WARNING: This narrative contains occasional strong language and adult themes along with unsolicited political commentary and opinion. It is also extremely long at over 20 8.5 x 11 inch pages. Reader discretion is advised.
Ah, New York City
Ah, New York City. I pretty firmly believe that you love it or you hate it, with no real room for fence sitting. Having been a full-time resident for four years complicates my perceptions and reactions, especially since the period of my residency began 20 years ago (it does not do for me to dwell too long on the many implications of that time span) and time, along with Giuliani and Bloomberg, have changed, in some instances significantly, the city I knew while moving into adulthood.
Getting There
The beginning of the adventure was not the most auspicious in that our flight to JFK was delayed by over 3 hours. Turns out that the outbound flight the day before was delayed by weather, which caused the crew to be late, triggering a delay because of FAA required rest periods, then traffic in Atlanta further delayed them. Delays are like ripples in a pond and according to FAA data, 70% of those ripples have their origins in New York City airports. Late equipment or late crew ripples onto the flights that are supposed to use that equipment or crew. It does make sense even if that doesn’t make you less irritated with a delayed flight and missed connections. However, I really don’t get irritated with factors beyond the airline’s control, like weather or FAA rules. Why yell at the Delta gate agent over a thunderstorm? Even if he is extremely well built and blond (I have never seen this gate agent personally, I’m just saying IF he existed) I still don’t think he is the Norse God Thor wielding thunderbolts, or change the hair to black and he still isn’t Zeus, you get the idea. And of course it helps that while we are delayed we are sitting in the Crown Room directly over the gate so we can see when the wayward equipment actually arrives and know to stroll down to the gate. So our experience really isn’t the majority experience, I do understand that. And we don’t connect for we know that danger that way lies. Well, normally we don’t connect, but this time, alas, we were connecting to another flight. We originally had about a 3 hour lay-over in JFK to wait for our connection, but with a 3 hour delay it appeared that perhaps we would miss that connection.
However, our connection was to the US Helicopter flight to the East 34th Street Heliport (FAA code TSS, go ahead, look it up), so we weren’t too worried about missing it since they go every hour. We arrived about 20 minutes prior to our scheduled helicopter departure, so we decided to not be in a huge hurry trying to get to the gate, figuring that we would just be re-booked onto the next flight. We stopped in the bathroom, strolled along, and arrived at the helicopter check in counter fully expecting to be moved onto the next flight at 2:30pm. Clearly neither Tim nor I had ever flown with US Helicopter before! When we stepped up to the counter, the lady greeted us by name and said she had been expecting us. She knew when and where our flight from Atlanta had arrived and George, the older gentleman standing to her right, had been waiting for the plane from Atlanta with his van to snag our bag from the baggage handlers directly. Our bag was waiting in the van and the driver who would take us to the helicopter was waiting for us as well. We were just waiting for a Mr. O’Brien who would be on the flight with us and off we would go. By the way, Mr. O’Brien was NOT a red-nosed Irish guy, admit it, that IS what you were thinking. Instead he was a 20-something multi-racial guy who was so excited to be in the helicopter I thought he would pee on himself. Oh yeah, it was just the three of us on the flight, plus the captain, who was about 12, and the co-pilot who from what I could see actually flies the thing. So, we get in the van and drive out across the tarmac. You have seen these vans, or vehicles like them, driving along like ants beside the jumbo jets, waiting at stop signs for a plane to cross the intersection ahead of them. Yeah, it is JUST as cool as you think it is, if a bit intimidating to realize just how enormous those planes really are. We had our passenger safety briefing in the van as we were driving, although I must say that pulling up on the door lock in an emergency, just like you would in a car was a bit different than the emergency exit doors I am more used to sitting next to. We now knew to approach the "heli" from the sides only and were reasonably sure that the rotors wouldn’t take our heads off even if we stood up straight, but after seeing this done on countless TV shows and in movies, you really sort of feel like you SHOULD duck down just for effect. The craft seats 8 people but it was just the three of us. Essentially everyone, even if completely loaded, has a window seat. The captain tells us to NOT open the door for any reason, I was thinking "no shit buddy," until I realized he meant once we landed, when he would open the door for us. It is fair to say that I was bit nervous since I had never been on a "heli" before.
So this helicopter, a Sigorsky like are used for those "life-flights," the type of helicopter ride you DON’T want to need or have, not that you are likely to remember it if you do, has wheels, not skids. So we start rolling out between these huge Delta jets and I was thinking that we were taxiing out to the runway for some reason, when I suddenly realized we were actually flying, or the ground was falling away, so I went with the we were flying explanation. It was a very smooth take off and I think the little bit of rolling first disguises the actual lift-off. It is NOTHING like when your jet takes off with the super fast acceleration, instead you just pick up and away you go. The views of the airport are spectacular and like nothing you have ever seen before. It was a bit too hazy to have great views of Manhattan coming in, but it was still a fascinating experience and so totally beats waiting for a taxi and going into the city that way. For me, the helicopter shuttle is now the ONLY way to get into NYC.
You land right on the edge of the East River, at 34th Street and FDR Drive. Well, actually, FDR Drive, as those of you who know NYC at all will know, is an elevated highway so you sort of end up underneath it. The "terminal" here consists of two modular buildings, essentially trailers, but the experience of landing next to other helicopters, most all private affairs, is still the height of cool. Tim thought there would be cabs waiting, but I really didn’t think there would be. I sort of figured that folks who fly in a helicopter have a car waiting for them, and it appeared that I was correct. Mr. O’Brien proceeded on foot and I employed my timelessly effective method of getting to travel a distance I don’t think Tim would approve of if he knew how far it really was: I didn’t tell him EXACTLY how far the trip is. Hey, don’t judge, it is effective!
We landed, as I said, at 34th Street and FDR Drive. Tim asked where the hotel was, and I correctly told him it was on 44th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues. So, he did some math and arrived at the idea that we were about 10 blocks south (correct) and no more than 6 or 7 blocks east of the hotel (incorrect). I was fine with walking, even pulling rolling bags, and Tim was lulled into a sense of distance that wasn’t quite spot on. There were two problems with his distance estimates. First, east/west blocks in NYC are VERY long. I know this all too well because to get to work, regardless of whether it was 90 degrees or 10 below, I walked from Lexington to East End along 86th Street. That totals 5 blocks, or about 20 minutes at a brisk pace. LONG blocks. The other thing Tim wasn’t quite clear about was that while the north/south avenues in NYC are numbered, there is a gap between 3rd Avenue and 5th Avenue comprising, from east to west, Lexington, Park, and Madison Avenues. So, when you are standing at 34th Street and 1st Avenue, thinking you have only 4 to 5 more blocks to go before you arrive between 6th and 7th Avenues, you really have more like 8 to 9 blocks to go. But by the time Tim discovered this at the corner of Lexington Avenue, it really didn’t make sense to try to get a cab.
We broke up the journey by making a pit stop at a true NYC institution, the hot dog and pretzel stand. I had a hot pretzel with mustard and a cold soda. I do NOT understand why more places don’t sell hot pretzels, for they are fabulous. Later in the visit we would utilize a Park Avenue falafel truck as well, so now Tim is no longer a falafel virgin. He has decided he likes gyros better since nothing died for him to eat a falafel. The stand is down the block from the Bank of Kuwait so its location makes sense. And I LOVE falafel despite the fact that no stupid animals died to feed them to me, usually a requirement for me to believe in a meal.
New York In Summer
Some of you might realize that NYC in July/August is not only generally warm, it is also insanely humid. I mean like 80% humidity. So, by the time we arrived at our hotel, we were a bit sticky. OK, honestly we were wet, dripping wet with sweat. Lovely. It seems that people who live in New York don’t suffer from this problem in quite the same way that two fat white guys from Georgia pulling roller bags do. But, we survived and had a ground eye view of landmarks like the main branch of the NY Public Library. I also noticed an amazing number of French tourists on the streets, a trend that would continue right into our hotel. I more heard French tourists and then saw them for French people look amazingly like other people despite our reigning village idiot’s vilification of them. I couldn’t figure out the popularity of NYC with the French at first. I mean I know that Delta, Air France and probably others fly every day direct non-stop but still, what was driving this? And then I realized that of course it is the worthless dollar against the powerhouse Euro making our expensive hotel room amazingly cheap to the French!
Our hotel was Hotel Mela. This is a relatively new property with an absolutely ideal location, depending on what you want to do, less than one block from the madness of Times Square and the Broadway theaters. Most importantly, despite the hotel’s proximity to what has to be the busiest intersection in NYC, our room was absolutely tomb like in its quiet because it was at the back of the hotel facing into the space between other buildings. Not a scenic view, but a quiet night, which can be hard to come by in NYC.
There is really nothing remotely resembling a cheap room in NYC and then you add almost 20% taxes onto the rate, but Mela actually had decent rates for what they offer. The hotel is almost self-consciously "hip" and retro. I seriously think we were the oldest people staying at the hotel (remember we are 38 and 41) and certainly far older than any of the staff whom we saw who seemed more late 20s to early 30s at the most. Muscles and tattoos were the order of the day it seemed for the staff, but then I also noticed that NYC residents tend towards the slimmer well built types as well as the younger types (often overlapping groups of course) with a gap of those 30-60 who presumably live in Queens, Brooklyn, or New Jersey. Maybe the challenges of life in Manhattan, i.e. cost, crowds, pace, crowd out anyone who has children bleeding them dry financially and emotionally. The older folks probably don’t have an easy time of it, but rent control probably helps and perhaps they have never known another life. But the demographics of Manhattan are pretty striking, although they change with neighborhood in that the Upper West Side, both Villages, and Chelsea are young at least in part because of university populations, while the Upper East Side is far older, with more families, WEALTHY families for this part of town is no bargain with studio apartments selling for $1.5 million.
I speculated that Hotel Mela was started and staffed by a group of Columbia School of Hospitality Management graduates who found some funding, purchased an old building that they gutted, and created a new boutique hotel in midtown. The building sort of has to be old given where it is, although Manhattan is in the midst of an insane building boom with some buildings having been completely destroyed. As but one example of this, the hospital that I worked at in NYC, originally Doctor’s Hospital, later Beth Israel North, has been completely demolished and replaced with VERY expensive co-op apartments. Apparently, old hospitals are becoming very hot properties to buy, demolish, and replace with apartments. Essentially investors are buying very valuable land with pesky large buildings full of the ghosts of dead people that have to be destroyed. OK, the ghosts thing I don’t buy, but the developer who bought my old hospital essentially used that as a justification for doing a total tear down in that people wouldn’t want to live in a building where people had died. Hmmm, I have news for the guy in that I fully expect that most ANY existing apartment building in NYC has seen at least one resident die. Not everyone dies in a hospital, many people do it right at home.
I don’t think Mela destroyed their old building given the well worn condition of the stairs. It takes time to wear dips into concrete or stone steps! But whoever owns Mela has done an outstanding job of renovation and staffing. The building and the rooms sparkle and the staff are quietly competent with an understated friendliness. All NYC hotel rooms are likely smaller than what you might be used to elsewhere, but Mela’s rooms were certainly of an adequate size with very nice furnishings and clearly everything is still very new and/or very well maintained. We liked the flat screen TV that makes the coolest sound when you turn it off and the gooseneck LED lights on the headboard for late night reading. The hipster / younger group mindset is perhaps best exemplified by the clock radios with MP3 player plug-ins. If you don’t know what a MP3 player is or if you don’t have one as I don’t then you are probably not the Mela target demographic but still it is a very nice place that I highly recommend. I also sort of thought that the boxed set consisting of a vibrator and condoms that you could purchase from the mini-bar basket on top of your bar refrigerator sort of bespoke of the younger set. I can’t give details on the vibrator since we didn’t buy it, but there it was lurking in the room during our entire stay. I was fascinated but not interesting in buying the kit to pursue any further discovery. I would stay with Mela again in an instant especially given the dearth of hotels in other interesting parts of Manhattan because for a theater district property their rates were reasonable, by comparison mind you, the staff were personable, the rooms and building sparkling clean, and the furnishings of very nice design. And hey, where else can you get a vibrator out of the mini-bar?
I have never paid much attention to MP3 players, best exemplified by the iPod, since they don’t interest me, but New Yorkers are intensely insular in that they withdraw very effectively into themselves in the most crowded of spaces because so much of their lives are lived amidst the masses that sometimes the only private space is that which you create in your mind. I remember this frustrated my mother on her visits to New York in that people wouldn’t talk to her on the subway. I tried to explain to her that you just didn’t do this but she insisted on trying. People just assumed she was mental patient recently released from Belleview for who else would dare to try to talk to strangers on a train? And remember that strangers on a train talking to one another didn’t work out well when Hitchcock portrayed it either! The invention of MP3 players and cell phones has raised the NYC population’s ability to withdraw to even greater levels. It seems that everyone from the suit wearing broker to the soon to be crack whore housing project trash has a MP3 player and/or device for texting people other than those sitting right next to them. Why pay attention to the person you are traveling or dining with when you can text message someone else or listen to your iTunes, make Steve Jobs richer, and totally alienate members of reality all at the same time.
The Great Broad Way
The justifying reason we were in NYC was to see Rent in one of its final Broadway performances. Of course the show was on Thursday night so we could have returned on Friday but we took advantage of the chance to hang out in NYC. Originally we were returning on Sunday, but the helicopter doesn’t operate weekends and we wanted to take it back to JFK so we stayed another day just to do that. It was worth it and more about that later.
I am hesitant to try to explain Rent too much for I think for some of you it would be meaningless while for others the meaning and impact will hit you right upside the head. Unless you get to Broadway very quickly you won’t see it there since it closes on the 17th of August, but you might have a chance to see it in a traveling show or you could always just rent the DVD of the movie version which is very faithful to the stage original, including essentially the entire original Broadway cast.
Briefly, Rent is a remake of La Boheme set in NYC, Alphabet City at 11th Street at Avenue B to be exact, sometime in the 1990s. Of course NYC has been so radically and effective gentrified that 11th Street and Avenue B is no longer the slightly to moderately scary place of illegal squatters, addicts, prostitutes, and homeless (as well as combinations of all the above) that it would have been when I lived there. Nowadays you are more likely to find yuppies walking their dogs than strung out hookers, and whether this is a good or a bad thing is a matter of opinion.
For me, Rent is a hugely powerful production and I would encourage everyone to see at least the movie version of it, even if it doesn’t in the end resonate with you in the same way or to the same depth as it does for me. Watching it might help explain to those who wonder why I seem to have a trip somewhere in the world roughly every month, even though no character in the show/movie actually ever leaves NYC. And if you pay attention you will hear three questions asked in the first half of the movie. Remember that this is a musical though, so the questions will be sung, not said. I am in a position to answer those questions, and the answers are as follows: absolutely yes, absolutely no, and maybe. Question number three could be answered with a yes, with a no, with a sometimes yes, a sometimes no, just a sometimes, it is highly variable. For me the answer is very clearly yes and that my friends has made all the difference in my life. For the sake of all of you, I hope your answer to question number three is yes as well. And don’t ask me to tell you what the questions are, for I won’t. If you really want to know you have to watch the movie or see the play. I am stubborn about this!
After the show we went downtown toward NYU, my alma mater, to visit Bagel Buffet. While I know better, I pronounce the Buffet part as "Buff-Et" not "Buff-A." The reason I do this is because that was the way that my dorm roommate, Jacob, and I referred to it when we lived just a block away at Rubin Residence Hall on the corner of 10th Street and 5th Avenue. I only know about Bagel Buffet because Jacob told me about it and I only know about salt bagels, my preferred type, because Jacob brought me one late one night back in Rubin Hall. He gave it to me and told me that since he had seen me snack on bouillon cubes right out of the wrapper, NOT diluted with pesky water, and since he had eaten dinner with me and my salt shaker, he figured I would like this type of bagel. Perhaps it helped that Jacob was Jewish that he even knew salt bagels existed for good luck finding one if you wish to try them. They are rare and frankly hard to find even in most of the bagel shops of NYC. As the name implies, a salt bagel is VERY salty, almost too salty even for me, and if you know me you know this means something. Essentially a salt bagel is a plain bagel decorated with a crusting of coarse ground kosher salt and nothing more. It tastes most like a very salty round chewy pretzel and I crave them. I tried them at a total of three bagel places and loved them all, but I personally thought that Ess-A-Bagel on 3rd Avenue at 51st Street did the best job. We visited them on Monday before we left to buy a stock to bring home and freeze since I seriously doubt that anyone in Georgia even boils then bakes this type of bagel. That isn’t a typo, bagels are first briefly boiled then baked and you can see them do this at the bagel place we visited on Broadway at 108th Street. So we ask the guy at Ess-A-Bagel for a dozen salt bagels and he said he would check. He managed to find two in the entire place, although to be fair I had eaten one right before we asked so they had at least three shortly before. They just are not that popular. But then he asked the most astounding thing: "You got an hour? We’ll make ‘em up for you and we deliver within a 7 block radius." Amazing. Custom made bagels for the asking, no extra charge, no grief, just what they do. I was stunned and delighted but unfortunately we didn’t have an hour before our helicopter left, but the bagel makers assured us that if we just call they will make them and ship them off to me no later than the next day. There is a guy sitting on the phone practically all day taking orders, and while most of them are probably headed no further afield than 7 blocks, it is nice to know that there is a way to get salt bagels without flying back to New York.
Greenwich Village
The area of NYC known as Greenwich Village, where Bagel Buffet is located, is rich in history and in character, or at least it was when I lived there. But the forces of gentrification have marched in jack boots here as well, closing bars and stores in favor of the new and plastic. I mentioned gentrification earlier and speculated that it could be a good or a bad thing depending on who you are. I guess the jack boot and plastic comment tips my hand on this point in that I think gentrification sucks!
I understand that if you are a tourist the changes made to the touristy areas of Times Square probably make you more comfortable and you feel safer, and heck, maybe you ARE safer than you would have been when I lived in NYC. And for residents perhaps the changes made by the Giuliani and Bloomberg administrations have been largely beneficial, but to my way of thinking they have destroyed part of what made the city the wild, joyous, and sometimes slightly wonderfully dangerous place that it was. I think of it like this: people go on safari to see the wildlife untamed in a natural habitat, instead of looking at the tamer and caged creatures posing as wild in the zoo. I think NYC should have remained wilder than it is now but that is at least in part because that was my experience of it at a younger, braver, and wilder point in my life. Perhaps if I lived there I would feel differently.
But to me, Hudson River piers that have morphed into a multi-use shopping, recreational, and housing area are just wrong. The Hudson piers should be the dilapidated concrete and chain link hangout of homeless kids and the grown-ups who exploit them, or whom are engaged in a complex cycle of mutual exploitation with no real way to say who comes out ahead in the exchange. Instead of Chelsea being the new home of the most highly buffed, polished and beautiful of the world’s gay male population it used to be a slightly rough around the edges working class neighborhood. The waterfront in Chelsea used to be the home of meat packing companies during the day but transvestite prostitutes and the absolute sleaziest of the city’s sex clubs and bars where the occasional night resident would be found by the day shift workers dead on the sidewalk, a well know risk for tranny hookers. Nowadays, this area is very expensive housing and the old elevated train track designed to serve the meat companies is now an open green recreation space further driving residential real estate prices higher and higher. Hells Kitchen is no longer hellish, Alphabet City could be a neighborhood on Sesame Street, and the Bowery is as genteel as could be asked for. Eighth Avenue, the edge of the theater district, was once nothing but a strip of trash bars, whores, johns, pimps, peep shows, and strip joints. Now, it is sterile with sterile anywhere and everywhere stores and trendy over priced restaurants. I know this for we ate at a supposed Brazilian Churrascaria that just didn’t compare to the one in Rio or the one that used to be in Atlanta or the one in Beverly Hills. Yep, we like our Brazilian! I realize that the removal of all of the above admitted filth both physical and human would please many a soul and I wouldn’t want to hang in the midst of it either, and yet I just don’t like that it is gone.
New York City ISN’T a family friendly Fantasyland at Disney World. Go to Orlando if that is what you want, or even to Anaheim, but not to NYC. NYC had character, a vibe, verve, an edge. The last 10+ years of city administration have eroded and polished that edge in ways that not everyone who lives in NYC likes either. The older crowd who came to the city when I did or earlier bear some resentments towards the politicos and developers for killing the character of neighborhoods and driving the price of even basic housing in formerly affordable neighborhoods into the stratosphere. I mean couldn’t they have left Ikea in Jersey? Did it really have to move onto the waterfront of Brooklyn? Does NYC also have to become everytown USA with the same stores, the same McMansions, and the same predictable people? Maybe the developers, planners, and politicians of NYC should have spent more time watching the Antiques Roadshow, for if they had they would have realized that the thing that will kill the value of an item the most is refinishing it, cleaning and polishing it. How many times have Tim and I seen an old lady drag in a humongous piece of furniture bigger than she is, and you have to wonder HOW she got it there, to be thrilled when told that her item at auction could sell for $55,000 IF she hadn’t refinished/repainted/cleaned/polished it, but since she did, it now MIGHT bring $500. By the way, watch both the American and British versions of the Roadshow just to see how ridiculous Americans look in comparison to the Brits in their reactions and/or expectations of what their crap is worth or what they think it ought to be worth. The point is that true vintage treasures retain their rough edges, their grime, their stories of a life lived sometimes hard and fast. That gives it character, gives it a past, a history, gives it VALUE to set it apart from the plastic crap we buy by the container ship full at WalMart. NYC seems in danger of losing some of that hard won value if the trend continues, and yet despite my shock and dismay at was lost, I still love NYC intensely even if I don’t think I could stand to live and work there full-time ever again, and I will look forward to returning hopefully many more times.
On Friday I made Tim walk into the Metropolitan Museum of Art even though he hates art passionately. I just think that there are fewer more breathtaking spaces in all of Manhattan than the Met, and it is deliciously air conditioned when it is hot and humid outside. I thought he should at least see the Temple of Dendur for it isn’t everyday that an entire Nubian temple turns up indoors for you to take a close look at. This was a place that I could walk to from work to see special exhibits on a weekday morning when the crowds were absent, a place to retreat from the mad pace, the heat or the cold, or the rest of life. It is special to me and still I have not explored it all. There is a great deal of construction going on here as well and they have filled a large hall with practically stacks of glass and ceramic pieces that you have to use computers in the room to even find out what they are. It was a stunning space for visual overload. We went across Central Park by bus, stopping right next to the Museum of Natural History, but knowing how Tim feels about museums, even those with entire dinosaur skeletons in them, we just took the train back downtown.
Getting Around New York City
By train I of course mean the NYC subway or MTA although significant portions of the subway are certainly not subterranean, meaning underground and hence the common name. Having lived in NYC for four years without a car I had, as most all New Yorkers I think do, a love/hate relationship with the subway as an essential element of life for work, for school, for fun, for whatever you wanted or needed to do. Amazingly it works very well most all of the time, and for a $2.00 flat fare you can go anywhere it goes, and it goes a LONG way with over 450 stations and hundreds of miles of track. Other systems I have used have fares based on distance you travel, but not the MTA. One stop or 30 miles, all the same price.
Change has come to the MTA as well of course. When I lived there, the price of a ride was first $0.75, then $0.85, then finally the unthinkable $1.00. But more than the cost has changed of course. The most enduring symbol of the MTA subway for me was the token you used to get into a station. They were brass coins with a steel center so they had the bi-color appearance of the Canadian $2.00 coin but in reverse, gold on the outside with silver on the inside. You bought them at booths staffed by harried change makers in most any station, although later you could buy them at some stores as well. You then immediately dropped them into a slot on the turnstile as you went through. The savvy commuter bought them in small plastic bags of 10, and a constant, and hugely appreciated, part of my Christmas stockings each year were these so called 10-Packs of tokens. The tokens were an ever-present part of any commuters change tray or cup at home, along with the usual pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters, for they were simply part of the currency of New York City life. For something so routine and so taken for granted to be gone forever stunned me and now I don’t know that I even have a single sample of the token still in my life.
Nowadays you buy a magnetic stripe card good for a single ride, a day, a 7 day week, or a month. These are sold by machines of course, not by the people who still staff the booths that seem to only give information or limited assistance with ill behaved machines. The token operated turnstiles are gone, replaced with machines that read the stripe on your card, and even the busses have these as well. Progress once again. Heck even the Times Square MTA Station doesn’t smell like the urine of the homeless anymore, and believe me, in the summers in the NYC I lived in, IT DID! The subway system has its own moments of beauty in the tile mosaic signs on the walls of the older Manhattan stations and even in the plain white subway tiles used to line the station walls. Now subway tiles, named because of their original use, are a high end accessory in homes nationwide, but their start was in the craftsmanship and pride of a system started over 100 years ago at a time when quality and workmanship still meant something. If you go to NYC, give the subways some time. Discover their blend of utility and beauty for yourself, and while yes the tunnels are hot in the summer, they are delightfully dry and warm in the winter, and the cars are climate controlled. Hint: if during a peak time you see an empty car with all other cars packed to the rafters, stay out of the car because either the climate control isn’t working or something, or someone, nasty is rolling around on the floor of the car. Take it from one who knows!
According to NY1, the local news and information station which occasionally and begrudgingly acknowledges that there is a world outside of NYC, the E train has the highest climate control failure rate at 30% of train cars not having functional air conditioning when checked. But the cars on that line average 40 years in age, most being constructed in 1965, although this was not the case when I lived in Queens and rode the E train all the time. New York City subway cars vary and was I simply STUNNED by the new ones with red LED indicators telling you the number or letter of the train, automated computer voices that announce stations and warn of closing doors, and even worse LED indicators inside the train cars that tell you the name of the station AND one that lights up the station on a line map of the route! Heresy! The walls of these cars are a sterile white, amazingly unmarred by graffiti or even dirt and the seating is a bland blue. NY1 also reports that MTA will be testing new fold up seats that will be locked up during rush hours and lowered for off peak times, in order to accommodate, and I use that term loosely, up to 18% more passengers during peak times. Yikes! My favorite subway cars had much more vivid orange, yellow, and red seats, sort of like BART or the Washington DC metro in arrangement but plastic not upholstered. And on these new cars the entire advertising space is purchased by one vendor including the NYC PD, Puma, or Con Edison. No more insane, but interesting and entertaining, mix of advertisers like there once was. And I liked the old colored circles with the train letter or number in white or black depending on the line. The 1, 2, and 3 were red, the 4, 5, and 6 were green, the 7 was purple. The A, C, and E were blue, the B, D, F, and V were orange, the R, N, Q, and W were yellow, the S shuttles were black, the L was grey, the G was a light green, and the J, M, and Z were brown. It was more colorful and gave a more immediate identification context in the busiest of stations. But times change and even the subway identifiers change, although I have to confess I had a thrill of nostalgia on the old cars that look the same as when I rode them daily and was even more happy to hear a conductor literally screaming through the PA to "get outa the doors in front" in that thick wonderful accent that assures you that you are in NYC. The sameness of the sterile computer voices just isn’t the same.
We had the 7 day unlimited cards for $25 each, so I had to ensure that we rode enough times to make the "ACR or Average Cost per Ride," a factor arrived at by Mr. Cheap, known to most of you as Tim, come out to $2.00 or less to avoid having hell to pay for wasting money on a card that made life infinitely simpler to manage in terms of a VERY crowded at all times of day or night subway system. This wasn’t hard for me to do since I am and always have been fascinated by the subway system. One of my career aspirations was to be a conductor on the system announcing stations, "next stop is Times Square 42nd Street, transfer here for the 1, 2, 3, 7, S, N, R, Q, W, A, C, and E trains with connections to the Port Authority Bus Terminal" (you have to eliminate whichever one you are conducting on of course and that is an accurate list of the trains that arrive and depart from Times Square 42nd Street station), but I feared that I would be stuck on the S shuttle train between Grand Central and Times Square, condemned to only announcing 2 stations endlessly. I like to ride the trains just because they are there to see where they go for you can enter totally different worlds from the one you boarded at. Ultimately, with my penchant for completeness, I would like to ride the entirety of the system and towards that end we did ride the entire length of the 1 line from 242nd Street in the Bronx to South Ferry station at the tip of Manhattan.
We rode the Staten Island Ferry, which is free these days although it wasn’t when I lived there, because it gives the best views of Ellis Island, the Statue of Liberty, and Governor’s Island, the Coast Guard installation which is now open to wanderers and day trippers. There is very little point in going to Liberty Island itself since you can’t go inside the statue anymore for fear someone might try to blow it up. I wonder if people realize how victorious the terrorists of 9/11 actually were. Bush tells us they hate us for our freedom, and personally I think that is a bullshit reason, believing instead that they hate us, justifiably, for our unquestioning support of Israel no matter what it does, our decades long practice of interfering in their national affairs, our Christo-centric view of the world that informs our policies, our bigotry, and our blatant hypocrisy in condemning states as sponsors of terror or dismal human rights records while at the same time holding thousands of citizens of other nations illegally in Cuba, engaging in torture by any other name, using other nations to do even dirtier work for us, extolling nations like Saudi Arabia from where most of the 9/11 hijackers actually came from and which features such brilliant human rights practices as public beheadings, public amputations, stoning to death, and forcing girls to roast to death in a school fire because releasing them would have allowed them to be visible to non-related males, among other rights-laden features because they have oil and because Bush holds hands with their clearly un-democratically chosen absolute ruler of a king. Oh, and then there is that matter of invading and occupying two sovereign states in the Middle East, at least one of which was done based on lies, and then executing their leader. Yeah, no reason for them to hate us for anything other than our "freedom." You know those freedoms guaranteed to us in 1776 in the that nifty thing called the Bill of Rights? Oh, haven’t heard of it? Well of course not since it was pretty well destroyed by the oh so cleverly named "Patriot Act," a masterpiece of bullshit sitting around since Cheney was Secretary of Defense under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, both of whom were President before some of you reading this were even born. Yeah, you really OUGHT to think about what that means in terms of the lies you have been sold outright, the sacrifices you have made that you don’t even know about or choose to think about. NYC suffered most directly and immediately on 9/11 and to this day some 70% of city residents believe that the Federal government either knew the attacks would happen or even assisted in the perpetration of the attacks, and if you realize that Cheney and company were able to then realize their dream of policies they had been incubating for over 30 years to remake America for their own personal profit you sort of have to wonder if typically savvy New Yorkers are not on to something. By the way, any of you own any Halliburton stock? I hear those cost-plus no-bid contracts, and if you don’t know what those are, look it up, have really paid off. Oh, and that gas you bought today for $4 a gallon? You do know that Bush IS a West Texas oilman by way of coastal Maine don’t you? And you do know that there are already millions of acres of off-shore land open for drilling, but NOT being used so why open more, and that even if we drill in and destroy ANWAR no usable product will flow for at least 10 years and even then the reserves will only last for 1 year. That ISN’T going to make a difference in your fuel bill. Hello people, WAKE THE FUCK UP!
All right, I digress…
But I do have to wonder if anyone from Homeland Security has actually BEEN to Liberty Island other than to close the statue. Do they KNOW or CARE about what the damn statue says about "give me your tired huddled masses yearning to breathe free"? Because if they do, our current xenophobic and idiotic immigration policies sure don’t reflect that sentiment. Open the damn borders because the market forces that currently make the US an attractive destination will ultimately serve to make it unattractive once there is no work to be done that our citizens refuse to do. The US will eventually become as unattractive a destination for people wanting to work as Guatemala is today but presumably with some semblance of better infrastructure, but that won’t be true for long if we keep "rebuilding" what we foolishly destroyed half a world away instead of rebuilding what falls apart at home, you know, like the bridge that collapsed on INTERSTATE FREEWAY 35 exactly one year ago today.
Oooops, digressed again.
The Staten Island Railway is now part of the MTA and our pass would have allowed us to ride to the complete other end of the island, but we saved that for another day and caught the ferry back immediately. Staten Island doesn’t like people to do this and even offers tours of the sights of the island from the ferry terminal. I think they just want you to spend some cash since I have been to Staten Island many times and really we are talking a suburb that should belong to New Jersey with malls and a giant landfill called Freshkills. Yeah, I always wondered about that name! By the way, if you want to see the WTC Towers and presumably the vast majority of the remains of those who died there, that is now all at Freshkills instead of the gigantic hole in the ground you could go look at 7 years later because self-important and egotistical types can’t agree on what to do with some of the most valuable and emotionally stacked land in the entire country. So do you STILL think the terrorists didn’t succeed in remaking our nation 7 years ago? Do you know who is listening to your phone conversations or even who is reading this e-mail? I didn’t think you did. I just seem to keep digressing, but these are things I had to think about when confronted by the NYC of today at least in part because so much today started here slightly less than 7 years ago.
Eating In New York City
I was able to eat dinner at one of my favorite New York institutions, Katz’s Deli on Houston Street (How-ston, NOT Hue-ston) between 1st and 2nd Avenues. There is table service but why would you use it when you can just walk up to a cutter on the line and he will make whatever you want. And who could resist those beautiful and so fresh corned beef briskets or pastramis, to say nothing of the homemade salamis. Piled huge on fresh rye bread with pickles so sour and wonderful I am seriously hoping they ship them. Katz’s tag line is "Ship a Salami to Your Boy in the Army." This dates from World War II when they did ship salami to NYC boys wanting a taste of home, and they still do this and have the photos of Jewish salami in Iraq. The irony didn’t escape me even if the reason why Katz’s is shipping to Iraq is a sad shameful chapter of our history as a nation. But, if they ship salami, why not the pickles? And yes I know vegetarians won’t approve of Katz’s but I love it so there! Besides, had you ever lived with a cow you would want to kill and eat it too!
And if you are a movie lover, the table where Sally proved to Harry that women could and do fake orgasms is still marked. I refer of course to Billy Crystal (Harry) and Meg Ryan (Sally) in the movie "When Harry Met Sally."
On another day we would have breakfast at the Washington Square Diner. The corner diner being a NYC institution that I sincerely wish was more widely duplicated for convenience and predictably decent food at any time of day or night. At any rate, Tim wanted French Toast and in NYC French Toast is typically made with Challah Bread. Challah is a type of traditional Jewish bread made for the Sabbath meal, but is more commonly eaten on any day of the week by New York residents Jewish and not, especially in the form of French Toast. Now Tim knew about this tradition and likes Challah bread so he was pleased to get it, because you just are not going to in Atlanta. But it made me laugh because it reminded me of my Dad ordering French Toast in a diner one time and the waitress asking him, repeatedly, in a typically exasperated and harried New York way if he wanted Challah. Of course Dad had no idea what Challah was and I was too overtaken by the humor of the situation to intervene and tell him what she was trying to ask him. Besides, I figured he was better off with something he was familiar with in case he didn’t like it, but it is a great example of the huge cultural difference you can encounter in something as simple as ordering breakfast in New York as compared to anywhere else in the country.
Later we had Indian food for dinner on Columbus Avenue in the 80s and there was a street fair going on. We asked our maitre d’hôtel what the occasion was and he told us that it was not an occasion as much as just something the neighborhood did on a fairly regular basis. In New York these types of fairs are usually feast days for the patron saint of whatever Catholic church is in the immediate area, so we were curious. But the maitre d’ pointed out that there was often lots of street food available at these events, an observation I thought odd to make when seating people in your not inexpensive restaurant. I knew I had bathed recently so I didn’t think I smelled and that he was trying to shoo me out on to the street to eat, but it was an odd thing to say. So Tim asked him if the Indian restaurant we are at ever sets up a stall. I thought the maitre d’ would explode before he managed to point out to Tim that their Indian food was FAR too complex to make on the street and would require MANY MANY different utensils. They needed more than just a GRILL you know! He then huffed on his way and I wondered what special treatment our food would get as pay back for the untimely question! It was good with stealthy heat that didn’t hit you at first but waited until after you had eaten a goodly amount. I found recipes for the dish Tim most liked, Chicken Chetinand, but he is in no hurry to try making it as it requires a significant number of ingredients and presumably multiple utensils and more than just a grill.
Food in New York is truly a global adventure for you can find anything you want and probably lots that you don’t want, but I know they have lots of Afghani places, even an Afghani boutique advertising Afghani imports which prompted me to wonder if that was a front for opium sales since I don’t know that Afghanistan exports much else since Chile cornered the lapis lazuli market after Afghani exports sort of dried up a few years ago. So if they have Afghani restaurants, Afghanistan being the first nation in an alphabetical list, I have to wonder if they have a Zimbabwean place as well, Zimbabwe being the last nation in the same alphabetical list. I do like to be thorough!
I am almost done, I promise!
We had a rainy day on Saturday and the same spirit that led me to Newfoundland because it was on the edge of the map of North America that I grew up with pinned above my desk in Porterville, led me to convince Tim to ride the A train to Far Rockaway and then the S shuttle to Rockaway Park Beach. Those two stations are arguably the farthest away the MTA trains will take you, right out past JFK, across a causeway and a bridge, to a huge sandbar facing the open Atlantic ocean. On the MTA map they were on the farthest reaches and so I longed to go there just because they were there and I never had been. It seemed to me that the Rockaways must be some exotic wonderland on the edge of the known world of NYC but I never seemed to have the time to dedicate to the ride which would take the better part of an hour. But this was the time so away we went.
Now I expected to be the only white person not carrying a suitcase once we got past the first few stops on the A train once we entered Brooklyn. I had fallen asleep on the A train once before long ago and woke up suddenly only slightly terrified to find myself in deepest and darkest Brooklyn at roughly 1am being stared at in deep wonderment by the rest of the train riders, all of whom were black. But this was daytime and I wasn’t alone, so not so big a deal. There are a smattering of folks with suitcases because you can ride the A train to catch the SkyTrain (also a new invention for it used to be a bus) that runs around JFK and out to two different subway stations, one on the A line the other on the E, J, and Z (Z only rush hours) lines. Past that point though only hardy folks headed out to the Rockaways are on the train. Tim and I were clearly objects of some curiosity as I presume we would be if were riding in a brush taxi out of Bangui in Central Africa, meaning that white folks just were not to be seen on this route. OK, I still wanted to go because I had always imagined the Rockaways, since they face the open Atlantic with literally beachfront property and sweeping ocean views, to be some paradisiacal fantasy land. I guess it is just as well that I made the trip after I no longer lived in NYC because what I found in the Rockaways were housing projects. Lots of housing projects. I was stunned because who the hell in their right mind builds drug and crime infested give away welfare project housing complexes on the ocean front with those views! Apparently the NYC housing authority does. Admittedly the Rockaways are getting a bit of gentrification as well, and out here because I am a bigot at heart and don’t think people should be given housing for free that has views that rival my own, no that I think you should have to work and save VERY hard to have, I don’t mind a spot of gentrification. There are some very nice new houses going up but not too many, and this is where it really hits you, an essential fact about the insularity of Manhattanites. They realize there is a world out there that isn’t on their own little island, they surely know there are beaches out there, ocean views, they know that Illinois exits, etc, but THEY DON’T CARE and they certainly DON’T want to go there! Their world is small but it is rich and they don’t care who lives way out in the Rockaways, they don’t want to go out there so far from work and entertainment, and admittedly the commute would be a bitch, so perhaps just as well that those who can’t be bothered to work or contribute get shunted out there despite the ocean views…although I have to think there is a lot of cheap land in Wyoming so couldn’t we just relocate public housing projects somewhere cheap where no one else really wants to live? I mean if we give you a house for free why can’t it be somewhere less than optimally desirable? What happened to the old adage "beggars can’t be choosers?" And yes I know this will ruffle the feathers of my more PC friends, but hey, this is me and yes I really think this way, but that doesn’t change me from being the generally fun, supportive, and kind person you otherwise know and occasionally love, so cut me some slack here!
By the way, that took care of the largest segment of the A train although I missed the segment that goes out to Lefferts Blvd since you have to choose Rockaway or Lefferts with the A, and we still have to ride it north to its terminus in Harlem, but with the 1 train down and most of the A train ridden, I am slowly making progress!
Then on Sunday
Sunday night we decided to hang out at a small neighborhood bar on Christopher Street that was new when I lived there and which Tim had visited during a trip to NYC before he even knew me, so we both had a connection to it, although the extent of my connection doesn’t bear repeating here. Suffice it to say that we spent the evening playing pool, badly, and drinking hard and heavy enough to serve the purpose of reminding me the next morning why I don’t routinely drink heavily. After the bar was closing we ate at the Waverly Diner which Tim had taken to calling the Breakfast, Lunch, Diner, because of the neon sign in the window that read Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner. It was cute at the time and he started calling it that before he was even drunk, so that really wasn’t the reason.
The next day we chickened out and took a cab for the first time during our entire stay to get us back to the heliport. I couldn’t believe it, but there is now a thing called Taxi TV in the back of the driver’s seat. Actual satellite TV in a taxi that is also interactive in that it will give up all the official taxi information and estimated travel times etc that used to be on large yellow-orange stickers somewhere in every cab. AND most all cabs are of a new style car, another feature of the make over.
The true brilliance of the heliport now comes into play for when you check in there you are checked through to your final destination AND you do TSA screening at the heliport. Since Tim and I were the only passengers at the heliport you can imagine that the waiting line for security screening was short. It was brilliant, simply brilliant. Our helicopter was maybe 15 minutes late because it had flown out to the Hamptons to pick up a charter going into JFK (imagine that type of luxury!) and the agent at the heliport was furious with dispatch since she had two passengers waiting who had only two hours until their Delta mainline flight left JFK. With an anticipated 8 minute flight to JFK we weren’t worried but the poor woman apologized profusely and repeatedly despite our protests that it really wasn’t a big deal. She also told us that because of our "delay" she had called Delta baggage to alert them to the presence of our bag and sure enough when we touched down at JFK there was a Delta luggage truck and baggage handler for our bag. Bear in mind that we checked one bag and were the only passengers on the helicopter but still we got out own baggage truck, our own baggage handler, AND our bag was first off the belt in Atlanta. Now that is the way flying ought to be.
We had the same helicopter and same 12 year old pilot, who remembered us, with the same co-pilot, as on the way into Manhattan. But the day was brilliantly clear and we would see everything, all the bridges, the buildings, the train tracks out to Rockaway even, the entire metropolis spread before our feet. Tim tried to make a video of the flight and aside from that we didn’t take lots of photos, so don’t expect too much on that front. We will see what there is to share.
Our return flight on our favorite Delta plane, a Boeing 767-300ER in seats 3A and 3B was actually scheduled to leave 10 minutes early, but the realities of loading baggage and cargo, and then a broken tow bar when pushing back from the gate all occurring at the peak time for JFK trans-Atlantic departures meant that we would actually take off slightly over 2 hours late, but I didn’t care because in seat 3A with free drinks and a personal size chicken pizza on the way, what was there to care about? And for those who don’t realize this, seats 3A and 3B occupy the same about of space as, for example, rows 18A and B, 19A and B, and 20A and B. In other words, we have to unbuckle the seat belt to put Sky Magazine back in the seat pocket in front us when done with the crossword and Sudoku puzzles and after realizing the answer to Reader Reward Question of the month is "Thar She Blows," on page 14.
I was full of excellent NYC food from Indian to Jewish, I had had a salt bagel fresh that morning, I had relived key aspects of my youth, bemoaned the loss of some things, enjoyed the new experiences of others, and had seen a show to be remembered for a lifetime because of what it meant to me to see it at this time in my life. New York City had worked all sorts of magic for me and while it is different than it was and it is true that you can’t go home again exactly, it was an adventure in an ever changing wonderland that I will treasure and it only whets my appetite to enjoy more again in the future.