Fire and Ice: Prometheus and Zamboni-man

Immediately after my early morning Bergdorf's photo-fun in early December, I continued south on 5th Avenue to see The Tree, sans throngs of Christmas pilgrims. Like the Bethesda Fountain at midnight or Times Square during Hurricane Irene, the enveloping silence during these magical moments of missing frenetic movement allows New York's other, less celebrated personality some breathing-room. Equal and opposite to the crush of happy tourists and the rush of impatient natives, here at the the intersection of art and architecture, Christmas and commerce, man and machine, sometimes the hush of contemplation is the loudest voice.

Note: The NYT just ran a beautiful profile of the man who has done this job with dignity and discipline for 20 years.

Two Great Albums by Singer-Songwriters With a Christmasy Song on Them

By West Village Bill

If it were possible, I'd have worn a digital groove in my iPhone listening to the great new albums by Matt Alber and David Mead over and over again.

I really enjoyed Alber's first album, Hide Nothing, and his second, Constant Crows, is a very successful follow-up. It starts off with the fantastic "Velvet Goldmine," whose second verse mentions Christmasy things like letting it snow, tinsel, and angels getting wings. And he sings Who-ish syllables toward the end of the song, after the listener has been swallowed up in gorgeous strings and horns.

Another favorite song from the album is "Brother Moon," a fun and sweet number Matt performs with his brother, Bryce. I had assumed that was who his singing partner was and confirmed it by asking Matt on Facebook. Look at me doing original reporting for this review. :-)

The river in question from the title of the second song on the album isn't named until the last three syllables. Read all about it here, if you're a geography buff. It's the longest river in North America but only the 13th largest in terms of discharge of water because it drains from rather dry parts of the U.S. and Canada.

Other highlights are the beautifully produced "Wallingford" and a fantastic cover of Madonna's "Take a Bow" that ends the album.

A couple of quibbles: I would have welcomed some more uptempo songs—after "Brother Moon," the rest of the album is decidedly slow—and some more songs period. There are only 10.

But I'm happy to have this new material from Matt, and I'll definitely try to catch him when he performs in New York in 2012.

Bergdorf Windows Without the Crowds

by baad lamb

If you and your camera want to enjoy Bergdorf's window displays without the massive pre-Christmas crowds getting in the way of your shots (Fifth Avenue sidewalks in December seems to rival Times Square for pedestrian density), here's the trick: Get up pre-dawn on a Sunday morning, pour your coffee in a to-go cup to save time, and arrive on site seven-ish. The tourists have not yet left their hotels, the tour buses are still en route, and the locals are still sleeping or still dancing. You will have the place to yourself (except for the 10 other people who had the same idea!)

Unless you're a professional photographer, shop windows are quite difficult to get full photos of, mostly due to the unavoidable reflection of nearly everything surrounding them. Lights, sky, taxi traffic, other pedestrians, the brightly lit windows across the street, and even yourself, all add complications that only occasionally can be  used to your benefit. So I leave the "whole window" shots to the pros, and instead focus on details, textures, colors, or eye-catching components. Luckily, the Bergdorf's window dressers seems to think that if "less is more", than way more must be excellent! Minimalism is not practiced here.

Even MORE more after the jump...

Raspberry "Pop-Tarts" and Some Other Christmas-Morning Breakfast Treats

By West Village Bill

I enjoy making breakfast treats for my family to eat on Christmas morning. Sometimes I make them ahead of time, and sometimes I'll bake them at my Granny's house. This year, I'm making a riff on Pop-Tarts that I found in Bon Appétit magazine back in April. I started the process on Sunday here in the city up to the point of freezing the filled tarts, and I'll take them frozen to South Jersey to bake on Saturday.

For the filling, I used raspberry jam I made when I visited my blogger buddies Mark and Rodger out in Portland, Oregon, over the summer. I doubled the recipe for the tart dough, and I used the kitchen scale Dad and Jean got me for my birthday to make sure the four portions I needed to separate the dough into were equal: Each weighed about 9 1/2 ounces. I shaped the four wads of dough into discs and chilled them in the refrigerator. The very buttery dough had come together pretty easily.

I goofed up when I made the first bunch of tarts. For some reason, I was thinking I needed to make only two tarts instead of four from the first disc of dough, so those turned out extra large. I made out much better with the remaining three discs and so got 12 tarts with the desired 3-by-5-inch dimensions. I froze all of the tarts in plastic containers with parchment paper separating the stacks.

Yesterday morning, I heated up one of the extra large tarts for my breakfast. I really dug it. The crust was nice and flaky, and the jam tasted wonderful in combination with its buttery shell. It was much better than an actual Pop-Tart, which my Aunt Marian always likened to two pieces of cardboard with jelly in the middle.

***

Perhaps my most popular breakfast treats with my family—and certainly with my Dad—were the Chocolate-Orange Sweet Rolls With Orange Glaze my nephews helped me make at Granny's House back in 2006. The recipe still isn't up on Epicurious. Maybe that's because it appeared in the R.S.V.P. section of Bon Appétit in which readers request the recipes for dishes they've enjoyed at a restaurant or, in this case, a B&B: The Acworth Inn on Cape Cod. If you want the recipe, you can Google it, and you'll find it on a site that credits a blogger who says she got it from a friend. Who got it from BA but didn't say that she did. :-)

A Wonderful NYC Holiday Party

By Father Tony

I sometimes suspect that everyone outside New York likes the illusion that all New Yorkers live in immense converted industrial lofts and throw huge parties attended by fascinating and beautiful people. Ray and Bob's annual Christmas Party at their penthouse home on West 27th St lives up to that fantasy.

We took a taxi that fishtailed through the new snow on Fifth Avenue.



Photo/video of the party, after the jump.

A Divine Christmas

By Father Tony

Our pal (and favorite NSFW New York blogger) BJ has honored his annual holiday tradition by posting this. It's from "Female Trouble" by John Waters, but really, it's a page from my childhood.

HO HO HO

Posted by Darling!

(Available at cleverfridgemagnets.com)

A Queer New York Christmas Greeting

Posted by Father Tony


This is for all of you who are out of town and longing for a cheerful New York City Christmas moment. Yesterday we stopped to enjoy this group of carolers on 5th Avenue. (I've added in some other photos taken yesterday of Radio City, the Rockefeller tree, Lincoln Center, the windows at Bergdorf's, and the Plaza Hotel.) 

The Holiday Craft Sale at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia

Posted by Brooklyn Bill

I went to a craft fair yesterday at Martha Stewart's headquarters in the Starrett-Lehigh Building in far-west Chelsea with my pal Mark, a gay man who's a crafting enthusiast and a former professional crafter,* and Joyce, my straight girlfriend who, like me, enjoys cooking and baking but isn't one to make handicrafts. Though we enjoy buying them.

Until this year, the fair was open only to Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia employees. A friend of mine who works at MSLO told me about the fair last weekend. She and her co-workers got first dibs on Friday. She said that jewelry was the predominant offering but there were plenty of other neat items** to be had.

We arrived separately and met up inside the large exhibit space shortly after noon, when the fair began. M&J hadn't previously met. Mark is from North Dakota and rode downtown from the Upper West Side on his bike. Joyce is from Ohio and took a "little yellow thing" (Joyce-speak for a cab) from Brooklyn Heights. Both of them have lived in the city for many years, and one other thing they have in common (besides their longtime residency here and their friendship with me) is that they always make sure to check out the department store window displays around Christmastime. Joyce took her Mom to view them while her Mom was visiting from Kent for Thanksgiving. And Mark scoped out the windows at three stores—Macy's, Lord & Taylor, and Saks—after he left the fair before succumbing to the rain, cold, and crowds.

Holiday Gifts for Central Park Zoo Animals

Posted by Brooklyn Bill

Every weekend this month before Christmas, some of the animals at the Central Park Zoo are getting special treats to celebrate the holidays. On NY1, Pat Kiernan reported this morning that polar bears Gus and Ida were given "whipped cream and trout." There's no mention of the bears' receiving dairy products on the Web page that shows when the animals are getting their treats this month; only peanut butter and frozen fish. Mmmm. Peanut butter and bears.