Our Early Summer Trip to the Big Apple

Dear George,

Katja booked our Delta flight to New York City by phone because it was the first time that we ever tried to use our Frequent Flyer miles.  It seems we’ve been accumulating points for half a century or more since the agent said we had 245,000 miles, enough to fly around the world several times.  My fare was free, though we did pay for Katja’s.

Air travel, as usual, was a headache.  When I forgot to take my shoes off in the security aisle, a TSA agent asked me my age, then determined I could leave them on.  The line was backed up, and another agent motioned Katja to come over to the lane he was in.  He checked her ID. looked into her handbag, and then said, “Push that box aside and go back to the other lane.”  Katja misheard him and started pushing the box over to the other lane.  The TSA agent there looked perplexed and wondered why she was pushing the box.  Katja told me later that she’d thought they were doing some sort of cognitive impairment test. 

We took a cab from LaGuardia to my sister- and brother-in-law Ami and Bruce’s condo on the Upper West Side.  Ami and Bruce, as always, were a delight to be with.  They have had German Shepherds their entire married lives and all of their previous dogs — Gabrielle, Annabelle, Pippin, Parker — have been a little wary of people and avoidant.  Their new dog, Taylor, however, was very well adjusted and liked nothing more than giving visitors a kiss on the cheek.

In a sense, this was an art vacation.  We spent a lot of time at the city’s museums and galleries.   As always, the Met impressed me with its vastness and astonishing quality.  Katja was drawn to an exhibition of musical instruments previously owned by rock and roll performers (e.g., the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Prince).  It was huge, and, while I enjoyed it, it began to feel redundant after the first sixty guitars.  The next day we spent several hours at the Guggenheim.  The main exhibits were by Swedish mystic Hilam af Klint and photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.  Despite my Swedish heritage, the Theosophic meanings of Klint’s abstract pieces were beyond me.  We’d last gone to a Mapplethorpe show in Cincinnati in 1990 when the local museum director was arrested on obscenity charges by the authorities.   Mapplethorpe’s photos still had some shock value though that’s diminished over the years.  We also went to the Whitney and MOMA, both incredible.  The MOMA was free after 4 p.m. that day, and the crowds surged in, with what seemed like a hundred or more people in every gallery.   

We went down to Chelsea to the Whitney Museum to see the Andy Warhol show, but it had just left.  However, their permanent collection, with Rothko’s, Hoppers, Pollocks, etc., is well worth the trip, and its outdoor terraces offer great city views.  Ami also took us to the Museum of the City of New York which had current exhibits on political activism, cycling in the city, Jackie Robinson, and graphic illustrator Don Freeman.  On our last day Katja was under the weather, and I went by myself to the AKC Museum of the Dog.   Featuring one of the largest collections of dog art in the world (paintings, drawings, sculptures), this is a must-see for dog lovers.  My only complaint is that Old English Sheepdogs were under-represented.

We went to see Don Giovanni at the Met, Katja springing for fancy first balcony seats.  She is the opera connoisseur, but even I was overwhelmed by the quality of the production.   When the opera ended with the Don burning in Hell, I didn’t expect to see anything left but ashes on the stage.  Ami then treated us to an off-Broadway production of Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish (with English surcaps).  I haven’t been that teary-eyed in quite a while.  Katja went by herself to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, a two-part production which was scheduled at 2 p.m. and again at 7:30 p.m.  She loved it.  We met up in between and had dinner at the Mercury Bar on Ninth Avenue. 

Eating out was a delight.  We had reservations for Eléa on 85^th Street for the four of us, but Ami came down with a nasty bug, so Katja and I went by ourselves.  Delicious, good ambience, great service.  We also had the best pizza of our lives at Di Eataly in the Oculus at the new World Trade Center.)  Being at the World Trade Center site was emotion-arousing.  The Oculus, a huge contemporary structure suggesting huge soaring wings, is remarkable, and the two vast memorial pools whose borders list the names of 911 casualties are fitting memorials.  On one of our theater nights we ate at the West Bank Cafe, Ami’s favorite on 42^nd Street.   On my one meal on my own I had two plain slices of pizza and a bottle of water for a total of $2.75 at a hole in the wall near Columbus Circle.  (This is a clue about the difference between my and Katja’s dining habits.)

I’ve been back a couple of weeks at the time of writing this, and I’m still feeling a sense of loss.  There is something about the city that is so invigorating.  The giganticness of everything, people everywhere, intense sensory stimulation, and the endless array of things to do and places to go.  We could easily have done a couple more weeks.  As a young adult, New York was the only place I ever wanted to be.  That’s moderated some over the years, but the city still remains a thrill.

 Love,

Dave