Hundreds Of Harleys

Saturday we went down to the Village for dinner and drinks and afterwards we hopped on the M20 bus to get back home via 8th Avenue. When we got off we turned onto West 53rd Street and were a bit startled to see a couple of rows of Harleys all parked neatly right on the sidewalk with only inches between them, almost nested like spoons. As we headed toward 7th Avenue we kept seeing more and more motorcycles parked and unattended. There were hundreds of them taking up the whole intersection. Sunday morning I Googled to find out what was going on. It turned out that that what we saw was just a small part of a huge group consisting of 1,000 cyclists riding to raise money for the families of the first responders to the 9/11 attacks. This is something that our Congress could not manage to do recently. Somehow setting aside money for this cause is not beyond politics. They start the ride in Pennsylvania then on to Washington DC and finally to Ground Zero in New York for a total of 455 miles stopping at each crash site. This is the tenth annual ride growing from 200 riders the first year. The group is called America’s 9/11 Foundation and you can go to their site if you want to help.

On Sunday they all gathered up for the final leg to the World Trade Center site. Unfortunately a group of 500 protesters chose to take advantage of the bikers’ schedule to gather at the same time to steal the spotlight away from a non-partisan positive cause to get attention for their cause of hate and bigotry. Yes, they were there to protest the building of the Muslim community center two blocks away disregarding the fact that Muslims also died in the World Trade Center and that there is already a long established mosque just four blocks away. To me this is not much different than the protests of the Westboro Baptist Church and disrespects the many Americans who have laid down their lives in the hopes of making things better in Muslim countries. I will never understand all this divisiveness.

It is funny to think of how the image of the biker has changed over the years from the violent gang thug Hell's Angels to the benevolent protector and doer of good deeds.

I was able to snap off a few pictures from our window in the morning before they quietly rumbled away in the rain.

Ray Wylie Hubbard

A couple of weeks ago we went to Ray Wylie Hubbard at Joe’s Pub in the East Village. Ray is far from a household name but he is one of my favorite artists. He is Oklahoma born and Texas raised and has the drawl to prove it which would lead most casual listeners to throw him in the Country Music category. But he is much more than that. His music is more rock, blues, and gospel than country. In fact his special blend of genres is nearly unique. He had put out a few releases in the 1970s garnering a small cult following mostly around Austin. Then his recorded output all but dried up until 1992 when he put out an album on his own. Since then he has been relatively prolific issuing ten CDs since and each album has been great. He doesn’t tour much outside of Texas, I only saw him once in Kansas City. So when we saw his date come up here we jumped on it even though the start time was 9:30 on a Tuesday night and going would involve a round trip cab ride as there is not a good bus option to get to this venue. Fortunately, his wife, Judy, put us on the guest list and that made up for the cost of the ride. We have been dealing directly with Ray and Judy off and on since the mid 1990’s stocking his self releases. The line up was Ray on acoustic guitar, and his 17 year old son, Lucas, on electric lead guitar, and a drummer whose name I missed, playing a small kit mostly with brushes and a variety of other small hand held rattles and odds and ends. Ray not only entertains with his music but his between song patter is just one hilarious laugh out loud anecdote after the other, most of it self deprecating and sometimes quite fantastic. He told of one encounter after a show when he was approached by a thirty-something fan who wanted to know how Ray managed to stay so committed to his music for so many years. Ray is in his early sixties. Ray proceeded to tell him how simple it was. All you have do is to ignore your momma when she encourages you to stay in school so in case the music thing doesn’t work out you will have something to fall back on. He also told of growing up and living at his grandma’s house. She was a psychic palm reader for extra money and had a creepy large red hand with weird zodiac symbols painted on the side of the house facing the nearby highway. They would stand outside when cars would approach and as his grandma watched them continue past without slowing down she would say, “I KNEW they weren’t going to stop”. If you ever get a chance to see Ray Wylie Hubbard you should go. You will have a great time even if you are not familiar with his music.

This was our second time at Joe’s Pub and I have decided this is my favorite venue. I haven’t been to all that many places here but this would be hard to beat. It is as intimate as a house concert with seating for only 160 and it has a couple of levels so there is no bad line of sight. We sat at the bar in the back on very comfortable barstools. Other seating on this second level was cushy barrel chairs and sofas. The lower level is all tables of different sizes which at worst puts you at the equivalent of the fourth or fifth row so no one is too far from the stage. This place also has the best sound I have ever encountered. You can truly enjoy the music clearly without your ears ringing the next day. It is part of The Public Theater complex which in addition to this venue includes five theaters for eclectic and avant garde stage presentations. This is where the musical Hair was debuted. The organization also operates the theater in Central Park where Shakespeare In The Park is performed. Definitely one of New York’s many assets.

Music In Manhattan

As you might expect the choices for music entertainment in New York are endless. There is simply not enough time or money to get to all the acts we would like to see. Here are some things we have seen recently and some that we are going to down the road and some that we missed out on.

A week ago we saw Raul Malo, not a household name, he better known as the lead singer in the Mavericks. We have not seen him since the mid-nineties with the Mavericks at a bar in Westport and we have never seen Malo as a solo artist. We had tickets for a show a couple of years ago but the show was cancelled at the last minute. His next stop in KC came the week after we moved away. When we got to NYC he was playing but it was when we were still at the hotel and we just had too much going on at that time. So, when we saw he had yet another date here we jumped on it, especially since he would be performing on one of the Circle Line cruise boats and a two hour evening tour of the Lower Manhattan Harbor was part of the “Rockin’ The River” package.

In my head I had an image of Malo serenading us under the starlit sky and the New York skyline behind him. However, when we boarded I could see that something totally different was going to play out. First there was no stage, just an area roped off with those ribbon and pole setups like you see in a bank queue. Within the roped off area were all the trappings of a full electric band. The band area was about midship and facing one side of the boat. Four or five feet in front of the band were three rows of twelve or so chairs and we were lucky enough to snag a pair. The rest of the chairs were lined up on either side of the band and practically none of them had any kind of line of sight. This was also a covered part of the boat with a seven foot ceiling.

The Circle Line oversold this as all the seats were filled and there was hardly room for the others to stand. We had a great view for about three songs or so and then a few people started dancing in front of us and then more and more until we couldn’t see past them any longer. I can’t blame them as they paid the same as we did and deserved to get to see it rather than just hear it. As that part of the boat became more and more compressed we wound our way out and down to the lower deck where we could still enjoy the music and get the cool breeze and take in the panoramic views of the Statue of Liberty on one side and Manhattan and bridges on the other.

Although the evening was not exactly like my vision we really did have a really good time. We managed to get in a good mix of concert and sight seeing. After the show ended Malo and the rest of the band came to the lower deck and took time to meet with everyone and sign autographs.

The next day we went to a free show at an outdoor venue at Lincoln Center as part of their “Out Of Doors” summer series. This was at the Damrosch Park Band Shell just west of Central Park. The venue was set up with 1,000 or so chairs fanning out from the stage. We opted to sit back beyond the seats in a treed plaza area away from the crowd. The weather was just perfect especially as the sun retreated behind the buildings. The evening’s program was the second part of “The Detroit Breakdown”, a day long program featuring music originating in Detroit from different eras and genres. We had never heard of the first two acts, Death, a punk band from the 70s sounding a bit like Iggy Pop, and the Gories, a pop band from the eighties that were a little like White Stripes. Next up was Question Mark and the Mysterians, known for the song and garage band classic, “96 Tears”. They actually managed a nice set despite the fact that they only had the one major hit a couple of minor hits to work with…they still had the great one left. The highlight was when they finally got to perform their hit and Ronnie Spector joined the band on stage unannounced. Closing out the show was Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels who had many hits to work with. He started off strong with many of his hits, Jenny Take A Ride, Sock It To Me Baby, and Little Latin Lupe Lu. However, he left the stage to the band for a planned break to rest his voice and the band carried on with some lackluster generic rock and even a drum solo. He still had yet to play Too Many Fish In The Sea and Devil With A Blue Dress/Good Golly Miss Molly but he was dragging the show out too long for us and we quietly slipped away back home.

96 Tears with Ronnie Spector's surprise appearance.

The upper plaza area at Lincoln Center

? and the Mysterians

Recently there have been a couple of shows we seriously considered going to but we didn’t for various reasons. One was Alejandro Escovedo at City Winery. He played just the day before Malo and it was a weeknight. I found out after the fact that Ian Hunter joined him on stage for the final song of his encore, a Mott The Hoople track, “I Wish I Was Your Mother”. Another was a few weeks ago at Radio City Music Hall where Ringo Starr was performing as well as celebrating his 70th birthday. And for his encore he was joined on stage by Paul McCartney. Of course that seems totally predictable in hindsight. Today there is a free concert on Governors Island and one of the acts is Steve Earle’s son, Justin Townes Earle. Steve lives in NYC now and it is hard for me to think he won’t be joining his son on stage for a song or two. We won’t be making it to this one either so we will wait to find out tomorrow if I am right.

So, looking to the future we are going to see Ray Wylie Hubbard on Tuesday at Joe’s Pub. In early September we plan to see Dave Alvin with Eilen Jewell opening at City Winery. Then we have tickets for September 25th to see The Fab Faux at Radio City Music Hall. Now this requires a little bit of explaining. They are, as the name may suggest, a Beatles tribute band. But they are not like others out there. They make no attempt to do impersonations or even dress like the Beatles. They are just about the music and replicating it perfectly. The only musician most would be familiar with is Will Lee who is part of the band on Late Show with David Letterman. Check the video and see/hear for yourself as they run through most of side two of Abbey Road without a break… essentially in one take. For the show we are attending they are performing a tribute to John Lennon for what would have been his seventieth birthday and will be playing his songs as a solo artist and with the Beatles. Normally I would not go in for a tribute band but this is different especially being in the city that Lennon loved so much. I have to think there will be a surprise guest or two. It is New York so we should be ready for anything.

There is something for every taste and budget here…from free buskers at Washington Square Park to the big names at Madison Square Garden.

Summer In The City

There hasn’t been anything too exciting to report in the last week or so, at least little to involve a posting. To prove my point I will bring you up to date day by day.

A week ago Sunday we went to the MoMA to see the newest exhibit, Matisse: Radical Invention 1913-1917. This was the final day of the private preview before it opens to the public. The rest of the exhibit has timed ticketing.

The next day was the Cowsills’ show as reported in my previous post.

Tuesday was the grand reopening of the Soup Kitchen International, renamed The Soup Man. This is the original soup take-out place that inspired the famous Seinfeld episode. They had closed this original location five years ago and for some reason it remained vacant until now. It is just around the corner and a beautiful day so I thought I would go over and observe. To my surprise there were only five or six people in line even though this had garnered tons of news coverage for the week prior. As it was nearly lunch time I thought I would go ahead and get some soup and surprise Toni. I took my spot and almost immediately a big line formed behind me. Then a few minutes later the media showed up in droves practically outnumbering the customers. Reggie Jackson was there acting as emcee for the opening and Meredith Vieira was spotted here and there. I was even interviewed by a radio station and a newspaper but to my knowledge none of my quotes surfaced anywhere. The storefront is just a counter about as wide as three people. There is no entrance, you essentially order from the street, pay, pick up and go. I got an extra large Turkey Chili and headed home. The soup’s reputation is totally deserved.

Wednesday we simply took a short walk through Central Park. We went as far as Bethesda Fountain and back, about a mile each way.

Thursday we went out for dinner at the French restaurant across the street, Maison. It was a beautiful evening so went for the sidewalk seating. We got our drinks and placed our orders and then we felt a couple of sprinkles and saw lightning. We didn’t feel like pushing our luck and ducked inside. As soon as we were reseated the downpour came in earnest. I only found out the next day that we were under a tornado watch. The weather has been unusual for New York. They have recorded the warmest June and July on record and three tornadoes in the area. It still averages about ten degrees cooler than Kansas City and much lower humidity. I don’t think New Yorkers would be able to handle the weather back home.

Friday there was a free Sheryl Crow concert at Central Park. I was all set to go but there were storm clouds threatening and I bailed out.

Saturday was perhaps the hottest day we have had here coming in at 100 degrees. With that in mind we opted for an indoor activity, the King Tut exhibit at a rather new museum in Times Square. These are timed tickets but we took our chances and were able to walk right in. We didn’t have the same luck when we tried to see the exhibit when it came through Chicago in the 1970s and got shut out. We had intended to catch a bus to the Village afterwards but Times Square is so crowded the bus stops are sometimes skipped if there is too much traffic and no relief in site. Our stop was blocked by a couple of hop on/hop off tour buses and with the heat we thought better and headed back home instead.

Sunday we went to a street fair one block over and found a wall hanging for one of our bare walls. We have been slow to get wall décor. We were so quick picking out our rather generic furniture and kitchenware but there is something more personal about what you put on your walls.

Later in the evening we went to Times Square with our friend, Liz, for the season premiere of Mad Men. It was actually a nice setup and was a little island of relative calm in the middle of all the teaming masses. There were a few thousand people there and many of them were dressed as characters from the show. In fact we got there just as they were finishing up with a look alike contest. The actresses who play Betty Draper and Peggy Olson made an appearance and then we all settled in for the show an hour earlier than the regular broadcast. It was a little like being at a Saturday matinee when you are a kid with the audience clapping when a favorite actor first appears. We had everything but the boos and hisses for villains.

Monday afternoon Toni went down to the corner to buy some fruit for the week. When she got there a line had formed and she knew it would take awhile and considered going to another cart a block away. That is when she noticed a crowd forming on 53rd St and Broadway. This is the street where David Letterman does his outdoor stunts. When she got there she saw Biff Henderson scurrying around. She heard something about Albert Pujols. Indeed, Albert was a guest on the show as was Denis Leary. They wound up having a little batting clinic with Leary pitching first to Letterman and then to Pujols.




Well, looking back at it I guess there is more going on than I realized.

The Cowsills

Monday evening I was wondering how I had wound up at B.B. Kings Blues club waiting for the Cowsills to come on stage. They were never on my radar growing up. I considered myself too sophisticated for Top 40 radio by the time they became popular and I never owned any of their records, heck, I never even knew anybody who did. But over the years the youngest sibling, Susan, stayed in the music business after her first career ended at the age of twelve. She would pop up from time to time on albums I owned singing backup vocals and associating with artists I truly enjoyed, Dwight Twilley, Peter Holsapple, Smithereens, Carlene Carter, and formed the Continental Drifters with members of several bands that I followed. More recently she has had a couple of solo albums that I have truly enjoyed. She has been touring to support her latest release but I was unprepared to see a tour as the Cowsills in the middle of her own tour. I tossed it out there as a suggestion to Toni fully expecting it to be rejected but she jumped on it. Of course, after I bought the tickets she asked me, “Now why are we going to this?”

We met up with our new friend, Liz, at the show. She asked me if I was excited about the show. I didn’t really know how to answer except that I simply didn’t know what to expect. I mean the group only had four hits. How would they possibly fill up their time slot? Well, we would have to wait just a bit longer for the answer as there was an opening act. The Funky Knights are a five piece band that originally played clubs around New York in the eighties and early nineties. Unfortunately they have recently reformed and we were subjected to something that I won’t even try to describe. For the morbidly curious feel free to check youtube for these guys. We alternated between jaw drops and laughing out loud through their thankfully short set.

Finally the Cowsills, Susan, Paul, and Bob, came out with a full band and jumped right in with a perfect version of Monday, Monday, the Mamas and Papas hit and a song I never tire of. I was hooked from the get go. They alternated their hits with covers which included Be My Baby (Ronettes), The Boxer (Simon & Garfunkel), Helplessly Hoping (Crosby Stills and Nash). They also did an acoustic mini set of folk songs made famous by Peter, Paul, & Mary, If I Had A Hammer, Puff The Magic Dragon, and another one that escapes me at the moment. None of these are songs to tackle for someone who is not seriously at the top of their game. I can honestly say they were spot on, never missing a note or straining. Plus they have that magic gift of harmonies that only siblings can achieve, like the Everly Brothers, The Beach Boys, The Jackson Five and others.

Only a third into their set they played one of their biggest hits, The Rain, The Park And Other Things best known for the refrain, “I love the flower girl”. They sounded as if they hadn’t aged a day since it was recorded. Later when they performed Indian Lake it struck me how much those two songs sounded like the Beach Boys. It should be no surprise that one of the absent brothers, John, is the drummer for the latest incarnation of the Beach Boys.

Also, they were quite entertaining with their between songs banter and jokes, teasing each other as siblings do and telling the stories of their careers including the unexpected back to back losses of two brothers, Barry and Bill, one in Hurricane Katrina and the other to health issues only weeks later. They even managed to convey these tragedies with a lighthearted levity that did not bring the room down. They also told how the family was approached to be in a sitcom and when it was turned down by the group the TV producers turned right around and created the Partridge Family instead even using some of the same team that worked with the Cowsills. And as turnabout is fair play they sang “I Think I Love You”, the hit for David Cassidy.

The funny man of the group was brother, Paul, who cracked the most jokes with just a touch of Paul Lynde silliness that kept the audience laughing. Susan sang a few tracks from her solo album and brought out her daughter, Miranda, to sing a moving duet. In fact, the family aspect has continued with Susan’s husband on drums, one of the nephews plays keyboards, and for the finale of “Hair” they brought Miranda back out along with yet another nephew.

After the show the Cowsills stayed in the lobby and signed whatever anyone brought along and stayed and chatted until everyone got their turn. I think the group had as much fun as anyone in the audience. There were no more questions about why we went.

The Neighborhood

There really isn’t much to report this week, mostly just working and errands and dealing with day to day issues that come up regardless where you live. We did squeeze in an hour walk through parts of Central Park, parts that we hadn’t seen before. There are so many meandering paths there I don’t think I will ever get it memorized. We also found another “keeper” restaurant called Hummus Kitchen that we liked enough to prompt Toni to write a review at Yelp. I have to agree with her.

Saturday we went to the American Folk Art Museum. This is a rather small museum right next to the MoMA that is really easy to miss as it has a rather small “store front” that almost looks like it is a side door to the MoMA. We were there specifically to the see the Henry Darger exhibit which runs through September 19th. We learned about Darger from a documentary several years ago. He lived a reclusive life in a one room apartment in Chicago where compulsively created art and wrote fantasy stories on an old typewriter. He worked as a janitor and had no friends. His creations were not known until after he died in 1973 and his apartment was being cleaned out. They found hundreds of works of art and several books he had written, one book was over 15,000 pages typed and single spaced. He is probably the best known of the so-called outsider artist world, that is artists who have created a large body of quality work without any formal art training, totally self taught.

For dinner that evening we went to Maison. This is a French restaurant right across from our apartment on Seventh Avenue. I have been reluctant to try it as we have not had the best experiences with the eateries right in our neighborhood. We are right in the midst of several large hotels and I think with all the built in traffic they aren’t worried about locals and repeat business. But Maison had just set up a rather large outdoor seating area a week before and the weather was so perfect we just could not resist. We got a great table where we could see Times Square down the street. I got a poached chicken crepe and Toni ordered a ratatouille crepe. Mine was so good that I was tempted to lick the plate. The kicker is this place is open twenty-four hours a day!! A great French restaurant that is never closed. We will be back.

Sunday was a pretty lazy day. In the afternoon Toni went off for a manicure/pedicure and I headed the other way for a quick stop at Home Depot. It was getting late and I hadn’t had lunch yet so I intended to grab something quick from the cart just outside our entrance. However, by the time I got to the street I promptly forgot all about it and turned the opposite direction and I was three blocks away by the time I remembered. I didn’t really feel like taking the time to stop at a restaurant, hmmm…. Then suddenly I saw that Madison Avenue was closed off for yet another street festival. I had no clue what the occasion was but there were blocks and blocks of booths and a fourth of them were all food. Saved. I was bad and got an Italian sausage sandwich that was smothered in grilled onions. It was delicious with just enough kick to keep it interesting. My mouth is watering again as I type this.

On Monday Toni had a late afternoon dentist appointment. The office is just a couple of blocks away, a short walk. On her way back she came down 53rd Street which happens to be the location of David Letterman’s stage door. She saw a gaggle of photographers and went up to see who their target was. It turned out to be Kyra Sedgwick, the star of “The Closer”. When she got home to tell me about she was all in a dither. The strange coincidence is that our first celebrity sighting when we were still in the hotel was an actor from the ensemble cast of this same show.

Fireworks Over The Hudson

We did not forget all about the Fourth of July. It is nearly impossible to forget when Macy’s, the sponsor for 34 years, has a full page color ad in every issue of the New York Times.

I sometimes wonder what it is that seems to fascinate us all with fireworks. Is it some primal thing that goes back to early tribes huddling around a campfire as logs popped and orange sparks spray up into the dark sky? Did some ancient Chinese chemist discover the effect could be enhanced with more colors by sprinkling different chemical compounds over the flame? Whatever it is most of us seem to be attracted to the colorful displays just as moths are drawn to a flame.

One of the great events at Lake Quivira is the annual fireworks displays from the dam. For twenty-two years we never had to think of where to be to get our fix. It was right in our back yard. Last year we opted for the view from our loft’s deck which paid off nicely as we were able to watch hundreds of displays from 180 degrees around for hours.

In New York we didn’t have to decide which display to watch as there is only one, but it is a killer. They have the launch sites all stationed on the west side along the Hudson River. There are six barges equally spaced from around 54th Street all the way down to 23rd Street and each of the locations have identical synchronized programs going simultaneously . The display lasts about a half hour during which they go through 40,000 explosives. This is a bit shy of the record 66,326 but a big display all the same.

We still had to decide where we wanted to go to view the spectacular. We didn’t know whether to head toward the river and deal with the crowds (Justin Bieber was performing somewhere over there) or to just go to our rooftop and deal with a limited view. We were weighing our options nearly up to starting time but we finally went with the rooftop. I think we would have been happy either way. Anyway, it turns out that the best vantage point is not even in Manhattan but across the river in New Jersey where you can take in the whole scene from lots of places.

I have embedded a nice video taken from the Jersey side showing the last seven minutes of the show. I recommend you view it in full screen mode (go to this LINK at youtube and click on the button with four arrows).

If you want to experience it like we did simply take your left hand and block half of one display and take your right hand and block half of the display next to it. This is a rough approximation of our view between the buildings. It was not perfect but our primal needs have been met for another year.