New York City 2006 : A Travelogue
Tuesday, October 31
At Frank's the previous night, we found, after much research, the hotel of our dreams, the Park Savoy. For just $205 a night, you can have a working sink, room to walk, non-shady-Russian-mafia desk clerks, easy subway access and all of it just one block from Central Park. And they even had the necessary five-day vacancy. We installed ourselves there Tuesday afternoon and set about wandering our new neighborhood. We had lunch at a fantastic French bistro where everything on the menu was too good to be true. Then we ambled our way through Tiffany's, FAO Schwarz, and Central Park.
Fashion shoot in Central Park South.
Bride and groom in Central Park.
Sunset on the Sheep Meadow.
After that, we donned our Halloween gear once again for the Zappa Plays Zappa show at the Theater and Madison Square Garden. I can't tell you what a thrill it was to hear Frank's music performed live by a band of capable musicians. Frank's music requires virtuosity, and Dweezil's crew of twentysomething monsters were nothing short of stellar. As an added bonus, Zappa alumni Napoleon Murphy Brock, Terry Bozzio and Steve Vai came out for several tunes.
Steve Vai and Dweezil. I have to say I was a little disappointed that the audience was not more higly populated by freaky freakies. Costumes were the exception and not the rule, sadly. I guess the majority of the crowd were too old to get weird. I suppose for people who want the vibe of one of Frank's annual NYC Halloween shows, there's always Burning Man.
Afterward, Tara and ventured down to the Village, where the freaky freakies were out in force. It was like Mardi Gras down there, or at least a house party with no roof. Plus cops. And confusion. We sequestered ourselves at the legendary John's Pizzeria on Bleecker to watch the world go by.
Wednesday, November 1
This was a personal day for me. Time to catch up with all my peoples. I met up with Arika at Chat n' Chew for a huge burger lunch with mashed potatoes. We walked aimlessly around town in search of something to do, went to the Container Store, and had the world's thickest hot chocolate from the City Bakery. It was like liquid chocolate mousse plus rocket fuel. We ventured back to her Brooklyn homestead.
Here were her family's Halloween costumes. They were the Brooklyn Tron family:
Copyright 2006 Antonio M. Rosario. Used without permission.
Arika's delightful 2 year old, Julian, can not only operate the camera phone, but also the stereo and CD player. He's insanely smart. His father is Chinese. That's all I'm saying. After that I got a call from Elizabeth and we went to a diner to hang out, back near Union Square where I met Arika. After that I spent some time shopping at the Going Out of Business Sale at Tower Records, where I bought way too much stuff before my rendezvous with my common-law stepsister Elizabeth (not to be confused with the Elizabeth from earlier). We had soup at Republic, also at Union Square right where we bumped into Tara and Joe by complete and utter random coincidence. New York is funky like that.
Oh and here's the cat from Shakespeare and Co. bookstore, where I picked up a copy of Jeanette Winterson's latest book, Weight:
