My Kingdom For A Meal (Third Day, Fourth Leg)

Are we at 14th Street already? Well -- almost. The trail from Chelsea Piers down to 14th Street used to be nothing more than rotting piers and a small bike path strewn with broken bottles, cans and other human detritus.

Now, it's a fairly large path for bikers, hikers and strollers, like us.Of course, there were a few strange sightings, like this guy who must have wandered a bit south from Ringling Brothers...

...Or, a bit north, from the Wild West Village's notorious leather bars. Oops, for a minute there, I thought it was the early 1980s again when I was "livin' the life" on West 10th Street, and Nature Girl was over on 22nd Street, in Chelsea. Ahh...to be that young and reckless again! Sights like this "leathery" tattooed fellow were the norm -- in fact, he's quite tame compared to some of the boys that were roaming around this part of town "back in the day." Not that we were actually part of the scene, more like fascinated observers. I remember tearing around on my two-wheeler (I believe it was a three-speed Schwinn) early Sunday mornings, dodging not traffic but discarded needles and bits of glass that surely meant a wild time was had out on what weather-worn, splintered, rickety piers were still standing, though listing slightly, on this part of the Hudson.

As much as I like the cleanliness and order of the area now, there is a part of me that's nostalgic for the grit and grime that used to be much more apparent then. Maybe it just felt more real, more like what New York City should feel like, especially on it's seedy and somewhat dangerous West Side. It certainly appealed more to my romantic 20-something self a good deal more than buff joggers pushing strollers and middle-aged strollers like us just truckin' along, enjoying the last vestiges of hot sun of a fast-fading summer.

My reverie is interrupted rather abruptly and rudely by a hideous, grumbling sound. No, not from my stomach this time, but from NG. So, we must now depart from the Hudson River road to repair to what we're hoping will be some yummy brunch nearby.

As we're walking down 15th Street towards 11th Avenue, we pass what I have to say is the one great thing about gentrification...a much better array of restaurants, cafes, bistros and other places to nosh than were ever in this part of town. Not that there was ever a lack of protein here. We're heading into the "meatpacking" district...so named because it was long the home to the many warehouses that were the repositories of massive sides of beef, pork, lamb and other animals that trains running along an elevated railroad spur called "the Highline" brought to be cut up and packaged and sent on their way to restaurants and grocery stores all over the area. I know this history because a very good Fordham buddy, Marc Sarrazin, was born into a family of French butchers that built a business called DeBragga and Spitial. You may have seen their white and red trucks racing through the city to make emergency meat deliveries to the city's top restaurants. Marc's dad, and now Marc, provide the steaks and chops and ribs that many of us New Yorkers devour...in restaurants and, now at home, through Marc's website that brings his extraordinary cuts to us all. In case you have a yen for some of the most fabulous meats you'll ever eat, the website is http://www.debragga.com/. DeBragga has been a fixture in this cobble-stoned area for many, many years (you can wave to Marc from the 12th Street entrance to new "Highline Park," which we'll stroll after lunch -- his offices and truck parking lot are clearly visible).

Had I known then what I know now, we would have walked right into the huge old warehouse building at the corner of 10th Avenue and 15th Street (right across the street from the back entrance of Chelsea Market -- another amazing repurposing of a building -- this time, an old waterworks turned into one of the coolest food and drink markets I've ever seen). It's so cool that the TV Food Network is headquartered there, and now this stretch of 10th Avenue is littered with huge restaurants like Mario Batali's Del Posto and Masimoto Matsuri's eponymous restaurant (and I'm not talking about Bob Pepi's amazing Eponymous wine -- a single-vineyard cult Napa Cab that would be dynamite with one of DeBraggia's steaks).

But, the restaurant I'm talking about is Craftsteak, Tom Collichio's soaring temple of unusual dishes (for a steakhouse) and ethereal steaks. Where I would have diverted us is to "Half-Steak," their bar area in the restaurant that is perfect for a lighter nosh. Alas, I only learned about it two weeks later, when the Old Guy and I celebrated our 22nd Wedding Anniversary in the main restaurant. Not the cheapest steakhouse on the block, but certainly the equal to any (and I include Peter Lugar in this assessment). I told the head sommelier Martin Flowers that I'd give the restaurant a "shout out" here...he and the entire waitstaff made our anniversary dinner incredibly memorable. I will be back...

But, where I was heading our triumvirate of famished walkers was to a new boite underneath the Highline called "The Standard Grill." It's actually in the basement of The Standard, a chic-chic "boutique" hotel (read very stylish and expensive) that actually is lacerated by The Highline itself.

This elevated train line, running from 12th Street all the way up to 34th Street, ran through many of the warehouse buildings that were in it's path (the easier to unload freight). You'll see what I mean in the next installment when we take our "bonus walk" in and on the City's newest park. But, right now our stomachs are screaming...and we're lucky that we've arrived just before the brunch crowd descends and we get a table immediately.

Given how chic The Standard is, I was quite pleased that the Grill had much more of a comfortable ambiance and reminded me of a smaller, cosier Oyster Bar at Grand Central Terminal -- or more like Buzzy O'Keefe's brasserie, Pershing Square, that is right across 42nd Street from the Terminal's Park Avenue entrance, actually tucked under the Park Avenue Extender Road that connects lower Park Avenue to Upper, winding around the upper level of the Terminal. Oh, you know where I mean. Anyhow, doesn't this look kinda cute and cosy...

I think the the style is even a little "kooky" in a Chelsea, London sort of way, from our waitressto the interesting tartan-style blazers and ties the waiters and busboys wore, to the table's salt and pepper shakers.NG has an extensive collection of shakers...I used to give her a set every Christmas, from my many travels, until she ran out of space on the painting guard that runs around the dining room of her Victorian home in NJ.

Even the bathrooms were unique, with communal sinks and a very "open" design...

not to mention the hallways. Despite the interesting touches, the brunch/lunch was quite good, though it pays to get there before 1:00 p.m. -- especially on a sunny, late summer day.

As the tradition of "Will Walk For Food" dictates, we start and end each section of "the walk" with a photo of our band of troopers. Therefore, courtesy of our waitress...

But wait, is this a Mcguffin? Yes...as there's a bonus walk chronicle coming in the next installment.

Ahh--The Sporting Life (Third Day, Third Leg)

From "The Frying Pan"... into the rest of our walk south along the Hudson. Very quickly, we strolled down to 23rd Street and Chelsea Piers, which was really the first salvo by the "forces of good" to clean up and "re-purpose" (love that word) the piers that once lined the river from Greenwich Village all the way up to the 120s when commerce was the waterway's main function, probably well into the 1950s. I believe that OG and I were still happily living in the Village when Chelsea Piers was first opened. As "the sporting life" really isn't my thing, I paid little attention to the warren of indoor sports arenas (for basketball, hockey, ice and roller-skating, even wall climbing), but I vividly recalled OG's ears perking up when I casually mentioned that one interesting feature of Chelsea Piers was a golf driving range.

Now, I may "walk for food" but the OG will crawl anywhere for golf. You can imagine how difficult it was for him, when we were living our idyll in the city -- the poor fellow would be up before the birds (sometimes at 4:00 a.m.) to drive way out into the wilds of Brooklyn (where the mighty Atlantic pounds the shores of Ris Park) for a 6:30 a.m. tee-off time on a course that lay over a garbage dump.

No surprise that I found myself lugging a bucket of balls and a driver over to the OG's little slice of heaven on the Hudson. I thought, for sure, we'd be whacking balls out into the waves. But, no...they had actually built a patch of green on a pier that was totally covered in netting, thus protecting the Circle Line and all other ocean-going vessels coming into or leaving the harbor. Not protecting them from my feeble attempts to hit golf balls.

I have to confess that this was not my finest hour. I have fairly good hand-eye coordination and am pretty consistent at making steady contact on the tennis courts, but the racket's net surface is a mite larger than the surface of a golf club head. And, those fuzzy, usually yellow and pretty LARGE tennis balls are surely an easier target than those puny puckered white spheres that golfers go "ga ga" over. I whiffed some many more time than connected, and probably looked so contorted in the effort, that it was more akin to Seinfeld's Elaine dancing--and likely as hysterical.

The one part of Chelsea Piers I did find interesting is the TV studios that take up a good portion of the southern end of the complex. That is, until I was invited to be part of the studio audience of a show that was filming there back in the 1990s. It was the Michael J. Fox comedy "Spin City" probably in the second season. I have always been a huge Michael J. Fox fan and was even more enamored of him on this show as he had a Fordham University banner in his bedroom on the set (it would make perfectly good sense that an aspiring political operative of Irish decent born and raised in the New York area would have gone to my alma mater -- I knew many of them). I remember hearing some story of how the banner actually got there, having to do with it being given to Fox by Fordham's dean at the time, but don't know where I heard it or if it's true.

Anyhow, here I was sitting in some bleachers with the various sets for the show -- the Mayor's office, Fox's office, the "bullpen" outside both, the media room at City Hall, Fox's apartment bedroom, etc. running down the length of a football field. So, the only part of the show the audience actually saw in front of them was one or two of the aforementioned sets. Everything else was shown on TV monitors. So, this "live" show wasn't really so live if you were sitting in the audience. And, like all creative endeavors, there are a quite a few "starts and stops" though, in TV, they do try to make it through in one or two takes. After about two hours of this, I'd pretty much had enough and was definitely cured of any notions that it was fun to watch them make TV.

So, overall, my experiences at Chelsea Piers were not terrific.

However, on this particular walk, there is one thing for which Chelsea Piers is extremely handy...the public restrooms.

Above are some satisfied customers who were visiting from Canada and allowed me to snap their photo...and others who would rather remain totally anonymous as they pick up where they left off on their own stroll along the Hudson.

Now, regressing back to the trail at hand (after that long digression on sports, modern media and bladders), a lovely park is being build just north of Chelsea Piers. We've seen small areas jutting out into the river all along our hike down from 213th Street...but none as large and ambitious as this one. About half of it is finished -- with the rest slated for completion within the next year. It will be a fine addition to what has turned out to be an amazing stretch of walkways and paths that have combined to bring a touch of "graciousness" to the eastern shore of the lower Hudson River.

Now, turning our attentions to across the West Side Highway, we find the only work by one of America's best-known living architects, Frank Geary. No Guggenheim or even Disney, but an office building on a portion of the West Side Highway not known for anything more than small warehouses and the formerly rotting steel beams of what is being transformed into the now-famous High Line Park (more on that a bit later).

I am a sucker for those undulating walls, so integral to Geary's designs. I get the same feeling looking at his buildings that I do when viewing most of Brancusi's sculptures -- something about the roundness of them pleases me greatly.

Hunger pangs are driving us ever southward to where we'll end this section of "the walk" and take a well-deserved detour.

...Into the Fire (Third Day, Second Leg)

First a little housekeeping...One chagrined reader asked where Nature Girl's unique and now-famous "walking chapeau" is. Sad to say, she forgot to bring it. Were I more clever with computers, I guess I could "photo shop" it in. But, this isn't a Warner Brothers production so, until I sell the movie rights for this blog, we'll all have to learn to love NG without it. Not that it can replace NG's vaunted hat, but there is a certain "jen ne se qua" to the cap that the Old Guy is sporting.

We're now strolling along the most densely populated and commercial stretch of "the walk" along the Hudson...the area of piers from the mid-50s down to the mid-30s, with ocean liners, tugs, the Intrepid Air and Space Museum (a God-send if you have to show teenage boys around the city), Circle Line Cruises (if you know the city, try one in another language -- and see how much you really know), the t0w-pound (I am most familiar with that, thank you New York City Parking Police)...all one right next to the other.

Not the prettiest strip, though it does have a few patches of loveliness...

We're almost down to the Javits Center (around 34th Street) and still awash is rather unsightly buildings and piers, with glimpses of the water now and again. Just then, a horse caught my attention:

I thought it odd that this rather garish, but patriotic, statue was displayed behind a chain-link fence -- and then I read the sign on the building. "Police Horse Ring." Indeed -- there was a horse ring inside one of the tin sheds. At least they get to exercise with a water view!

The trail is getting a bit less crowded and a lot more funky...

And, the piers have given way (more or less of their own volition)to unobstructed river views.

We're around 26th Street by now and, because of the late start, we're nearing the noon hour. Lunch-like thoughts are wafting through the air. NG has been crying hunger since the Circle Line pier, where she was thwarted in her efforts to secure a bit of sustenance (she, of no breakfast). I doubt she was ever a girl scout or she would have know to "be prepared."

Given the title of this blog, it should come as no surprise that thoughts of food are never far from our collective brains. The "food vibe" we were giving off must have been pretty powerful...out of nowhere, we stumbled over "The Frying Pan." I had absolutely no idea that there was a cafe along this part of the river walk...and I have a feeling most New Yorkers would say the same thing. But, once you clambered over what looked like a set of locks or a bridge that would load up a freight train and then turn towards the sea freighters to load or unload some cargo, you were face-to-face with a junk yard...no, I mean a sculpture park...no, it's more like a barge...no, I think it's a bar...a music venue...a party boat (sweet)! Look at the photos below and tell me what you think it is:

To the surprise of absolutely no one who knows the Old Guy, he struck up a conversation with a musician that was likely only a few years his senior, while NG lit out for a little reprieve from the grueling pace of the walk to catch a fresh breeze and seat on the bow of this art, music and libations barge.

In her post-walk role as Nancy Drew, NG found out that we were among the "cool kids" in the know for having found The Frying Pan (I could have told her that we were, once again, on the "cutting edge"). Alas, we were not on the way to satisfying those rapidly-growing hunger pangs in our stomachs, as they weren't serving anything past beer and wine (and not the "good stuff" like a honeysuckle-laced Torrontes or a passion-fruited Sauvignon Blanc -- from such great Argentine producers as Valentin Bianchi). So, with our stomachs audibly growling, we returned to the "road more taken" and continued south along the Hudson River.