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Lake Buena Vista, Florida
I'm coming up only to hold you under
I have nothing against Walt Disney World. I have fond memories of visiting as a little kid (I was five the first time I was there and still have distinct memories from that trip) and have probably been there over my life six or seven times. This visit though was the first time I was there for a non vacation reason, my cousin was getting married on property and I was there with a lot of family for a destination wedding. So unlike other Disney trips, this one had a purpose. I chose a hotel that would be convenient for the reception (I stayed at the Michael Graves Swan, although I probably would have stayed there anyway), and was able to spend some time in the parks but not as much as I would on a more (or perhaps I mean less) purposeful visit.
Since I was in Florida anyway with family, I decided to double things up and take that opportunity to also do my annual take your father to a ticket game for his birthday trip. There is no NHL hockey in Orlando, but there is in Tampa. This is the Tampa Bay Times Forum, where the local Lighning beat the Canucks 4 to 3, and I was harassed on the Jumbotron by the weird looking mascot Thunderbug, who stole some of my popcorn, put it in his grubby felt mouth and didn’t swallow because he’s a cartoon mascot and not an actual gigantic bug, although Florida does have some pretty big bugs so you never know.
Since I was in Tampa anyway, we also did a quick trip down to The Ringling, one of those really interesting uniquely American places that you can’t miss if you’re close by. This is the waterside deck at Ca’d’Zan, which is only a part of a campus that includes everything from European art to miniature circuses.
That’s it for Florida, at least for now. We’re instead off to Storm King Arts Center, a beloved sculpture park in Upstate New York, depending on your definition of “upstate”- for me it’s anything north of the Tappan Zee Bridge. I used to say that Storm King was great, but that was because of the overall sum of all of the art together, and that when looked at individually, all of the art was only good at best. Over time I have softened to say that if you look, some of the art there can be great. I’ll let you be the judge as you look here at some of my on site favorites including Mirror Fence by Alison Shotz, Schunnemunk Fork by Richard Serra, Storm King Wall by Andy Goldsworthy and Storm King Wavefield by Maya Lin.
We’re now going hyper local with a visit to Blairsden, a house designed by Carrere and Hastings in Peapack-Gladstone, New Jersey. Every other year (or sometimes every other other year) and organization called Mansion in May organizes a really unique event. They find a local gigantic house, usually a historic one, and ask interior design firms to go all out and design individual rooms. The event is a fundraiser for my local good hospital (Morristown Memorial or whatever it’s called now), and the mansion is literally only open ever day in May before it closes. It’s a chance to both see a historic mansion you might otherwise never see and also to see a lot of really overdecorated rooms. This year’s mansion (Blairsden) was incredibly spectacular on a great site in New Jersey horse country, probably the best site I’ve seen them do yet.
I am fortunate enough to live close enough to New York that I can easily spend the day there whenever I want. I’m about an hour train ride into New York Penn on an express train, longer on a weekend local but still not too bad. Or I can drive in, which isn’t terrible but if I have the option of a train or a car, I’m always going to take a train (it’s always less stressful, better for the environment, etc). Despite such ease of access, I find that I’ll need a reason to actually go back to places in the city I have already been, and this is a great example. I have been to the Metropolitan Museum of Art many times, but it’s probably been a few years since I’ve been there last. I am a member at MoMA and have been an on and off member at the Whitney (I love it but its a pain in the ass to get to so I just don’t go enough). This spring I found a reason to go back to the Met (a rooftop temporary summer commission by Dan Graham) and took that opportunity to do a deep dive there, seeing as much of the Met’s art that I could before (as always at the Met) it just felt like too much.
And speaking of temporary summer commissions that make you want to go back to museums you have already been to, this is the BIG Maze at the National Building Museum, a temporary summer commission so interesting that it justified me taking a train all the way to Washington DC to see it in person.
The BIG Maze is by Bjarke Ingels (his firm’s name is BIG) and it was damn fun. The maze scooped out in the center, with terrifying and disorientating high walls at the edges and friendly low walls at the center. I tried not to solve it before I entered (there were a lot of pictures online so I could have easily made a plan beforehand) and intentionally followed and double backed on dead ends, enjoying it for as long as I could.
