Sunday, October 02, 2005
Step out of doors – and into adventure: Union Square
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
Of a Sunday morning, well, a late morning, on our way to test the brunch at some new place that came to our attention during the Harvest in the Square celebration, walking West on 17th Street past the tropical paradise that Tony Maccagiano of Sal Anthony’s has created next to the gated entrance to the corner Irving Place building, we spied tents on Union Square.
It turned out to be the 7th Annual New York City Knit-Out and Crochet Event that this column had announced in its notes of permits granted by Community Board 5. long ago. Anyway, it was quite an event.
We turned up just as models were marching across the stage, set up in front of the Pavilion that may be partly converted to a restaurant (watch this column for the controversy). They were all fully covered up, beautifully dressed in woolen sweaters and scarves, unlike those on the Stuyvesant Oval lawn (as reported in this paper a week ago). Patterns for the sweaters were distributed by wool sellers in booths under the long tent, and nearly every visitor toted plastic bags from Red Heart Yarns and Bernat wools. Lion Brands offered warm and fuzzy easy to knit styles, not quite befitting the image of the roaring MGM animal, but so be it. Catalogs mysteriously marked Coats with a crown turned out to be from Coats and Clark, a name I remember from buying button thread at Woolworth’s. Now they have more brands (Moda Dea, TLC) and straight and funny-name websites, dominating the event.
The services dominated the center of the large Greenmarket plaza, with tables and chairs, and specialists offering lectures at various corners, a different one each half-hour, teaching Fair Isle knitting style, showing how to finish seams and other arcane of the trade. The Learn to Crochet stand, the whole West end of the market space, had people standing in lines, waiting their turn.
Knitting is good for your nerves, I have learned at the huge East Coast Wool and Sheep Fair that takes place each Fall in the Rhinebeck Fairgrounds, and attracts visitors from the entire seaboard and exhibitors from Canada and Australia. This event, though smaller in scope, seems to generate much enthusiasm, including among young people. Good news, a nation that knits will survive, even the next Ice Age (more later, I’m not in a Doomsday mood).
Moving right along, we eventually found brunch, at Pipa’s in the ABC Carpet and Home complex, a tapas place that I remember from the Harvest on the Square (for an expanded review open my www.dobelis.net website, and three taps will take you to the Looking Ahead blog). Very nice, good service, and we saw a Reece Witherspoon look-alike lunching with friends – she could not have been the real thing, she counted out her own few dollar bills out of a worn wallet for her share. Another of the kiddies hoping for a fortune in Big Apple. Be well.
Upon return to the Greenmarket plaza, the organizers were reading out the names of winners in a knit and crochet contest that I had no time to enter, with many no longer present. To make your fortune, you also gotta be there. Or buy lottery tix.
Crossing along the West side of the park, on our way to the Whole Foods Market, e passed through a gallery of artists’ stands on the right, and several high triangular poster displays on the left, showing enlarged pages of New York Times, with headlines of the Pope and Poland. Reaching the end, we found a placard announcing the 25th Anniversary of Solidarity, the Gdansk shipyard workers’ organization that broke the Communist rule. You don’t need the news and media to be reminded of history here in Union Square, it stares right at you, sometimes as demonstrators from all sides.
At the WFM, the late lunchtime lines at the fast checkout (10 items or fewer; that’s good English) were so thick that they used two line managers directing the fast traffic to some 50 stands. Downstairs, the apple stands still had their pristine symmetry, with several sweepers and stock clerks at work, and when I pointed an otherwise perfect pear ($3/lb) on the floor to one of them, he tossed it in a wastebasket without hesitation. Only in America.
I’ve been told that the downstairs is a good girl-watching spot, and indeed, there were both muscular runners in shorts and languid madonnas in max cutdowns, picking among the health-lending wares, Stuy towners to note. But not everything we need in life is in a WFM.
We found the missing items at the Food Emporium, where the checkout lines were unruly and argumentative; but the man who helped us was a joy. It’s a wonderful world.
Don’t forget to check my blog, and read this paper for news.
Of a Sunday morning, well, a late morning, on our way to test the brunch at some new place that came to our attention during the Harvest in the Square celebration, walking West on 17th Street past the tropical paradise that Tony Maccagiano of Sal Anthony’s has created next to the gated entrance to the corner Irving Place building, we spied tents on Union Square.
It turned out to be the 7th Annual New York City Knit-Out and Crochet Event that this column had announced in its notes of permits granted by Community Board 5. long ago. Anyway, it was quite an event.
We turned up just as models were marching across the stage, set up in front of the Pavilion that may be partly converted to a restaurant (watch this column for the controversy). They were all fully covered up, beautifully dressed in woolen sweaters and scarves, unlike those on the Stuyvesant Oval lawn (as reported in this paper a week ago). Patterns for the sweaters were distributed by wool sellers in booths under the long tent, and nearly every visitor toted plastic bags from Red Heart Yarns and Bernat wools. Lion Brands offered warm and fuzzy easy to knit styles, not quite befitting the image of the roaring MGM animal, but so be it. Catalogs mysteriously marked Coats with a crown turned out to be from Coats and Clark, a name I remember from buying button thread at Woolworth’s. Now they have more brands (Moda Dea, TLC) and straight and funny-name websites, dominating the event.
The services dominated the center of the large Greenmarket plaza, with tables and chairs, and specialists offering lectures at various corners, a different one each half-hour, teaching Fair Isle knitting style, showing how to finish seams and other arcane of the trade. The Learn to Crochet stand, the whole West end of the market space, had people standing in lines, waiting their turn.
Knitting is good for your nerves, I have learned at the huge East Coast Wool and Sheep Fair that takes place each Fall in the Rhinebeck Fairgrounds, and attracts visitors from the entire seaboard and exhibitors from Canada and Australia. This event, though smaller in scope, seems to generate much enthusiasm, including among young people. Good news, a nation that knits will survive, even the next Ice Age (more later, I’m not in a Doomsday mood).
Moving right along, we eventually found brunch, at Pipa’s in the ABC Carpet and Home complex, a tapas place that I remember from the Harvest on the Square (for an expanded review open my www.dobelis.net website, and three taps will take you to the Looking Ahead blog). Very nice, good service, and we saw a Reece Witherspoon look-alike lunching with friends – she could not have been the real thing, she counted out her own few dollar bills out of a worn wallet for her share. Another of the kiddies hoping for a fortune in Big Apple. Be well.
Upon return to the Greenmarket plaza, the organizers were reading out the names of winners in a knit and crochet contest that I had no time to enter, with many no longer present. To make your fortune, you also gotta be there. Or buy lottery tix.
Crossing along the West side of the park, on our way to the Whole Foods Market, e passed through a gallery of artists’ stands on the right, and several high triangular poster displays on the left, showing enlarged pages of New York Times, with headlines of the Pope and Poland. Reaching the end, we found a placard announcing the 25th Anniversary of Solidarity, the Gdansk shipyard workers’ organization that broke the Communist rule. You don’t need the news and media to be reminded of history here in Union Square, it stares right at you, sometimes as demonstrators from all sides.
At the WFM, the late lunchtime lines at the fast checkout (10 items or fewer; that’s good English) were so thick that they used two line managers directing the fast traffic to some 50 stands. Downstairs, the apple stands still had their pristine symmetry, with several sweepers and stock clerks at work, and when I pointed an otherwise perfect pear ($3/lb) on the floor to one of them, he tossed it in a wastebasket without hesitation. Only in America.
I’ve been told that the downstairs is a good girl-watching spot, and indeed, there were both muscular runners in shorts and languid madonnas in max cutdowns, picking among the health-lending wares, Stuy towners to note. But not everything we need in life is in a WFM.
We found the missing items at the Food Emporium, where the checkout lines were unruly and argumentative; but the man who helped us was a joy. It’s a wonderful world.
Don’t forget to check my blog, and read this paper for news.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 9:22 PM 
