Bikini Kill reunited and is touring. I had Pussy Whipped and Reject All American on CD back in post-college apt in Smyrna, probably some double-CD re-release [ed. yes! it exists], and they were in heavy rotation for a while. A few years back I went to see The Punk Singer at Plaza Theatre and was just blown away by how not just punk Kathleen Hanna is but just how leftist intellectual she is. So the tour came about and although I think they’ll be performing nearby this was a good excuse for an NYC trip. Last one was ~3 years ago for my niece’s b-day. So let’s go.
Thu 30 May 2019
Flight delayed several times so drinks and drinks at TGI Fridays. Inauspicious, but when you got a three-day weekend it doesn’t matter. Movie on the flight was I-can’t-quite-remember (?) and we ended up landing at midnight, Lyft to our hotel (Lotte New York Palace) and after settling in we headed to the concierge-recommended French bistro Le Bateau Ivre (“the drunken boat”, not the one in Berkeley but apparently based on a poem of the same name by Rimbaud) until around 3 AM. Amazing French bistro. I had the calamari salad and Lisa the endive, both outstanding. Wine.
Fri 31 May 2019
Decent start, maybe 10-10:30, considering the time we got home. The goal is the Highline in service of getting to the Whitney with several planned and unplanned stops on the way. No… they were all unplanned. The hotel has a coffee shop with amaaaaazing pastries that we stared at the whole weekend but never had, except a simple banana nut muffin with coffee that first-of-three mornings. Long weekends, man. The walk to the west to the Highline sent us pass a used book store called Bookoff (a name that sounds more dirty the more I hear it) where we perused but did not buy. They had a huge library of amazing/amazingly cheesy DVD sets (Touched by an Angel had 9 seasons?!) and comics but weirdly only manga and not Western comics. Next up was an accidental bar stop. Just past some teen dance troupe clogging the sidewalk was a walkdown beer bar called Beer Culture. Around noon Friday so only lightly peopled. They had interesting local items on tap but also a refrigerator with dozens of different bottles and cans, many also local. Bartender must open the cans/bottles for you?
Next up: the Highline proper! It’s a narrow-ish walkway elevated and running down the lower west side, although I guess locals maybe call it west midtown? The one/two story elevation gives you a fresh view of an otherwise street-heavy city that normally only offers ground-level or a view out of the barrier of a hotel window. Some scenes are prepared and presented as an “experience” (see Fuck The Vessel by Kate Wagner, we did not experience it) and some just generally random (apt window with a “Trump is Putin’s useful Idiot” sign, heh). Well, if not random then at least non-million-dollar injections but instead simply art and ambiance. One nice oddity: music piped in was either some wacky local music station (I thought I knew many of them but this was not familiar) or a recorded mix that included opera, world, funky pop, and et cetera. Nice-ish. Though narrow, there were little side-stops to sit or lean over and gawk at the street people or interesting buildings (or decrepit buildings) or at some of the split-level areas of grass and trees that seemed off-limits. Like something a park ranger takes care of.
The sun was crazy hot so we took a break to return to the Earthbound people and get some food at Cookshop where we cooled off with: radishes and butter, falafel sandwich, mahi mahi sandwich. And the place was packed so it offered good people watching. Back up on the Highline a few blocks to get to the:
We had gone to the Whitney years before with Lisa’s mom and it was a Biennial also, only a few pieces of which I can remember but remember there was a wide range of 21st century styles. Maybe there are photos on a hard drive somewhere? Unfortunately no reference on my old blog but their index of previous Biennials may jog my visual memory. This show was an insane trip through the last two years: minimalist sculpture where volumes press against gallery walls, Robert Frank-inspired photography of Americans and America (with a surprise image from Cabbagetown here in Atlanta by Curran Hatleberg), amalgamations of painting/sculpture/machine, paintings with simple and fascinating surfaces. We started at the top floor with a color field retrospective separate from the Biennial. Works from the 60s/70s including an iconic Morris Louis painting (below). I had studied the style in college (he and Helen Frankenthaler and Barnett Newman) and I don’t think I’d seen their pieces live before. I could’ve looked for hours if there weren’t many other hours of looking just as valuable. Worth going to their site to take a look (and do the reading I need to over the next few weeks). Wish I’d gotten better pics of Nicole Eisenman’s ridiculous sculpture “Procession”.
Subway home and a Port Manhattan at the Trouble’s Trust bar below the lobby at the hotel. That drink would serve me well the rest of the weekend. Subway to Brooklyn for the Bikini Kill show at Brooklyn Steel. We were just on time for the opener but instead peeled off from the crowd (it was maybe a 10 min walk from the station) to get a drink at Easy Lover. Who could resist? Small, busy bar and for some reason I thought we were crashing a gay bar but we weren’t. Lisa dubbed my impression “stupid”. I spotted the book Her Smoke Rose Up Forever sitting on the back of the bar and so looked it up. James Tiptree, Jr. late 70s post-human sci-fi. Sounded fascinating so I asked the bartender about. The author is a female bi-sexual who once worked for the CIA and eventually died in a murder-suicide with her husband. The bartender raved about it and so I purchased on the spot (dammit, should’ve waited and gone to a local bookstore) then recommended Ted Chiang’s Story of Your Life since it feels like similar, older, unusual sci-fi.
Walk to Brooklyn Steel and we met a girl who found tickets on the ground and so was rushing to the show. The opening band Palberta was already playing when we arrived: three-piece, chicks, noisy screamy pop, often opened a capella, short songs, goofy interplay with the audience. We’ll def see them again if they come in town. Then Bikini Kill. We were upstairs and kindof lucked out with a spot right up at the railing but just a little obstructed. Most of the concert was visible though and looking down on the antics in the crowd is always fun. Mohawk Lady ruled. BK kicked ass and Kathleen Hanna’s voice hasn’t changed a bit. Encored with the quiet ballade “For Tammy Rae” from the last track of Pussy Whipped:
Past the billboards and the magazines
I dream about being with you
we can’t hear a word they say
let’s pretend we own the world today
I know its cold outside
but when we’re together i got nothing to hide
hold on tight i will never let you down
it can’t rain on our side of town
wipe the sweat from my hair
tell me we’re not better off
wipe the tears from my face
the sunnyside of the street where we are
Drinks and many delicious empanadas (2 for $5!) at Reclamation Bar right across the street from Easy Lover.
Home at 1 or so which is more manageable than 3 or so from the night before.
Sat 1 Jun 2019
Subway to the Upper East Side to start the day with brunch at The Penrose on our way to The Frick. Delicious eggs and bacon and Bloody Marys and wine and such but sadly their computers went down and we had to wait almost an hour for the bill. Lisa eventually had to go get cash down the street. I felt for those poor waiters.
I think the last time (only time?) we were at The Frick was the same time we went to the Biennial. This’ll have to become a thing but not so infrequent. I got decent photos at the Whitney but photography is not allowed at The Frick because, I assume, it’s a private collection. Their web site has a good catalog and images though. Cherish your public museums, man. And, not to bitch, but Henry Clay Frick was apparently a union-busting asshole rich guy. But I guess that’s where all wealth came from at the time.
Art of interest:
The wall-sized Fragonards in Mrs. Frick’s drawing room were so kitchy, but I still love his stuff and really don’t remember having seen it live before. The colors are washed out from time, but the images still give that sense of frivolous, aristocratic French wealth. Apparently, Frick had originally purchased four smaller works by Francois Boucher for the room but then noted something along the lines of “the more I look at them, the less I like them” and purchased the Fragnonards instead. The Bouchers were in an adjoining room and I’m kindof a convert to them. Four paintings representing the four seasons. They’re little gems of trashiness that should be on the cover of some dime novel, but fun to look at.
There was one John Hoppner I really liked titled Sarah and Catherine Bligh that was half perfect and half flawed. The one sister’s profile and hand were well-done, but the other’s legs had an odd lack of visual depth and her nose seemed a little poorly integrated. Overall good composition.
The famous self-portrait that Rembrandt painted when he was getting older, proud yet a little bloated and dressed in fancy clothes that you know were not his. Whistler‘s Symphony in Flesh Color and Pink: Portrait of Mrs. Frances Leyland (wow). And Hans Holbein’s portrait of Sir Thomas More (also wow).
There were two Gainsborough full-length portraits on display: Mrs. Peter William Baker and The Hon. Frances Duncombe.
Local bar? Yes. Cocktails at Bar Pleiades while we planned the evening. Dark, classic, comfortable and a good Vieux Carre.
To Kill a Mockingbird adapted by Aaron Sorkin with Jeff Daniels at Shubert Theatre. It’s hard to express what it was like seeing this because from open to close it was emotional. And yet still funny at times and such an original retelling that, I think, also took from Go Set a Watchman. Though I haven’t read that, I had heard there are hints of racism in Finch’s character which came through so subtly in Sorkin’s play. Tickets were very expensive but I would’ve (probably) paid twice if I had to. GO SEE IT!
Taxi home. Drinks at Trouble’s Trust? Probably.
Sun 2 Jun 2019
Last 1/2 day. Soho for galleries and last lunch.
First the Jamali Gallery. There were some large scale non-objective, action painting works that were stunning, but most were really really garishly colored figures. Takashi Murakami works at the Martin Lawrence (I don’t thinks so?) Gallery. Really wish I would’ve purchased on of them and I don’t see the one I wanted online. Cartoony, flat, sharp edges and colors.
Sola Pasta Bar for lunch because Lisa had been craving Italian. Delicious homemade pasta, ragout with some silly squiggly pasta for me and stuffed gnocchi for her. A nice heavy meal before the flight! Then a couple of beers (cause we weren’t overfull enough) at Blue Haven.
Several episodes of The Orville on the flight. Home.