New York trip

Back from an east coast swing with the kids. We took the train up from my parents’ place in Philadelphia Friday morning, came back Saturday night; in that time we went to five museums (Natural History, Met, NYPL, MoMA, International Center of Photography) — ate belly lox at Zabar’s, pastrami at Katz’s, dumplings in Chinatown, Georgian food (Tbilisi not Atlanta) on the Upper West Side, and Junior’s cheesecake for breakfast — and saw three old friends. Oh and CJ took a college tour. My iPhone’s step counter registered 30,000 steps the first day (my all-time record!) and 20,000 the second day. We’re getting good at doing things fast!

I don’t doubt New York has been changed by the pandemic but the changes aren’t visible when you’re just walking around as a tourist on the street. Everything’s crowded and aive.

I was worried we’d have conflict about how much time to spend in art museums but both kids like the Canonical Moderns Of Painting right now so it worked out well. AB was very into Fernand Leger and was aggrieved they didn’t have any Leger postcards at the giftshop but I explained to her that it’s much cooler to be into the artists who aren’t the ones that get postcards at the giftshop. She thinks Jackson Pollock is a fraud and don’t even get her started on Barnett Newman.

My favorite old painting at the Met, the one I always go visit first, isn’t on view anymore. But my other favorite — a little on brand for me, I know — is in the gallery as always. Also saw a bunch of Max Beckmann I wasn’t familiar with, and at MoMA, this Alice Neel painting which looked kind of like Beckmann:

I took the kids to McNally Jackson and to the flagship North American MUJI (where I bought a new yak sweater, there is just no sweater like a MUJI yak sweater.) CJ went in the NBA store and complained they didn’t have enough Bucks gear. We went in a fancy stationery store where the very cute little desk clock we saw turned out to cost $172. We walked through the new Essex Market in the Lower East Side which is like Reading Terminal Market if everything were brand new. Michelle Shih took us to Economy Candy, which has been there forever and which I’d never heard of. I bought a Bar None, a candy bar I remember really liking in the 90s and which I haven’t seen in years. Turns out it was discontinued in 1997 but has been resuscitated by a company whose entire business is bringing back candy bars people fondly remember. There was a huge traffic snarl caused by someone blocking the box so my kids got to see an actual New York guy lean halfway out of his car and yell “YO!” (Then he yelled some other words.) We were so full from the pastrami that we couldn’t eat all the pickles. I brought them all the way home to Madison and just ate them. I ❤️ NY.

F*** yeah belly lox

At the very end of yesterday’s NYC trip I was in midtown with an hour before I had to leave for the airport, so I did what anyone would do — took the 1 up to 79th street and dashed into Zabar’s to get a half-pound of belly lox in an insulated bag with an ice pack.

Belly lox is not the lox you get on a bagel at the bagel store, no way.  It’s not smoked, but salt-cured, from the fattiest part of the salmon.  It is salty, very salty.  It presents a resistance to the teeth, then snaps, then melts like butter in your mouth.  It’s something like a very briny top-quality sushi invented by Jews and sliced very thin.  Of all the things people claim they only do right in New York (pastrami, bagels, pizza, etc.) belly lox is the one they actually only do right — hell, as far as I know, only do at all — in New York.

You could have this on a bagel, but should you really dilute the majesty of belly lox with that much bread?  On the other hand, it’s too intense to eat more than a few bites of it plain.  Here’s the way I’m eating it — on an Ak-Mak cracker with a little cream cheese.  Holy hell, this is amazing.

 

Math Midway this Sunday in Washington Square Park

If you’re in New York City and like math, consider stopping by the Math Midway, an interactive math exhibit running 10-6 this Sunday, June 14 as part of this year’s World Science Festival Street Fair. (The World Science Festival, despite its name, seems always to take place in New York.  Reminds me of a book I read at Emmanuel’s house, an Encyclopedie des Fromages du Monde which was in fact about the cheeses of France.)  Two more Greenwich Village recommendations from last week’s visit to New York: new Italian storefront restaurant Risotteria and Stephen Merritt’s musical adaptation of Coraline.

It seems that the people behind the Midway are planning to launch a full-scale museum of mathematics, to be called Math Factory and located somewhere in Greater New York.  Is this a good idea?

Update: I almost forgot my most important New York recommendation:  the Francis Bacon retrospective at the Met, which is even better than Risotteria and Coraline.