Category: Lopsided Observations

This old school funk band, playing on the street in midtown Manhattan, sounded great a block away. A perfect formula, pumping bass, drummer dragging the beat, scratchy guitar and soulful sax. I wish that sound, the era that Chic dominated, would come back.

We spent some time in midtown this visit, soaking in shows at the Modern, the Met and the new Met Breuer, and I couldn’t get over how good the fake Buddhists are. They look the part, shaved heads, orange robes, innocent smile, and people were giving them money. Don’t people read the news?

We walked through the park to get to the Metropolitan and stopped at the pond where a miniature sailboat race was taking place. We thought we would start with the Cornelia Parker piece on the Met’s rooftop but we had to work our way through the Roman sculpture garden, one of my favorite stops. We found Julian Schnabel in there holding hands with a young woman. He was wearing his pajamas. I got a photo of the two as they walked away. The rooftop installation, the facade of a house like the one in Psycho which Hitchcock based on a house in an Edward Hopper painting, struck me as a dumb art project but I got over that in a hurry. The house was really otherworldly against a backdrop of modern skyscrapers.

Peggi and I celebrated our fortieth anniversary over dinner at an Italian place. The waiters were Hispanic and they played early seventies pop. So bad some sounded good. Two of the worst got stuck in my head, Chicago’s “Saturday In The Park” and whoever does, “Take It To The Limit.” The playlist led to a discussion of how punk rock saved us from this shit. And then Alan Vega died that night.

We were surprised to see so many people gathered on the sidewalk across from the Brighton town hall this morning. A ribbon cutting ceremony for the new Brickyard Trail was scheduled for 11 and there were already more than a hundred people. Cheryl Dinolfo, Adam Bello, Joseph Robach, Joe Morelli, Sandy Frankel, Anthony Daniele and his father, Mario, Mayor Bill Moehle and Brighton town board members were all there to give an hour’s worth of tedious, self congratulation on accomplishing something so simple. I was asked to say a few words on my dad’s behalf and I was last on the list, the only non-politician to speak.

Fifteen or so years ago my father started uncovering the history of Brighton’s brick yards. The glaciers had generously deposited the right combination of sand, clay and lime in the Pinnacle Range. Cobbs Hill is named after brick maker, Gideon Cobb. Leo Dodd, one of the founding members of Historic Brighton, produced a book for the organization on the early brick industry. My father essentially brought to life the brickyards, the kilns, the train tracks that moved tons of clay from the fields to the furnaces, the homes the workers lived in and the baseball fields they competed on. His passion for art, engineering and history enabled him to depict this pre-photographic past in watercolors and 3D cad drawings. Peggi and I provided technical support as he developed the Brighton Brick book and then presentations and websites on the town’s early history.

He continuously pressured the town, most of the same politicians who were gathered here, to recognize and preserve the remnants of its past. Saving the Buckland House and the meadows behind it where the Bobolinks visit every year, preserving at least one of the old barns on Westfall Road, naming the woods after the Edmunds family that once owned it, the Edmunds family whose diaries of daily farm life my father transcribed, these were all issues he went to bat for. There would be no brickyard trail if it wasn’t for my father. I reminded the crowd of this when I spoke, just as the fire trucks showed up to respond to a woman who had fainted during the politicians’ drivel.

The Brickyard Trail runs through one of the former “clay banks.” The town was developing it while my father was still alive. We’d pull in the temple’s parking lot on the way home from his doctor’s appointments and check on the progress. My father was too sick to get out of the car on the last visit so he had me take photos. The politicians managed to cut the ribbon and the Brickyard Trail opened. We walked the trail with a small crowd and quite a few people made a point to tell us my father would have been proud. As modest as he was he would have proud.

Wandering around downtown between Jazz Fest acts is a good way to assess the city’s progress. Nothing stays the same. The city core was hurting and nearly emptied out but for the past ten years or so it is definitely on an upswing. Development and rehabbing are visible everywhere. The buried portion of the Inner Loop is a huge step in the right direction.

Clubs come and go. Jazz Fest venues are different every year. For me old memories are connected to buildings all over downtown. I never heard of the Cosmo Grill but this sign is posted near the door of a building on East Avenue. You can tell a lot about a place by the rules they set up for themselves.

Cosmo Grille Dress Code
In order to maintain a quality level of entertainment we request that our guests adhere to the following dress code standards:
• No Athletic Wear
• No Excessively Baggy Clothing
• No do-rags
• No oversized chains or medallions
• Baseball caps must be worn straight forward or backward
• No torn or soiled clothing
• No profanity
• Shirts must be worn
• Mens shirts must have sleeves

The management and security staff reserve the right to refuse entry to anyone they feel is not dressed appropriately. Thank you for your co-operation.

Soccer matches have gotten in the way of both nights of jazz fest this year. We had to catch the Flash meet the bottom placed Boston Breakers on opening night and we were treated to seven goals from our favorite players. We saw patterns develop that we knew were there. And last night we came home early from the festival to watch the US lose to Colombia for the second time in this Copa America. Tonight’s final between Chile and Argentina is also irresistable. We did manage to see a really great trio last night at the Lutheran Church.

At Harro East last night Kandace Springs played piano and sang mid-tempo, soulful jazz tunes. She was accompanied by bass and drums but she probably would have sounded better on her own. The band had a hard time following her loose, personal groove. She did a fantastic version of John Coltrane’s “Soul Eyes” which also serves as the title of her new album. She has a great voice and, of course, the look.

Brexit was all anyone wanted to talk about today. That and the hit their stocks took. Texit is next. It’s also the first day of Jazz Fest in Rochester, a perfect day for my camera to go on the fritz. Maybe it’s time to end my obsessive documentation of the acts we catch.

I hate everything about airports, the security, the expensive water, the waiting and mostly, the people. No one is at their best in this situation but these places seem to attract creeps. This guy was sitting behind me and I snuck a few photos of the back of his head.

Spain had possession in the seventy percent range for most of yesterday’s Euro Cup match with the Czech Republic and yet they couldn’t get through the final third to the net until the final minutes. Most of the match was played in that zone, lateral passes that were beautifully executed, back and forth until Iniesta poked one through. Some players are smarter than others. They are always in the right place even when they don’t have the ball and they always know where everyone else is when they do get the ball. Iniesta is brilliant at this and a joy to watch.

My father was scheduled to do a repeat of his presentation on Edmunds Woods on Saturday afternoon. The Brighton town historian filled in for him and she talked over my father’s slideshow. It was a small crowd that gathered in the park shelter next to the woods but it was a giant reminder of my father’s former presence. He had mapped the wildflowers, the trees and the wildlife of the this tiny bit of remaining old growth woods. He began calling it “Edmunds Woods” after the family that worked the near farm and we hear the town is planning to officially designate it so.

I hadn’t had an IPA in a while so I ordered one when sat down in the Uptown Brasserie at JFK but they were out of the Goose Island so I went with a Stella Artois, something that tasted exactly like the Spanish beers we had been drinking for the last few weeks. We sat near the window and had an ocean view. They were playing jazz on the sound system, Chet Baker, Duke Ellington and piano standards. We found an oasis on our way back to Rochester.

Back home we were stunned by how green everything was. Not just green but lush and overgrown. Pink Rhododendrons in full bloom. And it’s now impossible to see our neighbors through the backyard trees. If I could walk like a normal person I would be out in the woods with my tick-guard on.

Our map app delivers surprising results in Madrid. When we plot routes between places the times via “auto” are longer than those via “walk.” Madrid, in the old part, is that kind of city.

The streets of Madrid were empty last night. The bars were full. Atlético was playing Real in the European club championship. We sided with Atlético but the match could not be settled in overtime and went to Real Madrid with penalty kicks. Ronaldo struck the decisive blow and the streets erupted.

Are we supposed to be dumbfounded? Peggi and I were going to school in Indiana when Bobby Knight was in his prime. It only figures that guy could do Trump some good. And how about this first family? I find them far more interesting than the Kardashians.

I went out on a limb back in ’08 but I’ve pretty much stayed away from politics here. I will say we have watched almost all the debates. Some were a lot better than others. I fell asleep in the Clinton Bernie bash last night. We haven’t gone out to see any of the candidates in person. Cruz is here today but that wouldn’t be much fun. There’s a green house around the corner that has been flying a yellow snake flag for the last few years and his neighbor just put up up a small homemade sign that reads, “Billionaires Can’t Buy Bernie.” He put it right on the edge of his property line and faced it not out at the street but toward his neighbor. New York is in play for the first time in a long time and we are having fun with it so far.

There is an old horse path that runs through the undeveloped part of Durand Eastman Park. It’s a beautiful trail that hardly gets any use although it did get a lot of attention when Bulldozer Man drove part of the trail with his earthmoving moving equipment about five or six years ago. Not a park employee or anything, just a private citizen, he atempted to clear the trial again for horseback riding. Some alert woods-walkers notified Larry Staub, the director of the Monroe County Park system. At one point this path skirts a cluster of homes and this statue stands behind a house at the edge of the woods. The base rotted out and he was laying down for a while. I probably have a picture of that on this blog somewhere. I keep track of that sort of thing.

We always had a statue of Saint Francis in the house when I was growing up and I have one today near my desk. My youngest brother youngest brother was named after him. The Paton Saint of animals and the environment, he is one of the church’s favorite saints and is usually pictured in a brown robe, sandals and a rope belt with birds on his shoulder. Born Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone, he is the patron saint of Italy. He is reported to have received the stigmata during the apparition of Seraphic angels in a religious ecstasy making him the first recorded person to bear the wounds of Christ’s Passion.

Peggi took the survey and then I tried but the SurveyMonkey software told me I had already taken the survey. One to an ip address. So we went to the meeting at the town hall tonight expecting a crowd as big as the coyote meeting but it wasn’t even close. Instead of a simple, straight-forward plan to lay down bike only lanes on the main thoroughfares of Irondequoit (Titus, Culver, Hudson, Goodman, Portland, Saint Paul) we found charts and maps and big print-outs of photos of certain intersections all laid out on tables. It felt like a grade school presentation.

And when we pushed the issue, striped, bike-only lanes on these main thoroughfares, with any the attendants they told us the county is in charge of the main roads in the town. The town is simply repaving the roads and then re-striping them, not reconfiguring the size or shape. The county has has stats on the numbers of vehicles and the geometry of the intersections and they configure the lanes at intersections based on that. We learned the town was only collecting data. A few bike riders will need to die before get bike only lanes.

Preferring to see the hand of the artist I especially liked seeing Jill Gussow’s current show at MCC’s Mercer Gallery, “Antidotes and Such.” She has hand sewn every object in the show. Some are clearly faces but other, unidentifiable objects feel familiar and ancient at the same time like the handiwork of a lost tribe. Equally playful and pretty, hand stitched and cut like Mexican molas with embroidery. This show is a delight.

We’re lining up our route for First Friday tonight. I know we will start with Peter Monacelli’s show at Warren Philip’s Gallery and I’d like to see Lin Price‘s paintings over at Axom, across from the strip club on Anderson Avenue. From there we will follow the wind.

The Hammer Museum on the UCLA campus can usually be counted on to deliver the goods. Their current show, “Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933-1957” is made up of work from both students and teachers. The school in the Blue Ridge Mountains set the template for art schools today. Its first director was Josef Albers who had been educated in the Bauhaus School but was forced to flee the Nazis that same year. He came here with his wife, Annie, and she was a force of her own. Brice Marden has made a career of her work.

Motherwell, Franz Kline, Jacob Lawrence, Rauschenberg, Ben Shahn, Ray Johnson, Buckminster Fuller, Elaine and William de Kooning, Merce Cunningham, John Cage, Eric Satie, John Altoon and Robert Creeley all taught or were students here.

There was no house style, no uniform trend to art making here. Albers encouraged students to look longer, to see how something was made and to understand how visual information can be manipulated. Founded in the Depression and open through WWII the school had a Utopian culture of scarcity, an ethos of “making do.” I would enroll if it was still open. This show was the next best thing.

We used Uber for the first time to return to the canyon and hopped in my sister-in-law’s car for a drive to Venice in time to watch the sunset from our nephew’s office, the Swell headquarters. We had dinner at the “Tasting Kitchen” and walked the magical canals on the way home. Why do you think they call it Venice?

We were running out the door this morning, to meet with the lawyers that are handling my parents’ estate, and I had my jacket in my hand. I didn’t take the time to put it on in the house. I was too busy reading the paper. The zipper in my jacket got caught near the bottom of the door to our house and I couldn’t free it. I couldn’t open the door either and the key wouldn’t turn the lock. I tried ramming the door with my shoulder. That didn’t work either so we left. I had a hat on but no jacket in the middle of winter.

But that’s another thing. What kind of a winter is this? Imagine if you were on the high school cross-country ski team. They’ve had one week to ski. In that week I did notice that cross-country is a co-ed sport. I should have figured that out in high school.

We had lunch at Joe Bean. Ran into Fireball Jr. and Linda from Parkleigh. I was still running around without a coat. We stopped in to see my mom in her new digs and signed a contract for her room and board. When we got home I went down to Jared’s place and borrowed a pry bar to pop the door open and free my jacket.

In the dorms back at IU we used to “penny” people in their rooms. We’d lean on the closed door and push pennies into the space between the door and the door jam. Guys would be locked in for hours. Peggi and I were essentially pennied out of our house.