Another Steep View
Panoramas, restaurants, vertigo
I haven’t seen the Caspar David Friedrich show at the Met (I heard the paintings seem small), but I did go to a PR activation in the penthouse of a residential building Annabelle Selldorf designed. One Domino Square (next to the Domino Sugar Factory) is that pair of white towers at the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge. The cocktail was timed for a 5:30 sunset in the middle of February. Cater-waiters hung focaccia bread from a display rack of bronze S-hooks in the kitchen. A woman near the hanging bread who seemed vaguely in charge was gossiping about having seen Woody Allen with Alec Baldwin at Minetta Tavern the night before. It always feels like I’ve made an error in judgement when people whose job it is to promote an event can’t hide that they’re truly baffled why you’re there. I hope I’ve set the scene enough to explain why (it was mostly real estate agents). But we’d come for the view and the view was unreal.
Like, it actually didn’t feel real. It also didn’t seem predictably fake because it didn’t look like any postcard of New York. It was a composite of landmarks seen for my first time in a single panorama, and some of them at disorienting perspective and scale. Left to right: Staten Island, Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn. It was a steep look down at the Williamsburg Bridge and East River.
(A few weeks later, at the opening party for Jeanne Gang’s new office, I got another steep view. Looking out over Century 21 and buses passing by below, Jeanne explained to Michael and me that such views are rare because the Equitable Building, where we stood, lacks setbacks, and when it was completed in 1915, how it blocked sunlight from reaching the streets below sparked regulations requiring tall buildings to incorporate setbacks. The stepped profiles that define the New York skyline are a direct result.)
On the terrace at One Domino, Amber mentioned jumping. I don’t want to put words in her mouth. I can’t remember what she said exactly. Like she couldn’t help but not think of it. Or if she saw this everyday, then she would. The choppy waves below did have a pull. I don’t know if there’s a more expensive view in the city. Or one with more vertigo. I couldn’t imagine living here and not feeling tragically glamorous and depressed. The funny thing is nothing looked very impressive in any of the pics I took.
A few days later I went to the View, the revolving restaurant that had just reopened that week on the 48th floor of the Marriott Marquis in Times Square. It’s a 1980s hotel designed by John Portman, who’s also responsible for the Bonaventure in LA (see the cover of the PIN–UP sun issue or the shootout with Clint Eastwood In The Line of Fire). Like at Domino, the view here seemed impossible to instagram, everything dark with a red exit sign reflected too many times in the curved glass.
Colin and I had Katz Deli-themed martinis with pickle juice and pastrami spices which I 10/10 recommend. There was live piano. Colin left to meet someone else for dinner but I stayed by myself until I completed a full spin. The service felt almost midwestern, or like I was on an airplane. I want to go back.
Last week I went to Peoples which has taken over where Spain once was on 13th. I’d never heard of it, but Nancy who lives in LA had been told to check it out. The exterior’s not drawing attention to itself: black awning, no sign. I think you need a reservation. Despite the soulless swank of the new décor, the room is still cavernous and homey, and I like that the burger seems inspired by a Big Mac (flat patty, shredded lettuce, sesame bun).
Still my favorite burger in the city is Corner Bistro. Isaiah and I met Lynne there last Sunday and learned the salad is not worth trying.
Drew and I went to Funny Bar. It was my second time having dinner there, but the first time where I had to pay. I like that you don’t need a reservation and you won’t have to wait. The bill, though, was more than I wanted it to be.
I flew to Oslo for the book fair, Fashion Printed Matter(s). It’s organized by the International Library of Fashion Research, an archive Elise By Olsen co-founded, which is housed in the Norwegian national museum. Please come if you live in Oslo (I wonder if anyone who reads this lives in Oslo). I’m giving a talk on Saturday from 4 to 4:30pm and at a table all weekend. Then I’m going to LA for another book fair, a big cattle call-type industry convention called AWP (the Association of Writers & Writing Programs), which switches cities every year. I’m also doing a talk with Kim Hastreiter about her book STUFF on Thursday the 27th while I’m there, (3051 Rosslyn St, doors 7pm, rsvp@subrosaunlimited.com). I’m back to NYC for the Performance Space New York gala (for which there’s merch to make it accessible to support).
The ceasefire’s violation came a couple days after the 22nd anniversary of Rachel Corrie’s killing. If you’ve never read the email she sent to her mother on February 27, 2003 you should.
