Burlaki [back] on the Hudson

On a nowadays rare workday spent in Manhattan, I had a chance to stroll through Bryant Park in New York Midtown. Around lunchtime, it held a City Library-sponsored book reading in one corner and a musical performance in another. Some people played ping-pong, while others idly lounged around.

In yet another corner, there was an impromptu juggling center. One guy juggled tennis balls, two more guys practiced juggling clubs, but the center was taken up by a group of four people who toss-juggled clubs in a square-and-diagonals pattern. They weren’t exceptionally good, but they kept trying over and over again.

I had a hard time catching them in a nice shot, and did not really succeed. But one detail can be rather clearly seen in this shot. Two of the four were dressed in an office attire, marking them as office-dwellers who came out to play during lunch. I found the concept of going for a juggling exercise during lunch fascinating.
 

New York City & Environs, Pictures

This weekend, chauffeuring our guests around Brooklyn, I found myself for the first time in ages on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. In our early days in America, my Mom said on occasion that the view of Manhattan from there is worth coming to New York City all by itself. It is definitely one of my most favorite viewpoints in the world.
 

 
Don’t forget to click on the picture for a larger view.

New York City & Environs, Pictures

I wonder how many Parisians visit Louvre more than once in their adult lives, if ever. Or Londoners National Gallery. Or Madrileños Prado. Outside of a small group of art students and fanatical art lovers, I doubt that the majority of local population ever finds time in their busy daily routines to come in and admire the magnificent collections in their top museums.

I’ve lived in or around New York City for nearly two decades (with the obvious notable interruption of three recent years). During the first months of immigration, I visited Metropolitan Museum of Art at least half a dozen times. And yet, the last time I’ve set foot there was probably sometime in 1992.

On Sunday, having left the children in the care of willing grandparents, Natasha and I went for a day in the City. The main aim of the outing was to get together with our cousins who reside in Manhattan and whom we see much too infrequently. But when we were contemplating our specific plans for the day, Natasha had a brilliant idea: Why not spend a couple of hours at the Metropolitan before proceeding to our usual combo of food, drinks and catching up.

I don’t offer any resistance when a trip to an art museum becomes a possibility. And I’ve long felt a tinge of embarrassment that I had visited many of the Old World’s foremost art collections in the last 7-8 years, but neglected the one in my own backyard for so long. It was high time to rectify that.

We started with the respectable Impressionist collection, headlined by several wonderful Monets and Renoirs, but also including works by Van Gogh, Signac, Manet, Degas, Gauguin, Seurat, Cézanne. We then proceeded to earlier centuries, to Caravaggio and Rembrandt, Titian and Goya, Rubens and Ruisdael, van Dyck and Lorraine, Vermeer and Tintoretto, and scores of others. There is only one Canaletto in the collection, but several Guardis, which do just as nicely.

We also visited the Musical Instruments rooms and walked through the Greek Sculpture section and the Middle East art section.

I do not feel knowledgeable enough to lend an opinion on whether the Metropolitan can fully compete with Louvre or Hermitage on the strength of its art collection, but there is little doubt that said collection belongs to the top tier in the Western World. We probably covered less than 5% of what is on display at the museum. We were very much impressed by what we saw, having forgotten how good the Met’s collection was after all those years.

The Metropolitan is one of two museums in New York City that work on “suggested” admission-fee basis, i.e. you can enter it virtually for free even though there is a posted “recommended” adult admission price of $20. And here is what I find weird. In London, many major museums have free admissions and they are truly “free” – you walk in and simply proceed to the exhibits that interest you (except for “special” exhibitions, which carry a separate admission price). Each exit at such museums is adorned with a large donations box, and after a pleasant visit, you can’t help it but feel compelled to put some money in.

The Metropolitan works differently. You have to get a ticket. You come to the ticket desk, tell the person who sits behind it how many of you are there, and hear her respond with the total, “Eighty dollars”. You feel that you are entitled to pay less, and yet are confronted with the embarrassment of having to actually transact with someone who will know that you paid less. I am no psychologist, but I am pretty sure that most people would view themselves as not donating under these circumstances but rather as falling prey to extortion. I suspect that a fair share of people feel sufficiently embarrassed and pressured in this situation to fork over the full suggested amount (to say nothing of people who possess neither enough English skills nor the advance knowledge of the museum to realize what “recommended” admission price means), even though they are completely within their rights to pay next to nothing for entry. Quite possibly, this helps to at least partially cover for all of those visitors who pay no heed to the unspoken shaming and give the person at the ticket desk just a dollar or two. She will still welcome them to the museum and give them the bright lapel pins that perform the function of tickets…

Anyway. After having fed our inner art lovers for a couple of hours, we moved to another part of Manhattan, for a nice repast at an Italian bistro in SoHo. A couple of years ago in London, such trips combining a museum visit and a great meal out were a staple of our weekend routine. It was nice to recapture the feeling a little bit in New York City.

I wonder if I will have the same positive impression of the Hermitage when I finally decide to visit St Petersburg. The last time I visited was in 1990…

New York City & Environs

I am starting to dislike Manhattan just a bit again. The main reason is this:
 

 
The damn thing stands practically in front of the building where I work, and is surrounded by so many gawkers that it makes it a challenge to get through, especially at the end of day. And overall, during the winter holidays, New York City is too overrun by tourists for my taste. Hooray for being able to occasionally telecommute!

On the plus side, we could see the whole tree lighting show from our office windows last week. It made for a nice little office party, attended by several families. Brian has a photo report on what we saw.

New York City & Environs

One of the few fun things about working in NYC’s Rockefeller Center – there are many negative counterweights to it, trust me! – is the various fairs regularly held here. One day they display a fleet of historic fire engines and then torch an old car and demonstrate proper firefighting techniques on that as part of some Fire Safety Awareness deal. The other day it is on to interactive winter sports games to publicize Olympic Team USA. And so on.

To say nothing of a couple-of-times-a-week market during the summer.

One of these recently-held fairs revolved around cranberry. I did not bother to get into details of the occasion, but it lasted a couple of days, with long lines to the couple of points where cranberry-based products were sold – or, maybe, given away. Must have been some publicity event for Ocean Spray.

The centerpiece of the occasion was this large cranberry bog. I ended up taking a picture that did not feature a human in it, so you’ll have to believe me that it’s almost knee-deep. The machine in the corner does point to that.
 

New York City & Environs, Pictures

I’ve taken this picture a while ago, on one of the first days of resuming my Manhattan working life. There is nothing expressly special about it. I just happen to like the wide expanse of New York’s 6th Avenue above 42nd Street.
 

New York City & Environs, Pictures

Maybe I’ve become more attuned to noticing them in the past few years or possibly they simply were not here in my previous New York City life, but I keep coming across pretty cool modern buildings in Midtown that I don’t recall seeing before our expatriate period.

Such as this Westin Hotel on the corner of 8th Avenue and 43rd Street.
 

 
By the way, Hugin Panorama Tools Front-end rulez like no other. Half a dozen clicks was all I needed, with no manual adjustments.

New York City & Environs, Pictures

I lately find myself party to occasions where my friends – who share the same background with me and, like me, deeply loath socialism in its most manifestations – lament the approach of the end of the world as we know it on account of current administration’s proposed policies.

From where I stand, socialism has long been here in the States.

At least, if you go by the ornamentation on a building near where I work.
 

 
Bonus points if you know where the title comes from.

New York City & Environs, Pictures

I recognized in the last couple of weeks that I very much enjoy walking the streets of New York City. Even such tourist-infested locations as Times Square.
 

  

New York City & Environs, Pictures