Iron & Wine & Happenstance

My lovely friend A was visiting last weekend and thanks to a snowstorm flight snafu lucky break, she ended up on the plane with the band Iron and Wine.  Their very sweet manager managed to finagle us tickets to their sold-out concert at Radio City Music Hall (a few hours on the tarmac gives you a chance to get to know your neighbor!).  

The concert was amazing.  I knew a song or two of theirs, but it made us fans.  Lead singer Sam Beam is a fantastic musician and unexpectedly, quite a good stand-up comedian.  We ended up in sweet seats behind the sound guy and had a fantastic night listening to amazing music, watching the cool work on the sound board, and getting to hang out with A.  Fabulous night.  (And the pictures from my Blackberry just don't do it justice.)  Thanks, Howard - what a lucky coincidence!

Things You Don't See in the Country

I love New York.  Where else would you find this...?!

Holy ghouls, Batman!

NYC is a great place for just about any holiday, including Halloween. So this year as part of our frightivities, we went to the "Halloween Extravaganza" (sounds impressive, doesn't it?) at St. John the Divine. They showed The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari with a live organ accompaniment, but the main event was the procession of the ghouls - spectacularly-costumed creepies slinking their way through the smoke-filled nave of the massive gothic cathedral near Columbia University.

The photos don't do it justice (yeesh, those are difficult conditions for photos!), but here's a taste of this deliciously creepy and quintessentially New York event.  Did any of you do something special for All Hallows Eve?

Happy Halloween, everyone!
P.S.  As always, just click to enlarge...

A Million Trees

NYC gets some things so very right. Like this one: planting 1 million trees in the Big Apple. MillionTreesNYC started in 2007 with a 10-year goal of planting seven figures worth of greenery around the five boroughs. One of the best parts? You can request that a tree be planted on your street. Request one here, or find out more about the program, volunteer, donate, learn to care for trees, or request a tree-planting in a private space on the MillionTreesNYC website. As of today, almost 300,000 trees have been planted - let's help the city on its way to cleaner air, more shade, and glorious fall colors as the leaves change each year.

I love New York in the fall...

We had guests in town for a couple of days, so we took a leisurely walk through Central Park to admire the trees and the fall colors. I hear this year's weather made the colors less vibrant than usual, but it's still a lovely view to me.

Salumeria Rosi

A good friend just moved back into town and we went to one of our favorite places tonight as an introduction to the neighborhood. The restaurant/market is Salumeria Rosi, and it's a tiny jewel box of a place, where they have wonderful wines and they manage to serve foods that I know I don't like in a way that I just love. They serve tiny plates - Italian tapas-style - and it's also a great place for picking up a (shmancy) picnic (admittedly with a price-tag to match) and heading to the park. Happily, our friend loved it - hope you will, too. The menu is here and the review in New York magazine is here.

Buon appetito!

-a.l.g.