New York City trip

Linda and I went to NYC yesterday. This was our annual gallery crawl trip that we normally do in September, but had to delay due to conflicting travel schedules.

Cold day, but beautiful. Bus dropped us on 34th street across from Macy's, so we walked over to 8th Ave to get the subway down to 23rd. The block between 10th and 11th Aves is full of neat galleries - mainly 23rd through 25th Streets. Great fun! Lots of photography. Saw the Life Magazine show - great classic images. Also saw the Timothy Greenfield-Sanders show of 11x14" portraints of porn stars - wow! I want to do some LF portraiture. I can't see myself with an 11x14", but a 4x5" camera should producing some amazing work. Ruth Bernhard nudes at Sarah Morthland gallery.

Also saw some freaky non-photographic stuff. The paintings and drawings were great, but some of the mixed media constructions suggested that the artists had issues.

The trick to these trips is homework - go to the Photography in New York web site and download the current show directory. Then, visit each of the gallery sites to get an idea of the major galleries to hit. Finally, walk down the street and duck into any gallery that strikes your fancy.

Lunch at Chelsea Square Restaurant - ordered broiled flounder and they brought a whole fish - enormous meal! Then took the subway to 53rd street/5th Ave to do some shopping. That was a mistake! The sidewalks were so crowded that you couldn't move. Got into Crate and Barrell (hint: they have clean bathrooms!), and then to the Rizzoli bookstore on 57th Street. Finally, walked back to Rockefeller Center to see the Christmas Tree (a mob scene), and then meet our bus.

Major problem on the return bus. The driver told us to meet her on 51st Street between 5th and 6Aves. Unfortunately, NYPD wouldn't let her make the turn onto 51st. Street. So we were standing in the cold while she was circling trying to find a way to get to 51st. street. Eventually, we were able to make contact with her by cell phone and arranged to meet her on 6th Ave. That's fine, except that there were nine people who didn't get that message, and the cops wouldn't let her stand at the sidewalk to wait for them. So she decided to take another spin "around the block". Good news was that the missing folks were found by another driver from the bus company, so we were able to arrange for a place to meet them. Bad news was that the traffic was awful, and it took an hour and a half to get "around the block". On top of that, as the driver was turning off of Park Ave onto 51st she hit a parked car (illegally parked, naturally), so dealing with that added more time to the problem. And one of the missing folks was diabetic and had left her insulin on the bus. But eventually we were able to get through the Lincoln Tunnel at about the time we were supposed to have been arriving in Albany, and got home around midnight.