Waltzing Matilda

Posted on March 18, 2014 by TheFitzyreport

There is not a billabong or coolibah tree within cooee, but waltzing matilda has brought a flowering of antipodean beauty to New York City. While the much anticipated Conservatory Gardens is still in bud, Park Avenue is blooming with new sculptures for the summer. The work is from artist Alice Aycock, an artist with a bounty of self expression. In these sculptures she suggests ‘waves, wind turbulence…and vortexes of energy.’ While I can see a connection in the work to the Opera House and white sails on blue ocean, I don’t know that she has been to Australia and would like to believe there is another reason to call this piece ‘Waltzing Matilda’. Alice talks about the sculptures representing ‘the metaphoric visual residue of the energy of New York City’. Perhaps she has seen us on our bikes these past weeks flashing up Park Avenue looking for glimpses of Spring….

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Diners and dining

Posted on March 13, 2014 by TheFitzyreport

The Lexington Candy Shop Luncheonette looks like the real thing. Coca cola bottles collected from around the world have been filling the windows since 1925. The menu looks very much the same as it did then, and the staff happily follow suit. Chrome stools line the counter inside and classic booths complete the picture of Happy Days. You half expect to find Fonzie combing his oily slick-back as he walks out of the bathroom. In fact the place hasn’t been renovated since Mr Winkler was born. Which made it a perfect location in Three Days of the Condor, when Robert Redford raced out to get breakfast for his work colleagues and came back to find them all dead…

By complete contrast the Parma in Mulberry Street is a modern diner, dressed with a younger crowd and serving American Italian food. There is not a coke in sight, although Brooklyn beers and pinot grigio continue an old ethnic alliance. Chicken parma is the house favorite – breaded chicken with cheese and tomato sauce – with neapolitan ice-cream ( and sprinkles ) to follow. The food is more suited to Hangover part 6 than a Robert Redford classic, and the dudes that are regulars there would be proud. But for atmosphere I would take the luncheonette any day – who needs to eat when you’re expecting Fonzie…

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Men in Black

Posted on March 12, 2014 by TheFitzyreport

The mass gathering of people of distinctive color and race is not unusual in any big city. Santa Com makes everyone see red at Christmas time, just as all New Yorkers claim to be Irish when NYC turns green for Saint Patricks Day. But the anticipation of these events makes them somehow predictable and unsurprising. Unlike the event that Sean and I encountered last Sunday while taking a sunny ride downtown…

NYC is home to the largest Jewish community outside Israel, and the involvement of Hasidic Jews in the business of the city is part of the everyday. But last weekend, there was something more going on. Streaming past the now unoccupied Occupy Wall Street headquarters, men in black coats, black shoes, black hats and black looks were moving en masse. First a few, then more, many many more. Cars and buses filled with monotone men poured their passengers into the throng marching swiftly and silently across Broadway and beyond. There were no signs, no indications of industry, and scarcely any sound. Just an urgency and an undertaking.

Clearly this was not a belated march for International Women’s Day. There were some women in the crowd, but they were separate and silent. Shades of black but not a curl between them. Meanwhile the men murmured. They stood in front of walls, rocking and praying. Others flowed further to the hub of the hoards, where we could hear a voice theatrically crying and chanting though a loudspeaker. Little boys, fathers and grandfathers, rocked and prayed in a hive of sameness.

According to the lieutenant on duty with his boys in blue, Israel was in the process of passing a law making it compulsory for all Jews to be conscripted into the army. Previously clerics had been exempt, and so the Hasidics were sending a message of protest. This was one big demonstration. The top cop was not phased, he was a Viet Vet and a veteran of New York unorthodoxy. So a few thousand peaceful demonstrators was a cinch. At least in part.  ‘Just don’t tell me you’re looking for a man in a black coat and a black hat…’

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Lenten Labyrinth

Posted on March 9, 2014 by TheFitzyreport

In Churches all over the city on Wednesday, the beginning of Lent was marked by signs and symbols of public devotion. As a child this was always a time of conflicting angst and anticipation, as the bleak significance of 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness was offset by the reward of Easter Sunday with all it’s bounty. This year, St Paul’s Chapel is providing a thoughtful Lenten activity for those who have travelled to NYC and are interested to journey a little further.

The chapel has replicated a labyrinth embedded in the stone entrance of an old cathedral in Chartres, France, laying out the same puzzle with perhaps the same invitation. With the pews removed, the chapel is like a grand reception hall, open to people from around the world – many who are visiting NYC for the first time. On each Sunday during lent, everyone is invited to walk the labyrinth and to reflect on the pilgrimage of their life.

The Chapel, being part of Trinity Church, is a New York City landmark. Anyone who has seen photographs of 9/11 will have seen the magnificent spires of the church rising perfectly intact above the destruction, and it’s historic graveyard covered in debris. Fireman and police collapsed with exhaustion in the church pews, and souls from much earlier times, disturbed of their rest in the yard, were also brought inside. As a result, in the course of negotiating the maze today I was able to share a moment with David McKean who in 1795 was lost to the world ‘in the midst of his usefulness’. Fantastic. Maybe at the time he was leading others through a similar labyrinth, enabling the transformational experience eventually penned by T S Eliot, where we can ‘arrive where we started and know the place for the first time’…

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Oskas

Posted on March 3, 2014 by TheFitzyreport

What an excellent outcome for outstanding storytelling, with 12 Years a Slave and La Grande Bellezza bringing home the gold. It gives us all hope for the stories we have brewing for the big screen, and curiosity for those that charm us in the everyday. This Polish superintendent is weeks away from retirement, and after the boiler not working for the past freezing week – much to the vocal discomfort of the tenants – is off to join his long lost cousins on the beach in Australia…

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Pay to Play

Posted on February 27, 2014 by TheFitzyreport

There is an arc of light under the Grand Central clock on 42nd and Park that has been illuminating interesting and unexpected activities for decades. In the 50’s it was Walter Cronkite recording headlines for CBS, in the 60’s it was a 65 foot astroturf ski slope built by a Hungarian immigrant, and for a while after that it was the playground of more wayward turf when in the hands of Mr Trump. But these days the capacious cavern has become home to the most well placed tennis court in the city.

The Vanderbilt tennis club has public courts so anyone can play. Even Serena Williams. Apparently she was a regular during the last US Open, warming up for the next win. You just need to book in advance and be prepared to pay between $80 and $250 per hour depending on the time of day. ( Racquets are an extra $10 each…) The space may be a long way from Cockaleechie, and there are sounds of girls rather than galahs, but the sheer inspiration of the location with that iconic arched window, makes it a great spot for a few hits. You can even pump and spin from an overviewing gym level if you want to warm up and watch.

Grand Central is like a magic box, full of surprises. Original elevators transport you between the tracks and the concourse and the court, with the arrow pointing the way. But you may also find the doors opening to a restaurant or to the new bar spilling out from the Campbell Apartment, or even to the train driver’s lunch room on the fifth floor. Just be sure to read the signs – Mr Cronkite’s sharpie is still on the job…

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BB or Bust. Or both.

Posted on February 23, 2014 by TheFitzyreport

Breads Bakery is still the best in the city. When the Danish Israeli partnership opened their doors on 16th Street 12 months ago, flat whites arrived in NYC with a bang, coffee and croissants had a new currency, and american coffee with half and half was officially off the center podium. This was the pre-cronut era, but while the deep-fried fad flourished and faded, BB’s added layer upon layer of allure. First there were the cheese straws and the chocolate almond pastries, then sesame encrusted bready pretzels. Then the chocolate babka, that made you feel like you had died and gone to heaven. But that was before yesterday. Now we have the brûlée Danish, and even for an avowed custard cringer, this is a pastry to be coveted.

With the melting of the snow, a new crop of coffee shops is springing up around town providing the chance of new discoveries to share. From what I have found so far of the gimmes and cafe gimmicks, there is little to report… There has to be exceptional coffee and cake! But the search continues, the bike is getting a work out and the diet is on the back burner until Spring…

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Why Children’s Books Matter

Posted on February 16, 2014 by TheFitzyreport

The exquisite exhibition celebrating children’s literature at the New York Public Library is the cause of many excited cries from the young and the older lovers of classic tales. Curated with the joy of storytelling itself, the exhibition displays not only books, but original illustrations, actual manuscripts and the inspiration behind many of our favorite characters. The Wild Things, Pooh Bear and all the gorgeous irreverence of Dr Zeuss take center stage. There is the wooden doll which served as a model for Mary Poppins ( although perhaps not for Julie Andrews! ), the original manuscript from The Secret Garden, illustrations from The Wizard of Oz and the drawings of Little Toot, as watercolorist Hardie Gramatky doodled and daydreamed in his studio looking out over the East River.

The stories behind the stories are always the best, like discovering that The Wonderful Wizard of Oz grew out of a father’s desire to distract and entertain his children ( which took him from a door-to-door salesman to a Broadway legend ), or that Frances Hodgson Burnett wanted more happiness in the world, so wrote A Secret Garden as a premise for hope – ‘When you have a garden, you have a future’….

One of the most loved residents of the Library, Winnie the Pooh – the original Pooh Bear and a present from the author’s publisher to the library, was on display with Eeyore and Piglet. In the midst of the much loved toys was a photograph of A. A. Milne with his son, the boy that inspired Christopher Robin. A woman stood in front of the cabinet in misty disbelief that she was looking at the real thing. Perhaps her father – like mine – had made up magical stories for her that were better than any others, they were the gift of imagination, and she still believed that ‘in that enchanted place on the top of the forest a little boy and his bear will always be playing…’ 

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From our back door…

Posted on February 13, 2014 by TheFitzyreport

Happy Valentine’s Day – this one is for the bears…!

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I can jump puddles

Posted on February 8, 2014 by TheFitzyreport

It has been a week of picture perfect snow, sunshine and then enough rain to wash poor wincey out. The watery effect on the eight inches of snow was to turn NYC streets into a sea of slippery slushy ice. So the challenge was not only to gear up with warm layers, coat, scarf, hat, gloves, umbrella and wellies, but to stay upright and then arrive at the destination without getting completely drenched. But my delight at donning rubber boots and playing in the puddles, was as nothing compared to the revenge of the big guys. Hundreds of garbage trucks, typically slaves to stopping and starting their way through the back streets, suddenly had the right of way. Fitted at the front with giant ploughs, they were like speed boats, creating waves of water as they surged through the slush. I couldn’t sacrifice my suit for the shot but standing back on the sidewalk dreamt of Spring instead. With all this water, it’s going to be spectacular – we’ll soon be sunning as we climb the spout again…

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