A Day in New York

January 8, 2018

Vignette at Red Rooster behind the bar 

The big annual national conference of economists was in Philly this year.  I might have skipped it, but I was asked to give a talk by a friend organizing a session (which provides both positive incentive and exposure effects, of course) and figured that it would also be a good time to tack on a visit to my parents afterwards.  As a bonus, I fit in a day trip to NYC.  I was giving my talk on Friday morning and not flying to Indiana until Sunday morning, so I decided to take the train up to visit Caroline for part of the day on Saturday.  And there was also a critically acclaimed exhibit of Michelangelo's drawings at the Met that I was interested in seeing.  Caroline made us brunch reservations at Red Rooster, Marcus Samuelsson's restaurant in Harlem, which I was excited to try. 

First, brunch at Red Rooster was great.  As you can tell from the photos, it has a very funky, eclectic vibe (which makes sense given that Marcus Samuelsson is a Swedish-African transplanted to NYC).  The vegetable dishes were especially good.  

We then braved the bitter cold to make our way to the Met.  I think the weather kept the crowds down because there was no wait at all to get in.  Once inside, we found the exhibit to be very crowded, but the traffic moved pretty well.  It was an outstanding exhibit.  I felt like I learned a lot about Michelangelo's career, life, skills, and techniques.  We were able to inspect the pieces very closely, which was one of the most instructive aspects of the exhibit.  The hatching and shading techniques he used in his drawing were so intricate and varied:  they differed in terms of color, pattern, length, width, direction, and spacing of hatches, sometimes all in the same drawing.  Here are a few examples: