Small thoughts from a big city
I took a four hour walk in New York City the other day. I arrived on the train at Penn station and just started walking. I didn’t have an agenda or a goal in mind, unless you count purposely not having a goal as a goal. By my thinking, if you have a plan, let’s say a visit the Statue of Liberty, you’re pretty much going to stick with that plan and not deviate too much. You’ll catch a cab and head to the southern tip of Manhattan where a ferry will take you out to the monument. During that cab ride you will cross paths with a thousand interesting stories that you will never know – because you had a plan. The cab ride itself will be an interesting story since you will no doubt wonder if you have been kidnapped by an insane homicidal terrorist who has no interest in taking you to the ferry landing. He’s got a trunk filled with explosives and he’s going to drive you into the United Nations building. This is how all New York City cab rides end up. And this is why trips to New York so often have a funny taxi ride story: not a “ha ha” funny story, but a “I am still not sleeping because of the nightmares” kind of funny story. I’ve already had a couple scary New York cab experiences. This trip I wanted a taste of the other nine hundred ninety-nine stories lurking out there. So I walked aimlessly. Here are a few of my observations and thoughts.
A cop is questioning a guy paid to wear one of those sandwich boards advertising a cheap buffet at a restaurant from 4-7 PM weekdays. —So you didn’t do anything to provoke her? —No man. —You didn’t call her a name, you didn’t insult her, you didn’t touch her in any way? —I’m telling you I didn’t do nothing. —So this woman just comes up to you, asks you for a cigarette and when you tell her you don’t have one, she belts you, hits you right in the face? —That’s it; that’s how it went down. (7th Avenue and E. 36th Street)
There is no slack on the roads of New York City. None to give; none to take. It is simply not there. Traffic on 42nd Street is as tough and taught as a rope tethering the QEII to her gangplank.
Walking alongside a elderly Hasidic Jew on 7th Avenue, New York’s fashion street, a beautiful woman who is dressed in very expensive clothes, perhaps a model, cuts in front of us. We both look her over. I am thinking how well her clothes show off her curves. He is thinking, “Nice cloth.”
Free wifi in Bryant Park. Totally cool. (Postscript: This week’s Newsweek, which arrived in the mail the day I got home from New York, has an article about wifi showing up in the darndest places and shows a woman wifi-ing from Bryant Park.)
Leaving Bryant Park: A panel truck drives down the road hawking the radio station WFCUK. “None of the hits, none of the time.”
A lot of people say they can’t live here because of the noise. I think you can be even more specific than that. What drives you crazy? The unrelenting honking of the cabbies? The ear-piercing sirens of the emergency vehicles. The trash trucks at 4am? For me it would have to be the high-pitched squeal of the buses. Do all buses in New York need new brake shoes? It’s like fingers on the blackboard to me.
The Chrysler building peeked out at me when I turned onto 42nd street and drew me to it like a magnet. I walked into its lobby and was blown away by the elegance. I was here when I was a kid, but I saw it today for the very first time. The Chrysler building was the tallest building in the world for one year; it will remain the most beautiful example of art deco architecture forever.
This joke: A man waiting for a light near Times Square was crushed to death after he was handed nearly ten thousand brochures and flyers all at one time. Several of the people responsible for distributing the literature were shocked and distressed. “We were just trying to enlighten him about the horrors of genocide in Sudan,” said one. “Yeah, and offer him a special matinee rate to see The Lion King,” said another. They all agreed that the city ought to issue a flyer about the dangers of accepting too many flyers so that this never happens again.
Stopped in at a Starbucks for a cup of coffee. It is interesting to note that my usual drink costs sixty cents more in New York than Washington. A woman with wild black hair and a pentagram medallion proclaims this Starbucks to be the most inept, inefficient Starbucks in all of Manhattan. Imagine that. And I was there.
A pigeon flew a little too close over my head. I cringed, anticipating you know what. It occurred to me that I always cringe, expecting that to happen, but it never has. Not thirty seconds later, waiting at a corner for the light to change, I look over at a woman and notice a dime-sized splotch of pigeon shit on the back of her navy-blue suit jacket. It was completely hardened. It didn’t just happen. She was unaware. No one told her. She would find out on her own and wonder. When? Where?
The blocky, brauny, self-assured New York Public library: “Internet? Pft! I got your internet right here!”
How many people did I pass by today? Close personal contact. People near enough to talk to without raising my voice. Fifty thousand? One hundred thousand? More? And yet no one did. Talk to me, that is. One of the greatest ironies of life has to be that it is possible to be lonely on the streets of New York City.
10:25:30 PM  Stories
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