Happy New Year!

New Year's Eve

Snow in Central Park

"I'm Scared!"

This morning we headed out with a big day planned. Hannah had read about the art galleries in Chelsea so we had plans to visit some of those. First, we went to MoMA to see the Abstract Expressionists New York exhibit. Below is Balzac overseeing the sculpture garden in the snow.

Performance art always piques my interest. It's usually just a little bit (or a lot) weird. In the atrium of MoMA was a performance art exhibit that didn't disappoint. It was called Stop, Repair, Prepare: Variations on "Ode to Joy" for a Prepared Piano. The artist walked into the atrium, walked under a piano with a hole cut in the center, popped up in the middle of the piano and then proceeded to play "Ode to Joy" by playing the keys upside down while pushing the piano around the atrium. The little girl in the blue coat in one of the following pictures kept saying, "I'm scared! I'm scared!" as the pinao began to come toward her. We got tickled at that. We were kind of scared ourselves.

Yes, it was as weird as it seems.

We then saw the Abstract Expressionists New York exhibit, an exhibit with roughly 100 paintings and sculptures.

Physics as art? Two fans blew in the center of two circles of plastic tape. They stayed in the air and danced around.

After the MoMA we headed to Chelsea where we had lunch and then visited some galleries. Several of them were closed because of the holidays and some were closed for installations of the next exhibits. We saw as many as we wanted though. There are some 300 galleries in Chelsea alone.

The streets in this part of Manhattan were not as clear as the main ones in midtown. We ran across streets that had not been cleared at all and sidewalks lined with piles of snow.

As we were walking along toward the Flatiron District, Hannah spotted Eataly, the new Mario Batali European food court. I had wanted to see it. It opened right after we left this summer. It was really amazing. I can't describe it so check it out here.

Near Madison Square Park with the Empire State Building in the background

The south side of the park is the Flatiron Building where Broadway crosses 5th Avenue.

We had dinner tonight with Bill and a friend at Sfoglia and then walked back to our hotel. We couldn't believe this car on Park Avenue was still almost totally covered in snow!

And so ends another day in Gotham City.

"...and there was very much happiness."

There's nothing like a good night's sleep! We all three loved getting to sleep late this morning. After breakfast in the room, we headed out. It was still very cold and the streets were slushy with huge snow piles along the curbs. We walked down Madison Avenue. Tony needed some shoes so Hannah was determined to help him find some cool ones.

Even though there was winter everywhere you looked, a few Korean groceries had fresh flowers on the sidewalks protected by glass or viskween...a reminder of spring.

The mayor had some crow to eat regarding the city's preparedness for the storm. I saw one snow plow this morning; the sanitation workers work mainly at night. The cab driver this evening told us that there were still streets covered with snow. The further south you went, the worse the streets were. He said the plows would come along and scrape the snow off the street and then the residents would try to pull their cars out of the banks and put the snow right back on the street.

Most of the sidewalks were clear today and the crossings had a little path dug out; however, at every single street crossing it was as though you were walking through a huge disaster with a giant Coke Icee! The brown slush and water would come up to your ankles.

The back of St. Patrick's from Madison Avenue looked pretty in the snow.

This picture is just for the icicles!

We shopped for shoes and boots today and had lunch at Saks. We had dinner at 9:00 this evening at I Sodi in the West Village. It took a while to get down there because there were only a few main cross streets that everyone was using. We had a great meal, caught a cab back to the hotel and now we're settled in. It was a great day except for the fact that Baylor lost their Bowl game!