Walking Off the Lower East Side: Orchard Street Highlights

After reeling from the shock of construction sites along Orchard St. just south of E. Houston, as noted in the previous post, I calmed down long enough to enjoy the less disrupted blocks farther south. Some places of note, including a few art galleries, an increasingly more visible part of the Lower East Side landscape, listed from north to south:

• Charbon Epicerie: a convincingly French cafe; the door is through the Tabac Shop. 170 Orchard St.
• Guitar Man, 147 Orchard St.
• The Orchard Building. 140, 142. Beautiful ornate apartment building that could use some exterior preservation.
• Altman Luggage, long-established store. 135 Orchard St.
• Beckenstein signage. Fabric store established in 1919. According to Barry Popik's Big Apple website, The song "Sam, You Made the Pants Too Long" (1932) probably refers to Sam Beckenstein.
• The Bean Coffee & Tea. 118 Orchard St. Free Wifi.
• Blue Moon Hotel. 100 Orchard St. Upscale boutique hotel with large rooms and luxurious amenities.
• Mark Miller Gallery, 92 Orchard St.
• The Lower East Side Tenement Museum. 91 Orchard St. Must stop for gift shop and information. Guided tours only.
• Roasting Plant. 81 Orchard St. Cafe and Wifi.
• Former E.S. Ridley Department Store (at Grand). Once the largest retail store in the world, closed in 1901, it's a pink show-stopper of a building.
• Miguel Abreu Gallery, 36 Orchard St.
• Orchard. Gallery 47 Orchard St.
• Good World Bar and Grill. 3 Orchard Street

More images at Flickr WOTBA.
Part of a series of posts about walking in the Lower East Side. Maps and further adventures will be forthcoming.

A Walk in NoLita, Sometimes Speaking French

To get to the New Museum of Contemporary Art on the Bowery from where I live in the Village I walk through the precious neighborhood of NoLita. I say "precious," because this neighborhood North of Little Italy is home to many attractive small boutiques and stylish bistros, and it feels like it could be bottled and sold for a large price. In fact, that's happening. The prices for several new condos in the neighborhood's attractive renovated Victorian-era buildings start in the six- and seven-million dollar range. And the proximity of the New Museum solidifies NoLita's stature as a hot neighborhood, with galleries, shoe boutiques and other art-friendly places popping up here and there.

Walking along Prince or Spring toward the museum, I have several old and new, ecclesiastical and secular, places to note along the way:

Buildings: The St. Patrick's Old Cathedral at Mott and Prince, served as the Roman Catholic Cathedral until the big St. Patrick's was built on Fifth Avenue; and The Fourteenth Ward Industrial School, a Victorian building designed in 1888 by Calvert Vaux and George Radford, on Mott, built by the Astors for the children of neighborhood immigrants;

Food: Chibi's Bar (devoted to sake) and Cafe Gitane on Mott, Ceci-Cela on Spring.

Edification: McNally Robinson Booksellers on Prince. I could name many more places I like.

View Larger Map
While walking in NoLita yesterday, it seemed like 83% of the people were speaking French. Places like Cafe Gitane and Ceci-Cela attract French visitors, or possibly, local Francophiles practicing their language skills.

NoLita is not gentrified on every square inch. Along another street it's possible to see long-time residents playing board games in a concrete fenced park and children playing ball. Not everyone there is an attractive young French-speaking person, although it often seems that way.

Image and Map of NoLita by Walking Off the Big Apple.

A Walk in Turtle Bay: Beekman Place, the U.N., Tudor City, and E. 42nd St.

I recommend that visitors to New York, if they have time, should escape the more manic tourist attractions to discover quieter parts of the city. It's not only nice to get away from the crowds, for a change, but also to see how New Yorkers live and work. The far east side of midtown, from Beekman Place at E. 51st St. south to E. 42nd Street, is a diverse and intriguing oasis of quiet streets, spectacular housing complexes, and the international community around the U.N.


View Larger Map Distance: approx. 2 miles.
Note: This walk can function as a connector walk between two previous walks created for Walking Off the Big Apple - the Greta Garbo walk (that begins on E. 52nd St.) and the Raymond Hood architecture walk (picking up at the Daily News Building on E. 42nd St.)

Begin at 6 train subway stop at 51st St.
Walk north to 52rd St. and then east for lunch at ZipBurger (at 2nd Ave.), one of the best hamburger joints in the neighborhood (vegetarian friends like the salmon burger), and then continue walking east. Turn south on 1st Ave., walk east on E. 51st. to Beekman Place. (Or, head all the way east on E. 52nd to The Campanile, once home to Greta Garbo, and come back.)

In Auntie Mame, the 10-year-old orphan Patrick Dennis is taken to live with his peculiar aunt at her apartment at 3 Beekman Place. The quiet street of only two blocks and surrounding area is home to old New York families and several diplomatic consulates.

At the south end of Beekman Place, walk west back to 1st Avenue and proceed south on 1st Avenue next to the United Nations complex.

The United Nations complex, built in 1949 and 1950 on seventeen acres, symbolizes international utopianism. Like Rockefeller Center, completed a decade before, the buildings were designed by an international committee of architects. The main building housing the Secretariat is based on a design by Le Corbusier. In lieu of a physical tour, while preferable, I recommend seeing Sydney Pollack's 2005 movie The Interpreter for a look inside the complex.

Directly across from the United Nations, Ralph Bunche Park is a small oasis of greenery. Walk up the granite staircase next to the Isaiah Wall (with its "beat their swords into plowshares" quotation) to the Tudor City Apartments.

Tudor City
These 12 buildings in the Tudor revival style were built in years 1925-28 as rental units to keep middle class residents from fleeing to the suburbs. Designed by architects Fred French and H. Douglas Ives, the city within a city served to clean up the area's worst slums as an early example of urban renewal. In 1988 the Landmarks Preservation Committee designated Tudor City as an historic district.

Bounded by 43th Street. to the north and 40th St. to the south, between 1st and 2nd Avenues, the Tudor City complexes, unified in their dark brown bricks and variations on English Tudor ornamentation, share small peaceful parks. Charleston Heston, by the way, once lived in Tudor City. (Tudor City sites here and here for more info.)

Walk down the staircase on either side of 42nd Street to the sidewalk below and proceed west along 42nd St. The Ford Foundation at 321 East 42nd Street, designed by Roche Dinkeloo in 1967, is considered one of the best buildings of the late International Style, famous for its early use of the spacious interior glass atrium.

At the end of the walk, 42nd Street awaits. Continue west toward Grand Central Terminal where, presumably, you'll once again join the crowds.

See related posts:
Classic New York: A Walk, and a Map
The Classic New York of Mame Dennis: A Coda, on Bank Street
Classic New York: 59th and Fifth: A Slideshow
Classic New York: The Algonquin
Classic New York: Times Square
Classic New York: A Visit to Macy's, in April
Classic New York: Henri Bendel
Classic New York: The King Cole Bar at the St. Regis
The Classic New York of Mame Dennis
The Liberation Theology of Mame Dennis
Grand Central Theatre, and A New Walk Begins

Checklist for a Busy Week: Hair Stylist, Canal Street, a Film Symposium

The events of the upcoming week can conspire to do me in, but I'm assembling forces of angels to help me out. Beginning this Wednesday, my spouse (a.k.a. the colonel) will host 300 people at a nearby venue for a film symposium. This symposium, not a festival, is a biannual event, and I've gone through this very fun and enlightening experience/trial-by-fire five times in a previous life. This is the first of such events in New York.

Strangely, I am calm. I've made a list of tasks, accounted for surprises, and organized my life to account for crises. I carry my passport and a credit card with me at all times, so if any day gets too much, there's always New Zealand.

1. Haircut. Before friends arrive, I go see Jason Razorcuthands, my hair stylist in Soho. He gives me the extra flair I need as well as any updates on where to eat fried okra in the city. He also knows that the hair I wake up with in the morning will pretty much look like the hair I'm wearing all day, so he cuts it that way. He's a celebrity stylist and knows how to talk to me.

2. Passport picture. I had to get a new passport picture for something I can't talk about right now (not New Zealand), so I asked a good friend/artist/graphic designer/printmaker/Tribeca pioneer to take it for me. I passed through Soho streets to see her south of Canal.

3. Pashmina. Coming back home north from Tribeca and into the Square above Canal (Squabca, my new name for Soho, suddenly), I looked at a new scarf long enough for the merchant to lower the price.

4. Walking dogs. All days include a walk to the park with loving canines. One of my two best friends, I noticed, is turning into a hairy beast of the forest and needs to see her own stylist. Wouldn't you know, in my neighborhood, that her haircut would cost more than mine?

University Place: Pedestrian, Yes, But in a Good Way (Slideshow)

University Place, a relatively short street in lower Manhattan, links Washington Square Park to the south with Union Square to the north. A thoroughfare frequented by NYU students, neighborhood residents, and office workers, the street enjoys a democratic mix of bars, coffee shops, diners, restaurants, boutiques, laundries, shoe repair shops, florists, and even a bowling alley. A few haunts of old New York can be found along in here - the Knickerbocker Bar & Grill, a favorite of the late Brooke Astor, and Patsy's, one of Frank Sinatra's preferred stops for pizza pie. Residents try to keep straight three similarly-sounding places - Café Spice, Space Market, and Spice.

University Place is pedestrian in both senses - it's an ordinary street, nothing to write home about, but it's also a good place for walking. I frequently walk up University Place to shop at the green market on Union Square, but sometimes I like to just stroll up the street for no good reason at all. Many of the eateries provide seats at the counter facing the street, the perfect place to sit and watch everyone walk by.

A few changes are afoot, as they say. At the intersection of University Place and 8th Street, Joyce Leslie, an inexpensive popular clothing store for women with bodies and tastes unlike like my own, is relocating to Broadway. Across the street, on the east side, the bbq restaurant, where I often enjoyed watching people drink gigantic frozen margaritas in the summertime, has left the building and will now be the home of a bank. No fun. I hope the rest of the street stays its sweet pedestrian self.

Photos by Walking Off the Big Apple. March 5, 2008

Lost in the West Village? So Eat

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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.

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.

Monday Morning Quarterbacking, and The Flâneuse of Death

As I write this post on Monday morning, I see a mixture of large snowflakes and blowing rain coming down hard outside the window. What a contrast from yesterday's bounteous warm sunshine! At least the nasty weather held back until the end of last night's revelries. You may have heard that the NFL home team here, the New York Giants, staged an improbable underdog victory over the New England Patriots in the final minutes of the Super Bowl, and as soon as the game ended, excited fans poured out of the bars and into the streets. I enjoyed falling asleep last night to the noise of so many people whooping and hollering.

Yesterday, as I roamed the West Village, I took several pictures of places and people, more of which I'll share in upcoming posts. I remember taking the image of the woman in the black coat walking past Father Demo Square, the recently renovated space near 6th Avenue, Bleecker and Carmine Streets (and Our Lady of Pompei Church where Father Demo served as pastor). Looking at the photo now, I think she looks ominous in her darkness, a contrast to the bright dispositions of the people sitting in the square. She's the one that puts the kibosh on celebrating in the streets and the one who whips up bad weather for Monday mornings. She is The Flâneuse of Death.

Not Letting a Beautiful Day Go to Waste

After a stretch of gloomy days, the bright sun and warmer temperatures drew thousands of New Yorkers out of doors today.

The surprise gift of a beautiful day served as a way to open many conversations. It was a day to sit outside at the cafe, buy some tulips, or play handball in "The Cage." The dogs seemed to love it, too.

Seeing Red, the Color, on East 4th Street

The other day, as I was walking along E. 4th Street in the East Village, I kept seeing the color red everywhere. Today, just to prove to myself I wasn't hallucinating, or projecting Bolshevism upon the entire neighborhood (although that history is there), I went back and took some images of all the red things.

I think more women wear red coats on E. 4th than anywhere else in the city. I have a red coat myself, and I feel out of place in other parts of the city. I also like the RVCs (red velvet cupcakes) at Pinisi's.

To test my theory that E. 4th is more red than parallel streets, I walked back west along E. 6th. I saw some red on E. 6th, but I'd say E. 6th is more of an aqua street.

I don't think this discussion is frivolous, because color casts a powerful emotional feeling while walking down a street. I felt energized and empowered by the red of E. 4th.

Sometime this week I'm going to walk along W. 4th. I have a hunch it's a horse of a different color.

My Famous Neighbors and Their Politics

I often pass famous people walking down the street. Just in the past year, I have seen Sam Shepard, Jessica Lange, Moby, Mario Batali, Tim Robbins, Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed, Ethan Hawke, Mandy Patinkin, and so many others who sweep by me on the streets. Mostly I see people who look familiar to me, and I often think, "That person sort of looks like so and so." Many of these individuals are hard-working New York-based actors who I may have seen for just a minute or two on a TV drama. This morning, for example, I saw a woman who may have played the psycho dead-beat mom on Episode 146 of Law and Order.

I found a good way to look up some of my more politically involved neighbors and see where they live. I can also find out which political parties or candidates they support. It's a website called Fundrace, now part of The Huffington Post. You may enjoy this yourself, because you can plug in any zip code and discover all kinds of things about neighbors and friends. Only the ones who give a certain amount to a political candidate or party are listed.

So, for example, I found out that my aunt in Dallas gave money to George Bush in 2004 and that my New York zip code neighbor, the architect and artist Maya Lin, wrote a substantial check to the Democratic National Committee. Artist Robert Longo is listed as a contributor to the GOP.

In New York, we have an unwritten rule that we leave celebrities alone and do not bother them. If they want more attention, they move to Los Angeles.

Strolling Through the Home Improvement District

New Yorkers are like people living in the hinterlands in the sense that we, too, need to make trips to the home improvement stores. I'm talking your Home Depots, your Bed, Bath, and Beyonds. I am particularly attracted to the Beyond. We need these stores in a serious way, because we feel pressured to turn our tiny and expensive places into showcases for our fabulous sense of personal style. We also sometimes need mundane things such as sliders so that the chairs don't chew up the floor.

In Manhattan, these stores are not located at the far end of a vast parking lot, but in buildings of Beaux-Arts élégance. Many are fun to visit. Mostly you'll see New York residents in the Bed, Bath, & Beyond on 6th Ave. and 18th St., the location that I visited yesterday. I stayed in the store for nearly two hours, agonizing over a selection of duvet covers. I somehow believed that there was only one correct choice, and that if I chose the wrong color or fabric then I would be condemned to a life of eternal damnation. I noticed a fellow of similar temperament who kept asking his friend if he should go ahead and buy a certain wastebasket. He examined it from all angles and decided it was "fabulous."

Preparations for the British Invasion Walk

Many New Yorkers have spent much of the last 400 years trying to keep British subjects* uneasy about settling here. Even with the first encounter in 1609 the indigenous peoples of this area greeted English explorer Henry Hudson with some good trading deals but then shot arrows through his crewmen's necks.

It's been like that ever since. In our time, for example, David Bowie, Esq. (David Robert Jones, b. 8 January 1947, Brixton, South London), and Mr. Sting (Gordon Matthew Sumner, b. 2 October 1951, Wallsend, Newcastle-upon-Tyne) have financed a proposed burlesque club in the fashionable neighborhood of NoLita, only to face opposition from some New Yorkers who don't get the redefinition of burlesque as ironic performance art.

So I've poured some Lyle's Golden Syrup on my porridge this morning and unfolded the map of Manhattan next to me in order to plan the next walk.

I will first explain where I am not going. I am not walking up Greenwich Avenue, a street with some very good English-themed shoppes such as A Salt and Battery (fish and chips) and Tea & Sympathy. This past spring merchants along here organized a lobbying campaign to designate the avenue as Little Britain in the Big Apple. I wish them well.

WOTBA is interested in the big picture. Knowing that these repeated invasions from the British Isles have indeed made an impact far larger than afternoon tea, I have decided to walk west to east along 72nd Street, a journey that should serve as an exemplar of British power and might. If you already know what awaits at the corner of 72nd and York, then you may be surprised at what we'll find along the way. This modest itinerary will necessitate several posts over several days. At the end I will reveal the identities of the truly powerful, London-based gents who control everything in our refrigerators and medicine cabinets and keep many Americans in a steady state of self-medication.

OKAY! Now everyone shout out the answer - "Are you a mod or a rocker?"

Images: Letter from the Library of Congress, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, and a Union Flag. Click on the letter to enlarge.

* American Presidents born as British subjects: Washington, J. Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, J. Q. Adams, Jackson, and W. Harrison.

See complete walk here.

New York Walks Addenda

Image to the left: Quick sketch of the courtyard of the Westbeth building.

(Updated November 2007) When I'm out walking, I'm constantly making notes to remind myself what to tell you. I will sometimes pull out a small notebook and jot down these observations, and at other times I make mental notes that I forget by the time I return home.
Here are a few items my memory managed to recover:

• Where Diane Arbus lived and died is close to where Annie Liebovitz currently lives.
  
• Tourists seem to not know the existence of any streets east of Lafayette.
• The place where Arbus lived (see image), Westbeth, the former home of BellLabs, is what I'd describe as "shabby modernism." But in a good way. Richard Meier was the architect who redesigned the space way back then.
• E. 4th St. is sexy! Eateries that interest me - Euzkadi (reviewed in a later post), knife + fork, Cucina di Pesce. I still dream of the red velvet cupcakes at Pinisi. Also the E.U. (European Union) with a zillion beers.
• LaMaMa E.T.C. on E. 4th - a must-see drama venue. I saw the excellent revival of Sam Shepard's The Tooth of Crime there last year. Btw, I've seen Shepard walking his dog next to my apartment building. He's handsome and kinda floats.

E. 1st Street and Red Velvet Cupcakes (on E. 4th)

(Ed. note: To appreciate this post more fully, please read the post, 1917: Trotsky's Flâneur Boy Wanders Downtown.)

Yes, Seryozha, there really is a First Street, and it's still here in 2007, ninety years after your daddy took you home so he could lead the Red Army. Considering what befell all of you, I wish you had stayed in New York and grown up in the city. I will tell you about First Street in 2007, a charming and humble byway in what we call the East Village.

We'll walk from west to east on First Street, beginning at the Bowery. The famous anarchist Emma Goldman first lived on the Bowery when she arrived in the city, and she came to see your daddy deliver his farewell address in NYC in 1917.

The first block, Seryozha, between the Bowery and 2nd Avenue, has sadly been colonized by bourgeois arrivistes. Breaking the heart of the late Jane Jacobs, developers replaced vibrant street life with overly pricey nondescript condominium developments called Avalon. I visited their website (hard to explain to a boy from 1917, sorry), and I was surprised to see that they tell interested buyers that Washington Square Park is located in the East Village. Is there no end to their bourgeois lies, Seryozha?

You and your daddy would enjoy the blocks further to the east. Right away, on the left at 36 East First Street you'll find the offices of The Catholic Worker. Still publishing! Dorothy Day, who founded the paper, started out with a socialist daily, the Call, and interviewed your daddy for her first assignment. Continuing, we see organic spas, an Australian eatery, a playground, and so much more. First Street peters out at Avenue A, so we'll walk around these avenues also.

For a special end to our walk, Seryozha, I'll treat you to a red velvet cupcake at the family owned Pinisi Café on E. 4th.

By the way, if you had accomplished your walk from 164th Street in the Bronx to First Street, you would have traveled 8 miles. That's far for a little boy to walk!

Check out an entertaining presentation about a Trotsky impersonator showing up in an old Fox Movietone newsreel here.

Finally, your daddy would be amused to know that Frida Kahlo is still really famous, not because she was a Trotskyite but because she lived a colorful life and was in so much pain.

Image: Walking Off the Big Apple's beloved Frida Kahlo doll

Chelsea and West Village Walking: Specific Observations

The spectacular weather of this Labor Day weekend in New York seems to have prolonged the increasingly mandatory event called BRUNCH. New Yorkers and visitors have so ensconced themselves in their outdoor seats that I imagine many will find a way to stay through dinner. Everyone should make brunch reservations.

A friend suggested a visit on Friday to the josée bienvenu gallery in Chelsea to see the exhibit microwave, five. The exhibit demonstrates the skills of artists willing to patiently create obviously obsessive objects of beauty, thusly separating themselves as artists from the general population. I made the mosaic-like drawing of my dog as the Lion of St. Mark (the one in a previous post) over the course of a couple of months (maybe a year!), and while I like it, the process was so tedious I won't do it again.

Aside from this exhibit, Chelsea is sleepy, so it's not a great time to visit. Some shut down completely in August. Most are gearing up for openings in the next couple of weeks.

Many New Yorkers slack off work in the summer. In the art community, some quit their current jobs and leave for what they perceive as more prestigious and glamorous jobs. By May of next year, when their expectations have turned to dust, they will quit their current posts for another job they view as prestigious and glamorous, thus making way for all the incoming M.A.s and M.F.A.s from the Ivy League and Bard and Williams who want a glamorous job in THE ARTS.

After visiting the bienvenu gallery, we walked to the Frank Gehry IAC building and into the lobby. My friends sat on the long Gehry wooden bench. Here's the official website of the building. Be prepared for an assault of logos! IAC Building

I wish all the Chelsea galleries could move into smaller places with some trees and a built-in café, a bookstore, and a garden. With a cat. Or, preferably, build a new place to sell or show art. I am tired of gigantic art gallery warehouses with 100 foot ceilings and the whole warehouse art district phenomenon in general. The place where biscuits and cookies were once made by underpaid exploited immigrant workers is not intrinsically the greatest venue for contemporary art. This is my opinion. I have so much more to say on the ambiance of galleries that you are well-warned to expect this as a leitmotif of my upcoming posts. When I was growing up, warehouses meant this.

Walking to Chelsea Is Not Impossible

View Larger Map

I've had occasion to walk around Chelsea and the far West Village for the past couple of days, and I finally figured out how to walk from Washington Square Park to Chelsea without wanting to kill myself. When I visited art galleries in Chelsea in the past, I would take the subway from W. 4th to 23rd. and 8th Ave. and then walk these increasingly endless blocks over to 10th and 11th Avenues. By then my feet hurt, and I would end up hating the art that I would have found enlightening had I taken a taxi.
But since I walk everywhere now, I thought I could find a more rational and yet entertaining way to get to Chelsea. Summoning a map, for I have one, Little Miss Teen South Carolina, I realized I could zip up in a NW direction on Greenwich Ave. and then make my way to Chelsea Market for a little break and some refreshment. I found gelato works as a quick pick-me-up before art browsing along the west 20s.
Once I satisfied my art needs, I made my way back through the charming world of the far West Village. It's the one neighborhood of Manhattan that I can count on to fulfill fantasies of genteel urban life - tree-lined cobblestone streets, elegant townhouses, private gardens, gaslights, and little French cafes. It's the perfect NYC neighborhood in which to get lost.

Film Bonus: Village Sunday - 1960

Julian Schnabel's Tower of Pink Power

But, soft! What hot pinkness through yonder window breaks!

Place of interest: Julian Schnabel's Tower of Pink Power
Location: 360 W. 11th St.
Walking distance from the Washington Square Arch: Approx. 20 minutes via 5th Av. and 11th St.
Experience: Priceless

During the construction phase this past spring, Julian Schnabel kept his top-secret West Village high-rise under wraps. The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation had opposed the plans, particularly for the proposed height of the building which members believed incompatible with the neighborhood. Early this summer, JS finally unveiled the building, only to reveal a pastiche Renaissance referenced structure, the color of which challenged our entire contemporary visual culture.

Needless to say, the neighborhood freaked, and Schnabel's building received more press coverage. When The Villager published an article about the place, accompanied by a photo of the building, I was so astonished by the color I saw in the paper that I walked over to 360 W. 11th to see it for myself.
But it was a different color in real life.
I walked there again today. I brought along a camera, because for one thing I had little patience to sit on the sidewalk and sketch it, and also because I needed a bit of photo realité to show you.
Now try this. Look at the article below and compare the photos with the ones that you see here.

Not So Pretty in Pink (The Village, June 13-19)

Have they not punched up the pinkness with a little Photoshop in the night? Is this not the color of propaganda?
I have done my best to compare my photo with the building. If anything it is a dustier, bloodier color than my digital photos. But it's not that pink.

Looking at MY photos posted here, what color would you call this? I have no clue. Please send in your color name to walkbigapple@yahoo.com.

2/26/2008: Read the update on this post with additional photo.

4/6/2008: LOOK INSIDE! Two vast condos in Palazzo Chupi are on the market. See broker details (Brown Harris Stevens).

NEWS: Massive Unscheduled Walk-a-Thon in NYC This Morning

The rain hit hard and fell fast during the wee hours in Gotham this morning. Lightning flashed, thunder boomed. In quick succession, the mighty subway tunnels flooded. The MTA announced that we all needed to delay work. The buses quickly filled, and one woman interviewed by the local TV cried, "Not everyone in New York can get on the same bus!" All taxis were hailed.

Yours truly had an appointment in the DUMBO section of Brooklyn, so I hiked it all the way there in my pretty skirt, down Broadway to City Hall and then over the Brooklyn Bridge with your basic huddled masses yearning to be breathe free.

Storms lead to chaos in New York (BBC News)