Last night I went from apartment 5L down to apartment 3R which is the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Lopez, aka Julio and Stine. I had not seen them for a few weeks, hadn’t seen Stine in over a month as they had been in Denmark and Spain and back to Denmark again. Yesterday morning I saw them for a few moments and we chatted before they went off to do the landlord thing and clean out that apartment. We had loose plans to meet up last night and so we did. Bill was traveling from Pennsylvania so it was doubtful he would have made it.
Since Julio and Stine were in Europe at the time of my birthday they decided to give me some gifts and had a cake for me. Julio and I drank about 8 cans of Elephant Beer, a very strong beer from Denmark which both Julio and I like a lot. We sat and drank and listened to Johnny Cash cd’s and I opened a box containing a very sleek ashtray, in a Danish design. Very cool, Julio has one. I was surprised that Julio didn’t lecture me in the past. He would come back from somewhere with a souvenir, usually an ashtray. Then he would lecture me about smoking.
I told him if he wanted me to take him seriously about smoking, maybe he shouldn’t give me an ashtray. Julio has given me several very nice ashtrays which corresponded with the depth of his convictions against smoking. The nicer the ashtray the more serious he was. We sat at the table, Stine and I smoking, Julio telling stories about Spain and Denmark with Stine correcting him on mispronunciations of Danish words. It was all very cute. Then we sat on the couch watching a modern version of the slide show.
Julio hooked up the digital camera to the TV and we watched a lot of shots of Denmark and Spain, including Salamanca and Galacia. Julio used to spend his summers there growing up in a town a few kilometers from Salamanca. It’s changed quite a bit from the late seventies and early eighties and he was happy to be able to take Stine there to meet his mother’s family. It was all very nice but in reality it was a slide show, only without the setting up of the projector and screen, just connecting a cable from the camera to the very large television. Luckily the subject matter and the company was entertaining or else it would’ve been, ‘Here is the side of the house. Here is the back of the house, with the Spanish Inquisition in the corner.’
Which in some of those pictures, probably would’ve had the actual Spanish Inquisition four hundred years before. It was Spain after all. After a few hours of hanging out, drinking beers I came upstairs and had another piece of cake, watched some TV and went to sleep. Woke up, Bill had bounced off for more work this morning and I had a cup of coffee before heading out to get bagels and the Sunday papers. Got some bagels for Julio and Stine as well.
Today’s plan was to go on the Hoboken Artist’s Studio tour, where you walk around and visit various artists as they open their studios and offer wine and cheese and crackers, allowing you to check out their work or work in progress. Julio was reluctant an d cranky, claiming a hang over so we went to Johnny Rockets and had burgers before hitting the sidewalks of Hoboken. We went to the Neumann Leather Building which used to be a factory and for the past 20 years or so have been various studios for various artists in various mediums. I wanted to see a good friend of mine, Tim Daly and his show. Julio knows him too, he used to have art shows at McSwells including a major piece that used to hang over the jukebox. I love his work and wish I could afford one of his pieces. Check it out for yourself. Thank You Internet!
http://www.timdalypainting.com/
We checked out other artists in Neumann Leather, including Robert Piersanti, an artist whose work I’ve seen around. www.piersantistudios.com . Ran into RoDa who was sort of showing alongside someone else. Just a lot of fun to walk around and check out art and see people and friends that you hardly ever see anymore. After Neumann Leather I steered us to 201 Madison Street which is where I first lived in Hoboken over twenty years ago. A friend of mine from back in the day still lives there and has been showing his work in the Studio tour, Hiro Takeshita. I’ve been stopping by and saying hello each time I’ve taken the tour and he’s doing well. His website is www.hirotakeshita.com worth checking out I think.
We then walked up to the Monroe Center for the Arts, a gargantuan former factory building, more of a space to sell jewelry and quilts and arrange for portrait photography.
More commercial and not as dirty as Neumann Leather and by dirty I mean creative, rock and roll, hip hop vibe going on, more boho than anything else. We all agreed on that.
And here are some pics.
