NEW YORK CITY
We met my nephew Mike Wimsatt and his partner Kathy at the Grey Dog restaurant near our hotel in Chelsea. It was a colorful, cheerful restaurant where we had a marvelous breakfast. Kathy was celebrating her 42nd birthday with family that afternoon so they only had time to host us at breakfast, take us for a walk along the High Line, an abandoned elevated subway line turned into a green walkway and then show us how to pay for the subway by slapping our iPhone on the turnstile. It was so good to see them and to learn about their life in New York.
In the mid afternoon took the subway to Brooklyn Bridge where there was an outdoor flea market which we wandered through. At the same time certain streets were blocked off so that bicyclists of every age and size could attempt a 40 mile unobstructed bike ride around Manhatten.
In the evening we went to the home of Leeann and Tony Torn, the house that Tony grew up in with his father, the actor Rip Torn and his mother Geraldine Page. A sign on their brownstone identified the house as Torn Page.
Tony and Leeann are involved with all kinds of poetry and theater projects in New York City. Leeann teaches poetry at St. John‘s University and Tony is an actor involved in theater projects. We were there at 6 to see five short plays being put on in an upstairs room with with chairs for an audience. The theater company from Philadelphia were all very accomplished actors. The plays were dark and serious but mesmerizing.
When the show was over the troupe posed for photographs and then we went back to our hotel at 309 14 Street.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 