36 Hours In Zagreb, Croatia

Image by Suradnik13 via Wikipedia

I have only been to Zagreb, Croatia once, and that was way back in 1975—or was it 1976? It was so long ago that today I have trouble remembering exactly when. Anyway, at the time, I and a friend were two-thirds of the way through hitchhiking our way from London to Athens, and found ourselves in Zagreb for the night.

We were befriended by a couple of locals who invited us out to a club for the evening, with the promise of free accommodation in a recently built hotel that was still in the process of being fitted out.

I know, I know. The warning bells were ringing then as well, but to our relief our hosts were as good as their words, and we passed the night without incident before continuing on our way towards Greece.

I’m sure—in fact I am positive—that Zagreb has gone through countless changes since that brief 24-hour visit, not the least being those changes that were brought about by the brutal conflict that tore apart the country once known as Yugoslavia (as it was called when my friend and I passed through back in the 1970s). 

For a number of years, the New York Times has been producing a series of short videos for their 36 Hours In… series of articles. Reading the article, and watching the video, brought back dim and distant memories of that hitchhiking trip, and that overnight stop in the city, and that seemed like as good a reason as any to recall that trip and make the 36 Hours In Zagreb video the focus of today’s post.

Make sure you read the online article that goes along with the video.

New York City Arts Round-Up #3

Getting ready for the 2017 Open Studios program

Open Studios, 2017

The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council was formed in 1973. I don’t know exactly when it began presenting its now annual Open Studios arts program, or their other major summer festival, the annual River to River music series, but both events provide much needed exposure to dozens of up-and-coming artists, dancers, writer’s and performers. While the River to River festival line-up is yet to be announced, the Open Studios season is begins this coming weekend (April 28-29, 2017), with Workspace Artists-in-Residence.

This free, two-day event shines a spotlight on the work of over 30 artists who are working across all disciplines and genres from painting and sculpture, to poetry and fiction, to dance and theater. The artists have been working in their studios at 28 Liberty Street since last September. They will open their studio doors to the public for two days only, offering a unique, behind-the-scenes window into their creative practices in the visual, literary, and performing arts. 

The opportunity to meet them and see their work is not to be missed. But this is just the beginning. LMCC will host Open Studios events from April through September—click here to see the full calendar of Open Studios this year—all of which are free and open to the public.

If You Go: Open Studios with Workspace Artists-in-Residence

WHERE: In The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Studios at 28 Liberty, 24th Floor.

WHEN: Friday, April 28, 2017 from 6:00–9:00pm

WHEN: Saturday, April 29, 2017 from 1:00–8:00pm

ONLINE: The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council...

"The Silence of High Noon — Midsummer," 1907–08. By Marsden Hartley

Marsden Harley at The Met Breuer

The Met Breuer presents Marsden Hartley’s paintings of his home state, Maine

Marsden Hartley (1877-1943), was an icon of American modernism, He was born in Lewiston, Maine, and died in Ellsworth. In the early 1900s, he painted the state’s western mountains in a Post-Impressionist style. In his later years, he aimed to do for Mount Katahdin in Baxter State Park what Cézanne did for Mont Sainte-Victoire in Aix-en-Provence. For this exhibition, seven painted views, showing seasonal change, close the show and represent the culmination of a lifelong fascination.

In the 1930s, Hartley became increasingly aware of his legacy and strove to not just paint Maine but to “be recognized as Maine’s greatest modern interpreter,” the show’s co-curator, Randall Griffey, writes in the catalog.

The show at The Met Breuer is a hyper-local collection of rivers, hills, churches, logs and lobster traps. The mountainscapes — and logscapes — are characteristically devoid of people, unlike the Fuji views of Hartley’s heroes Hokusai and Hiroshige, which are sometimes peppered with small figures (eight gorgeous prints are on display).

If You Go

WHAT: “Marsden Hartley’s Maine”

WHERE: The Met Breuer, 945 Madison Ave., at 75th Street

WHEN: Through June 18, 2017

ONLINE: The Metropolitan Museum... 

Read more here…

Is Chinatown the next Chelsea?

Is Chinatown the New Arts District?

Lily Haight, posed the above question this week while writing for Chelsea News. 

Chelsea's gallery district has reigned as the heart of the city's contemporary art movement since the late 1990s. But could skyrocketing rents, coupled to the availability of cheaper options in other parts of the city, mean the district is losing some of its cachet with gallerists?

An August 2016 report by StreetEasy found that real estate prices near the High Line had increased by nearly 50 percent since the park's opening in 2011. Longtime Chelsea gallerists have recently made the move to the Lower East Side, and new galleries are skipping over Chelsea altogether and setting up shop downtown.

However, not everyone is happy with the prospect of Chinatown become the new Chelsea. 

According to the Chinatown Art Brigade's ManSee Kong, residents of Chinatown and the Lower East Side are concerned that the influx of galleries will gentrify the neighborhood and raise residential rents.

“Chinatown is a working-class, ethnic immigrant community. Folks depend on these kinds of immigrant enclaves as a social network of cultural and ethnic resources,” said Melanie Wang, who works as an organizer with the Chinatown Tenants Union. “When galleries come in and are displacing businesses that provide those services and those employment opportunities, it represents a significant threat to the fabric of Chinatown's social community.”

Read the full article here…

Untitled. c.1968, by Alma Woodsey Thomas. In MoMA's current exhibition, Making Space. 

Not Only — But Also in April

• NYCGO’s recommendations…
• The Village Voice recommendations…
• From the New York Times, and Art and Museums in NYC This Week
• And finally, The New Yorker magazine round-up of Art, Music, and Broadway Events in New York City…

New York City Street Food

Kabir Ahmed cooks to order during the early shift in his food cart. Photo: An Rong Xu, for The New York Times

A Day in the Life of a New York City Food Vendor

Great story in a recent edition of the New York Times profiling Kabir Ahmed, one of New York City’s more than 10,000 mobile food vendors. Now 46, Mr. Ahmed, a Bangladeshi immigrant who moved to New York 23 years ago, operates a halal food cart with two partners on Greenwich Street, close to the World Trade Center. They are there all year long, rain, hail, snow or shine.

If you have ever been to New York City, you will of course, have seen many of these vendors on the streets of Manhattan, and to a lesser extent in the other four boroughs. In four extended visits to the city, I think I have eaten a New York hot dog just once, but I have eaten many ‘chicken over rice’ meals from food carts similar to the types in this New York Times feature.

These vendors are a fixture of New York’s streets and New Yorkers’ routines, vital to the culture of the city. But day to day, they struggle to do business against a host of challenges: byzantine city codes and regulations on street vending, exorbitant fines for small violations (like setting up an inch too close to the curb) and the occasional rage of brick-and-mortar businesses or residents. Not to mention the weather, the whims of transit and foot traffic, and the trials of standing for hours, often alone, with no real shelter or private space.

The location of Mr. Ahmed's food cart

Using Google Maps and their Street View software, I took a ‘walk’ down Greenwich Street using as my guide, clues in the article—“near the World Trade Center”, “in front of the BNY Mellon building”—and found what I am certain is Mr Ahmed’s food cart on the corner of Greenwich and Murray Streets.

If you have ever wondered, like I have, about the source of food used by these vendors, the article provides the following:

The food comes from a commissary kitchen attached to the garage in Long Island City, Queens; the city requires that food carts be serviced and supplied by a commissary, and there are many of them, of varying sizes, with different owners, all around New York. At an extra cost, this one has provided everything Mr. Ahmed needs for the day: heads of lettuce, a few dozen tomatoes and potatoes, ready-sliced halal lamb, several bags of boneless chicken thighs, two 12-pound bags of basmati rice, four large plastic containers of potable water for cooking and washing, clamshell containers and napkins.

While I have had many a ‘chicken over rice’ plate, the article praises Mr. Ahmed’s chicken biryani:

“…regulars know to ask for the chicken biryani, flecked with fried onion and cilantro, garnished with half a hard-boiled egg, all for $6, with a drink. He’d like to raise the price, but worries that he would lose customers.”

Stock photo of food cart meals

Wow, six dollars! This must be one of the cheapest, if not the cheapest meal of this type in New York City. Later in the article readers learn that after paying the man who delivers the cart to Greenwich Street (and then returns it to a secure garage at the end of the day), and also paying the garage, Mr. Ahmed earns about $125 after splitting the day’s takings with his colleagues.

Again, Wow. For an eight-hour shift this works out to around $15/hour, which may seem good given the low wages most American workers receive, but to me this seems low given the amount of work that goes into running such a food service.

The article, by Tejal Rao, provides a fascinating glimpse into a way of life that millions of visitors to New York—and millions more locals—have come to rely on for their daily meals and snacks. I will be back in New York for almost three months from mid-June, and you can be sure that I will make a point of seeking out Mr Ahmed's food van for one of those chicken biryani meals.

Read the full article here…