Category: Travel

Las Vegas was wild—it’s like there’s no refinement, anywhere. Everything is pumped up, overpriced, and vulgar. I had so much fun! Big Chris and I paid homage to Liberace at the Liberace Museum, took a bus out to the Hoover Dam, and experienced a simulated thermonuclear explosion at the Nuclear Testing Museum. The Bellagio Fountain was pretty wonderful, streams of water spurting and dancing to different tunes throughout the day. I was actually moved to tears, almost, by Sarah Brightman and Andrea Bocelli’s duet.

The devoted older lady fan-guides at the Liberace Museum seem to know everything about Liberace, from his guest appearances on Batman to the palimony suite brought against him by his former chauffeur lover.

At the Hoover Dam…

We stayed at the Paris Hotel, where all the French seemed to be misspelled.

I was most intrigued by the architecture and the chocolate of Las Vegas. Each utilized the scale, grandeur and whimsy of the casinos, but engaged with new forms and sensation, instead of kitschy pastiche.

Tonight BC and I saw Jude Law as Hamlet on Broadway.  His interpretation was laced with humor and intelligence, his madness with method… the set was minimal, dark, with occasional bolts of fabric piercing the frame dramatically, shafts of light defined by foggy mists… Ophelia’s voice was like an audio version of a pre-Raphaelite painting, floral and soft, just lovely. Ah… what a satisfying evening of theater!

We’ve been being very touristy, taking the Staten Island Ferry this morning after viewing an exhibition on the history of the Dutch presence in New York. We enjoyed the best falafel sandwich down near Wall Street, from a halal street cart, run by a husband and wife team, so proud of their falafel they kept shoveling steaming balls of it at us. I want to stay in their cart next time I’m in town. Yesterday we took a long walk along the West Street, on the new Hudson River Greenway, which has been landscaped with very bold strokes of plant material and texture. There are so many new buildings along the walk, too, most really interestingly nestled into the cityscape playing with form and glass and color.

Chrissy and I ate dinner last night at Becco, Lidia Mattichio Bastianich’s restaurant in the theater district. The lamb Osso Bucco that I ordered was from some big ass lamb, oh my god, I sucked all the marrow out and licked the bone, it was so succulently lip-smackingly delicious.

Today BC and I journeyed out to Queens to visit the Noguchi Museum, nibbling on some pretty tasty, delicately prepared, and sculpturally resonant Japanese food on the way at Iji on Broadway.  The Noguchi Museum presents the work of Isamu Noguchi in a former factory, stripped down to exposed bricks, with a nice interplay between inside and out, the natural world and the artificial.  My favorite sculpture was a model for a pool that he was commissioned by Neutra to design for a home he was building for Josef von Sternberg, who was overweight and needed a pool big enough to accommodate him, according to the info on the wall.  How fat was Josef von Sternberg?  Maybe there was a trend in the 30s for pools that accommodated only skinny people?  Anyway, I don’t know why it wasn’t built, but a Noguchi pool is the way that I’d like to experience his work, immersed in harmonious functionality.

Near the museum is Socrates Sculpture Park, where one may interact with a series of whimsical, ready-for-kids-to-play-on sculptures, including a tile Spiral Jetty, a giant sliced fish, a crushed Cadillac, a raised boardwalk meandering though a stand of trees, and an aluminum campfire.

Following Mr. Noguchi’s museum, we ambled over the Roosevelt Island Bridge for a walking tour of Roosevelt Island.  There are parts that seem straight out of a 60’s film vision of an urban utopia, modern functional architecture designed for easy living and proximity to all of one’s needs.  What’s left of the 1839 New York Lunatic Assylum, an octagon-shaped building with a lovely dome, has been converted into housing.  They’ve accurately restored the marble exterior, but stripped the interior and re-imagined the inner spiral staircase with minimal columns and delicate lighting, accenting architectural space without decoration.  It’s a really stunning space.

I’ve always wondered this, because I think I was exposed to the joke before the monument, which is in New York, and is indeed where Grant is buried.  Ulysses S.  Actually, for you trivia nerds, he’s not buried there, he’s entombed there, with his wife.  BC and I watched The Thin Man movies a while back.  There’s one scene where Nick wants to investigate a potentially dangerous crime scene and doesn’t want Nora to tag along, so he puts her in a cab and sends her to Grant’s Tomb.  Hmmm… We’ll have to go there, too, we both thought.  And so we went.  In the tomb, you look down over a circular opening onto two massive granite sarcophagi.  You can descend and then sort of look up at them, where they seem to be about to ascend through the opening above.  It’s a particularly effective burial strategy, to create a sense of finality and of ascension.

Here’s a picture of an unidentified trunk in the mausoleum. Grant’s Trunk?

There was some sort of street festival going on near Columbia, so we munched down on Greek and French street foods, fresh lemonade and fresh fruit concoctions, then down to see the High Line with Davide. Davide has finally trimmed the small mammal that he called a beard into a super cool sexy italian lumberjack thingy. The High Line is just great. When I was here last in 2006, BC and I noticed all the chunks that were taken out of the buildings down here, and the remains of what looked to be an elevated railway. We did some research and discovered that indeed there used to be an elevated freight railway called the High Line, running along the Lower West side of Manhattan. They’ve converted it into a delightful elevated pedestrian walkway, with old rail ties and interesting plants, walkways of granite, wood, steel. They’ve retained the idea of an urban artifact, and all the landscaping and hardscaping feels like a take on this theme.

Oh, I forgot to tell you about pizza last night, at No. 28. It’s run by 5th generation Neopolitans, so of course, being napolitano, I had to check it out. The pies are oblong, like if Dali were Italian and had a pizza place in the West Village. The service was pretty lousy, but just like in Naples, where you have to flag down your waiter for anything, so I guess kind of authentic. I think that in San Francisco we’re kind of spoiled by the incredible quality of cooking, so while I liked the pizza, I thought the salads were just stupid–like if you’re going to have mixed lettuces and tomato, have a really good tomato, alright already? But the pizzas were pretty good, nice thin burnt crust, delicious toppings… On to the next pizza.