12.30am, Sunday July 5, Bentley Hotel ....firework extravaganza

I have returned to SW's fancy hotel room with him. The room has one full wall of window that stretches around the corner of the room with a view of the East River. Nice room, but shit location. No subways on the far east side.

SW, Dad and I tried to see a show together, but Hair wasn't in an accessible theatre, God of Carnage only had non-accessible seats available, Waiting for Godot wasn't offering discounted tickets, and The Fantastiks (back in production! Yay!!!) is in a theatre a walk up a steep flight of stairs. We decided to go to the Frick, Dad's favourite museum, instead. It was closed for the July 4th holiday.

To the Met, then. I forgot how many really famous paintings are at the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Monets, Degas', Reniors, Picassos, Seuratts, beautiful, beautiful van Goghs, Gaugins, Klimts. The best of the best. They should probably all be in France.

We walked through Near-Eastern, Pacific and South American art galleries, then to the Arms and Armor collection, SW's desire. We were all impressed at the intensely intricate work on the armour, swords and guns. Beautiful works of art as well as weapons.

armor at the Met

We walked downtown towards the evening's fireworks celebration and had trouble finding places to eat on Broadway and West End. I remember that about the Lincoln Centre area. We ended up at a fancy Chinese place. SW and I shared unspicy Szechuan eggplant and crispy bean curd sheet ('duck') wrapped in tortillas. Both dishes were nice but a bit expensive and skimpy on the portions.

After dinner, Dad, SW and I walked to 57th Street, followed the Fourth of July crowd, and ended up on a bridge in a barricaded square to wait for the fireworks while the sun set. After 9.00pm far away fireworks began to puncture the dark and there was a general fear that these were the city fireworks display and we had all picked the wrong spot to watch. But at long last the Manhattan display began, five simultaneous locations along the river. A nice show - blooming flowers dying in the sky, dandelion puffs dispersing, cube and planet and kiss shapes slowly blowing apart.

July 4th fireworks

When it was all over, thousands of people left, taking their garbage with them. How un-New York. I was disappointed in this display of respect and obedience.

Afterwards Dad went to the subway and SW and I found a bar at fancy hotel on 54th Street. I had a $12 glass of reisling and gorged on the complimentary nuts, wasabi peanuts and pretzels. It was a small dark masculine bar, muted, with big leather chairs and a King Cole mural behind the bar and no background music.