Bar Next Door
Posted: April 24, 2012 Filed under: Greenwich Village | Tags: TUESDAY TOILET TALK Comments Off on Bar Next DoorAfter having gotten lost inside Macy’s and having been accosted by a large, unruly dog on my walk down 6th Ave., I almost passed the place when I turned on my heels at a sound that registered as jazz, to see a plaque that said “Next Door.” I hurried inside and balked at the sight of the cave-like room, until the polite waitress seated me in a corner. Then, I pondered if I could touch the ceiling and why the table was sticky.
The clearance must have been 6’10” at most. I know this to be a fact because a guy who said he was between 6’7” and 6’8” nearly scuffed the ceiling with his hair. I gradually settled into this dark, cozy room and tried to look like a normal person, having vichyssoise with a side of bread. Unfortunately, I couldn’t suppress my smirk at the sight of two of my favorite boys playing music. The group was led by Benny Benack III, who is usually a trumpeter, sometimes a singer, and always a ham.
“I’ve had too much ham today,” said Mark, refusing pizza that Benny offered him. Mark Whitfield Jr. (drums) also declined chocolate mudd cake. He does like cranberry ginger ale, dolphins, Duke Pearson’s ballad “You Know I Care” and purple.
Benny is a self-proclaimed legendary ping pong champ, avid golfer, former high school junior varsity baseball player, fantastically imaginative yarn spinner and the ultimate middle school sleepover talent. And that’s just in his own words, from an unsolicited interview. I think we can safely add narcissistic to his list of traits.
Raviv Markovitz (bass), the only one without a generational suffix in his name, rounded out the trio. I hadn’t met Raviv before this but I quickly gathered that his name backwards is Ztivokram Vivar and that he roots for the Red Sox and likes watching Sports Center. Also, according to other sources, he is the sweetest guy ever and can rattle off a long list of chick flicks to watch, if you’re in the mood.
You may be wondering why this matters. Why does it matter that Coltrane loved to eat sweet potato pie? Or that Miles Davis wore Brooks Brothers suits? When these twenty-somethings just barely of drinking age step into their roles as the next jazz legends, you can say that you heard it here first.
There is a bathroom each for women and men at the Bar Next Door, down an unlit and narrow hallway (see the first photo). A very fat person would not be able to squeeze through to get to the bathroom, nor a would a very tall person be able to fit under the ceiling. Being a short and petite person, I was able to make it to the women’s bathroom at the end of the hall. It was similarly dimly lit and grungy, but not without flourishes, like a nice round mirror and an advertisement for tarot readings by Janet.
Benny did tell us how to say, “Where’s the restroom,” in what he claimed passed for native speech in France. Not because I was incredulous, but because I’m a good journalist, I cross-checked the information with Lucas from France. I learned that it should be “Où sont les wc,” not “Où est le wc,” but will give Benny the benefit of the doubt and include his French below, followed by that of Lucas. Perhaps his translation is some local variation on Canadian French.
Highline Ballroom
Posted: April 10, 2012 Filed under: Chelsea | Tags: TUESDAY TOILET TALK 1 Comment »“Green, black, orange or chai” said the server, to which I replied, “No peppermint?”
Having read that peppermint tea could relieve me of my newfound allergy symptoms, I settled for orange with some disappointment, as I watched singer Theo Bleckmann at Highline Ballroom. I happened to sit myself down at a table with the bassist’s wife, and she welcomed this Cali girl to New York, the city of extravagant pollen count.
New York, the great equalizer. A city where both young and old, rich and poor, can be found on public transit, sniffling and suffering from itchy eyes. As the train doors closed on the Cathedral Parkway station, I turned to catch a glimpse of two-time Grammy nominee, Gerald Clayton, walk by blowing his nose.
The men’s and women’s room sinks are connected, below on either side of the dividing wall. There are four stalls, a small table with an assortment of lotion and fragrance, a dingy clear plastic chalice full of hard candies and a lady waiting to turn on the faucet, pump soap and offer you a paper towel, hoping to be reciprocated with a bill in the tip jar. There was a man on the other side of the sink to fulfill the same role, as if in a mirrored, alternate universe, though whether the men’s side also had a mini fragrance bar or not is a mystery.
A woman walked into the crowded restroom and asked, “Are you in queue?”
Just one word can give you away.
Saturday marked the US release of Theo’s Kate Bush CD, with Henry Hey (keyboards), Caleb Burhans (violin/guitar/vox), Chris Tarry (bass) and Ben Wittman (drums/percussion). I have seen him perform in various configurations from solo to as a member of John Hollenbeck’s large ensemble, and this band now rivals his duo with Ben Monder as my favorite. The music, already engaging from beginning to end, benefited from the colorful changing lights, fog machine and giant disco ball on stage. I would avoid the place if you are prone to epileptic seizures.
Even though their calendar includes Chick Corea and Robert Glasper, Highline Ballroom is not a strictly jazz venue. Then again, Theo Bleckmann is not a strictly jazz singer. Nor is this a blog about jazz.
Theo was responsible for creating the space alien language in the movie, Men in Black, and he tells us how to say, “Where’s the restroom?” below —
untranscribable space alien language
Somethin’ Jazz Club
Posted: March 27, 2012 Filed under: Midtown East | Tags: TUESDAY TOILET TALK Comments Off on Somethin’ Jazz ClubThursday was another prematurely warm night where I needed to go on a brisk walk and eat ice cream. Except I was fasting sweets, so instead I watched KMac consume ice cream with a plastic fork from a nearby halal cart. I also waved a fork around, in case he felt self-conscious about holding two half-gallon tubs of Edy’s on the steps of Columbia. When our assiduous men’s room correspondent stirred to go watch a movie at home, I got up to head to my assignment at Somethin’ Jazz Club (To be fair, he shed snare drum etudes for four hours that day, while I practiced zero hours).
Located East of Midtown, Somethin’ Jazz is not convenient to get to from the Upper West Side. The longer we waited for the third train transfer, the more I felt that the train would come any minute because we had already waited so long, so we kept waiting a bit longer. But the amount of time you wait for something does not necessarily correlate with its estimated time of arrival; there’s no sense in expecting that the thing I’m waiting for is closer to arriving, the longer I wait. After twenty minutes or so, it was announced that the E train would not be coming at all.
We managed to get to the club to catch our classmates Olli Hirvonen (guitar), Frederick Menzies (tenor sax), Jeff Koch (bass) and Philippe Lemm (drums). Olli billed his quartet as a “Nordic jazz” group, presumably because with the exception of Jeff, members hail from Finland and Denmark, in addition to Holland. Actually, Jeff is the most exotic person I’ve met since moving to the city—a rare native New Yorker (and I don’t mean from Long Island) in a metropolis of jaded transplants and hopeful immigrants.
If Nordic jazz is synonymous with the ECM label, which showcases European interpretations of the originally American art form, which, in turn, began as a synthesis of African and European music, what do you call it when you have Americans striving to play in the ECM vein?
They had two individual restrooms, one labeled women and the other, men. The women’s bathroom was the neatest I have seen here, with a deep green glass bowl sink and sand colored tiles.
Of greater interest was the elevator up to the third floor, where the club is situated. The smallest public elevator I have been in, my friend Pat wondered how Jeff got in there with his bass. Upon stepping out, we ran into a Japanese man looking for a lounge on the second floor. I thought the elevator would lead him directly there but we couldn’t find the down button to get the doors open. Naturally, I proceeded to assume that this elevator was of the sort that only travels up, but not down because it’s easier taking the stairs down.
Make sure to try the elevator, if you visit. Someone demonstrated later that it actually does go down.
“Jazz elevator!” “Why not jazz gas station?” People have been mocking my work in such a fashion. Make fun all you want — I won’t be the one caught without toilet paper in the stall.
Olli teaches us how to say, “Where’s the restroom?” in Finnish —
Zinc Bar
Posted: March 13, 2012 Filed under: Greenwich Village | Tags: TUESDAY TOILET TALK Comments Off on Zinc BarLast week, I went down to Zinc Bar for the Tuesday night jam session. Even though I burped in his face (unintentional) over falafel, my friend Mark let me come along with our friends, Pat and Ivan, and we walked down to the train station under an unusually blue night sky.
Look at the four photos below in clockwise order—once you go through the swinging double doors, they lead to two sliding doors perpendicular to each other, with the mens room on the left and the ladies room on the right. You have to pull with force on the sliding door; the first time I visited Zinc Bar, I thought the bathroom was occupied because I couldn’t open the door.
Once you get the door open, you’ll see (or not be able to see—can you make out Ken® in the photo below?) the dark restroom covered in black tiles, with two stalls housing black toilets. I liked their ornate accessories, from the stand-alone toilet paper holder and elaborately framed mirror, down to the coat hook and the soap pump, but it’s difficult to make them out in detail, because it is really dark in there. It makes me think back to 90 mph van rides through pitch black darkness in the Amazon on unpaved roads, but less exhilarating and less scary, even though the restroom entrance looks haunted in the photos above.
Just as I like being able to see the food I’m having in a restaurant, I like being able to see the toilet seat to make sure that it’s clean, but you’ll find it difficult to do that in this dark restroom. Still, it is not cramped by Manhattan standards and they are stocked with soap, toilet paper and paper towel so it’s a fine restroom to use. And it’s fun going through the series of doors to get to the toilet, from the double doors with windows that lead to the sliding doors, to the wooden doors with slats for the stalls.
Being female, I only caught a glimpse of the mens room in a brief moment where the door slid open; I imagine that it’s similar but different. I wonder how different the world must be through different eyes, in a different body. My life experience and world view would be affected, certainly. How do the perspectives of women and men differ? I can’t tell you, for I am confined to the ladies room.
I also wondered what all the non-musicians hanging out in the club through 2 a.m. on a Tuesday night must do for a living. It was packed in there for a while, making it harder to breathe the farther you got away from the door.
The house band was led by trumpeter Igmar Thomas, with a pianist and trombonist that I was not able to identify, in addition to Obed Calvaire (drums), Harish Raghavan (bass) and Mark Whitfield (guitar). Like father, like son; it was amazing to see just how much Mark, the aforementioned falafel one, resembles his guitarist dad.
Among the handful of classmates I ran into at the jam session, drummer Philippe from the Netherlands tells us how to say, “Where’s the restroom?” in Dutch —
Jazz Gallery (Hudson St)
Posted: March 2, 2012 Filed under: South Village | Tags: TUESDAY TOILET TALK Comments Off on Jazz Gallery (Hudson St)Last Saturday, I went to see the debut of pianist Myra Melford’s new ensemble, Snowy Egret, at the Jazz Gallery. The entrance tends to take me by surprise because it seems to come out of nowhere, sandwiched between miscellaneous buildings and lots. And the entrance to the club is unusual in that it has stairs that lead upwards to a second floor, instead of stairs that go down, like many other jazz venues.
The Jazz Gallery has two unisex bathrooms that are completely different. From the performance area, walk all the way down the hall and turn left to find the restrooms to your left. The first one you’ll approach is a quaint old restroom with an interior door between the little washroom and the toilet (see photos below). The one farther down the hall is a more modern and spacious one with gray tiles (picture to your left) and has railings by the toilet, presumably for people with disabilities needing additional assistance.
In visiting various clubs, I’ve wondered how people in wheelchairs can expect to use any of the restrooms I’ve visited thus far. Actually, never mind the restroom problem; most places don’t even seem to have a ramp or elevator to even get down or up their narrow flights of stairs to the club itself. New York is not an accessible city, with all of its cramped spaces, difficult for even able-bodied people to maneuver.
Myra’s group consisted of Ron Miles (trumpet), Liberty Ellman (guitar), Stomu Takeishi (electric bass), Tyshawn Sorey (drums) and Oguri (dancer). I had seen Oguri dance with Myra before but his dancing featured more prominently in my mind this time, with relatively frenetic movements compared to the excruciatingly slow movements I peripherally observed at their last show in Los Angeles. Because the Jazz Gallery has a pretty confined and narrow performance area, Oguri danced directly in front of the band for the most part. I thought to myself that there are three ways to look at this: He is blocking the musicians. He is wallpaper. He is a part of the ensemble and enhancing my experience of hearing the music. Then I wondered if the same could apply to the thoughts running through my head, while listening to a musical performance. I often see the thoughts as distracting me from really listening to the music or acting as a constant white noise, but I could also accept them as enhancing the music, since they may have been aroused by the music anyway.
Seeing Myra play here was a welcome sprinkling of Berkeley granola on my New York City apple; it brought back treasured memories of my undergraduate years at UC Berkeley, sitting in Myra’s sunny office full of tea, CD’s & ethnic artifacts, and chatting in car rides home after her multi-disciplinary seminar in improvisation. She has taught me so much. I know that my music would have been drastically different (and possibly non-existent) without her mentoring and guidance.
I hear that the Gallery is being pushed out in the coming months to build new condos, so visit soon if you want to see the bathrooms! I also overheard that night that Myra and her bassist, Stomu, are birthday twins. And I just remembered that I forgot to take a toilet paper sample. Here’s a clip of Stomu saying, “Where’s the restroom?” in Japanese —