Bansky and His 31 Days in New York:

Artist Stirs Memories of Taki 183, Caine 1, 
Dondi and the City's Graffiti Heyday 

Graffiti emerged on the New York scene like a tsunami rushing in from the sea in the early 1970’s. Taggers with pseudonyms like Taki 183, Dondi, Cliff 159, Stayhigh 149, and Blade staged an aggressive in-your-face assault on a captive and unsuspecting audience, the million plus people who rode the subways on a daily basis.

This first wave of artists or vandals, depending on your view of art, defiance and defacement, used the subways as their personal 24/7 galleries and forum. With their energy, fervor and quite often talents graffiti entered the mainstream quickly. Their monikers became synonymous with the subway lines they tagged.

Their worked appeared everywhere: on doors, windows, seats, and ceilings throughout the system.

If you took the #4 train to Yankee Stadium you thought you rode the Mitch 77 train. If you went to Shea Stadium, where the NY Mets played, you rode The Caine Freedom Train compliments of Caine 1 and not the #7. Competition grew fierce and the graffiti exploded. Graffiti crews worked long hours in unguarded train yards creating their next eye-catching displays.

Tags evolved from simple lettering to huge block letters, large decorative illustrations and zany designs with cartoon characters like Snoopy or Dick Tracy emblazoned in vivid colors. Comparable mind-boggling works graced the exterior of cars from end-to-end, and not just a handful of cars but almost all cars.

The grime, filthy, smelly, and unsafe conditions of a deteriorating system compounded with smudged incomprehensible drawings, illegible scribbles, tags and designs copied on top of each other made it difficult to appreciate the works created some talented artists.

Bansky Unveils His Stuff

Graffiti as street art or vandalism resurfaced last October when Bansky, a British artist, painter, activist, and documentary filmmaker announced on his website a month long artist residency in New York City. Bansky received an Oscar nomination in 2010 for his film Exit Thru the Gift Shop and that same year made Time Magazine’s list of the world’s 100 most influential people.

Bansky, a recluse, is well known for “bombing walls in San Francisco, Detroit, Paris, and Barcelona.

His true identity is unknown although the London Daily Mail speculates he is Robin Gunningham, who began with the tag Robin Banx. He developed his pencil sketch style in his native Bristol, England.

In 2003 he staged his breakthrough exhibit “Turf Wars” in an East London Warehouse. In 2005 his celebrity grew when he traveled to Palestine and stenciled nine images on the West Bank Wall including his iconic Masked Armed Thrower. He has had major shows in Los Angeles and Sydney.

At the Miami Street Art Auction in February his “Kissing Coppers’s sold for $575,000.

His New York exhibit called “Better Out Than In” had one Bansky work popping up at undisclosed locations all 31 days in October. Bansky hit all five boroughs. His first installation in Chinatown, “The Street Is in Play,” showed one boy standing on the back of a second boy touching a sign which read “Graffiti is a Crime,” It ended with a set of balloons spelling BANSKY! And tied to a Queens warehouse on Halloween.

In between Bansky had a real person shining the shoes of a large fiberglass Ronald McDonald statue outside a Mickey D’s in the South Bronx; in Manhattan’s meatpacking district he unveiled “The Sirens of the Lambs” a slaughterhouse delivery truck crammed with stuff animals, heads butting out from slots, while touring the meatpacking district as a recording of animals crying played; and the Two Geisha Girls with parasols in Williamsburg, where bystanders tussled with a hooded vandal as he tagged the work.

Bansky artistic exploits, product placement (most off the beaten path) and PR showmanship tweaked my interest. And I like his work. In a city where graffiti survives for years more than half of his had not. Property owners destroyed or removed some. Taggers vandalized others.

Five days after his exhibit ended, I left my house at 10 am in search of Bansky. I headed to Larry Flint’s Hustler Club, at West 51^st & 11^th Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen’s, near my apartment, to see my favorite “Waiting in Vain.” Painted on October 24, it showed a forlorn lover dressed in a suit and a loosened tie slouched against a wall holding wilted flowers. No luck! The club, knew its value, removed it.

Next I walked to West 25^th and 11^th Avenue to see his second one, a text piece which read, “This is My New York Accent…Normally I Write Like This.” Strike two!

I went to 24^th near 10^th Avenue for his 18^th installment, an outdoor exhibition, and two hanging pieces, under the High Line in Chelsea, done in collaboration with Brazilian street artists Os Geneos. Strike three!

Moving to 24^th Street and 6^th I found his third posting, marred with graffiti. Called “You Complete Me” it showed a dog urinating against a fire hydrant. 

I walked to four other Banksy locations with no luck: the East Village (Priest in a Concrete Confessional), Lower East Side (the Two Boys; Night Vision Horses) and Nolita (Grim Reaper Rides a Bumper Car).

I flirted with the idea of crossing the Williamsburg Bridge to continue my search in Brooklyn but called it quits. At 4pm I returned home. At least I found one.

Photo Credits: 
a. DONDI - www.UKStreetArt.co.uk/dondi by Andy. In memory
    of Donald Joseph White "Dondi" (April 7, 1961 - Oct.2, 1998)
b. "The Street Is in Play" (Two Boys)  - Flickr - www.noupe.com by Tara Horner
c. "Waiting in Vain" Flickr - JC Decaux www.mobility-trend.com 
d. "You Complete Me" - Dog at Hydrant - Rudi Papiri
NYC Subway graffiti reference: Spar One Editor/Resource Director for Graffiti @149st

Tommy Tune's Penthouse Party...

Finding Pieces for My New York 

               Skyline Puzzle 

From a tipsy barefoot Robert Redford prancing before Jane Fonda in Washington Square Park in Barefoot in the Park, to John Travolta admiring the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in Saturday Night Fever to the baptism of Christ, played by Victor Garber, in Bethesda Fountain in Central Park in Godspell, New York City has served as a backdrop for many movies and television programs.
(YouTube Videos for movies posted below)

I enjoy scrutinizing old film clips and pictures of the city. I have a good sense of places and locations, yet I still get lost exploring its neighborhoods or when viewing the wonderful photos of Gary Winogrand, Helen Levitt, and Berenice Abbott and their images of old New York, one I never knew. 

Months ago when I received an email and photo attachment (posted below) from my friend Jim Malcolm I accepted it as a personal challenge.

He wrote,  "This is a penthouse party near Union Square. What street is this?”

Jim, a native New Yorker, moved away years ago. He is retired living in California.

I emailed back, “Not near Union Square.”

It is!” Jim replied.”  It’s TommyTune’s apartment. My neighbor was there.”

To showcase his roots and knowledge of Manhattan to his neighbor Jim wrote, “Can you name any of the buildings.” 

“Easy!” I never thought it would take me parts of three weeks to answer his question. I reviewed Google Maps, Instagram, and real estate websites. I made four tours of east side streets with binoculars, camera and notepad.

Why did it take me so long? I found Tommy Tune’s place and the names of four buildings quickly. 
I knew the party took place somewhere between 49 and 55^th Streets on First Avenue judging 
from the angle of the terrace and building 4.

When walking the streets of midtown east it is difficult to get a clear view of building tops. With the help of the Internet I found building 5 – and its white crown top. I located buildings 1 and 3. At first I mistook 1, the Libya House, for Verizon’s monolith on East 38th (now NYU Medical Center) with its stone slab sidings.

I had all the pieces, except one, building 2. At first, I assumed it was the Chrysler Building. Its fragmented top and stripped down Charlie Brown Christmas tree tower left me doubtful.

I focused on the Chanin Building, Lexington and 42^nd Street. The 1929, 56-story city landmark in buff brick and terra cotta, is topped with a spindly radio antenna. Mystery solved? NO! The antenna looked small and unimpressive.

Fortunately I spotted a white antenna soaring high above midtown as I stood at 41^st and Eight Avenue looking east. I searched the entire area with no luck. Ten days later sitting in Bryant Park I found it. It was not an antenna, but a huge crane at a construction site for a new office building, 7 Bryant Park.

Ready to raise the white flag I decided to scan the midtown skyline with my binoculars from the 22^nd floor of the Time Life building where I work. Keith Aurelio a co-worker and imaging specialist asked what I was doing. I showed him the photo and explained my dilemma. He opened a digital version of the picture in photoshop, then doodled some, and “Presto”! The Chrysler building materialized.

Where did the party take place?  Jim was right, in a way. Nine-time Tony award winner Tommy Tune had lived on 18th and Park Avenue South near Union Square but moved to First and 52nd, the scene of the party.

*Pieces of the Puzzle!

1_Libya House –East 48^th, Second Ave; 24-stories, built in 1982, home to Libya’s mission to the United Nations.

2_Chrysler Building – Lexington Ave., 42-43rd Streets. This 77-story Art Deco wonder, built in 1930, served as Chrysler’s headquarters until the1950’s.

3_One Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza – Second Avenue and 47^th. The 1972, 49-story tower is home to various companies and U.N. agencies.

4_Met Life - Park Avenue at 45^th Street; 60 stories, completed in 1963, for Pan Am; offered rooftop helicopter service to Pan Am’s JFK terminal until an accident killed five people.

5_Sterling Plaza – Second Avenue at 49^th Street, 32-story residential condominium built in 1985.

*YouTube Segments of Movies listed above:
Barefoot in the Park
Godspell 
Saturday Night Fever

Photo: Unknown Source; location Southgate Apartments at East 52nd Street near Sutton Place/Beekman Places; designed by Emory Roth.

Moses Gates: Hidden Cities...

Urban Adventurer Explores the Secret 
Places of the World's Great Cities

Moses Gates is not your typical tourist with a passion for cities. 

He is an urban planner, a licensed New York City tour guide, and a visiting assistant professor of demography at Pratt Institute.

He has an adventurous streak that leans more towards Indiana Jones than that of a starry-eyed Smartphone carrying photo-snap-happy tourist from the Midwest where he grew up.

Gates is not searching for the Ark of the Covenant or evading Nazis like Jones, Harrison Ford's character in the movie Raiders of the Lost Arc.

He is not satisfied sauntering across the Brooklyn Bridge to marvel at its beauty and enjoy the views of the New York Bay and the lower Manhattan skyline. It is just as hard to picture Gates entering the magnificent Gothic Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, or any other noted world destination in as a normal tourist.

Why? Gates thinks differently. While most people are content to walk across a famous bridge, Gates wants to climb it. He wades, no he dives head first into the underbelly of the cities he visits and unveils their hidden secrets and shares his stories with us.

In his book Hidden Cities: Travels to the Secret Corners of the World’s Great Metropolises; A memoir of Urban Exploration we learn Gates is a thrill-seeking urban adventurer with a wanderlust for going where very few people have ventured before him.

In the first sentence of page one of his insightful and humorous memoir he writes,

“I have just rung the bell of Notre Dame.”

Gates and several companions, including his best friend and the ultimate urban explorer Steve Duncan, are drinking at a Paris bar when they decide to investigate the city’s 1200-plus miles of underground canals. After squeezing through a locked gate they walked for a mile and-a-half before they stopped realizing it is tough to wade through a sewer without rubber boots and an air meter (this is an adventure for another day). They exited the sewer by popping open a manhole cover. Next they opt for the Cathedral of Notre Dame and its bell tower. They reach the bell not with a tour guide or by ascending the 387 steps of its narrow spiral stairwell but by scaling its exterior. They climb its gargoyles; flying buttresses and a makeshift ladder at night, in the rain, and tipsy.

His adventures span four continents. He has dodged third rails in five of the world’s ten largest subway tunnels including New York, Stockholm, Paris, London and Moscow. He has roamed the catacombs, water and sewer tunnels of these cities as well as Naples, Rome, and Odessa. Besides the Brooklyn Bridge he has climbed the George Washington, Williamsburg, Manhattan, Hell’s Gate Bridges (Gates calls it a beast of a bridge and a direct inspiration for the famous Sydney Harbour Bridge) and the Moscow Bridge in Kiev. Climbing is challenging and dangerous, especially at night, his preferred time in order to lessen chances of getting arrested.

There is only one way up the Brooklyn Bridge he writes: “climb the suspension cables, navigate around the suicide guards – metal gates on the cables designed to keep people from scaling them…then balance on the cables, hang on to the guide wires for dear life, and hope a gust of wind doesn’t come along.”

  

Gates writes about these dangers and his adventures in a casual matter-of-fact style like someone visiting the Statue of Liberty or the pyramids for the first time. His tales are funny. He writes about his “Sex on the Bridge Club” and his own rendezvous on the Williamsburg Bridge, of getting karate kicked in the face by a homeless woman named Brooklyn at 2 in the morning at her birthday party in the train tunnel under Riverside Park in New York City, and walking the streets of Rio de Janeiro dressed in drag and losing his negligee after getting drenched in a downpour.

 Gates gives us the history of the places he visits and he sheds light on his world one of squatters living in a vacant mansion in San Paolo, teenagers occupying Cold War bunkers under Odessa and much more. He writes about an informal network of students, travelers, historians, adventurers including legends with names like Dsankt and Siologen, members of Cave Clan, a group formed in Australia whose purpose is to climb urban storm drains. He writes about graffiti artists some of who have created masterpieces in the catacombs of Paris and in the train tunnels and unused subway stations in New York.

With Gates we enter ancient Roman ruins in the sewers beneath the Capitoline Hills in Rome, and German bunkers in Paris. We explore the city’s catacombs and wind past ossuaries filled with skulls and bones neatly stacked together. We discover the tomb of Philibert Aspairt who disappeared in the Paris catacombs in 1793. Legend says his torch expired while searching for the wine cellars of the Chartreux monks.  We travel through many rooms and a cave several stories high, and sliver through two-foot-high tunnels.

This is the ultimate reference book for those travelers whose curiosities know no boundaries. For the rest of us it may not inspire us to risk our lives climbing famous landmarks but it will certainly stir our interest to learn about the secrets of our hidden cities.

Buy his book: Hidden Cities: A Memoir of Urban Exploration

Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, Paperback Edition 2013

Follow Moses Gates on Twitter.

•His notes at the end of the book are an invaluable resource. His black/white and color photographs are priceless. 

Dance at Bougival

The Frick Collection:

Dancing with Pierre-Auguste Renoir... 

Dance at Bougival

The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art are special places. Millions of people come here from all over the world to explore their treasures. It is exhilarating to visit these museums anytime but especially when there is a major event, even if it means waiting on long lines.

I crawled with hundreds of people through the Iris & B. Gerald Canter Exhibition Hall at The MET in the summer of 2011. During a three month stretch almost 662,000 people visited the late Alexander McQueen’s “Savage Beauty" exhibit. They came to see his “bumster” trouser, three-point origami frockcoat, S&M jewelry, spray-painted dresses, futuristic styles, a life size hologram of Kate Moss, and many more of his ultra creative costumes. They came not out of sympathy for the famed British fashion designer who committed suicide at 40, a year before his exhibit opened, but to be dazzled by his uninhibited sense of fashion, art, history, and workmanship.

In 2012 I saw CindySherman’s Retrospective at MOMA, also heavily attended. It featured more than 170 photographs, all self-portraits that traced her artistic career from the 1970’s to the present. A master of disguise Sherman dressed as a faded movie star, sex kitten, naïve ingénue, straight-laced secretary, housewife and more. She accomplished this by physically altering herself with wigs, costumes, makeup, and prosthetic-body parts. She meshed art, cultural influences, pornography, fairy tales and horror films. In one work she appeared as Grandma Moses in a banana leather jacket and a sky-blue taffeta, another as a Renaissance Lady in an elegant dress, jewel adorned hair with a fake nose.

No exhibit inspired me more than the Renoir, Impressionism and Full-Length Painting at The Frick Collection in 2012.

Small in size, it featured just nine large life-size paintings, several measuring almost six-foot in height displayed in the Frick’s East Gallery, a long classical styled room with an arched portal, elegant keystone, fluted Ionic pilasters. Colin B. Bailey, the Frick’s Associate Director brought these works together for the first time. Built around The Frick’s La Promenade (1875-76), a mother walking in the park with her two young daughters, the museum’s most important impressionist work, the exhibit studied Renoir’s portraits and subjects from the mid-1870’s to the mid 1880’s. 

The other eight paintings included La Parisienne (1874) from the National Museum of Art, Cardiff; The Umbrellas (1881-1885) from The National Gallery of London; Dance in the City and Dance in the Country (1882-83) from the Musee d’Orsay, Paris; The Dancer (1874) from the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; Madame Henriot “en travesty” (1875-76) from the Columbus Museum of Art; Acrobats at the Cirque Fernando (1879) from the Art Institute of Chicago; and my favorite, the reason I write this article, Dance at Bougival (1882-83) from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 

Born at Limoges, France in 1841, Pierre-Auguste Renoir is considered one of the great artists of the French Impressionists movement. The size of these paintings and their bright colors gives the illusion his characters, specifically the trio of paintings of dancing couples, are ready to lurch off the canvass. But Bougival is why I returned to the Frick three times with a different friend each visit.

Bougival drips with gusto, life, and lust. It is earthy and sexy. The outdoor setting – painted in a studio - is a Sunday country-dance near Paris. Art critics chat about the dirt floor littered with cigarette buts, chestnut trees and people drinking beer from plain mugs sitting at an oak table in the background, but the male dancer’s passion and assertiveness mesmerized me. Standing in this very large wing with maybe only fifteen other visitors I am free to savor Bougival from many vantage points, and I too, wanted to whisk my partner, all three, around this beautiful gallery.

The young woman in Bougival, is Suzanne Valadon, a trapeze artist turned model, Renoir’s one-time lover, and mother of artist Maurice Utrillo whose father was rumored to be one of several men including Renoir. The gent, a working-man, with clunky brown boots and straw hat, holds her firmly against his body and stares intently at her beautiful face and head wrapped in a long flowing red bonnet. She looks away, her eyes cast downward in a shy yet flirtatious way as if desire stirs within her as they dance oblivious to the festivities around them.

Standing in front of Dance at Bougival I think of Leonard Cohen’s song….

"Dance Me To The End Of Love"

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin

Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in

Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove

Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to the end of love

Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone

Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon

Show me slowly what I only know the limits of

Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to the end of love

The Renoir exhibit  completed its United States run September 3, 2013 at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts.

Paul Busse's Enchanted City: Creator of the 
New York Botanical Garden Holiday Train Show 

Macy's Flagship Store Herald Square

I am sitting at my desk on a beautiful afternoon in August. This day has all the ingredients of what I call a million dollar day: brilliant blue skies, a few puffy white clouds, gentle winds, and comfortable temperatures.

Something is wrong with me. Instead of planning weekend getaways, beach outings, picnics, exploring New York City on bike or foot, kayaking on the Hudson, camping, and hiking I have lingering thoughts of the recent 2012 Christmas holidays.  No I am not daydreaming about Santa Claus, the Rockefeller Christmas tree, Times Square on New Year’s Eve, or Macy’s Herald Square’s Toyland.

What makes me smile is the New York Botanical Garden’s holiday train show. I went there in early January. I frowned when I saw a long line of people with hundreds of kids waitingto enter the Garden’s sprawling Victorian style Enid A. Haupt Conservatory.

 Empire State, Chrysler, Met Life (5 Madison Sq.), St.Patrick's

Upon entering the Conservatory I realized I had entered an Oz-like world one filled with a Lilliputian version of a New York City featuring many current landmarks and several long forgotten ones as well. All were crafted from natural materials – berries, pinecones, bark, beechnuts, seeds, twigs, pistachio shells, sea grape leaves, eucalyptus buds, and palm tree husks.

The New York Botanical Train show is the work of Landscape architect Paul Busse. He has built over 140 structures. The smallest is an 8-inch-high town house. The tallest is the 14-foot replica of the Brooklyn Bridge (although trains zip across his version). Current landmarks include the New York Public Library, Yankee Stadium, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Ellis Island, the Statue of Liberty, and City Hall. Lesser-known ones such as the Bronx’s Edgar Allen Poe cottage, Wave Hill House and Van Cortlandt House are also on display.

Clark Mansion 79th & Fifth Avenue

Busse pays tributes to some of the city’s long forgotten buildings as well. There are replicas of the magnificent 1907 Clark Mansion at 77^th and Fifth Avenue. The 121-room, 31-bath building with swimming pool, considered the avenue’s most incredible private home, stood for only 20 years. There is also Eero Saarinen’s futuristic 1962 TWA terminal at Kennedy Airport, and McKim Meade & White’s marvelous Penn Station, torn down in 1964 to make way for Madison Square Garden, an office tower and a now dismal train station. Busse’s Penn Station is about 20 square feet. The roof is made of magnolia, pinecone scales and columns of honeysuckle.

 

Original Penn Station, 31 to 33 Street - Seventh to Eight Ave.

Paul Busse, 63, is more than just a landscape architect. He is a master builder with a unique vision for creating enchanting venues. Busse’s company, Applied Imagination, with a staff of about 20 people including his son Brian, and his nephew Jason, have built similar exhibits across the country. His works are on display at the Chicago Botanic Garden, the United States Botanic Garden in Washington D.C., and the Morris Arboretum in Philadelphia.

Fourteen-foot replica of the Brooklyn Bridge with trains

At the New York exhibit Busse offer more than just great buildings. There are late 1800’s American steam engine trains, streetcars, freight trains and trolleys travelling over a quarter of mile of tracks spread out over the course of the entire exhibit moving over bridges and trestles, through tunnels, past waterfalls, streams, the Conservatory’s reflecting pool, and old train stations.

Over 200,000 people have visited the seasonal exhibit since it began in 1992.

The 2012 exhibit featured for the first time: the Brooks Brothers Madison Avenue flagship store, LED lights for Yankee Stadium, and Penn Station, which took over 1000 hours to build.

The 2013 Holiday Train show is less than five months away. Check the New York Botanical Garden’s website for info their events and educational programs.

Photos by Rudi Papiri

Silvano Lattanzi...From Italy to Madison Avenue 

             The Fine Art of Shoe Making

In the1953 movie Gentlemen Prefer Blondes Marilyn Monroe, whisks about the set pursued by a dozen handsome suitors in tuxedoes as she sings “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend.” Richard Burton knew this. In 1968 he gave his wife Elizabeth Taylor a 33-carat diamond, and the following year a 69-carat diamond.

Not everyone is Elizabeth Taylor. Not everyone can wear Harry Winston diamonds. Not everyone has a husband or paramour like Richard Burton.

After diamonds I say shoes are a girl’s best friend. Think Cinderella and her glass slipper; or Imelda Marcos, and her 2000 pairs of shoes; or Sex in the City’s Carrie Bradshaw who had hundreds of shoes and who made Manolo Blahnik a household name. 

Would Macy’s Herald Square set aside 63,000 square feet of space on its redesigned second floor and offer 250,000 pairs of shoes, if women and shoes were not best friends? Would Sak’s Fifth Avenue open a shoe emporium on the eighth floor and double the size of its inventory? This floor is so big it has its own postal zip code.

Enough about the ladies let's focus on the guys. Recently I stopped into several stores. Dudes like shoe too. They bought Nikes, Vans, Diesel sneakers, Tommy Bahama Sandals, Quicksilver Flip Flops, Timberland, Rockport, Hush Puppies, Geox, Ecco, Skechers; moving up the shoe chain Cole Haan, Allen Edmond, Ferragamo and Gucci.

Silvano Lattanzi Madison Avenue 

Then there are dudes who really love shoes. They visit the sultan of shoemaking, Silvano Lattanzi, a relative newcomer to New York. Lattanzi opened his boutique here in early 2001 but he is hardly a novice. He is a master craftsman and designer. He has created elegant high-end off-the rack and handmade shoes for over 40 years.  He opened his first boutique near Rome’s fashionable Via Condotti in1992. Lattanzi has shops in Milan, Moscow, St. Moritz, Beijing, and Shanghai.

I first discovered Lattanzi footwear while power walking on Madison Avenue one night three years ago. I scooted past Calvin Klein, Barney’s, Valentino, Giorgio Armani, Ralph Lauren appreciating their stunning fashion displays.

I only stopped when I came to the windows of Silvano Lattanzi’s and his small shop. I was fascinated by the hand-stitched sole of a shoe perched in front of a coffee table sized book opened to a photo spread of an old-time cobbler at work. A work of art, I thought.

Old World Shoemaking High End Prices

Lattanzi’s soles are hand sewn and require more than 240 stitches for each foot. The parallel double stitches have the same length. The miniscule holes are equidistant. It takes seven to 14 days, 30 hours of work and over 200 different steps to finish a pair of shoes.

Bespoke shoes take six to eight weeks depending on the humidity and weather.

About twenty-six cobblers produce 2500 pairs of shoes annually at his factory in Le Marche Italy near the Adriatic. They use century old techniques: wetting the leather on a last, hours of stretching, sewing a leather welt and shank to the upper part and then attaching it to the sole. They are made of alligator, crocodile lizard, ostrich, antiqued calfskin and cordovan shell. His shoes are costly. Off-the-rack wingtips costs

about $3200. Sneakers are a bargain at $1200. Custom made shoes start around $5300 and soar to $18,000. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Eric Clapton are customers.

Lattanzi is not just about men. Uma Thurman and Patty Smith are customers too.

Women’s crocodile boots cost $25,000.

Silvano Lattanzi, 905 Madison Avenue between near 73rd Street; 212-734-2962
Photos by Rudi Papiri

Paley Park, St. Luke in the Fields, St. John's...
Manhattan's Peaceful Open Spaces

Finding a quiet outdoor space in Manhattan is as challenging as Indiana Jones search for the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The ear-shattering blasts of horns and sirens and the deafening roar of construction trucks and buses make it impossible to have a conversation without shouting.

The city is an exciting place but we need a quiet zone to escape the madness.

Of course there is Central Park with its rolling hills, expansive meadows, and rowboat lake and the beautiful but crowded Bryant Park behind the New York Public Library on 42^nd Street.

Locating a small intimate outdoor space is not hopeless. You just have to know where to go.

Here are several to visit:

Paley Park

Paley Park 

Located on the site of the legendary Stork Club where the city’s high society dined from 1934 to 1965, Paley Park is one of the finest vest-pocket parks in the world according to the Project for Public Spaces.

Opened in 1967 as a private/public space and financed by the William S. Paley Foundation (Paley, late CBS chairman) it offers a reprieve from crowded Fifth Avenue. 

Its beauty is not apparent when you first see this narrow rectangular space. Once you ascend the steps and walk past tall ornamental gates you feel its magic. Ivy covers the east and west walls. Seventeen locust trees create a canopy over the park. The unique feature is a 20-foot high cascading waterfall at the back wall. The falls, which are lit at night, generate 1800 gallons of water per minute. The gushing water blocks all street noise. Iron mesh chairs and tables are moveable. 

A concession stand serving soup, sandwiches and hot dogs is hidden to the right of the entrance.

Paley Park: 3 East 53^rd Street between Madison and Fifth.

  

Garden of St. Luke

Garden of St. Luke in the Fields

Even in the West Village with its charming townhouses dating back to the 1800’s and quaint streets there is a need for a quiet space. St. Luke’s, built in 1822, on land donated by Clement Clarke Moore, has an idyllic garden. The church became a mission of Trinity Episcopal Church in 1891 and remained so until 1976. The present building was reconstructed after a 1981 fire.

Hidden behind a high brick wall and an iron gate is a lush pastoral garden that wraps around the church. Tall trees, colorful gardens, four stone walkways, two passing under metal arches covered with vines and flowers creates a mini green oasis.

 St. Luke in the Field: 487 Hudson Street between Barrow and Christopher Streets

  

Prayer Garden St John's

Prayer Garden at The Church of St. John the Baptist

Walk through the doors of the Brutalist style monastery, of the Franciscan Capuchin Friars on 31^st street, past administrative offices and up the steps or ramp to the church you will find a small sanctuary. 

The silence of this garden is in sharp contrast to the heavily congested streets and bedlam generated by its neighbors Penn Station and Madison Square Garden. The sun-filled garden is in a walled off space between the two buildings. It has plants, flowers, shrubs, palm trees, stone and wrought iron benches and an oval two-tier fountain filled with gold fish during the warmer months. 

Officially known as the Padre Pio prayer garden there are statues, candles and plaques with meditative words. All are welcome.

St. John the Baptist’s Church:  210 West 31^st Street.

Public Plaza World Wide Plaza

World Wide Plaza Public Plaza

 Mid-block on West 49^th Street in Hell’s Kitchen, on the site of the old Madison Square Garden, is a large urban space located between World Wide Plaza One and Two, commercial and residential towers respectfully.  

The park has over 40 trees including 20 Japanese Zelkovas, and 16 Honey locusts. There is large fountain called The Four Seasons designed by the late sculptor Sidney Simon. Four female statues hold up a huge globe. There are over one hundred moveable chairs and tables. The plaza has tworestaurants. It is accessible from 49^th and 50^th Streets. It is spacious and a great place to enjoy blue-sky days.

World Wide Plaza Park – mid block 49-50^th Streets west of Eighth Avenue.

Urban Space Eventi

Eventi Urban Space

Behind the luxury high-rise Eventi Hotel Chelsea you will find a long urban plaza. The space, part of the hotel, is open to the public. Built in a minimalist style it has a reflecting pool, 2 weeping European Birch and 15 Honey Locust trees. There are 55 moveable chairs and tables. Brighton Food, a beach-themed food court, connects to the plaza. What makes this space special is the 20-foot wide TV screen attached to the west wall high above the space. All major sporting and awards shows are shown.

Eventi: 851 Avenue of the Americas between 29 & 30^th Streets.

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Photos by Rudi Papiri