NYC Visit

We decided to try to the trendy hotel thing, rather than staying in midtown. I thought about the W but the W was trendy a few years ago so I wanted something a bit newer. The candidates I heard about where the Ian Schraeger hotels, 60 Thompson, the Mercer, and soho/tribeca Grande. I’d heard that the Ian Schraeger (sp?) hip hotels were getting a bit threadbare and 60 T wasn’t available. We ended up in the Soho Grande.

It was an interesting experience… The entry way was very cool - check out the lobby and lighting pictures – but the room was a bit of a disaster. We were on the 4th floor looking at the backside of some wreck of a building. It was incredibly noisy: the traffic, the plumbing, and even the hallway noise made it in. The room was small and the bed even had flaking chips of paint. The personal CD player and music selection were great, but that’s a bit of small comfort.

We were able to change rooms the next day and move to the 15th floor, where it was quieter and we got an NYC view. We spent a couple of late nights in the lounge, where the drinks and music were great. I’m really into the electro-jazz sound so it was quite enjoyable.

In future, I think we’ll stay at the W or try 60T if we want the “hip” experience.

The location was great, as there are many great restaurants and interesting things around. We spent a couple of days just walking around Soho. Turns out we were there during a “soho shopping days” which was pretty fun. We really enjoyed getting a feel for the area, which you can only get by also getting some sore feet. We went back to Bubby’s and found the Cupping Room for some great breakfast/brunch places.

Our first dinner/show was Lupa for dinner and the Producers after. We arrived for dinner just before 6:30 and they assured us we’d be out by 7:30. Well, at 7:40 I told them to forget the dinner we had to go. They brought our food to go and didn’t charge us. Even though it was consumed in the back of a friendly taxi, the food was really good.

We arrived a little late but got settled in quickly enough. The Producers was simply awesome. Good enough to go to again :-) It’s definitely one of my favourite shows ever.

Next day we spent a fair amount of time shopping. Orange was the theme this year, as Deanna and I both got orange shoes and I got some wild orange shirts. For dinner, we went back to the Han Bat Korean restaurant that our friend Stuart Quealy had introduced us to last year. The first time we ate at Han Bat it was a new and exciting experience. Since then, we have tried the same food in Korea and in Vancouver. This time, we enjoyed the Pa Jun (onion pancakes) but our palates had been educated by 3 little old ladies in South Korea. No surprise that the hole in the wall restaurant in Gyeonggju, South Korea is now our favourite for Pa Jun.

Afterwards we saw Hairspray, which was hilarious. Saturday was a visit to the Whitney museum of American Art. Very interesting works. It’s not as “impressive” as the Met, but I found the different works to be very interesting. I especially like the art on the industrialization of America. The one criticism of the modern art that I’d give is it generally seemed larger and less succinct than it should be. Much of the art was quite large, and often involved a variety of video displays. It seemed that it often wasn’t really making a “point”, but distracting in the size of the display. A revision of the old saw “I don’t have time to make a small piece of art so I’ll make a large and complicated one”.

It was a sunny day in Manhatten, so we had lunch of cheese and bread in Central Park. This was followed by a glorious snooze. I gotta say, there’s nothing like a good snooze in a great park to help your day.

That night we went to the Five Points for dinner, another StewQ recommendation. It was a really neat restaurant, with a great Italian wine list. I wish I’d remembered when we went there that the five points was the area talked about in Gangs of New York. It would have been fun to wander about the area.

Our final stop was at the Blue Note where we saw the “Queen of Jazz”, Dianne Schuur. I’d never heard of her before, but she was really amazing. We got there about 15 minutes before the doors opened and the lineup was quite long, so I was worried about our seats. Did we ever luck out! We ended up in the very front about 5 seats back from the stage, so we had arguably the best seats in the house. The one downside of the show was that she only performed for about 55 minutes. We definitely felt like the Blue Note had extracted a pound of flesh.

It was a bit weird during the show because Dianne mentioned the stormy weather a couple of times, and thanked us for braving the elements. We had no clue what she was talking about as it was a clear night when we were in line. Well, she certainly wasn’t taking the drugs that we hypothesized about.. It was an absolute downpour when we left. What a wicked weather change.

I’d found out before we left that the International Contemporary Furniture Fare was being held on Saturday to Tuesday. I’m fairly interested in design and this seemed like a great opportunity. We ended up having a “Dirk Gently” day as we didn’t get where we wanted but where we needed to. The ICFF wasn’t open to the public until Tuesday but we noticed on the way to the convention center that Nineth Ave was really busy. We ambled over and found that it was the Nineth Avenue Street Market. Talk about luck! We walked from 34th st to 54th st and took in all the people, food, trinkets, clothes and more. The pictures of the zillions of people don’t really do justice for the raw market feel of it. There was a river of people for as far as the eye could see. What a really neat surprise.

Dinner that night was at the famed Nobu. The sushi was very good and the ambiance was very “hip”. What was also interesting about it was that I have new found respect for Vancouver’s very own Tojo’s. While the décor at Tojo’s is pretty stark, the food (especially the tuna tartar) was better and about 2/3 the price.

Work took over the next 5 days, except where I took off for a couple hours and went to the ICFF. I can’t really begin to describe all the amazing things I saw, so I’ll let the pictures say the thousands of words.

Glenn Daniels and I went to see Avenue Q on Wednesday. It’s a show about a Muppet that goes to New York for work and ends up on the cheapest street. The show was really creative and enjoyable. The TV monitors were effectively used. The songs were fab: “Everybody’s a bit racist”, “My life sucks”, “the internet is for porn”, “Schadenfreude”, “Purpose”, were really amusing. Glenn again came through on an entertainment recommendation. Maybe he should do a Glenn’s survey, ala Zagat’s.

On Thursday I went back to see the Producers. Why go back to a show I’d already seen? The reason is that TimBL accepted my invitation to go to a show and I wanted to make sure the show was good. He told me later it was his first Broadway show, even further validation. Turns out he’s also a fan of Carmina Burana which Deanna and I had just sung a few weeks ago.

I must have been feeling really good about life that week because I volunteered to become an editor of the WSDL Part 3: Bindings document.

The only downside of the trip was completely expected: the transit through Toronto on Air Canada. I got a chance to see the new Pearson Terminal 3. I’ll make a separate entry on the continuing story of Air Canada’s suckage.

Another great trip to NYC that Deanna and I enjoyed immensely. There’s just nothing like having some time and $ to spend in NYC. It’s just so alive and so much going on.