A little night music, glad and sad

Last night's concert at Safra Hall in the Museum of Jewish Heritage was quite nice, but a bit of a new experience for me. I'm not used to attending rock concerts in an actual concert hall. Concert halls have advantages and disadvantages. On the plus side, people who go to concert halls are practically guaranteed to be there to actually listen to the music (unlike some places I've been). In fact, there were quite a few families with kids in the audience--I forget that the Museum of Jewish Heritage is located at the southernmost end of Battery Park City, a huge residential complex at the southwest-most tip of Manhattan. Also on the plus side, and possibly as much because there were children in attendance as because the concert was in a concert hall, the musicians had been asked to keep the volume down. On the other hand, a concert hall is not exactly the best place for a dancin' fool to dance. The most likely spot, between the "orchestra" seats in front and the stadium-style seating in the back, was, unfortunately for me, occupied by the sound equipment and technicians. I ended up dancing in the aisle leading to the entrance door, which meant that I had to be careful not to create a fire hazard by blocking the exit. Oh, well.

For me, the line-up of Clare Burson's and Michelle Citrin's bands was almost as interesting as their music. Clare Burson had a guy playing Hawaiian guitar (the kind that sits horizontally, i.e., flat and face up, usually on a stand), not something one sees everyday in a Jewish rock band, though C Lanzbom has been known to play a standard-guitar-looking version thereof (a slide guitar?). Michelle Citrin's band featured an electric-cello player, also not too common in a Jewish rock band. Chana Rothman, whom I'd heard before, sounded as good as I remembered, and I could even understand what she was saying most of the time. A good time was had by all.

After the concert, I decided to enjoy a walk along the Battery Park City Promenade (or whatever its official name is, these days.) I've hardly been down there since the World Trade Center was attacked and my sister forced to leave her apartment in Battery Park City. (In the interim, she's lived in various Manhattan locations on short-term sublets.) It was a beautiful night for a walk along the Hudson River. I even spotted a great place for a shidduch (matchmaking) date on a nice warm night: In the Japanese-garden area just north of the museum, a couple sat on the same bench but separated by roughly a foot. (Bad-for-Shidduchim alert!) It was definitely weird, though, when I approached the top of the beautiful stone staircase in the World Financial Center, where I always used to go to get the subway, and realized that, when I turned to face the place where the enclosed pedestrian overpass over West Street had once stood, I would see nothing but a gaping hole--and, sure enough . . . There's now a glass wall where the overpass once began, overlooking what's now a combination mass grave and construction site. I ended up walking halfway around the Financial Center to find a new, temporary overpass. (Looking south, I saw that one of the overpasses, from another building of the World Financial Center, had survived the destruction.) What a schlep to the subway! Actually, it's probably the same distance that it always was, but there are no longer any World Trade Center shops to serve as distractions along the way. They're building, though--even at 10 PM, the construction crews were hard at work.

I finally fell onto a subway seat, and, it being a ridiculously long ride, davvened Maariv/Arvit (prayed the Evening Service) on the way home.

See you later.