Category: NYC

For a Long Life, Retire to Manhattan

This little piece from the NY Times is fun, if a bit unrealistic. I don’t think I could ever afford to retire to Manhattan, but I like the idea. I could spend my days wandering around in museums and going to movies. I’d never need a car.

Who knows, maybe by the time I’m ready to retire, things will have changed somehow and “regular people” will be able to afford to live in Manhattan again, not just the ultra-rich.

Retiring to Manhattan is an act of bravery. It also prepares you for the end. The anonymity of metropolitan life gets you ready for the anonymity of the grave.

Source: For a Long Life, Retire to Manhattan – The New York Times

no NYCC for me

Well, I took a shot at getting NYCC tickets earlier this week, but I gave up on it after waiting about 90 minutes and seeing 4-day and 3-day passes sell out. I probably could have hung in there and gotten a one-day Sunday ticket, but it wasn’t worth the effort.

On the positive side, the debilitating pain in my foot that kept me home from work that day has almost completely gone away. And I’ve got an appointment with a podiatrist in a couple of weeks, so we can hopefully figure out what I can do to prevent this from happening again. I’ve already been a little proactive, spending $12 on a pair of off-brand gel inserts for my sneakers. Those actually seem to be helping a little bit.

I’d really like to go to at least one con this year, if I can, but SDCC and NYCC are both off the table now, and I’ve already missed WonderCon. It’s probably not too late to register for DragonCon, if I can talk myself into flying down to Atlanta.

no more Tekserve

I just heard the news that Tekserve is going to close soon. I got my MacBook fixed at Tekserve late last year, and they did a good job on it. There’s really no other place to take a broken Mac anymore, other than the Apple Store. And Apple is picky about what they’ll fix and what they won’t. (They wouldn’t have touched mine, since I have a 3rd party SSD in there.)

This is really disappointing, but I guess it was inevitable. Rents in NYC are going through the roof, so smaller independent stores of any kind have trouble staying in business. And there are multiple (official) Apple Stores in NYC, so fewer people are going to bother with (or even be aware of) an independent Apple retailer.

I guess if I need my MacBook fixed again, I’ll have to take a trip out to PowerMax in Oregon!

Warby Parker

Interesting story in the NY Times on Warby Parker vs. two of the older eyewear stores in Manhattan, Moscot and Cohen’s. I bought a pair of Warby Parkers about a year ago, but I stopped wearing them after a couple of weeks and just use them as a back-up pair now. The Safilo frames that I bought more than ten years ago at Rowden here in Somerville are still in great shape, and much more comfortable that the Warby Parker frames.

I’m not sure that I care much about the “narrative” of the stores in which I shop, and I think this article stretches its point a bit too far. As an unfashionable 40-something guy from New Jersey, I didn’t feel particularly “excluded” at Warby Parker. If I do ever need a new pair of glasses, though, I’m going to go back to my local optician.

On a related topic, though, I think it might be time to make a return visit to that neighborhood in New York and check out the Whitney and the High Line again. Maybe not today though; it looks like it’s going to rain.

Met Gala

My Twitter feed tonight is full of photos from the Met Gala. The Times had a good article today explaining a bit about the Gala, and how it works. The whole thing is kind of ridiculous and leaves a bad taste in my mouth, though it is all kind of amusing, I guess.

I’m not a big fan of the Costume Institute, and generally don’t get much out of their exhibits. It doesn’t seem to me like the kind of stuff that should even be in the Met. But I know I’m probably in the minority here. And while the Gala apparently makes a lot of money, it seems like all of it is used to fund the Costume Institute and not other departments at the Met, if I understand it correctly. If they were using some of that money to buy up a few new Monet or Cezanne paintings, I’d be all for it. But I guess some of the Costume Institute exhibits bring a lot of people (and ticket money) into the Met, in general, so that’s something.

I was at the Met yesterday, and checked out the Vigée Le Brun exhibit again, and the new Pergamon exhibit. And I’m looking forward to a sunny day, so I can see the new roof garden installation.

2 Art Worlds: Flush MoMA, Struggling Met

The [Met] will undergo a 24-month financial overhaul that it said was likely to include staff reductions, reduced programming and a concerted effort to increase revenue in its restaurants and retail operations.

Source: 2 Art Worlds: Flush MoMA, Struggling Met

I love both the Met and MoMA, but if I had to pick only one to support, it’d be the Met. I’m much more a fan of the older stuff at the Met than the newer stuff at MoMA. Reading this article, I feel kind of bad for throwing out the annual appeal letter I got from the Met this week. On the other hand, I see in the article that they spent $3 million on their recent “rebranding”, which I really think was completely unnecessary.

As to MoMA, I won’t feel bad about throwing away any supplemental appeal letters from them, since they just got a $100 million donation from David Geffen.

Metropolitan Museum admission

From Metropolitan Museum of Art Reaches Settlement on Admissions Policy:

The Metropolitan Museum of Art reached a settlement Friday in part of a long-running legal challenge to its admissions policy, conceding a semantic point and agreeing to change the wording on its signs to say that its $25 dollar full-admission charge is “suggested” instead of “recommended.”

This is such a weird little semantic issue, but I find myself somewhat amused by it. Is “recommended” misleading? I don’t know. “Suggested” does sound less judgemental to me, at least, but not by much. And why would The Met waste time and money battling this in court?

Some history on this here and here.

I’m a member, so I don’t pay for admission, but I’ve always been curious about how many visitors actually pay the suggested admission, how many pay nothing, and how many pay something in between zero and the suggested price. I like the idea of “pay what you want” transactions, whether it be Humble Bundle sales, They Might Be Giants albums, or museum admission. And I like the idea of places like The Met (or AMNH) being open to everyone, regardless of their ability to pay a $25 admission fee.

MoMA PLASTIC

I’ve visited MoMA twice recently; both were pretty short visits. There’s not much major going on right now. But the PLASTIC thing is kind of weird and funny. I wasn’t aware of it, initially, and I had thought that someone had maybe passed out on the stairs, and I was wondering why no one was doing anything about it. But I figured out that it was probably art by the time I reached the top of the stairs.

Someone posted a photo from that on reddit recently, and the comments turned into an interesting back and forth on modern art. Well, ok, lots of it is the usual reddit silliness, but there are a few actually insightful comments in there.