Gotham Revisited

Last week found us taking something of a sentimental journey to a most unsentimental place. Having been a resident (briefly, at the 47th Street Y and then just off Bay Ridge Avenue in Brooklyn), a commuter from New Jersey for several years and then a more or less monthly visitor from Rustic Upstate for a decade-plus, it was interesting to see the Great Gotham as a pilgrim from the hinterlands. Coming after a five year hiatus, it was not surprising to see this mighty city, as battered about as it has been during the latter half of that interval, with a whole new perspective. (The fixity in Time of that prior visit was assured by the occasion of standing in Times Square, within a day or so of nineteen years from when I first arrived in NYC looking for a job. Gone was the Nathan's Famous just up the block from the welfare hotel I had found in "New York on $15 a Day" and stayed in for the first two nights of my new life. A world class tourist destination had replaced an exemplar of sleaze.) 

I found a city a bit worse for the wear of relentless waves of financial comeuppance, but still emanating a magnetic pull on the ambitious and the well-heeled. For once, I was actually pleased that there was an extra twenty minutes or so of flight time. The circling prior to landing at LGA as afternoon was giving way to evening provided a splendid reminder of why New York City is one of the world's great natural harbors. The bus ride in from the airport was actually about the same price as the van ride in 1985, and immeasurably less stressful. The triggering of memories began in earnest at the Midtown Tunnel, which once you are inside of might as well be the Lincoln Tunnel. This brought back a flood of memories, of catching that 6:18 Lakeland Express out of Dover, NJ, and of stepping out into the freezing cold much more than the relief of stepping into air conditioning after a long summer's slog to and through the Port Authority. The next vivid memory jogger was probably that subway aroma which wafts up through the grates in the sidewalk as I made my way past Grand Central and up to my night's lodging (which set me back more than our  monthly rent was for the first few years we were married).

We might be in the wake of an immolation of consumer net worth of historic proportions, but NYC does not seem to have stopped drawing tourists from all over the world. I overheard one, inadvertently funny as she mangled a familiar riddle to a tour guide, "Where is Grant buried?", and I just might have heard a permutation of "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?". Of course, one also hears an array of peculiar utterances from some of the true (24/7) locals of midtown, such as a remarkably realistic and persistent meowing from one old fellow shuffling along under the scaffolding. The tourists were probably a bit more skewed to foreign than I remember (as were many of the apparent owners of buildings). Midday along the lower edge of Central Park saw the horse drawn carriages hard at work (the horses anyway), as well as a bit of a dust-up between cops and pedicab drivers (which don't strike a chord, memory-wise), which I later found out via the NY Post was part of an ongoing roust. 

Speaking of transportation, the cabs seem to be evolving in the direction of either crossover SUVs or the more eco-friendly but so-small-we-better-take-two direction. A few of them sported a refreshingly candid ad by a law firm, "Complicating Divorce Proceedings since 1971". They also seemed to be much more available than what past experience would have deemed normal, but maybe it only seems that way when you don't need one. One of the great things about midtown Manhattan is that if you are reasonably fit and the weather is not at one of its occasional extremes you can get around very easily on foot. While there seemed to be fewer people to step over than I can remember (from the early years, anyway), there seemed to be more trash to step over, even in parts of town that recollection strikes me as more or less immaculate. The municipal entity that is NYC is clearly straining under pressures it was not feeling in 2004. Building security, on the other hand, would seem to be in about the same overbearing state as it was at that last visit. 

It was a pleasant and productive trip, but I find myself in no great hurry to go back, and not just because pricing of meals, rooms, etc. seem to be set with "someone else's pre-tax dollars", and I am using my own now. The "glamour" of travel went way down hill about 24 hours after arrival, where back at LGA it was ascertained that my flight to ATL would be delayed. (due to bad weather in NY, they said, though whatever rain fell that morning had stopped before noon.) Indeed it was, just enough to induce an unintended extra night on the road. Along the way, I would be reacquainted with that nemesis of travelers, CNN. There seems to be almost no place one can stand in a gate area and not hear the iterative bleatings of a succession of people you could not pay me to voluntarily abide (Okay, maybe for $50/hour, but for no more than two hours a day.) What an inducement to get back home to where such pariahs can be forcibly ejected, were they to have to bad sense to show up at my doorstep. This is one of my lingering doubts about the very long term future of air travel as a consumer good, a very slow and subtle addition to what I have previously referred to as the all in cost of travel.

New York City has clearly been chastened by all that was coming undone on a more or less daily basis this time a year ago. It has been badly stretched, as it was when I was working on Sixth Avenue in 1990 and saw the building under construction out my window just stop going up (and stay that way for a couple of years at least). Something tells me, though, that no matter how badly some of its parts and some of its players might have been mangled, it is a very long way from a breaking point.