A rainy weekend in Manhattan
Perfect for museums and walks
Last Saturday
Aside from a timed entry visit to the American Society of Illustrators’ Museum we had a whole day free to wander so we got lost in Manhattan. Getting lost in Manhattan is the path to finding treasures. Renounce thy GPS and ye shall find wonders.
Wonders like an unexpected Saturday Street fair that made the concrete Stonehenge of Sixth Avenue a pedestrian paradise with block after block of food vendors, “I heart NY” T-shirt peddlers and world class folk artisans.
Wonders like “Kinokuniya”, a 3-story Japanese book and toy store that convinced us we were in Tokyo.
Wonders like Charles Dickens’ writing desk. We found it on display inside the New York Public Library. Friends, I’ve been to Mark Twain’s house in Hartford. I’ve seen the Book of Kells and I’ve hung out at Norman Cousins’ Beverly Hills home library. I’ve even seen Charles Schulz studio. But this! Seeing this piece of home office funriture enshrined behind glass in the same great hall where one can find the real Winnie-the-Pooh made this goober’s yapper gape.
While Ellen and Matt wandered among the Shakespeare folios, cuneiform tablets and illuminated manuscripts I stood transfixed by the desk, in a euphoric state of humble adoration of an object so sacred to me it might as well have been a nail from the true cross of Golgotha.
I have written countless parodies of Dickens “A Christmas Carol”, with a Tucson twist, for theatrical fundraiser shows and I hope a few of you got to enjoy one or two of my silly works of pure joy. Dickens’ masterpiece is the great moral fable of the ages. Scrooge is the archetypal self-interested free market capitalist who lacks empathy because he’s insulated from the lives of the common working class family. Next to Twain’s “Tom Sawyer” Dickens’ little Christmas story is the most powerful political tract ever penned. If you know the story and yet remain a libertarian Republican, you never grasped Dickens’ moral message.
I imagined Chuck seated there at his desk, quill in hand, turning to his children and barking, “Can’t you see I’m trying to pay the rent here? I’m getting my Oliver all in a twist because of you kids! I got my publisher hounding me night and day. I tell him I can only give him a tale of one city and he demands a tale of two cities! Are you pips listening to me? Are there no prisons, no workhouses for you noisy brats?”
It was time for us to head to the American Society of Illustrators Museum. I had a rendezvous with an exhibition of original pen and ink renderings by Mike Mignola, the creator of “Hellboy”.
Hi, my name is Dave. I am comic book geek. And I am powerless to control my addiction to the visual eye candy of Mike Mignola, my favorite comic book artist, a gothic master without peer.
I have too many Hellboy comics.
On the 2nd floor of a charming gallery east of Park Avenue I studied Mignola‘s mesmerizing brushwork with the same sense of wonder with which I would study Van Gogh’s mesmerizing brushwork at the Met, as if I was leaning over his shoulder watching him lay down each line and dab with the grace of a calligrapher.
The joy of seeing original comic art comes from seeing the mistakes, the erasures, the visual framework constructed by this veteran virtuoso of the pen and brush.
And there is something else about his work worth noting. I love Mike Mignola’s drawings of nazis, castles, para normal piffle and demons in Hell. They rock the imagination.
On the third floor we discovered the American Society of Illustrators tavern where we sipped cocktails under Norman Rockwell’s painting “The Dover Coach” and admired the comic art that covered the walls around us.
It was there we decided to get lost again, this time wandering Central Park aimlessly on a hot summer day.
Last Sunday
Sunday morning, we rose to a very gray and rainy day, a perfect day to inhabit the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art and finally get my money’s worth out of my art education at the University of Arizona without once sounding smug or effete.
On our way walking south to Grand Central and the Chrysler I glanced over at a cornerstone and discovered American history, the site where the great patriot Nathan Hale was executed. The man famous for regretting he had but one life to give for his country.
What’s the perfect destination on a rainy day in Manhattan?
The Strand Bookstore.
Umbrellas in hand we ambled past the Empire State Building and into Union Square Park where I stopped to praise a plein air artist. We talked about light and color and cartoonists he admired like the great Jeff MacNelly and he told me his name was Frank and I told him I liked the way his strokes of light illuminated the trees on the lane he was painting and Ellen and I walked on into the ethereal music of the jazz virtuoso down on the street ringing sugar from his xylophone. Here’s a sample:
And then it began to rain and umbrellas opened all around us and we opened ours and heading into the coolling breezes of an afternoon rain.
I shopped in a cartoonist’s Valhalla, “Forbidden Planet Comics”, while Ellen shopped in “The Strand” which was packed with happy crowds of umbrella fluffing bibliophiles.
In the comic shop I had a delightful comic book geek moment.
“Excuse me. Do you have any Mignola comics?”
“Right this way.”
“I just saw an amazing show of his originals uptown at the Illustrators’ Museum.”
“Oh, man! I’ve been meaning to check that out.”
“Yeah. To see his ink work up close was amazing.”
“I can only imagine. Steve here will help you.”
“Are you looking for his old Hellboy stuff or anthologies or…”
“His old stuff. Before Dave Stewart began doing the art.”
“Yes! Classic Hellboy.”
“I just came from a fantastic show of his original work for a Pinocchio at the Illustrators’ Museum.”
“Whoa. I hear that’s an amazing show. I’ve been meaning to see it.”
“Oh, you really should. It’s uptown, you know.”
Our last stop was Washington Square in the Village of Greenwich.
It was there at the Washingon Square Foutain Ellen and I decided to walk from Washington Square back to our hotel in the rain. Halfway home we made a pit stop so I could fuel my foolishness with a Manhattan. We asked the server where she was from.
“Bay area. But I love it here.”
“Why?”
“I like the energy.”
A litte frenetic energy is good for the western soul every couple of moons. And so is getting caught in a rainstorm in Manhattan.
Ellen and I like any excuse to use an umbrella so on we walked underneath our unfurled parasols in the glorious rain of Gotham, past diners and skyscrapers and a million stories lost in the grey mist, arm in arm, into the Manhattan night.
.
.
Brilliant and evocative prose yet again, from my favorite artist ,cartoonist, teller of tales, and just all around good dude. Greetings also to Ellen and Matt. Sounds like a dream vacation.
Wow, Dave, another great tale. I've never been to NYC. Bob didn't like crowds so he wouldn't take me! So thanks for this.