Today is Sunday, August 17, 2025. Today Elliot and I ventured into Manhattan – even though I was a little apprehensive about riding the subway since my Friday night debacle on the E – for a day of culture by visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art, on 82nd Street and 5th Avenue. Elliot particularly wanted to see an exhibit on chinoiserie that was closing today, while I was drawn to an exhibit on Black dandyism called Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, which is actually running until October 26. I was also intrigued by another exhibit called Casa Susanna which chronicles a community of cross-dressers who met regularly in New York City and the Catskill Mountains in the 1960s and onward. This exhibit runs through January 25, 2026, so you have time to see it.

Earlier, I went out for coffee at Pink Forest before leaving Forest Hills at around 11:15. To get into Upper Manhattan, we took the R train instead of the E and got off at 59th Street to transfer to the 6 where she got off at 86th Street. Before going to the museum, we had brunch at a new place on 83rd Street and 2nd Avenue called the Penrose Bar. The meal I had certainly tickled my palate since I had lemon ricotta pancakes that were so very tasty. Even the coffee was quite robust.

After brunch, we walked up to 5th Avenue and to the Met. I looked at my watch when we finally paid our guest rate (we donated each $10 instead of paying the suggested $30) and thus entered the hallowed halls of this world-famous institution. We asked someone at the information desk to guide us to the chinoiserie exhibit and we actually found the floor and the gallery it was located in without too much ado. The exhibit on the ground floor is specifically titled Monstrous Beauty: A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie. The liner notes on it say the exhibit “radically imagines the story of European porcelain through a feminist lens.” So when porcelain arrived in early modern Europe from China, it led to the rise of chinoiserie, “a decorative style that encompassed Europe’s fantasies of the East and fixations on the exotic, along with new ideas about women, sexuality, and race.”

The exhibit supposedly features at least 200 historical and contemporary works spanning from 16th-century Europe to contemporary installations by Asian and Asian-American women artists.

For my book, the second exhibit we visited on the second floor, the one on Black dandyism, had the most crowds and was the best exhibition I’ve seen in a long time. In fact, I hope to return to it at least once more before it leaves. According to its liner notes, the exhibit “explores the importance of style to the formation of Black identities in the Atlantic diaspora, particularly in the United States and Europe.” Here there was an abundance of memorabilia such as photographs, paintings, garments and accessories, decorative arts, and even videos to help interpret the concept of dandyism as both an aesthetic and a strategy that allowed for new social and political possibilities. The exhibit is organized into 12 sections, which range over several rooms of stuff. I’m sure I didn’t cover all 12 sections since Elliot finished viewing it before I and I didn’t want to keep him waiting.

We finally left the Met at 4:40 p.m., just 20 minutes before actual closing time. I was ready for another cup of coffee so we stopped at a Joe & the Juice on Lexington Avenue for hot coffee and banana bread for me. Elliot just read a copy of The Wall Street Journal that was left by a departing customer.

Now we walked down to 77th Street to get the 6 downtown to 51st Street where we waited for the E to take us back to Forest Hills. This time there were no delays getting home.

In the meantime, the toddler in chief just finished his much-ballyhooed summit with war criminal Vladimir Putin in Alaska over the weekend that ended in what someone has called a “nothing burger.” An online article for MediaITE reports on this fucking unsuccessful meeting with the Russian aggressor entitled “Trump’s Red Carpet for Putin Ends in a Faceplant,” by Colby Hall.

Here this demagogue promised he would end the war in Ukraine – but so far he glaringly hasn’t in the long eight months he’s been in office. The article states, “Instead, he delivered a red carpet for Vladimir Putin – and little else.”

The much-hyped Alaska ‘peace summit’ ended not with a triumph but with a whimper.” Dump had to embarrassingly admit that “we didn’t get there,” which is a horrible admission of truth for this inveterate liar.

Fox “News” itself had to admit that Putin steamrolled over the fat golfer. They couldn’t put their imitable spin on this worthless meeting. Senior White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich bluntly reported that Chump “got steamrolled by Putin” on Fox News.

Not that I saw a whit of this disgraceful display of fawning before Putin by Dump who was seen clapping enthusiastically for the Russian president as if he were a rock star and not a brutal murderer of women, children, and civilians in the Ukrainian war.

Here the assessment of what Putin got from this meeting on U.S. soil is brutal: “For Putin, the payoff was obvious. He stood shoulder to shoulder with an American president, was celebrated on U.S. soil, and gave nothing in return. For Trump, the cost is harder to quantify but potentially devastating. He has painted himself in a corner with his ‘peace on day one’ promise. Anything short of an actual cessation of hostilities looks like failure. And failure, dressed up with pomp and applause, is still failure.”

The world now saw a U.S. president who was outmaneuvered, outtalked, and definitely out of his depth. “Allies will wonder if America’s resolve is fading; adversaries will take note of how easily Putin extracted a victory.”

All in all, Friday was an enormously embarrassing day for America and it was all due to the buffoonish Demented Don. Thus the war drags on and Putin smirks. For his superfluous part, Dump is left clapping on the red carpet for a man who just walked all over him.

Do try to have a good week.

And so it went!

Here is one item in the chinoiserie exhibit.

Another remarkable piece in this exhibit.

Imagine having that in your possession. And someone certainly did!

This piece was situated outside in an area with other items.

These pieces reflect the “monstrous” nature of chinoiserie.

This is a very colorful, decorative vase depicting Chinese characters.

We are now in the Black dandyism exhibit which I enjoyed the most.

This is more of a contemporary look that is on display at this exhibit.

Not sure of the designers whose fare is on display here, but it’s still striking nevertheless.

These were actual letters written by celebrated author, historian, sociologist, and political activist W. E. B. Du Bois to Brooks Brothers in 1920.

Another striking outfit in this exhibit.

Here are some portraits of Black “dandies.”

This is from the last exhibit we saw: Casa Susanna. This is a copy of Transvestia, a magazine for cross-dressers from the 1960s.

This page is from the 1962 copy of Transvestia.

This is a picture of one of the cross-dressers who sought refuge in the resorts established by Susanna Valenti and her wife, Marie Tornell, in the Catskill Mountains. All of these snapshots were rediscovered at a Manhattan flea market in 2004 and they form the basis of this fascinating exhibit.

Another cover from this ground-breaking magazine.

Here is an open view of the “lego” building from Fifth Avenue.