The Carlyle
Posted: December 10, 2013 Filed under: Upper East Side | Tags: TUESDAY TOILET TALK Comments Off on The CarlyleWith the Great American Songbook as the soundtrack, I visualized the rabbits painted behind the bar in animated motion about the park, kayaking in a lake, hunting with a shotgun, and napping on a bench. These depictions of leisurely rabbit life in the city by Ludwig Bemelmans covered the antique gold-brushed walls, the columns surrounding the baby grand and the lamp shades on the tables. Served by a bartender suited in one of those red bellhop uniforms with gold buttons while taking in the place abuzz with patrons, you could feel the same kind of high experienced as a child on a carousel, but with the adult option of booze.
I felt as though I was on vacation, searching for my grandfather’s whisky among the bottles of spirits and daydreaming as the Loston Harris Trio played. I met Loston last month on Veteran’s Day, which happened to coincide with the Korean Pepero Day. We chatted in between sets and he asked about my Thanksgiving and whether I had a place to go for the holidays. Incidentally, last Tuesday when I saw him at The Carlyle was National Roof Over Your Head Day. I guess every day is a holiday with Loston.
Make a sharp left after you step out of the bar to find the restrooms to your right. The door painted with a top hat and cane was significantly wider than the door painted with a profile of an androgynous head and a long neck with a visible Adam’s apple. I figured that the slimmer door led to the ladies room because I had the hat and cane door as a point of comparison.
Of the four stalls in a row, I first tried the one to the far right but moved one over to the left after seeing that the toilet was not fully flushed. The second from the right was missing a hook to hang my bag so I ended up using the one to the far left with double coat hooks, since the other unexamined stall was occupied. Though the paper towels held up to hotel standards, the thickness and quality of toilet paper disappointed. The restroom had Kleenex® brand tissue and four soap pumps for three sinks. You will likely have to flush more than once because the water pressure is weak.
Loston Harris (piano/vocals), who was joined by Gianluca Renzi (bass) and Ian Hendrickson-Smith (tenor sax), continues his three-month residency at Bemelmans Bar at The Carlyle through the final night of the year. He’s a true gentleman.
Alyssa from Luxembourg tells us how to say “Where’s the restroom?” in Luxembourgish —
Thanksgiving
Posted: November 28, 2013 Filed under: Ken® | Tags: voicekwon Comments Off on ThanksgivingReaders, I am thankful for you and wish you a wonderful holiday season with family and friends. While unable to return home to LA this winter, I am grateful for technology that allows me to stay in touch. Now that my whole family is on FaceTime, my dad can point out blemishes on my face without having to see me in person, taking care of much of the ritual of the family gathering online.
In this Thanksgiving post, we say thanks to KMac as he steps down from the men’s room correspondent position he has dutifully held since our inception. I am proud to say that he is moving on to bigger and better things, leaving New York to fill the drum chair in the Navy Band. Look out for a special issue in the next year, when we visit him in DC.
Before he left, KMac gave me a book by Ben Ratliff titled The Jazz Ear: Conversations over Music for what he called my journalistic aspirations. I, in turn, got him something for his sartorial pursuits because he kept telling me about how cool he plans to dress when off-duty. It’s just as well that we are parting ways because clearly, we have different priorities.
Farewell Petty Officer KMac—we salute you or whatever it is they do in the navy.
And Ken®—you’re fired.
Happy Thanksgiving to all!
The Jazz Gallery (Broadway)
Posted: November 12, 2013 Filed under: Flatiron | Tags: TUESDAY TOILET TALK Comments Off on The Jazz Gallery (Broadway)Promised “spooky surprises” from pianist Glenn Zaleski’s “Halloween” Trio, I went despite the knowledge that Glenn would not be wearing a pumpkin costume. Other than sporadic onomatopoeic sounds from drummer Ari Hoenig and a spooky arrangement of Monk’s “Rhythm-A-Ning,” the trio did not deliver on its promise; however, it did surprise with an inventive performance of “All The Things You Are,” a rare arrangement in that the audience did not emit a collective groan at the song being covered yet again.
Bassist Matt Clohesy completed the trio, bringing his years of experience playing in rock bands for kids, having opened for the likes of the Jonas Brothers and possibly even Miley Cyrus in the nation’s capital. Hailing from Australia, he is one of the trailblazers of the string of fine bassists from down under on the New York scene today. And Glenn—he confided that he sometimes uses the women’s room at Smalls because it’s like heaven compared to the men’s room.
The bathroom at the new location of the Jazz Gallery on Broadway felt homely, in a bare bones kind of way that was epitomized by the outlet on the wall opposite with a strip of black over it and a handwritten sign that said, “SPARKS WERE COMING OUT OF THIS OUTLET. PLEASE INSPECT.” An extra roll of heart-shape embossed household toilet paper rested on the toilet below the shelf with packs of industrial paper towels. A separate closet housed the toilet so that a person could use the adjacent sink even if the throne is occupied and a greenish drape covered the storage area across from the water closet. Though I read that there were two public restrooms, I only noticed the one.
Located in an old building in the Flatiron District, the space surprised a couple visitors with its fifth floor instead of basement level occupancy and boasted unusually high ceilings for a space that functions as a jazz club. A music student sat in the modest foyer of the building to direct people up the elevator, while practicing guitar surrounded by his MacBook, music stand and space heater. That doesn’t seem like a bad gig, considering the difficulty of finding a practice room in this city.
With the exorbitant rent in Manhattan, it makes economical sense for the Gallery to share the space with a church, incidentally called Gallery Church. There are a number of churches hosting jazz events from St. Peter’s Church to Neighborhood Church of Greenwich Village, but the concerts at the Jazz Gallery differ in that they are run independently of the church supplying the space. Glenn runs concerts in an alternative venue too, along with his girlfriend/violinist Tomoko and invisible cat Stella, presenting their peers and the most promising young jazz artists in the cozy setting of their Brooklyn apartment.
Jenny from Thailand tells us how to say “Where’s the restroom?” in Thai. If you’re male, make sure to change the last word to say “Hong nam yoo nai krab?”
B.B. King Blues Club
Posted: October 8, 2013 Filed under: Midtown | Tags: TUESDAY TOILET TALK 2 Comments »If there’s one thing I wish more jazz concerts had, it’s an arc governing the performance that unites the sequence of songs into one cohesive piece. With the exception of a few consummate performers, musicians tend to play one song after another, prefaced by some generic introduction that ends with “I hope you enjoy it.” That usually gets me thinking, “I hope this is the last song.” While every concert certainly does not need to be planned according to the golden ratio, I would appreciate the band making an intentional choice about the way their performance flows, instead of defaulting to a linear, static model.
John Scofield’s Überjam Band, whether by default or due to the nature of the music, upheld the jazz tradition of stringing tunes together with Avi Bortnick (guitar/samples), Andy Hess (bass), and Tony Mason (drums) on the first day of autumn. Scofield’s mouth opened and moved, as if he were singing and not his Telecaster, wailing through guitar solos and providing contrast to the ambient and at times hypnotic mood of the long set. My friend Adam informed me that Scofield has been using the same Ibanez for decades and only parted with the guitar for the Überjam album/tour. Albeit untouched, the Ibanez was displayed on stage, likely to fulfill an endorsement deal.
I looked around to the bar in the back and to the dance floor in front of the stage, where a small but growing crowd stood, many holding up phones to record video and take photos. I looked across the cramped communal table into the clueless libertarian eyes of my men’s room correspondent KMac and wondered how we are able to be friends and work together. Truly, JAZZ TOILET is an equal opportunity employer.
I put KMac to work in photographing the men’s room at B.B. King Blues Club & Grill while he complained that I’m a tough boss. I’ve been called worse.
The men’s room had two urinals and two stalls with toilets, one of which is wheelchair accessible. The women’s room had four stalls with one wheelchair accessible. The photos were taken before doors opened so they do not show the lotion and candy that the bathroom attendants maintain for tips, like in its sister venue, Highline Ballroom. B.B. King’s genial Drew showed us the bathrooms in the two dressing rooms backstage as well. The larger dressing room’s bathroom had bigger square black floor tiles instead of the colorful little ones in the other three. All were clean.
The venue is located in the heart of Times Square, half a block away from the subway station and across the street from Madame Tussauds wax museum and Ripley’s Believe it or Not! Odditorium. Their dress code discourages shorts, though it didn’t seem like it would matter, and the conscientious waiter discouraged us from ordering the fried green tomatoes, which we ordered anyway.
Moses from Malawi translates “Where’s the toilet?” into his country’s common language, Chichewa —
Nublu
Posted: September 10, 2013 Filed under: East Village | Tags: TUESDAY TOILET TALK Comments Off on Nublu“Ten dollars and ID,” interjected the lady brusquely, as to not interrupt the conversation she was having with her friend on the steps of the entrance to Nublu. I surrendered what she demanded and stepped into the place. Standing on an enclosed square base with each side only as long as the width of an average American front door, I felt as though I was already in the venue’s restroom. I tried one of the doors that made up three of the four sides and pulled back the heavy curtains to enter the East Village club four Fridays ago.
With bassist Joonsam Lee and drummer Sangmin Lee leading their respective trios, their sets were collectively billed a “K-Jazz” night. While Joonsam played an arrangement or two of Korean folk songs with keyboardist Glenn Zaleski and drummer Ari Hoenig, there was little that distinguished the music as specifically Korean. Sangmin Lee’s trio with “Big” Yuki Hirano on keys and Randy Runyon on guitar featured tight rock-based grooves, similar to the first trio in its loud, organ-shaking amplification.
Seeing my buddy/JAZZ TOILET tech support Jack confused about the K-Jazz label, I explained to him that the night was billed as such because there are Koreans involved. On a related note, a Jordanian friend was raving about food she had tried at a popular Korean restaurant somewhere in Egypt, citing the duck in particular. I informed her that we don’t eat duck. It’s possible that less fortunate souls without Korean friends walked out of that restaurant or the show that night, not knowing duck from Korean fried chicken or “K-jazz” from the Korean tendency to claim things their people do, both good and bad, as their own.
I went down the stairs behind the bar to go to the restroom with old Nublu posters plastering the walls and profanities covering the door. It had everything one would need, though the hand soap was difficult to locate, hidden in the shadows inside the large sink. I came back up and was staring at the door at the top of the stairs when I noticed that it said “WC” among the layers of stickers. I opened the door to discover another unisex restroom with the same red glow and cool graffiti.
The venue was filled with the smell of incense and Butch Morris relics, including a large photo of him with his index finger up that seemed a popular photo backdrop for visitors. How did he host his conduction sessions in this club with its disco ball, rowdy people and noise? He was adamant about vocalists not using microphones in a conduction workshop I had the opportunity to participate in before he passed. With so many legends in the jazz community passing away recently, I’ve been feeling more of an urgency to check out the remaining masters while they are still around.
Vinh from Vietnam, a country similar to Korea in its Cold War involvement and its American nail salon workers, tells us how to politely ask “Where’s the restroom?” in Vietnamese –
Làm ơn cho hỏi, nhà vệ sinh ở đâu?