I’m All Lost In, #98: Map; app; and piano trios.

I’m All Lost In…

The 3 things I’m obsessing about THIS week.

#98

1) Trying to Visualize the Map of Manhattan

Remember: Bleeker St. is one block north of Houston.

I’ve been visiting New York City regularly every year since the late 1980s, even going two or three times a year lately. I also lived in New York City in the summer of 1985 when I kid you not my band played CBGB; I stood in the bathroom mirror of Keith’s apartment at 102nd and Riverside Dr. afterward marveling over the fact that the red magic marker I’d scrawled on my t-shirt before the gig had bled through onto my skin and now appeared written backward on my naked chest.

This is all to say, despite spending all this time in Manhattan, I still get flummoxed trying to find my way around in the swath of 10-plus neighborhoods between Chelsea to the northwest and the Lower East Side to the southeast.

I’d like to think part of the problem is that the orderly street grid north of Greenwich Village—streets numerically ascending as they run exclusively east to west—gets cast aside in lower Manhattan. The streets in the heart of the Chelsea-to-Lower East Side carnival axis run east to west and north to south. Canal St. left to right, for example. Orchard St., up and down. It doesn’t help that world-famous W. 4th St. at the epicenter of the Village lulls you into a sense of order only to capsize you later: After running east-west block after block, heading past Washington Square Park to the south, and on into the Village proper, W. 4th suddenly tacks north around Christopher St.

Bleeker St. is deceptive in the same way.

During my most recent visit last week I fixated on being able to conjure a map in my head. Personal challenge thrown down: Be able to pinpoint exactly where I was at any moment, both by the name of the neighborhood I was walking in and also in the context of nearby neighborhoods. For example, if I alight from the subway at W. 4th St. and Washington Square where am I? And how do I beat a path to Chinatown?

Home base for me in Manhattan is a friendly hotel on the Lower East Side called Untitled; with it’s piano and pool table coffee lounge, it reminds me of a college dorm. It’s located a couple of blocks south of Houston (though not in SoHo?) between Bowery and Chrystie St. in a colorfully graffitied alley off Rivington St.

Using mnemonics such as: the “W” in Bowery means Bowery is west of the hotel, I constantly tried, sometimes with success and other times in utter bewilderment to locate myself. A success story: Feeling amiable and tipsy on Sunday night after a groovy jazz show in Greenwich Village at the Zinc Bar on W. 3rd St., I weaved my way via Thompson St., Bleeker St., Mercer St., Houston, and the Bowery to a nightcap at the Wren, a bar in the Bowery. Or another: On Saturday night, I confidently set out from the Lower East Side East on Houston, north on Ave. B toward E. 11th St. to settle in and write at Hekate Cafe & Elixir Lounge in the East Village.

But then there was Monday. Completely disoriented, I circled Lafayette St., Spring St., Mott St., Prince St. and back around to Lafayette St. never knowing when or if I was ever heading east back to the hotel.

For more flaneur diaries, check out my ancient 2015/2016/2017 blog The Amazing City: The World is Dull, but not Today) where I posted a mini-history of my favorite walks. The list includes a tale from my aforementioned 1985 summer in NYC: “On Friday nights, I realized 10 million people were drunk, and I imagined the sidewalk bending like an amoeba under my sneakers.”

A New York footnote: When it comes to wayfinding, I am always able to find a late night bodega for a custom made, all-veggie sub sandwich. It’s a highlight of every New York trip, just as it was on this latest adventure. I scored a gyro jammed with artichoke hearts, green olives, tomatoes, black olives, broccoli, corn, red onion, green peppers, sun dried tomato, cucumber, and jalapeno pepper late Friday night into Saturday morning. Perfectly, this was also when the calendar was flipping over into my birthday transforming my favorite late night snack routine into a birthday celebration in the brightly lit, crowded Brooklyn deli. The three guys working the counter had the late-night sandwich making rush down to assembly line perfection. Despite the long line, the leader of the crew slid my XXL sub across the stainless-steel counter in less than five minutes: a birthday present wrapped in silver foil.

*Back at Lee’s, aka, Gregor Samsa, celebrating my birthday, 1:08 am, 8/23/25*

2) The U.S. Open App

The reason I was in New York City this past week in the first place was to watch the U.S. Open live. I had a ticket at Louis Armstrong Stadium for the Tuesday day session; this gets you an assigned seat for the two back-to-back daytime matches scheduled there. Seating 14,000 fans, Armstrong is the Billie Jean King Tennis Center’s second largest stadium; center court is the 24,000 capacity Arthur Ashe Stadium. The first match on Armstrong’s day schedule turned out to be a men’s match I wasn’t interested in seeing. Next up, though, a WTA match starring ascendant young American Amanda Anisomova (No. 9). The way ticketing works at the U.S. Open is this: Along with your assigned seat for either the day or night session, you also get all-day free access to any seat at the BJK Tennis Center’s other smaller stadiums and arenas, sidecourts, and practice courts located across the maze-like complex.

With so many matches going on and/or with one of your favorite players potentially scheduled to be hitting on a practice court, it can be dizzying to figure out where you want to be. Pretty often you’ll want to be two places at once: One of my favorite players, Ukrainian Marta Kostyuk (No. 27), was scheduled at Grandstand (the third biggest stadium) at 11 am—where I went instead of that men’s match at Armstrong. And my absolute favorite player Aryna Sabalenka (No. 1) was scheduled to practice on Court 2 at the same time. Meanwhile, French sensation Loïs Boisson (No. 46), accompanied by her cult of singing fans, was scheduled on Court 10. Another personal favorite, Ekaterina Alexandrova (No. 12) was playing on Court 11.

Enter the elegant and useful U.S. Open App. This is the rare app that gives you exactly what you need without frills or distraction: the schedule; the scores (choose live or completed); player info, match previews and reviews, a BJK Tennis Center grounds map, and snack options, all either clearly displayed on screen or one intuitive tap away.

With the dignified U.S. Open app as my ally—and given that I also decided last minute to attend Friday’s (free) final round of qualifying matches along with poaching a cheap ticket to Monday night’s Armstrong matches (World No. 12, Norway’s Casper Ruud , World No. 56, American Alycia Parks, and World No. 5, Russian’s Mira Andreeva were all playing)—I navigated three days of bouncing from stadium seating, to the practice court breezeway, to up-close bleachers, to standing-room-only at the smaller courts, to sitting down at the Food Village for a tofu and kimchi rice bowl lunch.

*World No. 9, American, Amanda Anisimova versus World No. 83, Kimberly Birrell, Armstrong Stadium, 8/26/25*

Speaking of tofu and kimchi for lunch: while the word of 2025 is acquiescence, it’s not so at the Billie Jean King Tennis Center. This is a woke, global event that would rile Trump to his last nerve. The USTA isn’t shy about DEI. First of all, as if skywritten with this year’s bold Althea Gibson logo, the Open isn’t interested in Trump’s sad and ornery effort to erase Black history. The Open is openly celebrating Gibson’s historical breakthrough as the first African American woman to play at the tournament in 1950. The heroic Gibson logo, designed by the first Black theme artist in tournament history by the way, along with signage and recurring PA announcements that proclaim Gibson’s status as a “trailblazer” and a “barrier breaker” seem more Free to be You and Me 1975 than reactionary 2025.

Anti-transit Trump and his anti-transit secretary of transportation Sean Duffy, who are currently trying to shut down NYC’s locally devised pro-transit congestion pricing plan, have also been put on notice by U.S. open fans. Riding packed and friendly subway trains—take the 7 to Mets-Willets for just $2.90—tens of thousands of transit riders from working class Queens descend on the their local stadium, the classy and tacky Billie Jean King Tennis Center (named after the lesbian equal rights legend) side-by-side with tens of thousands of others from across the country and the world. All of us tapping onto the subway to go watch international athletes from Argentina, China, the U.S., Mexico, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Japan, Brazil, Italy, Russia, Spain, Canada etc. compete on the hard courts. Welcome to the U.S. Open where an international roster of often eloquent and quirky tennis heroes take the stage at Arthur Ashe Stadium (Black American civil rights champion) and Louis Armstrong Stadium (Black American genius) to face off as the smell of both waffle fries and vegan kimchi tofu rice bowls linger in collective defiance of Trump's provincialist retreat.

18-year-old Czech Qualifier Tereza Valentova 8/22/25. She beat Dutch player Arantxa Rus, and went on to upset No. 57, Italian Lucia Bronzetti in the first round. Valentova eventually lost in the second round to superstar Khazak, No. 10 Elena Rybakina.

*Ball Kid and Russian World No. 12 Ekaterina Alexandrova on Court 11, 8/26/25.*

*Ukrainian World No. 27, Marta Kostyuk beats Katie Boulter 6-4, 6-4, Grandstand, 8/26/25*

3) Piano Trios at Dr. Yelena Grinberg’s Apartment

“Because you’re a new guest,” Dr. Yelena Grinberg told me as she escorted me to my front row seat. Like all 30 folding chairs she’d set out in her small apartment, mine had a name tag delicately laid on the cushion. Gesturing me to sit, she scooped up the sheet of paper emblazoned with my name (handwritten in cursive) and efficiently tucked it somewhere out of view for her immaculate record keeping, I presumed.

This was last Sunday evening at a private house concert in Grinberg’s Upper West Side one-bedroom. An at-ease virtuoso pianist, Grinberg, who teaches music history and chamber music at Fordham University, had programmed four piano trios this evening: one by Haydn, one by his successor Mozart, and two by his successor Beethoven, completing the “Classical Triad”—Haydn “the root,” Mozart the “beautiful third,” and Beethoven the “powerful fifth”—she explained to the gathering of what seemed mostly the familiar faces of her friends. She plunked out a C, E, and G on the piano to make the point.

This performance was, according Grinberg’s earnest, color mimeographed and stapled program notes, the 352nd chamber music salon she’s hosted. I learned about Grinberg’s DIY classical music gigs last year when after finding nothing on the calendar at the precious chamber concert series upstairs at Carnegie Hall, a google search turned up this more intimate affair.

I didn’t want to take a picture during the performance—as you can see from the music stand and my shoe (lower right), I was seated less than a foot away from the violinist. I snapped this before the program started, 8/24/25.

Mind you, before and after each piece Dr. Grinberg ushered her crackerjack cellist Amy Kang and her violinist Greta Myatieva in and out of the curtained-glass-door bedroom stage right of the living room concert hall to warm applause, presenting as if she and her accomplices were nowhere other than Carnegie Hall.

The exuberant expert playing was certainly concert-hall level, particularly Grinberg herself on piano, who happily relished the athletic dynamics, quirky moment-to-moment segues, and precision of these late-18th Century Viennese masterworks.

One piece wasn’t well-known, actually: the Mozart’s Piano Trio in D minor. Featuring three discrete unfinished compositions, it was posthumously glued together by a Mozart colleague. Grinberg, who only just learned about the piece while “doing the research for tonight’s salon over the last few weeks,” read a detailed precis about this as she did for all the pieces before summoning Kang and Myatieva once again from the wings/her bedroom. Her book report essays distinguished themselves from advanced AI thanks only to Grinberg’s heart strings; she clearly loves music, music composition, and the exercise of close reading itself which had her pointing out notable measures and rhapsodizing about Mozart’s “divine hand.”

It was mostly an older-to-elderly crowd, though a lively one, including a hipster Gen X couple dressed as if they were at a Nine Inch Nails concert. Grinberg seated me next to the one young person on hand, who despite sharing the front row with me, was not new to this club. “I come to all of these,” she proclaimed. “She’s incredible.”

Amped afterward, I signed the guest book with a reverent thank you note about feeling I was now in on a secret handshake. Then I took the elevator down to the tiled lobby, walked south on Broadway to the 96th St. station, took the 1 train to 59th St. Columbus Circle, transferred to the C train, and exited at W. 4th street to see a South American jazz band play the Zinc Bar on W. 3rd. They broke out a Japanese drum for the encore. It seems, as with the Billie Jean King Tennis Center, the Zinc Bar is defying 2025 as well.

I’m All Lost In, #98: Map; app; and piano trios.

I’m All Lost In, #97: Marinated tomatoes; the Tennis Podcast live; a tomato throw rug.