Friday, August 16
We kicked off the European segment of the trip with a nonstop JetBlue flight to JFK, starting at Terminal 1 in SFO. I am not usually impressed by airport art, much less by airport political history, but SFO has really scored with the re-opening of Terminal 1 as the Harvey Milk Terminal, and I encourage you to fly somewhere on JetBlue or Southwest, and allow an hour more to see it, before the reaction happens and it’s rebranded after Dan White. There are an impressive number of large photos, and exhibits by other artists (at Gate 7, a photographer had played Cindy Sherman Dress-up as her father and her mother, explaining that her father was secretly a gay man and her mother was secretly of mixed race). In the non-secured area are a bunch of continents done in metal by a Ms. Glynn, hanging from the ceiling, with steel plants hanging upside down like giant versions of what Fiona Hall casts in sardine cans. But where was Europe? From a position waiting to have our passports and boarding passes looked at in a long line, I couldn’t totally see Asia but it seemed only to extend to the Urals, and the White Nationalists are going to be annoyed to find their homeland gone.
As we were getting off the plane, a voice from the row behind said, “Dave Oppenheim?” It turned out we’d been riding the whole way in front of one of Dave’s Avid coworkers from several years back. He was on his way to a few days on Fire Island and we didn’t hear from him again.
From JFK we got a Lyft to our Airbnb in Brooklyn. You ask the airport people where to meet your Lyft, they say outside the arrivals area. You ask the app, they tell you the departure level. So we go up there, and get a call from our driver who, of course, is down on the arrivals level. He circles around and finds us, but they really should get their story straight, for a better user experience.
Our airbnb was a beautiful two-bedroom ground-floor apartment just east of Prospect Park, in the West Indies. Besides the bedrooms, there was a study, a living room, a kitchen, and a bathroom. Two blocks from the 2 train. And it’s less than $100 per night! Our host greeted us, despite our 10pm arrival, and explained the keys. As we left for dinner, we thought we just locked ourselves out, but learned it was just a sticky door. When we returned, we really had been locked out by one of the other residents of the building, but we successfully woke somebody up and get in. The deadbolt in question got taped over for the rest of our stay.
We tried to find a particular restaurant that was said to channel Ghana, but we had the same problem as in Lima: they were closed despite Google saying they’d be open. We found a happening pizza pub on Flatbush Ave and ate there instead. Pizza is locavore fodder in Brooklyn.
Saturday, August 17
Best thing I did: asking Marcus, our airbnb host, “SO, if this is a West Indian neighborhood, where can I get ackee and fish in the morning?”
Even through all his innate geniality, you could tell he was genuinely stoked that an old guy from Duck Dynasty wanted to know that. He said there were too many to count, i.e. he didn’t know. I think what’s happening is that his mom, who also lives upstairs, cooks it for him. Often a problem with asking natives for advice. We found it at a juice bar in the next block.
(Ackee has not always been available in the U.S. I don’t know which problem USDA had with it. There is always something unavailable for reasons unconnected to psychedelic drugs. Szechuan Peppers carried some kind of canker, French Cheeses are always being tariffed to death every time the French are right about the results of US Foreign Policy before we are willing to admit it. For surrender monkeys, they sure have a feisty labor movement, and the retirement age and health care to show for it.)
In May before we left, we saw the Andy Warhol exhibit, rejoining SFMOMA with a membership with reciprocal admission privileges at several US museums. This included the Guggenheim in New York, so of course we went there. Getting there was a bit confusing, since the subway maps showed the 2 train going up the west side of the park, but Google showed it going up the east side of the park. The station agent pointed out that Google was correct, there was construction on weekends which was rerouting that line. We did all of our traveling on Reduced Fare Metro cards, giving us two rides for the price of one, available by cash from station agents. I wasn’t quite 65, but after the first station agent let me slide, I kind of expected it from all of them, and didn’t have any issues.
The Guggenheim had a show curated by six artists featuring many interesting works. But the main draw for us was “Implicit Tensions: Mapplethorpe Now”, because it has dick. The most interesting part was “Notes from the Margins of the Black Book”, in which Glenn Ligon had annotated Mapplethorpe’s “Black Book”, a collection of his photographs of black men, with quotations which either responded to Mapplethorpe’s work, or commented on the lives and situations of gay black men at the time. Dave thought quotes from Essex Hemphill were most incisive. You can’t take photos of course and when you go to look them up on the Internet to remind yourself, the Internet says, “bla bla COOKIE POLICY bla bla” and “Sign up for our newsletter?”
In general, criticism of Black Book is only not Dada-lunatic if you start from the axiom that sex, and dicks in particular, are a thing completely outside human experience, with a minor in Black people being outside human experience. Thought experiment: grab a criticism of Black Book, replace Dicks with Lilies, and see how it reads as exegesis on Monet. (Mapplethorpe was not above replacing dicks with lilies, himself.)
The stupidest remark in the margins of Mapplethorpe, and there are many contenders, is that white gays grow up expecting privilege. Um, they start out as children, which is never privileged. Anyone under 18 knows what it is to be ignored, denigrated, stereotyped, unpaid, imprisoned, hit, the whole nine Wojnarowicz yards. Only by pretending the first eighteen years of your life are not a part of it, which is much done, can you make such an assertion.
There’s no reason to go to an art gallery if you aren’t going to be grumpy.
We took the train down to Christopher Street, and waited to meet Ray’s cousin Johan at Monsters, one of his favorite bars. We had their happy hour frozen margarita, and then headed to a nearby foodie taco place for a light dinner. Empellon Taqueria has improved since the TimeOut review. The taco fillings are much more flavorful than their reviewer described. Still Nordic around the edges. Smoked tilefish tacos. The rum-tequila-absinthe drink was just weird. I don’t have enough experience with hot pink shaved ice chick drinks to judge. Also Johan’s smoked something margarita.
And then back to Brooklyn.
Sunday, August 18
We had breakfast near the hotel at a little sandwich shop that featured rye waffles, which were quite nice. Then we headed to South Street Seaport to meet Roger, a cousin of Ray’s from his father’s side. He and Ray hadn’t ever met, but they decided it would be fun to. We wandered around for awhile, including checking out the World Press Photography awards, and then found a little Italian restaurant to hang out in and talk for three hours or so. He was an interesting guy, whose career includes having been the principal food photographer for Subway.
They gently kicked us out after awhile, and we walked across town to the World Trade Center to see what was there 18 years later. Besides the new tower, there was a huge memorial fountain, and a massive shopping center called Oculus. We dashed into the Oculus when it started raining, walked through the Eataly store to use up some time. Oculus looks like a church. The alien archaeologists will be convinced that lower Manhattan is a temple complex, to the God of Money and Consumption.
When the rain stopped, we left. We said goodbye to Roger, and went up toward Johan’s apartment. He had turned in for the evening, but we found Naya, a delightful Lebanese place at 56th and 2nd, and had some kebbe and other tasty snacks.
And then back to Brooklyn.
Monday, August 19
The Airbnb had no washing machine, but Nostrand Ave had tons of laundromats. We did breakfast and laundry in parallel, and then went to the Whitney museum, another SFMOMA reciprocal partner, to see its biennial.
They dedicated most of the building to art they’ve discovered in the last two years. The most alarming exhibit was a video documenting the use of machine learning to identify pictures of a particular brand of commonly-used tear gas canisters. Once trained, the bot culled the Internet to see where the tear gas canisters had ended up, which is everywhere. A sign next to the entrance to the video pointed out that Warren Kanders, one of the board members of the Whitney, was the CEO of Safariland, the company making the tear gas. Eight of the artists in the biennial had withdrawn their work in protest. A few days later, Kanders resigned, and the artists stayed in the show. That all happened about three weeks before we were there, which explained why we saw all of the works in question. Christine Sun Kim, one of the eight protesting artists, had a memorable array of pie charts describing the experience of deaf people in modern society, which was written about here: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/21/t-magazine/christine-sun-kim-artist.html .
Being at the WTC memorial the day before reminded me of Mary and Kelly, friends I hadn’t seen for ages. They’ve lived nearby, in Battery Park City, since before 2001. We walked along the Hudson to their place. It was fun to see them and catch up on how things have been.
We made more definite arrangements to see Johan’s apartment, so then we went up and did that. It’s a fabulous little place with a Murphy bed and a good view. He’d already eaten, so we foraged in the neighborhood and ended up at Totto Ramen up a block on 52nd. We had Chicken Paitan Ramen, with an amazing thick broth ideally made by cooking down some other chicken broth, including bones. We’d never had anything like it. (And now, we find it’s everywhere.)
And then back to Brooklyn.
Tuesday, August 20
We walked through Prospect Park and met Dave’s college friend David at Terrace Bagel, a place that another friend of ours swears makes the best bagels in NYC. There was certainly nothing wrong with them. David tells the same political line as our other friend Bertram, although he’s a plutocrat and Bertram is a cabinet maker: after dealing face to face with Donald Trump, he will have nothing to do with anything he’s involved in, since the 1990’s. He lies, cheats, and steals (but people do love that…)
Afterwards, we walked up the west side of the park and into the Brooklyn Public Library to get out of the sun for awhile. David got back on the subway and we walked back to the Airbnb, packed up and got a Lyft back to the airport. We found our Singapore Airlines flight to Frankfurt, got on board, and did our best to get some sleep. A380’s are so massive, there is no reason they should be able to fly.