, the building has been romanticized in almost every medium. {also featuring}

Around the Algonquin with Mrs. Parker and Mr. Benchley Village People: The East Village | Literary Bloomings Libraries in New York City | Invitation to the Dance Food for Lovers | Q&A with Dennis Basso

$5.99 urbanagendamagazine.com

Furniture • Accessories • Lighting • Rugs • Window 126 Village Blvd. • Princeton, NJ 08540 • 609-987-2600

V

isit us to see why over 70% of our business comes from referrals…neighbors, friends, relatives, colleagues. We think you will love us too!

Why? We love what we do… we love beautiful things and we love our clients. We are a locally owned independent furniture and design store. At Luxe Home Company, we have worked hard to put together a unique and beautiful mix of furniture, accessories, and rugs in our store.

Each and every one in our store plays a vital role selecting, mixing, and merchandising our store and we are really proud of it. We love to mix modern with traditional, rustic and refined, warm and cool tones…

We don’t believe your home needs follow some corporate plan or be out of a page from a catalog. We believe you deserve to experience more than manufacturer’s national best sellers list of products.

If you are bored by seeing the same items at all the national chains and big box stores, then you should visit us.

We take our inspiration from you and our lifelong love of design. Our clients offer us some of our best inspirations… some of you are passionate about fashion and travelling, others are inspired by timeless classics, and some are focused on being comfortable and cozy at home. We believe that you should not have to settle with your home. At Luxe Home Company, we think your home is personal… so everything we do is to offer you choices and to guide you with professional design advice.

We have partnered with the finest manufacturers that offer great product and custom options. Made in America is important to us. We have found many great craftsmen and small workshops that still make beautiful product by hand.

Visit us…take your time, soak in the inspirations. Let us help you in our store or in your own home. We look forward to seeing you!

www.luxehomecompany.com

Treatments • Interior Design www.luxehomecompany.com

contributors anne levin

jessica gross

Jessica Gross is a writer based in New York City. She’s contributed to The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review Daily, and The Atlantic Cities, among other places.

linda arntzenius

Contributing writer and Urban Agenda story editor Linda Arntzenius is also an oral historian, award-winning poet, and the author of a pictorial history, Images of America: Institute for Advanced Study. She regularly negotiates the NJ Transit system for visits to favorite museums, galleries, and midtown Manhattan muncheries, or simply to capture the revitalizing energy that is New York City.

stuart mitchner

Born in Kansas, raised in Indiana, a graduate of Indiana University, Stuart worked at the Eighth Street Bookshop in Greenwich Village, as a college rep for W.W. Norton, hitchhiked to India and Nepal and back for a year and a half, which he wrote about while doing graduate work at Rutgers; the book was Indian Action, published by Little Brown, which also published his novel, Rosamund’s Vision.

He’s published poetry, fiction, essays in Poetry, Partisan Review, Raritan, and the Village Voice.

Anne Levin writes about arts, culture, and other topics for Princeton Magazine.

She also contributes regularly to WHERE GuestBook New York, Playbill, and other publications. She worked as Associate Editor at Cue Magazine for seven years before it merged with New York Magazine.

paul grimes

ellen gilbert

Contributing editor Ellen Gilbert is a New York City native. She has a doctorate in library science from Columbia University, and has published books and articles on American publishing history, librarianship, and intellectual freedom.

2

URBAN AGENDA New York City

dilshanie perera

Freelance writer and aspiring anthropologist Dilshanie Perera is a native of Princeton who has lived in Chicago, Manhattan, and Sri Lanka. Now a Brooklyn resident, Dilshanie studies cities, both colonial and contemporary. While riding the subway, she often thinks about writing a book of short stories.

F E B RUARY/ MARC H 201 3

Paul Grimes says that food styling is about storytelling (“you eat with your eyes first”) and he has been creating beautiful “stories” in cookbooks, magazines, advertising, and television for over 20 years. A former food editor and senior stylist at Gourmet magazine, Paul’s experiences include a stint as an assistant to Julia Child’s longtime-collaborator, the late Simone “Simca” Beck.

A&D BUILDING New York’s Ultimate Design Resource

ARCHITECTS & DESIGNERS BUILDING Showrooms include: Allmilmo NY Alno USA Artistic Tile B&B Italia Bilotta Kitchens

Brown Jordan Carlisle Wide Plank Floors Cavendish Grey Clive Christian NY Davis & Warshow Dedon Edward Fields Carpet

150 East 58th Street New York 212 644 2766

WALK RIGHT IN M-F 9-5 Eggersmann Kitchens Exquisite Surfaces Fantini USA GE Monogram Hastings Tile & Bath Holly Hunt NY Innovative Audio Video

Listone Giordano Wood Floors Lualdi Doors Miele Paris Ceramics Poggenpohl Poliform SieMatic

adbuilding.com

Smeg USA Snaidero USA St. Charles Sub-Zero | Wolf Valli & Valli USA Varenna by Poliform Wood-Mode | ACK

ART SCENE

The Empire State Building Steals the Show

by Lin da arn tzen iu s

8

Village People by diLsH a n ie P erera

14

Q&A with Dennis Basso 20

Around the Algonquin With Mrs. Parker and Mr. B enchley by st ua rt MitcHn er

28

Literary Bloomings

by J essica GrOss

34

Libraries in New York City by eLLen GiLb ert

38

Invitation to the Dance by an n e Levin

44

Food for Lovers

by Pau L GriM es

52

Hand- C rafted C hocolates 24 How to Secure Free Tickets to Your Favorite Live TV S hows 50

4

URBAN AGENDA New York City

F E B RUARY/ MARC H 201 3

Pour Femme s Vacan c e s 26, 4 2 C alen d a r 46

february/march 2013

“Dance at Bougival” Pierre-Auguste Renoir Oil on canvas, 1883

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Lynn Adams Smith

Gloria Nilson REALTORS®, Real Living Celebrates One Billion Dollar Sales Mark Gloria Nilson REALTORS , Real Living, including RLS Realtors, announces they have reached a signicant achievement by closing more than one billion dollars in sales volume for 2012. This milestone reects both the hard work of the dedicated sales professionals at Gloria Nilson and the continuous upward trend of the housing market. ®

“Our commitment has always been to our clients and customers and about having the best team of sales associates in the industry and this remarkable accomplishment exists because of their dedication,” said Dick Schlott, owner of Gloria Nilson REALTORS. “We are so proud to have reached this one billion dollar milestone and are excited for continued growth in the New Year.”

“At Gloria Nilson REALTORS, our philosophy - through our Premier Service - is a way of doing business that sets us apart from our competitors while giving our clients a powerful advantage in the marketplace,” said Pat Bell, President of Gloria Nilson REALTORS.” Gloria Nilson REALTORS , Real Living, owned by Dick Schlott, has serviced the most discerning buyers and sellers of residential real estate in New Jersey for more than 30 years with 19 ofces and more than 700 sales associates throughout the state.

Also operating as RLS REALTORS®, Real Living®, a Real Living franchise owned by Berkshire Hathaway Homeservices, Gloria Nilson REALTORS and its afliates have long served as one of the Garden State’s preeminent real estate rms. Our experienced sales professionals are experts in their markets, and are committed to uncompromising customer service. ®

My REALTOR ? Gloria Nilson, Real Living of course. ®

®

glorianilson.com l i il

URBAN AGENDA New York City

ART DIRECTOR Jeffrey Edward Tryon GRAPHIC DESIGNER Matthew DiFalco CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Linda Arntzenius Stuart Mitchner Ellen Gilbert Anne Levin Dilshanie Perera Jessica Gross Paul Grimes Gina Hookey Taylor Smith ADVERTISING DIRECTOR Robin Broomer ACCOUNT MANAGERS Lindsey Melenick Bozena Bannett Sophia Kokkinos Kristin McGeeney ADVERTISING ASSISTANTS Jennifer Covill Mollie Morgan OPERATIONS MANAGER Melissa Bilyeu URBAN AGENDA: NEW YORK CITY Witherspoon Media Group 305 Witherspoon Street Princeton, NJ 08542 P: 609.924.5400 F: 609.924.8818 urbanagendamagazine.com Advertising opportunities: 609.924.5400 Media Kit available on urbanagendamagazine.com Subscription information: 609.924.5400 Editorial suggestions: editor@witherspoonmediagroup.com

urban agenda: New york city is published 6 times a year with a circulation of 50,000. all rights reserved. Nothing herein may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission of the publisher. To purchase PDf files or reprints, please call 609.924.5400 or e-mail melissa.bilyeu@witherspoonmediagroup.com.

© Gloria Nilson, REALTORS®. Independently owned and operated rms.

6

CREATIVE DIRECTOR Jorge Naranjo

f e b ruary/marc h 201 3

ART SCENE

The Empire State Building

Steals the Show {By LIndA ArnTzEnIuS}

In fiction and on film, this storied icon of twentieth-century modernity and American ingenuity—with its unparalleled 360 degree views of Manhattan from almost a quarter of a mile up in the air—has been romanticised as a place for lovers meeting. In this 80th anniversary year of King Kong, we focus on some of the building’s movie appearances.

8

URBAN AGENDA New York City

F E B RUARY/ MARC H 201 3

urban books/movies

H.G.

Wells in his 1933 science fiction The Shape of Things to Come imagined it “the last of the ancient skyscrapers,” being demolished in 2106. David Macaulay had it sold to a Middle Eastern billionaire, taken down piece by piece, and transported to Saudi Arabia in his 1980 book Unbuilding. At the end of Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach, the peach drops onto the lightning rod atop the building. Lucy and Ethel pretended to be Martians there and Tom chased Jerry in Mouse in Manhattan.

While it has had its fair share of horror and destruction as in disaster films such as The Day After Tomorrow, the majority of films that reference the building, are on the lighter side. Of the 94 listed on the Empire State Building (ESB) website (only a fraction of the estimated 250 that use the building either in a scene or as a place-setting opening shot as in West Side Story), more than half are romantic comedies.

romantic encounters

budding romance and follows this exchange of looks as if watching a tennis match.

On the day of their rendezvous, Terry, in her haste, is struck by a car, gravely injured and rushed to hospital. Nick, knowing nothing of the accident, waits for her until midnight before concluding that she has chosen not to come. Fate conspires to keep them apart until the very end when the star-crossed lovers fall into each others arms. Cue tears and handkerchiefs.

The American Film Institute ranks An Affair to Remember fifth on its list of America’s Greatest Love Stories. It inspired the ending of Nora Ephron’s 1993 romantic comedy Sleepless in Seattle with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, which is an homage of sorts with references and clips, even the theme song, throughout. This time, the planned get-together on the observation deck takes place, after a few missteps, of course. Phew!

Sleepless in Seattle is not the only film to take up the idea of a rendezvous atop the Empire State Building. An Affair to Remember inspired the Bollywood films Bheegi Raat (1965) and Mann (1999).

In 1994, Warren Beatty and his wife Annette Bening starred in the remake of Love Affair (which also had Katherine Hepburn in her final screen role).

One of the first, Manhattan Tower (1932) brings together an engineer and a secretary who work there. Perhaps it was inevitable given that the building’s two public observation decks (86th and 102nd floors) became popular meeting spots.

According to The Empire State Building: The Making of a Landmark by John Tauranac (Scribner, New York, 1995), The Jersey City Journal reported the first marriage there in April 1932.

The couple had chosen it, they said, because it was “the nearest place to heaven they could find.” In December 1935, The Brooklyn Eagle described a young woman pacing restlessly up and down the 86th floor promenade. Her story? She had met a young man there the year before and they had promised to meet again that day. He failed to keep his promise.

Clearly, the stuff of romance. And movie-makers paid attention.

Both story and engaging quote made their way into the 1957 film An Affair to Remember, a remake of the 1939 Love Affair starring Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer. As in real life, the promised movie rendezvous never happened. But unlike the young woman in the newspaper story, the fate of the missing lover is supplied by fiction.

EMpiRE stAtE BUilding UndER ConstRUCtion, 1931. WikiMEdiA CoMMons

an affair to remember An Affair to Remember starred Cary Grant at his sophisticated best as playboy Nick Ferrante traveling by transatlantic ocean liner en route from Europe to New York to marry his heiress fiancée.

It’s a marriage of financial convenience. Aboard ship he meets nightclub singer Terry McKay, played by Deborah Kerr, returning to marry her partner of five years, the man who has promised to take her away from the nightclub world and make her his wife.

After falling in love, they promise to extricate themselves from their situations and meet in six months time at 5 p.m. at the top of the Empire State Building, “the nearest thing to heaven we have in New York,” says Kerr’s character.

I remember seeing An Affair to Remember as a child (my mum was a great fan of the Scottish actress) and looked forward to seeing it again in preparation for this article. What I knew of the story seemed irresistibly romantic. But what was romantic back in the 1950s is laughable today. Relationships between men and women have, thank goodness, come a long way. The film reveals just how much attitudes to women have changed (and women’s expectations too). Still, the chemistry between the fifty-something Grant and the 31-year old Kerr yields amusing and tender moments as when the ship is about to dock in port and they’ve separated in order to meet their respective partners. Wordlessly, with a raised eyebrow here and a frown there, Grant conveys disdain for Kerr’s man. Kerr provides the same in response to Grant’s posturing heiress. The on-board crowd between them has observed their F E B RUARY/ MARC H 201 3

The ESB got its own biography, The Empire State Building: The Making of a Landmark written by John Tauranac, in 1995. Annie (Ryan) and Sam (Tom Hanks) atop the Empire State Building in Sleepless in Seattle.

URBAN AGENDA New York City

9

ART SCENE

IMAGES COURTESY OF WIKIMEDIA COMMONS. BRONZE MINIATURE COURTESY OF SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

1933 King Kong movie poster (below left). Scenes of Kong and Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) atop the Empire State Building from the same film (below right and bottom).

KING KONG: THE EIGHTH WONDER OF THE WORLD But without question, the film that is indelibly associated with the Empire State Building is the 1933 King Kong in which the title character, a gigantic ape, climbs to the top and is brought down by gunfire from a squadron of airplanes.

King Kong is so chockablock with cultural assumptions it wouldn’t be out of place on a college social anthropology syllabus, to be scrutinized for insights into 20th century American culture.

Although it is dated with respect to women and with gyrating black-skinned grass-skirted natives, the film remains a classic that is well worth watching. Its stop motion special effects broke new ground. It took a year to create scenes with the rabbit-fur-covered model of Kong. In 2004, the National Film Registry preserved the film in the Library of Congress.

In the story, an American film crew led by Carl Denham captures Kong and takes him to New York City to be exhibited as the “Eighth Wonder of the World: Kong the monstrous all powerful, neither beast nor man, something no white man has ever seen.”

In bringing together “the beast” and the skyscraper that had also been described as the “Eighth Wonder of the World,” King Kong unites two mythic fixations of American culture.

Denham sets out with gas bombs and enough explosives to blow up New York harbor. Reluctantly, he takes along Ann Darrow (played by Fay Wray) knowing that the public wants romance even though “women just can’t help being a bother, made that way I guess.”

The film sets up its beauty and the beast theme with a purported ancient Arabian proverb: “And lo, the beast looked upon the face of beauty. And it stayed its hand from killing. And from that day it was as one dead.”

King Kong is as much about the movie business as romance.

Darrow is a girl down on her luck, hungry and desperate for a job, even if it means a long sea voyage with a crew full of men to an unknown destination. Denham promises Darrow “money,

10

URBAN AGENDA New York City

adventure, and fame.” They set off in search of Skull Island in the Pacific Ocean where Denham has been told something strange is to be found. The something is Kong. Denham and his crew arrive as the natives are about to sacrifice one of their own to Kong.

On seeing Darrow, they decide upon the ‘golden woman’ as an alternative.

Making off with his screaming prize, Kong battles T-Rex, giant lizard and flying dinosaur. Momentarily safe atop a high cliff, he examines Darrow who has fainted in his grip. He gently peels off her clothing; nose twitching to take in her scent on his fingers.

Eventually trapped and put on display in New York, Kong is re-united with Darrow. Thinking her in danger again, he breaks his bonds and climbs the Empire State Building with her. His last act before being shot down is to find a safe spot for the woman who provoked his uncharacteristic gentleness. Hence the famous last line: “Oh no it wasn’t the airplanes, it was beauty killed the beast.”

F E B RUARY/ MARC H 201 3

New York Vertical (teNeues, New York, 2000), photographer Horst Hamann’s superlative guide to the city’s skyscrapers (below left). A worker bolts beams during construction (below left). Merian C. Cooper (below right).

MERIAN C. COOPER The man who conceived and created King Kong, the film’s director and producer Merian C. Cooper, was also the model for Denham.

A real-life Indiana Jones, Cooper traveled the world with his cinecamera in search of wildlife and exotic cultures for documentary dramas like Grass (1925) about a Persian tribe and Chang (1927) about a family in Thailand (then Siam).

From the window of his Manhattan office Cooper had watched the Empire State Building rise. In the tradition of Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1912 novel The Lost World (made into a silent film in 1925) and Tarzan-creator Edgar Rice Burroughs’ 1918 novel The Land that Time Forgot, Kong’s story takes place in a remote jungle where prehistoric animals have survived into modern times.

Cooper was a bomber pilot in World War I and took every opportunity to put airplanes into his films, bringing together dance and aviation in the astonishing Flying Down to Rio (1933).

In King Kong, Cooper is at the controls of the bi-plane that shoots Kong down.

The most memorable of King Kong remakes are the 1976 version directed by Dino De Laurentiis in which the World Trade Center replaces the Empire State Building, and the 2005 version directed

by New Zealander Peter Jackson of Lord of the Rings fame.

Jackson’s version runs over three hours and elicits sympathy for a solitary and lonely creature, the last of his kind. His Kong is less anthropomorphic than in the 1933 original, walking on all fours and beating his chest with his palms rather than clenched fists.

WHAT IS “THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING?” Right from the start, New Yorkers marveled at the building’s vital statistics: more than 100 floors; 6,500 windows; 73 elevators; 1,860 steps from street level to the 102nd floor; a footprint of 2 acres once occupied by the famed Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Today’s trivia

buffs will tell you that it even has its own zip code: 10118. And yet, it takes less than one minute by elevator to get to the 80th floor. The tradition of couples getting married on Valentine’s Day on top of the Empire State Building began in 1994 and Valentine’s Day is the only day of the year when weddings are allowed there.

Rising to 1454 feet (including spire with broadcasting antennas and lightning rod), the building beat the Chrysler Building and 40 Wall Street to become the tallest in the world, testament to the glories of steel and American ingenuity. The limestone clad structure went up quickly (15 months) and came in under budget at the start of the Great Depression. It cost $24.7 million (almost $373 million in today’s dollars) rather than the estimated $43 million. It was built by John Jacob Raskob creator and vice president of General Motors, in partnership with the founders of insurance company Empire State, Inc., which is how the building got its name. “The story goes that he took hold of a fat pencil, stood it upright on his desk and asked his architect, ‘Bill, how high can you build without its falling down?’” writes journalist Volker Skierka in his introduction to New York Vertical (te Neues, New York, 2000), photographer Horst Hamann’s superlative guide to the city’s skyscrapers. “Bill” was William Lamb of Shreve, Lamb & Harmon Associates and his design garnered the Architectural League’s Medal of Honor in 1931.

At the intersection of Fifth Avenue and West 34th Street, and designed in the Art Deco style, it was the tallest building in the world until the World Trade Center’s North Tower went up in 1972. After September 11, 2001, it became again the tallest building in New York City, although no longer in the world or in the United States.

For more films that feature the Empire State Building, visit: http://esbnyc.com/.

F E B RUARY/ MARC H 201 3

URBAN AGENDA New York City

11

Design ResouRce shop wheRe the top DesigneRs shop.

www.safaviehhome.com • 877.919.1010

FURNITURE • RUGS • ACCESSORIES • INTERIOR DESIGN 902 Broadway, NY | 212.477.1234 • Glen Cove, NY | 516.365.3800 • Livingston, NJ | 973.629.5800 • Stamford, CT | 203.327.4800 Hartsdale, NY | 914.681.6000 • Paramus, NJ | 201.291.0200 • Danbury, CT | 203.790.7200 RUGS ONLY: 153 Madison Ave, NY | 212.683.8399 • E. 59th St, NY | 212.888.0626 • OUTLETS: Port Washington, NY | 516.945.3868 • New Rochelle, NY | 914.355.5353

VILLAGE PEOPLE The neighborhood today is full of trendy restaurants, bars, boutiques, and a mixture of old apartments and shiny new condos. But in its pre-gentrification days, the East Village was the beating heart of the nation’s punk rock and art scene. Its pulsating, rhythmic, drug-fueled, rotten heart. New York never sounded or looked so good. {BY DILSHANIE PERERA}

(ABOVE): Poet Allen Ginsberg, photographed by Michiel Hendryckx. (RIGHT PAGE): “After Puno” by artist Jean Michel Basquiat.

14

URBAN AGENDA New York City

F E B RU ARY / MARC H 20 1 3

T

he East Village is roughly bounded by the Bowery and the East River running north-south, 14th and Houston Streets running east-west. It’s the stout, raggedy-edged square of land in Manhattan that birthed iconic movements in all genres: punk rock, Nuyorican poetry, graffiti-inspired painting and performance art. Big names emerged out of the clubs, cafés, and other haunts of the East Village glitterati: Patti Smith, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Talking Heads, Miguel Algarín, the Ramones, Blondie.

The 1970s and 80s dialed up the neighborhood’s creative fervor. CBGB opened its doors in 1973 and soon became a much-frequented venue on the Bowery. Though the acronym stands for “Country, Blue Grass, and Blues,” the club quickly gained its reputation as a haven for punk rock and New Wave bands. Later, in the 1980s, the underground hardcore scene flourished there. Imagine a smoke-filled room packed with young people outfitted in tight jeans and big permed hair, their writhing bodies contorted into a frenzy, screaming “Hey! Ho! Let’s Go!” right back at Joey Ramone. You could get right up to the stage, which was just about knee-height. You could see every bead of sweat illuminated. Punk rock time signatures are impossibly fast, the songs sometimes lasting for a tumultuous 30 seconds before coming to a screeching, triumphant end. There was nothing wholesome and nothing ironic about the music coming out of CBGB in those heady decades. Leave your Beatle boots at home.

While CBGB shuttered its doors after a dispute between the landlord and club owner Hilly Kristal in 2006, the designer clothing store carrying punk-inspired attire by John Varvatos that has taken its place retains some older fixtures. The shop has met criticism and praise, alternately decried for selling items at prices that would have equaled six month’s rent for the rockers of

16

URBAN AGENDA New York City

yesteryear, but also lauded for retaining some of the sensibility of the location’s storied past. The changes in the East Village are complicated: part of larger transformations afoot in New York, but also existing in stark contrast with the relatively recent past.

A feature film by Jody Savin and Randall Miller, due out in 2013 and titled CBGB, will detail some of the club’s iconic performances and personalities on the big screen.

The plug-it-in-and-light-it-up musical ethos of the 70s was prefigured by a couple of nearby East Village venues in the later 1960s. With Andy Warhol’s blessing, the Velvet Underground played regular gigs at the Electric Circus on St. Mark’s Place.

Nico’s vocals and the band’s jams combined with videos and photographs made by Warhol’s friends that were projected large on the wall behind the band. The entire experience was known as the “Exploding Plastic Inevitable.” Today, St. Mark’s Place between Second and Third Avenues retains some of the DIY feel of days past, with tattoo parlors, vintage clothing boutiques, head shops, and record stores lining both sides of the block, though those too are falling victim to the vagaries of increased rent and consumers buying online instead.

Travel east on St. Mark’s Place, and between First Avenue and Avenue A you’ll find a building with a red door and the gray and tan detailing of many East Village apartments. If its façade looks familiar, perhaps it’s because a black-and-white photograph of the building comprised the cover of Led Zeppelin’s 1975 album Physical Graffiti. The very same building featured prominently in the Rolling Stones’ music video “Waiting on a Friend,” released six years later. Apparently, even big-name bands from the UK are drawn to the neighborhood.

For walking tours that detail the history of the East Village’s punk, rock, and glam scenes from the 70s and 80s, visit rockjunket.com.

F E B RU ARY / MARC H 20 1 3

POETRY

It is fitting that punk got its start in a neighborhood that harbored and inspired numerous poets. Allen Ginsberg lived there. Punk personality Richard Hell still lives there, as does poet and author Hettie Jones. Auden used to go to church in the East Village. A recently-released downloadable walking tour begins there at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, which has been a site of continuous religious worship for over 350 years. The audio project is the brainchild of Pejk Malinovski, curator of a two-mile, 90-minute walking tour entitled “Passing Stranger” that features location-specific poems narrated by Jim Jarmusch and music by John Zorn. The tour is available as a free MP3 download at eastvillagepoetrywalk.org.

The same year CBGB opened also witnessed the founding of the Nuyorican Poets Café, which convened in the apartment of poet, writer, and professor, Miguel Algarín. Nuyorican is a portmanteau of “New York” and “Puerto Rican,” and the artists who contributed to the movement and who identify as Nuyorican brought the experiences of facing discrimination, violence, and racism into their work. Co-founder of the Poets Café, the poet and playwright Miguel Piñero, who did time in Riker’s Island and Sing Sing, began writing, publishing, and winning awards while serving out his sentence, with his early plays dealing with prison life.

After Piñero befriended Algarín, a Shakespeare expert and professor at Rutgers, they agreed that the East Village needed a venue for poets and artists to get together to showcase their work in an interactive way. By 1975, attendance at the Nuyorican Poets Café soon overflowed out of Algarín’s living room on Sixth Street, and the founders sought a more permanent location.

Today, the Nuyorican Poets Café is officially a non-profit organization and is still home to poetry slams, theater performances, spoken word acts, and other multimedia projects and is located on Third Street in the subsection of the East Village known as Alphabet City, between Avenues B and C. Visit nuyorican.org for upcoming events.

ART

(LEFT PAGE, CLOCKWISE): Vito Acconci’s photograph “Blindfolding catching

three stills”, façade of CBGB, Keith Haring’s wall mural “Crack Is Wack.”

(ABOVE): Blondie’s album cover “Heart Of Glass,” “Self-Portrait”

photograph by Chuck Close.

In recent years, the New Museum of Contemporary Art just south of Houston Street on the Bowery has hosted a number of exhibitions that focus on the work of area artists, past and present, assembling an archive of stories, photographs, paintings, sculptures, and oral histories dealing with the avant-garde of the time. The on-going project is called the Bowery Artist Tribute, and features people working in disparate fields like designer and architect Vito Acconci; painter Jean-Michel Basquiat; portraitist Chuck Close; photographer Barbara Ess, who created painterly images using a pinhole camera; Nan Goldin, whose color photographs were meant to startle and provoke; pop artist Keith Haring. And the list goes on. What brings these artists together was that they all lived at least briefly on or near the Bowery, a street that is Fourth Avenue’s alias as it cuts through the East Village and runs further south. For more information, or to contribute to the archive, visit boweryartisttribute.org.

While these musicians, poets, and artists were alternately friends, collaborators, lovers, and rivals, drawn to the East Village because of cheap rent, space to create and practice, and the proximity to venues to showcase one’s work, the neighborhood’s heyday of the various scenes was not without tragedy. Drug overdoses extinguished more than a few lives, abruptly terminating brilliant careers. AIDS was a killer in the 1980s. Brutal crackdowns on those deemed vagrants often ended in violence that was striated along racial and class lines. As rents increased in the 90s and 2000s, many who called the East Village home left for more affordable neighborhoods. The alleyway behind what used to be CBGB is now a hospitable refuge from the noise of the street, with a rotating cast of restaurants and boutiques lining the half-block. Standing there today, one has to try hard to conjure up a scene of chain-smoking New Wave enthusiasts arguing over which Blondie album is better. But it can be done. And if you’ve just listened to “Heart of Glass” on vinyl on your record player, then it’s pretty easy. U

F E B RU ARY / MARC H 20 1 3

URBAN AGENDA New York City

17

We understand the difference between insuring a house and a home.

Your home is more than a roof over your head. It’s a valuable asset that shelters you and your valued possessions. As your insurance advisor, we know you need an insurance company that understands the way you live. With more than 125 years of experience, a wellearned reputation for prompt and fair claim settlements, and special expertise in protecting fine homes and their contents, we know Chubb is as different from other insurance companies as a home is from a house. To see how we can create a personal insurance program from Chubb to meet your sophisticated needs, please call us.

930 Washington Street Hoboken, NJ 07030 201-659-2403 www.mullerinsurance.com Financial Strength and Exceptional Claim Service Homeowners | Auto | Yacht | Jewelry | Antiques | Collector Car Chubb refers to the insurers of the Chubb Group of Insurance Companies. Chubb Personal Insurance (CPI) is the personal lines property and casualty strategic business unit of Chubb & Son, a division of Federal Insurance Company, as manager and/or agent for the insurers of the Chubb Group of Insurance Companies. This literature is descriptive only. Not available in all states. Actual coverage is subject to the language of the policies as issued. Chubb, Box 1615, Warren, NJ 07061-1615. Š2010 Chubb & Son, a division of Federal Insurance Company. www.chubb.com/personal

PFV Dining Dest UANYC Half Page Page 1

18

URBAN AGENDA New York City

2/1/2013

2:10:24 PM

F E B RUARY/ MARC H 201 3

All eggs are not the same.

Our donor egg program has one of the highest success rates in the United States according to the Center for Disease Control (CDC).

Let us help you have a baby!

IVF New Jersey FertIlIty CeNter

800-IVFNJ-44

WWW.IVFNJ.com

Making little miracles come true since 1990.

New York city . Somerset . Short Hills . Hamilton . Freehold

QA DENNIS

BASSO

&

Dennis Basso is considered one of America’s premiere celebrity designers. He has dressed some of the world’s most glamorous

women such as Naomi Campbell, Nicole Kidman, Jada Pinkett Smith, Janet Jackson, Penelope Cruz, Renee Zellweger, Meryl Streep, and Catherine Zeta-Jones. His designs have been featured

on the cover of Women’s Wear Daily and on the pages of Vogue, Vanity Fair, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, Town & Country, and The New York Times Sunday Style section.

20

URBAN AGENDA New York City

FE B RU ARY / MARC H 20 1 3

In 2011 Dennis Basso created an exclusive collection of bridal designs for Kleinfeld Bridal in New York City and that is the focus of this Q&A. UA: UA: What What advice advice would would you you give give aa bride bride looking looking to to purchase purchase aa veil, veil, shoes, shoes, and and jewelry jewelry to to go go with with one one of of your your Kleinfeld Kleinfeld wedding wedding dresses? dresses?

DB: DB: II think think itit is is important important that that accessories accessories are are the the co-stars co-stars and and that that the the gown gown is is the the leading leading lady. lady. Everything Everything needs needs to to compliment compliment the the gown gown and and not not compete compete with with or or overwhelm overwhelm it. it.

UA: UA: What What should should aa bride bride select select first—her first—her dress, dress, venue venue or or wedding wedding cake? cake?

DB: DB: The The venue venue and and the the dress dress are are aa tie. tie. The The cake cake can can be be chosen chosen at at aa later later time. time.

UA: UA: What What isis the the difference difference between between designing designing an an evening evening gown gown and and aa wedding wedding dress? dress?

DB: DB: A A wedding wedding dress dress is is worn worn once once on on aa very very special special day. day. Simple Simple or or extremely extremely elaborate, elaborate, itit needs needs to to be be memorable. memorable.

UA: UA: Are Are classic classic wedding wedding dresses dresses aa bit bit boring boring or or wonderfully wonderfully timeless? timeless?

DB: DB: Classic Classic dresses dresses are are timeless timeless and and they they usually usually suit suit the the personality personality of of the the bride bride that that chooses chooses them. them. I’m I’m aa white white wedding wedding dress dress guy guy but but do, do, often, often, include include aa blush-pink blush-pink dress dress in in my my collection collection for for the the second-time second-time bride. bride.

UA: UA: Do Do you you have have aa favorite favorite bridal bridal look look from from history, history, today today or or otherwise? otherwise?

DB: DB: Grace Grace Kelly Kelly was was aa favorite favorite of of mine. mine. She She was was classic, classic, sophisticated sophisticated and and elegant. elegant. Her Her wedding wedding gown gown has has stood stood the the test test of of time. time.

UA: UA: What What trends trends are are you you seeing seeing or or anticipating anticipating in in bridal bridal fashion? fashion?

DB: DB: Long Long sleeves sleeves and and high high necks are necks are clearly clearly aa trend. trend. You You don't don't have have to to be be strapless strapless to to be be sexy. sexy.

UA: UA: What What isis your your favorite favorite venue venue for for aa classic classic New New York York City City wedding? wedding?

DB: DB: Where Where II had had my my own own wedding: wedding: the the Grand Grand Ballroom Ballroom at at the the Pierre Pierre Hotel.

Hotel.

UA: UA: What What new new projects projects are are on on the the horizon horizon for for you? you?

DB: DB: I’m I’m focusing focusing now now on developing on developing my my home home collection. collection. II love love entertaining, entertaining, so so anything anything for for home home decor decor is is very very special special to to me. me. UU

(TOP): (TOP): The The wedding wedding dress dress designed designed by

by Helen Helen Rose Rose of of MGM MGM was was worn worn by

by Grace Grace Kelly Kelly in in her her wedding wedding to to Prince Prince Rainer Rainer III III of of Monaco Monaco on on April April 19, 19, 1956.

1956.

(ABOVE): (ABOVE): A A Dennis Dennis Basso Basso finale, finale, with with models models Meandra, Meandra, Xu, Xu,

Ismini, Ismini, Lisa Lisa and and Elena.

Elena.

FFEEB BRU RUARY ARY//MARC MARCH H 20 201133

URBAN URBAN AGENDA AGENDA New New York York City City

21 21

weddings

John Kim + Ashley Cha St. Regis Hotel- Monarch Beach, CA

On August 10, 2012, Ashley and John invited their family and friends to an elegant, classic wedding celebration at the St. Regis Monarch Beach Resort in the seaside town of Dana Point, California. The pair dreamed up a “warm, intimate wedding and celebration for close family and friends,” says the bride.

Ashley attended high school in Princeton, New Jersey and went to Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) to study graphic design.

After college, she moved to New York City and worked as a graphic designer. John studied car design at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California and went to work in Michigan. They met through a mutual friend while John was visiting New York City in the summer of 2005. They started a longdistance relationship which culminated with the couple becoming engaged on March 18, 2012, the day they moved into their new home in California.

“I was arriving from New York, and John picked me up from the airport,” the bride recalls. “When we got home, John had already set up our room, filled with balloons and beautifully selected pictures of our relationship. I was so surprised, when he was on his knee and asked me to marry him! It was the perfect way to start our new chapter in our new home.”

John proposed to Ashley with an engagement ring from Tiffany & Co., which is also where the pair bought their wedding rings. The bride designed the wedding invitations as well as other stationery.

The cocktail hour was held outdoors on the St. Regis’ Botanical Lawn. “The weather and timing were perfect, with a beautiful sunset and a gorgeous view of the resort’s golf course.” A jazz band entertained the guests. The decor was “romantic, classic, and a touch of vintage,” says Ashley. It was a perfect day.

Wedding Planner: Divine D-Day Ceremony Venue: St. Regis Monarch Beach Resort Reception Venue: St. Regis Monarch Beach Resort Bride’s Wedding Dress: Kenneth Pool Bride’s Veil: Amsale Bride’s Accessories: J.Crew Bride’s Wedding Ring: Tiffany & Co. Groom’s Tux: Ralph Lauren Black Label Groom’s Shoes: Cole Haan Groom’s Wedding Ring: Tiffany & Co. Bridesmaids’ Dresses: J.Crew Bridesmaids’ Shoes: Kate Spade; Pour La Victoire Bridesmaids’ Accessories: J.Crew Groomsmen Attire: Black by Vera Wang Florist: Kristine Shin Designs Caterer: St. Regis Monarch Beach Resort Stationery: Designed by the bride Escort Cards: Kristine Shin Designs Cake Baker: St. Regis Monarch Beach Resort Dessert: Sweet and Saucy Shop Entertainment: Shine Entertainment Photography: Esther Sun Photography

22

URBAN AGENDA New York City

F E B RUARY/ MARC H 201 3

LATTICE COLLECTION 18K GOLD AND DIAMONDS

ART SCENE

URBAN ARTISAN

Hand-Crafted Chocolates Since February is such a sweet month, we thought it was only fitting to compile a list of our favorite New York City chocolatiers.

From smoked salt caramels to hand-painted truffles, these chocolate treats are sure to make your Valentine swoon.

Mast Brothers Chocolate 111 North 3rd St. Brooklyn 718.388.2625 Brooklyn’s hippest chocolatiers create chocolates that are as unique as the crafters themselves.

Case in point? Each chocolate bar is hand-wrapped in imaginative paper and the store itself is tantalizingly Spartan, earthy, and industrial in design. Popular flavors include Maple, Stumptown Coffee, Vanilla Smoke, and Sea Salt Almond.

Francois Payard Patisserie at The Plaza Hotel 1 West 58th St. Midtown West 212.759.1600 Located inside the Plaza Hotel food hall, Francois Payard Patisserie produces high quality chocolates and macarons. They are also wellknown for their indulgent hot chocolates and cappuccinos.

Vosges Haut Chocolat 132 Spring St. SoHo 212.717.2929 This is some eclectic chocolate. Vosges’ assortment of truffles include atypical ingredients like balsamic vinegar, violet flower, anise, wasabi, paprika, and olive oil.

24

URBAN AGENDA New York City

La Maison Du Chocolat 1018 Madison Ave. Upper East Side. 212.265.9404 Their macarons are chocolate centric (and rightfully so). Each macaron is filled with pure chocolate ganache, rather than jam or buttercream.

Leonidas Fresh Belgian Chocolate 485 Madison Ave. Midtown East 212.980.2608 Imported straight from Belgium, Leonidas has a chocolate for every taste, but is particularly noted for coffee-based flavors.

Mariebelle Fine Chocolates 484 Broome St. SoHo 212.925.6999 Sit down in the Cacao Bar for lunch or a sweet mid-afternoon snack to try their frozen Aztec Hot Chocolate.

Christopher Norman Chocolates 60 New St. Financial District 212.402.1243 Also found at Dean & Deluca, Christopher Norman makes deliciously unexpected chocolate flavors including Lychee, Green Tea, and Margarita.

LA Burdick Handmade Chocolates 5 East 20th St. Flatiron 212.796.0143 LA Burdick’s is especially popular with children who adore the variety of chocolate mice, chocolate bees, and traditional pastry desserts.

Kee’s Chocolates 80 Thompson St. South Village. 212.525.6099 Stop by Kee’s for a taste of something new. We recommend the tiramisu flavored with Earl Gray tea or the black sesame chocolates.

Chocolat Moderne 27 West 20th St. Flatiron 212.229.4797 This chocolate is a feast for the eyes as well as the taste buds. Take special note of the hand-painted chocolates laced with intricate designs.

Li-Lac Chocolates Grand Central Terminal Market, Lexington Ave. and 43rd St. 212.370.4866 Opened in 1923 by a Greek immigrant named George Demetrious, LiLac is one of New York’s oldest chocolate shops.

Don’t expect adventurous flavors here. Instead, come for old-fashioned treats like fudge, assorted truffles, and caramels.

Lake Champlain Chocolates Sold at Gourmet Garage markets throughout Manhattan. 212.595.5850 After one bite, you may feel some musical inspiration.

Lake Champlain Chocolates recently teamed-up with popular Vermont-based rock band Grace Potter and the Nocturnals to create “Grace Under Fire,” a blend of dark chocolate, red pepper, and pistachios.

F E B RUARY/ MARC H 201 3

Tache 254 Broome St. Lower East Side 212.473.3200 Tache Artisan Chocolate is one of New York’s newest chocolate businesses. Making all of their chocolates with one of the highest quality chocolate suppliers in the world, Domori Italian Chocolate, we predict Tache will soon become a New York favorite.

FIKA Choklad 66 Pearl St. Financial District 646.837.6588 Fika is a Swedish verb that roughly translates as “taking a coffee break.” Head chef Håkan Mårtensson knew from a young age that he would devote himself to the world of chocolate. After a long career at one of Sweden’s top chocolate houses, Mårtensson joined forces with Fika. Saunter into Fika for some coffee with your hand-rolled truffles and pralines.

Roni-Sue’s Chocolates 120 Essex St. (#11/ 12 at the Essex St. Market) Lower East Side. 212.260.0421 Drawing inspiration from New York City’s rich food traditions, family-owned Roni-Sue’s creates chocolates on-site at an outdoor kitchen at the historic Essex Street Market. Roni-Sue’s is now featuring a cocktail collection of chocolates—your favorite cocktail in bite-sized form!

Valrhona 45 Main St., Suite 1054 Brooklyn 718.522.7001 Created by a pastry chef in 1922 in the Rhone Valley, France, Valrhona has remained a chef-driven company that is involved in every stage of the chocolate production. We recommend their chocolate covered dried fruits and nuts.

IMAGES COURTESY OF SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

By Taylor Smith

COMMODA TUA ANTE NOSTRA YOUR INTERESTS BEFORE OURS Meyer Capital Group is a fee-only investment management and financial planning firm.

Our mission is to understand each client's needs and objectives and then deliver superior customer service. We are strongly committed to helping you protect your wealth using a thorough and disciplined investment approach.

“Investment management is a relationship business. Meyer Capital Group collaborates with you to provide the best approach for managing your portfolio and securing other financial services. By joining the Meyer Capital Group family, we will help you to build a solid financial future.” . . . . Thomas C. Meyer

856-985-8400 TOLL FREE 800-423-8044 www.meyercg.com feeonly@meyercg.com FIVE GREENTREE CENTRE | 525 ROUTE 73 NORTH, SUITE 312 | MARLTON, NEW JERSEY 08053 PHONE 856.985.8400 | FAX 856.985.8151

pour femmeS VacanceS

Michele Deco High Shine Diamond Watch, $2395. Bloomingdales, 212.705.2000.

Dolce & Gabbana Miss Sicily Vibrant Canvas Print Bag, $1995. 212.249.4100.

Mallary Marks Purple & Blue Sapphire Trapeze Earrings, $11,656. Barneys New York, 212.826.8900.

Stella McCartney d’Orsay Patent Cork Wedge, Sky, $685.

Bergdorf Goodman, 800.558.1855.

Karen Walker Helter Skelter, $245.

Barneys New York, 212.826.8900.

Castor Jewelers LLC Sapphire and Diamond Ring featuring Natural, Ceylon Sapphire, Round Brilliant Diamonds, 18K White Gold.

Price available upon request. 609.397.0809.

Herve Leger Scalloped Flare Dress, Blue, $1690. Intermix, 212.249.7858.

26

URBAN AGENDA New York City

F E B RUARY/ MARC H 201 3

Yves Saint Laurent La Laque Courure - 17: Bleu Cobalt, $25.

Barneys New York, 212.826.8900.

revealing the

F e b rua ry 1 6 – J u n e 9

AfricAn Presence in Renaissance Europe

“This history-rattling exhibition is a visual gift, with marvelous things by artists familiar and revered. . . along with images most of us never knew existed.”

—The New York Times

always free and open to the public

artmuseum.princeton.edu Agnolo Bronzino, Italian, 1503–1573: Portrait of Duke Alessandro de’ Medici (detail), after 1553. Oil on tin. Istituti museali della Soprintendenza Speciale per il Polo Museale Fiorentino, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence (inv. 1890, no. 857).

RoBERt BEnCHlEY SoCiEtY: BEnCHlEY.BlogSpot.CoM

ART SCENE

28

URBAN AGENDA New York City

F E B RUARY/ MARC H 201 3

around the a lgonquin with mrs. parker and mr. benchley {by stuart MitchNer}

N

owhere in the world will you find a concentration of 20th century celebrity residences to equal the hotels of New York City. Since most of these hotels are still open for business, you can stay where the stars did, sometimes even in the same room or suite, if you’re willing to pay a premium, as fans of Cary Grant, The Beatles and Elvis Presley do at the Warwick in midtown.

For literary celebrities, the landmark hotel is the Algonquin, which has been at 55 West 44th Street since 1902. Not that writers haven’t found other accommodations suitable for work: Ernest Hemingway rewrote the galleys of For Whom the Bell Tolls at the Barclay; William Saroyan dashed off his hit play The Time of Your Life in six days at the Great Northern; Nathaniel West wrote Miss Lonelyhearts while working the night shift at the Kenmore Hall and put up fellow writers there during the Depression; Dashiell Hammett embarked on The Thin Man at the Pierre; and, besides honeymooning with Zelda in Room 2109 at the Biltmore, Scott Fitzgerald stayed at a number of New York hotels, including the Algonquin and the Plaza, which he immortalized in The Great Gatsby.

This detail from the mural by Natalie Ascencios shows the core group of the Round Table, beginning with Dorothy Parker, behind her Robert Benchley; next, the man reaching down, is columnist Franklin P. Adams; standing in back playwright Robert Sherwood and comedian Harpo Marx; in the foreground at the table, founding editor of The New Yorker Harold Ross; whispering in his ear drama critic and raconteur Alexander Woollcott.

F E B RUARY/ MARC H 201 3

URBAN AGENDA New York City

29

T

he Algonquin’s most obvious rival for literary renown is the Chelsea some twenty blocks south, where the guest list included Mary McCarthy and Arthur Miller, not to mention Thomas Wolfe, who slaved on his last two massive novels there, and Brendan Behan, who landed at the Chelsea on the rebound having been asked to leave the Algonquin for allegedly chasing maids through the halls. While the Gonk’s claim to literary fame rests primarily on the legend of Dorothy Parker and the Round Table, writers have been residing or partying or hanging out there ever since. A regular guest from the 1930s through the 1950s, William Faulkner wrote his Nobel prize acceptance speech on Algonquin stationery, and Scott Fitzgerald and James Thurber got to know each other when both stayed there in the 1930s around the time that Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas checked in. It was Stein’s first visit to the U.S. in 25 years, and when she walked a block west to Times Square she saw the news of her arrival parading in lights around the Times Building. Four decades later, according to Susan Edmiston and Linda Cirino’s Literary New York, the Algonquin was no less popular, with regular guests including, among numerous others, John Updike, Gore Vidal, Graham Greene, Thornton Wilder, and Günter Grass.

CASSANDRA’S DEBUT Dorothy Parker remains the one writer consistently identified with the Algonquin’s glory years (she’s also credited with nicknaming it the Gonk) if only because she was one of the most vivid and outspoken, thus most quotable and talked-about personalities of her time. Though she began making her name writing for Vanity Fair and The Smart Set (whose editor H.L. Mencken always stayed at the Algonquin when he was in town), her path to literary stardom was in the pages of the New Yorker, a magazine virtually born at the Algonquin, where editor Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant were Round Table regulars.

To this day, the hotel still honors the association by making sure all guests receive a free copy of the current issue.

Parker made her New Yorker debut in the second issue, Feb. 28, 1925, with a poem, “Cassandra Drops Into Verse,” and a sketch, “A Certain Lady.” The poem speculates on a couple moving from the city to the country (the idea of Dorothy ever living a country life was a standing joke among the Round Table wits) “with birds and blossoms and such,” where after extolling the suburban virtues, Parker foresees “the end of our pastoral plan....Why, you’d be staying in town each night,/And I’d elope with the furnace man.” The subject of “A Certain Lady” is Mrs. Legion, “Heiress of the ages,” whose taste in all things is mocked, from a place to live (Riverside Drive, “as far from Park Avenue as it is possible to do and still keep out of Jersey”), to food to fashion to literature (“the author says the rawest things, well, my dear, simply nothing is left to your imagination”).

One of the first and most bracing displays of the Parker attitude appears in the May 15, 1926 issue in a ditty she called “Rhyme of an Involuntary Violet” (pure Parker, to make “shrinking” into “involuntary”). Imagine the effect on female readers of so sassy and forthright and cynical a voice from one of their own, with this opening couplet, “When I ponder lovely ladies/Slipping sweetly down to Hades” and others like “Gladly I’d be led to slaughter/ Where the ermine flows like water.” There’s a hint of Anita Loos’s

30

URBAN AGENDA New York City

novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, which had come out the year before, in this sequence, Do the pretty things I utter To the kings of eggs and butter Gain me pearls as big as boulders, Clattering, clanking around my shoulders Advertising, thus, their full worth?

No, my dear. Mine come from Woolworth.

Once again Parker uses the familiar “my dear,” as if she’s speaking right to her beaming sister-reader. And smiling comes easily when you read, Does my smile across a table Win a cloak of Russian sable?

Baby, no, I’d have to kill a Man to get a near-chinchilla.

BENCHLEY AND PARKER “It was the greatest act of friendship I’d known,” Parker told a Paris Review interviewer in 1956. She was recalling the time Robert Benchley resigned his job at Vanity Fair in protest after she was fired for panning three plays, most damagingly Caesar’s

F E B RUARY/ MARC H 201 3

IMAGES COURTESY OF WIKIPEDIA. BLUE BAR IMAGE COURTESY OF ALGONQUINHOTEL.COM

(Below top, l-r) Members and associates of the Algonquin Round Table: Art Samuels, Charles MacArthur, Harpo Marx, Dorothy Parker and Alexander Woollcott. (Below right) Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley. (Opposite) Blue Bar (cartoons on the wall are originals of Al Hirschfeld).

F E B RUARY/ MARC H 201 3

URBAN AGENDA New York City

33

ART SCENE Advertisement for the 1994 biopic starring Jennifer Jason Leigh as Dorothy Parker.

THE ALGONQUIN TODAY In June 2012, after a six-month “guts to décor renovation,” the Algonquin launched a relationship with trade publisher Penguin Group in the form of a “Penguin Preview Series at the Round Table” that coincided with New York Book & Media Week. A series of author events in the hotel lobby gave guests a sneak peek at upcoming books by Penguin authors. Events included an evening celebrating Dorothy Parker, with a roundtable (what else?) discussion of Parker’s influence with novelist Ellen Meister, author of Farewell, Dorothy Parker and Parker biographer Marion Meade, who also edited an expanded edition of The Portable Dorothy Parker (Penguin 2006). Quarterly Penguin Previews at The Round Table will continue and are open to hotel guests and the public.

Guests who happen to be writers can use, in lieu of Do Not Disturb signs, ones that read Quiet Please. Writing the Great American Novel.

IMAGES COURTESY OF WIKIPEDIA

MATILDA IS BACK

Wife with Flo Ziegfeld’s wife Billie Burke: “The plays closed and the producers...didn’t like it, you know. Vanity Fair was a magazine of no opinion, but I had opinions.” Benchley’s resignation was an act of more than friendship, since from all accounts he and Parker truly loved one another; in their understated romance, he was always Mr. Benchley and she was Mrs. Parker, and it was generally thought by their friends at the Round Table that if Benchley hadn’t already had a wife and family in Scarsdale, Mr. B. and Mrs. P. would have married.

Along with Jennifer Jason Leigh’s award-winning performance in the title role, probably the most admirable feature of the 1994 film, Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, is the portrayal of this shakily platonic literary romance. Campbell Scott does full justice to Benchley’s witty, ever faithful and protective gentle knight (not to mention capturing his subtle, difficult comic style), and the playfully loving intimacy between Scott and Leigh has a charm and depth you rarely see in motion pictures of any era. Biopics are always a challenge, and none more so than pictures about writers or poets. That this one works so well is due to producer Robert Altman’s determination to find the means to get it made; director Alan Rudolph, who captures the Round Table ambience of witty chatter about as well as could be hoped for; and of course to the brave, all-out performance by Leigh, whose commitment to the role included a week’s stay at the Algonquin communing with the shades of the Round Table, and then reading all of Parker’s verse, stories, and plays, as well as listening to the existing audio recordings of her voice.

32

URBAN AGENDA New York City

Resident Algonquin feline, Matilda, a five-year-old, blue-eyed Rag Doll, is back on her throne at the check-in desk after her vacation in upstate New York during the renovation. The tradition of having a feline resident at the Algonquin began in the 1930s when a stray cat wandered in through the hotel’s front door looking for food and shelter. Owner Frank Case, who can be credited for welcoming and making comfortable Dorothy Parker and the other denizens of the Round Table, was no less welcoming to the original Matilda. The 2012 incarnation maintains her Facebook (“MatildatheAlgonquinCat” ) and Twitter (@Algonqueen) pages, and answers fan mail from all over the world (via her email address matildaalgonquincat@algonquinhotel.com).

Natalie Ascencios’s painting of the Vicious Circle, unveiled in the Round Table Restaurant in November 2002, on the occasion of the hotel’s 100th anniversary, shows the core group of the Round Table: Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, columnist Franklin P. Adams, playwright Robert Sherwood, comedian Harpo Marx, founding editor of the New Yorker Harold Ross, New Yorker drama critic Alexander Woollcott, playwright Marc Conelly, playwright George S. Kaufman, columnist Heywood Broun, and novelist Edna Ferber, who wrote of her colleagues: “Their standards were high, their vocabulary fluent, fresh, astringent and very very tough. Theirs was a tonic influence, one on the other, and all on the world of American letters.”

OTHER LITERARY HOTELS In addition to the Chelsea, which has been undergoing renovations and at this writing is not open to guests, either permanent or transient, hotels with a literary provenance include the St. Regis, where John Cheever claims to have been conceived (www.stregis. com/New York); the Plaza, with its connection to The Great Gatsby and children’s book heroine Eloise (www.fairmont.com/theplaza); the Carlyle and its Ludwig Bemelmans mural (www.thecarlyle. com); the Elysee, whose top floor once housed Tennessee Williams and whose Monkey Bar is owned by Vanity Fair publisher Graydon Carter (www.elyseehotel.com); and the Pierre, whose writer residents in addition to Dashiell Hammett included Hammett’s roommate Lillian Hellman, and, more recently, Stephen King, John Grisham, and Tom Wolfe (www.tajhotels.com/...Hotels/...Pierre).

If you want to live literally between the covers, there’s always the Library Hotel, where each of the 10 guestroom floors represents one of the 10 categories of the Dewey Decimal System and each of the 60 rooms features a collection of books and art exploring a distinctive topic appropriate to the category (www.libraryhotel.com).

F E B RUARY/ MARC H 201 3

33

ART SCENE

Literary bloomings across New york city {by Jessica Gross}

“T

he passion my generation felt about poetry and fiction has gone into food, I think, into making pickles or chocolate or beer,” argued Daniel Halpern, publisher of Ecco Press, in a recent New York Times article. There may be an artisanal mayonnaise shop in Brooklyn now (really), but this isn’t an either/ or situation! If the literati-studded events below are anything to go by, literary culture still thrives in New York City, gourmet pickles be damned.

In March, The Morning News, an online magazine, will hold its ninth annual Tournament of Books. This March Madness-style competition pits novels against one another in pairs to arrive at a winner, and each round features beautiful essays about the merits and disappointments of the contenders. Which works win is less important than the incredible road map the competition provides to the previous year’s most notable fiction. Still, please note: the 2012 champion, Patrick DeWitt’s The Sisters Brothers, beat Teju Cole’s Open City in the final round—and both books were published in New York.

The 2013 judges will include Tony Horwitz (Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War), D.T. Max (staff writer at The New Yorker), Caity Weaver (The Hairpin blogger), and Charles Yu (How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe); for the books list, check www.themorningnews.org/tob.

The following month will see a different kind of large-scale literary event: World Book Night, which last year was celebrated in the U.S., the U.K., Ireland, and Germany. A group of librarians and booksellers have chosen about 30 books, ranging from Tina Fey’s Bossypants to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, to be printed in special editions and given to people with limited access to literature. Libraries and bookstores throughout New York City will host these joyful distributions on April 23, paired with festivities—like last year’s event at the Union Square Barnes and Noble, featuring Patti Smith on guitar. (Check the website, www.us.worldbooknight. org, for updates as the date nears.)

34

URBAN AGENDA New York City

Every spring, the PEN World Voices Festival invites writers from around the world to New York for a week of performances, discussions, and readings. In 2012, Salman Rushdie, founder of the Festival, gave a lecture on censorship, followed by a Q&A with Gary Shteyngart, the author of, most recently, the hilarious Super Sad True Love Story. Other events included a dialogue with Jennifer Egan, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad, and a conversation with Marjane Satrapi and screening of Persepolis, a film based on her seminal graphic novel of the same name. The events are rivaled only by their audiences, full of people who revere literature as much as you do. (Again, check the website, www.pen.org, for 2013 events.)

And what would a literary season be without awards? The National Book Award and Man Booker Prize winners won’t be announced until the fall, but the National Book Critics Circle Awards and the Pulitzer Prizes are both bestowed in the spring. In March, the NBCC—founded in New York City almost 40 years ago—will honor works of autobiography, biography, criticism, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, selected by critics (bookcritics.org/ awards). The announcement and awards ceremony are accompanied by a reading by the finalists, i.e. a chance to see the country’s most talented authors in the flesh and possibly ruin your fantasies of what their voices sound like. And in late May, at a presumably mind-boggling luncheon at Columbia University, the Pulitzer Prizes are awarded in 21 categories (the winners will be announced in April; see www. pulitzer.org).

But it’s not all about the big-name, big-budget (read: fancypants) events. Performance spaces around the city will continue their year-round crop of literati-oriented gems this spring. If you have kids, you might consider taking them to Symphony Space (www. symphonyspace.org) on the Upper West side. Later that month, the same space will present the latest installment of Selected Shorts, in which talented actors read masterful short stories, featuring works by the brilliant Sherman Alexie and Lorrie Moore. And the

F E B RUARY/ MARC H 201 3

92nd Street Y (www.92y.org/) on the Upper East Side boasts a 100year anniversary reading of Poetry magazine on April 8, featuring Frank Bidart, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Mary Karr, and others. The brainy might opt for an event, later that month, entitled “Brecht in the 21st Century,” including a conversation about the German playwright’s legacy.

Down in Brooklyn, the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM; www. bam.org/) presents an “Eat, Drink & Be Literary” series now through June, featuring dinners, readings, and discussions with writers including Colson Whitehead, Jamaica Kincaid, Junot Diaz, and Alison Bechdel. (Is that a lineup or is that a lineup?) On March 15 and 16, BAM’s Poetry 2013 will offer a program showcasing the beauty of the spoken word.

And why not break tradition this spring? Instead of an art museum, head to a lit museum. The Morgan Library’s (www.themorgan.org) spring offerings include an exhibit (open February 15 through April 28) celebrating the 100th anniversary of Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, “one of the most influential and ambitious literary works of all time.” The exhibit will display Proust’s notebooks, drafts, and proofs—and even some letters he wrote to his mom. You also might consider visiting the Center for Book Arts (www.centerforbookarts. org/exhibits/) and the main branch of the New York Public Library, the beautiful Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, both of which have a constant stream of wonderful exhibits. At the NYPL (www.nypl.org), the delicious “Lunch Hour” is on view only until February 17—hurry!

(The library also hosts a series of on-stage conversations, NYPL Live!, which will feature psychoanalyst and essayist Adam Phillips on February 25, writer Nathaniel Rich on April 8, and Junot Diaz on April 30, among others.)

New York City is full of nooks and crannies, and readers are really good at exploiting them. (Could a bookstore be any narrower than Westsider Rare and Used Books, on 81st and Broadway?) Many New York City bookstores don’t announce their event listings far enough in advance to print here, but check in with McNally Jackson, the Housing Works Bookstore Café, the Strand, and the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan and with the Greenlight Bookstore, the

Community Bookstore, BookCourt, and powerHouse Arena in Brooklyn closer to the date. Jodi Picoult’s The Storyteller is out this month; Karen Russell (author of the highly acclaimed Swamplandia!) has a book of stories, Vampires in the Lemon Grove, also out this month; Joyce Carol Oates’ The Accursed comes out in March; and new editions of three books by famous chefs—Italian Grill, by Mario Batali; Union Square Café Cookbook, by Danny Meyer; and Braise, by Daniel Boulud—come out in March. These bookstores are bound to have associated readings and events, so check in.

There are also tons of underground literary events that tend to take place in darkly-lit spaces (bars) and attract a younger set (hipsters). In Brooklyn, the monthly Franklin Park Reading Series takes place in a cozy room in a Crown Heights bar, and in Manhattan, the East Village’s KGB Bar features an overwhelming number of literary events (a recent glance reveals an emerging writers series, a poetry series, and “Fantastic Fiction”). The Happy Ending Lounge, on the Lower East Side, hosts The Southern Writers Reading Series on the second Wednesday of every month and, on the fourth Wednesday of every month, the “How I Learned Series,” in which writers, comedians, and storytellers “share invaluable life lessons against a dimly lit, selfindulgent, sexually tense and booze fueled backdrop.”

A number of other storytelling organizations work hard to keep oral traditions alive in New York. The Moth is the behemoth, with weekly StorySLAMs, in which anyone and everyone can enter their names into a lottery and be picked to tell a five-minute story, and monthly Mainstages, curated events featuring talented and practiced storytellers. (Expect to laugh and cry, without exception.) The Story Collider, a smaller and more niche organization, features stories all about science. And don’t forget that New York has fabulous universities—like NYU, Columbia, the New School, CUNY, and St. Joseph’s College—many of which offer lectures that are free to the public.

Cheers to a literary spring!

F E B RUARY/ MARC H 201 3

URBAN AGENDA New York City

35

The Perfect Weekend Getaway

Lambertville, NJ. Like a bird in flight, the undulating roof of this mid-century modern masterpiece seems to defy gravity and is without doubt the defining feature of architect Jules Gregory’s personal home, built in 1960 and newly renovated. Both the 4-bedroom main house and the guesthouse have walls of glass that extol the surrounding landscape, 10 beautiful secluded acres in West Amwell Township. Named “One of 10 Best Homes in America” by Architectural Record in 1961. $1,100,000 Call Barbara Blackwell (609) 915-5000

Barbara Blackwell Broker Associate Callaway Henderson Sotheby’s International Realty (609) 921-1050 bblackwell@callawayhenderson.com

Hun halfpg PM 10-12 ad_Layout 1 9/20/12 12:54 PM Page 1

For more information about properties, the market in general, or your home in particular, please give me a call.

JOYFUL LEARNING Matt Treichel’s AP Chemistry students have earned an average score of 4.76 out of 5.00 on the national exam for the last 13 years.

The national average is 2.58.

Experience a dynamic community where learning is a passion and each day is infused with a spirit of joy.

Matt Treichel AP Chemistry Teacher

THE HUN SCHOOL OF PRINCETON Serving grades 6 through 12 and post graduates www.hunschool.org (609) 921-7600

Join us for our Open Houses Upper School - Sunday, October 14th, 1:00 p.m. • Middle School - Tuesday, October 23rd, 7:00 p.m.

Please RSVP to admiss@hunschool.org

36

URBAN AGENDA New York City

F E B RUARY/ MARC H 201 3

On Campus. Online. Abroad.

THE HUN SCHOOL OF PRINCETON

Pre-College Programs at n

n

n

n

n

Brown University

Challenge yourself with Ivy League academics Prepare to succeed in a college environment Experience the freedom and responsibility of college life Meet exceptional students from around the world Connect with world-class ideas, people, and facilities

More than 300 Academic Courses College Credit Options

Summer Academic Resident Programs

July 1-August 2

• Diverse, coed program • Small classes • Credit courses and • Extensive English enrichment courses language immersion • Engaging and supportive • Minutes from environment Princeton University For more information visit www.hunschool.org or call (609) 921-7600, extension 2265.

Sessions 1 to 7 Weeks in Length Global Programs Online Course Options

176 EDGERSTOUNE ROAD, PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY 08540 (Minimum boarding age is thirteen.)

Summer Programs Open House

www.brown.edu/summer

Saturday, March 23, noon to 3 pm

BASED ON TRADITION. DEFINED BY INNOVATION.

“At Dwight-Englewood, throughout the Lower, Middle and Upper Schools, our students gain critical skills, seek excellence, ignite their passions, and develop the habit of lifelong learning. Indeed,they are fully prepared to meet the challenges of a changing world... and make it better.”

- Dr. Rodney V. De Jarnett, Head of School

Limited spaces available!

Visit d-e.org/admissions for more information.

F E B RUARY/ MARC H 201 3

URBAN AGENDA New York City

37

{BY ELLEN GILBERT}

PATIENCE, FORTITUDE, AND THE BROOKLYN DODGERS:

LIBRARIES While many suburban area residents have been spoiled by the excellence of their local public libraries, there are some very special libraries located in Manhattan that merit a visit—or two. Among them are both public and private institutions whose collections and, usually, architecture, set them apart. These special destinations almost always include an educational mission in their charters, so in addition to offering special events and interesting speakers, they invariably have at least one “wow”-eliciting exhibit on view. “The Newtonian Moment,” for example, an exhibition hosted by the New York Public Library (NYPL) that ran from 2004 to 2005, portrayed nothing less than “the science and the making of modern culture.” Amazingly old, and well-preserved rare books, documents, and examples of scientific apparatus on display came from the NYPL’s own not-too-shabby collections and as well as from places like the Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum in Chicago, and Harvard University’s Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments.

The "jaw-dropping grandeur" of the New York Public Library's Rose Reading Room (opposite).

38

URBAN AGENDA New York City

F E B RU ARY / MARC H 20 1 3

PHOTOGRAPHY BY WWW.SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

IN NEW YORK CITY

The main branch of the New York Public Library is a lively presence on Fifth Avenue. In winter, Patience and Fortitude (the two lions in front) sport holiday wreaths.

T

he granddaddy of them all, of course, is the NYPL’S Main Branch (Fifth Ave. and 42nd St.). Guarded by the lions, Patience and Fortitude, the majestic Beaux Arts building was designed and constructed

by Carrère and Hastings and dedicated in 1911. In 1998, the Library’s Rose Main Reading Room was reopened after a face lift made possible by a $15 million gift from library trustees Sandra Priest Rose and Frederick Phineas Rose, who renamed the room in honor of their children.

Hosannas followed: one writer described the room’s “jaw dropping beauty,” and the eminent art critic John Russell went so far as to gush that “the very act of bending over a book now has a built-in majesty.” Another update, this time to the tune of $300 million, is now in the works, and is having a more difficult time of it. While designers Foster & Partners bowed to the public outcry that came in response to their proposal to warehouse books offsite (added stacks will now enable them to stay), contentiousness continues. When details of the renovation were recently made public, one critic described them as showing “bland spaces cantilevered over an atrium that could be in a mall or even on a cruise ship.”

There are branches of the New York Public Library system, many of them courtesy of Andrew Carnegie, in every Manhattan, Bronx, and Staten Island neighborhood. Queens and Brooklyn have their own separate systems, with Queens enjoying particular celebrity for its branches’ responsiveness to diverse neighborhood populations. There are, though, a couple of NYPL research centers that are remarkable in their own right. These include the Performing Arts Library (40 Lincoln Plaza), and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (515 Malcolm X Blvd). The Performing Arts Library houses one of the world's most

40

URBAN AGENDA New York City

extensive combinations of circulating, reference, and rare archival collections in its field. These materials are available free of charge, along with a wide range of special programs, including exhibitions, seminars, and performances. The Library is a particular treasure trove of non-book materials such as historic recordings, videotapes, autograph manuscripts, correspondence, sheet music, stage designs, press clippings, programs, posters, and photographs. An exhibition that ran several years ago about the history of the beloved children’s troupe, The Paper Bag Players, caught the essence of their hardscrabble, winning performances over the years, and a more recent one on Noel Coward captured that paragon of elegance's je ne sais quoi. Stay tuned for future exhibitions, which had not been announced at press time.

The Schomburg is one of the world's leading research facilities devoted to the preservation of materials on African experiences the world over. A focal point of Harlem’s cultural life, the Center provides free access to its wide-ranging noncirculating collections, and sponsors programs and events, and exhibits like its current offering, “Visualizing Emancipation.” On view through March 16, this exhibit commemorates the 150th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation with pre–and post–Civil War era photographs of enslaved and free black women, men, and children.

The Morgan Library (225 Madison Ave. at 36th St.) is rightly known for its extraordinary holdings of illuminated manuscripts, rare books, fine bindings, literary and historical manuscripts, music manuscripts and printed music, drawings, and other works of art. The Morgan’s official history began in 1924 when J. P. Morgan, Jr. gave his father’s library to the public. The most influential financier in this country’s history, Pierpont Morgan had been an avid collector of art objects in virtually every medium.

F E B RU ARY / MARC H 20 1 3

The doors and façade of the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library are richly detailed.

The treats to be had at the Morgan are not only inside; the beautiful exterior architecture, which began as a palazzo-like structure designed by Charles Follen McKim, is more than noteworthy. The Morgan’s most recent transformation, in 2006, was a Renzo Piano design that integrates the three buildings comprising the Morgan.

While access to rare books and manuscripts is reserved for those engaged in research, the Morgan's exhibits and public events are easily accessible. “Drawing Surrealism,” on view through April 20, is described as “the first major exhibition to explore the central role of drawing in Surrealism,” and includes approximately 160 works on paper by artists like Salvador Dali, Max Ernst, Joan Miró, and Louise Bourgeois. The Morgan will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the publication of Swann's Way through April 28 with a selection of Marcel Proust’s notebooks, preliminary drafts, galley-proofs, and other documents from the collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

Tucked away in a townhouse at 47 E. 60th St., the Grolier Club is another atmospheric haven of treasures from the past. Named after the French bibliophile Jean Grolier (1489/90-1565), the club was founded in 1885 by New York printing press manufacturer and book collector Robert Hoe and eight fellow bibliophiles “to foster the study, collecting, and appreciation of books and works on paper, their art, history, production, and commerce.” Since then, it has collected, published, and exhibited widely in the field of book arts. “The Club does not subscribe to the popular millennial notion that the advent of computer technology necessarily signals the end of l'histoire du livre,” notes its current director, Eric Holzenburg. “On the contrary, if the past decade is any indication, the Grolier Club’s second century of involvement in the book arts promises to be even more exciting and productive than its first.” Currently on view, “Rooms of Wonder: From Wunderkammer to Museum, 1599-1899,”

is just that: a room of “wondrous” things that are noteworthy for their beauty, their rarity, their curious nature, or their artistic, scholarly, or monetary value. The Grolier was also recently the scene for an exhibit, now on tour, that celebrated the bicentennial of the Worcester, Massachusetts-based American Antiquarian Society.

Literary enthusiasts will be interested to know about The Center for Fiction (17 E 47th St., between Madison and Fifth Aves.).

Housed in a building that was founded in 1820 as the Mercantile Library, The Center for Fiction describes itself as “the only organization in the United States devoted solely to the vital art of fiction,” The mission of The Center for Fiction is “to encourage people [including children] to read and value fiction and to support and celebrate its creation and enjoyment.” The Center’s resources include a circulating book collection, reading room, website, a bookstore, and events like “The Big Read,” a program of the National Endowment for the Arts, designed “to restore reading to the center of American culture.”

Also in Manhattan, library collections at The New York Academy of Medicine Library, and in museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Frick, are world class, but access is usually limited to those engaged in research.

In Brooklyn, the Central Building of the Brooklyn Public Library, which opened in 1941, resembles an open book, with the spine on Grand Army Plaza and the building's two wings opening like pages onto Eastern Parkway and Flatbush Avenue. The location is great; an easy subway ride from Manhattan, it’s right near Prospect Park, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens. In addition to its regular circulating collection, the Central Library is home to a vast collection of Brooklyn-centric materials, including Brooklyn Dodgers memorabilia. U

F E B RU ARY / MARC H 20 1 3

URBAN AGENDA New York City

41

POUR FEMMES VACANCES

1) 2) 3)

1) Lilly Pulitzer starfish

cuff, $68; Palm Place, 609.921.1660 2) Tory Burch logo oneshoulder maillot, $225; Nordstrom, 732.603.5000 3) Graphic Image luggage tag & passport set, $70; Bloomingdale’s, 908.762.2400 4) Trish McEvoy Voyager beauty emergency kit, $85; Lord & Taylor, 609.799.9500 5) Jack Rogers Georgica Jelly, $68; jackrogersusa.com 6) Lilly Pulitzer Murfee “sand bar blue Florida” state scarf, $118; Palm Place, 609.921.1660 7) J. McLaughlin Alyssa leather bag, $345; 609.497.9717 8) Kate Spade Tulip glitter sandal, $138; 609.279.0061

4)

8)

5) 7)

42

URBAN AGENDA New York City

6)

F E B RUARY/ MARC H 201 3

O

ver 5,500 acres of natural wonder in a storybook setting.

Endless experiences and adventures. World class dining and charming accomodations. Come experience life at the top.

Just two hours outside of NYC in the heart of the Pocono Mountains.

INVITATION TO THE

{BY ANNE LEVIN}

B

olstered by television hits like So You Think You Can Dance, Dancing With the Stars and Breaking Pointe, the art of dance has gained renewed popularity across the United States. There are ballet companies from Boise to Buffalo. A Balkan dance troupe draws a faithful following in Seattle. A major modern dance company that tours the globe calls Chicago its home base.

But there is no question that New York remains the capital of the dance universe. Ambitious ballet, modern, and ethnic dance companies from outside the city still set their sights on Manhattan. And troupes that are locally based perform at a variety of venues, from small, downtown lofts to Chelsea’s Joyce Theatre, midtown’s City Center, the Baryshnikov Arts Center in Hell’s Kitchen, and the Upper West Side’s Lincoln Center, to name just a few.

The revolutionary choreographer Martha Graham made her New York debut in 1926, ushering in a tradition of modern dance while rebelling against the strictures of classical ballet. Not that there was much ballet to rebel against—it wasn’t until the arrival of Russian choreographer George Balanchine in 1934 that a foundation for American ballet was established. Dancers from Graham’s own company, including Merce Cunningham, Erick Hawkins, and Paul Taylor, went on to found their own troupes and establish their own styles. With the visionary arts patron Lincoln Kirstein, Balanchine would go on to found the New York City Ballet, which continues today as one of the world’s leading ballet companies.

Currently performing its annual winter season through February 24 at Lincoln Center’s Koch Theatre—which was built for ballet according to Balanchine’s specifications—and returning for its spring residency April 30-June 9, the New York City Ballet is a major anchor of New York’s dance scene. The company has

44

URBAN AGENDA New York City

been led by Peter Martins, a former principal dancer, since Balanchine died in 1983. Masterworks by Balanchine and Jerome Robbins, who was closely associated with the troupe, remain the mainstay. Ballets by Martins, Christopher Wheeldon, Alexei Ratmansky, Benjamin Millepied, and Justin Peck fill out the repertory.

City Ballet’s special Tchaikovsky celebration of this season will conclude with Martins’ version of The Sleeping Beauty February 13-24. Highlights of the spring run include an American Music Festival, with ballets to scores by 18 composers including George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, Duke Ellington, Philip Glass, and John Adams. Special family programs, seminars, “dancer chats,” and other pre-performance events will be held throughout the season. Visit: www.nycballet.org.

The other anchor of New York’s spring dance season is American Ballet Theatre (ABT), City Ballet’s friendly rival just steps away at Lincoln Center’s Metropolitan Opera House. While choreography is the star at City Ballet, individual dancers are the focus at ABT. Mega-stars such as David Hallberg, Julie Kent, Diana Vishneva and Herman Cornejo star in such classics as Swan Lake, Don Quixote, Onegin, and Le Corsaire. But ABT doesn’t limit its repertory to the old standbys. New works by resident choreographer Alexei Ratmansky and mixed bills of ballets by Balanchine, Frederick Ashton, and Mark Morris are also scheduled for the run. Visit: www.abt.org.

The Paul Taylor Dance Company takes over the Koch Theatre March 5-24, with a new work by the choreographer, still vibrant at 82, as well as 20 popular pieces from the repertory.

Visit: www.ptdc.org. At City Center, the Pacific Northwest Ballet comes from Seattle to present two works by Balanchine and a new version of Romeo and Juliet. The company is led by former City Ballet principal Peter Boal. From March 6-9, City Center hosts

F E B RU ARY / MARC H 20 1 3

PHOTO CREDIT: ROBYNLEE (TOP), NICKNAMEMIKET1 (BOTTOM TWO).

Ballet Flamenca de Andalusia, a repertory company from Spain.

Visit: www.citycenter.org.

The Joyce Theatre, an old movie house on Eighth Avenue converted into a space specifically for dance in 1982, is an important showcase of ballet, modern and ethnic dance companies based in New York and from across the world. Among those appearing through the end of August are the Martha Graham Dance Company, the Danish Dance Theatre, DanceBrazil, the Nederlands Dans Theater, Ballet Hispanico, the Stephen Petronio Company, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, tap sensation Savion Glover, and the Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet. Visit: www.joyce.org.

Ballet superstar Mikhail Baryshnikov established the Baryshnikov Arts Center in 2005 to give rehearsal and performance space to young, avant-garde choreographers, actors, and other artists. This spring, the focus is on new works by choreographers relatively new to the New York dance scene.

Rashaunn Mitchell, an acclaimed alumnus of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, will perform Interface, which has its world premiere March 14. The piece was developed in residence at the arts center. From April 18-29, Miami choreographer Rosie Herrera presents Dining Alone, described as “a gustatory dance work.” Visit: www.bacnyc.org.

At the Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Royal Ballet of Cambodia presents The Legend of Apsara Mera May 2-4 and DanceAfrica performs May 24-27. Visit: www.bam.org. NY Live Arts in Chelsea hosts Karole Armitage/Armitage Gone! Dance, Bebe Miller Company, and Lang Dance, among other contemporary troupes, through June 8.

Visit: www.newyorklivearts.org.

One of the most innovative dance programs in New York is the Works & Process series at the Guggenheim Museum. These

up-close performance excerpts and conversations with dancers and choreographers, held in the museum’s theater, are informative and entertaining, providing an insider’s view into what goes into the making of a dancer or a dance.

On April 14 and 15, City Ballet principal dancer Wendy Whelan is featured in a solo by contemporary choreographer Shen Wei; a duet with New York City Ballet colleague Robert Fairchild choreographed by Joshua Beamish; and excerpts from Restless Creature, featuring four new duets by Beamish, Kyle Abraham, Brian Brooks, and Alejandro Cerrudo. A discussion will follow with Whelan and the four choreographers. Then on April 21 and 22, The Versatile Dancer will feature artistic staff and dancers from American Ballet Theatre in an evening moderated by John Meehan, Professor of Dance at Vassar College, answering the question: “What makes an ABT dancer?” Visit: www.guggenheim.org. U

F E B RU ARY / MARC H 20 1 3

URBAN AGENDA New York City

45

february

calendar highlights Thurs, February

7

Sat, February

16

Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week (through Thursday, February 14)

Maroon 5 performs at Madison Square Garden

Blues musician Al Kooper performs at the B.B. King Blues Club and Grill in Manhattan

Yo La Tengo performs at The Town Hall in Times Square

Fri, February

8

Passion Pit performs at Madison Square Garden

Sat, February

9

16th Annual Soul on Ice Winter Skating Party Family Concert at the Rose Theater at Lincoln Center explores the sounds of Latin Jazz

Millrose Track & Field Games at the New Balance Track and Field Center

Sun, February

17

10 11

The 137th Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show

Thurs, February

14

On St. Valentine’s Day, couples can sign-up to be married on the 80th floor of the Empire State Building Celebrate Valentine’s Day “under the stars” at the American Museum of Natural History’s Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space

46

Thurs, March

New York International Children’s Film Festival (through Sunday, March 24)

Sun, March

3

The New York Botanical Garden’s Orchid Show (through Monday, April 22)

URBAN AGENDA New York City

14

Atlantic 10 men’s Basketball Tournament at the Barclay’s Center

Sat, March

16

St. Patrick’s Day Parade

Sun, March

17

New York Road Runners presents the New York Half Marathon Metropolitan Lacrosse Classic at Citi Field

2/17

4/08

2/14

Harlem Gospel Walking Tour

Mon, February

1

14th Annual Chinatown Lunar New Year Parade and Festival

2/07

Sun, February

Fri, March

Fri, February

22

New York City Beer Week (through Sunday, March 3) Lady Gaga performs at Madison Square Garden

Tues, February

26

New York Rangers vs. New Jersey Devils at Madison Square Garden

Thurs, February

28

Winter Stinky Cheese Festival held at various restaurant venues throughout Manhattan (through Monday, March 11)

4/17

Thurs, March

7

The Armory Show at Piers 92 & 94 (through Sunday, March 10)

Wed, March

20

VH1 Save the Music Foundation Family Day at the Anderson School in Manhattan

New Directors/New Films Festival curated by the Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Takes place at locations throughout Manhattan (through Sunday, March 31)

32nd Annual Making Brooklyn Bloom conference at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Wed, March

Sat, March

9

Tues, March

12

2013 Big East Men’s Basketball Championships at Madison Square Garden (through Saturday, March 16)

F E B RUARY/ MARC H 201 3

27

Macy’s Flower Show (through Wednesday, April 10)

Fri, March

29

New York International Auto Show (through Sunday, April 7)

Sun, March

31

Easter Parade and Easter Bonnet Festival

TBA March Sotheby’s Modern and Contemporary South Asian Spring Art Sale Christie’s Modern and Contemporary South Asian Spring Art Sale

Mon, April

1

Mets and Yankees Season Openers in New York

Sun, April

14

More magazine and Fitness magazine present the Women’s Half Marathon through Manhattan

Mon, April

15

Art Exhibitions:

The Book of Morman; Eugene O’Neill Theatre

Doris Duke’s “Shangri La: Architecture, Landscape, and Islamic Art;” Museum of Arts and Design

Gazillion Bubble Show; New World Stages The Mystery of Edwin Drood; Studio 54

Rock band, Muse performs at Madison Square Garden

Wed, April

Theater Performances:

17

Tribeca Film Festival (through Sunday, April 28)

Dead Accounts; Music Box Theatre Who’s Afraid of Virgina Woolf?; Booth Theatre

“Hava Nagila: A Song for the People;” Museum of Jewish Heritage

Forever Dusty; New World Stages

“Marvels and Monsters;” Museum of Chinese in America

Rock of Ages; Helen Hayes Theatre

“Manolo Valdes;” New York Botanical Garden

The Lion King; Minskoff Theatre

“WWII and NYC;” The New York Historical Society

Blue Man Group; Astor Palace Theatre Jersey Boys; August Wilson Theatre Chaplin; Ethel Barrymore Theatre My Name is Asher Lev; Westside Theatre Old Jews Telling Jokes; Westside Theatre Perfect Crime; Snapple Theatre Center Glengarry Glen Ross; Gerald Schoenfeld Theater Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; Richard Rodgers Theater Lucky Guy; Broadhurst Theatre The Heiress; Walter Kerr Theater

4/03 Wed, April

The Old Boy; Clurman Theatre Dead Accounts; Music Box Theatre

3

Once; Bernard B. Jacobs Theater Matilda; Shubert Theatre

Yankees play the Red Sox at Yankee Stadium

Sat, April

6

Season of Cambodia, A Living Arts Festival (through Friday, May 3)

Mon, April

8

The New York International Antiquarian Book Fair at the Park Avenue Armory Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham and the rest of Fleetwood Mac reunite for a concert at Madison Square Garden. The show marks the 35th anniversary of the release of their most successful album, “Rumours.”

Kinky Boots; Al Hirschfeld Theater Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark; Foxwoods Theater

4/28

Fri, April

“Materializing ‘Six Years’: Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art;” Brooklyn Museum

“The Butterfly Conservatory;” American Museum of Natural History “Meet Miss Subways: New York’s Beauty Queens 1941-1976;” New York Transit Museum “Monika Sosnowska: Fir Tree;” Doris C. Freedman Plaza “The Scream;” MoMA “Harry Potter: The Exhibition;” Discovery Times Square Exhibition “Configurations: Valerie Bass, Katinka Bock, Esther Klas, Allyson Vieira;” Metro Tech Commons of Brooklyn “George Bellows;” The Metropolitan Museum of Art “Through Soviet Jewish Eyes: Photography, War, and the Holocaust;” Museum of Jewish Heritage “Our Global Kitchen: Food, Nature, Culture;” American Museum of Natural History “African Art, New York, and the Avant-Garde;” The Metropolitan Museum of Art “Matisse: In Search of True Painting;” The Metropolitan Museum of Art “Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg;” Grey Art Gallery at NYU

26

“Landmarks of New York II;” The New York Historical Society

The Mets play the Phillies at Citi Field

Sun, April

“Zarina: Paper Like Skin;” Guggenheim Museum

28

Cherry Blossom Festival at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, celebrating traditional and contemporary Japanese culture (through Monday, April 29)

“Roman Vishniac Rediscovered;” International Center of Photography

3/27

F E B RUARY/ MARC H 201 3

URBAN AGENDA New York City

47

© 2012 Blue Man Productions, LLC.

ASTOR PLACE THEATRE 434 LAFAYETTE STREET, NYC

1 800 BLUEMAN BLUEMAN.COM

B/7- FGH "#*. 1+2- BA@< I#1?-*3 +($6 JFGKL KM-)0$/' 5'#1- JFN

!!"#$%&'(%"#$$ &'#() *+ $#,- "./* +0' 1.#$2'-( /'- $-/'(#() /&+0* 2#,,-'-(* 10$*0'-3 /(2 .-'#*/)- 4 -35-1#/$$6 /&+0* *.- 1#7#$ '#).*3 *./* 8/'*#( 90*.-' :#() ,+0).* ,+'; ;;; <3 = "/*1.-2 *.- 6+0() ,'#-(23> / 2#7-'3- 1+$$-1*#+( +, &/1?)'+0(23 *./* /(6 +, 03 +( *.- @55-' A-3* B#2- 1/( '-$/*- *+> = ,+0(2 C63-$, 1'6#() +(- C+C-(* /(2 $/0).#() *.- (-D*;E 4 )"*%+,-.,/*%0#1

ART SCENE

URBAN LIVE!

How to Secure Free Tickets

to Your Favorite Live TV Shows

By Taylor Smith

New York City is home to many live TV Shows. Instead of watching your favorite show from your living room, why not join the audience and get up close and personal with your favorite hosts? Each of these programs has a different route for securing tickets. Here’s the best way to become part of the show.

Saturday Night Live Age Restrictions: You must be at least 16 years of age to attend a taping.

Stand-By Tickets: Arrive by 7 a.m. on the morning of the taping under the “NBC Studios” marquee on the 50th St. side of 30 Rockefeller Plaza.

Tickets are available for either the 8 p.m. dress rehearsal or the 11:30 p.m. live show. Of special note: check the SNL website in advance to make sure that they are recording a new episode that evening before you spend all morning waiting outside of the studios.

Advance Tickets: Every August you can submit your ticket request online via email at snltickets@nbcuni.com.

If you are selected, you will receive an email confirmation and two free tickets to either a live taping or a dress rehearsal.

Late Show with David Letterman Age Restrictions: You must be at least 18 years of age and bring a valid ID to attend a taping.

Stand-By Tickets: Beginning at 11 a.m. on the day of the taping, call 212.

247.6497. You will be asked a “Late Show with David Letterman” trivia question. If you answer it correctly, you’ll

50

URBAN AGENDA New York City

be invited to wait outside of the theater an hour before taping.

Bring a jacket and be prepared to wait, because the stand-by route does not guarantee you admission.

Advance Tickets: You can request tickets online by visiting www.cbs.com/lateshow and submitting an online ticket form. You will be asked to select 3 preferred dates and to answer some “Late Show with David Letterman” trivia questions. To request advance tickets in-person, you can visit the theater at 1697 Broadway, Monday-Thursday: 9:30 a.m. to noon; Saturday and Sunday: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. You will be given a short interview and if you are determined fit to attend, will receive a phone call. On the day of the show, remember to bring some form of ID with your full name, birth date, and mailing address.

Late Night With Jimmy Fallon Age Restrictions: You must be at least 16 years of age and bring a valid form of ID. Stand-By Tickets: Arrive no later than 9 a.m. on the morning of the taping (check the episode schedule online at www.jimmyfallon.com) under the “NBC Studios” marquee on the 49th Street side of 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Only one

ticket will be issued per person.

Advance Tickets: Tickets are generally booked at least one month in advance by calling 212.664.3056. You can request up to 4 tickets. Due to the high demand, you may only book tickets once every six months.

“Today Show” in Rockefeller Center Age Restrictions: There are no age restrictions. All are welcome.

Stand-By Tickets: The “Today Show” doesn’t administer any official tickets.

Instead, be prepared to get to the corner of 49th and Rockefeller Center before dawn. Wear comfortable clothes and shoes for all of the standing you will be doing (a goofy sign doesn’t hurt either). The “Today Show” airs Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m.

The Early Show on CBS News Age Restrictions: There are no age restrictions. All are welcome.

Stand-By Tickets: To simply “walk-on” to The Early Show set, arrive at The Early Show Plaza, located at 59th St. and 5th Ave. no later than 7:15 a.m. The show airs live from

F E B RUARY/ MARC H 201 3

7 a.m. to 9 a.m. on the ground floor of the General Motors Building. Wear a big-enough smile and you might even get to meet the anchors.

Advance Tickets: Email brguest@cbsnews.com or call 212.975.2515 to make reservations.

Live! With Kelly Age Restrictions: You must be 10 years or older to attend (people under 18 must be accompanied by an adult).

Stand-By Tickets: Arrive at the studio no later than 7 a.m. on weekday mornings, MondayFriday and request a stand-by number. These tickets are issued on a first-come, first-served basis, so the earlier the better.

The show is tapped at ABC Studios, 7 Lincoln Square on the Upper West Side.

Advance Tickets: The most efficient route onto the show is by showing up early and waiting in the stand-by line. However, if you are prepared to wait a full year in advance, mail a ticket request form to Live! Tickets, Ansonia Station, P.O. Box 230777, New York, NY 100230777.

The Colbert Report Age Restrictions: You must be at least 18 years of age and bring a valid form of ID.

iMAgEs CoURtEsY oF wikipEdiA.

Stand-By Tickets: Arrive at 513 West 54th Street, between 10th and 11th Ave. in Midtown New York (no specific time of arrival is offered). One stand-by ticket will be issued per person and such tickets do not guarantee you admission.

Advance Tickets: Simply visit www.ColbertNation.com to request advance tickets.

Due to high demand, it’s best to begin the request process several months in advance.

The Daily Show Age Restrictions: You must be at least 18 years of age and bring a valid form of ID. Advance Tickets: Visit www.thedailyshow.com/ tickets and fill out their online request form. You may request up to 4 tickets and even select a specific date that you would like to attend. If selected, you will be notified via email. The Daily Show is located on 11th Ave. between 51st and 52nd St. in Manhattan.

Anderson Live Age Restrictions: You must be 16 years of age or older to attend. Audience members under the age of 18 must be accompanied by an adult.

All audience members must

bring a valid form of ID. Advance Tickets: To request tickets, visit www. andersoncooper.com or send an email to tickets@ andersoncooper.com.

Conveniently enough, their website allows you to view what dates have availability.

Anderson Live tapes at the CBS Broadcast Center, located at 528 W. 57th St. Visit www. andersoncooper.com for the current tapping schedule.

The View Age Restrictions: You must be at least 16 years of age and bring a valid form of ID. Stand-By Tickets: On the day of the show, anyone looking to join the audience must pick-up a number from a View Audience Associate between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. at the audience entrance, located at 320 W. 66th St. The actual show is taped at the 320 W. 66th St. location, Monday-Thursday from 11 a.m. to noon.

Advance Tickets: Visit www. theview.abc.go.com/tickets to fill out a request form.

The only email notification you will receive is if you’ve been selected as an audience member. Tickets are mailed to your home 3 weeks prior to the showing. According to their website, there is a 12 to 24

month wait for tickets.

Inside the Actors Studio Age Restrictions: You must be 18 years or older to attend.

Advance Tickets: Tickets are sometimes made available to the general public. Register for Pace University’s online mailing list at www.pace.edu to learn when there are openings.

There is no set schedule, but information about upcoming shows is posted on the Pace University website. Inside the Actors Studio is filmed at the Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts on Pace University’s campus, 3 Spruce St. Be sure to arrive 1 full hour before showtime.

Dress Code: No hats, chewing gum or sloppy dressing. If you wear clothing items with a pronounced logo, you may be asked to sit in the back row, outside of the periphery of the camera.

result in the deletion of your information. If you are granted admission, you will be contacted via email and sent tickets two weeks in advance (tickets are sent via email).

Dress Code: Audience members are asked to dress nicely. That means no tank tops, flip flops, jogging suits or ripped jeans. Instead, Rachael Ray advises you to wear “solid, jewel-toned colors.”

The Dr. Oz Show Age Restrictions: You must be at least 18 years of age and bring a valid form of ID. Advance Tickets: Secure tickets in advance by calling the NBC Ticket Line at 212.664.3056 between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.

When you call, select option “4” for tickets. We recommend making requests several months in advance.

Dress Code: Dr. Oz advises audience members to wear their best “business casual.”

The Rachael Ray Show Age Restrictions: You must be at least 16 years of age and bring a valid form of ID. Advance Tickets: Visit www.rachaelrayshow.com and fill-out an online form.

Remember to fill-out the form only once, as submitting more than one request will

F E B RUARY/ MARC H 201 3

URBAN AGENDA New York City

51

URBAN FOOD

FOOD FOR LOVERS

Food is foreplay. And what could be better than to share a meal in a wonderful restaurant with that special someone, especially this month when, despite the chill of winter, romance hangs heartwarmingly in the air. As Valentine’s Day approaches, my thoughts drift naturally to the pleasures of a sensuous and delicious meal to put me “in the mood,” to put a lift in my step. Hey, yes, to make me feel a little frisky.

I like food that has personality and is a tad lusty. My profession has afforded me the good fortune to travel extensively and I’ve many memories of such food sampled during my travels. But rather than having to pack and book and fly somewhere why not take an easy trip to a home-based European table to set the mood and kindle some fantasies about possible future journeys together. Let’s face it, as in foreplay, the fantasy of being abroad can sometimes be even better than the real thing.

As the song goes, “Everything old is new again.” It used to be that the best dining in the city was to be had in the grand hotels. Then the independent restaurant became popular and hotel dining lost its place in the spotlight. This situation has now turned quite around: dining in and around hotels has regained its cachet—which is convenient for townies and out-of-towners alike.

Here are several very different places to tickle your palate and your fancy—and, I hope, that of your loved one too. The first three are attached to hotels. How convenient is that for finishing off a memorable evening? Locanda Verde in the Greenwich Hotel; The Breslin Bar and Dining Room/John Dory Oyster Bar in the Ace Hotel; and, in a midtown townhouse, La Grenouille. {BY PAUL GRIMES}

52

URBAN AGENDA New York City

F E B RU ARY / MARC H 20 1 3

PHOTO CREDIT: ROBYNLEE (TOP), NICKNAMEMIKET1 (BOTTOM TWO).

Shrimp Scampi and Grits with organic polenta, tomato, sausage and coddled eggs.

Chocolate Budino: buttermilk gelato served with limoncello granita.

Locanda Verde (377 Greenwich St., corner of Greenwich & N. Moore, 212.925.3797, www.locandaverdenyc.com), attached to the Greenwich Hotel—a tony, downtown place between Franklin and North Moore Streets in TriBeCa—is owned by Robert De Niro. The building is all brick, glass, and wrought-iron on the outside; but the inside makes me feel as though I’ve just stepped off an Alitalia flight straight into an Italian country farmhouse. Here chef Andrew Carmellini—alumnus of the school of Daniel Boulud and restaurant A Voce, to name just two—revels in his own regional element. His tasty, colorful food is seasonally correct, delicious, and spot-on seasoned.

A rough translation of the Italian word “locanda” is “a local spot to eat, drink, and even spend the night”—perfect for our theme this month. As the hour here gets late the buzz increases, which can be a challenge for the soft-spoken. But once you have sipped a glass or two from the great selection of wines or expertly mixed libations you’ll find the buzz has turned into friendly white noise. So relax and let yourself be seduced by the taverna-style scene, the glow from the wood-burning oven, and the aroma of dish after dish—all produced from first-rate ingredients that make any selection across the board a winner.

Order some crostini to hold you as you peruse the menu. The antipasti offerings are varied and pleasingly modern. Perhaps share a sumptuous pasta (shades of that charming scene from Lady and the Tramp). It’s hard to choose from among the secondi offerings as each sounds even better than the one before. I confess to having been tempted while dining here to belt out Fergie’s version of “Be Italian,” from the movie Nine. You’ll be glad to know I resisted the urge.

Locanda Verde isn’t fussy, so dress comfortably. Many of the regulars turn up in jeans—albeit worn with a pair of fine Italian leather shoes. This is a place you’ll feel like hanging around. Wind down by slipping into the lounge next door and plopping down onto one of the sofas for an after-dinner drink by candlelight in the glow of the fire. If that doesn’t put you “in the mood” I can’t imagine what will.

F E B RU ARY / MARC H 20 1 3

URBAN AGENDA New York City

53

URBAN FOOD

54

The Breslin Bar and Dining Room.

The Breslin Bar and Dining Room.

Softshell crab sandwich with ramp tartar sauce and pea shoots.

The Ace Hotel (20 West 29th Street, north of Union Square) has two dining options: The Breslin Bar And Dining Room (16 West 29th St. between Broadway & Fifth, 212.679.1939, www. thebreslin.com.) and the John Dory Oyster Bar (1196 Broadway at 29th St., 212.792.9000, www.thejohndory.com). Under the guidance of Chef April Bloomfield, the rise of the new Gastro Pub food has made the British reputation in the culinary world something to pay attention to. A chef whose star rose at The Spotted Pig and an alumna of London’s River Café, April’s unabashed food makes me uncomplicatedly happy.

The decor’s deep rich colors wrap around you in The Breslin Bar and the John Dory’s cool tiling making you feel as though you are strolling through an earlier time and place. I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if I found myself rubbing elbows at the Breslin with the likes of, say, Nicholas Nickleby or Dr. Watson (though not his friend Sherlock, of course, whose drug of choice was not to be found in a bottle). You can choose to be a barfly or slide into a cozy private booth, where the bar offerings are interesting and varied. This swell watering hole also offers breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The food tips its hat to classic pub offerings, but April’s food is also seasonal and

smart, bold and assertively seasoned. Her menu here is “meat-centric” but not exclusively. The menu does offer “nose to tail” selections, the likes of artisanal sausage and terrines.

Additional artisanal products from small growers and farmers make this a very contemporary menu.

If your idea of romance includes the sea and its denizens, slip across the hotel lobby into the John Dory Oyster Bar—also the brainchild of April Bloomfield and her partner Ken Friedman—for a raw bar, bar snacks, crudo, small plates, and desserts. If you’re a believer in the amorous qualities of the oyster, bingo! And here the oysters are pristine. The shuckers clearly take great pride in their beautiful riot of seafood as they work their magic. The combinations of flavors in the small plates are crazy interesting, and watching the shuckers is like watching dancers at work. A few small plates here makes a very satisfying meal, and the oyster pan roast will undoubtedly soon be legend. The John Dory has good buzz, good lighting, and good people-watching. The service is friendly and informed, and the aquariums flanking the bar are worth a detour.

URBAN AGENDA New York City

F E B RU ARY / MARC H 20 1 3

PHOTO CREDIT (CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT): ALIFEWORTHEATING, ARCH*TEMPLAR, ARCH*TEMPLAR, F TRAINER.

Chargrilled Lamb Burger with feta, cumin mayo, and thrice cooked chips.

PHOTO CREDIT: JULIEQIU (TOP ROW), WWW.LA-GRENOUILLE.COM (BOTTOM ROW).

Lobster Stew and Hog Island Sweetwater oysters from John Dory Oyster Bar.

La Grenouille (3 East 52nd St. between Fifth & Madison, 212.752.1495, www.la-grenouille.com.) is one of the few surviving great French Restaurants of New York City, managing to move gracefully forward (while still coddling the well-heeled with delicious classics like quenelles and cheese soufflés) yet at the same time succeeding at being very today. Charles Masson, whose parents carried La Grenouille’s baton during the banner years, keeps this excellent restaurant every bit as vital and in demand as it was at its opening in 1962. When the French get it right, they get it very right. Masson is not only a first-class host, but also a master of mise-en-scène. The lighting in this florally festooned dining room is intimate and artful, transforming even your average-looking diner into one of the beautiful people. And what could be better when l’amour is on your mind. The aroma of butter hangs delightfully and unapologetically in the air. The mood is festive and the menu delivers. Dressy is how you’ll want to look here, so brush off your suit jacket and polish up your shoes!

For more information, including prices, Paul Grimes recommends the current Zagat guide. U

F E B RU ARY / MARC H 20 1 3

URBAN AGENDA New York City

55

MODERN FOUNDRY. BESPOKE HARDWARE. â&#x20AC;&#x153;In the spirit of enabling design, we strive to create in our foundry and atelier the absolute best architectural hardware in the world.â&#x20AC;?

Our world-class products adorn the most exclusive hotels, residences, and yachts in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, and the Middle East.

Working with one of our Designers, clients can commission their own architectural art, or customize a plethora of stunning hardware designed by SA Baxter.

Visit sabaxter.com to download our full catalog, and see a work-in-progress video taken at our eco-friendly foundry and atelier.

-Scott A. Baxter

NEW YORK www.sabaxter.com

|

LONDON 800.407.4295

“The Starry Night” Vincent Van Gogh oil on canvas, 1889

My REALTOR®? Gloria Nilson, Real Living® of course.

Cranbury, NJ

Bay Head, NJ

Few properties enjoy such a privileged position, sited on 14 acres (13 farm assessed), with four flexible outbuildings, paddock, pool and tennis along with peaceful, pastoral vistas. Princeton Office, 609-921-2600. $1,650,000

Bayfront! There was NO structural damage from Hurricane Sandy, the first floor needs your attention; being sold ”As Is”. Only 2 blocks to the Atlantic Ocean. Bay Head Office, 732-295-8099. $2,600,000.

Far Hills, NJ

Bernardsville Boro, NJ

In the prestigious village of Liberty Corner you’ll find, Kenworthy Court, a new upscale development set among the most luxurious estates in Bernards Township. Bernardsville Office, 908-221-1212. $5,950,000

A perfect Somerset County location! A charming five bedroom, five and two half-bath custom Colonial is situated along Bernardsville Mountain.

Bernardsville Office, 908-221-1212. $1,650,000

glorianilson.com rlsrealtors.com Bay Head Ocean Township

Bernardsville Point Pleasant

Brick Princeton

Holmdel Princeton Jct

Hopewell Crossing Robbinsville

Keyport Rumson

Manalapan Shrewsbury

© Gloria Nilson, REALTORS®and RLS, Realtors®, Real Living® Independently owned and operated rms.