Best of 2019

Well, 2019 was so busy that it took longer than expected to say what was best about it.

Thanks to all of you who have read, commented on and suggested blog posts in 2019. It would have been much harder to do this without the insights and support of family and friends.

The old dining room at Musso and Frank,
Photograph courtesy of Tina Whatcott Escheverra

Musso and Frank Grill: As noted in the blog’s September 24th post, Musso and Frank Grill in Hollywood celebrated its centennial in 2019. This restaurant, which Dorothy and I discovered for ourselves some years ago, remains a great destination, with some of the best servers in the nation, a menu with much variety and expertly mixed cocktails.

The Barnsider: The Barnsider, in Colonie, New York, an Albany, New York suburb, continues to be an excellent, independently owned restaurant. It has a dining room and a bar with a tavern, also called the Iowa Hawkeye Grille. I am not sure why a place named after a Big 10 school ended up in the Albany area. But don’t wonder; the food and drinks are all you need to know!

In addition to many appetizer, meat, fish and salad choices, the Barnsider has tavern snacks: popcorn, pretzels, Ritz Crackers and that cheese spread. A Ritz commercial once said “Everything sits better on a Ritz” and that’s definitely the case when the cheese spread is added to the cracker.

One of the excellent martinis at the Barnsider

Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute: About an hour from Albany, New York, is Williamstown, Massachusetts. In addition to being the home of Williams College, the village is home to “the Clark.”

Robert Sterling and Francine Clark opened the museum in 1955, as a place to display their collection of paintings, silver and other artwork that they acquired with Clark’s inheritance from his grandfather’s share of the Singer Sewing Machine fortune.

The first building on the Clark campus.
Photograph courtesy of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute

Clark died in 1956. But the Institute remained a living memorial to him, expanding in 1973 by adding a new library and gallery space and expanding again in 2014.

The new Clark Center, added in 2014.
Photograph courtesy of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute

The genius of the Clark is that it has something for everyone. It’s collection of paintings is astonishing and makes people grateful that Sterling decided to come to Williamstown. There are concerts and lectures throughout the year, on a wide variety of cultural topics. The 2014 expansion allows the Institute to bring in larger traveling shows and more modern art.

Richard Frisbie: Although Richard Frisbie died in 2018, his book It’s a Wise Woodsman Who Knows What’s Biting Him can still be found in used bookstores and some libraries.

In It’s a Wise Woodsman, Richard introduced the concept of “red blood density . . . describing a man’s awareness of himself as red-blooded and alive.”

He also introduced the miniaturized adventure. A person may be able to sail across the Atlantic, he observed, “but you can rig a sail on your canoe or rowboat and leave the shore astern.”

Writing styles and reader interests change. Books can be different when re-read. Despite 50 years of changes in outdoor technology and practices, the book remains relevant and indispensable. One reason for this is that Richard concentrated on basics rather than on products. For example, he focused on staying dry while hiking or camping, instead of whether the materials should be Gore-Tex, nylon, plastic or rubber.

The boxed set of postcards with Bob Eckstein's bookstore paintings

Bob Eckstein: I learned about Bob Eckstein’s art and love of books when my daughter, Lily, gave me a set of postcards with 50 of Eckstein’s bookstore paintings. Nearly all the painting first appeared in Eckstein’s book, 2016 book, Footnotes* from the World’s Greatest Bookstores.

Footnotes includes paintings of 75 bookstores. The book has an appealing accompanying text, opening with a Foreword by Garrison Keillor and an Introduction by the author.

In addition to sharing the world of bookstores past and present, Eckstein is a New Yorker cartoonist and author of The Illustrated History of the Snowman.

Eckstein invites people to visit his website where they can subscribe to his newsletter. A recurring subject in Eckstein’s cartoons is football. If you visit his website soon, you are likely to find cartoons inspired by the 2020 Super Bowl.

Milano Pizzeria: Pizza is one of those intensely debated subjects for the ages. I have fond memories of Santora’s Pizza from Buffalo in the first five years of my life. When our family moved to Staten Island, I added memories of different styles of pizza from places there.

Lately, my favorite pizza is from Milano, on Western Avenue in Westmere, a suburb of Albany, New York. The crust is thin yet well-cooked. The chef puts down the right combination of cheese and tomato sauces. The cheese pizza alone is great, but if you want toppings those are great, too.

Although Milano’s is my local favorite, a person can never have too many favorite pizza places.

So, my friends and I will continue in 2020 - - on regular luncheon missions - - to search for outstanding pizza places in the Capital Region.