New York, New York

I have written about New York City before. Hopefully you and I will have access to those recordings and peruse any of those meanderings other than this one, me on Gotham City. A city, a place like the one I wish to discuss is worth multiple analyses and assessments. Not like my perspective is the one to go to, per se, but for what it is worth.

New York City can make me excited and nauseated at the same time.

We all know that it is a massive city; that may go without saying (as my kids yell: Dad, you said it!). We all know that it has huge high rises and tourist attractions, that a lot of money goes through the city. Many famous celebrities and stars live there, that is part of its charm and attraction, its pull and allure.

 

I have been there a number of times personally, starting in the 1980s, continuing in the 1990s, and now a few times in the 21st century. I have been there less the last 20 years, since 9/11/2001, admittedly. Some of that has to do with starting a family and having expenses other than going to this city, which can cost too much. My daughters have blown a few dollars in the city more recently, to include the younger one witnessing a naked Iron Man in Times Square. Yeah, marvelous.

 

Sure, indecency can be part of this city, like many others, but that is not the only nauseating aspect of it. The sheer size and vastness of it, including the humanity, can make your head and stomach turn. The greed of the big money, or the seeming insouciance of morality or immorality of some of Broadway, or off Broadway, or off off Broadway... Or the other corruption that is known to walk its streets and plumb its depths, to include Wall Street. We are all affected by Wall Street investors and the rest: have you heard of 401K or Social Security? Yeah, those.

We all, assuming we watch film, television, and social media, have seen plenty of footage of New York City, the Big Apple. I grew up seeing King Kong jump on the Empire State Building, and fight airplanes, long before two planes crashed into taller twin skyscrapers decades later. I also saw the remake (maybe first?), with Jessica Lang, and that leaves an impression. From one of my kid magazines I had a fold out of King Kong on the then tallest building in the world in 3-D. They even supplied the paper fold out glasses. Of course, movies were numerous: Miracle on 34th Street, An Affair to Remember, Escape from New York, The Warriors (talk about scary and nauseating), and many others, some iconic, some forgettable. How about one of the best musicals of all time, based on Shakespeare, West Side Story? Or Annie, in Hooverville? (A little bit like Whoville?). Was Cats a New York thing? Had to be. Broadway and dance and comedy, big money and high finance, crime, passion... I left out Woody Allen, who typifies or sensationalizes the city.

Superheroes: what is Gotham, after all? Or even Superman at the Daily Planet... More recently we have the X-Men and Avengers.

All these characters, images, songs, books, newspapers, heroes, legends, crime bosses, gangs, love stories, miracles, terrorists (Denzel did a terrorist film in NYC before 9/11), parks and comedies (Friends, Seinfeld, A Family Affair (also known as Buffy and Jody), the Honeymooners, I Love Lucy, All in the Family, Welcome Back, Kotter, and a few more we watched unendingly, quoting all the time amongst ourselves.

Yeah, NYC, little Annie! We keep going back. Its got magnetism, its got a central locus of our attention, for so many reasons.

I have watched my share of sports related to New York, in basketball, football, baseball. Now Brooklyn has its own ball team, what do you know? California took a few Dodgers and things back after World War II, but the City that Never Sleeps has not gone away when it comes to sports teams and thrills.

Osama bin Laden, in some ways you made this city bigger than ever. Target the Big Apple and watch out! It just may be bigger, stronger than you realize.

Merry Christmas, New York City! To you, Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, former mayors and other would-be New York politicians of the past (the Roosevelts come to mind); to my old neighbors growing up next door, the Joneses. Bob and Kate, who hailed from Yonkers, an aptly named suburb of a wacky metropolis.

Like back in September, 2001: we are all New Yorkers!

 

Some favorite memories:

 

1. 1987 or so - Going to Grand Central Station by train with my mom and sister, and aunt, staying close to the Empire State Building, where we scaled it, taking taxis, eating at restaurants, some Italian, seeing a TV celebrity in the streets, Soupy Sales, taking the ferry across the bay, taking in the town for the first time, attending a Manhattan ward for church, walking Central Park ...

 

2. 1989 - Laying over in JFK Airport while en route to Europe. I think I saw and smelled a few things; I probably heard a few people tawk their tawk. Kind of like cawfee tawk. Kind of like my folks from Boston, but deepah, and moh New Yawk...

 

2. 1994 - Flying into La Guardia right before New Year's midway in the 1990s, buying a Jerry Rivera CD, with awesome Caribbean-New Yorquino tunes, eating at the Hard Rock Cafe with siblings and step siblings, watching the Christmas program of the Rockettes at where? Carnegie Hall? Hanging out with both sisters, and the husband, who both lived in the city, visiting the skyscraper of Credit Suisse First Boston, where the big money earners stroll their stuff and wear their high powered investment and consultant suits. Being in the city when the Apple fell on the New Year.

3. 1995, June --Flying en route to the Middle East through JFK, hanging in the airport with a few fellow students of the program, like Matt Romney (son of Mitt, who was famous back then for running against Edward Ted Kennedy, little brother of the guy that the airport was named after). He and I overheard some nearby passengers discussing something as a family at a cafe table. He thought it was Italian, I thought it was Portuguese. He may have been right, knowing fluent French and me Spanish.

4. 1995, August --Hanging out with my sister and husband and their baby Amanda, at their 96th street high rise dinky apartment, but that still had a doorman. Getting used to a doorman is a funny thing. How many work in Manhattan? Two thousand? More? Throw in security, and you got thousands...

I played round ball with some players from Harlem; they were not nearly Globetrotters (I was, more like it, I had just been in Israel, Palestine, and Egypt); but that was cool. We went up the World Trade Center, and took in the tremendous view going north through midtown and on forever, in every direction. Ah, the humanity! I left that time via a company car (of my brother-in-law's firm) to La Guardia.

5. 1997 --taking the train back down from Boston with the same sister and bro-in-law and babysitting their baby while the new Harvard business graduate was doing his interviews in the posh midtown corporate area. I later sat in the restaurant of the luxury hotel that the prospective business afforded to us; I ate in their first floor dining area, ordered a fancy Chilean bass (on their dime!), and listened to an older couple speak Yiddish next to me. Ah, I loved it! Yiddish in New York with a delicasy seasoned fish from a country where I had lived with a few privations in South America.

 

The life, I tell ya.

1998 -- I walked to the Bronx to see the Yankees play. My favorite player was with them. But they had no memorabilia of his at the sports store across the street! Ingrates... New Yorkers have some hubris, I find. And I think Raines was hurt, did not play that afternoon...

 

I was given a short tour of Columbia University; I attended the singles ward with a bunch of raging singles, me being one of the foremost. I met a funny, loud, vivacious young lady who served her mission in Chile. We dined at a Chilean restaurant, ordering traditional dishes like empanadas and and few other treats. Porotos con riendas? Maybe.

6. 1999 --Driving to the outskirts of New Jersey, learning how they do the gas fill up for you (modern state taxes meet the 1950s); driving into Manhattan in my relatively new car, overshooting Manhattan twice and winding up in Brooklyn, because there is no left on Canal Street going north! I almost got busted in Brooklyn for intruding onto a crime scene, but that is another story.

Staying overnight at the little apartment of my future wedding best man, a friend from childhood, the brother of the Harvard graduate. Parking was a trying adventure, I tell you something. Parking in Manhattan is a science, an art, a game for no weak hearted panzies, and a crap shoot. Mazeltov! Oy ve, meine lieben!

 

Driving a Utah cousin to the New Jersey side to see Lady Liberty and Ellis Island. It was pleasant and serene. The cousin (not mine), was quiet and not much to talk to. But nice. I spoke with a New Jersey guy who looked across the water to Manhattan, longing to live there one day. I spoke to Colombians doing part of their American pilgrimage or homage to the country, the world.

Lady Liberty. They have not brought it down yet.

 

2002, July -- Flying into Newark Airport, New Jersey, across the Hudson from downtown. Seeing the absence of the Twin Towers with my own eyes, beyond the voices over radio and images on screen. Seeing the absence of those two great mirroring symbols of our greatness and prosperity, no longer smoking (I think?); but some of us had fires awoken in us that would not be erased.

You strike at New York, at our people and system, you have attacked every one of us. That day between the City and DC and Pennsylvania you might have killed a few hundred or two hundred thousand. You tried the hardest you could.

2009 -- I drove my family in the minivan, the wife and four kids went to the Jersey side where we toured the statue on Liberty Island. I watched little Kaleel scramble around on the grounds, which I think is a giant star, while Jen and the three elders traipsed up the world famous monument, a 19th century gift from France. We did not make it to the island until later...

2014 -- On our way up to Massachusetts to see family of my recently passed mother, we went into Manhattan, stopped and hung out in Central Park, seeing some sights. We drove by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Temple, the same location where I had attended with family and friends in 1987 and 1999. Wait.. I went in 1998 and 1999... In '98 with my Chevy Spectrum, not going into the city, and in '99 boldly driving around arousing the suspicions of all law enforcement on their toes.

That is New York! Police thinking on their feet, or in their street booths, or on their horses. Looking for strangers like a weird guy driving around the city looking for lefts on Canal Street going north, or that one cheaper gas price, which was all along back in Jersey on the other side of the Holland Tunnel... Yeah, that one cop was leering at me for a real reason. Circling around, eyeing all the gasolinerias (Latinos have populated the place, it would seem). And the guy in Brooklyn had his reasons to be mad, too...

We got great parking with our blue mini-van by the  still being finished Freedom Tower. We walked around the deep fountains of ground zero, looking at the many names of the victims, most on that day, a sunny Tuesday, but others would die later from the chemical mess, and of course the subsequent wars. We are still fighting those that perpetrated that act. Cowardly, brave, audacious, mind bending. They got some of what they wanted, and now the struggle is on to win the hearts and minds.

(Still in 2020, as we withdraw troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, and Somalia.

2018 -- The boys and I drove north to see a football game; we paid the arm and leg fee to cross the Washington bridge and deal with some traffic up there, after the trouble free Jersey Turn Pike. We were slowed down by terrible traffic leaving Washington DC, so we got there at the more reasonable hour of 10 pm. North of Washington Heights you see apartments and rivers and bridges and on and on. Far north of the real action, but still New York, the megalopolis. Even parts of Connecticut seem like the city, probably close to where David Letterman lived, or lives.

On the way back a long weekend later I got a little turned around in the Bronx, or possibly Queens, and while trying to direct us to with the help of the GPS to go to Staten Island, a borough I am largely unfamiliar with wanting to see, I got mixed up and crossed into Manhattan itself, from the east side.

We drove around downtown, Wall Street, the Freedom Tower, watching the New Yorkers and tourists cross their walks and buy and sell and move their wares. There was a balloon fake version of Spider Man hanging from a building. We heard the news on the van radio that Stan Lee had just died. I told my sons to remember where they were when we heard the news. They do, they will. I most certainly will always remember that. We missed Staten Island and continued on home, some five hours away.

2019 --We went up north to see the same football team again the next year (last), but now in a larger vehicle.  With more people. And the price was exorbitant, larger prices to cross that part of town, even far from the center. Any part of town will cost you. Taxes. Death. New York City.

Budda bing is what the cash register says, not just  cha cha ching. Budda bing, boy.

On the way back we avoided the city altogether and did a little sight seeing in Scranton, PA, home of the Office. Plus a Latter-day Saint Church site, a restoration of the priesthood place, which is sacred to us. Different than NYC.

2020, August -- I got some Staten Island! The three of us did. Upon returning from a mostly bucolic trip to all the New England states, my sons and I made our way south to the biggest city, that of Gotham, which we had debated on whether engaging or not; they wanted the fastest route to our house possible, but I had my heart on a little land of Frank McCourt, an author and former teacher that I very much appreciate. My eldest son plotted in the 5th, and to me, the forgotten borough. We ended up going through a large length of Brooklyn, parts and places that I had never seen before, and even though while dark in the city night, we saw deeper into New York than ever before. It was somewhat thrilling and cool, I must say.

Unbeknownst to me, my son had not routed Staten Island into our route on the way home, another five hours drive; he had randomly centered our plot to Staten Island. And, that is where we went. The middle of the island, I guess. We saw a few things, nothing exceptional, but I got my wish. We did it, Mr. Teacher! We saw and even rolled down the windows and smelled some of Staten Island in the summer.

Summary of New York City

All of it, from Times Square to the rivers on both sides of the main thoroughfare of Manhattan, from the Harbors of Liberty and Brooklyn and the other boroughs, to the extended reaches of New Jersey and upstate New York and Connecticut, pushing west to Long Island and all of that mass of humanity; all of it becomes one huge, throbbing, miasma of people, money, cement, bricks, girders and beams, sparkling glass, black top, roofs and towers, rivers and boats, and a million vehicles of every type, a place that we are inspired by and scared by and that keeps beating as the heart of our nation and planet.

 

New York City is not the only place to find the good and bad of metropolises, it is not entirely unique in all it offers, and yet, there is only one Big Apple, there is only one place that I can say: Spiderman lives there. Stan Lee was formed by it. 'Nuff said. 

 

Our country is and nation are a big part of who we are because of it. Where we can dream to make it Carnegie Hall, big or small.

Where in our fantasies and dreams, we can be King of the Hill, Top of the Heap.

Best of the best.

So nice, they named it twice.