New York, New York

Part 1



Well now: New York City. Or Manhattan, I should say, to be more precise. My goodness.

We awoke early on Sunday to leave Baltimore in time to reach our hotel and ride the subway to Shea stadium, allowing extra time just in case. In fact, the sun was just rising and the full moon was just setting as we drove to the highway. It was a bright, clear morning but to be honest I was still groggy as we drove to the New Jersey turnpike and took it all the way to the Lincoln Tunnel, east to Manhattan Island.

Did you know that New York City was the first capital of the country? It’s odd to think that there was a time when a capital could move, because these days it would be next to impossible, I think, to move even a state capital. Plenty of state capitals no longer seem like logical choices, but now there is precedent and tradition and even liberals are conservative with stuff like that. I wonder if this says something about the state of mind in our country, in both times. Maybe we have lost something of that sense that it is alright and perhaps even preferable to amend things if circumstances change. I just hope it doesn’t take a figure like (Caesar) Constantine to bring it back.

Our hotel is near the exit of the Tunnel, next to Madison Square Garden, at West 36th St. and 10th Ave. I call it a hotel because it is, but there is not much to distinguish the room from a hostel room other than the television and coffee maker. There are two twin beds in a room as small as a freshman dorm room, and they are not comfortable. But, this is Manhattan and I gather that my father is still paying more for this room than the nice rooms we had in other cities. Location, location, location. We do have that. This is my first trip to New York, and my father was here only once in the ‘80s for a principal’s conference (and did not see a baseball game).

We arrived too early to check into the hotel, so we left our bags with the front desk and parked our van in the parking lot on 35th St, where the man backed it up onto a car lift, which is like a stationary forklift for cars that raises one car up so another can park beneath it. I left my laptop in the van, which made me anxious, but I would have been equally anxious leaving it in the hotel.

From there we walked two blocks east to the Penn Station subway stop, and figured out how to take the A line north a stop to catch the 7 train east to Queens. We charged a subway card with 6 rides and proceeded to blow two of them unused: (1) as I routed my father into a turnstile that wasn’t in use -- the kind you could hop over, blocked to prevent this -- and (2) as my father did not go to the front of the turnstile that was in use -- the kind that is like a revolving door which only revolves far enough to let one person through. I guess you could say that we paid our NYC first-time-visitor tax.

After that, though, we caught the correct train to the correct stop, and then caught the correct train to Queens. Shea stadium is the next-to-last stop, before Flushing, and we wound north-east through the neighborhood. The train dropped us off right next to the Shea box office, and we purchased tickets and went inside. Shea is nothing spectacular: it’s an older, symmetrical concrete stadium along the lines of the old stadiums in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and elsewhere. The lowest level of seats are orange, the next are blue, then the mezzanine hangs over with green seats, and the top deck is red. The levels above protrude out over the mezzanine and the back of the lower deck, so if you sit too far back you cannot see pop flies. We knew this ahead of time, from my older brother, and made sure to get mezzanine seats low enough to see everything. The one thing that distinguishes Shea from all the others is that they did not enclose the entire field, leaving centerfield open to a view. Unfortunately, that view is of parking lots and the outer edges of New York, which are not spectacular. La Guardia Airport is right there as well, and beyond the parking lots we could watch planes landing every 45 seconds or so for the entire game.

Tom Glavine pitched a complete game against the Braves, his team for over a decade, allowing only one run on a Marcus Giles homerun, and the Mets struck quickly with four runs on four pitches in the 6th inning: a ball 4, a double, another double, and a homerun by Cliff Floyd in succession. Fans in our section were excited that they would probably see a brief Mets victory and still be home in time to watch the Jets game. Speaking of the Mets’ fans, I’m impressed. Not that I like the Mets -- I don’t -- but there was a decent crowd for a team that has struggled in September, and they were vocal when they should be.

After the Mets game we went back to get my bag and the Yankee tickets my father left on his window shade visor, and everything was safe and sound in the van. We checked into the hotel, and then walked around Midtown looking for a place to eat. Most of the restaurants nearest to our hotel were closed, being Sunday evening, so we ended up eating at a TGI Friday’s, where the ribs were $22 and my buffalo chicken salad was $17. People still filled the streets of Manhattan, and there was a major traffic jam right outside our hotel with people trying to get back to the Lincoln tunnel. I’m guessing it took some of those cars an hour just to get to the tunnel entrance.

We ate a continental breakfast at the hotel, and then I convinced my father to join me for a bit of exploring around Manhattan, although he confided to me on the elevator that “I get intimidated by it.” After walking around last night, I can understand why. I did not feel intimidated, maybe because I have traveled in cities like Berlin and Paris, and extensively in London, and even Chicago to a lesser extent. (I have also been to LA, but it doesn’t feel like the others.) Still, Manhattan is in a class of its own, as far as I can tell. It’s true that people have that hardened look of extreme self-reliance on their faces as they walk around.

I planned a route: 34th St. east to the Empire State Building, then 8 blocks northwest on Broadway to Times Square. It was a sunny morning, although nearly every street is filled with buildings so tall that only a tiny bit of direct sunshine makes it all the way down. I don’t know that you can get a sense of Times Square from television, because walking around I saw how expansive it is. It’s to the point where there is so much neon and so many jumbo television-type screens that bare spots stick out more, for a stretch of blocks. There were people walking everywhere, and work crews at least once a block. I was glad we were not driving.

I convinced my father next to ride the E train south to Lower Manhattan, to Ground Zero, the site of the World Trade Center cleanup. The train stops directly at Ground Zero, and you walk up from the subway stop right to the viewing wall. It is still the quietest spot in Manhattan, I think, or at least it was the quietest spot we’ve seen. I’m not going to begin to try to capture the significance of the site, or its cleanup, or its future plans, but I’m glad we visited. I have no authentic reaction to give because I have no before picture. There are signs chronicling the events in a timeline, and others providing some historical context of the Towers’ significance, but I had no first-degree relationship to the site like so many did. I will say that seeing the size and scope of the area, I’m surprised more people were not killed in the attack. There is a list posted with the names of the people who died, and there is a Boehm: Bruce D. Boehm, no relation as far as we know. Ours is not a common last name, so I’m also sort of surprised to read it. Lastly, with most of the clean up completed, I’m surprised that there are a few grassy weeds growing on remaining concrete.

We walked across the street to St. Paul’s Chapel, which is literally across the street from Ground Zero. It is remarkable that it was left untouched, except for a single tree that was felled and scattering of debris. George Washington was a member at St. Paul’s, an Episcopal church, and he worshiped there before the capital moved to Philadelphia. There were many stories about St. Paul’s in the months after September 11, 2001, as it was the site where workers would come to rest, to pray, and to get supplies. They have an exhibit now, showing some of the items sent to the church to signify support for the relief efforts. It’s quite moving. I removed my hat as I walked in, hardly realizing I did it, but another twenty-something guy didn’t, and it bothered me. Another woman was talking on her cellphone, until a church attendant scolded her (quite rightfully). There are still Kleenex boxes handy throughout the church.

After leaving the church, we went east another block over to Broadway, and there Manhattan begins again: bustling people, traffic, and the noise exist like other parts of Manhattan. We ate lunch and rode the subway back to the hotel to rest before heading up to the Bronx.

I’ve decided that New York City residents earn their attitude, something like snobbishness, regarding every other city in America. Manhattan is as overwhelming as a city can be, and maybe Sinatra was right, singing about if you can make it there. I got the same sort of number-1 attitude from Londoners, and Parisians, and to a lesser extent Berliners. What’s interesting to me is to contrast it to Chicagoans after living there for a year, because many of my generation have a sort of attitude about Chicago as well. I’m not trying to say that civic or city pride isn’t a positive thing, because it is, and there is a lot to be proud of in Chicago and other cities. It’s just that as far as I can tell, only New Yorkers are living in the place to be. Cities like Chicago try to be like New York in certain respects; New York is not trying to be like anywhere else. I knew that, but I didn’t realize the extent that New York is ahead until I had walked around Manhattan. Maybe LA was on to something by not even bothering to compete, and just doing its own West Coast thing over the years. I don’t know that I would want to live there -- at least not until I had plenty of disposable income -- but I can certainly appreciate its stature, and I can see where it would give one a sense of satisfaction for achieving success in New York City.

Now, I cannot go so far as to say that it’s appropriate for New Yorkers to keep this attitude when they’re abroad, which they do -- at least sports fans, or at least Yankees fans. They take over another city’s stadium and act like they own it, and this is no way for a guest to act. My father tells me that recently in Toronto, Yankees fans spent the whole afternoon yelling various Yankees chants, and while it’s one thing to say that if Toronto doesn’t like it they should bring their own fans, that’s no excuse for Yankee fan arrogance. Still, I’m thinking that New Yorkers have earned some of their attitude by braving a city of cold, dominating indifference. We’ll see if that holds up after we visit Yankee Stadium.

(I haven’t had time to edit this, so it’s even more of a draft than usual. I haven’t had time to write out the rest of New York, so I’ll have to get to that and Pittsburgh in due time because I wanted to at least post something tonight. Sorry it's only half-done, and that this half isn't polished.)