I Can’t Give You Anything But Love…

May 29, 2014 at 1:47 pm

…baby.

I went to the Broadway musical “After Midnight” last night and was it good! Music of Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, the ’20s – ’30s era of great music at The Cotton Club in Harlem. The play opened with a guy stepping on to the stage and talking…and it struck me that this was so REAL…no special effects, nothing digital, just real human beings. Not a YouTube video. Rare in this electronic age.

   It’s just a spectacular show, old school all the way. If you could time-transport it to the ’30s, the audience of those times would love it. Wonderful singing and dancing, non-stop, it’s hard to believe the collection of talent here, the great songs. “Stormy Weather,” “It Don’t Mean A Thing, “Come Fly Away.” There were times during the dance numbers when the collective audience would gasp.

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You Can Take the Boy Out of the City…

May 26, 2014 at 2:55 pm

OK, those of you weary of my over-enthusiasm, or in general, averse to superlatives: skip the following.

   There is no city in the known universe that comes close to NYC. I’m staying in a small hotel in the old Village and right now having a latte and superlative breakfast wrap (eggs, cheese, sausage) in what is — yes, sorry about this — the coolest cafe I’ve ever been in. Grounded at 26 Jane Street, a couple of blocks from the hotel. Good colors, good Feng-shui (light pours in from street and skylight), greenery abounds, v. hip music, fast wi-fi, half the people here are on Mac laptops, everyone looks cool. No flakes.

   The hotel is in a 160-year-old building. I get to my 3rd-floor room up a steep flight of narrow steps (any steeper, it’d be a ladder). There are old nice quilts on the 2 beds. The windows open (unlike new hotels, where you are cut off from fresh air). Feels sort of like being in the attic of an old farm house. Traffic on street below, but it’s not bad, and dies down at night.

   NYC is in one of it’s very good moods. Weather balmy, fresh breezes off rivers, the sidewalk restaurants are full. When she’s good, she’s very, very good…

    There’s something very intimate about dining out here; you’re so close to people — you hear everything they say. I often end up in conversations with other diners.

   I’ve got a lot of good photos. Trouble is, it takes a lot of time to process and get them out there.

Deja vu factor. In 1957 I spent the summer living in a $60-per-week room on Morton Street (1st trip to NYC),  working the 4PM to midnight shift in a Durkee shredded coconut factory in Queens…another story…

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