This is what I'm talking about, cool cats. Friday p.m. was loaded with more stops than an uptown subway train, let me tell you. At 5 p.m. Donna Mae Moose, visiting from Lynchburg, Va., and I made our way to Manhattan's East Village for shopping along St. Marks Place before meeting my peeps for happy hour at St. Dymphna's between 1st Avenue and Avenue A. Sweet spot and yet another new destination for our bi-weekly meet.Onward at 7:15, taking a crosstown bus westward to the hip Maritime Hotel to see Turkish superstar Sertab Erener and her guitar-toting man Demir Demirkan at the Hiro Ballroom. Lots of industry allies present, including Janet Castiel and Patti Conte, who promptly escorted Donna and meese to front-row seating. Yee-haw.Sertab & Demir recently returned to the States after working on her new Turkish album in Istanbul (where Ayhan and I visited with them in January), making concert stops in Chicago, Washington and Ann Arbor, Mich., before closing their mini-tour in New York. This time, the whole show was in Turkish, to the delight of their sizable fan base here—which sang along to song after song, as Donna and I soaked up her massive talent, phenomenal voice and great melodies, in addition to the wicked musicianship of Demir and the full band.Sertab premiered the new English version of "Ask," my favorite among her Turkish repertoire, called "Love." Clip below!Following the gig—as Ayhan raced across town from Times Square—Donna Mae and I squeezed into the tiny basement at Hiro for a meet and greet with our pals...Mae and I exited the venue, right as Ayhan arrived in a taxi, and we all managed to race back inside, so that he could give Sertab and Demir a squeeze... Score! Next, with the weather chilly but pleasant enough for walking, we ventured a few blocks northeast to Chelsea's ever-hot G Lounge for liquid refreshment. After getting our fill, we hailed a cab home to Brooklyn Heights......Where the notion of post-midnight sustenance was too potent to ignore. Well, I'll be damned; there's the Park Plaza Restaurant just steps away. Thank heavens for 24-hour diners.2:20 a.m., already? Zzzzzz.
Spirit Airlines, already the worst of the nickel and diming carriers, has made U.S. travel more of a pain in the wazoo by daring to add a $45 fee for carry-on baggage. The airline previously not only charged for checking luggage, but for selecting a seat in advance.
Of course, if this were a solitary case of desperation, it'd be easy enough to simply avoid this two-bit flyer—but as we've seen time and again, once any carrier adds fees, the others quickly, gleefully fall in line. And I didn't think U.S. airline travel could be made more miserable.
But if New York Sen. Chuck Schumer has his way, Spirit may not get its way. He made a plea to the Treasury Department to rule that carry-on bags are a necessity for travel, which would make them exempt from a separate fee outside the ticket price. Schumer says carry-on bags contain medications and other necessities, while carry-on fees artificially inflate higher ticket prices and taxes.
Spirit CEO Ben Baldanza says fewer carry-on bags will help empty the plane faster. Indeed. And if passengers choose to avoid giving business to this abhorrent airline, planes can unload all the faster.
I don't know what to make of the fact that I wrote my signature on Christmas Eve for more than 15 years. Genius? Idiotic? Idiot savant? Regardless, I wonder why I chose to stop in 1988 instead of maintaining the tradition until that day when I can no longer remember my name... Could be any day now.
What is genius is that my photo editing tool turned this fading, brown masterpiece into a shimmering clear doc.When I took it out of the frame to scan, I discovered additional autographs on the back!
God bless Facebook. Visiting pal Donna Mae Moose and I both recently connected with Suzzette Straub, an acquaintance from E.C. Glass High School in our hometown of Lynchburg, Va., as we have with many past classmates. In fact, later this year, I'll return home for a decade celebration with my own class... made so much easier through FB, where dates were announced, along with regular communication with so many folks I knew from kindergarten all the way through grade 12.
After so much time, it matters little that we were friends in the third grade and traveled in different groups from that point on; or that I only had English with youse in the seventh grade... It matters a little more that you called me "sissy" in the 11th grade, but looking at my life now, I don't care. Truly, equal footing with common ground, and a reason for celebration, cool cats.
So it was momentous today to meet for lunch at South Street Seaport in Manhattan with Suzzette—uniting Donna Mae from Lynchurg, meese from Brooklyn and Suz from the Jersey shore—to utilize that bond to become "new" friends, um, all over again. We really had a blast, talking a bit about Person 1,2,3,4,5 and so on from those days, but also discovering who we have become in the years since. And that's where the real magic transported us into the future. A truly meaningful connect, based on history... It didn't hurt a bit that all three of us look quite a bit better than we did so many years ago. Nothing like being a late bloomer.
After visiting the spectacular new first phase of Brooklyn Bridge Park Wednesday with visiting Donna Mae Moose, today we ventured to Manhattan's South Street Seaport, which happens to offer the precise opposite viewpoint—into BK Bridge Park... both present and future.Above, the first phase, just opened.
This could have come straight from one of my fave webbies, engrish.com... Seen today close to Wall Street in Manhattan. Bress her heart.(PHOTOS: DONNA KENDRICK)
The largest group facility that I'm counting for the U.S. Census Bureau is the enormous Watchtower, the worldwide base of Jehovah Witnesses. I was taken aback to discover that the organization owns no fewer than 18 buildings in Brooklyn Heights—all of which my crew is enumerating for the GQE portion of the Census, with a potential population of some 6,000.
I had a little chuckle when I took a look at my Watchtower packets and papers and realized that, without knowing it, I had built my own mini tower.Here's the behemoth's primary base, located on the edge of Brooklyn Heights, facing the Brooklyn Bridge. The org is trying to move upstate and sell off all properties in the nabe—but the down real estate market has made that thus far a no-go.
With Donna Mae Moose arriving from Lynchburg for her annual NYC spring sojourn—and glorious record-breaking temps pushing 90(!) degrees—it was the perfect day to explore the spanking new Brooklyn Bridge Park, which opened late last month. The verdict: just stunning. Not only is the land graded with gentle slopes and peak vantage points of lower Manhattan, but there's plenty of wooden benches, walking trails and amazing views into Brooklyn Heights that were previously forbidden when the old powder blue warehouses commanded the waterfront.
THEN...NOW...Fascinating never-before-seen view of the BQE double-decker highway, with the Brooklyn Heights promenade atop.(PHOTOS: THE SMOKING GUN & DONNA KENDRICK)
was loaded with more stops than an uptown subway train, let me tell you. At 5 p.m. Donna Mae Moose, visiting from Lynchburg, Va., and I made our way to Manhattan's East Village for shopping along St. Marks Place before meeting my peeps for happy hour at St. Dymphna's between 1st Avenue and Avenue A. Sweet spot and yet another new destination for our bi-weekly meet.
Onward at 7:15, taking a crosstown bus westward to the hip Maritime Hotel to see 
Turkish superstar Sertab Erener and her guitar-toting man Demir Demirkan at the Hiro Ballroom. Lots of industry allies present, including Janet Castiel and Patti Conte, who promptly escorted Donna and meese to front-row seating. Yee-haw.
Sertab & Demir recently returned to the States after working on her new Turkish album in Istanbul (where Ayhan and I visited with them in January), making concert stops in Chicago, Washington and Ann Arbor, Mich., before closing their mini-tour in New York. This time, the whole show was in Turkish, to the delight of their sizable fan base here—which sang along to song after song, as Donna and I soaked up her massive talent, phenomenal voice and great melodies, in addition to the wicked musicianship of Demir and the full band.
Sertab premiered the new English version of "Ask," my favorite among her Turkish repertoire, called "Love." Clip below!Following the gig—as Ayhan raced across town from Times Square—Donna Mae and I squeezed into the tiny basement at Hiro for a meet and greet with our pals...
Mae and I exited the venue, right as Ayhan arrived in a taxi, and we all managed to race back inside, so that he could give Sertab and Demir a squeeze... Score! Next, with the weather chilly but pleasant enough for walking, we ventured a few blocks northeast to Chelsea's ever-hot G Lounge for liquid refreshment.
After getting our fill, we hailed a cab home to Brooklyn Heights...
...
Where the notion of post-midnight sustenance was too potent to ignore. Well, I'll be damned; there's the Park Plaza Restaurant just steps away. Thank heavens for 24-hour diners.
2:20 a.m., already? Zzzzzz.
