This is the view from my window on the 16th floor of The Bentley, the cheapest boutique hotel I could find this weekend in New York:
I'm slightly above eye-level with the 59th street bridge, which, only 2 blocks away, looks close enough to step out onto. The 59th street exit and entry ramps onto JFK drive loop down beyond the lower left-hand corner of my window frame. There's a concrete terrace off the highway with a few pale blue benches around the edge of it, and some twisted aluminum racks that look like broken pieces of a miniature rollercoaster suspended over it, forming a kind of gazebo-roof. This appears to serve as a dog run - I see seven people in there with New York dogs (2 poodles, a cocker spaniel, a pug, a boston terrier, a boxer, one beige mutt ). One of the poodle-owners is in green hospital wear, a doctor on break.
On the concrete bib between the 59th street off ramp and York Ave. is a combination playground, basketball court and tennis court with a flag pole and a little green wooden toilet hut. Across the street, nestled under the bridge like a giant cocoon, is an indoor tennis court in one of those white plastic tent bubbles.
I can count 45 buildings over 20 stories high within my field of vision, on the Manhattan side of the river along, and the only empty spaces I see are construction sites. I hear they are building condos in Time Square now.
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I had dinner with my friend Noah last night. He offered me two options: "Judeo-Latin brasserie" or "Nouveau Lobster Rolls." The latter, he claimed, are the latest big thing in Manhattan cuisine. Nouveau Lobster rolls?? I said. What's next, gourmet Philly Cheesesteaks? He said, no, those came and went 5 months ago. Apparently there were about 10 places we could have gone for lobster rolls, but we chose a joint called Black Pearl, which was a little kitchen in the back of a dive bar in the east village. Black Pearl's rolls were indistinguishable from any I've had at beachside seafood shacks in Maine, apart from the fact that they cost $20 and could be eaten while watching a homeless guy in a plastic shower cap dancing on Avenue A in the rain.
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In Nolita, one of downtown's most illustrious invented acronymborhoods, I came upon the following 5 institutions within a 3 block area:
Bread (a restaurant)
Rice (a restaurant)
Rice Pudding (a take-out place serving only variations on the eponymous dessert)
Shoe (a shoe store)
Bag (a bag store)
Is this a failure of imagination, a tongue-in-cheek elevation of the no-name-brand to urban chic, or some kind of anti-commercial statement?
I wonder how far this trend could fly. Perhaps a hipster-oriented firm called Law? A funeral home called Dead?
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As I'm crossing 57th street and Park ave this morning, a Rasta bike courier in knit Jamaican color Rasta hat gets cut off by a cabbie. Rasta shouts over his shoulder "ILLEGAL FUCKING IMMIGRANT!"