BROADWAY BITES AND STRING LIGHTS

LIGHTING THE OUTDOOR EVENING MEAL

The pale green and orange chairs now litter Greeley Square as pigeons strut between the tables and under foot picking up bits of dropped Fire Belly Korean BBQ and Red Hook Lobster.

Urbanspaces has lined the square with shack after shack of food vendors for their Broadway Bites event selling tastings smeared on crepes or wrapped in seaweed and rice.

The atmosphere is a melting pot of languages stirred in with a menu filled with ethnic food choices. All of this is available in an outdoor setting rich in culture and diversity. The lanes between the tables and booths are filled with young local shop workers, down-and-outs made to feel a bit normal given a place at a table or tourists feeling as if they've discovered a New York surprise.

The flow of people is endless making the people watching as entertaining as the foods being grilled, baked and scooped from under the makeshift tin roofs of the vending booths.

The menus are so appealing I've now come for the third time since I've been back in New York.

I've tried a kale salad,

Asian cimi balls

and the best dreamsicle snow cone I've ever had.

Tonight it's going to be fish and chips,

or maybe a grilled cheese and truffle sandwich with a cool ginger beer

and a seat on one of those celadon chairs where I can watch the world walk by in al its diverse shapes and voices,

even if the voices are ones I'd wish were whispered rather than screamed













STRING LIGHTS

Eating al fresco is more a European tradition than an American one but we're catching on. Ordinances against outdoor dining have fallen off the books in most American cities or put on the same page with laws requiring hands free cellphones to be used while driving or no sodas sold in containers larger than eight ounces. Those restrictions seem to have fallen on the law book page that now read ignore by the enforcers.

There's something so celebratory about outdoor dining under the stars with strings of little lights swaying overhead.

The small Tuscan towns we've loved to venture to have draped their restaurant gardens with these sparks of romanticism. It's such a small gesture but the effect is magical.

The lights in Greeley Square are no different zigzaging overhead adding an artificial star cover to a city whose lightshow burns out the heavenly stars.

Although the outdoor dining is just as wonderful for lunch, it's the evening dining that brings out the best of the Square.

We've taken the look and brought it back to our backyard in Madison and our daughter has taken full advantage.

There's a weekly bonfire with friends where bootlegged beer is hidden in red solo cups and marshmallows are skewered and roasted over the fire for smores.

THE GALLERY

Trattoria L'ingrasciata, 1961
Enzo Sellerio, photographer
Represented by Eric Franck Fine Art

KIPS BAY DECORATOR SHOW HOUSE 2015

A SHORT TOUR

This year is the forty-third anniversary of the Kips Bay Boys and Girls Club Designer Show House. For all of you familiar with the Show House you know it's really the "Decorator" Show House but I'm too much of a snob to use the lower case "D" word. One hundred percent of the participants are designers and deserve the more accurate title. For these participating designers the goal is charity the hope is recognition and a bit of praise. Every time we attend I'm in awe of the effort and commitment of each and every designer. First, the invitation to participate is not a ticket you can purchase. Invitations are only given out through a strict vetting process. You really have to earn your right to build a dream room in a Kips Bay Show House. Then there's the financial commitment required by each participating designer. Each year the chosen venue has its pluses and minuses. Some are in fairly good condition with a bit of original detail for the designers to build around. Others are completely empty boxes where the designer is starting from scratch or even less than scratch. There's a clause in all the contracts that states the designers need to leave their space in the exact same condition it was in before they started their installation unless the buildings owner asks that the installation remain. Take a look at all the custom work that goes into these rooms and then remember that every piece of molding, every wall covering and even every floor board has to be torn out at the end of the show. There's usually a lottery system for assigning the rooms with some senior and celebrity designers given first choice and then newer participants assigned by numbers pulled out of a hat. This lottery takes place about a month, maybe six weeks, before the opening reception of the finished rooms. That's at best forty-two days after the lottery and the designers first peek at their space to come up with a concept, implement a design on paper and then executing the design by begging for as many industry favors as they've accumulated over their careers. For the newer players that can mean going to the bank and borrowing a wheel-barrow of moolah or cashing in their first born in exchange for this priceless opportunity. All you have to do is look at the final rooms with a calculator in hand and begin assessing the accumulated valur and you'll see what I mean. You may not love every room you see but if you take into mind what went in to each room and the sacrifices each designer had to make it makes appreciating the effort all the easier. You can then top that off with the thousands of kids who through Kips Bay Boys and Girls Club add their gratitude and thanks for what the Show House's revenue provides for them.

This year's Show House is located in the Arthur Sachs Mansion at 58 East 66th Street originally built in 1877 as a rather plan structure. It's a twenty-foot wide five-story residence. It wasn't until after Central Park was completed that the Upper Eastside became a popular neighborhood for the wealthy. In 1908 financier Arthur Sachs of Goldman, Sachs & Co. purchased the building and had it redesigned by architects Buchman & Fox in its current Beaux-Arts style.

This year's designers have transformed the interior into a veritable history lesson in interior design genres starting with the first floor kitchen designed by the perennial participant and board trustee, Christopher Peacock. In the kitchen Peacock's transitional aesthetic is punctuated by a live-edge prep and eating island.

The room extends almost half the length of the entire floor and ends leading out into a tropical backyard garden.

In the garden palms in terra cotta pots along with purple petunias and a suspended chaise decked out in purple accessories complement the matching elements from nature that make the garden into a very modern spot for relaxation.

Perhaps the grandest and most dramatic space is the second floor dining room designed by Los Angeles designer, Mark D. Sikes. Done in red the room's padded fabric walls are segmented by red lacquered frames and moldings surrounding textile paisleys and contrasting large and small check fabrics.

The effect of all this pattern and fabric is like looking inside a Fabrege egg.

A huge crystal chandelier hovers over the dining room table its baubles and jewels reflecting sparks of light throughout the room. It is the quintessence of traditional Park Avenue chic.

There's a small powder room to the front of the dining room designed by Gail Green that has a wall and floor tile covered in Keith Haring interlocking little men crawling around this very sexy, minimalistic bathroom. The accents of red add a touch of Japanese asymmetricality to the design.

Alexandra Branca divides her time between her native Rome, New York, and Chicago. Her designs are impeccable traditional spaces but always with a twist.

Her direction at the Kips Bay Show House was to tint her design with touches drawn from the Chinese handbook of accessorizing.

One of the most serene spaces was a bedroom created by another Los Angeles designer, David Phoenix. A draped queen size bed set against a two-tone plaid fabric wall dominated the room.

Opposite the bed was a fireplace flanked by bookcases with black painted interiors.

There was a manly feel to the room. It was a room not meant for fireworks but for calm contemplation.

This year's design committee was headed by the New York designer, Charles Pavarini III. His room had a very eighties feel with its gold encrusted floor to ceiling fireplace and separate bar with swirls of blues, and reds, and purples.

Charles used a Midas wand on the suite taking us back to time Wall Street was king. I kept looking for Truman Capote to waltz in a flaming cigarette in hand.

Even the South was represented at the show house this year with Cathy Kincaid, a Dallas based designer, who charmed the crowds with her country estate inspired bedroom. A four poster ivory and ebony bed with Hepplewhite accents scattered about the room and faux animal heads on the wall gave the feel of being transported to horse country or the grounds of an English manor where you'd just be rising to the sound of the horn announcing the beginning of the hunt.

It was on the top floor that designer Alan Tanksley decided to install his garret getaway. He had painted a New York rooftop scene on the slanted wall with the arched cutouts framing the view looking out over 66th Street.

Architectural artifacts and two enormous ceramic antlered animal heads decorated his bungalow in the sky.

There were treasures left out of this tour only to entice you to make the journey to see what I haven't shown and to drop your price of entry into the kitty that supports a very worthy cause.



THE GALLERY

Petit Chateau, William K. Vanderbilt Mansion, 1897
B.J. Falk, photographer
Available through the Library of Congress

BAR SARDINE NYC AND MADISON MAKES IT ON AARP

ONE MORE WISCO RESTAURANT OFF THE LIST

We are now closing in on finishing our list of all the Little Wisco restaurants and this time it wasn't only the food and ambiance but one invited guest and a surprise encounter that made lunch totally memorable. I'll get to the food and ambiance later but first to the surprises. We have been having a real streak of both planned and unexpected encounters with our past during this last week in New York City. It was design week and the design intercessors were out in full force making novenas and sending out karmic messages to a host of lost friends. We slid into old friendships the way you'd pull on a favorite well-worn sweater, with total comfort and ease.

Elana Frankel was one of the first in the publishing industry to champion our furniture and design work. With all the social media out there we cast out our line and hauled her in. We're realizing Facebook does have certain potential. We first met Elana when she was in her twenties and today she still looks like she's in her twenties. This was no surprise. She hadn't gained a single wrinkle or lost a bubble of her effervescent personality during our hiatus. She is currently the senior director of photography and style at One Kings Lane and rules over a company that has grown to over five hundred employees. Adding to this managerial feat is an additional list of accomplishments and credentials that include raising two boys under the age of ten, dealing with a husband too gorgeous to live, making a home fashioned out of an old Methodist church and collecting eggs from a henhouse full of chickens. I may be too tired to go on.

We coaxed her out of her work routine and into meeting us for lunch at Bar Sardine, the fourth jewel in our Little Wisco necklace. The Bar along with several of its sister restaurants sits in the Village on the picturesque corner of West Tenth and West Fourth Streets. It was a warm Friday after a not so warm Thursday. A counter runs along the outside walls of the restaurant with huge windows looking on to the street. The bar management had unlatched the windows allowing the big glass panes to swing completely open and a light spring breeze to blow in the perfect day. The three of us fell into one of those patterns reserved for friendships that are not run by the clock. We took the first ten minutes to catch up on old times and friends we were convinced had aged way more than we had and then spent the ensuing two hours gabbing and gasping about everything new between grabbed bites of what was a pretty spectacular meal.

The waitress, a beautiful brunette with the right amount of Euro sophistication sans any pretensions, had to come several times to take our drink order before we were able to focus on anything more than each other's company. We finally put the decision in her hands and had her concoct something fizzy and refreshing that would taste like spring. She succeeded to the point we all had more than one, a blend of pineapple juice, ginger beer and finished with a squeeze of lime.

After we settled down to the point where we could look at the menu we decided the best course of action was to share several different dishes, our own little Wisco tasting. We were all hoping for sardines but they hadn't made it to the menu. There's a restaurant in Madison that goes by a similar name although they dropped the "Bar" from their name and simple settled on Sardine. Emmy, Rick and I had gone there the week before for Rick's birthday and the same fate befell us. They had been known for their fried sardines but we couldn't find it on the menu. Apparently there's a shortage of sardines due to a collapse of the sardine population off the U.S. west coast. All sardine fishing for the 2015 season has been suspended. So no sardines at either place.

Instead we went for a variety of snacks and small plates. We were not disappointed. The first thing our Irish waitress brought to the table was a plate of octopus hushpuppies served with a mustard cream dipping sauce and a wedge of lemon. The only problem with this was there were three of us and they brought four balls of deep fried ecstasy. They're impossible to cut apart. Rick and I showed our chivalry and let the lady have the extra puppy.

Next on our tasting journey was a salad of mushrooms, spicy greens, and pecorino topped with a slow-cooked egg. The waitress brought it to our counter at the perfect time while the egg was still warm. When you broke the yoke it very slowly oozed out perfectly coating the mushrooms and greens adding just the right amount of warmth to the spring inspired salad.

At about this time a bearded man wearing a rackish hat stopped by making sure we were enjoying our meal. He introduced himself as Gabriel. He was the surprise.  Gabriel Stulman is the owner and creator of all the Little Wisco restaurants. This led to the discussion of our quest to hit them all and how we have loved every one so far. When we hit our first three Wisco restaurants we were met with the same refrain, "You just missed Gabriel, he was here five minutes ago". This time we caught him.

Our last plate was a local burrata served with a walnut pesto and sorrel on grilled bread points. Burrata is a tough cheese to get just right. If it's not brought out young enough it can have a skin that is too thick. This burrata was perfect.
Elana and I had no pride or qualms about ordering a dessert. We both went right for it while the svelte Mr. Rick held back. I can't pass up a sweet and apparently neither can Elana. We wouldn't even share. We each got our chocolate pot-de-crème topped with whipped cream and an aerated caramel sponge candy that tasted like toasted marshmallow. A little secret; it's not on the menu you have to ask.
We all had meetings to go to or I think we might have stayed right through dinner. The corner seats at the counter looking out onto West Tenth Street, the perfect food and drink, and most importantly reconnecting with Elana were difficult to part with, but this parting was clearly only temporary on all accounts.

MADISON TOPS THE OVER 50's

It's as if we have a divining rod when it comes to real estate. We can't attribute our luck in home location to any kind of planned research. We just seem to have a nose for were to plant our roots and water our family's time on this planet. AARP has a newsletter. We received our first copy this month. Why after years of eligibility they should finally find us out I'm not sure. The lead story was, "Where to Live @50+". It peaked my curiosity. I'm always interested in these best of best articles.

I turned to the page with the heading, "Best Livable Places at 50+". They'd broken it down into sections: large cities, medium cities, small cities and neighborhoods. I started at the top and worked my way down. It was great to see Milwaukee with a number four ranking in large cities. They were all done in top tens.

It was even better when I saw Madison as number one in medium cities, 100,000 to 500,000 populations. I started to think it was a regional pot they were pulling from but then I saw places in New Mexico and California. Wisconsin started looking pretty good. I decided either they hadn't know about Scott Walker or politics weren't a part of the equation.

Small towns started off with La Crosse but then Fitchburg was second and Sun Prairie was fourth, these two Madison suburbs made the list and caused me a WTF reaction.

But it was the last category; Best Neighborhood that made me wet my pants. The number one neighborhood: Mifflin West in Madison, Wisconsin and number two: The Upper West Side in Manhattan. Where do we live: close enough to Mifflin (it is where we had our store) to claim it as our own and where is our little one-bedroom: on the Upper West Side of Manhattan of course. We didn't write this article. We don't have a working relationship with the AARP editorial staff. We're just that lucky.

THE GALLERY

Copper Shark in the Red Eye Bait Ball
Alexander Safonov, photographer