Feed Your Head: Design and the Elastic Mind at MoMA (A Review)

A few months ago, when I read that a certain type of printer was capable of producing three-dimensional objects, I had a hard time getting my head around the idea that I could print out a lost toothbrush. I completely forgot about the invention until I came across some of the printed objects in MoMA's new head-blowing exhibit, Design and the Elastic Mind. Now that I better understand the technology that allows me to print out an attractive bowl for the table - it involves resin and layers, I think I want a 3D printer in the worst way.

The exhibit at MoMA, some of it interactive, does toy a bit with this sort of high-tech consumer fetishism, but its deeper motive is to explain the more profound intersection of design and science through the lens of "elasticity." Defined in the exhibit as "the product of adaptability plus acceleration," elasticity implies movement - soaring arcs between shimmering points of light, walls that bend, micro-organisms that grow and change in relation to passersby, organisms capable of carrying information or broadcasting images in motion, prosthetic ankles that walk like real ones.

As an active organism in the blogosphere, I am already well-versed in the art of virtual mapping, an intermediate player in Google mashups, and familiar enough with tag clouds to appreciate the structuralist fundamentals of analyzing my own language. The exhibit covers some of the brave new frontiers of the web in its section on "Harvesting the Internet." We're already moved past those items, however, as it's so elastic. Check out what's in your future at Google Labs.

While I'm fine with the Internet, in terms of appreciating the virtual frontiers of computing, it's the biological parts of the Design exhibit that give me pause. In nanotechnology, scientists and designers are working in various fields to visualize or engineer revolutionary processes at the molecular level. Researchers at Harvard have visualized the "inner life of the cell" to give students aesthetically pleasing cinematic renderings of cellular life, and surely, pretty pictures could lead to more successful recruitment for future majors in the sciences. Maybe these students will go on to design video games that track down and kill cancer cells in the body. That would be wonderful.

Contemporary visual culture, as an academic field, embraces the notion that we're hell-bound to visualize that which we previously thought could not be made visible. Our global culture, in turning from the text toward the image, produces pictures that suggest their own ineffability, their own inarticulate "Wow." Nevertheless, Design and the Elastic Mind, while showing the much dazzling "wow" of macro and micro design and science, reveals that we still depend on those old and fabulous bits of information that we call "words" to explain these wonders. Or vice versa. I loved looking at Brad Paley/Text Arc's structuralist visualizations for Alice in Wonderland and trying to glean the relationship of the words to the cosmic rabbit hole.

Happily, the exhibit's online site is terrific and awaits exploration. Explore it here for yourself. Be prepared for lots of WORDS.

Design and the Electric Mind continues at the Museum of Modern Art through May 12, 2008.

At top: Screen capture of Google Analytics map showing locations of visitors to Walking Off the Big Apple during the month of February 2008. Click to enlarge.

The Weird Sisters at BAM (A Review): Macbeth

It's a shame that a play as old as William Shakespeare's Macbeth should seem so relevant, but it is, anyway you slice it. Watching the Chichester Festival Theatre's compelling production, now playing to sold-out audiences at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and set in a bleak totalitarian landscape, I was reminded too many times of the cruelties of contemporary warfare and the devastating consequences of acquiring political might for its own sake. Also, Nature gone haywire is a strong theme of the play, so the political tragedy is conjoined with environmental destruction.

Director Rupert Goold stages the play in a cold prison-like room, equipped with a refrigerator, a sink and a gated elevator with prison bars, that serves as torture chamber, operating room, military operations room, and banquet facility. Blood and wine, ripped flesh and a sandwich all share the same room. The effective lighting and sound design send up harsh lights and loud sounds, leaving little else to humanize the setting. Video projections of goose-stepping soldiers leave not much interpretation to chance.

Patrick Stewart, as Macbeth, plays the Scottish general as a coarse, superstitious and unsophisticated tyrant. He's barely aware of the consequences of his actions and only knows how to get more blood on his hands. Don't expect the big confidant voice of Captain Picard here, because Stewart brilliantly interprets Macbeth's language with short, clipped phrasing in a more shallow register. He physically conveys Macbeth as a small man at the outset of the play but then seems to grow larger and more swaggering in his speech as he becomes more dangerous. Stewart informs his performance with a reading of the life of Joseph Stalin, and the applied knowledge goes a long way in dragging the character uncomfortably to the modern era.

Macbeth's sexy, ambitious Lady, strongly played by Kate Fleetwood, stands by her man, effectively conveying how she's thwarted any softness on his behalf. During the banquet scene, played twice from different points of view, she's the hostess-with-the-most-est, laughing off Macbeth's delusions in order to save a good party. Her famous sleepwalk is chilling, one of the powerful signs that Nature has exacted revenge on these human violators. The play's most notable sign of the troubles brewing in "the fog and filthy air" is the inability to sleep, and Lady Macbeth's descent into guilt and madness compounds the tragedy.

The "weird sisters," as the witches are called, certainly the most memorable from anyone's youthful reading of the play, live up to their billing in this production. The weird sisters, dressed as '30s-era nurses, conjure a powerful trio as they shriek, scare, assist and entertain. The three convey several meanings with their incantation of the famous "trouble."

The ensemble cast is strong throughout, especially Martin Turner as Banquo, a powerful and worthy threat to the protagonist, Michael Feast as the rival Macduff, and Tim Treloar, making the most of Ross. Suzanne Burden conveys well the shock and fear of Lady Macduff, and watching the tragedy that awaits her and her precious children quickens the unfolding catastrophe. The Aristotelian cause-and-effect grows darker, more complex, more "unnatural," right up until the very end of "the dead butcher and his fiend-like queen."

A must-see production, if only to bear witness to these unnatural acts.

After concluding its run at BAM, the Chichester Festival Theatre's Macbeth begins performances at the Lyceum Theatre on Broadway on March 29. 3 hours including intermission. (Playbill info )

(Note to Readers: Strangely, for a website that is mostly light-hearted, this is my second post with a mention of the Stalinist terror. The first citation was my homage to Leon Trotsky's young boy who, while living with his parents in New York, left home one day to see if there was a 1st Street. He later died in the Stalinist purges.)

Roundup: The Plaza Hotel, Sondheim's Seurat, the Texas Primary, and the Upcoming Gelato Showdown in the Village

As I gather my thoughts about the Chichester Festival Theatre's entertaining production of Macbeth that I saw last night at BAM, I would like to pass on a few updates and news items:

• I've now assembled all the posts from The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect self-guided walk onto new pages and placed them under the list of walks on the site's sidebar. I've added a small slideshow of more images of the buildings.

• The Plaza Hotel reopens Saturday, March 1, and I look forward to visiting. I've been meaning to comment on the story, "It's Lonely at the Plaza Hotel," by Christine Haughney from the February 17, 2008 edition of The New York Times. Apparently, the new condo owners are lonesome, as not everyone can afford a place in their legendary hotel. The story quotes one woman who told the reporter that she "wouldn’t mind meeting someone other than the decorators, real estate brokers and other service workers fussing over the apartments." I know exactly how she feels. All I can say is that I'm available. I would love to hang out in The Plaza. Anyone living at The Plaza who might be reading this and who would enjoy some company, please write walkbigapple@yahoo.com.

• Mapping Texas for the Primary. As a native Texan, I have many opinions about the upcoming Texas presidential primary. I recommend reading Randy Kennedy's NYT article, "Pieces of Texas Turn Primary Into a Puzzle," that explains the diversity of the vast Texas political landscape. My mother, a proper East Texan who wore skirts, hose, and high heels her entire life, thought I would become uncivilized if I spent any time with West Texans. Of course, I rebelled. No further evidence is necessary beyond looking in my closet and seeing what is not there.

• Art lovers suffering from a Seurat withdrawal after the closing of the exhibit at MoMA should make note that a new production of Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George, now playing at Studio 54 (254 West 54th Street), has received good reviews and extended its run through June 15, 2008.

• (Image) Yesterday, I spotted the sign for the new gelato place coming to Bleecker Street later this spring. GROM's first NY location is up on Broadway on the Upper West Side. The Village location, an excellent site on Father Demo Square, will set up a showdown between this Turin-based upstart and L'Arte del Gelato on Seventh Ave. It will be like a spaghetti western but with gelato. As I posted earlier, I am observing a strict gelato diet for Lent. It's not going well.

Schnabel, WOTBA, and Venetian Masks: Most Popular Search Terms

I like to know the means by which new readers come to this website, and perusing the list of most popular search terms from time to time, I begin to ascertain patterns. I am also curious how well I help new readers find the information they need and how I can better meet the needs of the global audience.

Here is the list of the five most popular search terms from the past month that have directed people to Walking Off the Big Apple. I will follow the list with a brief analysis of these findings:

1. "Julian Schnabel"
2. "Julian Schnabel building"
3. "Walking Off the Big Apple"
4. "Venetian masks"
5. "How to make Venetian masks"

Julian Schnabel: recent Academy Award nominee, major contemporary visual artist, friend of Jean-Michel Basquiat, raised in Brownsville, Texas, interior designer for the Gramercy Park Hotel, mover and shaker. I don't know Julian personally. What else do you need?

Oh. His building in the West Village. I wrote about his "Tower of Pink Power" lo, these many months ago, when WOTBA was just a wee thing, but for each new week this particular post continues to rank high on the visitor's list. Indeed, you MUST come walk the neighborhood and see his building with your own eyes. I have come to love it in every way – its whatever pink-rose-red mottled facade, its brazen Italianate trimmings, its soaring height on the western edges of the Village.

Walking Off the Big Apple: I have high confidence that people have come to the right place when they type in this search term. I imagine it's the result of a conversation involving my far-flung friends. Since 1990, the colonel (the title I give my Kentucky-born spouse on this website) and I have lived in Austin, Texas, Oshkosh, Wisconsin, Columbia, South Carolina, and now Greenwich Village, USA. In that order. Beat that with a stick! So, I think the conversation goes like this:

"You hear anything from Teri lately?"
"Naw. Living in New York! Heard she had a popular blog." (Note: I tell people I have a "popular" blog as a PR technique.)
"What's it called?"
"I think it's called..."

Venetian masks: Time for the masked ball, or as a South Carolina friend commented when he saw some Venetian masks in a flower shop, "They must be having an Eyes Wide Shut party!" As I explained in one of the Weekend Frivolities, I visited the shop in Venice that made the masks for the Kubrick film. I stumbled upon the place while strolling the small streets near the Guggenheim Venice. From time to time, I make masks based on molds I made of our two dogs and deceased cat. I'm going to make more this year and will try to sell them to you.

In conclusion, Julian, raised on the Texas-Mexican border, and me, raised in Big D, and both in love with Art, sometimes dream in Italian. Prego, y'all. Welcome to the West Village. Welcome to Walking Off the Big Apple.

The 6th most popular search term is "cupcakes."

Image: Julian Schnabel's Palazzo Chupi, W. 11th Street, with cupcake and coffee from the nearby Magnolia Bakery. Photo from the morning of February 26, 2008. Walking Off the Big Apple –"Giving readers what they want since 2007."

Jasper Johns: On the Cold Gray Stones (A Review)

“Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.” - Alfred, Lord Tennyson

"Jasper Johns, the seafaring stranger," I thought. The sea kept sweeping through the galleries during my visit to Jasper Johns: Gray at the Met - images of a drowning poet, symbolized by Periscope (Hart Crane), Tennyson, the Poet Laureate who lived on the Isle of Wight, and the bridges, evoked by the Catenary series, leading voyagers to the edge of the sea. Johns has lived on many islands - Manhattan, the island, Edisto, the haunted sea island off the South Carolina shore, and the island of St. Martin, one of Johns' homes. Even circumstances of Johns' friends bring to mind the sea - Bob Rauschenberg, a child of Port Arthur, Texas, on the Gulf, and Frank O'Hara, the poet who died on Fire Island.

The Met arranges the grays thematically and, more or less, chronologically. After stating the thesis, well-made in the presentation of False Start and Jubilee, two paintings with the same subject, one with color and one with gray, the exhibit walks the visitor through the visual language of the artist - the objects (drawer, coat hanger, etc.), American flags in gray, the maps and targets leached of their colors, and then the splendid numbers and alphabets.

The targets, alphabets, and numbers function as our artist's semaphore - the "words" of his language, the "things the mind already knows." They are Johns' vocabulary, conveyed with all the tools of the trade - paints, graphite, encaustic, charcoal, watercolor, conté pencils, found objects, collage. Drawing is a gray medium. Letters and numbers - H means Hard, B means Black, and the HBs of the middle - 4, 5, 6, render grays.

And then comes Edisto. A drama unfolds. What happened to Johns here? It's the early 1960s, he's turned 30, and he's gone dark, sensitive, bleak, even tragic. Here's the room of Frank O'Hara and Hart Crane and a painting titled Liar and another titled No. Edisto, an old sea home of the Gullah people, is a moody, rocky, beautiful hard place. On those windswept days of gray rain and clouds, especially near the sea, pigmented colors announce themselves loudly, but at the same time a mood is struck. This sea island is the province of uncertainty, a place adrift, a Samuel Beckett play.

Beyond Edisto, the exhibit moves through a sculpture room and then to the hatch mark paintings. These short parallel lines become a new important part of the artist's pattern language. He's said that he saw the pattern on the side of a van. While crosshatching is a known technique in drawing, employed to render shading, Johns' hatch marks don't really cross. They're held in tension, graphic and flat, but full of motion in two dimensions.

Then comes the 80's room, shocking in its representations, the collage aesthetic, the busy bits of art history and the autobiographical archive. Winter, by the way, with the foregrounded snowflakes, its little snowman, and its looming outlined human figure, reeks of a midlife crisis. It's a moment where Johns looks like he's been swept up in a larger self-referential art history breakout and not really in his own element. He's included his own paintings in his paintings. They're all so social and conversational, even if it's mostly with the art history textbook. It feels like a phase.

He came out of it. Upon reaching the tenth room of the Gray exhibit, I sat on a bench and stayed long enough among the large gray Catenary paintings to watch the slight swaying of the ropes. Peace and quiet. With Near the Lagoon, 2002-3, a vertical canvas, the catenary becomes a drawing device and also a cosmic curtain. These gray surfaces are richer, bluer and creamier than the earlier paintings. Here's the Milky Way and the hints of the harlequin trickster. The jig is up. Johns has moved from his winter into night. I can smell the salt air in the astronomical twilight, the creaking of the pier underneath.

Upon leaving the exhibit, the gray flagstone pathway of Within, with its hints of many-colored lava underneath, carries the artist-as-Prospero, perhaps accompanied by a dog or two, to a new place on the island.

Jasper Johns: Gray continues at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through May 4, 2008.

See also the review of the drawings at Matthew Marks.

More Scenes From the Snowstorm: Central Park, February 23, 2008 (A Slideshow)

The Jasper Johns exhibit took me to the Metropolitan Museum of Art this afternoon, but the snow took me to Central Park. After looking at all of Johns' gray artworks inside the museum, I decided to take a stroll and surround myself with the bright white of the fallen snow. At some point, I wandered into a wild...dare, I say, mad?...tea party, as you will see. Maybe I just fell into a rabbit hole.

Scenes From the Snowstorm: Washington Square Park, February 22, 2008 (A Slideshow)

Quick, before it melts! Washington Square Park turned into a temporary sculpture park today. The most brilliant artistic turn was the appearance of a chubby snowman on one of the park's benches.

"Things the Mind Already Knows:" The Drawings of Jasper Johns (A Review)

Forty of Jasper Johns' drawings of the last ten years, currently on exhibit at Matthew Marks (522 W. 22 St.) in Chelsea, recommend themselves on so many levels that it's hard to know where to begin. I was struck not just by his continuing obsession with the images he's made famous over the years but by his obvious love for drawing and drawing materials. He's said this before, but it's clear he loves seeing how his targets, flags, numbers, etc. change from one medium to the next, how they emerge so differently on various material surfaces. He makes them all look new.

As much as I like looking at Johns' canvases, I love seeing these images played out on paper, created with all sorts of combinations of ink, acrylic, pencil, graphite, watercolor, etc. Artists with a large body of drawings gain my trust, as I believe that there's something deep about a compelling need among true artists to express themselves visually with whatever materials are at hand.

The exhibit at Matthew Marks certainly dissuades one from thinking that any one of Johns' images belongs to a specific decade and then abandoned in later years. He continues to recycle the whole bag of tricks - flags, flagstones, numerals, crosshatch patterns, alphabet letters, harlequin imagery, the bridge catenary, cruciforms, and maps of the United States. He's referred to these images, most of them from everyday life, as the "things the mind already knows." They're in his artistic DNA now and perhaps emerge involuntarily.

Johns' interpretation of Juan Gris, as depicted in a pair of drawings, suggests that he acknowledges his connection to many of the Cubists. Indeed, the imagery of the cubists find new echoes in Johns' works - the harlequins of Pablo Picasso, the target-like objects of Robert Delauney, and the presence of letters in cubist collage. "After Picasso," an ink and graphite drawing from 1998, explores the kind of hands and eyes that Picasso created in Guernica and related works, combined with Johns' characteristic crosshatching. The fact that Johns points to a longer artistic heritage in which he plays a part, in addition to his habits of drawing, elevates his work above that of many contemporary younger artists who feel compelled to substitute concepts for actual work.

I had one overarching impulsive reaction to seeing all this fine recent work by the elder statesman of American arts. It was "Johns wins."

Jasper Johns: Drawings 1997-2007 at Matthew Marks Gallery, 522 W. 22 St., continues through April 12, 2008

See also the review of Jasper Johns: Gray at the Met.

The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The Walk, and a Map

Visiting the four major building projects of architect Raymond Hood - the Daily News Building, the Radiator Building, Rockefeller Center, and the McGraw-Hill building, constitutes a pleasurable midtown stroll of approximately 2.5 miles. I'd throw in another mile for wandering around Rockefeller Center.

I haven't included Hood' earliest project here, the renovation of the small building on Bleecker Street, on this map, because after repeated alterations throughout several decades, the building is undistinguished. On the other hand, I enjoy shopping at the new art supply store that occupies the space (the other storefront occupant is the ubiquitous Duane Reade).

The walk presents opportunities to explore other landmarks along the way, including Grand Central Station and the New York Public Library. Keeping with the theme of Art Deco architecture of the 1920s, I also recommend a visit to the beautiful Chanin Building at 122 E. 42nd. Murals such as "The City of Opportunity" are in character with the optimism and boom-time cheerleading that characterized the age.


View Larger Map

Images of Rockefeller Center by Walking Off the Big Apple. February 2008.
See the NYT story of February 21, 2008 about the installation of "Electric Fountain"at Rockfeller Center by artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster.

See also:
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect
Raymond Hood Designed My Duane Reade, Well, Sort Of
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The Radiator Building
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The News Building
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The McGraw-Hill Building
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: Rockefeller Center
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: Final Thoughts

"Mrs. Clinton, of New York"

The august New York Times, keeping to its long tradition of referring to news subjects by the titles "Mr." and "Mrs.," refers to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as "Mrs. Clinton, of New York." As I was reading this morning's NYT front page account of Senator Barack Obama's impressive margin of victory over Senator Clinton in yesterday's Wisconsin primary and Hawaii caucuses, I thought, "Wow. "Mrs. Clinton, of New York. - That's her problem right there."

The Times keeps the style of Mrs. consistent, as far as I know, throughout the paper. Scanning other political stories of the day, I can read, for example, the account of Mrs. McCain's smackdown of Mrs. Obama. I'm still a little shocked, however, when I read the title Mrs., especially before the name of a woman who, though married, exercises a fair measure of independent political power.

When I was an aspiring ambitious youngin' in the great state of Texas, older uncle types would ask me about my college plans. "Are you planning on getting a MRS degree?," they'd ask, chuckling, referring of course to the useless academic time girls spend as co-eds. "Naw, man, I can't wait until I'm Governor of Texas, and you're in jail," I would think to myself, and then I'd go home to read MS. magazine.

"Mrs. Clinton" - now, that's the woman I think who stays home and bakes cookies. Adding "of New York" adds a double whammy. In the first place, in this election season you can see how well New York resonates with national voters. New York is still that suspicious foreign big crowded cold place where people get knifed in the face for no reason. For even me, "Mrs. Clinton, of New York" reads Upper East Side, a Botox-injected socialite who wouldn't in fact bake cookies but have her assistant go buy them over on Madison. It's a wonder Mrs. Clinton, of New York gets any votes outside of 10021 and 10022. On the other hand, "Mr. Obama, of Illinois" - now that's Lincoln-esque!

The New York Post doesn't use titles, so the candidates are simply Clinton and Obama, for example. Ditto for The New York Post. Other newspapers begin their reports referring to "Senator Hillary Clinton" and "Senator Barack Obama" but then drop the Senator title and the first names after these identifications. I prefer that style over the Mr. and Mrs. traditions of The New York Times. When I'm reading the Times I feel like I'm at a formal tea party. In 1954.

The way things are going, though, the title, "Mrs Clinton, of New York," sounds like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: Final Thoughts

Raymond Hood did not live to see the completion of the vast Rockefeller Center complex. An untimely death in 1934 at the age of 53, he had suffered from rheumatoid arthritis. His architecture practice had already slowed down, largely due to the economic effects of the Great Depression. He worked on a project to house the poor, but the finances for the project didn't materialize. More shocking, he received a letter threatening to kidnap his children. Gravely concerned, especially at the time of the Lindbergh tragedy when others received such threats, Hood sent his family to Bermuda and followed them a short time later. Upon hearing the news that the perpetrator had been caught, he collapsed, and after returning to his home in Stamford, Connecticut, he never regained full health.

Rockefeller Center is still unequaled as a grand modern urban plan, at least one so popular with the public. Though the buildings share some uniformity, the variation of taller and smaller buildings within the development, the art deco visual touches, and the artful design elements of the plaza combine to create just the right amount of theatricality. It's not too much. It's what we mean when we use the word "elegant."

In thinking about comparable urban developments of our own era, the kind that fuse private economic power with state ambition, the extraordinary projects in Abu Dhabi and Dubai come to mind, or maybe, the building of contemporary Berlin. But what new projects await Gotham? Well, several developments of some scale are in the works - the High Line/Hudson Yards redevelopment projects on the west side of Manhattan, Atlantic Yards in downtown Brooklyn, designed by Frank Gehry, and the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site downtown.

Still, whichever of these large projects come to fruition in this uncertain economy, contemporary architects and urban planners could learn a few lessons from Raymond Hood's skills and visionary design. A trip to Rockefeller Center is a start, watching people take pictures of friends and family in front of the fountain and enjoying the scene of people falling down on skates. Sure, the Rock's often crowded, but isn't that precisely the point?

See also:
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect
Raymond Hood Designed My Duane Reade, Well, Sort Of
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The Radiator Building
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The News Building
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The McGraw-Hill Building
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: Rockefeller Center
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The Walk

The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: Rockefeller Center

Walking the long cool dimly-lit black and gold power corridors of the GE building in Rockefeller Center, beginning my journey at the west entrance on the Avenue of the Americas and moving toward the east, I feel like I've fallen into a liminal pre-death dream state, a wandering soul pushed toward the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. The cool black hallways and the low lighting, the main source of which are illuminated numbers, discourage sounds above a whisper. "Shhhh....that's NBC over there...and look!, over there - if you've been good in your mortal life, you may ascend to the Rainbow Room." The darkness continues unabated, enveloping the visitor with the signifiers of a higher power. This must be the work of a medieval-loving man of great largesse, I think, someone who has inherited an empire.

After the dark journey through the long corridor, the pilgrim enters the Grand Lobby. Enveloped now by golden images of muscular semi-nude figures, the mythical workers of José Maria Sert's mural American Progress tumble down staircases, soar across the ceiling, and in several cases look as if they may trounce anyone below. I am less than nothing. I marvel at my insignificance.

Finally, a light at the end of the tunnel appears. Just as I suspected, the doors to heaven are those damn revolving doors. And beyond I see...Joy beyond joys! Light! Space! So many flags! People! And behold! Wouldn't you know it? Heaven has a sunken ice rink and places to eat some lunch.

At the beginning of creation, the center's site, owned by Columbia University and leased to John D. Rockefeller, Jr., was originally intended as a new home for the Metropolitan Opera. When the opera pulled out, Junior's architecture team, Reinhard and Hofmeister; Corbet, Harrison and MacMurray; Hood and Fouihoux, spent months drawing up hypothetical configurations. When the Radio Corporation of America, NBC, and then RKO decided to become the principle tenants, the project started to make sense.

Raymond Hood, as head of the team, bore the main responsibility for negotiating among the many interests to make "the City within a City" a reality in limestone. While speaking the language of cost and efficiency, he argued that Rockefeller Center needed roof gardens, open spaces, and works of great art if it was going to succeed. Almost everyone else at the time thought it was going to fail. They were wrong.

Photos of Rockefeller Center by Walking Off the Big Apple, from February 18, 2008.

See also:
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect
Raymond Hood Designed My Duane Reade, Well, Sort Of
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The Radiator Building
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The News Building
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The McGraw-Hill Building
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: Final Thoughts
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The Walk

FOCUS on POTUS: The Two Washingtons of the Washington Square Arch

Officially, it's still called Washington's Birthday, though President's Day has become the accepted name, mostly as a way to include President Lincoln.

The day's meaning usually signifies a break from work or school or the arrival of a sale. In the United States Senate, however, there's at least one formality. One senator is selected to read Washington's Farewell Address. The practice began in 1862 as a way to cope with the dark days of the Civil War.

This morning I visited the statues of the two Washingtons - the military George and the civilian man of peace that grace the north side of the Washington Square Arch in Washington Square Park. Sadly, in the ever increasing disruption caused by the renovation of the park, the arch itself is now inaccessible behind a metal fence.

The arch served to commemorate the Centennial of Washington's Inauguration, an event that took place downtown. The pier statues were added later -"Washington at War" on the left of the arch by Herman MacNeil in 1916 and "Washington at Peace" on the right by Alexander Stirling Calder in 1918. Yes, Calder was the father of the famous mobile artist, Alexander Calder.

While it's not surprising that two different sculptors should interpret Washington differently, especially given the separate tasks, I'm struck how the civilian Washington, the one by Calder, presents the tougher image. While MacNeil's warrior George seems to retreat behind all those formal clothes and hat, Calder's peacetime George is bold and struttin' his stuff. Casually resting his left hand on the pedestal, his massive strong right hand shows off serious knuckles. This POTUS has got some legs, and I'd be afraid of that extra muscle he's got behind him.

Images of "Washington at War" by Herman MacNeil (1916) and "Washington at Peace" by Alexander Stirling Calder (1918) by Walking Off the Big Apple, February 18, 2008, Washington's Birthday.

Luc Tuymans' Wonderful World of Painting (A Review)

Belgian-born artist Luc Tuymans (b. 1958) brings his painterly virtuosity to the kingdom of the mouse in his new solo exhibit, Forever, The Management of Magic, at David Zwirner. The image fragments of Walt Disney's electric magic empire, painted here like faded film stock in the blues and mauves of cotton candy, conjure a dusty collection of peripheral memorabilia. With these eight wonderful paintings and a side room of gouache drawings, Tuymans opens up a service entrance to the back lot of utopia. No mice here, this is Walt, the utopian urban planner, the maestro of the energy-draining world of tomorrow, the extravagant Robert Moses with electric turtles. Pay no attention to that man that Tuymans has almost cropped out of the painting.

Wonderland, one of the two largest paintings (at 138.98 x 215.35 inches), is based on a still from a family home movie made at Disneyland. Tuymans paints the trip through the Alice in Wonderland attraction from the perspective of the amateur filmmaker, and the painting functions as its own amusement, a kind of old fashioned play for the virtual reality that paintings once represented.

It took a trip to the Internet to get a fix on what I was looking at with the equally enormous Turtle, because I didn't recall that Disney's twinkling turtle from the Main Street Electrical Parade sported large round spectacles. These circles, then, of glowing light poking off the turtle's head represent the turtle's "vision." What a weird thing to think about - a glorious painted representation of the Disney electric twinkling turtle that needs glasses. What a ghostly spectral spectacular!

Wow - paintings. You remember them - stretched canvas and the application of paints with a paintbrush. Oils, no less, as Tuymans could not possibly make this work in the plastic technicolor world of acrylic but only with the creamy applications of oils. In passages, they remind me of seascapes. Tuymans has this wavy surf-like action going on with his brush strokes that leave marks that look like angel's wings. After coming across so much assemblage this year, I thought it wonderful to encounter aesthetically-pleasing two-dimensional painted canvases in seductive oils. Some of the works were so fresh I could smell them.

Walt Disney, famously frozen in time and space, manipulated and shaped the American psyche in profound ways - from the everlasting orphan search for Daddy to escaping unpredictable American reality for the safe ordered haven of Disneyland. I'm not sure we learn anything new here. I think types who show up at David Zwirner already see through the ideology of the mouse and the production of desire. There have been books. Actually, when I was looking at Tuymans' Wonderland, I think my mouth dropped open a little as I imagined myself riding on the train through the tunnel. Daddy, it was like magic. I want to go on that ride again.

Luc Tuymans, Forever, The Management of Magic continues through March 22, 2008. David Zwirner. Chelsea.

Walking News Week in Review: The Sustainable Flâneur and Other Top Stories

Strolling Device Converts to Electricity and Thusly Saves the Planet from Environmental Destruction (Discovery News)
Mechanical engineers have found that a wearable knee device can turn any flâneur into a self-sustained power house, charging up our cell phone or whatever powered device we may be carrying in our Vuitton bag. So great! And we thought we were only good for drinking absinthe in cafés.

The Mayor of London Wants People Out Cycling and Walking (The City of London)
Ken Livington, the Mayor of London, announced plans to invest 500 million pounds in new expenditures to get folks in London out of their motor vehicles and into the open air. The pedestrian plans call for better signage to help navigate pedestrians from one place to another.

A Guy Who Calls Himself Fellow Human Walks and Eats Sardines (Explorer News)
A guy who calls himself Fellow Human is walking across America wearing a 45-pound backpack and living off sardines.

West Virginia Students Told to Walk More (Marshall Parthenon)
West Virginia is trying to persuade college students to walk to class so they won't be so chubby.

I've signed up for a Google Alert on the topic of walking, and I like to share the best stories from time to time. Most of the news stories, however, involve pedestrians who are injured or harmed in some malicious way while walking, but I don't like to share those types of reports.

The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The McGraw-Hill Building

The McGraw-Hill Building at 330 West 42nd Street, built in 1930, is unusually blue-green. In fact, architect Raymond Hood's use of glazed terra cotta tiles in shades of blue-green constitutes one of the most ambitious applications of this material in the history of architecture.

A splendid example of the streamlined moderne style, the McGraw-Hill Building, built on a steel frame skeleton, sports plenty of light along its striped exterior and linear decorative stripes throughout the lobby.

Many architecture historians consider the McGraw-Hill building to embody the transition from Art Deco to the International Style largely due to its lack of ornamentation. Hood was a follower of the modernist master Le Corbusier, especially in his advocacy of a city of towers, and, certainly this building is a far cry from the Gothic idiom of the Radiator Building.

When I visited the building a few days ago, I was surprised at all the hustle and bustle around the lobby. Many kinds of businesses, art groups, labor unions, and civic organizations rent out space in the building. Given all the activity, I thought the building, especially the exterior near the entrance, looked a little worn and in need of some TLC.

1221 Avenue of the Americas, built in 1969 as part of the expansion of Rockefeller Center, is also known as the McGraw-Hill Building and serves as headquarters for the McGraw-Hill Companies, a Fortune 500 company. 1221, one of the three "XYZ" buildings, is gargantuan, bureaucratic, oppressive and boring. (See New York City Skyscrapers site for image.)

Images here of McGraw-Hill Building, 330 42nd Street, by Walking Off the Big Apple. 2008.
See also:
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect
Raymond Hood Designed My Duane Reade, Well, Sort Of
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The Radiator Building
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The News Building
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: Rockefeller Center
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: Final Thoughts
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The Walk

The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The News Building

In 1919 Chicago Tribune co-publishers Joseph Medill Patterson and Robert R. McCormick couldn't agree over the content of the newspaper, so they decided Patterson should start a different newspaper in New York. Inspired by the popularity of a London tabloid, The Daily News emphasized photography, celebrity news, and a focus on city politics. New York commuters loved the paper because it was easy to hold and read on a subway.

John Mead Howells and Raymond Hood, the architects of the Chicago Tribune building, were tapped to build the new building for The Daily News. Patterson initially wanted a large enough facility to hold the paper's staff and printing facility, but Hood talked him into the lucrative proposition of building an office tower on top. It hadn't occurred to Patterson that he could make money from rent-paying businesses.

In designing the tower Hood had to deal with a new city zoning law, one that prohibited the construction of large massive buildings that blocked light from the streets. The setback requirements of new building construction encouraged the tiered design of all the new New York skyscrapers of the 1920s and 1930s. It's this wedding cake formula that characterizes the older New York skyline. The soaring Daily News building, one that mild-mannered reporters could leap at a single bound, was completed in 1930, roughly the same time as the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building.

The overall design of the building was guided by the windows. The architects decided that the average office worker needed to easily open a window, so the windows should be small enough to handle. Moreover, the worker most likely to open a window would be a female secretary (or Lois Lane). The architects figured that an average woman could manage opening a window four feet and six inches wide. In addition, after one of Hood's associates designed the red and black pattern for the brick spandrels, Hood decided that all the window shades needed to be red.

The Tribune Company owned The Daily News (website) until 1991. Mort Zuckerman bought the paper in 1993, and in 1995 the paper relocated to 450 W. 33rd Street.

Image: The Daily News Building. 220 E. 42nd Street. photo by WOTBA. February 2008. See related posts with images of the famous lobby. Still to come on the Raymond Hood walk - the McGraw-Hill building, Radio City and Rockefeller Center. Wow - some serious walking ahead of me. I hope I'll have strength left to open a window.

See this breaking story on the Daily News plan for color on all pages (New York Times, Feb. 14, 2008).

See also:
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect
Raymond Hood Designed My Duane Reade, Well, Sort Of
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The Radiator Building
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The McGraw-Hill Building
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: Rockefeller Center
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: Final Thoughts
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The Walk

The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The Radiator Building

After architect Raymond Hood finished the renovation of Mori's restaurant in Greenwich Village in 1920, he found success designing radiator covers for the American Radiator Company. The income allowed him to move with his bride and growing family to an apartment on Washington Square. In 1922 John Mead Howells invited Hood to join him on a design competition for the Chicago Tribune Building, and when they won the $50,000 award, Hood finally emerged out of debt.

Winning the prestigious Tribune competition allowed Hood to secure his first important New York commission - the new building to house the American Radiator Company at 40 West 40th Street. In designing a tower that would symbolize the company, Hood designed several unusual features, including the use of black brick. He didn't want anyone to work after dark in the building, thinking that the illumination would disrupt the overall impression of mass and solidity. He couldn't control the workforce, of course, and George O'Keeffe (see related post) made the building famous by painting it at night.

After the building was completed in 1924 Hood moved his offices into the building's fourteenth floor. He partnered with J. André Fouilhoux, a French engineer, and Frederick A. Godley. The firm also designed the National Radiator Building in London, also a structure of black brick.

Increasingly successful in a time that coalesced with the national building boom of the 1920s, Hood enjoyed a long four-hour lunch every Friday at Mori's with Viennese designer Joseph Urban, his best friend and architect of the Ziegfeld Theater, and architects Ely Jacques Kahn and Ralph Walker. Among them they built a significant part of the famous New York skyline.

For Hood, after the Radiator Building, he would soon leave his Gothic designs in favor of sleeker and less ornamental work. The Daily News building provided reasons to move on to something more modern.

Image: The American Radiator Building, 1924. The carousel in Bryant Park is in the foreground. photo by WOTBA. 2008.

See also:
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect
Raymond Hood Designed My Duane Reade, Well, Sort Of
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The News Building
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The McGraw-Hill Building
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: Rockefeller Center
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: Final Thoughts
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The Walk

Wee Willy WOTBA's Downtown Chocolate Walk

Yesterday was the colonel's birthday, so he asked me to go over to Bruno Bakery and buy a couple of cakes for an impromptu celebration. It's a hard job, but someone's got to pick out the chocolate cakes. Now, facing the prospect of Valentines Day, I must once again go back into the world and find chocolate candy. Gee, life's tough. Fortunately, chocolate has known health benefits, so I can rationalize any purchase. Buying a little chocolate also helps the economy by boosting consumer "sentiment."

I first devised this self-guided chocolate walk for visiting friends who expressed interest in such a thing. I sent them to chocolate meccas in SoHo - Vosges, Mariebelle, and Kee's, stores within just a few blocks of one another. Now I feel compelled to broaden the walk to include Jacques Torres and a few pastry shops that also feature quality chocolates. I'm also partial to the very elegant La Maison du Chocolat up on Madison, but that's too far off my personal grid.


View Larger Map

Shopping for Valentines Day should also include a roundup of chocolate-covered strawberries, red velvet cakes, a big bouquet of red roses, and a bag of those little hearts with sayings on them. Greeting cards may be involved. After festively decorating the dining room table with these items, you've pretty much taken care of your own needs and could consider what to get for anyone else.

Image: Inside a case at Bruno Bakery (musical pleasures await at the website), LaGuardia Place. February 2008.

Raymond Hood Designed My Duane Reade, Well, Sort Of

Born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island on March 21, 1881, Raymond Hood attended Brown University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. Hood returned to the United States and established an architectural practice in New York in 1914. He didn't have much work, but he got a lucky break in 1920 when his landlord, Placido Mori, commissioned him to redesign his popular Greenwich Village restaurant on Bleecker Street. According to biographer and architect Walter H. Kilham, Jr.'s account, Mori gave Hood the assignment because, as Mori said, "He must be a genius–he eats so much!"*

As part of her epic journey documenting a vanishing New York, photographer Berenice Abbott took a photo of the restaurant in 1935 (see Museum of the City of New York website), and comparing her image with the image here it's easy to notice that some of the details of Mori's remain today. Hood added the top apartments, the Federal lintels above the windows, and the Doric columns.

Image: 144 Bleecker Street, February 12, 2008. WOTBA. Originally two Federalist era townhouses at 144 and 146, the facade of the building was resigned for Mori's Italian restaurant by Raymond Hood in 1920. The restaurant went out of business in 1938. The building hosted a variety of tenants until 1962. In that year the Bleecker Street Cinema, an indie art house, beloved in its era, opened in the building. After the cinema closed, a series of music venues occupied the building including the Elbow Room and Nocturne, as well as Kim's Underground Video. Most all of these businesses departed the location due to rising rents. It's an eternal New York story.

For a curious story about some lost murals from 144 Bleecker's wartime years and the history of the building, see this November 4, 1990 article from The New York Times archives.

* Raymond Hood, Architect: Form Through Function in the American Skyscraper by Walter H. Kilham, Jr. NY: Architectural Book Publishing Co., 1973.

Part of a series of posts relating to the New York buildings of architect Raymond Hood (1881-1934).

Lesson: If you want to design some place like Rockefeller Center, you gotta start somewhere.

See also:
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The Radiator Building
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The News Building
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The McGraw-Hill Building
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: Rockefeller Center
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: Final Thoughts
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The Walk

The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect

During the heady years of the late Jazz Age in New York, architect Raymond Hood (1881-1934) presided over some of the city's most dazzling projects. Catapulted to fame after winning the 1922 competition to design the Chicago Tribune building with partner John Mead Howells, Hood quickly built a reputation in New York. Architecture critics and historians denounced Hood's winning Chicago Tribune design as too safe and too neo-Gothic retro, especially in comparison to the competition of European modernists, but he would come to shed these retro design sensibilities, embracing the sleeker lines of art deco and simpler geometries.

Hood's American Radiator Building at 40 W. 40th Street in New York, his first major New York commission, echoed the Gothic lines of the Tribune building but with the added drama of black brick and gold trim. With the Daily News building and the McGraw-Hill Building on 42nd Street, and as lead architect for the team that designed Rockefeller Center, including parts of Radio City and the monumental RCA building, he helped bring modernism to the United States.

Hood was a late bloomer, and he didn't get a lucky break until he was 40. He started out broke. He was persuasive with clients, logical, and mischievous. A man of slight stature, Hood nevertheless put his faith and hopes in the future of tall buildings.

His buildings are worth a close look. They're hopeful and utopian and full of fun. He would have called them simply practical. So, a walk begins - 42nd Street, Rockefeller Center, and environs, with a detour to a little building on Bleecker Street.

Images: Raymond Hood, architect-in-chief, Rockefeller Center, July 3, 1931. Gottscho, Samuel H. 1875-1971, (Samuel Herman), photographer, Library of Congress, and McGraw-Hill Building, 330 W. 42nd Street, photo by WOTBA.

See related posts:
Raymond Hood Designed My Duane Reade, Well, Sort Of
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The Radiator Building
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The News Building
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The McGraw-Hill Building
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: Rockefeller Center
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: Final Thoughts
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The Walk

The Girl With The Purple Umbrella

After a forecast yesterday that called for rain or snow in the morning, followed by a chance of flurries or some rain later in the morning, and then some rain around noon, nothing really materialized until the early afternoon. Then, a wild but brief sideways snowstorm blew in fast and furious. It was not like fluffy snow or freezing precipitation but more like being caught inside a shaken snow globe.

I chanced to look out the window at the blowing wintry precipitation - the kind that the weather service might characterize as "unknown," when I spotted a young woman with a purple umbrella standing in the middle of the intersection. I didn't think she was in too much danger, Sunday afternoon at that hour is fairly quiet in the Village, but I did worry that she was fairly vulnerable to a speeding taxi. As we say in Texas, usually about politics, "Only thing in the middle of the road are yellow stripes and dead armadillos."

I watched her for several minutes, though she was hard to see in the blowing snow, and I wondered why, of course, she was immovable in the middle of the intersection. I liked her purple umbrella. Then I realized she was talking on her cell phone. That must be a pretty important call, I thought, the kind that's so important that you have to stand still. Casual phone calls usually can be conducted while walking, but serious or surprising news will stop you dead in your tracks. So, here's this girl with a purple umbrella that's about to blow out of one hand, and it's snowing sideways at about fifty miles an hour, and she's on the phone and not moving. I would not do that.

I surmised that even though I saw her standing at this particular intersection in the middle of a winter storm, she herself imagined being elsewhere, a somewhere that was not in the middle of the street.

Call for Volunteer Contributors: Attention Far-Flung Flâneurs, Walkers, and Peripatetic Writers

If you have been reading Walking Off the Big Apple, you know that the site has started to receive serious attention. Manhattan User's Guide in October described the site as their favorite pastime, and The New York Times added WOTBA to their City Room Blogroll. Stanley Fish quoted WOTBA in his review of the New Museum. Fancy that!

I think Walking Off the Big Apple would be even ten times more fabulous if it included guest walks from around the globe. The readership has always been international and not just confined to the greater Big Apple area. Plus, I get tired of the sound of my own twangy voice.

I invite interested walkers and flâneurs (see the gift list post for the distinction) to author a guest walk for WOTBA (the silly abbreviation for Walking Off the Big Apple). Maybe you have a favorite street or neighborhood you would like to share with WOTBA's global audience. I will serve as the gentle editor for your post. Feel free to take pictures or make illustrations for your walk. You may use your own name in its entirety, if you wish, or an abbreviated one or a colorful pen name. I don't need more than 500 words. Previously published walks will not be considered. No money will exchange hands. I will sing your praises.

I operate on a whimsical schedule as it is, so I would not hold anyone to a strict deadline. I have previously sent out this call to a handful of global readers who have expressed enthusiasm for this site, but as true flâneurs, they are proudly slow.

Please write walkbigapple@yahoo.com if interested in sharing a walk from your neck of the woods with the worldwide WOTBA audience. Thank you!

Image: Inside the Daily News building. 42nd Street, New York, New York.

Weekend Frivolities: Walking Off the Big Apple's New Wide Open Spaces

Do not adjust your set! Walking Off the Big Apple needed SOME SPACE. For those loyal readers returning for a daily dose of WOTBA, I apologize for the shock of this bold new look. I needed room to stretch - I have long lanky legs, and the tiny font size of the former WOTBA was too hard for me to read, much less write. I redesigned the site yesterday on a total whim. Maybe it's due in part to the images of tall buildings I plan to show you this week or the pretty SoHo chocolates coming up for Valentines Day. In any case, like many Texans in the Big Apple, I need to walk to where I can see the sky.

Image: From The Promenade in Brooklyn Heights, the view of Lower Manhattan.

WOTBA's Walking News Digest: Walking Felon Preachers, Maryland's Issues With Walking, and No One Walks in Arlington

Florida Man Shoots Himself While Walking His Dog
Florida Today.com. When I'm walking my dogs, I try not to carry too much in my pocket. I don't advise packing heat.

Walking Preacher Is Really a Felon
Natchez Democrat. This guy was walking around the country, he explained, because God told him to. Turns out he was walking away from some hard time.

No One Walks in Arlington, Texas
Fort Worth Star Telegram. Arlington, Texas was built as a car-friendly suburb, with the residential areas far away from places of employment. Ergo, Arlington comes in last place in the number of people walking to work, according to a study conducted by hr.blr.com, a human resources web site. NYC comes in a fourth place behind Boston, Washington, and San Francisco.

Walking in Snowy Fond du Lac, Wisconsin is No Fun
Fond du Lac Reporter. Recent snow storms have left snow piling up on the sidewalks, and some folks in the land of the Frozen Tundra are mad they have to walk in the streets.
Same for Idaho Local 8 News (Idaho Falls, etc.)

Maryland's Experiment in Making Walking the State Exercise
(AP) Some people in Maryland don't think walking is Maryland-specific enough to warrant adoption as the state exercise.

Image: The globe inside the Daily News building on 42nd St. Walking Off the Big Apple is fixin' to put together a themed self-guided midtown walking tour of the buildings designed by architect Raymond Hood. See also The Building That Would Glow at Night.

Inside the Daily Planet

Image: "Clark Kent Contemplates the Gulf of Mexico."

Lobby, The New York Daily News building, 220 East 42nd Street (at 2nd Ave). 1930. Raymond Hood and John Mead Howells, designers. Photo: WOTBA, February 7, 2008. Visiting the Daily News building should be on every visitor's list. The building is only a few blocks east of Grand Central Station. Only the lobby is open to the public, but that's the part you want to see.

Lost in the West Village? So Eat

View Larger Map

Last week I walked down E. 4th Street and noticed that the color red dominated the visual landscape. Walking on W. 4th the palette veers to the blues, greens, and teals. The cool colors dominate on the west, while the hot colors splash on the eastern blocks of 4th Street. I attribute this visual duality in large part to the cultural history of the two areas - the West Village is more Western European while the East Village blends southern European with Latin American cultural heritage.

The West Village is often confusing and disorienting, because the streets run off grid. I spend a lot of time helping lost souls regain their bearing, and sometimes I'm lost myself. Last week a woman approached me near the intersection of Bleecker and Thompson and asked me how to get to Washington and Perry. She actually looked lost, with that glassy-eyed averted glance of trying to understand the mysteries of space and time. I had to go into a trance to be able to help her.

I attribute the success of the West Village restaurant scene to the trap that the denizens set for the lost souls wandering in the neighborhood. My own personal compass is informed by the knowledge that Bleecker Street and the parallel W. 4th take tricky turns toward the north beginning at 6th Avenue. That's really all I need to know. Walking north on Bleecker after 6th Avenue, for example, I know that turning left will take me further west.

I've started to compile a list of restaurants and cafes in the West Village for anyone who is interested in veering into such a trickster neighborhood and has some patience with getting lost.

Another way I orient myself in the West Village is to take my big dog with me. She loves the Hudson River pier so much that she will drag me there.

The Foodie Blocks of Bleecker Street, and a Map

I feel like such an enabler. Some people come to this website seeking help on walking to lose weight, and I stick up pictures of food in their face. I should explain.

Bleecker Street, just a few steps out my door, is a well-recognized food haven for many visitors and New Yorkers. I am of the opinion, however, that beautiful food, made locally by people who are trained in tradition, adds to the quality of life. In an earlier post, I extolled the virtues of handmade gelato. The people who make my favorite gelato consider themselves true artists. A sense of artistry is part of the best culinary traditions, just as many craft traditions maintain the standards of beauty that mass production forfeits.


View Larger Map

I often visit the food blocks of Bleecker just to pick up the lasagne at Murray's, the bread at Amy's or the pignoli cookies at Rocco's. Even during the times when I'm shopping at Pet Central acquiring the gourmet items for Snoopy and Lassie (not their real names), I enjoy looking at the windows of these food establishments. Food can look beautiful, and I don't have to eat anything.

Among Yesterday's Other Spectacles, A Fire On Bleecker Street

Out and about yesterday, gelato cone in hand, strolling Bleecker Street with the celebrating NY Giants fans, I smelled a delicious barbecue. Unfortunately, it was not part of the Super Tuesday New York Giants Mardi Gras celebration, but a fire in the building that houses Indian Taj on Bleecker Street.

Many people gathered to watch the firemen tear out the roof. The intersection of Bleecker and Macdougal near the fire comes as close to the heart of the Village as any one place, so I'm glad that the firemen saved the historic block from complete ruin. The history of the Village is fragile.

I've dined at Indian Taj. The food is good, and the servers are gracious, so I hope they'll be back in business again soon. Pinkberry, the trendy gelato place next door, should already be back in action.

Given the popularity of firemen among children, many were enthralled by the truck, the red lights, and their hero figures in full gear.

Walking Off the Big Apple's Lenten Gelato Diet

While walking on Bleecker Street yesterday and looking at all the food in the windows of the street's foodie blocks, and stopping for awhile to watch the firemen put out a fire above Indian Taj (all of which I'll show you soon), I held in my hand the item you see before you until it disappeared. Gelato, I thought, would be my answer to the Grapefruit, though I greatly enjoy the grapefruit in its ruby red variety, in much the same way as that of my fellow countryman, President Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Waking up on this Wednesday and noting it was to time to count all the sins of omission and sins of commission for the next forty days, as I was well trained by the priests of the Episcopal Church, I have set upon a diet plan based on gelato. As the Ice Cream Diet seems to be resurrected every decade, I think it's time to move on to the softer, more artisanal version of frozen wonderland. I am sort of over frozen yogurt. Gelato incorporates less air in its making than ice cream and should be lighter in fat.

For the Gelato Diet I will incorporate a twice-weekly indulgence with the 10,000 steps-a-day program, for, indeed, that's the 4.5 to 5 mile walking range that should allow me to walk off most of it. I also plan to cut back on portion size at every meal.

Twice a week for the next forty days, I will also order the gelato on a cone, as the cone provides practical and aesthetic pleasures while walking. Walking down the street with a cone of gelato frees the other hand to wave at friends and admirers.

Image: Stratchiatella and dark chocolate nutella gelato. L'Arte del Gelato, 75 Seventh Avenue, NY, NY.

Election Day

After watching endless hours of CNN and MSNBC (I'm partial to the latter) over the past month and being one of the many enthusiastic followers of the political horse race that began in Iowa, it felt almost surreal to finally cast my own ballot today.

I went to the polls in the late morning, before any rush, and I found the line short and the temperaments of the poll workers cheerful. The subdued atmosphere of voting struck me as a complete contrast to the fevered high-energy commentary of the televised political coverage. The business of news coverage demands cranking up the volume and pumping up the drama to drive ratings, but the business at the polls is necessarily the boring attention to order, procedure, and checking off names.

The pace of the process, in its slow way, helped me with the peculiarities of the New York party primary ballot - the list of named delegates supporting the candidates, people I'm supposed to vote for but do not know. I have been familiar with this New York process for a long time, but still it's odd. I heard a guy in line whispering the mystery of the delegates to another voter, but she didn't get it either.

Given the hoopla of media coverage about Super Tuesday, I wasn't too surprised to read that today in Bexar County, Texas - that would be San Antonio and pronounced like "Bear," over a thousand voters called the election commission to ask where to vote. Primary day in Texas is March 4, not today. Reading this news of the Bexar County confusion, I recalled my long-ago awakening as a young idealistic activist. During my college years my activism took me to San Antonio to participate in the state-wide convention, and I remember thinking that politics was the greatest, most glamorous, and most important aspect of my life.

That sense of myself as the young person who would change the world belongs to a different era. In the intervening years, political professionals took over the grass roots politics I loved, and I feel guilty that I let them. But this morning, in the gray light of an overcast day, a small distant voice came back to me and wanted to re-engage with the world. It made me happy.

I don't think I need to tell you who I voted for.

A New York Giants Mardi Gras: Awash in a Sea of True Blue

After voting in the late morning I spent an hour walking west on Bleecker Street and then up and east over to Astor Place. I expected to see plenty of people out and about carrying Obama and Hillary signs or wearing campaign buttons, especially near NYU, but I've seen very little visual evidence outside my polling place that today is the important Super Tuesday New York primary.

I did see the New York Giants fans out in full force, dispersing from downtown's parade in the Canyon of Heroes. Several Giants fans wore both the team jersey and Mardi Gras beads, but I kept hoping to see one that wore a NY Giants shirt, some carnival beads, and an Obama button. Maybe I just missed that person.

It's Fashion Week in New York, but it's hard to see that, too. Only True Blue looked fashionable on a day like today.

Images: top, the window of Ottomanelli's Meat Market, 285 Bleecker St.; Giants fans, in their lucky "away" colors, along LaGuardia Place; selling the tabloids at Astor Place.