Apr 4

Apr 4 NYC Recovery

Architecture, Cityscapes, Jazz Musicians, New York City, Street Musician, Travel

I am not sure whether this post’s title refers to New York City’s condition or mine. I certainly have been energized by my recent trips to NYC. And on this 5-day sojourn, the city looked better than it did last year. So maybe the title refers to both of us.

There were many more people on the streets and on the subway. More importantly, my favorite Midtown Italian restaurant, Trattoria Dell’Arte, had re-opened following its prolonged Covid-19 closure. Its ambiance is satisfactory, but the vegetable antipasto bar is to die for.

Graffiti still abounds south of Fourth Street I am not talking about the occasional wall or subway entrance. The scrawls, tags, and scribbles are everywhere, together with the awful stickers plastered to signs and light poles—there can be anywhere from 25 to 100 stickers per object. Replacing the windows in the vacant retail storefronts and restaurants will prove cheaper than removing the gang tags; there are plenty of vacant spaces so the repair and replacement costs will be in the millions, assuming the tenants return.

The six-story former bank building once owned by famed New York photographer Jay Maisel is covered in graffiti. It was not the exception on Bowery Street. Very sad because the building is a Neo-classical stone bank building ws once a beacon of unadorned beauty.

Washington Square Park offered further evidence that recovery is we’ll underway. I arrived late Saturday afternoon, after an 11-mile walk over the Brooklyn Bridge, through Dumbo, and then along Flushing Avenue, passing through Williamsburg, which is awash in Hassidm, and ending in Bushwick, which is awash in street murals.

The sun still had an hour or two to go before it would gracefully slip into the Hudson. As I entered the park from its north-east corner, I could see hundreds of people (i) gathered around the fountain, which was devoid of water; (ii) hanging around the arch, which is now encircled by police barricades to impede graffiti artists; and (iii) proceeding along the diagonal walkways leading into and out of the park.

The afternoon backlighting illuminated hats, hair and the pungent smoke plumes. It is still illegal to sell pot in New York, but partaking apparently has been decriminalized—the three cops standing just to the side of the fountain certainly weren’t making any arrests. The smoke and the smell was pleasantly overwhelming. It seemed like everyone sitting on the fountain’s edges had a shred of a roach in between their fingers.

The skateboard kids had commandeered the fountain’s interior, converting it into one of the empty Southern California swimming pools where a young Tony Hawk invented his sport’s fundamentals. Most of the kids sucked, but there was an occasional noteworthy feat. Their demeanor, posture, and garb never change. Today’s kids are identical in looks to those who found themselves splattered on sidewalks and the bottoms of stairwells two or three generations ago..

I stopped before arriving at the fountain to listen to a jazz quartet that was pretty terrific. Once I arrived at the fountain, the music shifted, with a soul-Reggae band laying down some thick rhythms, while a female singer made Street Noise. Saturday is aways a good day for music in Washington Square Park. The musicianship is generally club-worthy.

Photographically, the weekend was less than ideal. Saturday was the only remotely pleasant day. I can deal with snow, rain, fog, and overwhelmingly bright skies. But flat grey skies in the city just don’t do it for me, particularly when the calendar says Spring, but the bone-chilling temperatures have yet to yield to summer’s engulfing currents. Photographically, the city is best represented when shadows and shards of light clash.

On the overcast days, I headed to the museums. The Jewish Museum’s Jonas Mekas exhibit proved hugely disappointing. The exhibit largely was limited to eight or nine screens displaying different parts of one film that Mekas made as part of his decades-long career that saw him invent New American Cinema. That was fine, but the exhibit did not address Mekas’ style, his influences or associations, or his impact on others.

I had better luck when I headed down to the Met, where Cruel Radiance: Photography, 1940s-1960s was on display. It featured about 100 rarely seen photographs from the likes of Helen Levitt, Roy DeCarava,, Mario De Bias (Italian Neo-realist), and Diane Arbus, as well as several photo books by Japanese photographers. A small, but impactful exhibit.

Later in the week, I headed over to Fotografiska, where there was a two-floor exhibit of nudes produced by female photographers, as well as a floor devoted to László Moholy-Nagy’s photograms and other experimental work. Both were worthy exhibits. I then visited the International Center of Photography for a provocative exhibit entitled “A Trillion Sunsets,” which implicitly asks the question: Do we need another photograph of the Eiffel Tower? I was particularly intrigued by a video that served as an open and somewhat unsympathetic letter to the artist’s father. The monotone narration, mixed with family photographs of a young woman who preferred to be a man, proved to be haunting.

But before arriving at ICE, I visited the Ukrainian Museum of New York City. Somewhat to my disappointment, there were few references to the unfolding war, but there were two noteworthy exhibits. On the ground floor, In Bloom: Nature and Art, an exhibit of floral paintings by Ukrainian artists, proved to be a nice counterpoint to war atrocities.

On the second floor, the museum showcased a recently acquired collection of paintings—The Impact of Modernity: Late 19th and Early 20th Century Ukrainian Art. I had the same reaction to this collection that I had when I visited the Menshikov Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia: A lot of fabulous artists who we in the West are unfamiliar with, but who are equal to our usual suspects.

The last exhibit I visited was in DUMBO at the Higher Pictures Generation gallery, which was showcasing Susan Meiselas’ pioneering work from the Seventies entitled Carnival Strippers. It included about 20 photographs, so it was small, but I was glad to see the images up close. Fortunately, Steidl is republishing Meiselas’ original book that was first published in 1976, together with a second book that goes behind the scenes. Of course, I already have it on order.

My extended weekend was a nice break from Chicago.

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