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Hello Crush,
A bunch of new subscribers have joined us lately, so I’d like to say Welcome! Thanks for being here.
I’m Dish, the Master of Ceremonies here. I write about culture, life, love and friendship from the 50+ perspective. I write under a pseudonym because I’m a private person who appreciates a private life who, of course, also wants to respect the privacy of my family, friends, boyfriends and (if I’m lucky) lovers who I might write about. (I’m not trying to imply I get lucky much.) Read more about me here.
I just got back from a busy few days in New York City. Even though I have a lot to say about the new biography on Gwyneth Paltrow by Amy Odell that’s just about to drop (excerpts have been released, for instance this one in People), as well as about Lena Dunham’s new Netflix show Too Much, I’m going to save those for a CRUSH Letter in the very near future because (like the show’s title) we have Too Much.
I would like to acknowledge the CRUSH Readers who have written lately to ask follow-up questions about my story Thinning Hair. First I Freaked Out, Then I Did These Things That Seem To Be Working. It’s been ten months since I wrote it and I’ve added some things to my routine and dropped others, so I am going to updating that story and report on how things are going, also in the very near future. Stay tuned.
Let’s jump into the Big Apple now, shall we?
This CRUSH Letter is sponsored by SuitShop.
“I don’t wear a suit or tux often enough to break the bank on them. It wouldn’t amortize. I get invited to a friend’s kid’s wedding, or an occasional professional or charity event. I maybe wear a tux once a year, a suit three or four times. When I do, I want to look good, though. I get a million compliments in SuitShop. Nobody can tell that I’m not wearing something that cost 5X more. Maybe it helps that these events are often low-lighting. Just kidding. I’ve recommended it to a million friends, and they love it too. I’ve also bought suits for my son. A recent college graduate, he’s needed them for interviews, weddings and events.” CRUSH Reader Craig
In This Letter. +What I Did Over An Impromptu Few Days in NYC by Dish Stanley. +All Blues. A very cool Japanese ‘kissa kissa’ Style Listening Bar in Tribeca. +Provoked. Diane Arbus at the Park Avenue Armory It’s the largest exhibition of her work ever mounted, but you can’t see it all — by design. ++Casual Thoughts on Sargeant at the Met. It was a blockbuster experience. ++Bangkok Supper Club As recommended by my nephew over text from Krakow +What I Wore in NYC (Summer Version) by Dish Stanley Minimalist & Breezy. Inspired by The Sartorialist’s shots of women on bikes in Milan. +Roam: Manhattan’s Upper East Side By Dish Stanley. Resharing this piece on my love affair with my new neighborhood. +Social Media I Loved This Week. +Our Song of the Week
What I Did Over An Impromptu Few Days in NYC.
Arbus at the Park Avenue Armory, A Cool Japanese ‘kissa kissa’ Style Listening Bar, A Buzzy Bangkok Supper Club & Sargeant at the Met
I did a last minute trip to NYC because my sister had just spent a week there and told me there were things I should catch before they ended, most notably a Takashi Murakami exhibit at Gagosian’s West 21st Street gallery (which is now over, so I won’t write about it). Also, the Diane Arbus and Sargeant exhibits that end in August. It was raining in Boston at the time, so I decided to seize the moment.
I’ll start by telling you about the thing I did that I loved the most in case it hasn’t yet hit your radar, and end with a few words on the Bangkok Supper Club, a restaurant that it is impossible to get into except during the summer, which is precisely why I love being in NYC in the summer.
All Blues, a Japanese ‘kissa’ style listening bar in Tribeca by Dish Stanley
This ‘low talk’ listening bar isn’t everybody’s scene but if it’s your scene, BOY is it your scene
It’s like laying back in an ocean and letting the waves sweep you out to sea.
As you know, I enjoy music. I’m by no means an expert but over the years I’ve managed to get to most of the well-known live music venues in New York City (including Harlem) and Boston, and many of the lesser known ones as well.
Then, in 2017, on a solo trip to Tokyo (it was a post-breakup escape, a ‘whole other story‘) I went to JBS (Jazz, Blues, Soul) in the Shibuya district of Tokyo. Like Tokyo itself, it’s a world unto itself.
JBS is what is referred to in Japan as a ‘jazz kissa‘ cafe. Essentially, the term refers to immersive vinyl record listening bars that are engineered and organized for the best acoustics. They are uniquely Japanese and originate from the 1920’s, when the Japanese couldn’t access American jazz records. If someone got a good jazz record in their hands, they would gather. People wouldn’t talk — they were there to share the experience of listening to something rare, a hard-to-get special vinyl recording. Jazz kissa’s declined in popularity as records became more readily available in Japan, and that continued as vinyls were replaced by cd’s.
But jazz kissa’s started picking up in Tokyo in the 2010’s, and then started to spread to places like Berlin, London and New York.
In New York, some of the Japanese style listening bars are more like bars with great acoustics where people talk. A close friend celebrated her birthday with a private gathering at the Tokyo Record Bar in the West Village, a place that falls more into the latter category, a bar that provides a great place for conversation with great acoustics in the background.
All Blues, in Tribeca, was opened by Yuji Fukushima last year and it emphasizes the listening. That’s why I picked it among the other offerings in New York and Brooklyn to try out. In fact, it’s so serious about the listening being ’the whole point’ that in order to confirm the reservation I had to acknowledge (by text) that I wouldn’t talk (much). That was a feature, not a bug, for me because I wanted that same feeling I had at JBS in Tokyo of music washing over me.
When I walked into All Blues, Cornelius and Nathalia greeted me and explained that there is a bar area where there is more talking, but I had reserved for the ‘listening room’ in the back. Cornelius gave me a brief tour and explained the JBL sound system, which I appreciated but which also went right over my head.
To read what it felt like to be in All Blues listening room, continue reading here
Provoked. A Stunning Collection of Diane Arbus’s Work at the Park Avenue Armory by Dish Stanley
Constellation at Park Avenue Armory, (runs through August 17th)
This amateur admirer of Diane Arbus’s photography recommends you catch Constellation, the largest exhibition of her work ever mounted, but she humbly warns that being lost in this particular space may make you feel alienated from the art.
MOMA presented the first major solo retrospective of Diane Arbus’s photography in 1972-73, a year after she committed suicide. With 113 prints on exhibit, the show broke MOMA’s attendance records, resulted in a heated debate among intellectuals on moral boundaries, exploitation and voyeurism in art and also cemented photography in the canon of serious art. That’s some show.
I learned all this because in college in the 1980’s I was assigned to read Susan Sontag’s essay Freak Show, a stinging condemnation of Arbus’s art. It was published in the New York Review of Books, a temple for the public intellectual, and is available for subscribers only, so I’ll summarize by saying that Sontag argued that Arbus turned the subjects of her photography, often marginalized or "deviant" individuals, into spectacles who she presented without empathy and out of context. I wasn’t stupid enough then to take the other side on anything Sontag argued (she is considered one of the best essayists ever), but I wasn’t fully convinced, either. Arbus wasn’t the first to turn an eye on the marginalized — think Degas and his prostitutes, dancers and bathers. More to the point, it was not clear that Arbus lacked empathy for her subjects.
I raise the kerfuffle now as context because this summer the Park Avenue Armory entered the conversation with its Arbus show, Constellation. It includes a whopping 451 silver gelatin prints and is the largest Arbus exhibition ever mounted. Given my earlier engagement on the topic, I rushed over while on my brief trip to New York.
I am a lay person, certainly, when it comes to appreciating and understanding photography, but my reaction to Arbus’s work was that it was brilliantly immediate and piercing.
Admittedly, I wasn’t coming to it fresh, but some of the pictures made me really uncomfortable. I flinched looking at Arbus’s pictures of her subjects in mental institutions. They were too vulnerable, too exposed. I felt like I was seeing something I wasn’t sure I was invited in to see. But is that all on Arbus? I’m not so sure. Some of my discomfort might be issues that are mine to own: Arbus is depicting the full panoply of life, while I (no doubt) prefer a world of fantasy over realism.
Most of the pictures are nothing short of mesmerizing, though, which makes looking closely at all 451 exhausting.
At least, that would be the case if you could actually see all 451 pictures. But you can’t. That’s because the show’s curator, Matthieu Humery, installed the pictures on a sprawling, non-linear matrix that he says was inspired by a New York City subway map. There were mirrors on the back of each picture and one long mirrored wall (like, I have to say, you might find in a circus hall). The pictures weren’t hung in consecutive order and were not labeled — you had to track each down by ‘mapping’ the number next to the picture with a listing that you also had to locate, sometimes by walking around the installation to the other side. At one point, I bumped into somebody whose head was also aimed at the ground, looking for titles. At another, a fellow traveler and I were seeking the title to the same picture and he pulled out his printed listing to help me. (Just like being on the green line and asking somebody how far the Lexington Avenue stop is.)
All of this turned an already provocative and exhausting experience into a frustrating one.
On the wall as you entered Humery shared his reasoning for the annoying way he and the Armory chose to display Arbus’s work: ”The concept of a constellation occurred to us as a structure capable of presenting both the images and the imperceptible architecture underlying all creations: chance, chaos, and exploration … ”
Right. When I read the above statement before entering, I just thought, “Huh?” But again, I’m not an expert. I was game to give it a try, to give the curators the benefit of the doubt, to wander through what I’ll refer to in my own mundane language as the baffling maze of discovery (that is life) alongside the other perplexed and lost wanderers on our shared journey.
To read more Provoked, continue here
Casual Thoughts on Sargeant at the Met and Texting About Trying Bangkok Supper Club
Sargeant and Paris at the Metropolitan Museum, runs through August 3rd.
A number of friends raved about this Sargeant show, and one CRUSH Reader was kind enough to take the time to send me this a few weeks ago:
“Just saw the Sargent and Paris exhibit, really terrific. Favorite was the portrait of Mrs White (in a white dress, of course), loved the way he captured the sheen of the satin fabric and the anatomy of her lovely hands.“
I agree on the show. Dazzling.
I thought the most striking was Dr. Pozzi at Home. The picture shown above the title to this piece was taken by my friend, and even though we hoped that it would be less crowded at a special ‘Members Only’ viewing, it was still very crowded. I am sharing her shot because it gives a sense of the viewing experience. It’s a fabulous show, but it is (alas) a ‘blockbuster show viewing experience.’
My favorite Sargeant paintings hang at the MFA and Isabella Stewart Gardner museums in Boston and luckily, I have seen plenty of both of them under less crowded conditions. While one of those paintings was in the Met show, the other was not.
The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit is celebrated for its unusual composition as a portrait, and for Sargeant’s use of light and shadow. As a study of family dynamics, I find it fascinating. Just to start, the youngest is front and center (grabbing all the attention), while another is isolated to one side and the other two are in close proximity (and perhaps, the most emotionally intimate, but who knows really because one of them lurks in the shadows. (Is she shy, private, ignored or just full of secrets?) Is it a Rorschach test? For sure in part, because I am certain that the complexities and emotions of my own childhood are in the forefront as I ask myself what Sargeant is trying to convey.
Sargeant’s El Jaleo wasn’t in this exhibit, but I feel compelled to share this shot from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum‘s site to encourage you to visit. When Sargeant showed El Jaleo at the Paris Salon of 1882 it was this painting that made him ‘the most talked about painter” in Paris. (I wonder why they couldn’t strike a deal to get this in this show given its significance … ) At the Gardner, El Jaleo is masterfully hung in its Spanish Cloister in a niche framed by a Moroccan-style ceiling. Magnificent experience seeing it, really.
Bangkok Supper Club, on Hudson Street in the West Village
My nephew, an intrepid world traveler, texted me from his trip to Krakow to suggest a few ‘impossible’ restaurants that I should try to get into in New York since it’s summer and reservations would be easier to score. Bangkok Supper Club was on his list because he knows I love Thai and we have made a point of trying great Thai spots together around the city.
I will let our exchange speak for itself:
Peter: Bangkok Supper Club for Thai! West Village. Impossible! The vibe is ‘Bangkok late night.’ Same guy as Fish Cheeks. But maybe if you go early, and because it’s July you’ll snag a rez.
Me: Oh! I’ll try that one. Thnx!
[next morning]
Peter: How was BSC?
Me: Fun! Defintely high end, creative Thai, not standard Thai fare. Loved the retro vibe. Great cocktail list, great service. I see why it’s buzzy.
Me: Cocktail at the bar - a Rosado
Peter: What did you eat?
Me: The appetizers are more creative than the larger dishes, and I could easily have done a ton of them but we ordered around some of my friend’s allergies. We loved the Chilean sea bass chakras curry and the whole branzino and the side of green beans.
Peter: How would you compare it to Tha Phraya and Chalong [Readers, these are a couple of Thai restaurants Peter and I recently liked.]
Me: It’s a more festive place to meet friends, etc., but on a food basis alone it’s not better per se. Same flavors though a different menu. BSC definitely the best one if you’re planning a fun group night with friends bc it’s more restaurant-feel than the more crowded/louder/casual ones we went to. All in, it’s aces. If you’re just grabbing quick great Thai with a friend, then the others are good.
Me: How’s Krakow?
Peter: BEAUTIFUL. Largely preserved when the Soviets pushed the Nazi’s out. The food is good. More Central European, like Vienna or Prague. The most tourist-friendly city in Eastern Europe and there’s a lot to to do.
What I Wore There by Dish Stanley
Three NYC Summer Outfits Inspired by The Sartorialist’s Shots of Women Riding Bikes in Milan
When you scroll down to the ‘Social Media I loved’ column in this Letter, which focuses on The Sartorialist’s summer shots of women in Milan, you’ll say “aha.”Meaning, you’ll get that my outfit selections were all dresses and skirt combinations that were minimal and flowy and easy, yet urban and, to The Sartorialist’s credit, very much inspired by his shots of women riding bikes in Milan.
{Note that PrimeCrush doesn’t earn any affiliate links from any of my (or your) recommendations — here or in our popular Three Things I’m Crushing On column.}
Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea (Late Afternoon), then straight to All Blues Bar (Downtown)
My goal with this outfit was to incorporate daytime/nightime, and also be more relaxed yet kinda hip.
dissh gaby mini dress ($169.99)
I have this dress in white and chocolate brown. I wore the chocolate brown one to the Gagosian gallery in Chelsea to see the Murakami exhibit (now closed) because I was going straight from that to drinks/quick bite and then onto the All Blues listening bar. (I feel like I keep having to say this, but the white dress falls longer on me and lands an inch or two above my knee, making it less ‘beachy’ looking for these purposes and more versatile IMHO. I have worn the white one in both urban settings as well as on the Cape for various activities.) The beauty of the chocolate brown one is that it will transition well into fall (adding a short cardigan sweater).
Aside: I have been eyeing this chocolate brown Faden dress by Rachel Comey, too, but there’s no way I’m spending over $700 on it. Also great for summer into fall. It’s fab, right?
As you can see, the dress has a deep V and also the arm holes are a deep cut. You can’t usually see any lingerie, but I wanted to make sure that underneath it I wore something I wouldn’t mind somebody getting a glimpse of (just in case). Since I was wearing chocolate brown, I wore the leopard bralette shown below (and matching panties).
Understatement Underwear Lace Plunge Bralette in Leopard ($103)
As an aside: I first learned about the Understatement line from following this cool body positive woman, and.bloom, on instagram. She is, to me, a much more realistic look at a ‘real life, but cool, sexy and hip 50+ woman’ than soooo many other sites. (I could do a whole column on the various 50+ women on instagram who I follow - some of whom often vex as much as inspire (looking at you, @paulinaporizkov and @graceghanem. (Actually, I think I will do that column. Also a column on lingerie brands I love, now that I think of it. Stay tuned.))
Anyway, I’ve gone on to buy a few lingerie pieces from Understatement and I find them fun, sexy and comfortable.
My Own Vintage Necklace from Lisbon
I wore my hair down and my only jewelry (at all - no earrings, no rings, keeping with a minimalist look) was a large chunky gold necklace that I got at a vintage store in Lisbon a few years ago. It kinda sorta has the feel of this one from Amazon in that it has large gold circles and the length is adjustable to accommodate a jewel or v-neck. I think the gold necklace brightened the look up a lot, and I happen to love the chocolate brown/gold combination for an urban summer look.
Since I would be out all afternoon and night in the same outfit, walking quite a bit, I wore this Birkenstock Papillo collaboration — I think the chunkier style can make it read a little hipper and edgier and funner (depending on what I am wearing with them). I like the neutral color because in my fantasy world it extends the eye and makes my legs look as long and lean as India Hicks’s.
Birkenstock Papillo Arizona Suede Sandals ($144)
I wear these sandals a lot. I wear a lot of white linen and cotton in the summer and think these work with most everything …
Members Night at The Metropolitan Museum, Plus Dinner at Chic UES Private Club
This was my first night and my flight was delayed landing in NYC, so I had to rush to my apartment to get dressed for a ‘Members Only’ viewing of the Sargeant and Paris show, followed by dinner at a chic UES private club. I threw on the outfit below.
I know that the outfit doesn’t look like anything special, but I am sharing it because I couldn’t believe how many strangers complimented me. The dress might look like a simple tailored number in these shots, but while I was waiting for my friend to arrive at the Met, three separate New York women left the line they were in and walked over to me, standing in my agreed-upon meeting spot under a tree, to compliment my dress (and ask where I got it). It’s the detail of the pleating around the neckline, I think, and the fact that it is such a crisp Italian-made poplin that looks easy but pulled together. It’s so versatile, too. I dressed it up by wearing my hair in a french twist with the fancy pearl earrings I show below, but it works just as well with a pair of white canvas sneakers for going to a farmer’s market …
I wore my hair up in a loose French twist. (It took me about six months of practice to be able to this effortlessly and I learned from this video. I use these for a full French twist.) Four women, between the museum and dinner, asked about my earrings. The flats are so basic, but I was walking ten blocks up to the museum, then twelve blocks down afterward for dinner so I needed basic flats. My goal for the shoes was to ‘not detract’ from what was intended to be a sorta’ relaxed elegant look.
The Celia Dress from Ann Mashburn ($350)
Anita Berisha Mini Mermaid Earrings ($300)
These are handcrafted summer ‘statement’ earrings that I wear for dinner when I am trying to add pizzazz to an otherwise simple outfit. In addition to the dress above, they look great with the chocolate brown dissh gaby mini dress (above-above).
French Sole Jigsaw Leather Napa Flat ($200)
Basic, feminine, the color blends in with whatever you’ve got on and highly walkable.
To see my final outfit — featuring my Rondini sandals from St. Tropez and a vintage Pucci scarf — that I wore to see the Arbus show at Park Avenue Armory, followed by drinks and dinner downtown at Bangkok Supper Club, continue reading here.
Roam: Manhattan’s Upper East Side By Dish Stanley
A recurring column where CRUSH Readers share a snapshot of where they’ve been and what they loved there.
Manhattan's Upper East Side
Tell us a little bit about you.
As CRUSH Readers, you already know a little bit about me! Since this is our travel column I’ll focus on that.
Perhaps because I was born in Japan to two American parents, I was born to travel or, at the very least, born feeling comfortable in foreign places. I have gone through many periods in my life — particularly the decade after my husband’s death — when I have voraciously chased the feeling of discovering faraway spot.
My favorite trip was the one I took with two close girlfriends when I turned 50: we went to Madrid, then Marrakech, then took an often harrowing ride through the Atlas Mountains down to the Western Sahara. We stayed in a small, gorgeous, riad in Marrakech that I had read about in Elle Decor. It was in a dangerous part of town that our driver couldn’t access, so we held hands and did a 10 minute sprint down dark, deserted alleys between the car and our riad twice a day. That trip incorporated every element I enjoy most about traveling — immersing myself in another culture, glamour, history, adventure (though the danger was not anticipated). Also, the intimacy of prolonged time with close friends in another world, and the ‘other worldly’ space that creates for conversations to unfold slowly that weave back and forth over days. Revealing more secrets from the people you already know quite well.
As COVID was wrapping up, I decided to move back to New York City. I had been living in Boston for twenty years by then, having moved there to marry my late husband. Before that I spent my twenties living in many different neighborhoods in New York, but mostly in the West Village. For a year in the mid-90’s I was a house sitter in the glamorous Upper West Side building Nora Ephron made famous, the Apthorp. In exchange for free rent in a penthouse apartment outfitted with an intimidating Aga stove, I took care of the owners’ cat, Mellarooney.
Moving back to New York in my fifties, I was drawn to Central Park and the elegant, quiet, clean, tree-lined streets of the Upper East Side. Everybody thought it was odd, me being pulled in by the city just as so many bold-faced names and long-term New Yorkers were pulling out. But it felt both generous-hearted and exciting, like taking an old lover back when he‘d hit a rough patch. The choice of the UES seemed, in particular, like a mistake to most everyone. “Dead, Dish,” said one former New Yorker, who had just sold her Park Avenue apartment and exited for Naples. “Madison Avenue is boarded up. You’re crazy. It’s never coming back.”
Yet, back I went. And back it is. I got what I thought was a good price on a prewar two bedroom apartment that needed renovating. Three years later, the construction finally done, I have fallen truly, madly, completely in love with my new neighborhood.
I love it with the passion of the newly converted. Here is what I love (so far).
In one word, describe the atmosphere:
Refreshed.
From the newly reopened Frick Museum and Surrey Hotel, to some of the city’s best new restaurants (Chez Fifi, Cafe Commerce, Schnipper’s Quality Soups, NR, and the yet-to-open London transplant Birley Bakery), the Upper East Side feels fresh.
Continue reading here
Social Media I Loved This Week
The past few summers The Sartorialist has shared street style shots from Milan. I love the very particular vibe he captures. Let’s call it ‘summer, but urban summer, yet very Italian urban summer, but really it could only be ‘Milan Italian Summer’.’
I appreciate all his shots, but the ‘sub genre’ within his ‘Milan Italian Summer’ genre I love the most is ‘women riding bicycles in dresses (and often heels).’ I have gone through all of his offerings this summer (so far) and selected only my favorites. (It was hard whittling them down, tbh.) Here they are.
All shots from The Sartorialist
Song of the Week
Body Heat by Quincy Jones
I am going to create a playlist for you that is inspired by what Yuji Fukushima was spinning at All Blues the night I was there — an intoxicating sexy, soulful, bluesy but upbeat blend – but as I pull that together for you, I’ll tease you with Quincy Jones’s Body Heat.
I’m keeping a running list of the topics you asked for that I promised to write about:
- Men’s Summer Style - Brands & stores CRUSH Readers (and I) love
- Eyeliner lesson (from the woman I sat next to who had PIP)
- Update on my Thinning Hair Journey
- Update on my dating journey
- My thoughts on Keith McNally’s memoir, Gwyneth’s book (when it drops) and Too Much, among other pop culture obsessions
- What it was like to move back to NYC and renovate my COOP (it took three years, and it’s small!)
What else do you want, CRUSH Readers? You can always write me at Dish@PrimeCrush.com.
XO,
Dish
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Dish Stanley
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The Crush Letter is a weekly newsletter from Dish Stanley curating articles & intelligence on everything love & connection - friendship, romance, self-love, sex. If you’d like to take a look at some of our best stories go to Read Us. Want the Dish?
