I spent a very manly evening at Hudson Bar & Books way down yonder on Hudson Street at Horatio with R, esq. This would be Holiday Spirits #4. R, esq. is another lost soul who I communicate with regularly but don’t actually get to see very often. Like most lawyers, he works. A lot.

Hudson Bar & Books is a cigar bar. Smoking has been run out of town, so walking into a bar and encountering a cloud of cigar smoke is a bit unsettling. The testosterone practically drips off the walls and seeps down onto the copper-topped bar.

This bar is so damn masculine that they play nothing but James Bond movies on the small TV in the corner. Last night they had You Only Live Twice on a loop. I was able to watch it one and a quarter times. The back room of the bar is a library. Nobody reads there. It’s just drinking and smoking. The books are for show. And a pretty show it is, especially for an old bookman like myself.

There are women in the crowd but, generally, it’s a bunch of guys sitting around puffing cigars. They have a cigar menu and a whisky menu. No food. I don’t make a habit of smoking cigars but when the occasion calls for it I am happy to imbibe. I always end up smoking a stogy or two when in Vegas.

4 glasses of Dewar’s (2 straight up, 2 w/ soda) + 4 Dunhill cigars = $147.63 And that’s without the tip! No food, remember. Just alcohol and tobacco. Even for New York that’s preposterous. Well…that did include the Bond movie.

I got down the the Village a little early and had a cup of chili at this utterly charming bistro.

Next door to the bistro is the house I going to own someday.

That wreath is hung in their living room window. It looks out onto a quiet, pretty block in the heart of Greenwich Village. *sigh*

Store windows are a pretty big deal in New York. Designing window displays is an actual profession out here and the penultimate store window display each year is the series of holiday windows at Lord & Taylor on 5th Avenue. People anticipate their unveiling and queue up in line nightly to view them. It’s been a New York holiday tradition for over 80 years.

The Lord & Taylor holiday windows do not display merchandise. They are painstakingly detailed scenes of vintage holidays of yesteryear. There are a lot of moving parts and animatronics. I would describe the color palate used as “violent.” It takes a lot of detailed work by a team of artisans to put these windows together and in this high-tech age, they seem quaint and innocent.

7-Year Old Daughter had the day off from school so I took a vacation day and brought her into the city. The brainwashing program that I have been developing since her birth is officially underway. My intention is to raise her with the notion that New York City is not a loud, foul, occasionally dangerous place (which it is). Rather, I would have her grow up believing that the city is filled with opportunity and hidden beauty.

We went to the Museum of Modern Art for the Van Gough and the Colors of the Night exhibit. It’s a series of paintings whereby Van Gough uses light to convey night. It’s a fairly small show—about 30 paintings in four galleries—and it was PACKED. Van Gough always draws a big crowd. I had to pick her up on a few occasions so she could see the paintings over the heads of the crowd. She was able to name Starry Night on sight, which is a good sign.

My favorite was The Sower with its green luminescent sky.

I met Sharon there. She’s an artist. I have always advocated visiting an art museum with an artist in tow because that way, you get your ignorant ass schooled. She spoke of brush stroke techniques, history and influences. Daughter got much more out of the trip than if I had brought her by myself.

Here she is trying to make sense of Pollock’s drip masterpiece.

Here, I’m trying to convince her that although painting a soup can is not difficult from a technical standpoint, successfully convincing people that it’s legitimate art is an innovation.

After the museum, I fed Daughter her very first New York City dirty water hot dog. I know what you’re thinking, but I had to do it. It’s part of my brainwashing program. Nurse H met us for lunch. She always makes a big fuss over Daughter. Daughter, being a megalomaniac, is always especially pleased to see her. I wish I could spend my days doing stuff like this and not waste so much precious time chained to a desk doing work that is only occasionally inspiring. My plight is not unique. It’s part of the human condition.

The past few weeks have been a rough go for a number of reasons. Issues at work. Issues at home. My issues have issues. Someone a lot smarter than me said that the universe was biting at my ankles. Boy, that’s the truth! The last thing I needed was the Friday night crush at Penn Station, so after work I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to find some peace of mind.

If I’m in the right mood (a state of extreme agitation or vulnerability) a trip to an art museum can really knock me on my ass. Edward Hopper is the undisputed master of sunlight and human isolation. And that goddamn van Gogh still, after all these years of overexposure, gets to me every time. It was a pretty evening so I went up to the roof to look at the fun Jeff Koons balloon sculptures. I bought an ice cold bottle of Corona for dinner ($7) and looked over Central Park and 5th Avenue. It was also the first time I saw Damien Hirst’s 10 foot great white shark floating in a tank of blue formaldehyde. I wonder what they paid for it?

The Impressionist galleries are always crowded, as are the modern galleries, but The Met is like a bee hive and you can always find some little nook if you need to be alone to think. I walked into a small, dark, quiet room and was surrounded by these beautiful back lit medieval stained glass windows that are on loan from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. It was a nice moment and then some stupid woman with her ape boyfriend in tow walked in, looked around and loudly announced, “There’s nothing in this room!” They turned around and walked out. How could she not see? It could have been worse. She could have stayed.

My beer dinner wore off so I had a gyro at Gyro II across from Penn Station. Always a culinary delight. Smell me.

The Brooklyn Bridge opened for business 125 years ago this weekend. I spent my early NYC years living in Brooklyn and my heart goes pat-pat-pat every time I see it. Anytime I had visitors, I would always take them on a walk across the bridge. You have to start from the Brooklyn side and walk towards Manhattan because that’s the better view. You can see all of lower Manhattan, the UN, and all the midtown skyscrapers you know by name, whether you’ve been to New York or not. Take the A train to High Street/Brooklyn Bridge, come out of the subway, cross Cadman Plaza, up a stone staircase and walk that beautiful walk. The cables look like a spider’s web and there’s nothing more elegant than the cathedral-window cutouts in the center of the stone support towers. It’s an architectural masterpiece.

One morning, many years ago, a cable snapped and came crashing down to the walkway and killed someone who was walking to work. They said that the acidity in the pigeon guano that had accumulated over the years caused the cable supports to corrode. Pigeons 1. Humans 0.