A Year In New York

Recently I headed to Williamsburg in Brooklyn to see an exhibit by Joe Mangrum, an artist friend who creates fantastic visions from everyday things. He and I moved from San Francisco about the same time.
Joe unlocked the door of Chi Contemporary Fine Art and showed me around just after the place closed for the night. [...]

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In March the Union Square farmer’s market is a meager proposition: onions, potatoes, and some apples. I spent a more fruitful time having a guy write me a poem.
“What do you want your poem to be about?” Benyomin Spaner asked.

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My friend Jen is visiting from Amsterdam to debut her erotic film, and yesterday we made a visit to the Guggenheim. We lingered at “The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia” exhibit. This piece in the lobby summed it up neatly. Listen up, everyone! Ice is melting.

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As a Californian used to spending lots of time with trees, especially pine trees, New York City can be a barren place. These East Coast maples and elms have lost all their leaves. If it’s a pine smell you want, hail a taxi that has a tree-shaped air freshener dangling from the rear-view mirror.
Or you [...]

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The holiday season has been too a-bustle for me to blog about every store window that has turned my head. Now, two days before Christmas, allow me to present the best of the best: the display at the Bergdorf Goodman store on Fifth Avenue.
The designers ditched the egg nog and cherubic children — yawn — [...]

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I spied this among the garbage cans on 47th Street today and took it as a sign that the recession has hit home for New Yorkers. Or perhaps it’s meant as inspirational art. For goldfish.
Or maybe it means something entirely different. What do you think?

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I made my first visit to the Bowery neighborhood to explore the New Museum of Contemporary Art. The New Museum launched in 1977 as an upstart to the MOMA, or Museum of Modern Art, which opened in 1928 and was no longer so modern. In 2020, New York will celebrate the grand opening of MOFFAT/N/SO [...]

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Last night I made my first trip under the East River to Williamsburg, a refuge for the quirky-arty types who have been priced out of Manhattan. The crowd on the L train was young, I noted. Brooklyn girls wear strong, floral perfume.

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The New York subway has 468 stations, and that’s a lot of walls to cover. A few stops have tilework that’s worthy of a museum.
Seen more that I shouldn’t miss? Tell me where to look!

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With food shortages popping up around the planet, I’ve been drawn to visit the art museum known as P.S. 1, which this summer has built a rural farm right in the middle of Queens.
The exhibit, called Public Farm 1, occupies the courtyard and is composed of cardboard cylinders planted with 51 varieties of edible veggies [...]

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