MsMaNHaTtaN

Feast of San Gennaro 2010

2010-09-25T18:34:00.012-05:00

Little Italy's Feast of San Gennaro on Mulberry St. is one of those annual NYC events you should do at least once every five years or so. Go with no expectations, meander (as best you can in the crowd) from Houston St. to Canal St., and savor the aroma of sausages, seafood and sweat commingling around you. This year's feast culminates on Sunday, September 26 (is it really already the last weekend in September???), with the Grand Procession of the Statue of San Gennaro at 2 p.m., led by actor Tony Lo Bianco (The Honeymoon Killers, The French Connection), the Grand Marshall.

I like to go on a week night, when it's typically less crowded, and met my friend Steven at Mulberry and Prince last Wednes-
day, the final night of the summer. I got schooled on braciole (pronounced bra-zhul) and consumed a tasty one, dressed with broccoli rabe and sauteed onions, at Lucy's, where the proprietor kept shouting, "Fredo, you disappoint me, Fredo," while he charred the pork cutlet on the grill.

When a thunderstorm rolled in from the West, we waited it

out under the canopy of a gaming concession, where one of the available prizes was a stuffed Obama doll. Seeking a better shelter, we ended the wet evening at Ferrara, where we splurged on Tiramisu, an assortment of miniature pastries (cannoli, chocolate mignon and a chocolate mousse Dacquoise) and iced cappuccino.

With the storm over, we wandered west across Grand St., eventually making our way over to Seventh Ave., celebrating the arrival of fall at 11:09 p.m. as we walked uptown. At 23rd St. we could just make out through the cloud cover a fuzzy Jupiter under the (nearly) harvest moon. At a rate of once every five years or so, we'll be making two or three treks back to San Gennaro before Jupiter passes this close to Earth again in 2022.

NYC Museums: Openings & Closings Spring 2010

2010-04-08T12:09:00.010-05:00

If I'd known they'd line up just to see him,
I'd taken all my money and bought me a museum.

--Steve Martin, King Tut

This spring marks the return of the boy king, Tutankhamun, to New York -- or, more accurately, the return of artifacts from King Tut's tomb. The new exhibit, "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs," opens at the Discovery Times Square Exposition on April 23, following runs in Los Angeles, Chicago and other cities.

King Tut doesn't seem to have ignited the same cultural hoopla as on his first U.S. visit, from 1976 to 1979, when "Treasures of Tutankhamun" toured the country. That exhibit, which inspired Steve Martin's parody, drew 8 million people, breaking attendance records for a traveling exhibit. (In New York alone, 1.2 million people stood on long lines at the Met to see the show, according to The New York Times). So far the new U.S. touring exhibit has attracted 4 million visitors and has generated positive reviews.

The Met passed on hosting the new Tut exhibit here due to its policy of not charging a separate admission fee for special exhibits; however, it opened a complementary exhibit, "Tutankhamun’s Funeral," on March 16 that features about 60 objects used for Tut's mummification and burial. Most of these artifacts are from the Met's permanent collection and were instrumental to the 1922 discovery of King Tut's tomb by archaeologist Howard Carter. (For the full story, see the Met's exhibit Web page.) The exhibit runs through September 6.

But King Tut, who will end his New York (and U.S.) run on January 2, 2011, is hardly the only show in town this spring. Exhibits at the Guggenheim and the International Center of Photography provide perspective on artists in Paris in the early 20th century, while the Museum of the City of New York's "Only in New York" collection of photographs from LOOK magazine brings to life our hometown in the mid-century. The upcoming Henri Cartier-Bresson retrospective at MoMa offers an in-depth look at the entire 20th century, while a triennial and a biennial spotlight emerging art and design in the 21st century. If that's not enough time travel, visit with the Victorians in an exhibit that elevates the craft of scrapbooking to fine art. And you have just a little over two weeks to squeeze into MoMA's "Tim Burton" show. Here's a sampling of exhibits opening and closing in New York between now and June 1.

Navigation Tip: The exhibition title links directly to the exhibit Web site; the museum name links to the home page of the institution's Web site. All links will open in a new window or tab.

Openings

Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century
Opening: April 11 (members preview on now)

The first retrospective of the iconic photographer's work since his death in 2004, MoMA's exhibit will feature about 300 photographs spanning Cartier-Bresson's entire career. His early work "helped define the creative potential of modern photography," notes the exhibit's Web page, and his "uncanny ability to capture life on the run" has influenced photojournalism ever since, crystallizing the idea of "the decisive moment." It's fitting that MoMA should host this retrospective as it was the site, in 1947, of Cartier-Bresson's first major exhibit. The show, which runs through June 28, should be universally appealing given that "the vast majority of his photographs describe things that happen every day, for his essential subject was society and culture — civilization."

Museum of Modern Art: 11 West 53rd St. (between Fifth & Sixth Aves.); 212-708-9400.
Hours: Mon., Weds.-Thurs., Sat.-Sun.: 10:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m.; Fri.: 10:30 a.m.-8:00 p.m.; Tues.: Closed; MoMA is open until 8:45 p.m. on select nights in April -- check the Web site for details.
Admission: Adults: $20; Seniors (65 & over): $16; Students: $12; Children (16 & under) & members: Free; Guests of members: $5.

Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs
Opening: April 23

Most of the 130 objects featured in the exhibit had never been seen outside of Egypt before the current tour started and were not included in the 1970 tour, according to the exhibit's organizers. Advance ticket sales started on March 23; you can buy tickets for a specific date and entry time at the exhibit Web site. A slideshow preview of the exhibit is available on The New York Times' Web site.

Discovery Times Square Exposition: 226 West 44th St. (betw. Broadway & Eighth Ave.); 866-987-9692.
Hours: Sun.-Thurs.: 10:00 a.m.-8:00 p.m. (last ticket sold at 6:30 p.m.); Fri.-Sat.: 10:00 a.m.-9:00 p.m. (last ticket sold at 7:30 p.m.)
Admission: Adults: $27.50; Seniors (65+): $25.50; Children (4-12): $17.50; Children under 4: Free; A "Golden Ticket" promotional admission including the exhibit, Mummies 3D film and audio guide tour is available for $37 Mon.-Thurs. and $40.50 Fri.-Sun. (must be ordered in advance).

National Design Triennial: Why Design Now?
Opening: May 14

Cooper-Hewitt's fourth Triennial -- the series launched in 2000 to spotlight "the most innovative designs at the center of contemporary culture" -- features works by designers exploring human and environmental problems across architecture, landscapes, fashion, graphics and new media. All of the featured projects were created between 2006 and 2009.

Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum: 2 East 91st St. (@ Fifth Ave.); 212-849-8400.
Hours: Mon.-Fri.: 10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.; Sat.: 10:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m.; Sun.: 11:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m.
Admission: Adults: $10; Students & seniors: $5; Children under 12 & members: Free; The museum is offering free admission through April 23.

Closings

Only in New York: Photographs from LOOK Magazine
Closing: April 18

On view since November, this collection of photographs from the pages of LOOK magazine chronicles New York from the mid-1940s through the early 1960s, a time when, notes the exhibit Web site, "New York was both a newly emergent international capital of world-class museums and glamorous nightclubs as well as a hometown for millions who rode its subways and thrilled to its baseball teams." Extract "newly emergent" from that observation, and you have an apt description of New York for the ages.

Museum of the City of New York: 1220 Fifth Ave. (@ 103rd St.); 212-534-1672.
Hours: Tues.-Sun.: 10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.; Mon.: Closed (except holidays).
Admission: Adults: $10; Seniors & students: $6; Families: $20 (max. 2 adults); Children (12 & under) & members: Free; If you live or work in East Harlem above 103rd St., mention "I'm a neighbor" for free admission.

Tim Burton
Closing: April 26

Pulling together more than 700 works from the filmmaker's personal archives, including drawings, paintings, photographs, moving image works, concept art, storyboards, puppets, maquettes, costumes and cinematic ephemera, this exhibit has possibly gotten more hype than King Tut. The New York Times reported that as of mid-March, the show, which opened in November, had already had 450,000 visitors, despite lackluster reviews. Times art critic Ken Johnson called it "a let down" and "monotonous," and Ben Walters, writing for The Guardian's film blog, noted, "The peculiar thing about [the show] ... is how little effort its curators have made to glance backward or sideways to place Burton's work within a broader context."

Burton fans, however, writing on the "real-people-real-reviews" Web site Yelp.com, called the show "DEFINITELY worth seeing," "exquisite" and "AAHHMAAZINGGG!" (They also consistently complained about the shoulder-to-shoulder crowds.) Only a limited number of tickets are available at the door; buy them in advance for a specific date and entry time.

Museum of Modern Art: 11 West 53rd St. (betw. Fifth & Sixth Aves.); 212-708-9400.
Hours: Mon., Weds.-Thurs., Sat.-Sun.: 10:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m.; Fri.: 10:30 a.m.-8:00 p.m.; Tues.: Closed; MoMA is open until 8:45 p.m. on select nights in April -- check the Web site for details.
Admission: Adults: $20; Seniors (65 & over): $16; Students: $12; Children (16 & under) & members: Free; Guests of members: $5.

Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage
Closing: May 9

The 48 photographic collages from the 1860s and 1870s in this quirky exhibit represent a trend among educated, aristocratic Victorian women that might be equated with today's "scrapbooking." Mixing photographs with watercolors (and without the help of Photoshop), the results are "whimsical and fantastical, combining human heads and animal bodies, placing people into imaginary landscapes, and morphing faces into common household objects," notes the exhibit Web site.

What makes this significant is that photocollage is generally considered one of the beacons of modernism, but these gals were creating their collages some 50 years or so before Cubism. The New York Times art critic Roberta Smith wrote of the exhibit, "It suggests that women’s art history (a phrase I’m not entirely comfortable with, but never mind) is still only just beginning to be examined and understood."

Metropolitan Museum of Art: 1000 Fifth Ave. (@ 82nd St.); 212-535-7710.
Hours: Tues.-Thurs. & Sun.: 9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m.; Fri.-Sat.: 9:30 a.m.-9:00 p.m.; Mon.: Closed (except holidays).
Admission: Adults, $20; Seniors (65+), $15; Students, $10; Children (under 12) & members: Free; Students who attend New York City Public Schools & selected local colleges and universities: Free (with student ID).

Twilight Visions: Surrealism, Photography, and Paris
Closing: May 9

This collection of 150 images, films, books, magazines and Surrealist ephemera cuts two ways, illustrating perceptions of Paris in the 1920s and '30s as well as surveying early Surrealism. Writing in The New York Times, art critic Ken Johnson noted that the photographers represented (such as Jacques-André Boiffard, Brassaï, Ilse Bing, André Kertész, Germaine Krull, Dora Maar and Man Ray) "were as preoccupied with what was being lost as with what might be gained by modernization." Nearly 100 years later, I find myself in a similar state of mind.

While the images no longer shock today as they did in the early 20th century, Johnson writes that the show is nonetheless "absorbing" for the way the images "set up poetic contrasts between the new and the old." He added: "Most straight photography registers an instant on the razor-fine edge between the past and the future, but in Surrealism that moment is more metaphorically loaded. The 'twilight' of the exhibition’s title has as much to do with the mistier regions of consciousness as with the borderlands of real-world time and space."

Tell your teen or tween that you're going to a Twilight exhibit and then introduce them to something truly surreal.

International Center of Photography (ICP): 1133 Sixth Ave. (@ 43rd St.); 212-857-0000.
Hours: Tues.-Thurs., Sat.-Sun.: 10:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m.; Fri.: 10:00 a.m.-8:00 p.m.; Mon.: Closed.
Admission: Adults, $12; Seniors & students, $8; Children under 12 and members: Free; Admission is pay-what-you-wish Fridays, 5:00-8:00 p.m.

Paris and the Avant-Garde: Modern Masters from the Guggenheim Collection
Closing: May 12

The 30-odd paintings and sculptures on view here provide another look at the Paris art scene in the early 20th century, when artists "united in their defiance of academicism" converged in the cultural capitol. Curated from the Guggenheim's permanent collection, it features works by Chagall, Picaso, Miro, Brancusi, Calder and others.

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum: 1071 Fifth Ave. (@ 89th St.
Hours: Sun.-Weds., Fri.: 10:00 a.m.-5:45 p.m.; Sat.: 10:00 a.m.-7:45 p.m.; Thurs.: Closed.
Admission: Adults $18; Students & seniors (65 & over): $15; Children under 12 & members: Free.

The Whitney 2010 Biennial
Closing: May 30

The Biennial is the show that New Yorkers love to hate, but the pared down, themeless 75th installment has actually gotten fairly good reviews. The New York Times art critic Holland Cotter wrote that it's "a solid and considered product," adding, "The show has dead spots, mainly where it reflects the retrenched art-about-art spirit of the day. But it also has strong work (particularly in video) that speaks of life beyond the art factory." New York Magazine's Jerry Saltz called it "the Obama Biennial: alternately moving and frustrating, challenging and disappointing — and a big improvement on what came before." Howard Halle, in Time Out New York, perhaps put it most plainly, stating this Biennial "doesn’t suck precisely because it doesn’t feel or look like your average Biennial."

For three days in May, the 26th through the 28th, the Whitney will remain open around the clock as part of featured artist Michael Asher's Biennial proposal (Asher actually wanted the museum open 24/7 for a full week, but the costs and personnel requirements of that were prohibitive). Web site NewYorkology reported that, in the audio guide to the exhibit, "co-curator Francesco Bonami refers to the concept as 'an intervention' to make the museum more accessible to people who can’t usually get there." It reminds me of the book From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankenweiler; it's not the Met, but you can spend the night in a museum without having to hide in the bathroom.

The Whitney Museum of American Art: 945 Madison Ave. (@ 75th St.); 212-570-3600.
Hours: Weds.-Thurs., Sat.-Sun.: 11:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m.; Fri.: 1:00-9:00 p.m.; Mon.-Tues.: Closed.
Admission: Adults: $18; Seniors, students & young adults 19-25: $12; Children/Teens under 18 & members: Free; Admission is pay-what-you-wish Fridays, 6:00-9:00 p.m.

Caswell-Massey Closing Lexington Avenue Store; 11 Days to Spa Week

2010-04-01T18:52:00.008-05:00

After 84 years of continuous operation, CaswellMassey's beautifully-appointed flagship store at Lexington & 48th St. will close this Saturday, April 3, at 6:00 p.m.

At this point the store has only a fraction of its usual merchandise left on its shelves, but is worth a last-chance trip to see the gorgeous antique wood furnishings and to take advantage of a great deal: Sign up for its mailing list, and get a 25 percent discount on your in-store purchase. When I was there on March 18, I stocked up on Gardenia Body Lotion ($17), Bath Gel ($16) and Talc ($12); Almond & Aloe Body Balm ($18); Almond Talc ($12); and beautifully scented Oakmoss Luxury Liquid Soap ($25), all for about $75.

Caswell-Massey will re-open on April 21 as a stall in the new Limelight Marketplace, the retailing reinvention of the old Limelight nightclub at Sixth Ave. and 20th St. The size of the space, in the Limelight's "Apothecary" on the second level, will be something akin to the space allotted vendors at the holiday market at Grand Central; with the small footprint, it will carry only a limited amount of merchandise.

The company says the Limelight operation was already planned before the store closure, and it hopes to find a new location for its flagship retail store by later this year or early next. But it had to shutter too quickly to find an immediate replacement.

The store opened in 1926 in the old Barclay Hotel, now the InterContinental New York Barclay. Like so many closures these days, this one comes as a result of landlord greed -- or ignorance, perhaps. One source speculated that the hotel's owner, the U.K.-based InterContinental Hotels Group, is "European and doesn't understand the value of the store."

IHG told Caswell Massey late last year that it would not be renewing the store's lease due to plans to allow a financial institution to take over the space. "We believe their decision is quite regrettable, given the store’s historical and cultural value," Caswell-Massey wrote in a note published on its Facebook page. The store originally was told it would have to vacate by February 1.

Caswell-Massey used Facebook to reach out to its fans last December, asking customers to write Jim Abrahamson, president of IHG Americas in Atlanta, to protest the banishment. The company's nearly 1,400 Facebook fans must have had some effect; on January 9, Caswell-Massey reported that an IHG representative contacted the company, saying, "Please make all these complaints stop! It is causing all kinds of headaches around here." IHG ultimately agreed to extend the lease by an additional two months.

Alas, the company confirmed via Facebook last week that the closure is definite: "We did everything we could, but unfortunately sometimes not everything works out in one's favor." Plainly put.

Caswell Massey, one of the oldest American companies in existence (it was founded in Newport, R.I., in 1752), opened its first New York store in 1833 at the corner of Fifth Ave. and 25th St. The Lexington Ave. location is said to have served Greta Garbo, George Gershwin, the Astors, the Vanderbilts... And countless anonymous New Yorkers such as myself.

On a related note: We countless anonymous New Yorkers who like to pamper ourselves can choose from an array of $50 treatments all over town during Spa Week, April 12-18. In the tradition of Restaurant Week, spas around the city will offer a host of facials, body wraps, massages, waxing and more on a prix-fixe basis. Book your appointment now at the Spa Week Web site.

Site registration is required to view the entire list of participating locations, but some of the more alluring-sounding options are the 45-minute Dead Sea Salt Jewel Scrub at Ettia Holistic Day Spa on West 72nd St. and the 45-minute Raspberry and Rhubarb Seasonal Facial at L'Institut Sothys New York on West 57th.

St. Paddy's Day 2010

2010-03-17T08:18:00.008-05:00

It promises to be a beautiful day for the St. Patrick's Day Parade on Fifth Avenue -- if you don't mind the crowds, you find amusement in the looks-like-that-dude's-going-to-keel-over-any-moment suspense, and you can overlook the politics of exclusion.

I went to the parade once, years ago. It was worth it at the time. I went to a lot of parades that year -- even the Labor Day Parade. I'd never lived anywhere that had so many parades: Labor Day, Columbus Day, Thanksgiving Day, St. Patrick's Day, Easter...

These days, I'm ambivalent about New York's St. Patrick's Day Parade. I like the idea of the tradition; I like the idea of parades in general. But, I'd rather avoid the crowds, don't find drunkenness amusing and have mixed feelings about celebrating with a group commemorating pride, culture and nationalism that would so vehemently exclude fellow nationals based on their sexual orientation. Year after year, the New York City parade organizers continue to disallow LGBT groups from marching along with their fellow Irish. As the chairperson of Dublin Pride said this week, this attitude and practice are "deeply un-Irish."

At the same time, it's the organizers' prerogative to include who they want. I disagree with the decision, and I support the protesters who organize every year; that's my prerogative. Over the weekend, Buffalo, N.Y., hosted the first St. Patrick's Day Parade in New York State to include an LGBT group. Yep, Buffalo. NYC parade organizers, take note.

If you want to celebrate St. Paddy's Day, but wouldn't be caught dead near the parade, other options are available. Check out these resources for things to do and places to go to get your green on:

If you want to go the parade (your prerogative), bear in mind that NYPD says it will show no tolerance for public drinking this year. It starts at 11:00 a.m. at Fifth Ave. and 44th St. and continues up the avenue to 86th St. Get information on the route, street closings and the alcohol warning here.

The Amiable Child Monument: Unexpected Discovery of the Day

2010-03-07T18:54:00.006-05:00

On my weekend outings with the dogs, I try to wander, breaking off our well-worn routes in Riverside Park or Central Park in the hopes of coming upon something I've never seen before. Today I was rewarded with the discovery of the Amiable Child Monument on Riverside Drive at 123rd St., just north of General Grant's Tomb.

One of only a few private burial sites on public lands in the city, it's a memorial to St. Claire Pollack, a five-year-old boy who in 1797, at the age of five, fell to his death on the cliffs of the Hudson River. The original monument was erected further down the hill, closer to the river and the actual site of the boy's death. It has been replaced twice due to deterioration; the current monument was erected in 1967 and is surrounded by a wrought-iron gate.

My discovery is hardly rare, as I've uncovered a number of blog posts and Web sites about it this afternoon. Nonetheless, the surprise of coming upon it on such a gorgeous, nearly-spring day, underscores how the city continually reveals itself unexpectedly, provoking you to view your own well-worn routes with new eyes.

More on the Amiable Child Monument
In addition to the Riverside Park Fund's Web page about the monument (linked to above), check out Amiable Child (April 17, 2009), from the War of Yesterday blog, a detailed account of the memorial's history, including current and historic photos.

More on the Neighborhood
For more information on this neighborhood and other sites in the area, read my post Morningside Heights Walking Tour.

Film Forum's Victor Fleming Fest Opens Friday

2010-03-04T09:54:00.018-05:00

Film Forum launches the Victor Fleming Film Festival tomorrow (Friday, March 5), providing the opportunity to see Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, among other classics, on the big screen -- or at least, as big as it gets at Film Forum.

The two-week fest (March 5-18) kicks off with a double-feature of Red Dust and Bombshell, both starring Jean Harlow (Friday-Saturday). The The Wizard of Oz screens in a double with Captains Corageous March 7-8. GWTW is scheduled for four days, March 13-16; for a separate admission, you can make that a double-feature with The Wizard of Oz on the 13th and 14th. In all, the festival features 22 of the director's films starring the likes of Clara Bow, Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, Myrna Loy, Henry Fonda, and the list goes on. Check out the full schedule here.

I love these retro film fests at Film Forum. When I first moved to New York, in the early 80s, you could catch retro films at half a dozen or more indie theaters. You could camp out in the mezzanine seats, and smoke and drink, settle in, immerse yourself in four hours of consciously curated double bills. Sadly, most of those theaters are gone now; the few that survive have largely been reincarnated in another form.

The Metro, 100th & Broadway
Now empty and forlorn, but not demolished, the Metro of the 80s showed a mix of second-run and retro films. My friend Louis and I went to a devastating double-feature of Shoot the Moon and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Afterward we walked south on Broadway, and I vowed never to marry; just then, we saw Mariel Hemingway eating at a table-side window in a Chinese restaurant. Both of us being a little star-struck in those days, plus fans of Manhattan, the sighting saved us from a big, fat post-mortem pity-fest.

Theatre 80 St. Marks, 80 St. Marks Place
Rumors of a complete shutdown of this Jazz Age space surfaced last spring and, happily, proved wrong. The Otway family, which has owned it since 1965, recently re-opened it as a digital projection movie theater after leasing it to the Pearl Theatre Company for 15 years. Prior to that, Theatre 80 had booked great double-bills of classic films, rear-projected in 16mm. This was where I learned the pleasures of going to the movies alone, when I ventured out solo one cold Saturday for a double feature of Mildred Pierce and Double Indeminity.

St. Marks Cinema, 133 Second Ave.
A great place for a contact high, the St. Marks dated back to around 1914 (or earlier?), when it was the Astor Theatre. It was an East Village mainstay in the 80s, with great late-night, double-feature picture shows. Over the New Year's holiday in 1985, my friend Steve and I loaded up on midnight snacks for a double of Diva and Stop Making Sense, during which we both enjoyed and, no doubt contributed to, the second-hand schmoke. Not long after, that grand old theater was replaced by a Gap store, which presaged the ongoing ruin of St. Mark's Place. Today it's a luxury condo building.

Other retro houses of note included:

Cinema Village (22 East 12th St.), which survives with the proud distinction of being the oldest continuously operated theaters in the Village and one of the oldest in the city. It was built in 1963 and, for about 30 years, featured double bills of classic and cult films. It was one of my favorites, partly for the smoking-allowed balcony seats, partly for its convenient location across the street from my office in the old Fairchild Publications building; you'd get a burger and a pint around the corner at the Cedar Tavern (yes, also gone), catch a double feature, then return to the Cedar to discuss. Balcony and location aside, it's line-up made it a standout. In the early 90s Cinema Village avoided the fate of its brethren by switching from a repertory format to a focus on contemporary indies, and it remains a standout.

The original Thalia (95th & Broadway), a classic retro theater that felt a bit like a basement screening room -- you had to get there early so you didn't end up in one of the aisle seats behind the gigantic columns. It closed in 1987, then reopened as the Leonard Nimoy Thalia within the performing arts center Symphony Space; it showcases independent films.

Bleecker Street Cinema (144 Bleecker St.), a Village landmark for cinephiles that fell prey to high rent and neighborhood politics in 1990.

The 8th Street Playhouse (52 West 8th St.), best remembered for making Rocky Horror Picture Show a midnight-movie cult classic. It also curated classic and cult fests before closing down in the early 90s.

The non-profit Film Forum has successfully navigated the ever-changing terrain, the ever-shifting priorities of New York development, and celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. The present Houston Street location is its fourth since it opened in 1970. My first visit to Film Forum was at the third incarnation, on Watts Street. I don't remember what movie I saw, but I do recall drinking coffee with my friends in the old, chrome, streetcar-style Moondance Diner afterward; the evening fulfilled my 20-something-Southern-girl expectations of a classic New York night, lifted from Woody Allen movies, and fermented my enthusiasm for making the city my home.

The Film Forum's film fests evoke that New York for me and that, as much as the movies themselves, may be why I'm drawn to Houston and Varick to sit in the dark for four hours and watch films I could see on DVD or Turner Classic Movies. It's mac-and-cheese, two eggs with bacon on a toasted roll, chicken pot pie... comfort food as satiating as any the Moondance served.

Shout OUT! “Anyone But Me” Web Series Inspires New Resources List

2008-12-14T08:37:00.004-05:00

I’ve been putting together a list of LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning) resources for a while now, always intending to post them during Pride Week in June. But then I’m almost always on vacation in June.

So, why did I finally post them now, in December? I was inspired by Anyone But Me, the new Web series I’m producing that premiered on StrikeTV on Monday, December 8.

Anyone But Me introduces a new generation of New York teens – gay, straight and ethnically diverse – coming of age in a post-9/11 world. When 16-year-old Vivian McMillan (Rachael Hip-Flores) moves from New York City to Westchester County, she’s uncertain about coming out at her new suburban high school. While she was completely out as a lesbian in the city, now she’s cautiously navigating new terrain.

Tina Cesa Ward, creator, writer and director of Anyone But Me, writes about this experience in her Anyone But Me – The Web Series blog:

Everyone tells his or her coming out story. I always found it funny that everyone tells it like that was the only time they've ever had to come out. Like after that first "I'm gay" moment, everything else has been easy ever since. But the truth is we all have to come out over and over again. If we change jobs, move into a different apartment building, go to a party with people we don't know. And for most of us, coming out to people can still be just as hard as it was the first time. That was what I wanted to explore with Vivian.

We see more of Vivian adjusting to her new life in episode #2, which premieres on Tuesday, December 16, on StrikeTV. ABM has also been selected as an Editor’s Pick video on AfterEllen.com, the Web site for “News, Reviews & Commentary on Lesbian and Bisexual Women in Entertainment and the Media” (which gave the show a great write-up last week and included it in its weekly recap Best. Lesbian. Week. Ever.); our episodes will begin streaming there as well on Monday.

So, in a somewhat shameless plug for the show, but a nonetheless well intentioned resource for the Vivians out there cautiously navigating new terrain, as well as the old hands who are out and proud, I have posted a new When You Need to Know listing of New York’s LGBTQ organizations and publications. The post follows below; you can also link to it from my new sidebar section, Shout OUT!, a collection of posts relevant to the LGBTQ community.

When You Need to Know: New York's LGBTQ Resources

2008-12-11T22:29:00.005-05:00

New York's LGBTQ community is as diverse as the city itself. From activist organizations to athletic leagues, find the community resources you need here. This list offers a sampling of some of the most useful sites, but is by no means complete; check the links listings at each of the Web sites to find additional resources.

General Resources
The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center
The second largest LGBT community center in the world and the largest on the East Coast, New York City's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center hosts over 300 different groups and has 6,000 visitors weekly. Programs include social services, cultural and recreational activities, public policy activism, and educational services. 208 West 13th St.; 212-620-7310.

LGBTQ Teens
The Hetrick-Martin Institute
The home of Harvey Milk High School, HMI has been providing a safe haven to the city’s LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bi, transgender & questioning) youth for more than 30 years. Aimed at kids 12 to 21, HMI’s programs include internships, support services and a variety of year-round after-school programs for arts & culture, health & wellness, academic enrichment and career development. Located in the heart of the East Village and open 9:00 a.m.-6:30 p.m. daily, HMI also provides a place for LGBTQ young people to just hang out, with a café, a living room, a homework room and a lounge. 2 Astor Place; 212-674-2400; Email: info@hmi.org.

Health Outreach To Teens (HOTT)
A service of the Callen-Lourde Community Health Center in Chelsea, HOTT provides free and low-cost medical and mental health care to LGBT youths ages 13-24. The confidential services include general medical care, HIV testing and primary care, STD testing and treatment, counseling, crisis intervention, psychiatric evaluation and more. HOTT has its own youth-only medical suite on-site at Callen-Lorde and also operates the HOTT medical van, which travels around Lower Manhattan and Midtown in the afternoons and evenings. 356 West 18th St.; 212-271-7200.

The Door
The only requirement for membership in The Door, a youth empowerment organization, is age. Among The Door’s wide range of medical and mental heath care, educational, career and leadership development, and recreational services for all youths are LGBTQ programs such as coming-out therapy and Skittlez, which hosts weekly meetings for LGBTQ teens to socialize. Other LGBTQ youth activities include film screenings, speakers, sexual health workshops and creating a Door float for the Pride parade. 555 Broome St.; 212-941-9090.

YES (Youth Empowerment Services)
A service of the LGBT Community Center, YES hosts daily activity groups and a wide range of weekly events, including Lyfe Skillz workshops, SEX + discussions of sex and sexuality, Young Men’s and Young Women’s groups, job search and scholarship assistance, and more. YES is open to youth ages 13-21; drop by the office in person to join. Tuesdays-Fridays, 3:00-7:00 p.m. and Saturdays, 12:00-5:00 p.m. 208 West 13th St.; 212-620-7310 (ask for the YES program; YES@gaycenter.org.

Activism & Support
Gay Men's Health Crisis
At the forefront of the fight against AIDS, the GMHC is a non-profit, volunteer-based organization dedicated to preventing the spread of HIV and bringing dignity to the lives of those with HIV. It operates a hotline and provides interventions services, a meal delivery program, services for women and families, and more. 119 West 24th St.; 212-367-1000; Hotline: 212-807-6655 or 1-800-AIDS-NYC (1-800-243-7692).

ACT UP: AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power
Recognized as one of the most influential social justice organizations in the United States, ACT UP promotes political activism in the fight against AIDS. The group meets every Monday night, at 8:00 p.m., at the LGBT Community Center. Contact: actupny@panix.com.

The New York City Gay & Lesbian Anti-Violence Project
Founded in 1980 in reaction to violence against the LGBT community, AVP provides crime victim assistance, counseling, social justice advocacy and other services. Contact: 212-714-1184; 24-Hour Bilingual Hotline: 212-714-1141.

Professional Groups & Networking
Gay Professionals MeetUp Groups in New York
Find a LGBT professional or special-interest group for just about everything at this listing of New York-area Meetup groups. Meetup.com is a social networking site for local clubs, formed on the premise that “more than 2,000 groups get together in local communities each day, each one with the goal of improving themselves or their communities”; the challenge can be finding them. Meetup groups for New York’s LGBT professionals cover the spectrum, from the NY LGBT Entrepreneurs Group to the 40-Plus Single Gay Men's Film Group and NYC's Adventure Group for Girls. Listings include number of members, meeting schedules, listings of recent events and members’ comments.

Out Professionals
Based in New York, Out Professionals is a nationwide business and social networking association for gay men and lesbians. With more than 1,000 members, it hosts a number of career, community and cultural events each month, such as film screenings, social events and cocktail parties, seminars and workshops, networking opportunities and more. Contact: info@outprofessionals.org.

OP.Lynk: Women’s Network of Out Professionals NYC
A special-interest group within Out Professionals (listed above), OP.Lynx aims to empower lesbian professionals in New York by “'lynking' them with other like-minded business professionals and groups at informative and inspiring panel discussions, networking mixers and special events.”

New York Chapter of the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association
With members including journalists, media professionals, educators and students who work within the news industry, this group works to foster fair and unbiased coverage of LGBT issues as well as professional development for its members. Local chapter events include monthly mixers every second Tuesday, fundraisers, parties, forums and more. Contact: Get individual email addresses for the group’s officers at the Web site.

LeGal: The LGBT Law Association of Greater New York
Serving the LGBT legal community in New York, this organization promotes the advancement of LGBT legal professionals and addresses legal issues of concern to the LGBT community. It hosts regular forums and networking events and provides a walk-in legal clinic, a lawyer referral service, CLE classes and more. Contact: 212-353-9118; le_gal@earthlink.net.

Events & Recreation
Heritage of Pride
Get information about New York's annual Pride March, Rally, Festival and Dances, held each June to commemorate the Stonewall Riots. HOP, organizers of the event, meets monthly; check the Web site for meeting schedules. Contact: 212-80-PRIDE; info@hopinc.org.

The New Festival Inc.
With an annual film festival and other year-round programs, this non-profit arts organization showcases LGBT film and video in the New York metropolitan area. The annual NewFest LGBT film festival (usually held in June) features an international array of films and is considered one of the world’s most comprehensive showcases for LGBT film and video. Later each year is the annual NewFest@BAM, a special series spotlighting the best of the fest, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Rose Cinemas. Check the Web site for other programming events. Contact: info@newfest.org.

NY Lesbian & Gay Contradance Series
Bringing "gender-role free" American Folk Dancing to the New York area, this group sponsors monthly events at the LGBT Community Center. Dances are on the second Friday of the month, 7:30-10:30 p.m. (this is accurate as of 12-10-2008, but check the Web site for schedules, workshops, dance camps, etc.) Admission is $10 per person (sliding-scale admissions are accepted). Contact: AmericanFolkDanceNYC@yahoo.com.

Out of Bounds
This non-profit organization supports New York's LGBT sports leagues and recreational groups, such as the NYC Gay Hockey Association, NY Pride Rowing Association, Fast & Fabulous Cycling Club and a host of others. The Web site features news, a calendar of LGBT sports events, a listing of affiliated LGBT athletic leagues and more. Contact: jeffkagan@oobnyc.org.

Publications
Gay City News
A bi-weekly newspaper serving the New York gay and lesbian community, Gay City News covers local, national and international news.

Homo Xtra
A weekly guide to Manhattan's gay nightlife and culture, HX bills itself as "the Totally Biased Politically Incorrect Party Paper." The Web site for the print publication features articles and reviews; listings of clubs, restaurants, bars, film festivals, shows, etc.; and more.

Next Magazine
Covering gay nightlife, travel, theatre, celebrities and other topics, Next Magazine also provides weekly arts and entertainment listings, profiles, reviews, gossip and more, punctuated by photos of guys who are easy on the eyes.

New York Blade Online
This gay owned-and-operated weekly newspaper provides local and national news coverage of issues in the LGBT community, lifestyle coverage, arts and entertainment listings, and more.

GO Magazine
Published 10 times a year, this New York-centric magazine bills itself as the "Cultural Roadmap for the City Girl." With national news and entertainment coverage, it tends to focus on the New York scene, and its Web site features a number of “Very Best of NYC” listings for theatre, art, dance and more.

New Web Series About Teenagers in New York Premieres Monday, 12-8, on StrikeTV

2008-12-04T11:34:00.009-05:00

I'm sometimes preoccupied with wondering what it would have been like to grow up in New York. A Columbia student I know who grew up on the Upper East Side says I romanticize his life (to a degree I suspect he finds annoying) when I imagine erudite discourse around the family dinner table, Saturday mornings spent playing soccer in Central Park, a high school packed with cool kids all bound for the Ivy League. He's right: I do have a romantic notion about being a teenager in New York. The key word is teenager: No matter where you are, being a teenager just has that built-in Life Sucks factor.

Anyone But Me is a new Web series that offers a fresh and frank perspective on coming of age in New York in the post-9/11 world. It doesn't romanticize; it's got plenty of the Life Sucks factor. It also has plenty of humor, drama, hope and relevance.

At this point, it's only fair for me to disclose that I'm the producer of the show, which was created, written and directed by award-winning filmmaker Tina Cesa Ward. Susan Miller, an Obie award-winning playwright (My Left Breast) who was a consulting producer/writer for Showtime's groundbreaking The L Word and ABC's landmark series thirtysomething (among myriad other hit television shows), is the Executive Producer and co-writer.

In the first episode, which premieres on Monday, December 8, on StrikeTV, 16-year-old Vivian McMillan, the daughter of a NYC firefighter, is forced to move from the city to Westchester County due to her father's health problems, the result of 9/11. She's uncertain about how to be herself in her new suburban school, missing her friends in the city, a bit unnerved by the sudden motherly attentiveness of her aunt. In a word (or two): Life sucks.

Watch the trailer at our Web site and be sure to tune in for Monday's series premiere on StrikeTV.

New York Filmmakers Spotlighted in SciFi Channel Special Redux

2007-05-14T15:25:00.000-05:00

As announced previously, two New York-based indie filmmaking teams will be featured in this weekend's Exposure special on the SciFi Channel. The shorts RF EYE-D, created by Leslie Jaye Goff (that's MsManhattan to you) and Aram Bauman for Puffin Films, and Bloody Mary, by Mark Harris and Timur Civan for Desperate Comfort Films, are among the nine films selected to air on the cable network by voters in last fall's Exposure online short film contest.

Originally scheduled to air in April (see original post), the 90-minute show will finally premiere this Sunday night, May 20, at midnight with subsequent airings on Tuesday, May 22, at 8:30 a.m., and Thursday, May 24, at 3:00 a.m. Don't forget to tune in -- or set your DVR -- and then go to the Exposure Web site to vote for your favorite flick (need I say which one I think that should be?). The grand prize winner gets a pitch meeting with SciFi Channel programming execs.

MsManhattan thanks you in advance for your support for New York indie filmmakers!

New York Filmmakers Spotlighted in SciFi Channel Special

2007-04-18T22:15:00.000-05:00

UPDATE 22 APRIL 2007: SciFi Channel has postponed the premiere of the Exposure short film special until May 20, 2007. Check back for more information in May. Thanks!

ORIGINAL POST
Now that The Sopranos is back on the air for its final season, many New Yorkers are no doubt home on Sunday nights. TiVO-shmivo -- you just have to see it when it comes on at 9 p.m. So, after you've seen the new episode this Sunday night (April 22), try to stay up a few extra hours -- or go ahead and put your DVR to good use -- and check out two New York filmmaking teams who will be featured in the SciFi Channel's Exposure special.

Blatant Self-Promotion Alert: MsManhattan comprises half of one of those teams...

The one-hour show, airing at midnight (channel 44 on Time Warner systems in Manhattan), spotlights nine short films selected by voters in last November's Exposure Online Short Film Contest, co-sponsored by SciFi Channel and Sundance Channel.

It was a fierce competition. First we had to submit our films for review by the contest promoters, who then selected eight to 10 entries for each week of the eight-week contest. My production partner, Aram Bauman, and I eagerly went to the site each week to see if our submission, RF EYE-D, had been selected and, in week 4, were elated to see that it was up for voting.

And then just as suddenly as our spirits soared, they came tumbling down when we saw that we were up against two close friends: the Brooklyn filmmaking team of Mark Harris and Timur Civan with their film Bloody Mary. Given all the films submitted, and the two-month window for the competition, how did we end up vying against our own friends, with whom we've collaborated on other projects?

We hoped that at least one of our films would win for the week, and one of them did: theirs. Our joy for them was unavoidably mixed with disappointment for ourselves. And then, out of the blue a week later, SciFi Channel announced that "upon further review," RF EYE-D would share the Week 4 win with Bloody Mary.

We shot RF EYE-D in Manhattan and Brooklyn. We secured permission to shoot at the historic Church of the Intercession uptown; we also shot, guerilla-style, sans permission, in Central Park, at the South Street Seaport and in a major Brooklyn supermarket that shall go unnamed. We even made our own do-it-yourself green screen studio with yards and yards of green fabric hung in a mini-storage unit. Mark and Timur shot Bloody Mary in Brooklyn, making good use of various friends' apartments. All of the actors in both films are from the greater New York area.

Both films -- and their creators -- will be featured in Sunday night's special (it repeats on April 26 at 8:30 a.m. and April 27 at 3:00 a.m.). So, check it out and don't forget to go back to SciFi.com to vote on your favorite of the nine shorts afterward. The Grand Prize Winner gets to pitch a feature film project to network programming execs. MsManhattan is clearly biased, so my only plea here is: Support New York indie filmmakers!

Mega Millions Mania

2007-03-06T00:23:00.000-05:00

MsManhattan is ambivalent about the state lottery. Yes, all the proceeds fund public education. “Raising Billions to Educate Millions,” the NY State Lottery Web site proclaims -- $2.2 billion, to be exact. But when I see folks who probably should be spending that lotto money on groceries, it makes me a little sad and anxious.

Nonetheless, I usually play when the jackpots are really huge and sometimes I play during the first week of March. A fortune teller in Dublin once told me I would win $50,000 in the lottery on March 5th or 6th. She did not say what year. So anytime a lotto drawing falls on one of those dates, I usually get optimistic and play. It has been 16 years, but, to quote the lottery ads, hey, you never know. Of course, it turns out that she told anyone who went to see her that they, too, would win $50,000 in the lottery…

But, she was uncannily correct in most everything she saw in me or, that is, my forehead. She threw Tarot cards and then gazed intently at my forehead as though a movie were playing there. It was unusual, but effective. She saw in my forehead, for instance, my former father-in-law having a heart attack while trimming the shrubbery in the front yard. She described his house and his yard to a tee, down to the unusual color of bricks for which the house was named: Greystones. And, he had, in fact, just a few months before, had a heart attack while trimming the shrubbery. She saw my office and my co-workers, including particular physical characteristics of each. She described my boss perfectly except she said he was “clean-shaven.” He had a beard, so I figured she just got that detail wrong. But when I returned to New York, his beard was gone, and he had shaved it off – I kid you not – the day before my appointment with the fortune teller.

So, with the March 6th Mega Millions drawing worth a potential $355 million jackpot, I have purchased $20 worth of tickets. That bought me 23 chances to win – you get a bonus set of numbers for each five sets you buy. I’m hedging my bets – since she said March 5th OR 6th, I waited until the 5th to buy for the drawing on the 6th… I’ve got it all worked out.

I always get a little flustered when playing lotto because the rules are different for each of the games. For Mega Millions, you choose five “regular” numbers and one “Power Ball” number. I’ve played all my lucky numbers – one being the fortune teller’s street address – in various combinations of “regular” and “Power Ball.” Like I said, I’ve got it all worked out.

Tonight’s drawing will be live in Times Square. You have until 8 p.m. to buy your chance at instant freedom. For MsManhattan, instant freedom would mean I’d have to start a new blog: MmeParis… Or, MsMaui, perhaps… As a previous Lotto ad campaign used to say, all it takes is a dollar and a dream. This March 6th, MsManhattan is a little less ambivalent about the state lottery…

An Artful Dodge of the Holiday Hub-Bub: Eight Not-to-Be-Missed Exhibits

2006-11-21T14:44:00.000-05:00

With the holiday season upon us, you may be scrambling to take the last of your vacation days that you’ve put off all year, or hosting a number of out-of-town guests, or simply in need of a respite from the holiday hub-bub. Whatever the case, immersing yourself in an art exhibit is a great way to resolve the unique challenges presented by any of the above.

New York is never short on exhibits worth at least a couple of hours of your time, and now is no exception. Plan your museum itinerary for the holiday season – and the post-holiday hangover – with this guide to eight must-see shows closing between now and the end of January.

Navigation Tip: The exhibition title links directly to the exhibit Web site; the museum name links to the home page of the institution's Web site. All links will open in a new window.

Full House: Views of the Whitney's Collection at 75
Closing on December 31

Marking its 75th anniversary, the Whitney has devoted its entire fifth floor to works by Edward Hopper, drawn both from its extensive holdings (the world’s largest Hopper collection) as well as loans from other institutions, such as the Art Institute of Chicago’s Nighthawks (1942) and MoMA’s New York Movie (1939). Included alongside his paintings are many of Hopper’s preparatory sketches and drawings. Originally scheduled to close on December 3, the exhibit has been extended through the holidays.

NOTE: The other sections of the Whitney’s larger Full House exhibit, which featured selections from its entire collection, have already closed. If you don’t care for Hopper, check out Picasso and American Art, which examines Picasso’s influence on American artists by juxtaposing his works with those of Max Weber, Stuart Davis, Arshile Gorky, John Graham, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, David Smith, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Jasper Johns. It runs through January 28.

The Whitney Museum of American Art: 945 Madison Ave. (@ 75th St.); 800-944-8639.
Hours: Weds.-Thurs., Sat.-Sun., 11:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m.; Fri., 1:00-9:00 p.m.; Closed Mondays.
Admission: Adults: $15; Seniors & students, $10; NYC public high school students, children under 12 & members, free. Admission is pay-what-you-wish Fridays, 6:00-9:00 p.m.

Willing to Be Lucky: Ambitious New Yorkers in the Pages of LOOK Magazine
Closing on January 3, 2007

The title for this exhibit of 1940s and ‘50s photography was cleverly excerpted from E.B. White’s classic essay Here is New York, in which he wrote: “No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.” The New Yorkers featured in the 100-plus images here are dancers, boxers, showgirls, artists – some celebs and some just plain folk, but all “just offbeat enough” to end up in one of the most influential pictorial magazines in the 20th century – and some lucky enough to be photographed by Stanley Kubrick, who launched his career with LOOK. Special events in association with this exhibit include a guided tour with co-curators Donald Albrecht and Thomas Mellins followed by a screening of the early Kubrick film Killer’s Kiss (Sunday, Dec. 3, 2:00 p.m.) and a screening of the 1945 film The Stork Club, which stars Betty Hutton as a hat-check girl lucky enough to get rich working in the famed New York nightclub (Sunday, Dec. 10, 2:00 p.m.); both are free with museum admission.

Museum of the City of New York: 1220 Fifth Ave. (@ 103rd St.); 212-534-1672.
Hours: Tues.-Sun., 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.; Closed Mondays except holidays, including Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Presidents’ Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day, and Columbus Day.
Admission: Adults, $9; Seniors & students, $5; Families, $20 (max. 2 adults); Children (12 and under) & members, free. Admission is free Sundays, 10:00 am-12:00 p.m.

Ecotopia
Closing on January 7, 2007

You won’t look at “nature photography” the same way again after this exhibit of images by 39 international artists who “boldly examine new concepts of the natural sphere,” reflecting “new perspectives on the planet that sustains, enchants, and – increasingly – frightens us.”

International Center of Photography (ICP): 1133 Sixth Ave. (@ 43rd St.); 212-857-0000.
Hours: Tues.-Thurs., Sat.-Sun., 10:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m.; Fri., 10:00 a.m.-8:00 p.m.; Closed Mondays.
Admission: Adults, $10; Seniors & students, $7; Members, Free.

Defamation of Character
Closing on January 8, 2007

How apt, with all the hoopla surrounding the “TomKat” marriage (did I say that out loud?), the Britney divorce and, worst of all, the now canceled, thank the gods, O.J. interview and book, is this exhibit of “post-punk” work that “explores the relationships between face and fame, notoriety, disclosure, and erasure.” While some of the 30 international artists represented here “mine popular culture to produce scathing or defamatory indictments of consumer mores,” others bring their art to bear on “the moral corruptions of public and political acts,” and some “practice detournement – using elements of well-known media to create new work with a different or opposing message – to elevate injury and injustice into the realm of high art.”

P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center: 22-25 Jackson Ave. (@ 46th Ave.), Long Island City, Queens; 718-784-2084.
Hours: Thurs.-Mon., 12:00-6:00 p.m. Closed Tuesdays & Wednesdays, and on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years Day.
Admission: Adults, $5; Seniors & Students, $2; MoMA members & MoMA ticket holders, free. Fees are suggested donation.

Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer's Life, 1990–2005
Closing on January 21, 2007

Together with Willing to Be Lucky and Defamation of Character, the celebrity photography of Annie Leibowitz on display here form a trifecta of sorts for those interested in images of popular culture. But this exhibit of 200 images goes beyond Leibowitz’s well known and witty photos of the famous; it also includes personal photographs of friends and family, documentary photos from Sarajevo in the early ‘90s and landscapes of the American West and the Jordanian desert, broadening our perspective of Leibowitz’s body of work.

The Brooklyn Museum: 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn; 718-638-5000.
Hours: Weds.-Fri., 10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.; Sat.-Sun., 11:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m. (11.a.m.-11 p.m. on the first Saturday of each month). Closed Mondays and Tuesdays; also closed Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day.
Admission: Adults, $8; Seniors & Students (with valid ID), $4; Children under 12 & members, free. Fees are suggested donation.

Americans in Paris
Closing on January 28, 2007

American artists flocked to Paris “by the hundreds” in the late 19th century, when it had emerged as the world’s new art capital. The City of Light, notes this exhibition’s Web site, “inspired decisive changes in American painters’ styles and subjects,” which can be seen in this landmark exhibit of 100 paintings by 37 artists, including James McNeill Whistler, John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt, Thomas Eakins and Winslow Homer. The Met will also host a special symposium, “Americans in Paris, 1860–1900,” on Thursday, Nov. 30, and a special related “Sunday at the Met” program on Dec. 3. Both are free with museum admission; for details, email lectures@metmuseum.org.

Metropolitan Museum of Art: 1000 Fifth Ave. (@ 82nd St.); 212-535-7710.
Hours: Tues.-Thurs. & Sun., 9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m.; Fri.-Sat., 9:30 a.m.-9:00 p.m.; Closed Mondays.
Admission: Adults, $15; Seniors, $10; Students, $7; Children (under 12) & members, free.

Masters of American Comics
Superheroes: Good and Evil in American Comics
Closing on January 28, 2007

These two concurrent exhibits survey the American landscape in the 20th century through the comics. While Masters of American Comics, featuring work by R. Crumb, Chris Ware and others, explores the evolution of comic book art style from 1950 to the present, Superheroes delves into the themes that characterized the “Golden Age” of comics (1938-1950), featuring work by 15 Jewish comic book artists who created such iconic characters as Superman (Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel) and Batman (Bob Kane and Bill Finger ). “With the creation of superheroes and super villains,” the exhibit Web site explains, “these artists and writers not only reflected their own experience as immigrants—frequently Jewish immigrants from European countries—but explored the very real battles of good and evil that were being fought internationally during WWII. …
These powerful figures came to secure truth and justice the American way—forging an Americanness that was extremely important for many of these immigrant children and immigrant artists.”

The Jewish Museum: 1109 Fifth Ave. (@ 92nd St.); 212-423-3200.
Hours: Sat.-Weds., 11:00 a.m.-5:45 p.m.; Thurs., 11:00 a.m.-8:00 p.m.; Closed Fridays.
Admission: Adults, $12; Seniors, $10; Students, $7.50; Children under 12 & members, free. Admission is free on Saturdays.

Manet and the Execution of Maximilian
Closing on January 29, 2007

When a Mexican firing squad shot France's Emperor Maximilian to death in 1867, Édouard Manet began working on a series of paintings that would culminate with his landmark painting The Execution of Emperor Maximilian. This exhibit brings together, for the first time in the United States, several of these works and additional pieces that “examine the evolution from one painting to the next, which was fueled by a steady stream of written and graphic accounts of the event.”

Museum of Modern Art: 11 West 53rd St. (between Fifth & Sixth Aves.); 212-708-9400.
Hours: Mon., Weds.-Thurs., Sat.-Sun., 10:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m.; Fri., 10:30 a.m.-8:00 p.m.; Closed Tuesdays.
Admission: Adults, $20; Seniors, $16; Students, $12; Children (16 & under) & members, free.

When You Need to Know: Film Festivals in the Five Boroughs

2006-11-17T13:28:00.000-05:00

New York film buffs have the chance to attend not just one, but two, film festivals this weekend. In fact, over the last three months the city has hosted no fewer than eight fests, including October’s 44th Annual (that would make it the longest-running in town) New York Film Festival.

On tap this weekend are the Big Apple Film Festival (November 16-19), showcasing works by the New York indie filmmaking community, and the New York/Avignon Festival (November 15-19), billed as “the transatlantic crossroads of independent cinema.”

Over the course of the year, New York film buffs can usually find at least one, if not more, fests to attend each month. No matter what you like, you can find a festival for every taste and special interest, from the Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival showcasing films of anthropological and environmental interest to The Bicycle Festival, celebrating all things on two wheels. And this doesn’t include specially programmed fests that outfits like the Film Forum and the Pioneer Theatre regularly put together.

Here’s a sampler, in alphabetical order, of 25 local fests, mostly in Manhattan but a couple from Queens and Brooklyn for good measure. (Feel free to email me additional fests that aren’t listed here.) Note that dates are subject to change, but I’ve listed the month that the festival typically takes place. If upcoming dates (between November 2006 and November 2007) have been announced, they are listed here, but your best bet if you find a festival that interests you is to bookmark the site and check back often for news and schedule updates. And for filmmakers who want to enter the festivals, I’ve included the URL for submission information and forms.

* N/A indicates information not available.

The Avignon/New York Film Festival
Billed as “the transatlantic crossroads of independent cinema,” this fest takes place in Provence in the summer and New York in the fall, offering a mix of French, American and European indie films as well as roundtable discussions, parties, trinutes to indie filmmakers and more in “a celebration of independent cinema with good films, good people, good wines and good talk.”
Usually held around: November
To submit your film for consideration: The deadline for the New York festival is usually in September; the deadline for the 2007 Provence festival is May 1, 2007. Click here for details and forms.

The Bicycle Festival
Proving that where there’s a special interest, there’s likely a film festival built around it, this fest “celebrates the bicycle.” Appropriately, this is a traveling fest that – forgive the pun – cycles through L.A., San Francisco, Minneapolis, Chicago, London, Milan, Sydney and Tokyo in addition to New York. “We are into all styles of bikes and biking,” the Web site explains. “If you can name it-Tall Bike Jousting, Track Bikes, BMX, Alleycats, Critical Mass, Bike Polo, Cycling to Recumbents- we've probably either ridden or screened it. What better way to celebrate these lifestyles than through art, film, music and performance?”
Usually held around: May
To submit your film for consideration: Submissions for the 2007 festival will be accepted from December 1, 2006-February 17, 2007; click here for details.

Big Apple Film Festival
Showcasing the works of the New York independent filmmaking community, this fest aims “to bridge the gap between dedicated independent film audiences and filmmakers, as well as to connect emerging filmmakers with established industry professionals.” It also screens a number of other indie films from outside the New York area and offers panel discussions, a screenplay competition and networking parties. MsManhattan hopes its organizers have a far better eye for film than for design: This fest definitely takes the award for worst Web site – the information is poorly organized and the layout is hard to follow.
Usually held around: November
To submit your film for consideration: Click here for guidelines.

Coney Island Film Festival
This quirky fest, held at Coney Island’s Sideshows by the Seashore and the Coney Island Museum, showcases shorts and features made in or about Coney Island. It’s a freewheeling weekend full of joie de vie, parties and screenings of films you may not see anywhere else.
Usually held around: October
To submit your film for consideration: The call for entries for the 2007 festival will begin in March. Apply via Withoutabox.com; for details, click here.

Havana Film Festival in New York
Despite its name, this fest goes far beyond Havana, offering audiences a wide range of works from Cuba, Mexico, Central America and South America, as well as an annual tribute to a Cuban filmmaker.
Usually held around: April
To submit your film for consideration: N/A

Human Rights Watch International Film Festival
This activist-oriented fest, which debuts in London before coming to New York, features documentaries and dramas – “heroic stories of activists and survivors through the eyes of courageous filmmakers, putting a human face on threats to individual freedom and giving voice to those who might otherwise be silenced.”
Usually held around: June
To submit your film for consideration: Unsolicted submissions are accepted for the New York festival only; the 2007 fest deadline is December 10. Click here for guidelines.

Israel Film Festival
This annual traveling fest rotates through New York, L.A. and Miami as a showcase for the Israeli film and television industries. Works are selected “to enrich the American vision of Israel’s social and cultural diversity and to advance tolerance and understanding.”
Usually held around: Varies; the 2007 festival is scheduled for June 6-21.
To submit your film for consideration: The deadline for the 2007 festival is January 20, 2007. Click here for guidelines and forms.

LaCinemaFe Film Festival of New York
The 2007 installment of this two-week fest of “the best of Latina Merican and Spanish cinema” promises features and shorts from Argentina, Colombia, Bolivia, Spain, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Peru, Mexico, Italy, France and Spain. Additionally the program will feature retrospectives of children’s films and “Latin American Gay Cinema.”
Usually held around: It appears that this festival, which is coming up on its fifth installment, had originally been held in August; however, the Fifth Annual fest seems to have been delayed and is scheduled for February 22-March 3, 2007.
To submit your film for consideration: The submission form for the 2005 festival is here; it will give you some idea of the requirements for entry. The submission deadline for the 2007 festival has passed; check the Web site next spring for more information.

The Machinima Festival
Described as “filmmaking within a real-time, 3D virtual environment, often using 3D video-game technologies,” Macinima “blurs the lines between production and post-production,” according to the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences, which produces this fest for the American Museum of the Moving Image in Queens.
Usually held around: November
To submit your film for consideration: For rules and deadlines, email your inquiry to submissions@machinima.org.

Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival
Showcasing international documentary works produced by social scientists, independent filmmakers, students, and indigenous media-makers, this festival honors anthropologist Margaret Mead for her pioneering use of film in fieldwork. Presented by the American Museum of Natural History, the festival travels around the country after its New York debut.
Usually held around: November
To submit your film for consideration: Call for entries usually starts in the spring; check the Web site periodically for entry forms or read the festival’s FAQ here.

New Directors/New Films
A collaboration between the Film Society of Lincoln Center and MoMA’s Department of Film and Media, this fest focuses on works by emerging filmmakers from around the world and has introduced such directors as Pedro Almodóvar, Spike Lee, Sally Potter, Nicole Holofcener and John Sayles. Recent films that debuted at the festival include Junebug, Murderball, My Architect and Real Women Have Curves.
Usually held around: Mid-March-Early April; 2007 festival is scheduled for March 21-April 1.
To submit your film for consideration: Click here for rules and submission forms. This fest is non-competitive – “films are chosen according to quality,” the guidelines state – and no awards are given. The deadline for the 2007 festival is January 5.

NewFest: The New York Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender Film Festival
Marking its 19th year in 2007, this fest showcases the best of film and video by, about, or of interest to lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgendered persons. NewFest also supports other programs throughout the year, including FilmMaker’s Forum, a workshop series, and NewFest at the IFC Center, a monthly film series.
Usually held around: Late May/Early June; 2007 festival is scheduled for May 31-June 10.
To submit your film for consideration: Click here for guidelines and forms. The early deadline for the 2007 festival is December 22; regular deadline is February 20, 2007.

New York African Film Festival
A nine-day program of features and shorts by African directors, this fest is held only during even-numbered years. Additionally, the AFF supports outdoor screenings in the summer, a traveling film series, educational programs and more.
Usually held around: July/August
To submit your film for consideration: N/A

New York Asian American International Film Festival
Known as the “First Home to Asian American Cinema,” this festival launched in 1978 to screen works from all over the world by artists of Asian descent.
Usually held around: July
To submit your film for consideration: N/A

New York Asian Film Festival
Presented by Subway Cinema, a collective established in 1999 to promote Asia’s popular cinema in the United States, this two-week festival brings to New York films from China, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Korea, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia and India.
Usually held around: June
To submit your film for consideration: N/A

The New York City Horror Film Festival
With more than 50 films over five days, filmmaker Q&As, awards and tributes to masters of the genre, just call this fall fest horrific – in the best possible sense.
Usually held around: October
To submit your film for consideration: N/A

New York Film Festival
One of the world’s most important festivals and, with 2007 marking the 45^th anniversary, the oldest fest in New York, this 17-day festival sponsored by the Film Society of Lincoln Center is the city’s must-attend fall event. It screens an average of 28 features and 12 shorts from around the world, including premieres of new works by leading filmmakers.
Usually held around: Late September/Early October
To submit your film for consideration: Application forms are available starting in May; the submission deadline is in July. Click here for details and forms.

New York International Children’s Film Festival
Perhaps better called the festival for hip New York kids with creative, open-minded parents, this three-week fest aims “to help define a more compelling film for kids” by presenting “intelligent, passionate, provocative cinematic works for ages 3-18.” For example, a previous fest featured a Peter Sellars retrospective for kids ages 10 and up that included Dr. Strangelove and The Mouse That Roared. “We are not shy about showing films with mature themes, subject matter, language or sensibilities—especially for our teen and pre-teen audiences,” the submission guidelines say. The 2007 fest will feature over 100 films in competition plus gala premieres, retrospectives, workshops and more.
Usually held around: March; the 2007 festival is scheduled for March 2-18.
To submit your film for consideration: For rules and submission forms, click here. The deadline for the 2007 festival has already passed.

New York International Latino Film Festival
Dubbed “New York’s Latin Sundance” by industry pub Indiewire, this week-long festival brings together an array of features, shorts and documentaries by Latino filmmakers from around the world. The festival, which is co-sponsored by HBO, debuts each year in New York and then travels around the country; other programs throughout the year include a short film competition, a Latino Writers Lab and more.
Usually held around: July
To submit your film for consideration: N/A

New York Jewish Film Festival
Running since 1992, this festival co-sponsored by The Jewish Museum and the Film Society of Lincoln Center presents international features, shorts and documentaries that offer “unique visions of the Jewish experience.”
Usually held around: January; the 2007 festival is scheduled for January 10-25.
To submit your film for consideration: For details and forms, click here. The submission deadline has passed for the 2007 festival.

New York Korean Film Festival
Sponsored by the Korea Society and held at various venues around town, this is a two-day fest of shorts and features from Korean filmmakers.
Usually held around: Late August/early September
To submit your film for consideration: N/A

New York Short Short Film Festival
This festival featuring shorts with a running time of five minutes or less launched last May as a forum for “empowering new and emerging filmmakers in the New York area.” Hosted by the Anthology Film Archives, it billed the 2006 event as the “First Annual…” but the Web site does not yet have details on a “Second Annual” fest for 2007 (at least as of November 2006).
Usually held around: May (but it has only been held once, so who knows?)
To submit your film for consideration: Click here for details.

New York Underground Film Festival
Hosted by Anthology Film Archives, this fest screens narrative features and shorts, documentaries, animation and experimental films “of an innovative, experimental, subversive, critical, uncompromising, and adventurous nature,” according to its call for submissions. As of November 2006, the Web site is lacking in information on the upcoming festival but provides links back to previous fest archives.
Usually held around: Late March/early April; the 2007 festival is scheduled for March 28-April 1.
To submit your film for consideration: Submit via Withoutabox.com.

Tribeca Film Festival
One of the newest and already most prestigious fests in town, Tribeca is a not-to-be-missed two-week party of red-carpet premieres, filmmaker panels, indie screenings, street parties and more.
Usually held around: End of April/beginning of May; the 2007 festival is scheduled for April 25-May 6.
To submit your film for consideration: Click here to apply online or download submission requirements and forms. The entry deadline for the 2007 festival is December 8 (late entry deadline is January 5).

24-Hour Film Festival
Downtown Community Television (DCTV) last July launched this screening sleepover featuring 12 two-hour programs of indie shorts, features and animation. Whether the group intends to make it annual event remains to be seen, but it’s certainly worth checking the Web site periodically to find out.
Usually held around: July (but it has only been held once, so who knows?)
To submit your film for consideration: N/A

New York for Reel

2006-11-15T13:06:00.000-05:00

New York films are what make those of us who grew up anywhere else want to move here when we grow up. We see Diane Keaton and Woody Allen capping off an odd and elegant evening with hot dogs under the 59^th St. Bridge, Dustin Hoffman going to town on the hood of a taxi in the middle of a busy intersection, Cher strolling home in Brooklyn Heights under an impossibly big moon, Audrey Hepburn sitting on a fire escape strumming a guitar, and we get a glimpse of ourselves leading a different life.

And so we transplants who now feel ourselves, perhaps, New Yorkers owe, in a sense, a debt of gratitude to the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre & Broadcasting (MOFTB), which marks its 40^th anniversary this month with a series of screenings, a book release and a photography exhibit.

The MOFTB is a huge resource to big production companies making on-location movies and television shows as well as local indie filmmakers, providing free location permits, police assistance, discounts and various other supporting production services.

(Of course, you can also blame the MOFTB when you can’t park on your block because Law and Order is shooting there that day or some overly eager production assistant stops you on the sidewalk and makes you wait until they “get the shot.” It can be annoying, without a doubt, but try to be patient – those films and TV shows they’re shooting add jobs and revenue to the city.)

Many of the events commemorating the MOFTB’s 40th anniversary have already passed – such as October’s Coney Island Film Festival, in which (WARNING: BLATANT PLUG COMING) Aram Bauman, my production partner, and our friend Stephanie Armstrong screened their short film Red Meat.

But you can still catch a number of events, including the following:

Tuesdays-Sundays, 12:00-7:00 p.m, through November 27: Exhibit featuring photographs from Scenes from the City: Filming in New York 1966-2006, a new book examining filmmaking in New York over the last 40 years. The book shows how New York itself becomes a character in the films set here and also documents the city’s changing landscape – as well as the history of location shoots here. Tribeca Cinemas Gallery, 13-17 A Laight St. (between Varick and Sixth Ave.).
Wednesdays, November 15, 22 and 29: Screenings of experimental and indie short films about the city. 11-15, 1:30 p.m., Andy Warhol’s The Chelsea Girls; 11-22, 1:30 p.m., Central Park; 11-29, 2:30 p.m., Living American Theater Dance, Company, and Kiss Me Petruchio. New York Public Library’s Donnell Library Center, 20 West 53rd St. (between Fifth and Sixth Aves.).
Friday, November 17, 6:00-7:30 p.m.: A book-signing by James Sanders, an architect and New York history buff who put together the new photographic survey of New York films, Scenes from the City: Filmmaking in NY 1966-2006, produced with the MOFTB. International Center for Photography (ICP), 1133 Sixth Ave. (@ 43rd St.).
Tuesday, December 5, 6:30 p.m.: A talk – and another book-signing – by James Sanders (see above), Recital Hall at the CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Ave. (@ 34th St.). Advance reservations required; to register, call the CUNY Graduate Center's Office of Continuing Education and Public Programming at 212-817-8215 or email continuinged@gc.cuny.edu.
Thursday, December 21, 7:00 p.m.: A screening of director Ry Russo-Young's Marion, a remake of Psycho set in the West Village. Jonathan Shorr Gallery, 109 Crosby St. (@ Prince St.). Presented by the AIC-Cypher Salon, a series combining poetry and filmmaking.

For more details on these events, click here. And, to learn more about the book Scenes From the City, check it out at Amazon.com.

MsManhattan commemorates the MOFTB’s 40th anniversary by launching New York for Reel: Resources for NY Filmmakers and Film Buffs. Over the next few weeks look for links to local film festivals, production resources, best places to see indie films and more.

And, if you’d like to support a humble local indie filmmaker – namely, MsManhattan (WARNING: BLATANT SELF PROMOTION COMING) – check out the Exposure online film contest sponsored by SciFi Channel and Sundance Channel. RF EYE-D, a short film I wrote, produced and co-directed (with DP/Editor/SFX Artist extraordinaire, the aforementioned Aram Bauman) is in contention this week only (November 13-19). To view and to vote, go to SciFi.com and then to SundanceChannel.com – and email the links to all your friends.

Let Your Voice Be Heard: A Guide to Manhattan's Community Boards

2006-06-03T09:20:00.000-05:00

It's easy to feel like you're not being heard in a city as cacophonous as New York, but don't give up. If you have concerns about your neighborhood – too many rats on the block, a high-rise development proposal that will mar the local character – voice them at the next public meeting of your local Community Board.

Each of Manhattan's 12 Community Districts is represented by a Community Board. Community Boards are fundamental local resources for each neighborhood within Manhattan. Staffed entirely by volunteers, they serve as liaisons between New York City government agencies and local civic organizations, residents and businesses in each district. Monthly public meetings involve civic and public officials as well as city agency representatives, and public sessions at each meeting offer community residents an opportunity to speak out on local issues, make new proposals and more.

Don't get drowned out by all the noise; check your local Community Board's schedule, and make it a priority to attend the next meeting. Use this guide to find information on the Manhattan Community Boards where you live and do business.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This information is accurate as of June 3, 2006. To ensure that you have the latest available contact information for your Community Board, link to its Web site or check the city’s listing at the Community Assistance Unit Web site. (The Board Web sites tend to be more up-to-date than the city’s listing.)

LOWER MANHATTAN
Manhattan Community Board 1
Board Chairperson: Julie Menin. District Manager: Paul Goldstein.
Address: 51 Chambers St.. Room 712, New York 10007. Phone: 212-334-0611.
Area: Little

Italy

, Tribeca, Lower Manhattan, Ellis Island, Governor's Island and Liberty Island.
Monthly Meetings: 6:00 p.m. on the third Tuesday; call or check the Web site for location.

Manhattan Community Board 2
Board Chairperson: Maria Passannante Derr. District Manager: Arthur Strickler.
Address: 3 Washington Square Village, New York 10012. Phone: 212-979-2272. Fax: 212-254-5102.
Area: From Canal St. to 14th St. between the west side of Bowery and the Hudson River.
Monthly Meetings: 7:00 p.m. on the third Thursday; call for location.

Manhattan Community Board 3
Board Chairperson: David McWater. District Manager: Susan Stetzer.
Address: 59 East 4th St., New York. 10003. Phone: 212-533-5300. Fax: 212-533-3659.
Area: From Houston St. to East 14^th St. between the East River and Bowery/Third Ave.
Monthly Meetings: 6:30 p.m. on the fourth Tuesday at P.S. 20, 166 Essex St.

CLINTON/CHELSEA
Manhattan Community Board 4
Board Chairperson: Lee Compton. District Manager: Anthony Borelli.
Address: 330 West 42nd St., New York 10036. Phone: 212-736-4536.
Area: From West 14th St. to West 59^th St. between the Hudson River and Sixth Ave. or Eighth Ave. (depending on the block).
Monthly Meetings: 6:00 p.m. on the first Wednesday; call or check the Website for location.

DOWNTOWN/MIDTOWN
Manhattan Community Board 5
Board Chairperson: David Diamond. District Manager: Gary Parker.
Address: 450 7th Ave., Suite 2109, New York 10001. Phone: 212-465-0907. Fax: 212-465-1628.
Area: From 14th St. to 59th St. between Lexington Ave. and Eighth Ave.
Monthly Meetings: 6:00 p.m. on the second Thursday; call for location.

Manhattan Community Board 6
Board Chairperson: Carol A. Schachter. District Manager: Toni Carlina.
Address: 866 United Nations Plaza, Suite 308, New York 10017. Phone: 212-319-3750.
Area: From East 14th St. to East 59th St. between the East River and Lexington Ave., and further west in some areas.
Monthly Meetings: 7:00 p.m. on the second Wednesday, usually at the NYU Medical Center, 550 First Ave.

UPTOWN
Manhattan Community Board 7
Board Chairperson: Sheldon J. Fine. District Manager: Penny Ryan.
Address: 250 West 87th St., New York 10024. Phone: 212-362-4008.
Area: From Columbus Circle to Cathedral Parkway (West 110^th St.) between Central Park West and the Hudson River.
Monthly Meetings: Usually held during the first week of the month; call or check the Web site for dates, times and locations.

Manhattan Community Board 8
Board Chairperson: David G. Liston. District Manager: Elizabeth McKee.
Address: 505 Park Ave., Suite #620, New York 10022. Phone: 212-362-4008.
Area: From the north side of East 59th St. to the south side of East 96th St. between Fifth Ave. and the East River, including Roosevelt Island.
Monthly Meetings: The third Wednesday; call or check the Web site for dates, times and locations.

Manhattan Community Board 9
Board Chairperson: Hon. J. Reyes-Montblanc. District Manager: Lawrence McClean.
Address: 565 West 125th St., New York 10027. Phone: 212-864-6200.
Area: From the north side of West 110th St. to the south side of West 155th St. between Riverside Dr. and various avenues (depending on the block).
Monthly Meetings: 6:30 p.m. on the third Thursday at the Community Board office.

Manhattan Community Board 10
Board Chairperson: Hon. Neal Clark. District Manager: Yasmin Cornelius.
Address: 215 West 125th St., 4th Floor, New York 10027. Phone: 212-749-3105. Fax: 212-662-4215.
Area: Harlem and the Polo Grounds.
Monthly Meetings: The first Wednesday; call or check the Web site for dates, times and locations.

Manhattan Community Board 11
Board Chairperson: Lino Rios. District Manager: Javier Llano.
Address: 565 West 125th St.. New York 10027. Phone: 212-864-6200.
Area: From East 96th St. to the northeastern tip of Manhattan between the East River/Harlem River and Fifth Ave., including Ward's and Randall's Islands.
Monthly Meetings: The third Tuesday; call or check the Web site for details.

Manhattan Community Board 12
Board Chairperson: Martin Collins. District Manager: Charles DeFino.
Address: 711 West 168th St., Ground Floor, New York 10032. Phone: 212-568-8500.
Area: From the north side of West 155th St. to the northwestern tip of Manhattan between the Harlem and Hudson Rivers, encompassing Washington Heights and Inwood.
Monthly Meetings: The fourth Tuesday; call or check the Web site for details.

Point A to Point B in a HopStop and a Jump

2006-05-18T10:24:00.000-05:00

I have two friends who in March used their remaining FEMA funds to relocate to the Big Apple from the Big Easy. Having been among the first wave of residents to return to New Orleans after Katrina, they were ambivalent about leaving their French Quarter digs. But with work scarce and their landlord in need of their apartment for a family member, they concluded that it was time to make a move.

They had both lived here previously, years ago, so they weren’t entirely inexperienced in the ways of the city. Still, even for those who have lived here before, finessing a move here can be challenging, and they’ve often impressed me with the ease with which they’ve made their transition. For one, they’ve shown tremendous resourcefulness in navigating the subway system, finding unique and efficient ways of getting from their out-of-the-way neighborhood in Brooklyn to various points around the city. They finally shared their secret with me: HopStop.com.

As with MapQuest, you just enter your starting and ending points, and the site generates detailed directions from point A to point B. It tells you how to get to the nearest subway station, the transfers you need to make, and how to walk from your subway stop to your ultimate destination. What if you don’t know the address of the Met? No problem; just type in “Metropolitan Museum of Art.” You can also use intersections, but the system won’t recognize a single street only (e.g., you must put in 14th St. & Avenue A” – not merely “14th St.”). You can use pull-down menus to select such preferences as whether to walk more and transfer less (or vice-versa), and whether to combine bus and subway options. You can also enter the day and time you’ll be making the trip and select a language for the directions (current options are English, Chinese, French, German, Greek, Italian, Russian, Spanish and Swahili).

If you don’t like the route it suggests, just click “Reroute” and HopStop provides alternate directions. Or if you want to know how safe, clean, efficient, etc., the subway or bus line is, just click “Ratings” to get Zagat-like user reviews and tips. Once you have your route, you can text-message it, email it or print it. Other site features include the ability to generate an itinerary with multiple stops, maps, and guides to nearby attractions, shops and restaurants.

Even if you know the subway system like the back of your hand, HopStop.com is a great asset when you’re hosting the inevitable out-of-town visitor. Just text-message them an itinerary, and you may never get another desperate “OMG, we’re lost!” phone call again.

When You Need to Know: The Sporting Life Links

2006-05-10T13:14:00.000-05:00

Being a city dweller doesn't negate an interest in the sporting life. New Yorkers are an active bunch, and Manhattan provides a number of opportunities for athletic pursuits and both indoor and outdoor recreational activities.

Turn here to find sports, fitness and recreation resources to indulge your physical side. I’ll update this as I come across new resources – and if you have any good local sports and recreation sites to recommend, please send them along!

For links to your favorite local pro teams, check out When You Need to Know: NY’s Professional Sports Teams.

New York’s Parks
NYC Parks Facilities: Where to Play, Practice & Watch
The New York City Parks system provides public facilities for a vast array of sports and recreation, from bocce courts to volleyball courts. Find the public places to play, practice or watch the sport or game of your choice with this searchable Parks Department guide.

Manhattan's Backyard: Sports Facilities in Central Park
Did you know that Central Park has indoor and outdoor rock-climbing walls? Or that it has two croquet lawns and yoga classes? Get information here on all of the public sports facilities Manhattan's backyard has to offer.

League Sports
A League of Your Own: Applying for Athletic Permits
If you're organizing a league of your own, you'll need to obtain an athletic permit to use the public parks facilities. Apply for a permit online, download applications for permits (Adobe Acrobat Reader required), and check out the usage guidelines for the public courts and fields at this Parks Department Web site.

Out of Bounds
Get a listing of New York's LGBT sports leagues and recreational groups, such as the NYC Gay Hockey Association, NY Pride Rowing Association, Fast & Fabulous Cycling Club and a host of others. All are endorsed by Out of Bounds, a non-profit organization that “advocates and actively works for the acceptance, visibility, and active participation of members of the GLBT community in professional, amateur, and recreational programs without regard to race, gender, age, or sexual orientation..” OOB’s Web site also features news, a calendar of LGBT sports and more.

Inline Skating
NYC SK8: The New York City Inline Skating Guide
This all-purpose overview of inline skating in the New York Metro area started out in 1994 as a mere FAQ and has grown into a useful guide to local inline skating. It features information on where to buy inline skates, a guide to local laws regulating the sport, a safety primer and more. My favorite feature is a handy neighborhood guide to the city’s best places for inline skating, which is thoughtfully written for the novice as well as experienced skater.

The Empire Skate Club
This non-profit membership-based association is “dedicated to having fun and improving the skating environment in New York.” It sponsors a variety of regular skating events, such as the Tuesday Night Skate, for advanced skaters; the more relaxed Thursday Night Roll, a social skate for beginner-to-intermediate skaters; and out-of-town skate trips. An annual membership is $25. Get all the details at the club’s Web site.

The Central Park Skate Patrol
This group is a godsend for beginning skaters. I would never have learned to feel confident on hills without the patience and persistence of the Skate Patrol volunteer who taught me how to brake at the West 72^nd Street entrance to the Central Park Loop; volunteers are available every weekend, April-October, 12:30-5:30 p.m.. The local chapter of the International Inline Skating Association's (IISA) National Skate Patrol, the Central Park Skate Patrol also runs a very reasonably priced Skate School, with certified instructors, on the second and fourth weekends of each month. Check the Web site for more information.

Tennis
TennisNYC League
The official Web site of the city’s self-proclaimed “#1 Tennis League” is a confusing mess in terms of design but, if you’re willing to scroll through its very long main page, you’re apt to find out everything you wanted to know about amateur tennis in New York.

Central Park Tennis Center
Get the lowdown on group classes, private lessons and tennis camps offered at the Har-Tru and hard courts located near the reservoir in Central Park.

Riverside Clay Tennis Association
This citizen’s group saved the clay courts at 97^th St., alongside the Hudson River in Riverside Park, from being paved over in the early 1980s and now, in conjunction with the Parks Department, maintains 10 world-class courts, runs tournaments and tennis ladders, and hosts a summer sunset concert series. The organization also pays the salary of an on-site tennis pro who offers private and group lessons.

119^th St. Tennis Association
This home-grown site representing the hard courts at 119^th St. in Riverside Park features tournament schedules, news and, most notably, a listing of “Play Pals” – names and contact information of local enthusiasts who are seeking tennis partners.

Friends of Harlem Tennis Center
Support tennis north of 96^th St. by checking in here for an update on the Harlem Tennis Center at the 369th Regiment Armory. The center has been closed, awaiting funding for a renovation. Check out the “HTC Crisis” link for news on what’s been going on, the “About HTC” link for a history of the center – notables such as Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe played and taught here – and the “Local Tennis Groups” link for a listing of various leagues and associations elsewhere in the city.

Horseback Riding
Riding in NYC’s Parks
Each of the five boroughs offers public horseback riding trails in the city’s parks. While Central Park is Manhattan’s backyard, you’ll only get to ride here if you’re pretty experienced. Venture out to one of the other boroughs, however, and you can get reasonably priced lessons as well as guided trail rides. This Parks Department guide includes information on hours, services available and rates, as well as links to the individual stables in each park.

Urban Cowboy: NYC Horseback Riding
If you want a glimpse into what riding in the city is really like before you venture out and try it for yourself, check out this article at Gorp.com, the Web site affiliated with Outside magazine. A first-person account by an experienced rider of various stables and trails in each of the five boroughs, it offers both a glimpse into the reality of riding in the metropolis and practical information on the stables. NOTE: You must complete the free Gorp.com site registration to access the entire article.

GoCityKids.com’s Guide to Horseback Riding in NYC
Get an overview of the stables and rates available around the city, plus kid-centric mini-reviews of each, as well as links to the stables’ Web sites.

Recommended All-Purpose Guide to Sports and Recreation in NYC
NY Sports Online
I’ll add more sports and recreation links to MsManhattan.net over time, but as much as I’d like to, it would be next to impossible for me to provide a comprehensive listing of sports and recreation opportunities in the city. And why should I, when New York Sports Online has done a fabulous job already? This site offers local sports and recreation news as well as localized guides and links to just about any athletic pursuit you can think of, from arm wrestling to volleyball.

When You Need to Know: New York’s Professional Sports Teams

2006-05-10T12:14:00.000-05:00

Whether you root for the Yanks or the Mets, the Giants or the Jets, the Knicks or the Nets, New York fans are the most loyal in the country. Use the teams’ official Web sites to get the latest team news, check out team standings and stats, get schedules and purchase tickets.

Baseball
The NY Yankees

The NY Mets

The Brooklyn Cyclones

Major League Baseball

Minor League Baseball

Football
The NY Giants

The NY Jets

The NY Dragons

The National Football League

Arena Football League

Basketball
The NY Knicks

The NJ Nets

NY Liberty

The National Basketball Association

The Women’s National Basketball Association

Ice Hockey
The NY Rangers

The NY Islanders

The NJ Devils

The National Hockey League

Roller Derby
Yeah, that’s what I said: Roller Derby. If the A&E reality show Rollergirls made you want to catch some of this action, you’ll be happy to know the metro area boasts two women’s leagues.

Gotham Girls
Comprising four local teams representing four of the five boroughs – Bronx Gridlock, Brooklyn Bombshells, Queens of Pain and Manhattan Mayhem – the Gotham Girls have bouts coming up this summer at The Schwartz Athletic Center at LIU-Brooklyn.

Long Island Roller Rebels League
With three teams – The Wicked Wheelers of The West, The East End Ladies of Laceration and the Mid Island Rolling Thundercats – this Long Island-based women’s league will be competing through October in Bethpage.

New Feature: When You Need to Know

2006-05-08T22:45:00.000-05:00

To make this site a more valuable resource for New York residents (and visitors, too), I'll periodically list links to useful Web sites on different topics. Since we're having such a fine early spring -- perfect for perusing new neighborhoods -- I've kicked off the new When You Need to Know series with a list of links to neighborhood information.

In the weeks to come I'll add more neighborhood resources and create When You Need to Know posts on new topics, including The Sporting Life (sports and recreation), Manhattan 311 (city government), Getting Around (transportation and travel) and more.

Please post a comment if you'd like to request any specific topics or to share a link that you've found helpful.

When You Need to Know: Manhattan Neighborhood Links

2006-05-08T22:00:00.000-05:00

Part of Manhattan's charm is the distinct character of each neighborhood, from Murray Hill to Morningside Heights, Little Italy to Lenox Hill. Check in here for neighborhood guides and info; I’ll periodically update these links to keep you informed.

Neighborhood Spotlights and Local Attractions

Spotlight on Morningside Heights: A Walking Tour
Morningside Heights – so named because it sits atop a 135-foot bluff - is a genteel neighborhood just above Manhattan's Upper West Side. Flanked by three of the city's finest parks, and home Columbia University and The Cathedral of St. John the Divine, it lends itself to meandering and taking your time. Get to know the people and places of Morningside Heights on this walking tour.

Spotlight on Midtown: One Night at the Plaza
An anchor on the northern edge of Midtown, the Plaza Hotel was the Grande Dame of New York luxury hotels. Established in 1907, its rooms overlooking Central Park, its French Chateau architecture, and its famed interiors such as the Palm Court, the Grand Ballroom and the Oak Room and Oak Bar made the Plaza a New York icon. Sadly, the hotel closed its doors on April 30, 2005, for a conversion to private residences.

Greenmarkets: A Guide to Farmer's Markets in NYC
You probably already know about the popular Union Square Greenmarket (or Farmer's Market, as it's often called). But did you know Manhattan hosts 18 other Greenmarkets throughout the city on different days of the week? While some are seasonal, 11 are open year-round. Use this map to find a Greenmarket in your neighborhood. NOTE: Adobe Acrobat Reader required. For more information on the city’s Greenmarket program, CLICK HERE.

NYC's Architectural Gems by Neighborhood
Tom Fletcher, a New York architect (by way of Australia), maintains this online library of photographs and notes about an eclectic range of the city's most architecturally interesting buildings; it's conveniently organized by neighborhood.

Best Neighborhoods for Inline Skating
This handy neighborhood guide to best places for inline skating is thoughtfully written for the novice as well as experienced skater, noting such details as how the trees hanging over the sidewalks of Riverside Park make the ground "twiggy." Get the full rundown on all the best locales around Manhattan.

Manhattan Restaurants by Neighborhood
When you need a restaurant in a specific neighborhood, use this link to get New York Magazine’s listing of 1,861 Manhattan restaurants sorted by location – from Battery Park City to the West Village (neighborhoods are sorted in alphabetical order). You can resort the list by cuisine, price range or restaurant name. Reviews are included, too.

New York Magazine Neighborhood Guides
The glossy’s Web site offers a number of handy neighborhood guides with detailed maps and write-ups on local shops, restaurants and attractions. Check them out before you head out.

SoHo
Map No 5: Crosby Street (November 29, 2004)

Lower East Side
How Low Can You Go? (May 8, 2006)

Lower East Side-East Village
Map No 2: The Bowery (October 25, 2004)

Union Square
Map No. 9: State of the Union (April 5, 2005)

Upper East Side
Map No 4: Lexington Avenue (November 29, 2004)

Upper West Side
Map No 1: Lower-Middle-Upper West Side (October 6, 2004)

Harlem
Map No 8: 125th Street (February 28, 2005)

Maps and Community Information

New York City Map Portal: Community Information by Address
Plug your address into this interactive NYC Map Portal, and you can spend hours getting detailed information on your neighborhood, from the breakdown of your various districts (community, city council, school, etc.), census data and local services to a host of statistics such as crime rates, number of noise complaints and more.

Map of Manhattan Neighborhoods
This color-coded map demarcates where one Manhattan neighborhood ends and the next begins, from Inwood to the Financial District.

City of Neighborhoods: The NYC Department of City Planning Interactive Neighborhood Map
This map breaks the five boroughs down into their 59 official Community Districts. Click on any one to get a detailed view of the district, including niche neighborhoods (e.g., you’ll see not just the Upper East Side, but Carnegie Hill). Or, use the pull-down menu to select a specific neighborhood to view. You can also use this site to obtain information on proposed city planning projects, such as the city’s recommendations for the development of the World Trade Center site and the High Line development plan in Chelsea.

Manhattan Timeformations: The NYC Skyline in 3D
Watch this interactive computer animation reveal the development of the downtown New York City skyline, neighborhood-by-neighborhood and era-by-era. First click on an area (e.g., downtown), then click through the time periods and major developments, and watch the city take shape – literally. HINT: A brief tutorial precedes the animation; just click through each of the links to arrive at the interactive map. For more information about the Manhattan Timeformations project and its developers, CLICK HERE.

The Oldest Known Map of Manhattan (1639)
For a look at Manhattan long before the skyscrapers, check out this 1639 map, dotted with tiny farms, plantations and four Native American villages in what is now Brooklyn.

One Night at the Plaza

2006-04-30T09:48:00.000-05:00

The heavy for the Plaza Hotel’s owner, Elad Properties, stood sentry outside the Oak Bar, turning away patrons who had come to pay their last respects to the venerable New York watering hole. “We’ve run out of liquor,” he offered as an excuse.

“But we don’t need drinks; we’ll just have a Coke. We just want to spend some time here on the last night,” I explained. “No, I’m sorry, no,” he said, turning away my beau and I, as well as a number of others gathered at the entrance, all of us hoping to say a proper goodbye to the place that held so many memories, an immeasurable amount of history.

It was Friday night, April 29, 2005, the last night that New Yorkers would have access to the Oak Bar for two years. The next day, at 1:30 p.m., the Plaza Hotel’s last guest signed his bill and left.

A year ago today, April 30, at 2:00 p.m., the Plaza Hotel closed its doors to the general public for a two-year renovation in which its 800 rooms are being converted into 180 private, luxury condos; 130 public hotel rooms; and 152 “hotel-condos” -- the uptown equivalent of time shares.

By all accounts, Elad Properties, which acquired the Plaza in 2004 for $675 million, began disassembling the storied hotel’s infamous rooms almost immediately and sold many treasured items. A letter posted in a thread at Wired.com’s New York forum this past December stated, “Those rotten bastards at Elad sold everything, lock stock and barrel down to the double P brass door knobs and door plates. In the ‘Land marked’ [sic] areas, they used unskilled, pissed off union workers to ‘pack up.’ Chandeliers were packed like garbage, the irreplaceable smoked glass mirrors in the Palm Court were broken, everything was done to spare spending any money that was necessary.”

The pillage culminated with an auction at Christie’s on March 15 that garnered a whopping $1.8 million for 344 lots that included such irreplaceable items as Eloise’s ruby slippers, the oak corner humidor and a vintage Steinway Baby Grand piano from the Oak Room, a pair of Jean Honore Fragonard murals and a Louis XV-style blue- and clear-glass chandelier, according to a March 16 press release at Christie’s Web site (Christie's Honors The Plaza With An Auction That Realizes A Million More Than Pre-Sale Expectations). Elad and Christie’s whitewashed the auction with a lavish pre-auction party billed as an homage to Truman Capote’s 1966 Black-and-White Ball; naturally the party, not the ransacking of an historic landmark, grabbed all the headlines.

Elad had originally announced that it would maintain only 100 hotel rooms for the public, resulting in a projected loss of between 900 and 1,100 jobs, according to a statement by the NY Hotel Trades Council last year. The union waged a fierce campaign to save the hotel – and its jobs – and garnered involvement from Mayor Bloomberg’s office. The end result: The Plaza still closed, but Elad promised that it would maintain about 300 hotel rooms and would preserve key historic interiors. Those were to include – according to a Letter to the Editor from Elad’s CEO, Miki Naftali, published in the New York Times on April 10, 2005 – the Oak Room, the Edwardian Room, the Palm Court and the Grand Ballroom.

In the meantime, preservationists were as outraged as the union, and lobbied the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission to bestow landmark status on a number of the Plaza’s interior rooms. The Plaza’s exterior was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1986, but interior landmarks are a rarity: In New York, only a relative few interiors enjoy landmark distinction. (Note that I didn’t say “protection” – enforcement of the regulations surrounding landmark status seems rather soft, particularly when owners can apply for waivers; the enforcement process consists of a warning letter, an official Notice of Violation if the warning goes unheeded, a hearing, a second Notice of Violation and civil fines.)

Last July after a series of delays that drew the ire of Plaza supporters, the Commission granted landmark status to eight of the Plaza’s famed interiors, including the Palm Court, the Grand Ballroom, the Terrace Room, the Oak Room and Oak Bar, the 59^th Street Lobby, the Fifth Avenue Lobby and Vestibule, and the Main Corridors, as well as some adjacent corridors, murals, chandeliers and decorative metalwork. At the same time, however, the Commission recommended approving a landmarks waiver that paves the way for Elad to create 39,000 square feet of commercial space and to make changes to the landmarked exterior – such as adding a new entrance to what critics expect will be an upscale mall.

The current Plaza Web site assures the public that Elad is “working with preservationists, architectural historians, and stained glass and lighting experts … to recreate a huge, 1,200-square-foot laylight” in the Palm Court and includes historic photos of the lavish dining area’s original stained-glass ceiling. This plan was, apparently, a concession to the Landmarks Commission to get the waiver on the exterior and permission to create the commercial space, which is expected to feature high-end stores.

The Web site makes only a brief reference to the Oak Room and Bar, saying “it will be restored and will remain in its original grandeur [sic].” But if Elad is planning on restoring the now landmarked Oak Room to its original grandeur, why is the company selling off the room’s legendary furnishings? Likewise, it says of the Grand Ballroom that it “also will be accurately restored to its original grandeur.” It includes no information on the Edwardian Room except a notation that it is, alas, the site of the sales office for the ultra high-end new residences.

Those are being offered for a total of $1.3 billion with individual sale prices ranging from $2 million for a one-bedroom overlooking a new, private internal courtyard to $40 million for an upper-floor three bedroom with park views, according to published reports. The private residences will consume all of the space on the north side of the building, facing Central Park, while the public units will be consigned to the 58^th Street side. The final mix of units available to the public differs somewhat from the count first agreed to with the union – the plan for the 152 “hotel-condos” eats into the originally estimated 300 public rooms.

The uncertainty of what the Plaza Hotel will really look like when it reopens in 2007 was best expressed to me last April (2005) by a New Yorker in a position to understand fully the import of the Plaza’s closing. Curt Gathje, author of At the Plaza: An Illustrated History of the World's Most Famous Hotel (2000, St. Martin's Press), worked at the Plaza for 27 years, climbing the ranks from room service waiter to Director of Guest Services and official Plaza Historian. “I am not convinced that the interior public spaces are protected or are safe,” he told me when I interviewed him about the Plaza’s closing. “They might reopen, and the Oak Room could be a Barneys or god knows what. So, I am a little discouraged, and I am not convinced.”

Feeling that same sense of discouragement in the final week coming up to the closing last year, I threw budgetary caution to the wind and fulfilled a lifelong dream: I had a room with a park view at the Plaza Hotel. Ever since I saw Jane Fonda standing in the doorway of her bridal suite, wearing Robert Redford’s oxford cloth shirt and sending him off to work with a sexy goodbye in the film Barefoot in the Park, I had wanted to stay at the Plaza. When I woke up on the morning of Saturday, April 23, my first thought was: “This is it, my last chance Texaco. I have to do it,” and I called and got a room.

Following are excerpts of a journal I kept of my resplendent 21 hours at the Plaza Hotel on its final Saturday night as New York’s Grande Dame.

Saturday 23 April 2005, 3:40 p.m.
I’ve just checked into the Plaza Hotel, for the last Saturday night that it will be the Plaza as we’ve known it. The Oyster Bar is already closed, but the Oak Bar and the Palm Court and the truffle shop are still open, and I am here as a guest for my very first – and, alas, last – time.

This is the place I’ve come to use the lady’s room when stuck in midtown with nowhere else to go, to buy truffles, to have tea, but never, until now, to sleep. Thanks to a most accommodating reservations rep, who has sworn me to secrecy so I will refer to him only as the wind beneath my wings today, I have a 12^th-floor park view, a free breakfast in the morning and a decent discount.

As I was falling asleep last night, it hit me: If I don’t do it now, I’ll never get to. Over 23 years in New York, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t dream of staying at the Plaza. So, I called this morning, and here I am, after struggling with my conscience about my budget and concluding, you only live once, and if you live in Manhattan, you can not let a fleeting opportunity like this pass you by.

Other than the absence of a monogrammed, white terry bathrobe in the bathroom, which I’d expected somehow, everything is just how I’d imagined it would be. I have park views – of the Duck Pond – from both the main room and the bathroom. The room itself, while not huge, is large enough with colonial blue walls and embossed satin wallpaper within picture moldings and a walk-in closet that’s just about the size of my first room in a share in Carroll Gardens circa 1984.

Saturday 23 April 2005, 6:20 p.m.
Tea in the Palm Court, a wonderful tradition. I brought my beau’s daughter here once, after a trip to the Natural History Museum. I’d meant to come many more times, and today I waited on line, with dozens of other New Yorkers, desperate to get in one last time.

Michael, my waiter, has the most pleasant, musical, baritone voice and eyes that dance to go with the cadence. He has worked at the Plaza for 35 years, and plans to come back when it reopens in ’07.

“I don’t know how to feel,” he tells me. “I’m very attached to the place. But I want to come back to it when it’s good again. Not like the last four months,” when apparently even coming up with spoons for customers shelling out $35 for sandwiches, scones and pastry has been a challenge. “We have to hide them on the side,” he says. “You can’t tell a customer, ‘We have no spoons for you.’ They’re still paying the same amount; they should get the same service. But they tell us, ‘Do the best you can.’” They being, it seems, management.

“What will you be doing next weekend?” I ask. He smiles broadly, yet wistfully. “I don’t know. Fishing?” With a question mark at the end. “I’ve told myself, I’ll spend the summer fishing and the fall golfing, and then I’ll have to find a new wife because mine will throw me out.” And he laughs again, and then his expression changes to not quite solemn, but searching. “I don’t know how I’m going to feel. I think this time a week from now, I’ll be very upset.”

A couple from Long Island has brought their very exquisite daughter, who twirls and twirls to show me her pretty dress. “It blows out,” she says, and twirls again. She has dark eyes and olive skin like her father’s; he’s distinguished and calm and cheerful, and his petite wife has gorgeous clear blue eyes. Standing on line earlier, in front of me, she was anxious we wouldn’t be seated. We were told there’s no guarantee, but we pleaded, and the hostess found space for us. Those behind us were not so lucky – we were the last ones given tables for the last Saturday tea in the Palm Court.

The scones are small and light, for scones, and the clotted cream is, as well, like clouds of sweetness on top with the raspberry jam. I eat both of them and all of my sandwiches; the smoked salmon with scallion cream cheese and caviar on pumpernickel is particularly delicious. I finish off my last of three cups of English Breakfast tea – brewed in a white porcelain pot, which Michael refills with hot water for me – with a delectable mango mousse pastry, laced with a hint of raspberry. When I am done, I am sweetly sleepy, a pleasant carb overdose making me drowsy and dreamy and wishing I could be Eloise, eternally living at the Plaza. I leave Michael an extravagant tip.

The concierge, a tanned older gentleman with good skin, silver hair thick with a wave, and full lips – handsome – tells me no when I ask if 1215 is a smoking room; then he adds, “Oh, you can smoke. We’re closing. Just open the window.”

I buy truffles and return to 1215, fighting the impulse to nap. I pull my chair over by the window, raise it enough to let the smoke out, and look out at my park view. It’s actually a partial view, and I have to stand and stretch over the heating unit to see the Duck Pond, but that’s OK. I have a room, with a park view, at the Plaza Hotel, on its last Saturday night. The trees outside are the vibrant green they are only in spring, and the tops are skimmed by fog. It has threatened to thunderstorm all day, but the storm has restrained itself. Beyond the Duck Pond, I can see the paths of the park twisting and turning their way west and uptown, to my neighborhood. But for the fog, I think I’d be able to see Great Hill, although unlikely given the thick full trees, which have become that way seemingly overnight – turning from bare and stark to full-blown color. The cars go by 12 floors below and honk, and it’s New York, and I am in love with this town, and I even love myself right now.

Saturday 23 April 2005, 9:15 p.m.
So after the rush of checking in, and the exquisite tea, and the purchase of truffles, what do you do in the Plaza Hotel when your beau is stuck editing with a crazy producer? Go see a French film at the blue velvet Paris Theater. Happily Ever After (Ils Se Marièrent et Eurent Beaucoup d'Enfants) seems like it was tailor-made for me on my special night, deftly combining an homage to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (my all-time favorite film) with Elvis’ Can’t Help Falling in Love (perhaps my all-time favorite love song – at least by Elvis), and Johnny Depp – speaking French and looking so fine And then all the smoking, the fabulous French and their unabashed smoking.

As soon as I stepped back out into the cool, damp Manhattan evening, I lit one up myself and watched the smoke circle above my head. I stood on the plaza in front of the hotel, drinking in the sound of the cascading fountain and tires rolling on the wet streets. The Plaza stood tall, bathed in a diffused light, enshrouded in fog, and a blue haze hung all about. The doorman rocked back and forth, from one foot to the other, hands in his pockets, bored, perhaps wondering himself where he’d be this time a week from now.

Sunday 24 April 2005, 11:40 a.m.
Less than half an hour to checkout, and I wish I didn’t have to leave, because I know this moment will never come again. At the end of a really great vacation, a vacation that has seduced me, when I have fallen in love with the place and the time, I soothe myself with the promise that I will return, and it’s always a comfort to know that a return trip is an option. But that isn’t an option this time because I leave knowing that the Plaza will never be the same after next weekend.

So, I soothe myself with one last call to room service and enjoy a decadently expensive breakfast in bed.

My beau joined me just after midnight last night, and we went down to the Oak Bar, where an air of sadness pervaded the boisterous late-Saturday-night crowd. People were convivial enough, and the room was loud with talk and laughter, but a certain finality hovered over the crowd. Even though my trips to the Oak Bar have been infrequent, the coming changes made me anxious, and I picked at the bowl of mixed nuts on our table as my beau kvetched about the crazy producer and her TV interview with Itzhak Perlman.

I’ve always felt like part of an eternal tradition when I’ve come here; it never occurred to me that could go away. Although Elad has conceded to preserve the Oak Bar, I fear that it will somehow be different. I tell myself that part of Manhattan’s charm is its ability to both preserve and redefine itself at a continuous pace, that it thrives in the constant blurring of the old and the new. A new storefront goes in, and you can’t remember what was there the week prior. Only now, it seems, the new storefront is a Duane Reade or a Washington Mutual and the old one was your favorite mom-and-pop deli with the best coffee between your apartment and the subway. It seems that all we’ve got for our trouble in this town lately are chain drugstores, retail banks and the ubiquitous Starbuck’s.

After the Oak Room, we lingered at the jewelry cases in the lobby and then came upstairs for a 2 a.m. supper from room service. He had to leave early, and I remained here dozing, then reluctantly packing up – and dreading the final tally on my bill. I was brazen to do this, but sometimes in Manhattan you have to be brazen and seize the moment and take that last dying opportunity before it’s gone forever. I stayed at the Plaza on its last Saturday night; I had a room with a park view at the Plaza before it passed into its next life. I had a room at the Plaza Hotel overlooking the duck pond. My night at the Plaza.

Photos by "my beau."

BONUS TRACK: Q&A With Curt Gathje

On Saturday, April 30, 2005, Elad Properties, the real estate developer that acquired the Plaza Hotel for $675 million in 2004, closed its doors for a controversial, two-year renovation that will convert about half of the property to condominiums.

Following a campaign to save the hotel, mounted by the New York Hotels Trades Council, and involvement from the Mayor’s Office, Elad’s management pledged to maintain some of the hotel’s historic interiors, including the Oak Room, the Grand Ballroom, the Palm Court and the Edwardian Room (see story above for details). Nevertheless, one New Yorker with close ties to the Plaza had his doubts about the illustrious hotel’s future.

Curt Gathje, author of At the Plaza: An Illustrated History of the World's Most Famous Hotel (2000, St. Martin's Press), worked at the Plaza for 27 years. He started out as a room service waiter, and worked his way through the ranks, finishing his tenure as Director of Guest Services and official Plaza historian. On April 29 last year, less than 24 hours before the Plaza’s 98-year reign as New York’s Grand Dame of luxury hotels drew to a close, Gathje spoke with me about the loss of a New York icon that he compared to the loss of the original Penn Station, and one that he measured as a personal loss, as well.

MSMANHATTAN: Why is the Plaza such an iconic symbol of New York; why do we feel so invested in it?

GATHJE: Certainly its location has a lot to do with it – Fifth Avenue and Central Park South is one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in the city. And the grandeur of the building, that it’s part French chateau, part skyscraper, makes it a really spectacular building. And time helps in these matters – the more time it’s around, the more venerable it is.

At the same time, I think New Yorkers pay lip service to it being a top building, but they don’t really visit it, and that’s why, say, the Oak Room has had a tough time in recent years. It hasn’t made money. And, it’s one of my favorite places; it’s so sad.

MSMANHATTAN: What is your favorite story about the Plaza's history?

GATHJE: I was the archivist, and I took a lot of press tours around, and the story that people always got the biggest kick out of is the one about Harry Allen. He owned a fleet of taxi cabs in the early part of the last century, and on opening day [October 1, 1907] he brought his fleet up Fifth Avenue and parked in front of the hotel and gave all the patrons free rides.

Well, he got a lot of publicity for his taxi fleet, and he made horse-and-buggy drivers in the neighborhood very upset. There was a story that he was having breakfast in the Edwardian Room, and he was shot at. He was unpopular because he was a harbinger of things to come, and we know what happened. But, the Plaza is still one of the few places in town where you can hail a handsome cab, so Harry Allen never quite got rid of all of them.

MSMANHATTAN: What was the most surprising or unusual thing you uncovered about the Plaza as its historian?

GATHJE: I think it’s surprising that it managed to maintain its reputation as a great oasis of luxury throughout the last century, because it has certainly gone through a number of hard times. In 1943, when it was sold to Conrad Hilton, it went for $5 million less than it had cost to build it in 1907. It cost $12.5 million to build back then, and he paid $7.4 million for it.

That’s not atypical of what happened with a lot of hotels after the Depression. But certainly there have been very long periods where the Plaza was O.K., but not this shining emblem, and yet it maintained a reputation throughout the century of being this high-class, super-deluxe place. And having worked there many years on the inside, I can tell you that there are areas that are super-deluxe, but many that don’t fall into that category. So, I marvel at the way the place has soldiered on through good times and bad, and has still managed to convince people that it’s a high-class affair. That’s not easy to do.

MSMANHATTAN: Can you share any anecdotes about your own personal experiences at the Plaza – a favorite memory, for example?

GATHJE: I worked there off and on 27 years, and when I left, I was director of guest relations, which is essentially the VIP office. The market segment that I was responsible for was the high-profile, high-end business, which are not necessarily the same thing. High-profile people don’t want to pay high-end prices, but they pay by way of their presence. You’re on the elevator, and the doors open, and the Queen of England walks in, and you go home and tell everyone, “I was on the elevator with the Queen of England,” and then they all want to come stay at the Plaza, too, because maybe they’ll get to be in an elevator with the Queen of England. So, celebrities have their value. And most do not pay – there’s an unwritten celebrity discount in this world.

So, I met a lot of VIPs, and that was always interesting to me; I met a few people who were personal heroes of mine – Keith Richards and Gore Vidal were two.

One of things I did was meet-and-greets for a lot of guests, and I walked a lot of well known people through that lobby. And the one person who got biggest reaction of all was Colin Powell, and this was long before he was a Cabinet member. With maybe the exception of Keith Richards – people started screaming when he walked in – Powell got the biggest reaction [from the patrons]. People just froze. I was really surprised because I got used to seeing celebrities walk through and how people reacted to them, but that was electric.

The preparations for VIP guests were always very interesting, too. Now I’m an editor in the guidebook business, and it’s a very different life. That was very exciting – one phone call could totally rock your world, and it’s something that I miss and, at the same time, I don’t miss.

MSMANHATTAN: What was your most unusual advance request from a celebrity?

GATHJE: That might have been Shirley MacLaine. She needed total quiet, and we had to install a lot of those white noise machines in her room, and a lot of things like that. And you’d have things like rock stars with demands for blackout curtains, and no red M&Ms in their candy. But that was more room service’s problem than mine.

MSMANHATTAN: How did you become the historian for the Plaza?

GATHJE: I started out as a room service waiter, and worked my way up. I was always interested in the history of the city, and when I became director of guest relations, I would go to sales meetings and give the "Plaza Minute" – a little speech on one story from the hotel’s history, because the history was one of its biggest selling points. It’s hard to put your finger on it, but there is a magic that makes people want to come there. So, I was encouraged to research the history, and when I took people around, I could note [historical anecdotes] about certain rooms or places in the hotel.

MSMANHATTAN: In addition to the reduction in hotel room availability and the loss of jobs, on a more symbolic level, what does the Plaza's closing mean for New York City?

GATHJE: It’s the end of a kind of tradition that I think we keep slipping further and further away from. Instead of Conrad Hilton, we have Paris Hilton, and that really sums it up for me.

In the case of a lot of us who worked there, it’s our youth gone by. And I think it’s the same way for any New Yorker – we are used to seeing a landmark, and we identify it with our lives, and when it’s gone, we feel like we have lost a part of ourselves. And the number of places in New York with that kind of tradition and history is rapidly shrinking. It’s the most famous hotel in the world because of the movies, and to have it go away is really... I don’t know if is says something about the state of New York City, but I do think the building has always reflected what going on in New York – it had an art deco bar, there was a Tiki Bar for a while, and now that it’s turning into condos, it’s not that far of a stretch. It just seems more drastic than a Tiki Bar.

The truth of matter is, I think it was too large to be a true luxury hotel; it has 800 rooms, and that’s a lot of rooms to keep luxurious. So maybe shrinking it to 350 rooms, ultimately, might make it more of a luxury hotel.

I'm not convinced of [Elad Properties’] statement that they will keep intact the special rooms and that they’ll retain more hotel rooms. They say the Ballroom and the Oak Room – the most historically intact rooms in the building – will remain the same, but it doesn't make sense to me. I don’t understand how the union can (ensure) that. What I wonder is, where is the Landmarks Commission at this time, because there was talk of landmarking the interior, and that’s unusual in the city. Interiors typically don’t get landmarked.

I feel the press has sort of taken the announcement that the union has made this agreement as the end of the story. I had written an Op Ed piece in The Times in January on the Oak Room and the Ball Room, and The Times did its own opinion piece at the beginning of the month – “Save the Plaza,” – and the guy who edits the letters column called me to fact-check a lot of things in the letters, and then the announcement came, and they killed all those letters. It was as if, “Oh, O.K., the building is saved; on to the next story.”

I am not convinced that the interior public spaces are protected or are safe, and the Plaza closes at 2 p.m. tomorrow, and what happens after that, I don’t know. I don’t know how the Landmarks Commission works. I had heard that there would be hearings on landmarking the interior, and until then the new owners can’t alter anything, but I feel that once the doors close, we don’t know what’s going to happen.

And when reopen – they say it will be the end of next year, but I think it will be 2007 – it could be a fait d'accomplis. They might reopen, and the Oak Room could be a Barneys or god knows what. So, I am a little discouraged, and I am not convinced.

MSMANHATTAN: It sounds like you feel the Plaza will never be the same, and this is an era that’s coming to an end.

GATHJE: I went to a party there last night and saw people I have known many, many years. It was supposed to be a party celebrating that the union saved the jobs and the rooms, but it didn’t feel much like a party; it felt more like a wake.

I’m just not convinced that the hotel is saved. And I’m not convinced that the new owners really understand the significance of this property to New Yorkers, and to America for that reason. They are a foreign concern, and they’re new on the scene in New York, and they have very deep pockets, and I don’t think they had any idea of the furor that would be caused by their plans. My impression is that it took them by surprise.

They asked me to consult, and I considered because it looked like the place was going down without a struggle, but I opted not to work with them. I never got the sense that they really understood the importance of that building in the city landscape and what it means other than 400,000 square feet on the park. They are real estate developers – how else would they look at it?

I do feel this is an era coming to an end. There are a lot of unanswered questions. I don’t think it’s far away from the loss of [the original] Penn Station. “Icon” is a word that’s used a lot these days for things that are not always iconic, but that is a very iconic building in New York, and I am kind of astonished that there has been this sort of vague concern, but I never felt there was any out-and-out outrage.

I spoke to some bellmen last night, and they were surprised that the hotel hadn’t been full to capacity in the last few weeks with people who wanted one last hurrah. Last night there only 30 percent occupancy … and everyone was surprised that there wasn’t a big show of former guests.

But, this is the way life is and, again, the Plaza has always reflected the city’s mood. So, I don’t want to be too downbeat about whole thing, but ultimately I’m frustrated that the things that matter most to me – the Oak Room and the Ballroom – their fate is still up in the air, and people have dismissed that and want to think everything is going to be alright, but they’re not looking at the facts.

Additional Resources
For more information on the Plaza Hotel’s history and about what’s been going on at the hotel over the last two years, check out these articles:

The Plaza Lives! A Hundred Years of Stories From New York’s Most Storied Hotel
New York Magazine, May 5, 2005

The Plaza: How It Was Sold
The Real Deal, December 2004

When Eloise Met Norma Rae
New York Magazine, March 14, 2005

$480M Revamp for the Famous Plaza Hotel
The Australian, April 11, 2006

The Plaza Hotel Thread at Wired.com's New York Forum

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury: For your consideration, two more Southern-inspired restaurants

2006-03-21T21:51:00.000-05:00

Bubby’s Pie Co.
Address: 120 Hudson St. (@ North Moore St.)
Phone: 212-219-0666
Hours: Monday-Friday, 8:00 a.m.-11:00 p.m.; Saturday-Sunday, 9:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m. (brunch) and 6:00-11:00 p.m. (dinner); closed 4:00-6:00 p.m. on weekends.
Editor's Note: Bubby’s has a second location at 1 Main St. in DUMBO, Brooklyn; 718-222-0666.

The Goods
The food at Bubby’s isn’t so much “Southern” or “Soul Food” as it is just honest American cooking with its own unique perspective: Make everything from scratch using fresh, local ingredients. And because it doesn’t claim to serve authentic Southern food, I don’t hold it to the same stiff standards that I reserve for those restaurants that classify themselves as Southern. But, it is definitely Southern-flavored and no matter what standard you hold it to, it doesn’t disappoint.

Yeas!

Delivers what it promises
Wholesome ingredients
Classic pies

Nays!

I’ve tried, but I just can’t come up with any negatives.

My Meal

Soup of the Day, $3.95 (cup) or $5.95 (bowl): Rosemary White Bean
Smoked BLT, $4.95 (1/2) or $8.95 (whole): The classic with Applewood-smoked bacon on homemade bread
Sour Cherry Pie, $5.95: Plump whole cherries and a buttery lattice crust

On a recent two-and-a-half hour break during jury duty – an experience that is taking me longer to digest than any large meal, and which I will write about in this space shortly – I walked from the courthouse at 111 Center St. over to the corner of Hudson and North Moore for a leisurely lunch at Bubby’s. A large, airy, sunny space, Bubby’s was the perfect antidote to the chilly – make that frigid – gloomy courthouse, and the food was most definitely a comfort.

With its Tribeca location, Bubby’s draws an eclectic lunchtime crowd of business people, film professionals, lawyers, neighborhood locals, tourists and, in my case, jurors. In other words, if you’re dining alone, it makes for good eavesdropping and people watching while you eat. To my right was a pair of tired (or so it seemed) tourists who had little to say to each other (or so it seemed) and to my left, a pair of soccer moms out sans the kids for a change (or so it seemed). I also strained to hear the networking session going on between two well dressed, well coiffed women, marketing professionals in the entertainment industry (or so it seemed), who both ordered the Pear-Arugula salad. Their lunch seemed so much more glamorous than my escape from New York State Supreme Court. I intentionally held up my copy of The Independent magazine so they’d think I was one of them, but alas, they never noticed.

The range of daily specials and regular menu items at Bubby’s matches the diversity of its patrons. I had a tough time deciding between lunch or breakfast, which is served up until dinner time (eggs, grits and homefries; banana-walnut pancakes; and huevos rancheros are just a few of the choices), and so I compromised with the Smoked BLT. This isn’t your local diner’s BLT: Hearty slices of homemade whole wheat bread were topped with thick slices of chewy applewood smoked bacon, crisp lettuce and firm tomatoes. The Rosemary White Bean Soup, one of the day’s specials, that I had as a starter delivered what it promised – not just a hint of rosemary, and not an overpowering amount either, but just right, flavoring small tender white beans in a tomato base.

I was pretty much full as a tick after the soup and sandwich but couldn’t pass up the Bubby’s specialty, a slice of homemade pie. Again, with a mix of seasonal specials and staples on the menu, I really had to ponder my selection. I finally decided on the sour cherry pie, heated up and served with homemade whipped cream laced with real vanilla. I don’t even usually like whipped cream, but I’d forgotten to ask the waiter to hold it, and I was actually glad. It was like having my pie – with a buttery handcrafted crust – a la mode, but without the heft.

I dreaded going back to the court house afterward, but the good-natured ambience and naturally good food at Bubby’s eased, if only for a bit, my frustration over a trial that never should have been. But, like I said, more on that in another column.

Afterthought: I was entirely happy with my meal, and would order any of it again on a subsequent visit. But I reckon next time I’ll have to try the Meatloaf & Gravy and the Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie. The various barbeque dishes and Tex-Mex choices look great, too.

Spanky’s BBQ
Address: 127 West 43rd St.
Phone: 212-302-9507
Hours: Monday-Friday, 11:30 a.m.-10:00 p.m.; Saturday, 11:30 a.m.-11:00 p.m.; Sunday, 12:00-9:00 p.m.

The Goods
Virgil’s Real Barbeque, around the corner on West 44^th St. (see BONUS TRACK, below), has better ribs – and sweet tea, which Spanky’s lacks. But all in all, Spanky’s offers a decent down-home meal.

Yeas!

Spicy popcorn shrimp
Collard greens cooked like your Southern grandmother used to make
Hefty portions

Nays!

Soggy Fried Green Tomatoes
Ribs with more aroma than flavor
Bland banana cream pie

My Meal

Fried Green Tomatoes, $8.50: Firm, not yet ripened tomatoes fried and doused with an unidentifiable sauce
Popcorn Shrimp, $7.50: Expertly seasoned, battered and fried with a remoulade
St. Louis Style Center Cut Pork Ribs, $21.50 (full rack, 10-12 pieces) or $16.50 (half-rack, 5-6 pieces): Smoked short ribs with cole slaw and one side
Collard Greens, available as a free side order with select dishes or $2.95 a la carte: Finely chopped and slightly vinegary (although I’m pretty sure they were actually turnip greens)
Candied Sweet Potatoes, available as a free side order with select dishes or $2.95 a la carte: Traditionally sweet and cinnamon-tinged, but somehow watery
Banana Cream Pie, $4.50: A mushy, uninspired mess

Editor's Note: No, I did not eat all of that by myself… I had help from my dining partner, Aram Bauman, a Brooklynite who also had Tater Tots and thought it was all good. Tater Tots are just too school-cafeteria for me, so I can’t vouch for those.

Still seeking solace from what was – as I’ve mentioned – a painful jury duty experience, I turned to another so-called Southern restaurant, this one a Times Square theme restaurant owned by the man who brought you the Heartland Brewery. His intentions are good: The menu at Spanky’s BBQ features a solid mix of genuine Southern smokehouse staples (ribs, barbeque chicken, collard greens, sweet potato pie) and classic roadhouse staples (chicken fried steak, Texas chili). It also has some souped-up versions of the above catering to tastes north of the Mason-Dixon Line (smoked maple-cured pork loin with a mango barbecue sauce and a fried catfish sandwich served on brioche), which is only fair considering the restaurant is, after all, in the heart of Manhattan.

But Spanky’s both a hit and a miss. The smokehouse aroma is more enticing than the actual flavor of the ribs, and the meat doesn’t exactly fall off the bone like it should. On the other hand, if you’ve never had true Southern barbeque or are jonesing for it pretty bad, Spanky’s will get the job done.

Like the ribs, the sides were a tad bland. They were flavorful to a degree, just not as rich or salty as the real thing. The collard greens were chopped up fine and cooked down well with bits of smoked pork – a plus since many times they are left large and leafy and simply steamed ( a distinctly un-Southern way to make collard greens). In fact, I believe that they may have actually been turnip greens – which I prefer to collards but can never find in the naked city. The candied sweet potatoes were O.K., but their flavor seemed diluted by being cooked in too much water. I wanted to try the black eyed peas, but the waiter said they weren’t seasoned with pork so I thought, what’s the point? I love black eyed peas cooked just about any way, but when I’m eating out in a Southern spot, they better be cooked with ham hocks.

As for the appetizers, you seldom see fried green tomatoes on any menu in New York, so Spanky’s gets bonus points just for having them. But if you’ve never tried them before, don’t judge them by those at Spanky’s. Battered rather than simply dredged in cornmeal, salt and pepper, and then drenched in an indistinct sauce, they were, in a word, disappointing. Far better was the Popcorn Shrimp, which we had no trouble polishing off.

One thing Spanky’s has going for it is portions. They were large enough that even with two of us eating, I took home enough leftovers for a substantial meal a few days later. And even though I’d been a bit disappointed by the food, I had no trouble finishing it off the second time around.

Afterthought: If I had it to do over again, I’d probably try the Jalapeno Poppers and/or Heap of Onion Straws appetizers instead of the Fried Green Tomatoes, and at some point I will have to return to try the Chicken Fried Steak and the “Southern Fried Chicken.” I had to put that in quotes because fried chicken is only called “Southern Fried” when you’re not in the South… As for dessert, I’d probably try the Sweet Potato Pie or Key Lime Pie next time around.

BONUS TRACK: Top 3 Southern Food Joints in Manhattan

So many New York restaurants promising Southern food – or soul food, if you prefer – just don't deliver the real thing. The fried chicken is overly battered; the mac-n-cheese, gussied up; the iced tea, unsweetened; the barbecue, too sweet; the vegetables, bland and undercooked.

Here are three Manhattan joints serving the cholesterolilicious real thing, right down to the vegetables unfit for a vegetarian, spiced with pork and cooked until just before the point of disintegration.

1) Miss Mamie's Spoonbread Too
Address: 366 West 110th St.
Phone: 212-865-6744.
Hours: Monday-Thursday, noon-10:00 p.m.; Friday-Saturday, noon-11:00 p.m.; Sunday, 11:00 a.m.-9:30 p.m.;

Miss Mamie's has the quintessential Southern baked mac-n-cheese – a square-shaped serving that doesn't dissolve into a saucy mess. Although you'll be stuffed after the meat-and-two-sides entree and basket of cornbread, indulge in the banana pudding anyway. If the Red Velvet cake is available that day, it's a must-try, too.

2) The M&G Diner
Address: 383 W 125th St.
Phone: 212-864-7326.
Hours: Daily, 8:00 a.m.-11:30 p.m.

You know it's for real when the baked mac-n-cheese arrives swimming in its own butter; and the salty corn muffins – the closest to real Southern cornbread you'll find in the city – come swimming in butter; and the candied yams come swimming in butter. Don't miss the fried chicken; the smothered chicken runs a close second. TIP: Call first in the summer; the place shuts down for two or three weeks for vacation.

3) Virgil's Real Barbecue
Address: 152 West 44th St.
Phone: 212-921-9494.
Hours: Sunday-Monday, 11:30 a.m.-11 :00 p.m.; Tuesday-Saturday, 11:30 a.m.-midnight.

Yes, it's in Times Square. Yes, it draws a considerable number of tourists. But Virgil's is nonetheless the real thing, with barbecue that will make you think, for at least a while, you're down in Memphis, and Elvis may come walking through the door any minute now. Other highlights: Big fluffy biscuits with gravy and the Oklahoma State Fair Corn Dogs appetizer.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Yes, this blog is supposed to be about life in Manhattan, not the definitive authority on Southern restaurants in the Big Apple. While I may arrogantly consider myself somewhat of an expert on that topic, I’ll get back on point in my next entry. Consider me banned from discussing Southern food for a while – at least until I start craving it again…

Chat 'n Chew: Solid comfort food. Just don't call it "Southern."

2006-02-22T21:44:00.000-05:00

Chat ‘n Chew
Address: 10 East 16th St. (between Union Square and Fifth Ave.)
Phone: 212-243-1616
Hours: Monday-Friday, 11:00 a.m.-midnight; Saturday-Sunday, 10:00 a.m.-midnight

The Goods
If you're looking for authentic Southern food, you won't necessarily find it here. But if it's reliable American comfort food you want, you should leave feeling better than when you walked in.

Yeas!

Phenomenal mashed potatoes.
Tasty fried chicken.
Decadent Coca-Cola Cake.
Large portions.

Nays!

No sweet tea – a sin for a restaurant serving Southern staples.
Disappointing mac-n-cheese.

My Meal

Teenie Weenie Mac and Cheese, $5.50: An oversized appetizer of macaroni and cheese.
Uncle Red's Addiction, $13.95: Pan fried chicken with mashed potatoes and Green Bean Casserole.
Coca-Cola Cake, $5.95: Rich chocolate layer cake with icing concocted from Coca-Cola.

From what I had heard about Chat 'n Chew, I was expecting authentic Southern fare. On the other hand, I grew up in the South, and I know that what sometimes passes as Southern food in New York is not.

That said, I was nonetheless optimistic, although I was ambivalent about the country kitsch decor. While the old road signs and tin cans stacked artfully on shelves above the white-washed wainscot were charming, such overt signs of down-home authenticity could, I thought, be a mask for food that isn't authentically down-home.

In the end, it was and it wasn't. The macaroni and cheese was overly peppery, and not truly baked like the mac-and-cheese you get down South. The fried chicken wasn't "Southem" fried, but it was delicious, tinged with honey and expertly pan fried so it was moist on the inside but chewy on the outside. The mashed potatoes – with the skins on – were like velvet, light and creamy but still textured. The traditional Green Bean Casserole was complete with lightly fried strips of onions on top.

I had most looked forward to the Coca-Cola cake, having never found that dessert north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Chat 'n Chew's wasn't like the one my mama used to make, but it was too good to fault tt for that: rich without being too dense, lathered with creamy, sweet icing, and drizzled with a sticky chocolate sauce.

So though Chat 'n Chew didn't quite deliver the Southern food experience I was hoping for, it delivered solid comfort food, and that was enough.

BONUS TRACK: My Mama's Coca-Cola Cake Recipe

My trip to the Chat 'n Chew restaurant, which serves down-home cooking and is known for its Coca-Cola Cake, made me long for the Coca-Cola cake my mother used to make back in Arkansas. It was our standard family dessert for holidays, birthdays, picnics and other large gatherings.

When she was featured in the "Cooks Corner" section of the local weekly, the Benton Courier, the owner of the local market reported to her later, "We just about ran out of Cokes and cocoa after that recipe ran."

Thanks, Sammie, for letting me share your recipe here.

INGREDIENTS:

2 cups unsifted flour
2 cups refined sugar
3 sticks butter
1 cup + 6 tablespoons Coca-Cola
6 tablespoons cocoa
½ cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 eggs, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla
1-1/2 cups miniature marshmallows
1 box powdered sugar
1 cup chopped nuts, toasted (optional)

PREP:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

While the oven is preheating, lightly toast 1 cup of chopped nuts for the frosting: Spread nuts out on a cookie sheet, and shake pan frequently; leave in about five minutes and be careful not to scorch..

Grease and flour a 9x13 sheet-cake pan.

CAKE:
Combine flour and refined sugar in a large mixing bowl.

Heat 2 sticks of butter, 1 cup of Coca-Cola and 3 tablespoons of cocoa over low-medium heat just until it starts to bubble. Remove from heat, and pour over theflour/sugar mixture. Mix well.

Add the eggs, buttermilk, baking soda and vanilla. Beat well.

Add marshmallows, and stir well. This will be a thin batter, and the marshmallows will float to the top.

Pour into a greased-and-floured 9x13 sheet-cake pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

FROSTING:
Empty 1 box of powdered sugar into a medium-sized mixing bowl.

Heat 1 stick of butter, 3 tablespoons of cocoa and 6 tablespoons of Coca-Cola over low-to-medium heat until the mixture is simmering rapidly. Remove from heat and pour over the powdered sugar. Beat well.

Add toasted, chopped nuts. Stir well.

Spread the frosting on the cake while the cake is still warm.

SERVINGS:
About 24.

Renting a Car in Manhattan: NYC Car Rental Tips

2006-02-18T10:44:00.000-05:00

Did you get stuck in town over President’s Day Weekend because you couldn’t get a car rental? Renting a car in Manhattan can be frustrating and expensive. The wait at the counter during peak times can be excruciating, the extra fees can add up quickly, and renting a car at the last minute is an oxy moron in this town. Here are some tips to help you minimize your hassles and maximize your experience.

Advance Planning Is Key
Unfortunately, spontaneous trips and car rentals don't go together in Manhattan. You have to plan ahead, especially around holidays, during the fall foliage season, on three-day weekends and anytime in the summer. Reserve your car well in advance, but bear in mind that rates can come down in the two weeks prior to your trip if an outlet is trying to adjust its inventory levels. Your best bet is to check the rental rates again as your trip gets closer.

This being Manhattan, those great deals the car rental companies advertise on TV are seldom – if ever – available here. But, you'll typically get better rates on the car rental companies' Web sites than by calling the reservation lines. Surf around and compare prices, as they can vary significantly. It’s easy to review, modify or cancel reservations online, too, as well as search for the outlets nearest you. If you rent frequently, sign up for the preferred customer programs.

Pick One Near Your Home: Car Rental Outlets by Neighborhood
Car rental outlets in Manhattan's various neighborhoods tend to be clustered together within a few blocks of each other. Here's a sampling:

Upper West Side: West 76th-77th Sts. (Alamo, Avis, Hertz, National)
Upper East Side: East 80th-90th Sts. (Alamo, Avis, Budget, Dollar, Hertz, Thrifty)
Midtown West: West 40s-50s (Alamo, Avis, Budget, Dollar, Hertz)
Midtown East: East 40s (Avis, Budget, Hertz)
The Village: East 11th-13th Sts. (Alamo, Avis, Hertz, National)

What About ZipCar?
ZipCar offers a new membership-based model for car rentals in the city, allowing rentals by the hour ($8.50 and up) or the day ($59 and up), eliminating the car rental counter (your "ZipCard" unlocks the car you reserve), and including insurance, gas and parking in the rates. If you rent frequently, or usually only need a car for a few hours, you might want to join; select a monthly or yearly membership fee, based on how often you rent. Cars are available all over Manhattan.

Major Credit Cards Required and Other Rules to Know
You must use a major credit card to rent a car. Don' show up with cash, personal checks or a debit-only ATM card.

Naturally, you must be a licensed driver, and typically you must be over 25 (21 for ZipCar). The same applies to anyone who will be driving the car.

To avoid potential snafus in the event of an accident, officially add anyone who will be driving the car to your rental contract. You can usually add one extra driver, who must be present and sign the contract when you pick up the car.

Pick Up and Return During Off-Peak Hours
Nothing gets your trip off to a worse start than waiting on line to pick up the car, and your happy memories of the trip will quickly fade standing on line to return it (after sitting in traffic on the West Side Highway).

Schedule your pick-up and return during off-peak hours. If you plan to leave early in the morning, pick up the car 30 minutes before closing the night before; most of the major rental companies are open until at least 10:00 p.m. Then you can return it late, too.

Use the 24-Hour Rule
Avoid incurring charges for extra days by returning the car at the same time you picked it up. Most places have a 59-minute grace period. Check the hours at the outlet you select; you may have picked up the car at 10:30 p.m. on Thursday, but if the place closes at 10:00 p.m. on Sunday, you'll be charged for an extra day if you arrive after closing. For example, Enterprise Rent-a-Car outlets in Manhattan tend to close early.

If Fido Goes Along for the Ride...
Avoid extra cleaning charges when you return the car. Most car rental companies in New York will charge fees of $30 or more if they find excessive pet hair in the car. If you'll be taking your pet(s) along for the ride, cover the seats and floors with a clean sheet or blanket to avoid leaving pet hair behind. At the end of your trip, vacuum out the car or visit a good carwash where they'll vacuum it for you. The same advice applies if you have young children or rowdy, messy friends.

Don't Put off Dealing With a Parking Ticket
If you get a parking ticket on your rental car, don't think you can ignore it just because you don't own the car. The City will catch up with you -- and so will the car rental company. Your best bet: Avoid getting a ticket at all. Check out the Alternate Side of the Street Parking rules, get up to speed on the meter rules, and learn to interpret all those crazy No Standing, So Stopping, No Parking signs at the Department of Transportation's Web site.

If, despite your best efforts, you get a ticket anyway, you can pay for or dispute it online at the Department of FInance Web site. To avoid additional costs, respond within 30 days -- those extra penalties add up fast.

Morningside Heights Walking Tour: Parks, Churches & Sunset on the Hudson

2006-02-15T10:23:00.000-05:00

Morningside Heights -- so named because it sits atop a 135-foot bluff -- is a genteel neighborhood just above the Upper West Side. Flanked by Riverside Park to the west and the wilder, less landscaped northern section of Central Park and the sprawling Morningside Park to the east, it is one of the city's greenest communities, marked by wide tree-lined streets and dotted here and there by colorful gardens. This is a neighborhood that people truly make their home; it's not a stopping point on the way to "something better" -- it is the something better.

Officially, the Upper West Side ends and Morningside Heights begins at West 110th St. But those boundaries are more nebulous to local residents above West 96th St., who refer to the area alternately by its proper name, or the "Upper Upper West Side" or sometimes just "near Columbia," which anchors the stretch from the West 100s up to West 125th St. In addition to the parks and Columbia University, two glorious, historic churches also help define this neighborhood's character, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and Riverside Church.

This isn't so much a walking tour as a strolling tour, for Morningside Heights lends itself to meandering and taking your time. Plan on spending a leisurely day here, starting in the morning and ending with a sunset picnic overlooking the Hudson. Or, if picnics aren't your thing, watch the sunset, then head back toward Broadway to one of the neighborhood's myriad restaurants.

To get to Momingside Heights, take the 1 or 9 train to either 103rd St. or 110th St.; which station you choose depends on whether you prefer croissants or bagels for breakfast.

If the former, get off at 103rd St. and walk north on Broadway to the Silver Moon Bakery at the corner of West 105th St. for its light, buttery croissants (one plain, one chocolate, $3.75) and strong coffee. If the latter, get off at 110th St., cross Broadway, and walk south to Absolute Bagels at West 107th St. Consistently rated among the city's best, these bagels are the perfect combination of slightly cruncy exterior and light, chewy interior, and are available with a variety of cream cheese, tofutti or fish salad toppings ($1.95 for plain cream cheese; $2.75 with walnut-raisin tofutti; $5.50 with whitefish salad).

Whichever breakfast you prefer, get it to-go and walk to Straus Park, situated at the junction of Broadway and West End Ave., for your nosh. This oasis of seasonal flowers, shrubs and blooming trees provides a daily respite for local residents. The park is a memorial to Isidor and Ida Straus, German immigrants who lived at Broadway and 105th St., and who met a tragic end in the TItanic disaster. Isidor Straus was the self-made department store magnate who, with his brother Nathan, turned R.H. Macy & Co. into the World's Largest Department Store. A fountain at the south end of the park pays tribute to the couple.

Once you've had your fill of breakfast and people-watching, go west on 106th St., lined by graceful mansions,toward Riverside Park. Just as you come to the Riverside Drive service road, take a detour one-half block south to the New York Buddhist Church (332 Riverside Dr.). Standing at the entrance is a towering bronze sculpture of Shinran Shonin (1173-1262), who founded the Jodu Shinshu sect of Buddhism.

What's most remarkable about this sculpture is its origin: It was brought to New York in September 1955 from Hiroshima, where it survived the atomic bomb dropped during World War II. It stands as "a testimonial to the atomic bomb devastation and a symbol of lasting hope for world peace." This is the kind of earnestness that lies at
the core of Morningside Heights' soul.

Now, backtrack to 106th St. and descend the stairs to Riverside Dr. proper, cross the drive, and you'll be on the upper promenade of Riverside Park, amid the dog walkers, joggers, families with children and other locals. This park truly belongs to the residents and, like Straus Park, is part of their daily routine. Walk two blocks north along the tree-lined Promenade to the stairs at West 108t St., and enter the park's second level (of three).

Now that you're on the park's main level, you have a choice: Ultimately, you'll be heading north, but if you're a dog lover, take another detour, and head south a few steps to a second set of stairs. At the bottom of those stairs, turn left, and you'll see the local Dog Run just up ahead at around 107th St. Full of dogs and their owners at just about any time of day, this is a great place to eavesdrop on neighborhood gossip, size up a mix of mutts and pure-breeds, and get lots of unconditional love.

From the dog run, or from the 108th St. stairs, turn right to go north through the park. You can choose one of two paths: The wooded upper path is quieter and less traveled, while the wide second-level Promenade affords sweeping views of the Hudson. Both will take you to your next destination, the Bird Sanctuary at West 115th St.
The entrance to this is about midway, from either direction, on the path that connects the upper path to the Promenade.

Step into the Bird Sanctuary, and you'll suddenly question whether you're still in the city or hiking Upstate. Created in 1916 by the Women's League for the Protection of Riverside Park, this wooded preserve is home to over 100 species of birds, including Peregrine Falcons and Red-Tailed Hawks. Even If you're not a bird-watcher, this peaceful haven is a place to linger for a while.

When you reach the far side of the Bird Sanctuary, you'll be at West 119th St. Turn right, and connect back with the upper path; then turn left, and head up the stairs back to the street-level Promenade at West 120th St. Across Riverside Dr. is The Riverside Church.

A non-denominational church with a strong social services ethic, Riverside traces its history back to February 1841, when it was founded as the Norfolk Street Baptist Church. By 1925 it had adopted its multidenominational stance, and two years later broke ground for the present church, which was modeled after the 13th Century gothic
cathedral in Chartres, France.

The doors of the church are generally open to the public. Take a few moments to sit In the stillness of the sanctuary. If it's lunchtime, you can grab a bite at the Riverside Cafe, located in the South Hall of the Martin Luther King Wing (open Sunday-Friday, 8:30-10:30 a.m. for breakfast and 12:00-3:00 p.m. for lunch;
212-870-6821). Public tours of the church are also offered; check at the entrance for availability.

Across from the northwest corner of the Riverside Church complex sits the General Grant National Memorial, more commonly known as Grant's Tomb. Operated by the National Parks Service, the final resting place for General Ulysses S. Grant and his wife was dedicated on April 27, 1897, in a ceremony attended by over 1 million people.

A wide plaza stretching northward from West 122nd St. fronts the entrance to the memorial. This is a popular spot for strollers and skateboarders. Vou can pay your respects to the Grants year-round (except Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years Days) from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Enter the rotunda, and descend the stairs to the viewing area; it's still and quiet, and some find it a bit disconcerting, but the experience is worthwhile. Back upstairs, you can learn more about General Grant and his accomplishments as a Civil War hero and President (1869 to 1877).

Adjacent to Grant's Tomb is Sikora Park, a small neighborhood park overlooking Morningside Heights to the east. It features an expansive lawn and a quaint gazebo that provides a shady spot from the afternoon sun.

From Grant's Tomb and Sikora Park, you'll be heading south and back east over to Broadway. You can return via Riverside Park's upper Promenade, then cross over West 116th St., or descend the stairs from Sikora Park and wind your way back to Broadway through the residential streets in the western part of Morningside Heights. Your next stop is the Columbia University Quad at 116th St. and Broadway.

Entering the Quad is another one of those stepping-into-another-world experiences common in Morningside Heights. Busy with students and academics, even on weekends, it is an enclave unto itself, surrounded by classic Ivy League campus structures. It will likely seem familiar -- it has been featured in a number of films over the years, including Ghostbusters and Woody Allen's Husbands and Wives.

You can leave the Quad the way you came in, at West 116th St. and Broadway, and turn left to continue south. Alternately, you can exit the Quad on the Amsterdam Ave. side, turning right to go south. Your next stop is at West 112th and Amsterdam; taking the Broadway route, at West 112th St. you'll pass the familiar blue and pink neon signs marking Tom's Restaurant, an old-school diner and favorite Columbia student haunt made famous by Seinfeld; the neon "Restaurant" sign on the diner's south corner was used for the exterior of the show's fictional Monk's Diner. Turn left here and head east on West 112th St.

The advantage to crossing West 112th St. is the spectacular view it provides of your next destination, The Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Approaching the Cathedral from this vantage point, framed by the block, creates a feeling of anticipation that will be rewarded by your trip inside the cavernous nave.

Construction of St. John's began December 27,1892, and continues today. After an arduous initial construction period spanning 49 years, it opened on November 30, 1941. One week later, the bombing of Pearl Harbor suspended further construction, which was not resumed until 1972.

Along both sides of the nave are a number of exhibits, ranging from a tribute to poets to a larger-than-life quartz mined in the state of Arkansas. All are worth perusing, as is the eclectic gift shop. If you happen to be here late on a Sunday aftemoon, it is also worth waiting for the Choral Evensong and Organ Meditation (6:00 p.m.), when the choir chants a cappella and the great pipe organ resounds up to the vaulted ceiling.

No trip to St. John's would be complete without a turn through the Children's Sculpture Garden, with its enormous, odd centerpiece, and a trek around back to search for the peacocks that roam the grounds. Afterward, relax for a while across Ansterdam at the Hungarian Pastry Shop, a Morningside Heights mainstay. Neither the coffee nor the pastry are top-notch, but the ambience is authentic New York coffee house.

Weather permitting, the best way to end your day in Momingside Heights is back in Riverside Park, down by the Hudson River along the Cherry Walk. Lined by Cherry Blossom trees, this stretch of the pathway developed along Manhattan's west side waterfront affords gentle, unobstructed views of the sunset and is the perfect spot for a twilight picnic.

You can pick up supplies at the Milano Market (Broadway at 112th St.) or Garden of Eden (Broadway at 107th St.), both of which offer an array of prepared salads, meats, cheeses and desserts. Return to Riverside Park, go down to the main level via the stairs at 108th St. or 103rd St., and head south. As you approach the area parallel to West 100th St. on the main-level Promenade (a few blocks south of the Dog Run), a path veers off to the right and winds down under the 96th St. overpass of the West Side Highway. Pass through the tunnel under the overpass, and you'll come out on the Cherry Walk.

At the entrance to the Cherry Walk is a triangular grassy knoll. Plop down here or try out the rocks along the river's edge. Benches are available to the left. Anywhere along this stretch, which extends to about 91st St. to the south and 125th St. to the north, makes a serene place to end your tour, as the sun slowly settles over Morningside Heights.

If you're looking for food or drink after sunset, plenty of both are available on Broadway, and during spring and summer, the majority offer outdoor seating. Here's a sampler of places to end your day in Morningside Heights:

Mama Mexico (Tex-Mex): 2672 Broadway @ 102nd St.; 212-864-2323.
Henry's (American bistro): 2745 Broadway @ 105th St.; 212-866-0600.
La Rosita (Cuban/Dominican): 2809 Broadway @ 108th 5t.; 212-663-7804.
Deluxe (retro American): 2896 Broadway @ 112th 5t.; 212-662-7900.
Le Monde (French bistro): 2885 Broadway @ 112th 5t.; 212-531-3939.