Feeling kind of like the blind pig and the truffle. Sorting through apartment rental options on line back in New York, picked this place, not having the slightest idea where it was located, and it turns out to be one block over and three blocks down from the two locations -- both torn down and rebuilt -- where Borges was born and where he came back to live in the 20´s. While there he wrote,
This city that I believed was my past,
Is my future, my present;
The years I have spent in Europe are an illusion,
I always was (and will be) in Buenos Aires.
The Rough Guide -- aside from that Borges quote and info -- is also quite good in general on Palermo Viejo. Cortazar´s Hopscotch was set -- to the extent Hopscotch could be set -- here, and he is remembered, sort of, with the Plazoleta Julio Cortazar, where Honduras and Serrano (before it is renamed Jorge Luis Borges) converge. But, says the Rough Guide, and sadly to my way of thinking, no one calls it Plaza Cortazar (though he´s only been dead 22 years), but Plaza Serrano. It is ringed by the inevitable street artesania sellers, mostly colorful schlock. Some semi-precious stones jewelry. In the ¨which U.S. punk bank is commemorated on the most T-shirts¨competition, the Ramones win in a landslide. Che is more seen for sale than worn; that´s one mythology -- unlike Cortazar´s creations -- to which I would say good riddance.
On their first day here I was watching Sebastian and Colin play on the seesaw in Plazoleta Cortazar. One evening back in 1984 before the family arrived I was walking along Avenida Corrientes late at night and saw the shocking headline that Cortazar had died -- nearly 70 but still too soon for his work -- in Paris. And 22 years later watching my grandchildren in the plaza named for him, grown-up player that he was. Connecting those two life snapshots feels both incomprehensible and fitting.
Friday, December 29, 2006
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Buenos Aires
I started the blog about New York. Annie´s illness intervened, and with it paralysis for almost everything, including writing this. And now the bulk of what´s written so far will turn out to be about Buenos Aires. That´s fine. Like New York, it´s a subject of endless variety and fascination.
December 13 -- The apartment is in Palermo Viejo, on Gurruchaga, corner of El Salvador. A small loft apartment townhouse, stone tile floors, sparse and mightily uncomfortable furniture, an iron black staircase with black railing to the loft and a light curtain to be drawn across the railing to prevent access view from the street. The cash card worked, always a good moment when traveling abroad. Re-read the NYT travel article from a few weeks ago and discovered the first restaurant we stumbled into for our first meal in BA was the one the article raved about, La Cabrera. We´d forgotten the portions -- an astonishing oversight -- huge for Dana Dee´s mediocre Caesar salad, made mediocre by the way too heavy amounts of dressing and huge for my bife de chorizo. One thing I hadn´t forgotten -- and this would be impossible to forget -- is the first taste, charred crisp on the outside and warm medium rare on the inside, thick, tender and instantly and deliciously recognizable as Argentine beef. What set Cabrera apart were the sides -- small metal appetizer-sized dishes of cold salads, a particularly fine slightly vinagrette potato salad, and hot vegetables, mashed potatoes, mashed carrots with raisins, a couple kinds of black beans and warm smooth and sweet applesauce. Since we paid with cash we got a 10 % discount (offered in some few restaurants) but even before that knockoff the chorizo bife, salad, chorizo sausage starter, beer and a glass of good house wine came to less than $20 for the two of us. I said to Dana Dee, "I don´t think we´re in New York anymore." Some one is practicing voice in the touwnhouse next door or beyond the patio -- she sounds like Bianca.
December 15 -- The first Argentina bottle of wine gets uncorked on day three. A Fincas Carcassone 1884 2005 Malbec a bit harsh going down, but, hey, I paid all of $3.50 for it. It so often comes down to food and drink here, especially on these warm summer nights. I bought a restaurant book, Restaurantes de Buesnos Aires, los Recomendados 2006, and find that more than a dozen are in Palermo Viejo or Palermo Hollywood. A dismal six block stretch along Honduras separates the two trendy places and access by all streets except Honduras and Paraguay is blocked by the Gral San Martin suburban train line. By blind luck with La Cabrera and by full intent with La Cupertina,we have already eaten at two of them. Cupertina today at noon was flat out fabulous probably the best empanadas I´ve ever eaten, dating back nearly forty years to the boarding house in Traiguen and those Sunday lunch treats. Baked to order, there are five varieties -- diced beef (far better than the usual carne molida option), chicken, ham and cheese, cheese and onion, and corn. The corn type we first encountered in Pucon in Chile, a fine new twist on empanadas then, and these topped them. They arrive crusty on the outside and with the contents thoroughly heated. The restaurant couldn´t be more basic, a few wobbly tables and a wooden serving block on which to cut and eat the empanadas. We didn´t order enough, three for the two of us. (They are very small, half the size I´m used to.) We have plenty of days ahead to remedy that and at 66 cents apiece there is hardly room for complaint. Midnight now -- a mild, lovely breeze shakes the leaves about the patio. Reminds of nights in Miami with the hotel window open in Coral Gables or listening to the wind from a bedroom in the Principal Officer´s residence in Havana. It is only three days and I have clearly fallen back into Argentina, as if no time had past, as if these young things that stroll the ludicrously named Palermo Soho were, as they are now, early 20-somethings instead of pre-schoolers when last I lived here. A would-be trendy store in Recoleta called itself General Store, purportedly after General George Store, whose faux name was printed under the muttonchopped face of Ambrose Burnside, a link in the chain of fools before Lincoln found Grant.
December 13 -- The apartment is in Palermo Viejo, on Gurruchaga, corner of El Salvador. A small loft apartment townhouse, stone tile floors, sparse and mightily uncomfortable furniture, an iron black staircase with black railing to the loft and a light curtain to be drawn across the railing to prevent access view from the street. The cash card worked, always a good moment when traveling abroad. Re-read the NYT travel article from a few weeks ago and discovered the first restaurant we stumbled into for our first meal in BA was the one the article raved about, La Cabrera. We´d forgotten the portions -- an astonishing oversight -- huge for Dana Dee´s mediocre Caesar salad, made mediocre by the way too heavy amounts of dressing and huge for my bife de chorizo. One thing I hadn´t forgotten -- and this would be impossible to forget -- is the first taste, charred crisp on the outside and warm medium rare on the inside, thick, tender and instantly and deliciously recognizable as Argentine beef. What set Cabrera apart were the sides -- small metal appetizer-sized dishes of cold salads, a particularly fine slightly vinagrette potato salad, and hot vegetables, mashed potatoes, mashed carrots with raisins, a couple kinds of black beans and warm smooth and sweet applesauce. Since we paid with cash we got a 10 % discount (offered in some few restaurants) but even before that knockoff the chorizo bife, salad, chorizo sausage starter, beer and a glass of good house wine came to less than $20 for the two of us. I said to Dana Dee, "I don´t think we´re in New York anymore." Some one is practicing voice in the touwnhouse next door or beyond the patio -- she sounds like Bianca.
December 15 -- The first Argentina bottle of wine gets uncorked on day three. A Fincas Carcassone 1884 2005 Malbec a bit harsh going down, but, hey, I paid all of $3.50 for it. It so often comes down to food and drink here, especially on these warm summer nights. I bought a restaurant book, Restaurantes de Buesnos Aires, los Recomendados 2006, and find that more than a dozen are in Palermo Viejo or Palermo Hollywood. A dismal six block stretch along Honduras separates the two trendy places and access by all streets except Honduras and Paraguay is blocked by the Gral San Martin suburban train line. By blind luck with La Cabrera and by full intent with La Cupertina,we have already eaten at two of them. Cupertina today at noon was flat out fabulous probably the best empanadas I´ve ever eaten, dating back nearly forty years to the boarding house in Traiguen and those Sunday lunch treats. Baked to order, there are five varieties -- diced beef (far better than the usual carne molida option), chicken, ham and cheese, cheese and onion, and corn. The corn type we first encountered in Pucon in Chile, a fine new twist on empanadas then, and these topped them. They arrive crusty on the outside and with the contents thoroughly heated. The restaurant couldn´t be more basic, a few wobbly tables and a wooden serving block on which to cut and eat the empanadas. We didn´t order enough, three for the two of us. (They are very small, half the size I´m used to.) We have plenty of days ahead to remedy that and at 66 cents apiece there is hardly room for complaint. Midnight now -- a mild, lovely breeze shakes the leaves about the patio. Reminds of nights in Miami with the hotel window open in Coral Gables or listening to the wind from a bedroom in the Principal Officer´s residence in Havana. It is only three days and I have clearly fallen back into Argentina, as if no time had past, as if these young things that stroll the ludicrously named Palermo Soho were, as they are now, early 20-somethings instead of pre-schoolers when last I lived here. A would-be trendy store in Recoleta called itself General Store, purportedly after General George Store, whose faux name was printed under the muttonchopped face of Ambrose Burnside, a link in the chain of fools before Lincoln found Grant.
A Thanksgiving Story
We volunteered at the Broadway Presbyterian Church for the morning, carving turkeys and setting up for the Thanksgiving dinner. A new crew of volunteers succeeded us and we headed later to Tout Va Bien, since there were only the three of us, making roasting a bird hardly worthwhile. Rain swept the city. We sat wet at one of their banquettes along the wall, next to a table of three men, one of them a musician at Radio City on a break between shows. They were there together for at least the second straight Thanksgiving. After a while, a single woman, mid-forties, came in and was seated on the other side of us. She ordered some champagne and after a few minutes mutually recognized one of the men from being in the restaurant at the same time last Thanksgiving. It´s a New York story too -- he invited this coincidental stranger to join them. She happily did and sometime later we left the four of them, enriching each others´ day, just what Thanksgiving should be.
Monday, November 13, 2006
An Off-Broadway Mistake
I knew I was in trouble at Jacques Brel is Alive, etc when the first song began with an accordion. It reminded me of the old New Yorker split panel cartoon with St. Peter on one side greeting a new arrival to Heaven by saying, "Welcome to Heaven, here's your harp," and the Devil on the other saying, "Welcome to Hell, here's your accordion." It would have been better if the lyrics had not been translated from French for subtle allusions were not Brel's strong suit.
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Annie, 12/11/49 - 7/17/06
Annie
She was a New Yorker in spirit,
And now, in spirit, she's here everywhere and always.
She was a New Yorker in spirit,
And now, in spirit, she's here everywhere and always.
Sunday, May 21, 2006
Yankees Stadium, Mother's Day
To hold season tickets and be able to go to any Yankees home game any time I want and to feel, unlike with other teams I have backed and continue to back, that as long as the Yankees are not behind by double digits there is a chance they can come back and win.
To believe that even on a dreary day and in a dreary game like today's 6-1 loss to Oakland. (After a Yankee win, the stadium sound system plays Frank's version of New York, New York. After a loss, it is a female jazzy version I don't recognize.)
To sit in Yankee Stadium, refurbished twice and soon to be replaced, but still haunted by legendary ghosts and served with the worst selection of concessions in the major leagues -- at least of those stadiums I know -- and where for some reason only light beer is sold in the upper deck.
To be able nonetheless to at least get a hot Italian sausage.
To hear this fan dialogue -- him: "It was a ball, ump." Her (embarrassed): "Please shut up." Him: "I paid $60 for this seat and I should shut up??!!"
To then jog home after the game, a couple beers content, through Harlem to our apartment on Broadway.
Sweet!
To believe that even on a dreary day and in a dreary game like today's 6-1 loss to Oakland. (After a Yankee win, the stadium sound system plays Frank's version of New York, New York. After a loss, it is a female jazzy version I don't recognize.)
To sit in Yankee Stadium, refurbished twice and soon to be replaced, but still haunted by legendary ghosts and served with the worst selection of concessions in the major leagues -- at least of those stadiums I know -- and where for some reason only light beer is sold in the upper deck.
To be able nonetheless to at least get a hot Italian sausage.
To hear this fan dialogue -- him: "It was a ball, ump." Her (embarrassed): "Please shut up." Him: "I paid $60 for this seat and I should shut up??!!"
To then jog home after the game, a couple beers content, through Harlem to our apartment on Broadway.
Sweet!
Saturday, May 20, 2006
Three Days -- April 6-8
April 6: We went to see the Rangers beat the Islanders 3-1 in a game notable only for Jagr telling the referee that he did not score the goal that would have given him the single season Ranger goal scoring record. Plenty of games left. The real action, as it often is at Ranger games, was in the stands where DD kept hearing birdcall shouts coming from the crowd. It turns out -- we learned thanks to the Rainman-like commentary from a fan sitting behind us -- that those are supposed to be gull sounds to taunt the Islanders. And another fan sitting beside us gave his version of the origin of the whistle call and the answering chant of "Potvin sucks." Turns out years ago Potvin ended Ulf Nielsen's career by taking him down illegally in a corner and wrecking his knee. The organist that night played the notes that are now whistled to encourage a "Let's Go, Rangers" chant, but instead the crowd responded, "Potvin sucks." The semi-obscenity caused the organist to immediately drop the bit, but the ever-inventive Ranger fans carried it on with the whistles and years later, and Potvin long-retired, the tradition continues at every game. And, since the Islanders had been eliminated from playoff possibilities the night before, for much of the third period the crowd chanted them with "Sea-son's o-ver, sea-son's over."
April 7: Friday night with Neko Case was mediocre, but all around me the rest of the audience seemed to disagree. Webster Hall was off--putting as well, odd layout and at the end of the evening large bouncers blocked one exit and the entire main level audience had to filter down a single narrow staircase. If I'd had my cell, would have called the fire marshal. Highlights of the evening were the a capella first song; Buckets of Rain; a very pretty version of the standard I'll Be Around; Hex; and Neko's wonderful red hair. Lowlights -- inane patter; Neko's apparently inevitable dissatisfaction with sound equipment (I've seen her three times and twice she's spent about the first third of the concert unhappy with the sound. Perhaps it's her way of dealing with performance jitters.); a band less good than the Sadies or New Pornographers; Wayfaring Stranger as the first encore -- who can possibly bring anything new to that song?; and, for reasons that defy all the laws of time, space, nature and gravity, Neko's acceding to an audience request to sing We're An American Band as the final encore. It was an awful song three decades ago and more with Grand Funk Railroad (certainly a Top Ten contender for worst band ever) and the intervening years have done nothing to improve it, not even with Neko.
April 8: Less than twelve hours after Neko we went to the Met to hear a lecture on The Imperial Estates of St. Petersburg. It was a touch like being back in large lecture halls at Cal, catching a few winks here and there, but with the advantage of knowing there would not be a midterm or final exam. Up to lunch afterward in the Trustees Dining Room, an oasis of quiet above Central Park in that most often thronged museum. Although, truly, with a few turns along the Met's corridors and rooms, there are always quiet, empty and cool places to be alone with the art. The rain came hard and steady against the slanted windows, obscuring the newly blossoming trees in the park. Food was expensive and not especially memorable, but it was -- and will be -- a really nice addition to a day at the Met and in autumn or a snowy winter day it should be a lovely vantage point for the Park. Because of DD's interest, we then went to "Hatshepsut From Queen to Pharaoh," making sure to get our audio guides, the best five bucks one can spend at the Met -- or for that matter at any great museum. Hatshepsut is fascinating, married to her half-brother, Thutmose II, and, on his death, regent for her nephew, Thutmose III, who was a small boy when Thutmose II died. At some point, for reasons that are not yet known, she made herself Pharaoh, and co-ruled -- as the senior of the two -- with her nephew for better than 20 years, one of only a handful of female Pharaohs. Then, 20 years after her death, Thutmose -- a greatly successful Pharaoh and warrior in his own right -- systematically set out to erase all traces of her rule. She was only rediscovered in the mid-19th century by a French Egyptologist puzzled at the references to "her" in ruins obviously describing a Pharaoh. The art is varied and spectacular, from large recovered and painfully pieced together sphinxes and statutes depicting Hatshepsut, some disguising her female characteristics, others reveling in them. (When Thutmose ordered the destruction of her existence, all her statuary likenesses were smashed, dumped into a large pit and buried where, ironically, they rested safe from looting until a Met expedition in 1923 or so.) Some of the gold metal slippers and fingernail caps buried on Thutmose's wives are so delicate and well-preserved that they could have made in the last decade instead of 3700 years ago, when -- the show reminds us -- the pyramids had already stood for more than a thousand years. So it's humbling to stand among all this and moving to find similar beliefs and faith -- from the funerary statue of Satepihu, described as a local headman and overseer of priests: "Your heart will guide you and your limbs will obey you. You will prevail over the floodwaters and the north wind that issues from the Marshlands. You will eat bread whenever you desire, as you did when you were alive. You will see Re everyday, and your face will behold the disk when it rises."
These things in barely 36 hours, where else this variety?
April 7: Friday night with Neko Case was mediocre, but all around me the rest of the audience seemed to disagree. Webster Hall was off--putting as well, odd layout and at the end of the evening large bouncers blocked one exit and the entire main level audience had to filter down a single narrow staircase. If I'd had my cell, would have called the fire marshal. Highlights of the evening were the a capella first song; Buckets of Rain; a very pretty version of the standard I'll Be Around; Hex; and Neko's wonderful red hair. Lowlights -- inane patter; Neko's apparently inevitable dissatisfaction with sound equipment (I've seen her three times and twice she's spent about the first third of the concert unhappy with the sound. Perhaps it's her way of dealing with performance jitters.); a band less good than the Sadies or New Pornographers; Wayfaring Stranger as the first encore -- who can possibly bring anything new to that song?; and, for reasons that defy all the laws of time, space, nature and gravity, Neko's acceding to an audience request to sing We're An American Band as the final encore. It was an awful song three decades ago and more with Grand Funk Railroad (certainly a Top Ten contender for worst band ever) and the intervening years have done nothing to improve it, not even with Neko.
April 8: Less than twelve hours after Neko we went to the Met to hear a lecture on The Imperial Estates of St. Petersburg. It was a touch like being back in large lecture halls at Cal, catching a few winks here and there, but with the advantage of knowing there would not be a midterm or final exam. Up to lunch afterward in the Trustees Dining Room, an oasis of quiet above Central Park in that most often thronged museum. Although, truly, with a few turns along the Met's corridors and rooms, there are always quiet, empty and cool places to be alone with the art. The rain came hard and steady against the slanted windows, obscuring the newly blossoming trees in the park. Food was expensive and not especially memorable, but it was -- and will be -- a really nice addition to a day at the Met and in autumn or a snowy winter day it should be a lovely vantage point for the Park. Because of DD's interest, we then went to "Hatshepsut From Queen to Pharaoh," making sure to get our audio guides, the best five bucks one can spend at the Met -- or for that matter at any great museum. Hatshepsut is fascinating, married to her half-brother, Thutmose II, and, on his death, regent for her nephew, Thutmose III, who was a small boy when Thutmose II died. At some point, for reasons that are not yet known, she made herself Pharaoh, and co-ruled -- as the senior of the two -- with her nephew for better than 20 years, one of only a handful of female Pharaohs. Then, 20 years after her death, Thutmose -- a greatly successful Pharaoh and warrior in his own right -- systematically set out to erase all traces of her rule. She was only rediscovered in the mid-19th century by a French Egyptologist puzzled at the references to "her" in ruins obviously describing a Pharaoh. The art is varied and spectacular, from large recovered and painfully pieced together sphinxes and statutes depicting Hatshepsut, some disguising her female characteristics, others reveling in them. (When Thutmose ordered the destruction of her existence, all her statuary likenesses were smashed, dumped into a large pit and buried where, ironically, they rested safe from looting until a Met expedition in 1923 or so.) Some of the gold metal slippers and fingernail caps buried on Thutmose's wives are so delicate and well-preserved that they could have made in the last decade instead of 3700 years ago, when -- the show reminds us -- the pyramids had already stood for more than a thousand years. So it's humbling to stand among all this and moving to find similar beliefs and faith -- from the funerary statue of Satepihu, described as a local headman and overseer of priests: "Your heart will guide you and your limbs will obey you. You will prevail over the floodwaters and the north wind that issues from the Marshlands. You will eat bread whenever you desire, as you did when you were alive. You will see Re everyday, and your face will behold the disk when it rises."
These things in barely 36 hours, where else this variety?
New York Now
We live in New York now. I've been telling stories about it to friends. Some of them encouraged a blog. Why not?
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