La Caravelle And Lunch At Luger: Ten Years Ago

[Pink Pig Time Machine by Wilfrid:  September 3, 2013]

One of those lovely mixed weeks around Labor Day, 2003.  Downtown, uptown, and over the river.

Beginning with the first ever "Howl Festival" in the East Village, an event which was huge fun for a few years, subsequently dwindled and missed a year or two, but I guess would claim to be ten years old this year.

One of my gripes from year one was that, starting with the name (and continuing even today with the logo), the festival seized Allen Ginsberg's image, implying somehow that Ginsberg was reducible to the East Village and/or that the East Village was reducible to Ginsberg, both depressingly false claims.

But I still had fun, watching a performance in Tompkins Square Park by Penny Arcade, and the drag extravaganza known as Wigstock, and in the nearby Mary Help of Christians space (yes, the flea market), sets by the Church of Betty and that remarkable survivor Jayne County.

Then it was into a fine suit and tie, and dinner at La Caravelle.  Chaire de crabe (dressed crab, I guess we called it in the UK: out of the shell, anyway), abats de veau (veal offals: kidneys and sweetbreads in a reduction), and the good old fromages.

A day or two later, a subway out to Williamsburg which, let me tell you, was not a place anyone visited at all ten years ago.  Except to eat at Peter Luger.  I can hardly believe this was my first meal there, but it was.  And it was a formula I was subsequently happy to repeat. Big slices of tomato and slab bacon to start, then the porterhouse (for two, three times, as there were six of us).   There were a couple of portions of chopped steak too, just to pass around.

To finish the week off, a rainy night at Sunshine Cinema on Houston for the recently released 24 Hour Party People, followed by supper at that little corner South American spot Café Flor.  It's now a boutique (part of Rag & Bone, I think).  Arepas con pollo, capacha con queso de Guayanés (a capacha is not entirely unlike an arepa, and  Guayanés is a Venezualan cheese).  Carne asado of some kind to top up, doubtless with rice and beans and things.