Episode 20: A New York Minute

[Music] Hello and welcome to Unlaced with Trock and Bates. I'm Madison Trock. And I'm Evan Bates and we're Olympic Ice Dancers for Team USA. If you're into sports betting, bet online is the fastest and easiest way to bet all your favorite sports. Head to their new updated desktop or mobile website to sign up today and receive your 50% welcome bonus on your first deposit. Just use our promo code believe50 to receive your bonus. Well, our traveling podcast continues on the road this week with another episode. It certainly does. We've been on the road for a long time. Since the end of March. But we've been having a blast. And this time we are in Allentown, Pennsylvania and tonight we have a show with Stars on Ice. That's right. We've had a very exciting week since our last episode. Three shows last weekend along the east coast of the US. One in Newark, Hartford Connecticut and then Providence, Rhode Island. And then we got to spend three wonderful days in New York City. Lucky us. Thanks to Figure Skating and Harlem who invited us to their 25th anniversary gala on Monday night. It took place in Gotham Hall and it was an incredible celebration. There were so many wonderful people there. We got to meet the founder of the organization. Sharon Cohen. Sharon Cohen. The wonderful girls who make Figure Skating and Harlem what it is. It was just such an inspiring night to see all of these young women and all of the people who are part of this program. It really was honestly just being in the room was so inspiring. Getting to hear the stories of so many of these young women who make Skating and Harlem what it is. Obviously Sharon Cohen, Tina Lundgren, the board, the past president, the current president who've all poured so much time and effort into this program. But listening to some of the stories, particularly of some of the alumni who we heard from, it was really inspiring and it was so cool to just hear about how Figure Skating set them up for their future successes. All these other industries and without fail, like every single one of them pointed to Figure Skating and Harlem as a huge turning point in their lives. They talked about how the tools that they learned Figure Skating were the same tools that they used in the board room or in law school or whatever it was. It just shows that Figure Skating and Harlem has an incredible impact. They had a 100% college attendance rate for their skaters. And so many of them going to be very successful in business or law or whatever it is they choose to pursue. Amazing. Incredible. So lots of smiles, lots of money donated to the great cause. Their website is figure skating and Harlem.org. If you want to read more about it and if you want to contribute to their incredible organization. So after Figure Skating and Harlem, we had two days off in the city and we decided to just be tourists, enjoy our New York experience to the fullest. Yeah, we just started walking, we explored the city, got out, kind of stumbled upon MoMA. We had no intention of going in any particular direction and MoMA. MoMA is the modern museum of art. Isn't it lovely? Like we were like, what's that building? Yeah, it looked so cool, the shape is so different. We were literally wandering around New York City and stumbled upon the museum and had free time and we decided to go inside and Mattie became a member, didn't you? Indeed I did because to become a member was the same price as the ticket. Like a one-time entry was just as much as a year-long subscription. So I became a member and now at my whim I can just enter MoMA anytime I'm in New York, which is a bowl for the next year. And enjoy discounts at their gift shop. Yes. And I'm sure you'll be getting some emails from them. Yeah, keep up to date on their newest installations. But it was cool, I'm so happy that we've become members now. Yes, oh, so cultured. What was your favorite part about MoMA? I think just like the spontaneity of arriving there and then joining and then walking through it for a few hours. And I think that's kind of like a great way to experience art is when it's kind of unplanned and spontaneous. And then walking through I'd say the piece that struck me the most maybe was just kind of seeing maybe the Jackson Pollock piece that was. Yeah, you sat in front of that for a while. It was his biggest piece I think that he's done and it was basically an entire wall and then reading about how he painted it, laying it on the floor and then like throwing paint with his whole body and saying that it was like the first painting that they like into dance. Yes. That it was like a full body experience and reading more of. I think the coolest thing is like the deep dive, like getting interested in something and then. Seeing a piece and then reading about it and. Reading what the artist and the artist's like. Seeing how it was inspired, how it came to be, what they were focused on, the colors, the details of the patterns and the painting perhaps. I saw a really cool one that. I wasn't familiar with this artist at all, Barkley L Hendrix. And it's this beautiful painting of a woman just lounging on a couch, chewing a piece of bubble gum. And it's so casual but like just the colors of the painting are so vibrant. And you feel like you just want to climb in the painting with her and ask her for a piece of bubblegum. You can sit there on the sofa and chew it together. I remember like standing in front of that and thinking that was a super modern looking piece like. And looking that it's from the 60s or 70s, right? I can't remember. See, I think the 70s, yeah. But I was very captivated by that painting. I thought it was just. It perfectly captured just a casual moment of everyday life in that time period. Yeah. And we saw some. what else did we see? Andy Warhol had some cool installations there. It's a little modern. Some really modern pieces and some modern artists that were like. Excuse me. Combining kind of like print and paint. There were some really cool ones we saw at the end. Jordan Castile was one artist who I discovered. She had a piece hanging in MoMA and you know it said, "Born, same year as I was born and I thought. That was really cool to see what an artist my age, who is just like an incredible American artist. Her portraiture struck me so much. It was beautiful. And so then again I looked her up and read about her and she's a force and she's incredible. And her story is so interesting. She's a New York City native. She has Lupus and she's an incredible painter who has been published in a lot of magazines. And I've just been naive and completely haven't heard of her until seeing her painting. Well that's what these museums do. They inspire you to take a deeper dive into the arts and to something that interests you. And that's what I love about museums. You're just introduced to new art, old art, new to you art. Right. And there is one more painting that I do want to mention before we just move on. I know we're talking a lot about these. An artist called Yves Tengey, American born in France. Is that right? Yves Tengey? Tengey? I think it's Yves. Yves Tengey. Yves Tengey. Tengey? Okay. Probably butchering in the pronunciation. Anyways, this painting is just so incredible. The blend of colors. I think it's oil on canvas. And it's so interesting. I don't even know what exactly it is that he has painted. It's kind of so abstract. So abstract but clear. It reminds me of Salvador Dali in a way. It's very Dali-esque and the way like something almost look like they're melting but they're not. It looks like metal. It's kind of sci-fi-ish almost. And yeah, it's just very, very vibrant color. So if I posted it on my story, so maybe you saw it. Yeah, if you check it out, it's called slowly toward the north. You could pin your stories. We could do a. Yeah, a Met Pin. A Momma Pin. I was speaking of the Met. We actually did visit the Met the next day. Yeah, the next day was the Met. Yeah. It was really like a museum filled today's own. What was your favorite part of the Met? Oh my goodness. I think just like the grinness of the history that was in the Met. There were so many artifacts and art pieces that were dating back to thousands of years of like BC. And just to wrap your head around that time period and how long ago that truly was was just yeah, mind blowing. But as far as the art, I think my favorites were the Van Gogh, the Monet and the early Picasso paintings. I'll just so interesting to see how some of those artists lived in the same time and painted some of the same things like Renoir and Monet often set up their easels in near the same spot. And so you would just see there two different versions of how they depicted that scenery. What was your favorite part about the Met? Well, I think we really were into the paintings. Yeah, we were. But the Met is so big, we weren't obviously we weren't able to see everything. So we had to kind of like. Pick and choose. And I asked with the time that we had, I would say my favorite piece that kind of like I stood in front of for a really long time and appreciated was George Sarat's Sunday on the grand Jetta. You know, the point of them were. of one of the stories. - Yeah, it's just, I was so, I don't know, I was so struck by what he's capable of doing with a few dots and seeing like, in getting lost in the painting and looking deep into the background and finding new characters or new stories and like, people rowing on the river boats in the background. - A dog didn't see, he did see. - And he like, it's just incredible. Like, I mean, it's point-al-ism, right? - Yeah, the closer you get, the more it doesn't make sense. And you see all of the different colors. - Well, that's like the impressionism and point-al-ism. I don't know if they're-- - And then you take a step back and you see the whole picture and you can see. - When you step up and you see like, what he's accomplishing with like four dots of color. - Yeah. - And then you step back and you understand like how they blend together and work together. And when you look close, it's like just different color dots right next to each other. It's just like, it's so cool. - It's so cool. Yeah. So are you inspired to paint? - You know, I think-- - You can borrow my easel and can't-- - We should do some painting this summer when we get back home. All the paintings were great. Obviously, there were so many monays at the Met. It was incredible. We saw Venco-- - The early Picasso ones. You really liked the lady in the white dress. - Monet, Monet. (laughs) - Regua. - Yeah, it was crazy. - Homer, we went to the Homer. - Homer, we saw Homer exhibit. - I like it. - That was incredible. And like after looking at all the European art and then seeing the American art from the Civil War era and it was so inspiring. And the guy, like, the tones of his-- - The contrast of his colors. - The tones of his painting, the way he painted water. - Mm-hmm. - And how he even-- - Like a crashing wave. - Could remember these like fleeting moments. He captured such a moment that you just see for a second and then it's gone, but he was able to capture it without having a photo of reference to look at again like he would just see it and then paint it, which is as someone who dabbles in the arts myself, that is very difficult. I find that's so difficult to do. I mean, maybe it's easier for other people than some, but I was very struck and impressed by how detailed his captures were of these-- - Yeah, he didn't have like a camera to take a photo of an image and replicate it. - Yeah. His understanding of the human body and color and the way fabrics move was just impeccable. - So did you like the mat or the mama better? - Oh my gosh. It's hard. That's a hard one. I would definitely go back to the mat because we didn't get to see everything. I would have loved to go into ancient Egypt. - But you're not a member of the mat. - I know. I thought about that when I was buying tickets and I was like, should I just become a member of this one too? But we were kind of in hurry. We had a time crunch, so it didn't wanna spend too much time figuring that out. - The mat's just so massive. - The mat. - Yeah. - We looked at the paintings, but we also saw-- - I think I love the history the most of the mat. - Ancient Egyptian art, Greek and Roman art. - Medieval art. - Medieval like armor and sculptures and just so much at the mat. It's huge. I mean, it was like, what is it? One full avenue and like a couple square blocks. - Yeah, no, it was like two full avenues. Somebody said that, the entrance. What was it? - It's like, it takes up so much real estate. - Yeah. - There's so much there and we probably saw just a tiny fraction of what they have. But anyways, that was our museum experience. It was pretty epic. It was great. But we weren't a time crunch because we had something to get to that evening. - Yes, we did after Momo. No, no, after the mat, right? After the mat, we had tickets to Hamilton in the evening, which we've been very excited about. I'm looking forward to four months. Yeah, we got to go see Hamilton live and it was incredible. There's nothing that beats like a life performance in the theater, the energy of the actors, the songs we know so well from just listening to Hamilton over and over again, it was phenomenal. What was your favorite part? - Of Hamilton? - Uh-huh. - Walking into the theater and after watching it on Disney Plus like, Countlands Times, just being so excited and sitting close to the theater or close to the stage. And appreciating that like the history of what they've accomplished in six years, since it's inception and appreciating the genius of Lin-Manuel Miranda and what he's done for the younger generation, being able to tell the story of America with-- - Americans today. - A history of America. - A history of American. - By Americans today. - People you don't often see portraying past presidents and founding fathers and it's genius. - Yeah, it really paints a beautiful picture of the America we hope to have with much more inclusion and people of all races and-- - And how the way it is. - In positions of power and influence, the America we have and are still working to build. I think we can still go so much further, but it was really inspiring to see how America today tells the story of the history of our America. - It was so inspiring, the stage, the costuming, the lyrics, the music, the audience was so excited. - The choreography. - It was fun to sit. - There was a guy who was sitting, I don't know, a couple rose behind us and after Eliza finished her solo, he just went, "Wow!" He was the only person in the theater. We spoke, but he just couldn't contain himself 'cause he was so moved. It was really funny. It was an amazing night. We had a great dinner before in the theater district. - Yes, that was delicious. - It was just fun to go out and be tourists and to just enjoy the city. It has so much to offer, we just found ourselves wandering around New York, kind of aimlessly and stumbling upon these little gems around every corner, so. - We were walked all day, we walked until we couldn't walk anymore, and then we would jump in a cab and go somewhere else and try to explore as much as we could in the two days that we had. We went-- - I do feel like we covered quite a bit of ground. - Yeah, mostly uptown, but we also went down to Soho, did some shopping and some people watching. It was so interesting to see the fashion, the vibe of the city and different little neighborhoods and pockets. - Incredible. I'm ready for our next trip. - It was really, really fun. So I think we'll be going back in the future. - Yeah, absolutely. But in our immediate future, we have four stars on ice shows coming up. Tonight in Allentown, tomorrow, Hershey, Pennsylvania, Boston on Saturday, and then a show in Long Island on Sunday to close out the week of shows. - Yeah, so-- - If you're in the area and you want to see stars on ice, tickets are still available at starsonice.com. This has been another episode of Unlaced with chalk and baits presented by Bet Online. - Make sure you subscribe for future episodes. You can follow us on social media at Chuck baits, and we'll talk to you soon. Bye. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING]