El Paso 2.0

Big news in East Harlem: El Paso on Lexington has finally moved across the street to their new location. Although it's only about 40 feet from the old place, it's a totally different vibe from the tiny, always crowded corner joint they used to have. Now they have lots of space, a faux-Southwestern aesthetic, a detailed wine list, an army of staff, even a maître d'. They've upgraded the menu as well with oysters, ceviches, and several new entrees (including a lamb dish). It took a few minutes and few Negro Modelos to adjust to the fancy-pants atmosphere, but once the food arrived, all was right in the universe. The ceviche with mango and striped bass was tangy and refreshing and the roast chicken with sesame seeds, baby cactus, and guajillo was melt-in-your-mouth perfect. And don't worry if you loved the food at the old place. All your favorites are still here--spicy guacamole, fabulous chilaquiles, homemade huaraches, carne enchilada cemitas, and mushroom quesadillas. Plus, once you get a glimpse of the gorgeous back patio complete with an outdoor bar, you'll be back for sure.

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Restaurants • Upper East Side / East Harlem

Guggenheim Goodness

Definitely check out the current exhibit, The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia 1860-1989. Not because it's got a whole hell of a lot to do with Asia, really, but because it's an excuse to go see a bunch of really cool shit from a bunch of really mind-blowing conceptual artists (You might also want to invite your friend Owsley to come along, if he's in town that day). Either way, the show should have enough to keep you occupied for quite some time. Highlights: Tehching Hsieh's One Year Performance, 1980-1981, where the artist photographed himself standing in the same place every hour, on the hour, for a full year; Anne Hamilton's Human Carriage, the site-specific work that graces the rotunda; Adrian Piper's Here and Now; and great work by James Turrell, Robert Irwin, Jordan Belson, Richard Tuttle, James Lee Byars, and Walter de Maria, among others. Your last stop should be LaMonte Young's Dream House re-creation; it's not as loud as the one in TriBeCa, and they didn't do anything new or special for it, but it's still killer. Owsley will agree.

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Landmarks , Movie Theaters , Museums • Upper East Side / East Harlem

DiFara of the North

The formula is simple. One old guy makes pizza all day long. Sounds familiar right? Well, the Upper East Side may have nothing close to the magic of DiFara, but it does have Il Fornaio Pizzeria which really isn't half bad. There's no line, big doughy slices are only two bucks, and the guy even wears one of those old-school red and white striped pizza making shirts while on the job. He's only open a few hours a week and there's no delivery, so it's hard to get in the door unless you live close by. But if you do, you'll be rewarded with a trip back to a simpler time when wood paneling was the interior design of choice and garlic knots were cheap and plentiful.

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Restaurants • Upper East Side / East Harlem

My Left Foot

Newsbreak: My left foot is an adamantine bother. I animadvert that it cease to burn in my toes. No ministrations or silent prayers have coerced my foot to return to its pre-neuroma-struck self. I am tearful over the state of my immobility. I am sitting on my boss's chair with a CoolPac wrapped 'round my ankle, toes and mid-foot. Midwood is where I was ambulating when my left foot started to ache. It was long ago, perhaps December, when I was young and able-bodied. I danced in my hallway, merrymade in my altogether. But now that I have returned to NFT, all is lost; specifically, my ability to walk. Leaders Rob and Jane do smite me, pious Michael does indict me. Melanie throws rocks. Jane's dogs, they roughly taunt. Emily lives under a podiatrist and daily she vexes me with this proximity to healing. Norman mocks me in Spanish because he knows I am American, Aaron is excessively diverted by my misfortune and the ladies Lea and Sarah (alongside their trusty underling Nate) send me on needless errands as my tendons crack and carol in the moonlight. I long for the Mount Sinai Orthopedic department as I have longed for nothing in days.

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Hospitals , Emergency Rooms • Upper East Side / East Harlem

Home Sweet Home (Sort Of)

In 1940 my grandmother was working as a jewelry buyer for Macy’s. In those days Macy’s was a classy department store, not a zoo of foreigners trying to spend their powerful Euros on as much crap as possible. But before I go on another rant, let’s get back to 1940. In January of that same year my mom entered this great planet at New York Hospital. According to her birth certificate she spent the first two years of her life at 49 East 96th Street, a beautiful pre-war building. Fast forward 69 years later, and I find myself living only ten blocks away from where my mom’s life began. I frequently walk by and try to peer in, before the door man can catches my eye. I can easily imagine my mom and her folks walking to Central Park, catching the bus downtown, or visiting the Museum of the City of New York (my granddad loved the antique fire trucks in the basement). When Googling the address I came across a real estate listing for an apartment there. Now if anyone can loan me a mere 639,000 bucks (so much for falling real estate prices), I can complete the ancestral journey and move back into my mom’s first apartment.

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Landmarks • Upper East Side / East Harlem

Emergency Room

Slowest ER in town. Prettiest individual patient rooms for lollygagging a hundred hours before the Resident rolls 'round to erroneously diagnose your "tendinitis." A typical red tape-laden admittance to the ER goes like this: First, you wait in an airless, whitewashed hoi polloi waiting room, then are teased into a temperature-taking, injury-describing secret room with a pretty, nail-lacquered lady before being sent back to the main waiting room for a million hours before being transferred to an individual room where you languish before being treated by a Resident before being sent to dispatch yourself wherein the dispatcher lady instructs you to register at the main desk in which case you wait in the hoi polloi waiting room again and deal with your throbbing left foot/people. And you know how in the movie Lower City, the white guy gets stabbed and is circuitously taken to some slab of concrete in a slum where some quasi-doctor puts a bandage on him and a few days later he's fine? That makes me so jealous. Would that I were stabbed and not inflamed of nerve. It would heal so much faster and obviate the hospital factor.

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Hospitals , Emergency Rooms • Upper East Side / East Harlem

Paris/New York

Meanwhile, uptown, the Museum of the City of New York is showing the New York Public Library's more extensive counterpart--Paris/New York: Design Fashion Culture 1925-1940--which examines the innovative ways in which modern life is being re-conceptualized, economic downturn or not. This mid 20th century showcase examines art, textiles, architecture, and furniture design. The evolution within categories was integral to the progress of the respective metropolises. From Josephine Baker to Chanel, from Van Cleef & Arpels to Sonia Delaunay, jazz to skyscrapers, design parameters were totally reconfigured and incredibly daring. Observing these wonders can serve as an inspiration to you (and as a distraction from your instinctual consumer-driven activities). See it! Runs through February 22.

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Landmarks , Museums • Upper East Side / East Harlem

Hanging Bird

Lots of NYC neighborhoods are adorned overhead with old pairs of shoes, their laces knotted together, dangling from street lamps, traffic signals, and telephone wires. It seems that most people have no idea how they got there—or why. The same goes for a dangling dead bird hanging from the street lamp at the corner of East 88th Street and Lexington Avenue. Much smaller than a pigeon and too far away to confirm that it’s a sparrow, the bird hangs from some kind of string or wire—almost as if it were put it there on purpose. Maybe the pigeons sacrificed the sparrow during a pigeon voodoo ceremony (performed by a secret squab society). Or maybe it’s not even a real dead bird. And how is it possible that it seems completely intact? Dead birds can’t stay that “alive-looking” for that long, can they? It may sound crazy to care about something like a dead bird hanging from a street lamp, but every time I pass it, I kind of like the fact that there is a bizarre little mystery overhead that, possibly, only I bother to notice. Now you can notice it, too.

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Landmarks • Upper East Side / East Harlem

Glaser's Bake Shop (est. 1904)

Glaser’s Bake Shop, a neighborhood institution that has been in business for over 100 years, has THE BEST black and white cookie in all of NYC. Yes, I know these are fighting words for some folks, who swear that THEIR neighborhood bakery holds the title. But—I kid you not—Glaser’s has the best. The cookie, a soft, buttery specimen is the perfect texture on which to place the heavenly chocolate and vanilla frosting. They’re so fresh that there’s usually an indentation in the frosting from where the staff picked up the cookie with a piece of wax paper to put it in your bag. And if you’ve gone on just the right day—you can be waited on by Terri, a woman with short blonde hair who has an infinite knowledge about 1980s new wave music and has been rumored to have appeared on MTV where she won a 1980s music quiz. If you have been out of the ‘80s reunion tour music scene…or if you just want to discuss the subtle differences between Bauhaus and Tones on Tail over the best black and white cookie you’ll ever taste—then Terri’s your girl and Glaser’s is the place.

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Landmarks , Shopping • Upper East Side / East Harlem

Zaha Hadid - Guggenheim Museum

Well, she’s great. Which is why she’s scored about a dozen major commissions in the last eight years, all of which are in various stages of completion. If you stay to watch the videos, you’ll realize that she’s also an insane megalomaniac, but then again, so is every other star architect ever (see Wright, Frank Lloyd and The Fountainhead). So, of course, watch the videos, look at the paintings, and marvel at the models. The BMW Central Building (completed) with the assembly line running through the corporate offices is inspired; the Landesgartenschau (a small exhibit building in a park in Germany) is sublime, and the Rosenthal (pictured) is, well, open and in the States, at least. And the stuff that’s coming—the high-speed train station in Naples, the office towers in Marseilles and Moscow, and a half-dozen others—is even more mind-blowing. Well done, Zaha—now take a chill pill.

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Landmarks , Movie Theaters , Museums • Upper East Side / East Harlem