vip in the city

Bastille Day 2006 Redux

Although Friday July 14 was Bastille Day, the French Institute Alliance Française (FI: AF) held its annual fête on Sunday afternoon, July 16, this year.

The French Institute and the Alliance Française de New York (Nouveau York?) originally operated as two separate organizations, but merged in 1971 to form the largest Alliance Française in the United States; their Haskell Library is the most comprehensive private collection of French volumes in the nation.

No waiter races this year, but there was plenty of good, French fun to be had. We arrived in time for the “Fun with French” comedy/musical performance of stripe-shirted Jacques and Marie. The stands lining East 60th Street offered crepes, creme brulée, eclairs and vichyssoise – somewhat classier that the standard street fair fare of sausage and peppers and deep fried funnel cakes.

Children gathered at the (ineffectually sloped) sand pit for rounds of pétanque — the French version of bocce.

While the American origins of vichyssoise have been debated by culinary historians, its creation is generally attributed to French chef Louis Diat, who created the soup for the opening of the Ritz-Carlton rooftop restaurant in New York City. In his 1961 “Gourmet’s Basic French Cookbook,” Diat recounted that as a child in France, his maman would serve him warm leek and potato soup for breakfast, which she would sometimes cool with milk. So while Diat was certainly not the first to combine leeks, potatoes and cream in a soup, he added the innovation of serving it chilled, and dubbing it with its current name, after his birth town, Vichy.

Interestingly, the quintessential French dish coq au vin was, according to popular myth, invented by an Italian. Sort of. The legend goes that when Caesar conquered the Gauls, the inhabitants of the area – now modern day France – presented him with an old rooster as a sarcastic tribute. Instead of being galled at their impudence, Caesar ordered his chef to stew the tough bird in wine and served it to the Gauls for dinner. In urban dictionary parlance, this would be known as “flipping the script.” Or the bird. Nowadays, of course, the dish is almost always prepared using a poule/chicken instead of an old coq/cock.

And yes, I’m playing directly into this website’s advertising campaign, but if you’re in the market for a luxury Parisian rental, or like me, you just enjoy poring over photos of stylish/fancy apartments, you can check it out.

I indulged in some overpriced but refreshing lemonade (rather: citron pressé) at the fair, unwittingly opting to pay the 50% premium for quality. Hours later, in the much needed oasis of air-conditioned cool at the TimeWarner Center, I paid for more quality lemonade from Bouchon Bakery.

La chair est triste, hélas! et j’ai lu tous les livres. (Alas, the flesh is weary, and I have read all the books.)
– Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898)

Madonna art

After work, I stopped in at the W New York — Times Square Living Room for the new exhibit of Madonna art. Which is to say: paint embellished photographic canvases featuring Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone, the pop — not religious — icon.

Prominent New York-based photographer Steven Klein has been called the “anti-fashion fashion photographer.” Interesting side note: Klein was the photographer behind the infamous Brad Pitt-Angelina Jolie “Domestic Bliss” feature photo spread in the July 2005 issue of W Magazine, which prompted Jennifer Aniston to remark of Pitt to Vanity Fair, “There’s a sensitivity chip that’s missing.” I’d say so.

Jean-Baptiste Mondino is a French fashion photographer and music video director. He directed Madonna’s “Open Your Heart,” “Justify My Love” and “Don’t Tell me” videos, among many others. Mondino and Klein’s photos covered the span of Madonna’s career… well, more accurately, her post True Blue-career. Not a lace glove cutoff or wedding dress in sight.

The champagne was free-flowing, as was the music: all Madonna, all the time (natch), with focus on The Immaculate Collection singles, mixed — ineptly, as my tunes-sensitive companion pointed out — by the resident DJ.

Beauty’s where you find it
Not just where you bump and grind it

Main Squeeze

SYB rose bright and early on Saturday morning to wait outside the Public Theatre for Shakespeare in the Park tickets so I could attend one of the last performances of Macbeth that night. A valiant — and generous — effort, but perhaps due to the recent run of sunny, low-humidity days or to some “final reminder” writeup in one of the dreaded city-centric blogs, by 7:30AM, the line was 250+(!) deep for the 1:00PM ticket distribution. Got his text message shortly after 10:00AM regretfully informing me that he missed the cutoff by about 10 spots.

Meryl Streep’s run in Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage begins August 8. Dare I try?

So after work that night, instead of watching Liev Schreiber perform (and instead of crashing D’s bachelor party), I strolled over to Riverside Park South to check out the tail end of the 1st Annual NYC Main Squeeze Accordion Festival on the newly opened Pier I at West 70th Street.

Good, goofy fun. As advertised, there was live accordion music and an accordion flea market. By 8:30PM the festival was winding down, but as the sun set in the west, the band musicians played on to a still lively crowd, several of whom were moved to their feet, dancing along the pier to “The Tennessee Waltz.”

View of West New York, New Jersey: