Just about done with a few days in New York City, and I came ill-prepared. I thought I'd enjoy just walking around whenever I wasn't meeting up with friends, but that was generally unsatisfying—nowhere more so than in our neighborhood of Tribeca. There's nothing new here for me—I've wrung it dry—and, to a lesser degree, that goes for the city, too. I know what's around every corner, which is boring.
So while everyone else thinks Hudson Yards, the new corporate "neighborhood" being built above the Hudson Rail Yards is sterile, soulless, and depressing, I found it sort of interesting. I wouldn't want to live there, or work there, or even go back there, but for an hour, it offered novelty in a city whose wrinkles are being ironed out.
I took the A train to 14th Street, then walked up the High Line till 30th Street. The architecture that has gone up—and continues to go up—around the High Line is a mixed bag, and I'm a firm believer that the weirder a building is, the more it wants to be set off against something that's not weird. That's not remotely the case at the High Line, an architect's alley of showcase design, each trying to one-up the other. The building that most caught my eye was Heatherwick Studio's 515 W. 18th St.
At W. 30th Street, I went into Mercado Little Spain, the food hall from José Andrés and the Adrià brothers. Some of the food looked good, but unless you opt for sit-down dining, you have to fight for a seat. Does anyone like that?
Next stop: La Boîte, a spice shop in Hell's Kitchen that I had read about in the Wall Street Journal. It was great, and I picked up a few gifts, but I didn't take any photos—the place is as much an office as a shop, and it didn't feel right. I haven't spent much time on the west side of Hell's Kitchen, so the walk back down Eleventh Avenue was refreshing in its way. Two highlights: a street address cleverly mimicking gold foil stickers (makes sense that a graphic design firm is the tenant), and a glimpse of how the shiny new buildings of Hudson Yards are on a platform over the train tracks.
Then I met up with Adam at Vessel, the massive interactive sculpture at the heart of Hudson Yards. Like the condo I admired along the High Line, it's by Heatherwick Studio, which is also designing the funky Pier 55 on the Hudson River. (Many years ago I made him track down a drawbridge in London, by Heatherwick, that rolls up instead of raising in the usual way.) Anyway, back to Vessel. At first, I thought it should be called Corporate Ladder, given the office-park setting, but then it would have to narrow at the top instead of widen. There are various striking moments as you ascend and descend, and we enjoyed seeing the elevator slowly make its way. The walls on the perimeter are really low, however, and suicides would seem to be inevitable. (P.S. The bronze color is awfully 80s....)
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The New York Times ran an amusing article on pug lovers in Germany, with a quote that I should get needlepointed on a pillow: "A life without pugs is possible, but meaningless." All that reading about pugs must have conjured up something, because I saw four today, ending a long pugspotting drought. The last one is just sagging, not pooping.