BPC Eateries Dish It Out in Downtown's Newest 'Taste' Fest

Winchester, a four-year-old English bulldog, was sprawled in the aisle of the Tribeca Shinola store Sunday afternoon, the chin beneath his jutting lower jaw resting on one paw. Like the other dogs and their humans squeezed into the store, Winchester waited patiently for more than an hour for his portrait to be sketched by one of three New Yorker cartoonists. And why wouldn’t he be pleased with a masterfully drawn picture of himself, said his owner, Rebecca Bales, who had brought Winchester downtown from Sutton Place.

“He’s slightly vain, given how good looking he is,” she said, straight-faced. “It’s going to be framed and on our wall for the rest of our lives!”  

Winchester was among more than 80 dogs who gathered in the Franklin Street store for a free portrait by a New Yorker artist, one of many events during the three-day New Yorker Festival. Not all the subjects, however, had Winchester’s sense of decorum. There were, for example, two 11-year-old Jack Russells who vocally expressed their displeasure at being in a crowd of canines and were taken home.

“They get along so well that when they see other dogs they protect each other and they bark,” explained their owner, Andrea Pivnick, from Tribeca. Like many of the other pet owners, she made the artist’s work easier by providing a photo of her pets.

“We have so many pictures of our kids,” said the mother of three, “we thought it might be fun to have a sketch of our dogs from an event that transpired in our neighborhood.”

“Oh my gosh, that is so cute!” Pivnick exclaimed as Carolita Johnson, who has drawn more than 100 cartoons for the magazine, completed her quick sketch of Mack and Josie seated side by side in a chair.

As Johnson, herself a dog owner, prepared for the next sitting, she was asked which she preferred to draw, dogs or people.

“Dogs,” she replied, “don’t tell me not to make them look fat.”