A fast trip to NYC materialized last week and it was inspiring. A meal at Marlow & Sons and a walk across the Williamsburg Bridge set the pace for a couple days of wide-eyed wandering. I met up with Sam and we visited the inimitable Otherwild’s east coast outpost, beneath Coming Soon (a super great housewares shop), and saw Matthew Chambers’ paintings at Feuer/Mesler and Rachel Levit’s prints at Object_ify. The summer heat was sticking around and we probably should have decamped for Rockaway Beach (I really want to see this Katharina Grosse installation) but we drank our way across the city instead. We had some special mimosas (made with their inventive juices) at The Butcher’s Daughter and meandered towards the café at the Standard East Village, trying to acquire a discounted room via their app but it was sold out for the night. We got caught in the rain and brought the party to Sam’s studio, eventually ending up at The Ides Bar atop the Wythe which has a real pretty nighttime view.
I began the next day with stops at the Dimes Deli and Café Henrie, and was able to get a research appointment at the Lubalin Center! It’s a library and archive of design ephemera, just flat files of every issue of Avant Garde and Herb originals and it’s bonkers. There’s also a good Swiss design show in the adjoining gallery (at Cooper Union). I explored some of the showrooms upstairs at ABC and had ramen and a pint at Momofuku. I was finally in the same city as Radiant Human’s tour so I got an aura photo and it was illuminating. Then Sam and I chased more art, seeing Sarah Cain’s Dark Matter in Chelsea, David Shrigley’s Memorial in the corner of Central Park (a passerby asked us, “What is this?”), and the Madeline murals (which I have an affinity for obviously) on the walls of Bemelmans, where we got sidelined by expensive martinis and were late for the opening night of the NY Art Book Fair.
The NYABF was like a happy dream where you’re in a literal maze of publications and everything in sight is so good. The big bummer was that we didn’t have time to see everything at the preview and I was leaving in the morning — I could easily have spent all weekend there. Lastly met up with some tight bros from way back when at the bar and drank Minnesotan beers of course. New York is overwhelming to me but I just surrendered to it and did my thing and it was so fun.
