The Best of New York City

I was in the US for almost two weeks, with about five of those days in Philadelphia, and the rest in New York.

I've done The Best Of New York City once before, and here is one more. Some of the items from my previous list stand, and I've added some new ones.

NEW Best Smoked Salmon: Toast, on 105th and Broadway. It is served with mayonnaise (with some lemon flavoring) and capers on toast crackers.
NEW Best parquette: The American Musuem of Natural History, 81st and Central Park West. For quiet contemplation, or a quick sandwich, before embarking onto the City again. This is smaller than, and different from, the "Small Park" at Strauss Park I list below.
NEW Most exhilarating 30 minute walk: Brooklyn Bridge. From Manhattan to Brooklyn (or almost to Brooklyn). I tried to find the Washington Plaque, but it will have to be for next time.
NEW Best Walk by the Hudson River: Riverside Drive. Don't get annoyed by the stream of traffic along the driveway, it is actually strangely soothing, like a flowing river. And the sparkling water is beautiful near sunset, when there is a breeze flowing from the river.
NEW Best Coffee: Plaza Hotel Food Hall (it is NOT called the Food Court). At the Pain D'Avignon stand.
NEW Best Bus Ride: Down Central Park West with the M10 to view the Park and the stately apartments. Again this is different from the M4 I list below.

Here is the rest, from 2013:

Best Hotel Lobby: The Plaza Hotel, on 59th and Fifth.
Best Hotel Bakery: The Plaza Hotel, at the lower level.
Best Hotel Bakery Item: The Hamentashen at the Plaza Hotel (apricot filling).
Best Hot Chocolate: Broadway Restaurant. Ask for whipped cream at 25 cents extra. The Broadway Diner has apparently been used for several movies, including George Clooney's Michael Clayton. As far as I can recall, there were also photos of old time movie stars on the wall, who had dined at the diner.
Best Pork Chops: West 107, on Amsterdam. For $13.50 you get the Grilled BBQ Pork Chops, which are listed under "From the Farm" on the menu. They are enough for two meals (share with someone, or take home a doggy bag). The side vegetables aren't spectacular, but they will do.
Best Burgers: I'm no real expert on burgers, but Toast's $10 burger (well, $9.95) fits the bill. The restaurant decor, some kind of faux Art Deco is spacious, in a bohemian (Art Deco) sort of way. And the best way to eat a burger I learned, is "medium rare." That way, there is no need to cover up the over-cooked, dry meat with all kinds of condiments. Toast (Downtown?) is on 105th and Broadway. Apparently, there's another on 125th Street.
Best Bagels: Broadway Bagel. Quick service, quiet and cheap.
Best Midtown Cafe: Europa Cafe. It does have a French cafe feel to it.
Best Midtown Diner: The Red Flame. Quiet and bright.
Best Irish Pub/Restaurant: Kennedy's. Despite a bit of a shaky start, the "Library" in the back of the restaurant provides a pleasant atmosphere for a group dinner.
Best Ethnic Restaurant: The Red Rooster Harlem, run by Ethiopian Chef Marcos, who's adds his own touches to "world" cuisine.
Best Museum/Gallery: The Morgan Library and Museum. Free on Tuesdays 5-7, but the adjacent McKim's room is free entrance Tuesdays, 3-5; Fridays, 7-9; Sundays, 4-6.
Best Museum With a Garden and a View: The Cloisters. Views of the George Washington Bridge (with the Hudson River) and the New Jersey Palissade from the garden.
Best Ceiling Mural: Grand Central Station.
Best Mini-Park: Strauss Park. With benches for sitting and contemplating.
Best Department Store: Bergdorf Goodman (no not Macy's). Bergdorf Goodman is understated, and has a beautiful entrance (don't mind the slovenly pedestrians in the linked image) with a doorman.
Best Christmas Window Display: Tiffany's. Disclaimer: I haven't actually been to see the Tiffany display, but Macy's, Lord and Taylor and Bergdorf Goodman have strange "pagan" themes to their windows, and have no luster (is it because of the paganism? I think so.).
Best Window Shopping Strip: No, not Fifth, but the adjacent Madison Avenue, where the many designer boutiques are located.
Best Bus Ride and Tour of NYC: The M4. Make sure to click "continue with the tour" at the bottom of the linked website to go on the tour from start to finish, starting at the Cloisters and ending at Penn Station.
Best of Best Of: Just walk down the avenues, look up at the buildings, take your time and don't mind the crowd, New Yorkers are friendly and polite.
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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25 West 81st (at Central Park West)

Below are photographs of a building on 81st street, just around the corner from the American Museum of Natural History, in New York.

As I got off the bus (M10), I thought I would take a look at some of the buildings around the museum, and settled on 25 West 81st Street.

It happens to be a landmark building. Here is some of its background:

Architects: Gronenberg & Leuchtag
Built (completed): 1927
Floors: 16
Designation: City Landmark

The building is across from the side entrance to the American Museum of Natural History. Despite the imposing design of the museum, I found its sprawling structure with a combination of architectural styles too confusing (compare it to the elegant Metropolitan Museum of Art).









[Photos By: KPA]
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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Starting Out in the Evening

View from Toast, on 105th
This scene reminds me of one of my favorite New York movies,
Starting Out in the Evening
[Photo By: KPA]


Building across the street from Toast
Showing the dusk glow on its facade
(The building is visible in the above photo)
[Photo By: KPA]


The "X" marks the spot where I was sitting (for the couple of evenings I went during the rain.)
The third time, it was a lovely mild evening, and I sat in the patio.
[Photo from Toast's website]

Although I started out very early in the mornings during my stay in New York, the end of the day was equally special.

I took the above photo at late dusk (around 8:30 pm) at Toast on 105th street on Broadway. It had just rained, a thundershower to be exact. The street was empty except for the occasional yellow cab, and it was fast getting dark. My camera just about can take photos in the dark. But opening up the aperture to let in more light also affects motion, so some of the photograph looks blurred, especially the rustling leaves. But I also got those neat effects of streaming light.

I think the photo picks up the mood perfectly of the quiet evening. I was sitting by an open french window inside the restaurant since the patio seats were still wet. But I got the best of both interior and exterior, with a breeze coming through, and an unobstructed view of the street in front.

I had a delicious smoked salmon appetizer (House Smoked Salmon with capers & herb mayo, from Toast's menu. I usually don't like capers, but I didn't leave anything behind, finishing off the capers first so as not to detract from the mild and sweet smoked salmon), with a French rose. The wait staff knows me, and kindly accommodates my sometimes demanding requests.

Here is how Toast's menu describes the wine:

Bieler Pere et Fils 2011, France
It’s that time again! Ripe fruit with strawberry & a tingly dry finish. This classic Provence style always shines. Now in its 9th strong vintage - and by far our top-selling rosé every season! Ahh...Rosé.

After the Rain
[Photo By: KPA]

The lights floating on the trees are reflections of the restaurant's lights on the window, behind which I took the photograph on the wet evening when the french window was still closed (they opened it up a little later, at my request).
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Posted BY: Kidist P. Asrat
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Paris in Phillie

This is Paris, or a relative of Paris, a French Poodle. I met Paris in Phillie last week during my trip. She was sitting a little out of breath, so presumably she had been out for a run in the park.

"What's her name?" I asked her owner.

"Paris."

"Can I stroke her?"

"Just make sure she smells your hand first."

"Hi, Paris," I greeted her, stroking her surprisingly soft fluff of coiffed hair.

She just sat grinning at me, quiet and calm.

"Paris!" I said to my friend who was showing me around Philadelphia. My friend is a France expert, and speaks fluent French. She also knows the real Paris.

It seemed a good sign, to find a poodle named Paris in Philadelphia. And indeed, the rest of the day went beautifully well.

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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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New York Public Library Grant Application for 2013

Objective

Modern man is a literary man, possibly more so than a visual one. Through the written word, with timely examples and with an exhorter’s clarity, I will be able to relay the urgent message that beauty is disappearing.

The book Reclaiming Beauty aims to document the contribution that beauty has made toward our Western civilization, from the earliest records of God’s love of beauty, to a young child who sees beauty almost as soon as he is born. Our civilization thrived, prospered and matured because of beauty. Our great artists, architects, writers, philosophers and scientists have always referred to beauty with awe and wonder. It is in the modern era that beauty began to be undermined and eventually neglected by artists and other intellectual leaders.

Reclaiming Beauty will show that the abandonment of beauty leads to the death of culture, and eventually society. Modern man’s neglect of beauty has initiated the cult of ugliness, leaving us with bleakness and nihilism.

But, people want beauty. And they will surround themselves with some kind of aesthetic quality. Still, beauty is the business of the knowledgeable. The man on the street may be able to recognize beauty, but he would not be able to explain why it is beautiful. That is the task of the experts.

With Reclaiming Beauty, I aim to present my ideas, observations and analyses on beauty, and to provide a guide for recommendations on how to remove oneself from the nefarious influences of our beauty-rejecting world. This way, we can build a parallel world which will eventually form a growing movement of beauty-reclaiming individuals, who can start to shape a world where beauty is not minimized and rejected.

Significance

Reclaiming Beauty will be the first book on beauty to make a comprehensive, historical, cultural and societal review of beauty. It will describe the moment (or moments) when beauty was not only undermined, but eventually abandoned, as a paradigm of civilized life. Rather than attributing beauty to a Godly goodness, philosophers, writers and artists began to view beauty as their enemy, and as their nemesis. They saw God as a judge who would not let them do as they wished. In order to pursue the image of beauty they desired, they began to look elsewhere. They began to abandon God, and by abandoning God, they began to change their world, filling it with horror and ugliness.

I maintain that this was not their objective, which was merely to look for a different perspective on aesthetics. The realization of the horror they have created may have come too late, and too weakly, from cultural leaders, but ordinary people, who are most affected by these changes in worldview, are already incurring changes. But they cannot make useful inferences, and hence necessary changes. They still need an elite to help them materialize their desires and observations.

A new elite that is pro-beauty needs to take the cultural reins, to guide and return our world back to its awe and wonder of beauty. To this end, Reclaiming Beauty will add an element which no other book on beauty has attempted: guidelines on how to renounce this world of anti-beauty, and how to progressively bring beauty back into our culture.

The book will be a manifesto for concrete references to these basic ideas. Along with the book, a website will be developed that will be an interactive continuation of the book. On the website, members can post their original articles, shorter commentaries, articles and excerpts from other authors, and encourage feedback and comments from other members. At some point, this group can develop into a more formal society, which can meet in a physical locations a few times a year, building beauty societies, whose purpose would be to develop ideas and strategies for bringing beauty back into our culture.

Part of the book will be revised versions of what I've been developing over a number of years in my blogs Camera Lucida, Reclaiming Beauty and Our Changing Landscape, and from my full-length articles from Kidist P. Asrat Articles.

All images that head the chapters will be from my own collection of photographs and designs. Some of these images can be found at Kidist P. Photographs and Well-Patterned. Others I will choose from my collection of photographs, mostly in negatives and prints. Others I will take as the project progresses.

The image on the book cover is a photograph I took of the the inner courtyard at the Cloisters Museum in New York. There is a section in the book dedicated to the Cloisters titled: The Sturdy Periwinkle: Linking the New World with the Old, which discusses the Western, European influences in North American culture. The chapter will be a revision of a post at the blog Reclaiming Beauty.

What I plan to accomplish at the New York Public Library

The library’s vast, world class research facilities will assist me in finding the scholarly, historic and artistic information necessary to develop the ideas for my book.

How I plan to use the New York Public Library’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building

I will primarily be using the Arts and Architecture Collections. The material I am interested in is the Western collections (fine art, decorative arts, architecture and design history, as described in the NYPL website). Here are the specific ways I will peruse the library’s facilities:
- Catalogues Raisonnes
This will provide me with specific works of art by specific artists, who played important if not seminal influence on Western art and culture
- Thirty Minute Consultations
Since my time is limited at the library, periodic, short consultations, especially at the beginning of my research schedule, will save me time and help me find relevant and pertinent information.
- Vertical Files
Although vertical files are no longer being catalogued, my research is also concerned with a historical perspective on art and culture, and the perception of beauty. The material that is catalogued between 1910-1950 will be useful to analyze how the detrimental effects of two world wars (1914-1945) affected the culture.
- Photographic Collection
Examining photographic records of recent history will provide me with a documentary of the society's aesthetics when image production started to be more democratic, and more available. Photographs don’t, and don’t need to, eulogize their subjects, as did painters.
- Print Collection
The collection which dates from the 15th century, and which encompasses almost five hundred years of image reproductions, will provide me with a historical survey of how beauty, and beautiful images, were viewed over these centuries.
- Spencer Collection
I will have access to the Spencer Collection through the Photograph and Print Collections, providing me with further material to enhance these two collections, including medieval and renaissance manuscripts.
- The Manuscript and Archives Division
This houses documents ranging from medieval and renaissance illuminated manuscripts, which is also connected to the various other prints divisions in the library, and will enhance my research.
- Map Division
Besides the practicality of maps, there is an aesthetics to maps as well. The Map Division will provide me with this aesthetic survey of maps over the centuries.
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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Commemorating Larry Auster's Tombstone

Laura Wood, of The Thinking Housewife, who organized the event to mark the placing of Larry Auster's new tombstons, writes here:

Last week, five friends of the writer Lawrence Auster, who died in March of last year, gathered at his graveside at Sts. Peter and Paul Cemetery in Springfield, Pennsylvania to mark the placing of a new tombstone at the site. We all continue to miss him, but it was a happy occasion to be there together and remember the man who so inspired us and truly was the greatest of friends. Afterward, we went to a restaurant nearby and talked about Mr. Auster’s work and life. There was so much to say. We agreed that we would all visit his grave together at least once a year.

Thank you to the readers of View from the Right and to Auster family members who contributed to this beautiful monument made of Vermont granite. I wish to thank especially a reader from New Orleans who contributed $1,000.

Larry Auster would have been happy with this choice of material: Vermont granite.

He posted a discussion at View From the Right an article on the Martin Luther King Memorial in 2010, where a reader comments:

...one reads with interest the February 11th [2010] issue of The Washington Post, where an article describes the future arrival of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. This enormous piece of carved stone will stand nearly 31 feet above the ground at the other end of Washington’s Tidal Basin, the site of the cherry blossom trees, and opposite the Jefferson Memorial. King’s stone image will be at least 10 feet higher than Jefferson or Lincoln in their respective memorials, and will require driving hundreds of concrete piles into the ground to support this 55 ton Stone of Hope Memorial, on which King is shown, bracketed by two called Stones of Despair. What may interest, as well as amuse, some readers is that The King Memorial was carved entirely from Chinese stone, and will be shipped from China.

Another reader comments:

...the weighty and ponderous slabs of stone that comprise the memorial, each of which weighs, “thousands of tons,” are “ready to be shipped,” according to The Post article

And adds this from the Washington Post article:

...these component slabs will leave Xiamin China and arrive in Baltimore by March or April. At that point, the Chinese architect, Lei Yixin, plans to finish the work by the summer or early autumn...

The sculptor also carved a statue of the Chinese communist leader Mao Tse-tung. This isn't mentioned in this particular posting at VFR, but I do remember someone bringing it up in a discussion at another posting.

The full Washington Post article is here.

Chinese stone, carved by a Chinese, to commemorate an American was a subject worthy of Larry's attention, and indignation.

He would have certainly approved of the American stone chosen for him, carved by an American craftsman, to be placed on his modest grave.

The light gray, textured stone is beautiful. The base, which seems to have been left uncarved, gives us some idea of where this stone came from.

In order not to detract from the simple beauty of the stone, Laura arranged to have the inscriptions as simple as possible, but with a beauty of their own. The simple cross and the varied scripts with the Biblical quotes in italic, give a solemn, yet light message.


Rock of Ages Granite Quarry, Barre, VT
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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The Colonial Supreme Court in Philadelphia

Located on the corner of Chestnut and 5th Streets, Old City Hall is open year round, with hours varying by season. Visitors are admitted free of charge on a first-come, first-served basis. Ranger talks are offered. Built as the City Hall of Philadelphia, [Old City Hall] was used by the U. S. Supreme Court from the time the building was completed in 1791 until 1800 when the Federal Government was moved to Washington D. C.. The municipal government and courts occupied the building during the 19th century. [Source]

I will be posting more on my recent trips to New York, Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, but above is the lovely Old Supreme Court in Philadelphia. The image is not mine, and I foolishly didn't take any photographs while I was there. Nonetheless, the charm of this small, stark room is obvious from the photo above, where much work was done.
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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