What I did on my vacation #4

New York in spring... and a birthday bash for New Yorker cartoonist Victoria Roberts (pictured with pug Archie)...desserts to have a coronary over at Gordon Ramsay's restaurant in the new London hotel...almost slamming into Helen Gurley Brown upon my entrance into the new Hearst building, where I was invited to lunch...the heavenly Poiret exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum, followed by my usual pilgrimage to the medieval armour collection...the dreadful tone-deaf LoveMusik on Broadway, redeemed by the transporting delights of Grey Gardens at the Walter Kerr...a few nights in my old stomping ground, the East Village, in Gatecrasher columnist Ben Widdicombe's guest room and then the quiet of Harlem where the WildKind boys have made their home...City Hall in full bloom... Bryant Park in the hot sun...my friend Thornton Willis in motion in his Soho loft, completing another glorious painting...discovering it's cheaper to ship books from Strand than lug them home in the case...the craziness of B&H photo...the disappointment of Century 21 at non-sale time...a train ride to Connecticut...devils on horseback at The Spotted Pig...the creeping nastiness of the all the furniture stores that have taken over my beloved Tribeca... too too much, all of it, and too little time.