Category Archives: New York Times

September 9, 2007

THE wine bar is a simple idea, yet it can be fraught. A wall of unfamiliar labels, obscure descriptions and extravagantly wine-schooled patrons can evoke a nagging vertigo.

But in San Francisco, a city known for both its casual culture and obsession with quality food and drink, a visit to a wine bar can be an unpretentious pleasure. The city has long had wine bars — the London Wine Bar, downtown, opened in 1974 and is said to have been the first in the United States. Now, a wave of new wine bars has been opening, often in unexpected neighborhoods.

I met with Alder Yarrow, the obsessive and opinionated writer behind vinography.com, a blog that exhaustively chronicles San Francisco’s wine bars. We sat at the long zinc bar at Nectar (3330 Steiner Street; 415-345-1377; www.nectarwinelounge.com), a wine bar in the Marina District. The place was just starting to fill up, and summer evening light flooded the tall, narrow space.

Read it on the NYT site…

September 2, 2007

IT was a cool spring day at the foot of La Rambla, Barcelona’s famous — and famously overrun — main promenade. I had been strolling under the freshly leafed plane trees, but now the sky threatened rain, and the crowds were growing wearisome. It was the perfect time to duck into the darkness of the Centre d’Art Santa Mònica. Inside the museum, a former convent, the bustle of the city falls away.

On the dim, vaulted main floor I found seven large screens that divided the space irregularly. Upon each was projected the video image of a luminous white wall and a barred doorway, through which I glimpsed a walkway and summer foliage.

Entitled “Lugar de Silencios,” the piece was a collaboration between the Barcelona artist Montserrat Soto and the poet Dionisio Cañas. Portly in a sweater and long gray hair — a portrait of the artist of a certain age — Mr. Cañas appeared in the video doorways from time to time, deep in thought amid crunching footfalls. Breaking the silence, he proffered snippets of poetry: “No time, no time, no time./No time for coffee,/no time for donuts,/no time for The New York Times.”

Read it on the NYT site…

September 2, 2007

Part of a worldwide wave of re-envisioned mid-20th-century hotels, this once-drab Best Western reopened in June after a thorough transfusion of Japanese hip. Plasma screens shimmer with anime and monster movies under a muraled ceiling in the lobby. A vending machine sells T-shirts and cuddly things from the Asian-American pop culture brand Giant Robot. In an interesting hybrid, the hotel remains affiliated with Best Western but is managed by the Bay Area hotel company Joie de Vivre.

Read it on the NYT site…