North America

February in New York

Posted by Jim St. George on June 8, 2019
Posted in: New York (Home), North America, USA. Leave a Comment

Moving gently into the role of hosts, we had our friends Sven & Mary Beth over for drinks one night before going out to dinner. Soon we would face our fears and insecurities and actually cook a meal for guests.

This whole “Catching Up” process hasn’t gone so well. I was pretty happy back in April when I wrote up our final stop in Brazil, and then in May when Mark posted our January doings. But here it is in June and instead of having caught up … well, we haven’t. And it’s not as though we’re super busy or anything. I mean, retirement leaves a lot of spare time.

At any rate, back to February. The big deal for the month was getting a household set up after not having a household for nearly six years, but there’s not much interesting to write or say about that. We started the scary process of inviting people over for dinner; after six years of not cooking our skills were a little rusty. Mark’s parents came for a visit, our first house guests though we were pretty confident not our last.

It was a mild winter in New York and only once in February did we get any accumulation of snow at all. That once was enough for me to go down to the Battery at Manhattan’s southern tip to enjoy the views.

A lot of the month was just getting to know our new home town. Turns out it’s a big city with a lot to do. We’re trying to embrace the cultural opportunities here so we joined both the Metropolitan Museum and the New Museum, a modern art exhibition center just a couple blocks from our apartment. We even went to a “Music in Time” lecture an old graduate school classmate was giving on the Upper West Side. He’s mostly retired from the CEO-ing he did after graduate school and instead puts his energy into researching the relationship between music and political history. In this case it was Verdi’s role in the Risorgimento, Italy’s reunification campaign of the 18th century. It was a fundraiser (in an apartment on Central Park West) for a music scholarship program where his lecture was interspersed with real opera singers doing some of Verdi’s arias. Very New York.

Speaking of very New York, we absolutely love this view of uptown from our Lower East Side apartment

And then of course there was the seemingly interminable waiting to close the contract on our new loft at 62 Cooper Square. We wanted to close as quickly as possible to get the whole process rolling but that was not to be. The previous owner had had some construction done and needed to get an occupancy permit for the unit before the condo board would allow the sale to go through. You see, she had previously owned both the 11th and 12th floors, with a staircase connecting them, since no one could be expected to live in just a single full-floor unit. But she was downsizing and had the staircase removed and the floors created as separate units, meaning ours needed the occupancy permit. Now, all the work had been done; it was a perfectly livable with toilets and a kitchen and all that. It’s just that the city bureaucracy, particularly in the Department of Buildings, can move at a glacial pace. So we waited. In the meantime we were working with our architect to design the space (assuming we would be able to buy it eventually) while the then-current owner was paying taxes and condo fees. Frustrating to have to wait but ultimately not a bad deal for us.

As the month closed though we had no occupancy permit and, more frustrating, no idea whatsoever when the city would get around to issuing it.

Our first house guests, Mark’s parents, enjoying pre-dinner snacks and cocktails

Classic New York street scene near our apartment

One of New York’s new “pencil towers” on what is becoming known as Billionaire’s Row up near Central Park

We met Tamara in April 2014 when we first discovered the fabulous Temple Lodge in Bali. We bonded with her, stayed in touch, and even visited again with her in Bali in January 2017. While she still travels a lot, she lives over in Brooklyn so she was our first dinner guest. She appears to have survived.

There’s a lot to love about shopping here. For instance, New York has cheeses…

…and Jesus (this one by El Greco at the Met)

And here is El Greco’s view of Toledo (the one in Spain, not Ohio)

Me, enjoying an espresso and wearing the sweater I bought in Baku that I wore nearly every day in February…

And one last view of winter in New York

January 2019 in New York

Posted by Mark Sullivan on May 12, 2019
Posted in: USA. 3 comments

New York is beautiful in its own way even in the dead of winter. And we figure if we can get through January we can get through anything.

Hello again readers. Since we landed in New York City on January 2 we have been pretty quiet on our blog, right? Since that landing ended our 5-year, 8-month travel adventure, we’ve also been debating whether to end the travel blog or turn it into something else.

We’ve decided on “something else.” We love having the blog as a record of our adventures and especially a place to put our favorite pictures. And while the full-time travel adventure has come to an end, other exciting adventures keep unfolding. And we keep taking pictures that would like to have a nice home as well.

So welcome to MarkAndJim.com 2.0. We are going to try to write about our adventures monthly or so and see if that works. But we’ve got some catching up to do, so here is a summary of our first month of readjustment to non-nomadic domestic life. We will try not to include any spoilers!

We spent most of January living in a hotel right on Union Square, where the farmers markets are legendary

Our first home in New York felt a lot like our recent homes elsewhere. We spent 26 nights in a hotel as we tried to figure out how to find something more permanent. We spent all of that time at the W hotel right on buzzy Union Square, arguably right at the edge of lower Manhattan. Union Square is a great location, close to all the downtown neighborhoods where we wanted to look for a place to live.

Truth be told, we had a pretty good sense of EXACTLY where we wanted to live before we even got to New York. We’d been watching property listing in New York for most of the last year, always wishing we could find the perfect thing for us, which would be a large space with good bones in need of a total renovation. Our last home in Cambridge was our own creation, a loft space that we planned and designed ourselves. And it was perfect for us. Thinking about living in New York, we could never imagine ourselves with anything less than a space imagined and designed just for us. And we are willing again to suffer through a year of renovation to get it.

62 Cooper Square

The Carl Fischer Building was built in 1926 and housed a music publishing business for decades. Our 11th floor future home is highlighted.

Back on November 30, in Egypt, Jim saw a new listing on Zillow, which captured both our imaginations right away. It was the full 11th floor of the historic Carl Fisher Building at 62 Cooper Square in NoHo — an unimaginable 6,500 square feet, with 40 windows facing every direction with sweeping open views. And badly in need of a total renovation! NoHo is a great neighborhood surrounded by our other favorite neighborhoods — Greenwich Village to the West, the East Village to the East, Union Square and Flatiron to the north, and SoHo, NoLiTa, and the Lower East Side just to the south. OK, something must be super wrong with this property.

When we arrived in New York on January 2, our agent, Mara, had already set up a grueling couple days of property showings, starting that very afternoon. And the first property on the list was 62 Cooper Square. From the moment we walked into that space, nothing else was ever going to be able to compete. What was the awful thing wrong with it? Absolutely nothing. We could hardly believe someone else hadn’t scooped it up in the month since that listing first appeared.

We were blown away by the vast expanses of raw space at 62 Cooper Square. Now this has potential!

The front of the unit looks out over the historic college called the Cooper Union and the ultra-hip East Village

I know what you are thinking — sounds expensive! And yes, New York’s astronomical real estate prices take some time to get used to. We are lucky to have the budget of people who started and eventually sold a software company. But Cooper Square, with its big, open, unfinished spaces was priced so much lower per square foot than almost everything else we were looking at. You pay a lot more per volume to walk into a beautifully furnished spaces with appliances and finishes somebody else picked out. By our accounts, this property will be a bargain even after investing heavily in the renovation. Plus we know we can turn this into the perfect place for us.

As Mara shepherded us through a grueling schedule of property visits, nothing came close to Cooper Square. Every listing compared unfavorably to its value and potential. We’d barely cross the threshold of the next property before we’d be saying, “But Cooper Square This” and “Cooper Square That.”

So within just a few days we made an offer. And after another two weeks of anxiety, negotiation, excitement, and worry, we signed a contract to purchase the 11th Floor of 62 Cooper Square. We were aware then that we were embarking on a long and difficult process to turn the place into our dream home. Ahead of us lay months of agony to close on the property, make renovation plans, get permits to build, hire a contractor, and complete the construction. But by the end of January we had a signed contract and a newly hired architect.

We traipsed through many beautiful properties with Mara (in the white hat), but everything compared poorly to 62 Cooper Square

This was the rooftop of an apartment that belonged to the playwright Edward Albee. It was an interesting but quirky place that needed major renovation, but would still be quirky

196 Orchard Street

Until we had that contract in hand, we were afraid to make any other commitments in New York or anywhere else. We constantly feared the deal would fall through and it could take many months to find something else we could be so excited about. Would we stay in New York all that time? Or run away to somewhere else to sulk?

But now it was time to find an apartment for the year or so it would take to renovate Cooper Square. We felt little enthusiasm about finding an apartment, feeling like we’d be living in temporary squalor for a year. After looking at lots of dreadful listings and visiting a few dreadful apartments, we discovered a sparkling new apartment building in the Lower East Side and fell in love.

Because everything about real estate in New York is hellish and complicated, it took us well over a week to apply and get approvals to move in. On January 25 we got our keys to the new apartment and embarked on a mad three-day shopping binge to acquire the things we’d need to move in. After all, we’d been living out of suitcases for nearly six years. We had NOTHING required to live in an apartment. No furniture, no dishes, no sheets or towels or silverware or toilet paper or cookware. Finally, on January 28 a whole set of rented furniture was delivered, and we moved out of the W Hotel and into our new home at 196 Orchard Street. It felt really weird to have a place to call “home” again.

Our new apartment before the rental furniture got delivered. Here is Jim taking a break from our 3-day shopping marathon.

One of the best things about living in New York is that we have a surprising number of old friends here. That includes my college friend Mary Beth, here with her youngest daughter Fiona at one of several wonderful dinner parties they’ve hosted for us.

Dinner parties are Mary Beth and Sven’s house are pretty serious gastronomic affairs. This is the stunning fish dish that Sven put together.

Plus everybody loves to visit the Big Apple! Bart and Ann came down from Boston for a super fun weekend.

New urban planning strategies and new construction technologies have led to a new generation of super tall and skinny skyscrapers called “pencil towers,” here rising above Central Park

Cool modern shapes at the World Trade Center

New York is a very international town, as witnessed by signs for the construction workers in our apartment building in English, Albanian, Russian, and Spanish. Over 37% of New Yorkers were born in another country.

That’s Peter Stuyvesant, Director General of the New Netherlands from 1647-1664

We were anxious to get to New York so Jim could see a doctor here after his health scare in Brazil. They filled all those little tubes with his blood and eventually concluded that he’s in pretty good shape.

Manhattan

Posted by Jim St. George on May 10, 2018
Posted in: North America, USA. Leave a Comment

Mary Beth has become a very special friend. She was a close friend of Mark’s in college but I’ve only gotten to know her well in the last couple of years. On top of this visit through Central Park she & Sven had us out to dinner at their house in the ‘burbs twice. That alone is a good reason to move to New York!

Two weeks in New York City – it sounds like a dream come true. And that’s pretty much what it was; we loved our time there. Great food, great friends, great neighborhoods, great parks, great weather (some of the time), and, as befits Manhattan, great Perfect Manhattans.

All of which is a good thing, as we’re pretty serious now about buying a place there later in the year. We’re pretty much booked solid until early September – 10 or 11 weeks in Africa and then six weeks in Europe – but after that it feels increasingly likely that we will go back to New York and start looking seriously for a place to buy.

Why New York? This shot of Central Park on a perfect spring morning is one good answer.

First we had to get to New York from Boston, so naturally we bought tickets on Acela, the “high-speed” train up the northeast corridor. There was part of the trip that impressed me: the train left exactly on time and was pretty comfortable. I had been expecting the worst, so that was a good sign. The crazy thing about it, though, is that while the train is capable of going up to maybe 180 miles per hour, it only hits that speed briefly. And as you start to get near New York it just crawls, for something like an hour or so. This is the best we can do in the U.S. for high-speed rail and in that sense it’s pathetic.

These two-plus months we’ve spent in the States have made it clear to both of us that we’re ready to be closer to family and friends and ready to slow down the travel. We’ve both noticed over the last year or so that some of the magic has gone out of traveling; that we’re just not as excited about the next new adventure, that we’re more likely to be lazy in a new place than to go out and explore. And if you’re going to have a home in the U.S., wouldn’t it just have to be in Manhattan? After you’ve seen the world, anywhere else just feels a bit boring.

Thus we spent a big chunk of our two weeks working with a real estate agent to figure out what we like, what we need, what we can afford, and – crucially – what neighborhood or neighborhoods we want to live in. Going into this exercise I had assumed that we were wide open in terms of location, anything from Tribeca or even Battery Park in the south to the Upper West Side or Upper East Side in the North. After doing some serious explorations we came to realize that Tribeca is just too far south and the Upper East & West Sides, even Midtown, are just too far north. Now we’re much more focused on Soho, Greenwich Village, Chelsea, and the Flatiron district. Downtown, but not way downtown. That’s important to figure out.

That’s me with Mara, our real estate agent, in the master bathroom of one unit we looked at. You can see from the raincoats that the spring weather in New York isn’t always perfect.

I should note that working with a real estate agent in New York is like nothing else I’ve ever seen. First of all, your tour is a walking tour. None of this driving around from property to property; the agent identifies eight or nine properties in one area and you hoof from one to the next. Given New York traffic, of course, that makes perfect sense; there’s no way you could reasonably drive around and it would be utterly impossible to park if you did. And on top of that, the agents know everything about the neighborhood, the history, the building, and even some of the other owners. Our agent was recommended by a friend in Miami Beach who is also a real estate agent and, it turns out, Mara knows pretty much everything you could ever know about real estate in these neighborhoods. We would mention some property that we’d seen online and she would immediately explain why that one wouldn’t work for us. And now that she’s got us figured out she will spend her summer finding our dream home while we’re traipsing around Africa and Europe. Not a bad deal!

Besides house hunting, it goes without saying that there’s a lot to do in New York. First of all we walked. And walked and walked and walked. And walked. My Apple Watch tracks steps you take and translates that into distance; over the 14 days we were there I walked just over 170 miles, so well over 12 miles a day. Much of the purpose for that walking was to figure out the city, where the neighborhoods and “feel” of the city change, and all that. But then there was also long walks along the Hudson River parkway, walks up into and through Central Parks, walks to dinner, walks over both the Williamsburg and Brooklyn bridges. So yeah, walking and walking and walking.

Walking in New York in May means lots and lots of blooms. The weather can be cold and dreary but when the sun comes out and the blossoms open up it can be glorious.

Then there’s the whole business of finding the right hotel. Mark does a lot of research on this stuff and given the insane prices of New York hotels we chose the Algonquin, a classic old Manhattan landmark up near the theater district that was less crazy expensive than others. There were only a few problems with it. The location was wrong for us, as we increasingly realized we didn’t want to be that far north. On top of that the hotel was pretty run down, very much tattered around the edges. The windows in our room were simply the dirtiest windows I’ve ever seen in my life. One of the two elevators was shut down for repairs the entire time we were there, meaning that everyone – staff included – was limited to a single elevator; waiting times were sometimes significant. And that was before Mark got up early on our fourth morning to go down for coffee and discovered that the remaining elevator was out of order, too. So there we are on the 12th floor – the top floor – with no working elevator whatsoever.

Actually, it was a blessing; there was no way the hotel management could deny our request to cancel the remainder of our reservation and move to a new hotel. This time we moved way downtown to Public, a new and very buzzy hotel developed by Ian Schrager in the Lower East Side, right near Soho. Much nicer but not really worth the money we were paying and this time too far south. In this case we only reserved four nights and then decided to move up to the W Hotel at Union Square, and that turned out to be perfect. Nice hotel and great location; I really loved being right next to Union Square, so it was just what we needed. And as a bonus on our last day there, just before heading to the airport to catch our flight to Africa, there was a big union rally at Union Square. And as we walked past it I looked up and realized that just then the speaker was no less than Gov. Cuomo. I’m not his biggest fan but I kind of worshipped his father, so it was still pretty cool.

Wayne Brady, the star of Kinky Boots, after finishing his last performance. And we were right in the front row to drink it all in.

And there are shows to go to. On our first night in the city we had dinner with our old graduate school classmate Ajay and his family. Ajay is a native New Yorker and knows pretty much everything that’s going on; he suggested we go to Kinky Boots, the 2013 Tony Award winner for Best Musical. But, he noted, we had to go soon because after a couple years the lead, Wayne Brady, was ending his run. We got tickets for two nights later and there we were in the front row for his very last performance. It was a great performance and you could easily see why it would win a Tony. A week later, this time at the suggestion of Mary Beth, we got tickets to The Play that Goes Wrong. This was a crazy slapstick comedy that normally wouldn’t be the right cup of tea for either of us but it was genuinely a riot. As Mark put it, the sillier it got the funnier it was. After those two experiences our thought was that once we move here (if we move here…) we’re going to see a lot of plays.

Mary Beth and Sven invited us to a dinner party for 12 out in New Rochelle. Sven in particular is a genuinely accomplished chef and the meal was incredible. Here he is building the salad course plate by plate, literally one piece of lettuce at a time. Wow.

And on top of all that lots and lots of friends. Dinner parties out in New Rochelle with our friends Mary Beth and Sven, with whom we’ve spent time in Italy. Lunch and dinner and walks with Ajay and Ann and little Lucia. Dinner in Brooklyn with Monica and Esha, two former VAN staffers both of whom now work for a nonprofit that was holding an all-staff meeting there. Another dinner in Brooklyn with an old friend from my tax policy days. After dinner drinks with our friend Dan, also in town for work. Dinner and drinks with Les, an old friend of Mark’s from college. Even a quick photo op with a friend/former staffer who I just ran into in Central Park, the first time in five-plus years on the road when we’ve just run into someone unexpectedly. When we first started talking about getting a permanent home again I suggested that we move to someplace where we have family or friends: DC, Boston, Minnesota, Michigan. Maybe even San Francisco. Mark explained that if we have a place in New York people would come to us and this two-week social whirlwind suggests maybe he’s right.

Apropos of nothing in particular, you always need a cat picture, right? She was the house cat at the Algonquin Hotel, our first stay, and the only redeeming quality of the hotel.

Two strange observations about New York City. First, while it’s known as “the city that doesn’t sleep,” we were more likely to think of it as the city that doesn’t get up. For most of our stay breakfast wasn’t included with our room so we’d go out hunting for breakfast. Not crazy early but like 8:00 AM or a little later. We’d seen one restaurant at night that advertised breakfast so we went there only to discover they don’t open until 9:00. For breakfast! Another restaurant was supposed to open at 8:00 but when we got there at 8:05 they explained they wouldn’t open for another 15 minutes “or so.” Crazy.

And then there’s this thing where at least some of the hotels seem to be making their lobbies into hangout lounges for college-age kids and their laptops. We saw it first at the Ace Hotel where we had lunch; the lobby was just packed with kids, coffee, and laptops. Later, when we checked into Public for four nights the lobby was again a lively, buzzing place. I can’t believe that many 20-somethings were shelling out that kind of money for a hotel. But I suppose from the hotel’s perspective if you take what is usually a big empty space and fill it with life – and sell some coffee on the side – that’s not a bad thing.

So now we’re done with the States for a few months at least. First Africa, then Europe. I think it will feel good to go somewhere exotic again. And if Africa isn’t exotic, nothing is.

Time with friends: out to dinner with Ajay & Lucia on our first night in New York

Later in the week we walked across the Williamsburg Bridge with Ajay, mostly just because walking in New York is so cool

Dinner in Brooklyn one night with Esha, who had a great run working at NGP VAN until just recently she took a new position

We didn’t get all four of us in one picture, but Monica – another former staffer – was there for dinner too. Neither Esha nor Monica live in New York – they were in town for a work meeting – but as Mark assures me, if you live in New York you’ll see your old friends because everyone comes through at one point or another.

Speaking of old friends, I was walking through Central Park and heard someone call my name. At first I almost didn’t recognize Benjy; when we hired him some years ago he was too young to drink legally and now he’s all grown up with a beard and everything. And yes, after five years on the road this was the first time outside of Boston that we just randomly ran into someone from our old life!

One night we learned that our friend Dan was in town for work, so we met him at the Blue Bar for a late after-dinner drink. Can’t for the life of me figure out why it was called the Blue Bar.

But no, this wasn’t called the Red Bar. That’s another old college friend, Les, who has lived here for nearly 30 years. It would be great to live near him, too.

One last fun friend to visit. Jennifer is another NGP VAN staff, a woman I hired more than 10 years ago. These days she lives on Long Island and works remotely, so she came into town on Saturday for brunch with us.

Looking for property was our top priority so when we just happened on this building it got our hearts racing. A boarded up building suggest someone is going to renovate it, we thought. That’s our perfect scenario where we can get in at the start, as we did in Cambridge, and design our own space. I suspect there aren’t a lot of people who would walk past this and say “My dream house!”, but that’s what we’re looking for. Sadly, Mara said that it’s highly likely a developer has air rights for this and the neighboring building (also boarded up); they’re likely planning to tear it down and put up a big glass building in its place.

We also toured a couple of those big towers that are still under construction. Again, the opportunity to design our own space in something like this is pretty appealing, too.

This was one of our favorites, a good-sized unit in a classic old department store building. If we were ready to pull the trigger (we’re not) it would have been really tempting to put an offer on this one, the top floor on the right, including that turret as a great sitting room.

One more of our favorites. This was a nice unit on 5th Avenue down in the Flatiron district. High ceilings, tall windows, on a corner so lots of windows. And if that wasn’t enough, immediately above a Banana Republic!

Yet another unit we looked at had this great view of a very French building right across the street. This would be the view from the bathtub!

There are lots of townhouses available and while we’re not likely to want one – we’re not crazy about that kind of vertical living – we toured this one. Someone already has all the plans to turn this into something fabulous, including making this into a roof deck. That’s Mara, our real estate agent, poking her head up into the space.

Admiring the classic architecture is always a highlight of New York. Here we, have the Flatiron Building, One World Trade Center (sometimes known as Freedom Tower), and the Empire State Building.

The World Trade Center Transportation Hub, designed by Santiago Calatrava. Among other works, we’ve enjoyed, even been amazed by, his Turning Torso in Malmö and the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia.

Hudson Yards isn’t yet a New York landmark, but it will be. It’s a massive development $20 billion project at the end of the High Line (our favorite elevated park outside of Paris) that will add 16 skyscrapers and nearly 13 million square feet of office, retail, and residential space to the city. Wow.

Speaking of landmarks, here we are walking across the Brooklyn Bridge for dinner over there with our friend Jean

Then I turned around and Mark took this shot with the downtown skyline behind me

Speaking of the High Line, we walked on it a couple of times during our stay. This is the very beginning, approaching the Standard hotel. While the building is really not aging well, the High Line certainly is. The trees and plantings and flowers and all are so much bigger and more lush than they were when we first saw it maybe eight years ago.

Another shot on the High Line, here with Hudson Yards looming

One more shot from the High Line. This is a new residential project by Zaha Hadid, a Iraqi-British architect who died two years ago. The building is cool, but a number of the units just open up right next to the High Line. Not a place for someone who likes a little bit of privacy.

Along with the High Line and Central Park I’ve come to love a great bicycle and pedestrian parkway along the Hudson River. It runs from Battery Park at the very southern tip of Manhattan a long way up the west side of the island. Here I am on a gorgeous spring afternoon lying on Pier 45, and old work space they’ve turned into a thriving park.

Mark showing off some of the cherry blossoms bursting out

I was dressed perhaps somewhat more appropriately to show off another cherry tree

Here Mark is sitting at Piccolo Cucina, a Soho restaurant that TripAdvisor made sound good. Instead it was great – a perfect afternoon when we got there at exactly the right second to get one of only two outdoor tables. And half the people around us were speaking Italian, making it feel pretty authentic. On top of all that I just loved the view of those very New York buildings behind him.

A week after the big dinner party Sven & Mary Beth invited us out for a quiet family dinner of lamb burgers. Always the chef, Sven insists on grinding leg of lamb himself since nothing else would do, of course.

Mary Beth came into the city one afternoon just to play with us

One walk took me through Chinatown. The whole street scene and all that really felt like I was in China.

Chinatown has almost completely swallowed up Little Italy (the Italians moved to the suburbs). Perhaps you have to have spent time around all the spitting in China to appreciate this sign on Columbus Park.