Richard Thompson at Carnegie Hall

There is a really old joke about Carnegie Hall. The story goes that a pedestrian on Fifty-seventh Street, Manhattan, stopped Jascha Heifetz and inquired, "Could you tell me how to get to Carnegie Hall?" "Yes," said Heifetz. "Practice!” In our case we have had loads of practice getting to Carnegie Hall as we went right by it every time we went to Central Park. Our practice paid off a few weeks ago when we finally were able to go to a show there. We enjoyed a solo concert given by Richard Thompson. He is hardly a household name but he is one of the most respected musicians and songwriters among his peers. He actually appeared in the smaller 600 seat Zankel Hall. It is a beautiful state of the art facility that was renovated a few years ago.

Thompson did not disappoint…playing songs spanning his long career. He took a few requests and even got into some joking sparring with some of the audience and mocking his tendency to write dark and sometimes even gruesome lyrics.

1) I Misunderstood

2) Withered & Died

3) The Turning Of The Tide

4) The Money Shuffle

5) The Woods Of Darney

6) She Twists The Knife Again

7) Sunset Song

8) 1952 Vincent Black Lightning

9) Stumble On

10) Hamlet Song

11) Persuasion

12) Crawl Back Under My Stone

13) Bee’s Wing (request #1)

14) Cold Kisses

15) I Feel So Good

encore:

16) Matty Groves (request #2)

My only favorite that was missed was his often covered, “Wall of Death”. You may be familiar with Nanci Griffith's or R.E.M’s versions. This was easily one of the best shows we have seen in NYC. Since it will probably be our last one here it was a great way to finish.

Eighteenth Visitors

Toni writes today: On St. Patrick’s Day, Sam and Kellie Dworkin arrived in NYC for five days. They stayed in the East Village with Sam’s cousin, Liz Dworkin, the real estate agent who was nice enough to give us our apartment hunting 101 crash course when we arrived here last April. We have known Sam since our school days in Overland Park, Kansas, and then we met Kellie when Sam started dating her back in 1980 when we used to frequent the Downliner and Parody Hall. Through the years our careers and families have not let us spend as much time as we have wanted to spend with them, so their New York vacation was the perfect time to catch up and recapture some of our fun glory days with them.

On St. Patty’s Sam and Kellie arrived at our apartment where we all enjoyed a take out lunch of corned beef sandwiches and matzo ball soup from Carnegie Deli. Then we walked down to the parade on 5th Avenue and viewed it for a few minutes. Next we walked down 5th Avenue into Central Park stopping at the Mall, Bethesda Fountain, the Boathouse, Strawberry Fields, and the Dakota. We took a snack break at a deli/diner as we walked south from 72nd Street down Columbus Avenue. Fortified once more we walked down to Times Square, Rockefeller Center, and back to our corner at 53rd and 7th Avenue. We met up with cousin Lizzy and her son (also named Sam) at our favorite neighborhood restaurant Maison for a wonderful 3 course dinner. It was a great day filled with food, drink, and many of the icons of the city.

The next day we met them at Washington Square Park for the requisite “Village Crawl”. First stop was Fat Cat for a game of Scrabble, then cheap drinks at the Cubby Hole, and round the corner to the back room lounge at Art Bar. Then a southern style BBQ dinner at Bone Lick. After our late dining I became the lightweight (so much for glory days), got in a cab, stumbled up to my bed, and slept for the next nine hours. The rest of the gang soldiered on to Marie’s Crisis Café to enjoy the piano bar. Unfortunately, we were only able to spend these two days of their vacation with them, as we had to finish our preparations for our two week stay in Toronto starting on Monday.

On Saturday the Dworkins went to the Tenement Museum and the Folk Art Museum, and then afterwards they stopped by our place for a view from our rooftop and good-byes. That night they were able to attend a Peter Case concert in the Lower East Side close to Liz’s apartment and we attended the Richard Thompson show at Carnegie Hall in our neighborhood.

We miss these great friends and hope they decide to be our house guests in Toronto in the next year or two. As evidenced by this writing, you can see they really know how to pack a lot of fun into life! For more photos go HERE.

Baker's Dozen

Yesterday marked the one year anniversary of our landing at Laguardia Airport. As it turns out our lease is not up until the end of April so you will be getting a little bonus on our blog. As I write we are actually in Toronto securing our next home and setting up things for that move. We sign the lease on Thursday and we will be sharing all that with you soon.

In the meantime, I have some New York posts to get caught up on and April looks to be very busy for us too.

West Side Stories

Toni writes today:

Act One

Last April we had completed one of our marathon shopping trips to finish furnishing our apartment at the Harold Square Macy’s. We were famished so we proceeded to the nearest restaurant, The Tick Tock Diner. As we were reviewing the menu I could not help but notice the couple in the booth behind and across from Bill. The man and woman were in their late twenties. He resembled a younger version of Steve Buscemi and she looked similar to Katie Holmes. They were engaged in a deep conversation which proceeded to gradually increase in volume. After a couple minutes I could hear every word the man was saying, mostly spouting out about his insecurities. I concluded that I was overhearing their “break-up”. As I tried to concentrate on the menu, they got louder and I told myself to hell with their privacy and perked my ears feline-style. I looked over my menu, kicked Bill under the table and gestured with my rolling eyes to open his ears to what we going on out of his sight. Bill only responded with, “What, what??”, but at this point the fun turned serious. Buscemi-face was practically shouting how he was going to do away with himself, and of course I jumped to the conclusion he was going to do it here and now, and take us all down with him. I was about to tell Bill out loud to duck and cover, when suddenly I noticed the couple sat back and relaxed with smiles on their faces. She said, “I think we got it now; that was great” as they both pulled out copies of scripts.

Act Two

It was a beautiful afternoon in June as I walked towards home on 8th Avenue from 57th Street. As I approached 56th Street I saw a man and woman emerge from one of the nicer Italian restaurants. They were in their mid-70s and dressed expensively (Trump-style). She was yelling at him as he checked his cell phone. My first thought was to avoid her unpleasant shrill voice and their slow pace so I wound around them and thought that I had left them behind. I got caught at a light and there they were right behind me again. At this point I could hear that the conversation was about infidelity. Now, I could have decided to cross the avenue, but my curiosity got the better of me so I stood pat enabling me to hear the drama unfold without being detected. This was better than watching the soaps or “The Insider”. Two blocks later they were still right behind me and I had been exposed to every cuss word known to man, concluding with, “Did you F*** her, you actually F***ed her….????? The accusations were met with another shrug as he continued to stare at his cell phone. They turned west and I turned east, never to know if they were married and heading to a costly divorce or seniors with dating issues. If we had all gone the same direction I might have eventually learned that they too were rehearsing for acting roles.

Act Three

Winter was finally starting to show signs of spring. I trekked back from produce shopping at Stiles with a full backpack. My route took me straight through the middle of the Theatre District. As I neared the backstage door to one of the theatres it suddenly burst open. From about fifteen feet away, I saw a beautiful, sprite-like girl run from the door and leap up onto her boyfriend, grabbed him around the neck and wrapped her legs around his waist. She must have been a dancer since no matter how young or thin I ever was I could have never have pulled off a move like that especially on the street and with such grace. I got a little closer and I heard her exclaiming, “I got the part! I got the part!” They kissed, then she leapt down and they strolled off toward me hand in hand. I took it as a lucky omen to witness such a joyful moment.

Maybe these occurrences are unique to New York because of all the “show people” that inhabit it. Perhaps they occur daily in every city but go unseen or unnoticed.

Lucinda Williams In The East Village

Saturday evening we headed down to the East Village to Webster Hall to catch the Lucinda Williams show. It seems that all of the shows are in the East Village and yet nearly every time to go to one it is a venue we haven’t been to before. Webster Hall is pretty interesting. It was built in the 1880s and is supposed to be the first nightclub in the US. It looks to me as if it has had minimal remodeling over the decades. The few updates have been on the surface, literally. They have added electricity, water sprinklers, speakers, and spotlights over the years but nothing has been installed behind the walls or hidden in the ceiling. Instead they ran layers of conduit and pipes on the outside of the walls and facades or even punched holes in the ceiling making all these improvements visible.

The posted time for the show was misleading and was actually the time for the doors to open so we wound up getting there a couple of hours earlier than we needed to. Toni decided she was not going to be able to wait until after the show to eat so she headed across the street to a place we had been to before, The Village Pour House. I wasn’t hungry so I decided to wait at the bar at the hall. She told me if I changed my mind I could meet her. When we were last at the restaurant in December we learned that this is the official watering hole for the local KU alumni to hang out. As fate would have it Toni had timed it perfectly to show at their door for the middle of the final game of the Big 12 Tournament. She wound up having Thai at the restaurant next door instead.

We found out that the venue was set up for standing only, no seats. However, one of the bouncers rounded up a chair for me and set us up just in front of the soundboard. This guy looked like he was wearing football shoulder pads. No exaggeration, he had to turn sideways to walk through doorways.

Lucinda’s show was good, not great. Pretty much the same formula for her live shows the last couple of times I saw her. Started out with semi-acoustic slower numbers and gradually kept notching up the tempo and volume until by the end she was rocking it out and shaking the rafters. The new material sounded OK but there was probably nothing there that will replace her older songs in the long run. You can check the song list below. After the show we were just waiting around for the others to clear out when our friend the bouncer came up to us and gave me the guitarist’s playlist complete with his notes of what guitar to use for each song and what chords to play. FWIW they did stray from the setlist as there was one song added for the finale. Lucinda is known for very little stage patter and simply introduces each song with, “This song is called ‘Sweet Old World’ “, or whatever. But for the last song of the evening she went on for some time about the state of the world and politics before the house lights came on and she launched into Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” (Hey, hey, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going down).

The audience roared and jumped right in singing the entire song with her.

Seventeenth Visitor

Toni writes today:

Late afternoon Tuesday, we had an enjoyable visit at our place with Alan, my brother-in-law who has been married to my sister Connie for forty-four years. He was in town for the day from Toronto to attend a working luncheon for his role as an alumni committee member from the Williams College class of 1961 located in Massachusetts. After his swanky private club luncheon at 65th and 5th he walked to our apartment as he is quite familiar with the city. Connie and Alan met each other while living in Manhattan in the middle 1960s eventually marrying and living here until moving to Canada.

We had not seen him since he and Connie stayed with us at our loft in Kansas City in June of 2009 for Connie’s 50th high school reunion at Paseo. We spent a couple of hours talking about all sorts of things: The Williams College 50th class reunion coming this June, writing, life in NYC, and life in Toronto. Alan and Connie have lived in Toronto since 1969 except for a few years in the 1980s when they resided in Halifax and Bridgewater, Nova Scotia. Like us, they emigrated to Canada from NYC. It’s funny to think about my migration pattern mirroring that of my sister’s years earlier: starting from Kansas City, then to NYC, and on to Toronto. It will be the first time in fifty-one years my sister and I have lived in the same city (I’ve been encouraged to blog about that). Alan is a retired city planner and planning consultant who now enjoys writing for a hobby. He is on his seventh novel, and has written a mountain of political commentary articles over many years. He is what most of us call, “scary smart” and luckily most of the time we are all on the same page with our opinions. Sometimes I think he thinks it would be more fun if we weren’t as he is a debater extraordinaire. After we have settled in Toronto awhile he is encouraging us to write about the differences, similarities, pros and cons of U.S. and Canadian health care systems. I am pretty motivated to do this since one of my passions is myth-busting, and Alan would be a willing critic and mentor. I walked with Alan to the Newark airport bus stop located across the street from Bryant Park. What made this fun was I got a city planner’s lesson from him. He talked of things like how the street signs were different in Toronto, how terraces on skyscrapers help lessen wind shear, and food cart licensing. I left him at the bus stop and as I was headed into the subway I realized it was the first time in my life after a visit with him I said, “See you Monday evening”, instead of “Goodbye”. .

ourweekinkc

Whew! We got back from our trip to Kansas City and we were exhausted. We want to thank all of you who hosted us here and there and took time to meet with us at places and times that I am sure were not terribly convenient for you. Of course most of you know that our visit had a very sad part with my step-mother, Mary, passing. Thank you for the condolences. She left us way too quickly and way too young.

As we near our anniversary of being in New York City we are firming up plans for our next year which will be in Toronto. We thought it would be easier to get in a KC visit before rather than after the next move. We are sorry that we could not manage getting around to seeing everyone we hold dearly and that we did not get to spend more time with those we did see. We are grateful to have all of you in our lives and also grateful that we are able to stay in touch electronically today.

We plan to be living in Toronto by the end of April. In the meantime stay tuned for a flurry of more posts here as we aren’t done with Manhattan by a long stretch. Thanks for all the kind words about our blog and the encouragement to start another one in Toronto. We will be happy to report what we encounter there as well and hope to have just as many visitors in the coming year.

Photos:
RecordBar
Family Party
Happy Hour
BBQ
Brothers
Quivira