Birdland
Posted: September 25, 2012 Filed under: Midtown | Tags: TUESDAY TOILET TALK 1 Comment »A couple Saturdays ago, I made it out to Birdland to hear the Dave Liebman Group. I attempted to listen for the signature Lieb chromatic sound as he played with guitarist Vic Juris, bassist Tony Marino and drummer Marko Marcinko but quickly settled into passive listening. As my threshold for dissonance increases, it may be that it takes a more concentrated effort to distinguish among the various shades on the spectrum from diatonic to chromatic harmony. My brain wasn’t up for that and I let the music wash over me as I enjoyed an old Ornette standard, played on wooden flute by the saxophonist.
Though it was my first time at the club, I found myself feeling at home in the familiar dim lighting and relaxed atmosphere, sandwiched between tourists from Brazil and Japan at the bar. Noticing the Phantom of the Opera program booklet, I began to chat with the stranger to my right about the musical and his business trip to the Big Apple. With his startled observation at my looking like an “oriental face,” bewilderment at the concept of student loans to pay for school and surprise at the fact that I am the same age as his daughter, Mr. Shikata reminded me of my dad in his curious and astounded reception. To avoid giving him a heart attack from an overload of revelatory details such as how long I have lived in the States to what I am studying in grad school, I excused myself and went to check out the bathrooms.
The ladies room was fairly nice, with a plate of potpourri on a table, flowers and posters in a long restroom with two stalls and two sinks. There’s even a slightly faded plush bench you can sit on and ample lighting by the mirrors. From photos that our diligent men’s room correspondent KMac sent me previously, it appears that the men’s room is very similar to the women’s, but with an additional sink and two urinals.
The crucial thing to note about Birdland’s restrooms is that they are wheelchair accessible. The signs on the doors caught my eye, as I have never before seen a club with such a feature in the city thus far. Before moving here, it didn’t occur to me to consider accessible restrooms, but if I had, I likely would have thought of them as a necessity and not an additional feature. But with so many clubs located underground, accommodating restrooms are rare luxuries here.
Located at ground level just a couple blocks away from the hustle and bustle of Times Square and directly across the street from a major hotel, Birdland is not only accessible, but situated in a prime sightseeing location. Scanning the audience, I thought about how many tourists must come through each night to complete their New York experience. Given the importance of tourism to this city’s economy, what kind of impact does it have on the jazz scene? I hear that the market for jazz is in the European circuit, and not here—what a funny situation that would be if it’s true that our musicians make income largely by touring abroad then come home to play at venues that are also significantly funded by foreigners.
Kim from Norway tells us how to say “Where’s the restroom?” in Norwegian –
Iridium Jazz Club
Posted: July 10, 2012 Filed under: Midtown | Tags: TUESDAY TOILET TALK Comments Off on Iridium Jazz Club
Do you remember Hurricane Day in the city last summer? I showed up with nothing but the clothes on my back and a platter of assorted cheesecake in my hand to pianist Misha Piatigorsky’s place, at the kind invitation of drummer Chris Wabich. And that is how this refugee became acquainted with Sketchy Black Dog, a rhythm section plus string quartet ensemble that mixes classic rock and jazz.
I went to see Misha and Chris’s group again on Thursday at Iridium Jazz Club. Danton Boller joined them on bass and violinists Monica Davis and Adda Kridler, violist Colin Benn and cellist Agnes Nagy made up the quartet. Sketchy Black Dog’s nickname is Scratchy Black Cat and it used to go by Paris Troika, before adding the strings.
I’ve never noticed Iridium before because its presence is obscured by humongous signs advertising Mamma Mia! and Stardust Diner. The jazz club is downstairs from the diner, decked out in reddish blue décor with guitars and Les Paul posters hung all around. Their restroom was clean with three stalls that were roomy enough. And in case you weren’t sure if being a woman also qualified you as a lady, they had two signs on the door, one that said Ladies and another that said Women.
Hopefully you have a compact mirror on you to read the bathroom door handle, because it says “Pull” in mirror image reflection. Once you open the door, you might notice that the wall on the far right corner goes in. They stuck a small sink there, which was most adorable and the best feature of the room. They also had a standard size sink and more posters up on the walls. Iridium seems to be as fond of putting up decorations as my mom; every time I visit home, I have to take down a few plaques and trinkets.
My mom told me that when our family used to live on the East Coast and visited New York, we could only afford two bowls of jja-jang-myun (black bean noodle) to share among the four of us. I thought about this, what little money we had in the first decade of our life in the States and the change in lifestyle over the years, while I ordered and ate my $9 strawberry shortcake without flinching.
Misha, who also immigrated to the States at a young age, tells us how to say, “Where’s the restroom?” in Russian —
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 —