A grand experiment on the mean streets of New York

After considerable effort and no less considerable personal expense in this great city, I have come to a shocking conclusion of great importance to fellow wanderers.

The only way to screw up a slice of greasy New York pizza is to charge too much for it.

So, the results of my experiment have been input into the following chart (not much of a chart, really, because that would require graphic arts skills. This is more of a list).

Cost to taste
Cost: $2.75 -- Taste: Bad
Cost: $2 -- Taste: OK
Cost: $1 -- Taste: Great

Using science then, I can without doubt answer once and for all a major point of contention between New Yorkers. I can tell you, scientifically, where you can find the best pizza in New York.

"99-cent Pizza" at 43rd Street and Third Avenue.

They sell pizza for 99 cents a slice. It is greasy. They let you sprinkle your slice with grated cheeselike substances, red pepper flakes and that powdery green stuff that looks like herbs. You get a napkin and a paper plate that becomes translucent as the slice drains. It is a true New York experience you can actually afford to experience.

And, while you are eating it, you can walk the block and cut through the Art Deco wonderland that is the lobby of the Chrysler Building.

That's what I'm talkin' about.

Molly’s Pub on Third Avenue has no Molly (love ya, miss ya, Molly), but …

In a town flush with the latest hot bars and coolest cool clubs -- all of which would bore me out of my mind if I didn’t have the game of “this is like being stabbed in the (fill in the blank) with a (fill in the blank)” to play in the wrinkled front part of my brain – Molly’s Pub & Shabeen isn’t unique, but it also isn’t common.

It isn’t the club scene. It isn’t a tourist joint. It isn’t a student hang out. It is modeled after an Irish pub, from the white stucco store front to the dark wood paneling and the fireplace with mantle I saw an actual patron rest his arm on like he was going to sing a ballad badly or box with John Wayne, but it isn’t really all that Irish, either.

It’s just fairly quiet, mostly comfortable, usually a bit crowded so you feel at one with the people but not so crowded you can’t find a seat.

This is a dining establishment … and the fare runs to the Irish. I haven’t tried the food and probably never will. I steadfastly avoid eating at restaurants with “atmosphere.” If you happen to stop by and grab some grub, let me know what you think. I’ll add it to the map.

Back in the 80s, when I lived off Union Square and whiskey, I used to stroll down to Molly’s and stagger home from Molly’s on a regular basis. Now, I have less money and more years, but Molly’s is still a nice, gentle bar on the fragile senses … if not the wallet. That’s better. I don’t stagger out anymore. I can’t afford it.

It would be perfect if Molly worked there (seriously, love ya, Molly. Miss ya, Molly ... and the rest of you. I didn't forget about you. It just wouldn't have fit so well in the blog. The bar ain't called John's or Brad's or ...), but no one said this is a perfect world.

TO GO
Molly’s is the white-fronted building on the east side of Third Avenue between 22nd and 23rd streets. You can’t miss it.

Yeah, I took the photo across the top of neoflaneur.blogspot.com.

I rock. That's all I think needs to be said.

High culture and low class at Juilliard

The thing about concert halls is they are designed to get sound from the front of the hall to the back. The thing about human beings is some of them don’t get this fact. The thing about free concerts is there is no barrier to entry.

I took in a free concert by Juilliard Ensemble of a tribute to contemporary composer Luciano Berio (1927-2003) at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater on Tuesday night. It’s a pretty big house and it wasn’t packed, so I found a nice spot with five seats between me and my nearest neighbor, settled in and was prepared to be enthralled. About five minutes before the show started a gentleman sat down in the row in front of me two seats to my right. He was followed by another gentleman who sat in the row in front of me two seats to my left.

As the lights dimmed and Emi Ferguson, a young flautist, took the stage for a solo work created in 1958, the gentleman to my right decided to have an emphysema attack of Biblical proportions. He wheezed and coughed and snuffed and snorted and shifted and flapped his program for the next two hours.

A couple of minutes into Ferguson’s piece, “Sequenza I”, a frantic piece of music in which Ferguson held a musical conversation with herself, the gentleman to my left – apparently no fan of contemporary composers – decided it was time to balance his check book. He took out all his bills for the month … still in their crinkly envelopes … and went to work.

The second piece, “Corale”, written in 1981 for a dozen highly trained musicians, became “Piece for musicians and two assholes in the audience”, written in 2008.

They were a team (in fact, I asked them as I took to my feet, "Are you guys a team?") They drove me from my seat and deeper into the back of the theater. I found a spot in the second to last row of the Muppet Theater, right in front of two older gentlemen talking to each other between pieces.

“I don’t like this.”
“It’s not for you to like.”
“Oh, it’s for the younger generation then?”
“The kids like it.”
“I don’t. It’s for the younger folks.”
“Well, look at the audience.”
“I see a lot of white hairs, but I don’t like it.”

So, they left.

And I finally did get a chance to like it. Berio seemed hell-bent on making his musicians suffer over the ugly tones he forced them to create from their beautiful instruments. There was a 1969 solo piece for oboe, “Sequenza VII”, played by Jeffery Reinhardt, in which Berio forced Reinhardt, who he’d probably never even met, to make sounds like blowing your nose into an already-full snotrag. This is not something I imagine comes naturally to a young man studying at Juilliard, but even the uninitiated such as myself could tell the kid was playing his ass off.

The came a piece of interesting – again, played brilliantly by a quartet including vocalist Carin Gilfry, harpist Jane Yoon and percussionists Molly Yeh and Sam Budish – in which Gilfry sang three e.e. cumings poems (two of the poems twice) while Yoon played counterpoint on the harp and Yeh and Budish banged the shit out of everything but the tag-team assholes in the audience.

It was great, a 16-minute theater piece akin to Blue Man Troupe in evening wear.

And then, David Huckabee came on to play the 1980 solo piece “Sequenza XIV” for cello. It was like watching Buster Keaton. The piece sounded like the cello would escape, running around insanely and crashing into itself and every note in the musical realm, and Huckabee was right there in the middle of it, stone faced.

I’m not a fan of contemporary concert music, but the thing about making a point of seeing New York City on the free is you never know what you are going to get, so you need to be prepared to enjoy yourself. And, for the love of God, leave your checkbook at home.

Fricking on a Sunday afternoon

The Frick Collection (70th and Fifth Avenue) has Sunday "Pay what you wish" day, and while I wished I had the wherewithall to pay the $15 regular admission, I could only pay $5 and spent a couple of hours wandering yet another former abode of the very, very rich and very, very dead.

This time it was the New York City home of Henry Clay Frick, who made his money in steel and union busting. His artistic tastes leaned to portraiture and Romantic frippery (including five J.W.M. Turner pieces that I liked, having a frip of the romantic in me when it comes to sailing vessels). But, most of it zipped past me, even though I tried really, really hard to like looking at paintings of rich old people.

There were a couple of standouts, though. One, El Greco's "Purification of the Temple", was the reason to show up. I kept moving away and then finding myself drawn back into it. The link above doesn't do the piece justice. The color is gone. The energy in Christ is muted, as is what I perceived to be a wicked sense of humor in El Greco's mind when he painted Christ as gleeful.

Another nice work worth spending a little time in front of was Jan Vermeer's "Officer and Laughing Girl", which according to the Frick web site will be on display until Nov. 2. The sun in this piece grabs the wall from the other two Vermeer on display. There's also room in the piece for you to imagine the backstory ... one of Vermeer's hallmarks.