several things i was not fond of this weekend

• Cinderella at ABT.  I suppose there are many possible interpretations of this story, but I did not like this one.  It seemed to be attempting a modern class commentary, using costumes from somewhere between the nineteenth century and a clown college's castoffs.  The choreography reminded me of early-midcentury musicals, and although I did rather like Cinderella's solos, I frequently felt like there wasn't much happening onstage.
• The Frying Pan.  I suppose I would like this place, if I were 24 years old and enjoyed walking in puddles of dirty water and cheap beer.  I like the idea of this place, but the execution is clearly designed for hardier (or drunker) souls than myself.
• Sarabeths West.  I have been to Sarabeth's East once and liked it, or anyway really wanted to like it.  And, again, I like the idea of the place.  I like the menu, I like the outdoor dining area, I like the friendly wait staff.  I'm not thrilled with the huge mob at all reasonably brunchlike hours.  I'm okay with spending $15 on an omelette, but then it should have detectable amounts of all advertised fillings, and the muffin it comes with should be identifiable as the requested type (my pumpkin muffin was, I'm pretty sure, an apple-cinnamon muffin, and not a terribly good one at that).  I can handle spending $4 on coffee, but $6 for juice seems a little steep, even if it is organic or free-range or whatever it is.  On the whole, I'd be just as happy at the greasy diner 10 blocks south, where I'd pay half as much for better food and prompter coffee refills.

 

Inevitably, I fall further and further behind.

• I brought my unserious book club to Balade and they all loved it.  This place is definitely awesome - they have food for vegetarians (and vegans!), food for carnivores, wine, and several different kinds of cheese.  Also they have a lot of small plates, which are obviously the best thing ever.
• Saturday was my company's annual summer picnic, which was held at Randall's Island, which I had never been to before.  It is odd that, so close to the city, there are large green spaces harboring biting insects.
• Speaking of large green spaces, I also visited the New York Botanical Gardens for the first time.  I had been wanting to go for a while, but to be honest... eh.  Maybe I'd be better off going in the spring, but there just weren't all that many ... flowers.  Which I guess is not the entire point of a botanical garden, but it's mostly the entire point for *me*.  Also there's a big indoor greenhouse, which is all very nice, but it mostly focuses on things like "Deserts of the Americas" and "Deserts of Africa" and "Tropical Rainforest", which are maybe a bit more exciting when it is not eighty-seven degrees outside.  I would go back, but not until another season.

surprise Tuesday culture

Today was supposed to be a day of working late and cleaning.  Instead it was a day of working late and seeing the last two acts of the Royal Danish Ballet performance that a friend of a friend couldn't make.

Her loss was my gain - the performance was very good, and also different from the sorts of things I'm used to seeing (although I think I probably say that often enough that it's never really true).  It was a series of short repertory pieces, which I prefer to long ballets because I have no attention span.  The costumes were more elaborate than I'm used to, the dancing seemed to have a lot more jumping, particularly by men, and because my friend and her friend have more important jobs than I do, I was sitting close enough to see the subtle details of the dancers' movements.

That is all.  I'm not very smart about ballet.  But I went, I saw, and soon I will sleep.

a very busy week

The last week has been busy, although mostly not in interesting ways.  There was a lot of working and a lot of running and a lot of socializing, all of which I enjoy, which is a good thing since most of the summer will be spent on those activities rather than high-minded cultural exploration.

A few notes:
- Barcibo Enoteca is a wine bar (that also serves small plates and paninis) near Lincoln Center.  It's a nice place to meet someone you don't know very well because it's anonymous in location and atmosphere without feeling impersonal.  Also the waitresses are friendly, the wine list is long, and there's just the right amount of noise.  However, I've been using it as a default first date spot for most of the time I've been living in New York and none of those first dates led to second dates.  Maybe I should find a new spot.

- La Vela on the Upper West Side continues to be very good, very simple, and very relaxed.  It's the type of place you can order just an entree - no wine, no app, no dessert - and still feel okay about sitting there all evening.  However, their prices have increased about 25% in the last three years.

- Went for a very early morning run on Saturday - twelve miles starting before six a.m.  The most notable feature of this (other than the fact that I actually had some energy left at the end of the run) was seeing the start of the Mini women's 10k as I was leaving the park.  It made me just a tiny bit jealous that I wasn't running with them - until I realized that it was only going to get warmer and more humid, and that I was too hungry to do anything but go home and eat yogurt.

- I rode the Staten Island Ferry, for the second time since I moved here (although the first, right after finishing the Five Borough Bike tour in the pouring rain, was mostly memorable for its abject misery) because some friends were in town from South Dakota. It was pretty awesome - it's free, easy to get to, and on the trip out you get a better view of the statue than you probably would if you actually went to it.

- Also, I somehow convinced said friends to trek all the way up to the Upper West Side to join me in my first visit to our new 16 Handles (okay, okay, the original destination was the AMNH...).  It was predictably awesome except that, probably because it was drizzly, their chairs weren't out.

- Went for my first outdoor bike ride with my pedals-with-clips.  I thought it would be scary, but it wasn't, maybe because I didn't ride anywhere with car traffic.I just went about 50 blocks in Riverside Park, stopped and read the paper for a bit, and then turned around and came home.  I could see doing that repeatedly, should I ever have a free weekend morning again.

- Museum of Art and Design.  About half the museum is devoted to temporary exhibits, while the other half is the permanent collection. As on my other visit about 18 months ago, I found the temporary exhibits much more interesting, in that they challenged but did not entirely violate my idea of what constitutes art.

- Balade.  Lebanese restaurant.  Went there for a meeting of my serious book club.  I ordered poorly, as I frequently do, but the food was very good quality and reasonably priced.  I'm making my unserious book club go there later in the week.

You see?  I'm tired just from *typing* all that.

A highly cultured weekend

• Friday evening I watched The Big Sleep at a friend's apartment.  We read it the novel a couple months ago in a book club, and I guess she was curious about the movie.  I liked the novel a lot, partly for itself and partly because it was interesting seeing an early example of a hardboiled detective novel - basically, what the stuff I filched from my father's bookshelf as a kid was based on.  The movie was less interesting to me - I'm not much for classic films, and they cut out some of the highly-controversial-at-the-time plot elements and made Marlowe's character much more of a ladies' man than he seemed in the novel.  But I'm glad I saw it - I'd been envisioning the story as if it were a Kinsey Millhone novel set in the 1980's and this really helped put it in context.
• Saturday morning I painted at a Boys' Club in Alphabet City.  On the way there, I walked past a new restaurant that caught my eye because its name was similar to the Thai restaurant we'd ordered takeout from the night before.  It was in a location that used to house a diner called Rockin' Robin, which I went to frequently for brunch the first winter I lived in New York, with my East-Village-dwelling then-boyfriend.  We were both sad when it closed suddenly, in part because it was one of the few places we both liked.  I've never lived anywhere long enough to be nostalgic for things that used to be in it, and I haven't been in New York that long; Meg Ryan's character in You've Got Mail notes that New York changes quickly, and derides the type of people who like that, of which she knows she is one - but then, her bookstore has just gone out of business and she fears it will be replaced by something "really depressing, like a Baby Gap".  One of the odd and constantly surprising things about living here is how much my life looks,visually, like the movies.
• Saturday evening I saw the American Ballet Theater production of Lady of the Camellias.  It was a really unusual ballet, I thought (although I'm getting the sense that ABT productions are more varied than and in general very different from NYCB productions, which come in only two major flavors).  The plot was very intricate - which makes sense because it is derived not from a fairy tale but from an actual play - and the choreography was unusual and very good.  I thought the pas de deux in the first act was completely amazing - most slow, romantic dances just look like the man is moving the woman around, but this one looked as if they were actually in love.  And I loved the pieces with Manon and her lover, and especially when they interacted with Marguerite and Armand.  The structure of the ballet was also unusual - instead of opening with an overture, it began with a character walking onto an already-lit stage, and the audience only gradually realize that the show was beginning, and the house lights going down a few minutes later.  It was also a memory play, but not solely in the memory of one character.  And I have never seen copulation simulated with such flagrancy in anything remotely this highbrow.  On the whole - well, it could have been a bit shorter, but I definitely liked it.
• Today I saw Jerusalem.  Apparently the play is likely to win a Tony, which it will not deserve, and the actor playing the main character is likely to win another Tony, which he also will not deserve.  It's not a bad play; actually it's a good play.  It's funny and well-acted and the dramatic structure is very tidy and it makes some interesting allegoric references to Shakespeare.  But it wants to be a great play, to make alarming, trenchant observations about the dehumanizing effects of modern society, and it fails at that, which makes it less good than it could be.  I was not sorry that I saw it, because I enjoyed the first two-thirds of it and because it was interesting, but (unlike Lady of the Camellias) if it is still around, or around again, in five years, I will not go and see it a second time.

Quoth the raven, "Chocolate Madness!"

This evening I met up with a friend for what was supposed to be a drink after work.  We were going to try Thalia, the cafe/bar/music venue at Symphony Space, but it was closed for a private event.  Neither of us knew anything else in the area, and he said he was sick of places further uptown, so we headed south in search of somewhere low-key.  We settled on Edgar's, a cafe on 84th Street that was introduced to me by a long-gone gentleman caller, who described it as "like Cafe Lalo but better", although I rather thought of it as Lalo's scruffier, less exciting cousin.

The 84th Street location - on Edgar Allen Poe St., in what I think must have once been the lobby of a hotel - was boarded up, and a signed directed us to Amsterdam & 91st.  The new location has the same quaint ambiance, but the space is much nicer - high ceilings, attractive decor, lovely open storefront (sadly, no outdoor seating, at least yet).  The menu - before the move, mostly comprised of salads and cakes - has been expanded to include several pasta dishes, and although I didn't try one, my friend did and it looked pretty good.  I had a salad, which was serviceable (for $11, I would have liked a bit more than greens and goat cheese and two olives, but I do like my goat cheese) and we both enjoyed dessert.  The staff was friendly and didn't rush us, the bathroom was clean, and the tables weren't two inches apart like they are at Lalo.  On the whole, it was a good meal at a reasonable price in a great setting.  I'll be going back.