hot walk in chelsea

(tt)  You get an idea to do a long long walk and then the heat sort of makes it a short long one!

This is all that remains of the signage on Pier 54 where the Titanic was to have docked in April 1912. The White Star letters are still showing through.

The Chelsea piers have been turned into arms of a riverside park.

This is a view of the apartment block over in New Jersey where Alan and Gary live and where we spent Independence Day

I think this is a little cafe

That's the latest extension of the Highline. I was going to go up but the stairs went past my eyes like a steel Everest so will return with Sheldy when it's a bit cooler.

This area is clogged with galleries

More ghostly remnants. This on the corner of 10th and 25th

And now 10th is in resurgence because of the success of the Highline. Even the shuttered Empire Diner is open again minus the Empire bit.

This is the loading bay of the Chelsea Markets....bread and pastry paradise and from which I am barred for the unforseeable future!!

Highline meets a new condo

Time to go home.

On the way back the bus broke down, a woman fell on the road, a man smacked into an old lady and  forty people tried to board  the packed vehicle at Union Square. So I got off . My Crocs are walked in and all is right with the world!!!

A NEW McBROOM

After Miss Feldshuh  had exploded onto the stage of the Iseman Theatre in sparks of colour and light the sultry Miss Amanda McBroom, accompanied by the brilliant Alex Rybek, debuted her new act, "Noir".  It was a deliciously cool concoction featuring her own compositions such as "The Rose" and "Dreaming" as well as standards from Cole Porter and Jacques Brel.  She got the idea of the show from listening to a song by  ultimate noirene, Julie London called, " Nice Girls Don't Stay For Breakfast". The whole set dripped with sex and class.   She was glorious.

Trumf all round

As with most fab actors Miss Feldshuh pulled out a proverbial rabbit and wowed the throng in her debut of  the play wot she writ herself,  "Aging is Optional".   Here she is mid flight.

Her wonderful accompanist, Beth Falcone, was her lifeline.

She is also hilarious

So here's to you Miss F!!   You are more than divine and I have had a ball working with you

Yale 2

(tt)   The final day of Yale involved getting Tovah rehearsed in the space. We actually found the theatre abandoned the night before and snuck in accidentally - and stayed accidentally but nobody who could punish us will read this so who cares. As well as getting her new act together Tovah was part of a tutorial for budding music theatre students along with Amanda McBroom, Sally Mayes and the amazing Julie Wilson. We were quitting the space for the start of the seminar and I had to run back and thank Miss Wilson for all the pleasure her work has given me. She held my hands and thanked me and I am now dead.
Tovah went  back to her Yale dorm to rest so I went on another explore of Old Yale.

The Princess Theatre opposite the Shubert is gone.. boarded up for an apartment development

This square was being set up for a pop concert that night. Roast audience.

 Yale isn't a closed off campus. Colleges are part of the New Haven township.
Here are some grabs of the buildings

The window and tradesman's entrance of an exclusive Yale tailor

So there you have it. Slices of Yale.

The second half of the adventure - Yale

(tt)   Woke to a warm morning which would turn bakingly hot and we all had brekky by the river

Sheldy  farewelled me at New Haven  and headed back to New York

And I continued on to the Yale campus and checked in to a freezingly cold hotel with a very warm-hearted staff. I didn't see the air conditioning control til I checked out two days later but the outlet made a great cooler for my dietary needs.

The Study Hotel is right opposite the theatre where Tovah Feldshuh ( the reason I am here) will be performing her new cabaret the following evening.

Classic seventies rubbish. How they got away with it when you consider the lovely real classic architecture I saw on a brief rec ...curtailed by the heat. Only idiots like me were on the streets.

The famous Yale Rep. Hoped to catch a matinee tomorrow but they are on summer hiatus.

Yale Art Gallery which I would invade later

Could be Florence

Or Sunday on Collins St, Melbourne

What a shock when I expected to see the 19th century New Haven theatre depicted in the brilliant

 and got this

instead of the one in the movie ( which I believe was actually  the San Francisco Shubert)

What still exists is the Taft building..now an apartment complex

 Back in the fifities all the actors in a  pre- Broadway tryout would stay here.  And it's where Eve Harrington was ensconced before her triumph in  'Footsteps on the Ceiling'.
Here she is with Addison DeWitt (George Sanders) walking from the theatre to the Taft.

and here they are in her suite just before Addison snares the bitch and makes him hers forever.

"We..talked"

I wandered in the blasting heat in a little park full of colonial churches until I was forced home for the coolth.

 Back to Collins St. Makes you realise that architecture en masse makes some cities indistinguishable like Body Shops in brick. I would still choose this over those sketched by Lego obsessed public servants who  can throw up glass blocks in ten seconds.

By now my new Crocs had rubbed off half the skin on my feet so I went into the Yale Art Gallery and bled on their cool floors.

Here are some of my faves

Judith Shea's 'Shock and Awe'

Marisol's 'Dinner Date'

Giacometti's 'Hands Holding The Void'

George Grosz's 'Inside and Out'

Elie Nadelman's 'Classical Head'

Walter Kuhn's 'Chorus Captain'

A genuine portable record player from the thirties

Van Gogh's 'Cafe at Night'

 and a  wonderful pre-Raphaelite  work by Edwin Austen Abbey 'The Play Scene in Hamlet'

I checked out the sculpture garden

and was blinded by radiant heat!

Then it was time for meeting up with Tovah and company to check out the space

and work til 1 a.m. !!!!!!