Westminster Wrap-Up

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202 – July, 2023

By Sarah Montague

Photos by Lisa Croft-Elliott

This is the opening number of Cole Porter’s Broadway musical Kiss Me Kate, and it came naturally to mind as I looked back on the Westminster Kennel Club’s past, present, and still-to-be determined future.

After two years at the Lyndhurst Estate in Tarrytown, the Club brought its show back home this year, to the Billy Jean King Tennis Center in Flushing, Queens. After my talk with incoming WKC president Don Sturz [see our May 2023 issue] it was good to see so many of his confident assertions about the show’s new venue realized.

Full disclosure, I wasn’t sure I was going to make it to this year’s show. I have lived in New York City for many years–in Manhattan, thank you very much (which is where Cole Porter lived, incidentally). Friends misguided enough to move to Brooklyn for cheaper housing and to raise their young would see me occasionally. But Queens–Queens was terra incognita–the place you get to by taxi, or Uber, because it’s where your airplane awaits.

So it was with some trepidation that I ventured onto the Long Island Railroad to make my way to Mets-Willets Point, the stop nearest to the Center and, as you can tell from its name, the closet station stop to the stadium for the New York Mets baseball team. Naming rights are a big part of sports branding, but this particular conjunction also reminded me of an English precursor from the country house tradition: if your estate, your title, and your influence were sufficient, there would be a special stop for you on whatever rural train line you were on.

Click here to listen to the podcast with Sarah Montague and Janice Hayes.

Click here to read the complete article
202 – July, 2023

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Posted by AnthonyA on Jul 14 2023. Filed under Current Articles, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.