The Highline and Broadway's Promises, Promises

Spent some time today in my favorite NYC spot - the Highline Park.  This elevated-train-track-turned-park is best viewed during the week to avoid crowds.  Given that today is Good Friday, people were apparently off from work and many were out enjoying the park in the fine weather.

I like to start from the northern end of the Highline, which today is at 20th (in the future it will be much higher when the park is complete), and head south.  That provides a great view of the Statue of Liberty and deposits the walker into a nice neighborhood with restaurants and interesting sites.

As you walk south, look to the right (West) to see this Frank Gehry buidling.  This is the IAC (InterActiveCorp) headquarters on 11th Ave between 18th and 19th Sts.  IAC is an internet company providing services to the retail sector (as I understand it after a very quick search).  Its building was completed in 2007.  According to the January 13, 2006 Wall Street Journal Online, the lobby (reportedly has)

images of the company's more than 50 brands on a floor-to-ceiling interactive screen running the length of the building. The images (are) visible to pedestrians and to passing cars through a transparent horizontal band.

The Journal also stated that the buidling, on the site of a former truck garage, has a

geometric façade has eight skyward arcs of glass that...mimic wind-whipped sails of boats making their way along the Hudson River, just across the West Side Highway... (It) uses low-iron glass that removes its normal greenish tinge -- and makes the glass clearer. People working inside the building,,,have a clear view of the river and the city. At night, the lights of the building...make the walls seem transparent.

Chelsea Market is close to the southern end of the Highline so we went through it. During a wine tasting there, we most enjoyed the Old River Road Cabernet Sauvignon 2005 from California's Ponderosa Vineyard. Also loved the wine purses they sold. I thought $29.99 was too much and assumed I could get one cheaper online. That proved to be incorrect. They are that price and more online! Looks like I am heading back to Chelsesa Market for my wine purse (with corkscrew included)!

Dinner was at Patsy's Pizza.  (There are several locations throughout NYC.)  Of all the years I've visited NYC, and the year I lived here, why did I wait so long to get to Patsy's?  Simply great pizza - located diagonally across the block from my building!  Thin crust and crispy.  Great mozarella cheese.  Yummy.

Saw Promises, Promises after dinner.  This revival was entertaining at times and felt painfully long at other times.  The second act was better than the first.

Sean Hayes made his role very "Jack"-like (his role in Will and Grace).  He sang surprisingly well.  Kristin Chenoweth killed the song A House is not a Home.  (I'm sorry, no one will ever be able to sing it and not have it compared to Luther Vandross' amazing rendition.)  I enjoyed Chenoweth's version of I'll Never Fall in Love Again.

At the end of the show, the applause for Kate Finneran, who played Marge MacDougall, was probably just as loud as the applause given to Hayes and Chenoweth.  Finneran performed wonderfully; she was very comical.

Another satisfying day in NYC.