Shades of Blue

Last Thursday dragged the way days do when there's something very exciting happening at the end of them. As it turns out, this was precisely the case. I had tickets to see the spectacularly talented Carole J. Bufford in her new show Shades of Blue. Ed didn't get to come with me the last time I saw Carole perform at 54 Below (read about it here), and so I was doubly eager for 9:30 to roll around, excited to share this with him. My expectations were sky high, and even so Carole managed to exceed them.

Ed and I took our seats at a table in the Metropolitan Room, a small cabaret in Chelsea, about 15 minutes before the show was set to begin. We were treated to a pre-show show when the female half of the couple sitting across the table from us began a stream of chatter that did not let up until the lights went down. Marty was a short woman with clouds of long, fine, curly hair and lots of sparkling jewelry. I heard her life story and learned all about Roxy, her Yorkie-Poo and her various philosophies on investing, theater, global cities, life, and love while her more reserved husband chatted with Ed about the engine. I asked Marty if she knew Carole and she said she did not. She had decided to come to the show because of Carole's review in the Wall Street Journal. "Did you see it?" she wanted to know. I said I had seen the review in the New York Times, but not in the Journal and in the time it took me to say this Marty had dug a newspaper page from the depths of a large handbag. "There!" she said triumphantly. I reached out to take the paper and she held it out of my reach for a moment, pointing to the top corner of the page. "See? 'Wall Street Journal.' That way you know it really is from the Journal," she said, as though I were a skeptic in need of persuasion. I skimmed the review and proclaimed it fantastic. "You'll have to tell your friend about it in case she missed it," Marty advised. I assured her that Carole had probably been made aware of its publication but that I'd mention it just in case.

Then a pianist and an upright bass player took the stage, the lights went down, and Carole swished through a curtain to take the stage. She radiated poise and an easy grace from the word go.

I wanted the show to last all night. Carole was outstanding and the line-up was fantastic. It included obvious blues numbers (covers of Bessie Smith and Dinah Washington), which were wonderful, but my favorites were the more unexpected, creative choices. Carole brought new life to Reba McEntire's "Why Haven't I Heard from You?" and Elvis's "All Shook Up" ("They say rock and roll is just the blues sped up, so we decided to slow it back down."), reinvented Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison," and had me on the edge of my seat throughout every note of John Legend's "Who Did That to You."* Another inventive performance paired Carole's a cappella singing with a tap dancer who did a tremendous job of supplying tight clusters of beats for her voice to soar among. But my favorite might (might - it's really tough to choose) have been her cover of "Summertime" (as in "and the livin' is easy") which was so soulful and impassioned that I barely breathed until she hit the last note and then let out an involuntary whoop when I finally gasped in a lungful of air.

The intimate Metropolitan Room 

Ed and I sat at the foot of the stage (which was low and therefore neck-friendly), and this is precisely the way to watch Carole sing. I recommend getting as close as possible because this girl can emote. She is simply superb at conveying depths of feeling in songs in ways that make it seem as though she's living the lyrics as she's singing them. And since this was a blues line-up, lots of those feelings were heart-wrenching ones. Despite my knowledge that Carole is a cheerful, bubbly person who lives a very happy life, I was nearly overcome several times and had to restrain myself from leaping onto the stage, patting her hand, and offering her a cup of tea and a tissue. But then the lights would go down at the end of the song, and after a beat her mega-watt smile would return as suddenly as if a switch had been flipped. Carole seems to genuinely love every moment she is on stage; if it's an act, it's a very persuasive one. At one point she said, beaming a little apologetically, that the blues were sad but she sure does love singing them.

My new friend Marty was very impressed. After the first number I caught her eye and she grinned at me, and over the wild applause following the second number she called, "She's incredible!" over the table. As the lights came up after the show, she pronounced it the best cabaret she had ever seen.

After giving Marty my card, letting her kiss both my cheeks, and waving her and her husband out the door, Ed and I went to a nearby bar with Carole, her husband, and several of her friends. We chatted and sipped cocktails while Carole devoured a well-earned sandwich. But, alas, Ed and I are not part of the show biz scene and had to excuse ourselves a little before 1:00 to stagger to bed. Friday morning was rough, but it was well worth it.

New York-based readers should do themselves an enormous favor and see this show, which is running weekly for at least another month. Get there the moment the doors open to ensure you secure yourself a good seat and hold onto your hat.


*There is no question mark at the end of the song title. The lyrics are the words of a guy who is assuring his lady love that he will avenge her by killing the person "who did that to you." So: not a typo. Despite my best efforts it certainly happens sometimes, but this is not one of them.

Boulder Bound!

This will not be news to most of you, but I thought I should write about it anyway (to get one more May post in, if nothing else): Ed and I are headed west! We're planning to move into a rental house in Boulder, Colorado on October 1st.

Neither Ed, nor I, envisioned living in New York forever when we moved here. It has been a fantastic place to live for the last five years, and I've loved it far more than I expected to. I've made a great group of friends and my job is wonderful. I enjoy the convenience and the energy and am inspired by the concentration of talent and drive. Pulling up the roots that have spread almost involuntarily throughout this city will be painful. But I'm also ready to move on. I miss having outdoor space of my own in which to garden or just hang out. I can't wait to adopt a large dog to be my running companion. I look forward to tossing gear into the car for a weekend ski or camping excursion without launching a logistical nightmare. The bottom line is that though I've adjusted to city life far better than I ever would have imagined, at the heart of it I'm just not the big-city sort.

Ed and I are both lucky in that we are not constrained by professional concerns. He can take his company with him anywhere he wants. I, with my certification to teach ages "birth through sixth grade" and "sixth grade through adult" am qualified to find a job in just about any school and can do private tutoring on the side in a pinch. But so much latitude can be a little frightening: we could go anywhere, so how to choose where to go?

It was easy to draw up a list of criteria. Our new home had to be 1) close to very good skiing and venues of other outdoor activity; 2) close to a major airport; and 3) in an area with some reasonable cultural scene. Alas, the make-up of our sprawling country is such that Number One is at odds with Numbers Two and Three in almost every case, and so our list effectively ruled out nearly everything. Most great skiing spots are in tiny, relatively unsophisticated towns serviced by small airports. The exceptions to this were Salt Lake City and Denver and their respective surrounding areas. As far as downhill skiing goes, SLC was the clear winner; it has unparalleled access to a number of stellar ski options. But after poking around the city a bit when we were out there for Sundance, Ed and I agreed that it wasn't the place for us. In winter, Salt Lake City is known as Smog Lake City, and the brown haze that hovers over the buildings and nearly obscures the view of the nearby mountains was too much. Even though the layer dissipates every spring, we were both sufficiently turned off to cross it off the list.

Smog Lake City in Winter 

To properly get an idea of Denver's offerings, we flew out and stayed for a week. I was nervous that we'd have to go back to the drawing board if we didn't like it but I needn't have worried--I loved Colorado just as much as everyone who knows me said I would. We spent a few nights in Denver and although I really liked many of the neighborhoods we drove through, the city itself didn't do too much for me. It was fun to see, and we went to some cool spots, but I wasn't that excited about the idea of being there every day. We checked out some very fetching suburbs, too, (Littleton was a standout), but I wasn't head over heels.

Half an hour down the highway later, however, we entered Boulder and a warm feeling of relief washed over me. The Boulder neighborhoods, particularly in North Boulder are beautiful and instantly triggered fantasies of sipping tea on a front porch on a June morning or taking a dog for a leisurely stroll on a crisp, colorful autumn afternoon. The houses are well maintained, cradled by large, old trees and boast big yards. Despite the gracious, verdant feel of the neighborhoods, the city is actually much bigger than I'd first thought. During the school year it has 100,000 people, though it gets a lot smaller when the university students leave for summer. At no point, however, did it feel like a "college town," though I'm sure one could find that atmosphere quickly by visiting certain areas. There is a very charming downtown, but there are also several huge, soulless strip malls--disappointing to the side of me that loves scenery and local business but welcome to the side of me that knows certain things can be found only at massive chains like Target or Bed, Bath, and Beyond. All of the corporate sprawl is concentrated on one side of Boulder, though, so the rest of the town feels peaceful and almost garden-like. Boulder is incredibly dog- and bike-friendly. The foodie scene is flourishing in Boulder, which is great news for two spoiled New Yorkers, and there's a flourishing microbrewery scene. And everywhere we went people were friendly (which is a little unnerving to someone used to Manhattan but could grow on me). Ed and I went for a run along a river that started on one end of town and within just a few miles we were in the wilderness, jogging through craggy outcroppings. In the city I sometimes pretend that the roar of traffic is actually the sound of water crashing over rapids. There was no need for this sort of delusion in Boulder.

This is spring?

Boulder is not perfect, of course. The warm wash of relief I experienced is surprising in some ways, since we entered Boulder at the start of a mid-May snowstorm that ultimately dumped several inches on us. Locals mused that this was a bit unusual but did not seem horrified; unpredictability like this is, well, predictable in a mountain town. And it is certainly small; part of our rationale for renting for a year prior to buying anything is to determine whether it feels too small. Many people bemoan the cost of living in Boulder, but I'm not worried about it. For one, Denver was more expensive than I expected it to be, so it seems the difference between the price margins of the two places is not as different as perhaps it once was. And secondly, after living in New York everything feels like a bargain. Finally (and this is a big one), there is only one highway to get to the resort skiing that nearest to Boulder, and I have heard nightmares about the weekend traffic on it.

I'm sure that I'm only scratching the surface in terms of the downsides to Boulder. But I also have yet to learn about lots of things that will make me love living there. I'm already smitten with the idea of getting from my front door to a trailhead in a matter of minutes, of being closer to California, and of weekend road trips to some of the most beautiful natural attractions in the country.

Chatauqua Park is literally minutes from the heart of downtown Boulder. 

I can't put into words how strange it is to think that this is my last summer in New York. But I'm elated by the prospect of the new adventures that await us out west.

Sending Marion Off in Style

I joined four of the coolest ladies in the Northern Hemisphere to celebrate our dear friend Marion's upcoming nuptials this past weekend, and I'm happy to report that a good time was had by all. I've known Marion since we were freshmen in high school and have enjoyed her brainy side, quick wit, and sense of fun for more years than I'd like to think about. I was delighted when she asked me to be a bridesmaid at her wedding in June along with three of her friends from college and one roommate from her post-college years. This will be the first wedding I've taken part in (if you don't count handing out programs at my friends' Mark and Shelly's wedding in Atlanta once), and I was fascinated to get the inside scoop. Turns out that for a bridesmaid the inside scoop is pretty minimal. I sympathized with Marion while she fretted (for good reason) about floral centerpieces that won't shrivel in moments in the Central Valley's summer heat, put in an order for my (very pretty) bridesmaid's dress, and called it a day. On to the party!

It was decided that Marion's bachelorette party would take place over a weekend on the Central Coast of California, and so the six of us congregated at our house in Los Osos on Friday. We opted to stay in that night and feasted on the spread my mom had prepared for us, drank wine, and played Cards Against Humanity. It was relaxing and fun and just what I needed after a long, cross-country flight.

At Veris, our first stop

The next morning we prepared for our wine tasting outing. Marion had given us each pretty beach towels and cups filled with "favors," including matching white sunglasses that we opted to sport that day. Marion's maid of honor, Ailene, also had a surprise up her sleeve and presented the bridesmaids with matching tank tops emblazoned with "Bachelorette" in rhinestones! Marion's, of course, said "Bride." Thus adorably attired, we headed to Paso Robles and hopped on the Wine Line, a mini bus driven by a sweet, rather hapless young man named Colby who became the butt of many a private joke after we had a few tastings under our belt.


We visited five wineries on Saturday:

Oso Libre

Veris - Some of my favorite wines all day (perhaps because my palate was unmarred?). I particularly enjoyed their Ben Hogan Tribute Cabernet and some of the sparkling white wines we sampled.
Castoro - A less pretty setting than Veris, but their Trenta Anni blend was very nice, as were two new varietals to me: a Chenin Blanc and a Charbono (red).
Croad - Couldn't tell you a reliable thing about the wines I tasted at this New Zealander-owned winery, though the hilltop  location was beautiful. We ate a picnic lunch on the grounds at the end of our tasting. The proprietor was very nice and gave us temporary tattoos of kiwi birds.
Mystery Winery - I didn't make notes about any of the wines at this tiny place and recall dumping several glasses after a small taste.
Oso Libre - This was my favorite stop of the day, though not because of the wine. It was recommended to us by the pourer at Veris, but when we asked Colby if we could go he refused; it was too far, he said. After Mystery Winery, however, Marion turned on a combination of coquetry and cold, hard negotiation skills. She presented him with information about the winery's location pulled from Google and talked the other group sharing the van with us into going as well, and Colby finally threw up his hands and said he couldn't turn down a request from a group of ladies. The drive was, in fact, longer than it had looked because the road was hilly and narrow, but it was well worth it. Instead of doing a tasting, we sat outside with a bottle. The weather was absolutely spectacular and it was nice to be out of a tasting room, chatting and enjoying the view of rolling hills.

After a bit of downtime at the house, we got dolled up for a night on the town. Marion, of course, wore white and the rest of us stepped out in black dresses to provide a good backdrop for her. We had dinner at a great restaurant in San Luis Obispo called Novo, where we sat on an outdoor patio next to the creek. Alas, none of us are quite as young as we used to be. The plan had been to go bar-hopping into the night, but after a full day of wine tasting in the sun and a good meal, that wasn't sounding like such a good idea anymore. We walked into, then out of, a few bars along the main drag and ended up throwing in the towel earlier than planned. Back at the house, we all changed into PJs and chatted in the living room until past midnight.

Sadly, the next day I had to head back to New York, though the other five girls stayed on to spend the day at Hearst Castle and go out on the town again. I was sorry to miss it, but even a short trip out there was fantastic. Los Osos is one of my favorite places and it was great to spend time there, run along the water, sip wine against a world class backdrop, and (best of all) share it with friends old and new. I'm looking forward to reuniting with this group in a month for Marion's big day!

Citi Bike! (And Apologies)

April was certainly a hectic month on this end. During the week, my work calendar was completely over-booked (great for the business but stressful for me) and on three out of four weekends Ed and I jetted off to Vegas, San Antonio, and Reno for weddings and other social get-togethers. Whew! Hence my radio silence, for which I apologize. May is off to a calmer start: The pace at the office will still be brisk, but not frantic, and our travel agenda is less strenuous. I hope to resume posting with my usual frequency.

Enough groveling. On to my first post in a little more than a month:

A little less than a year ago, shared bike stations started popping up all over lower Manhattan and Brooklyn.

New York, it seemed, was finally joining the ranks of sophisticated cities, like Paris, Washington, D.C., and Mexico City. This being New York, though, there were, of course, complaints about the new program. The stations took up a lot of curb space, some griped, leaving less room for parking. So few people drive here, though, it was hard to believe the curb would be too problematic. Others complained that Citibank's sponsorship of the new Citi Bike program meant annoying advertisements in residential neighborhoods. When every bus shelter, light post, subway tunnel, and passing taxi play host to ad space, however, this also seemed to be a fairly pointless objection. Generally, the new program was met with excitement.

Each dot is a station.

Citi Bike turned out to be enormously popular among average New Yorkers in western Brooklyn and southern Manhattan. (Because the program is in its infancy, only parts of the city currently have service.) The solid blue frames were soon ubiquitous in the park, on riding/running paths, and on streets. Cab drivers, and many other motorists, hated them from the beginning, and so did some pedestrians. The average Citi Biker was not an experienced cyclist and often rode with a dangerously obliviousness to the obstacles on all sides. Many went the wrong way down one way streets and ignored traffic signals if there were no cars, causing walkers to have to leap out of the way. Most of them didn't wear helmets, either.

I didn't really form an opinion initially, other than musing that more cyclists on the roads would force drivers to be more careful, even if the change was slow in coming and involved some casualties first. I figured didn't have any cause to join the program, myself. For one, I was the owner of a great bike. My bike is great enough, though, that I can't really ride it around the city to run errands; I'm too scared to leave it locked outside where it might be stolen. It's really more suited to long bike rides on which I don't ever get off it. Secondly, my commute was no more than half a mile and was easily walkable.

On the other hand, crosstown transportation options in New York are limited, and biking would be a nice alternative to the slow buses. And I like biking. When I started to really think about all the occasions I could take a bike in lieu of the subway, my interest piqued. And when I found myself signed up to proctor the SAT at a school due east of Chelsea, I realized that a 25-30 minute trip with public transportation would take just over 10 minutes on a bike. I decided to give it a whirl.

This is what my fob will look like.

Citi Bike passes are available for a single day ($10) or a whole a week ($27). Locals can buy a yearlong membership ($100), with a $15 discount if a Citibank card is used for the transaction. Regardless of the package, users get unlimited use of the bikes while their pass/membership is active for stints of 30 or 40 minutes at a time. One simply unlocks a bike (with a code for pass holders and a key fob for members) at any station, rides to another station near one's destination, and docks the bike again. Bike can be checked out of and returned to any station, and there is a station every 1 or 2 blocks in lower Manhattan.

On the Saturday of the SAT, I walked three minutes to the nearest station to my apartment and purchased a pass for a week with my credit card. The machine gave me a code, which I entered into one dock, then several others. No dice. Returning to the machine, I got a second code, and this one worked. I mounted up and was off. Early morning was a great time for my first ride since few cars or pedestrians were about. The bike itself was solid and comfortable to ride. There were three gears, a bell, and a very convenient basket-like receptacle between the handlebars with a beefy bungee cord for securing a bag or purse. I loved the ride from the moment it began. The so-called long blocks melted away and I was at my destination before I knew it. I docked my bike, which required a rather firm slam, and went in to the nearby school. Four hours later, I undocked another bike and set off home.

A cheerful rider, sensibly helmeted, makes use of the basket. 

My second day of riding was a little less charmed. After meeting failure after failure trying to unlock a bike, I called the service number to complain. My call was answered promptly and I learned that the station had a "low charge." (The stations are all battery powered for some ridiculous reason, though the credit card machines are solar powered; this explains why I was able to obtain a code but not use it at any of the docks.) The woman assured me that a van was on the way to recharge it and offered to direct me to a nearby station. During the ten or so minutes I'd been trying to access a bike, however, a Citi Bike had been sitting next to an adjacent building, unaccompanied, and I decided to use it. Users are charged $1,000 for lost bikes, and I figured I could ride this one to where I needed to go and dock it there. The user who had checked it out could get another one any time he/she needed it from the recharged station, and this way I'd be both getting to my destination and saving the bike from being stolen, unguarded as it was. My ride was, again, great. Later that day when I was ready to return home, I found that the nearest station to me was offline. Four bikes were locked there, but this station, too, seemed to need a charge. So I walked a block to another station, unlocked a bike, and rode home without incident.

It's amazing how easy it is to get around Manhattan on a bike. The city seems to have shrunk over the course of this weekend. I enjoyed riding around enough that I've decided to purchase a membership for the year. With the Citibank discount, my investment will cost the same as about 34 subway rides, or 17 round trips. It won't take long for the membership to start paying for itself*. And I think the enjoyment I get from riding around will more than make up for the annoyances: oblivious pedestrians, aggressive drivers, and occasionally malfunctioning stations. Careful riding can just about eliminate risks caused by the first two, and by walking a block in nearly any direction I can get around the third. My key fob will arrive in about a week, and until then I still have five days left of my membership to cruise around this suddenly-smaller city.


*I hope that the program will exist long enough for me to make all those rides, however. Ed tells me that Citi Bike is almost bankrupt. One cause of this is that the program isn't making as much money as anticipated. Apparently the one in DC is quite profitable, largely because tourists buy so many expensive day passes. Tourists aren't doing that in New York at the rate predicted though, which I can understand; this can be a scary city to ride around if you're not used to it. And the best place to ride confidently, Central Park, has stations only along its southern border. Many more annual passes than predicted have been purchased by locals, but those don't bring in much money. Also, the cost of personnel and vans that drive around the city to maintain the stations and redistribute bikes when one station has too few open docks and another has too many is much more than anticipated; lots of this is due to the batteries that power the stations running down. I hope they sort it out; people are going to be furious if the program suddenly disappears, and I'll be a bit miffed myself.