First Vacation

New York: First and Second Days

Lou, the New York Man, greets passengers at the 86th street Q stop. The weathered face of indifference. Neither welcoming nor scornful, pleased nor disappointed, hopeful nor pessimistic; behold the quintessential face of a New York denizen.

It’s half past noon on a Monday and I’ve just touched down at JFK. I’ve made this trip before so I know what’s coming. First I’ll deplane (fifteen minutes), then I’ll walk across the airport and follow the signs marked Ground Transportation (ten minutes). I’ll wave off gypsy cab operators who gouge tourists until I reach the taxi queue where I’ll wait in line for an attendant to assign me a car (five minutes). I’ll get in a cab and have to repeat my destination at least twice before ultimately punching it into the GPS for the driver myself and, even then, with a satellite image of the route projected onto his phone, I’ll still be asked which way I’d prefer to go. Whichever is quickest, I’ll say (forty five minutes.) Also seventy five dollars but I’m on my first ever adult solo vacation. I will do my best to ignore numbers with dollar signs until I’m back at the airport. God help me. I’ve returned to New York to be with friends, see good theater, raid the museums, eat too much, and attend a wedding. It is going to be a great week.

We must’ve already eaten here because we’re smiling.

I’ll be staying in an apartment I used to live in with my former roommate, Bryan, who continues to reside there with his wife, Victoria. After I moved out the two of them converted one of the bedrooms into a living room and have made the dining area into a quasi work-space. The breakfast nook is now well outfitted with a bounty of kitchen equipment reaped from B & V’s well curated wedding registry. The apartment that was once a bachelor pad consisting of the bare essentials and no guest accommodations is now properly furnished and joyfully decorated with pictures of friends & family. There’s a blow up mattress for me. The only thing that’s the same is the Q train which runs by every ten minutes two stories below the kitchen window. As Elwood said to Jake in his Chicago apartment next to the El, it goes by so often you won’t even notice it. This is a true New York apartment and my friends, true New Yorkers themselves, have built it out in their image and made it work.

Bryan also now has a car - luxury of luxuries - and we are able to meet Victoria for dinner at a reliable haunt, The Double Windsor. We eat steamed mussels, fried catfish, saucy wings, shoestring fries, and local beer. Bryan and I, still peckish, go in for a grilled cheese after all that but it may have been a bridge too far. Nevertheless, we find room. Catching up with friends is hungry work. We pay the bill and then go around the corner to get ice cream. It has been a good day.

Two good cooks live here.

The Peristyle. Built in 1905 by famed architecture firm McKim, Mead and White, this renaissance style structure provides shelter from inclement weather on the south side of Prospect Park. I’ve seen countless wedding photos being taken here while running by on the park loop.

Tuesday morning, revitalized after an early bedtime and a sound night’s rest, I mustered a jog around my old friend, Prospect Park. The lush, three mile loop wends through a half a dozen neighborhoods, goes by the Brooklyn Museum, the botanical garden, Grand Army Plaza, and if you get there early enough, you can see the dog owners exercising their labradors on the main lawn before off-leash hours end at nine. It’s a welcome sight and the perfect way to begin my first full day back in the city. Back at the apartment my hosts and I share a pot of coffee and quickly down a few hard boiled eggs before setting off to begin our respective days; Bryan to work, Victoria to jury duty, and me to a museum.

We’re just walking to the train, dude, don’t make a big deal about it.

My first subway ride in three years. It may lose its novelty by the end of the trip but now, after so long apart, it’s a thing of beauty.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art. First in class.

The first stop on my itinerary is America’s second most visited museum. (The National Gallery in DC slightly surpasses the Met in annual visitor count.) Not unlike the Louvre, it’s a sprawling complex that houses works from every corner of the globe and every period of human creativity. It’s a mammoth collection that no one person could possibly appreciate if they were given a month. I’ll tackle one exhibit at a time. First up: Van Gogh’s Cypresses.

Wheat Field with Cypresses; 1889.

After he cut off his ear in December of 1888 Vincent was checked into an asylum in Saint-Remy in the south of France. The grounds were parklike and verdant but he was kept inside for some time by the asylum doctors. He painted interiors and interpretations of other artists’ work. Eventually the asylum staff let him out onto the grounds where he was able to capture the surrounding countryside. It was here he would paint the famous Starry Night. Van Gogh would often repeat the same scene many times over. Starry Night, for instance, has over twenty variations. This mode of repetition was displayed well in the cypress exhibit. The above painting was made in June and the same image below was made three months later.

Note the heavy application of oil in the first version. I like to imagine the obsession of the man; revisiting, re-experiencing, re-articulating. He had to paint and he painted what he had.

The exhibit was well curated. It’s doubtful that Van Gogh thought of his work in specific terms like cypresses or wheat fields but it’s a clever bit of curation to highlight one recurring motif. He was nearing the end of his life when he made most of the paintings displayed here. Depression and psychosis had taken a firm hold of him by now. His brother, Theo, had a child and though this may have made Vincent a proud uncle, his obscurity as an artist persisted. It’s a famous bit of trivia that he only sold one painting while he was alive. That surely weighed heavily on his esteem. And yet he persisted. His continued output in the face of madness, destitution, and oblivion is a beacon for artists everywhere. Somehow, the great master continued to believe in himself.

The great breakthrough at the asylum was his use of a swirling texture. The voice of an artist is recognizable and unique. Many search for years in order to find their own method. At Saint-Remy, Van Gogh found his.

This Drawbridge from May of 1888 clearly demonstrates the shift in style between then and his time at the asylum. It’s a lovely piece but it doesn’t quite have the the whimsy of his later work.

From June of ‘89. I never realized that the dark, flamelike massif in the foreground of the painting were a pair of cypress trees. The whorls of caked on oil are mesmerizing. It’s famous for good reason.

Van Gogh’s dedication has no doubt been romanticized over the years. It’s a fantastic notion to picture an artist giving his or her life to their medium. I admire people who set aside ego, ambition and transient pleasure in the pursuit of a higher calling. It’s more than likely that kind of commitment will amount to nothing - it certainly didn’t bring Van Gogh any success while he was alive - but it is a noble calling. My admiration stops, however, when an artist’s sanity is put into peril. Good art is beautiful, meaningful and fun. It is a failing of humanity to let its most expressive people lose their wits in the pursuit of greatness. No one needs to die for their work. Living well is enough.

I left the Met feeling refreshed. My next stop would be in Union Square. I had a date with a man about to be married. Ray Huth was one of the first people I made friends with when I moved to New York in the Fall of ‘12. We did a show together and became immediate companions. Over the years I watched him toil away, indefatigably and without complaint, in the pursuit of acting work. He’s Van Gogh without the madness. While I am quick to despair and give up hope, Ray soldiered on. He took what was given and said thank you. His efforts have, at long last, been rewarded. He’s been cast in a career making role that I can’t specify here suffice it to say that the show involves percussion, movement, and a lot of blue paint. I have never been prouder of anyone than I am of my good friend Ray.

It’s important that everyone have a friend like me who’ll tell the waitstaff, “This guy’s about to get hitched!” so that cool shit like this happens.

The two of us did a bit of shopping for that evening’s dinner. We’d later meet Bryan at one of the best steakhouses in the city…

We ordered enough to make our waiter raise his eyebrows. He didn’t know who he was dealing with.

Phase I: Oysters, wedge salad, crab cocktail, slab bacon. Simple? Yes. But excellence needn’t be complicated.

The old school steakhouse used to be a gentleman’s smoking club. The wooden pipes were practically disposable and so the ceiling and walls are festooned with pipes used by the club’s famous patrons. Politicians, artists and notable dignitaries are represented throughout the restaurant by the pipes they used and discarded. Most famously, Keen’s has a framed playbill that is stained with blood. It is said to be the program Lincoln was holding when Booth murdered him. I find it hard to believe. I also didn’t get a good picture of it so you can make up your own mind as to its validity.

The program is in the bottom right. You can see the bloodstain slightly. Sorry I didn’t get a better image, we had had some scotch at this point.

Pipes on the ceiling. Pipes in the case. The lighting in the lobby didn’t shine on my face.

Entrees: Mutton, steak, mushrooms, creamed spinach, and mashed potatoes that have been charred on one side. Easily a top five lifetime meal.

The ice cream sundae. No frills. Just right. Ray considers abandoning all of his Earthly possessions and moving into the booth permanently.

We ate our weight in protein and butter and drank at least a cask of smokey Scottish aqua vitae. As far as bachelor party dinner’s go, there wasn’t much room for improvement. We collected ourselves and took a car to the second half of the evening.

One cigar a year is about my limit. I finally figured out that you’re not supposed to inhale. Note the lack of green in my face.

After a round of cigars we called it a night. It was the night of a lifetime and it’s going to be tough to top on this trip. We said our goodbyes and told Ray that he will make an excellent husband. I’m honored to be close enough to celebrate the occasion. Later that night, when Bryan and I made it back to the apartment, our noses painted red and our shirts engulfed in cigar fumes, Victoria ordered us to shower thoroughly and burn our clothes. We meekly obeyed.

Bon Voyage, Mr. Huth!

Thanks for reading, y’all. More on this trip to come. Happy fourth!