So here we are. Six days and nights, four boroughs and a million photographs later, there's still so much that I have left undone, unclicked and unexplored in New York, New York. As I gaze through the window of my Northwest flight to Minneapolis in Terminal 4 of JFK International Airport, (which, by the way, has now replaced LHR as my favourite airport) I notice an Air India aircraft parked at the next gate; the sheer international representation of aircraft at the terminal (Aer Lingus, Swissair, El Al, Bangladesh Biman, Virgin Atlantic, KLM, Delta, Air India, Singapore Airlines, Lufthansa, Alitalia to name but a few) is unlike anything I've seen before; the Chinese lady in the seat next to mine is starting on Jhumpa Lahiri’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Interpreter of Maladies” at the same time that I start on her next book “The Namesake” – it is such small pleasures that make life joyful.
I also know now why no-one ever mentions the all-important fact that New York is not at all flat but slopes every which way - there's so much other stuff to talk about that this obscure factoid gets lost in the bright lights of Broadway.
I can't wait for my next trip to a new destination.
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
New York: Day 6
Monday was again a tourist day, albeit not nearly as busy as the previous week. After a refreshing night’s sleep I continued my touristy ways by visiting the United Nations headquarters at 42nd Street and 1st Avenue.
I took the one-hour tour that is the only way visitors are permitted to enter the various halls, and while it was impressive to actually sit in the General Assembly Hall and the Security Council Chamber, I didn’t learn much more about the UN than I already knew. They did have some fabulous gifts from member nations on display and a moving exhibit on the immense destructive power of the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Other exhibits documented the UN’s peacekeeping efforts around the world and activities of the various world organizations under its umbrella. And as a bonus, I finally was able to get a good photograph of the Chrysler Building from inside the UN.
I then headed west on the M42 cross-town bus to Pier 86 on 12th Avenue to see the Intrepid aircraft carrier that now houses the Sea-Air-Space Museum, only to discover that the museum is closed on Mondays in the winter season.
Cursing myself for forgetting that all-important fact (I had made a note of it while planning my trip), I headed back towards Times Square to visit Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum on 42nd and Broadway.
While it is more expensive than any of the other attractions, I thoroughly enjoyed the hour or so I spent there, walking through a celebrity party “hosted” by Ru Paul and “attended” by anybody who was anybody, from Julia Roberts to Tony Bennett, then a room full of famous political and artistic figures and through to an excellent display of popular cultural icons like Madonna and Michael Jordan. Along the way I discovered that Salma Hayek is absolutely the perfect height for me, which just about made my day and week and decade!
The statues were so lifelike I could have sworn I saw a couple of them move while I was walking around the exhibit. In fact, on one occasion a lady was standing so completely still in front of a statue of John F. Kennedy that for a brief embarrassing second (until she blinked) I was honestly unsure if she was part of the exhibit or not!
The Empire State Building at 34th Street and 5th Avenue was next, but there’s nothing really spectacular about this one (especially if you hate waiting in line) if you’ve been up the John Hancock or Sears Tower in Chicago, or the Gateway Arch in St. Louis or any tall structure in other cities. It was a hazy day too, which meant that the Statue of Liberty and points south were practically invisible, so after spending the obligatory five minutes walking around the observation deck I proceeded on to the B&H photography store at 34th Street and 9th Avenue, which is reputed to the largest of its kind in North America.
The store is absolutely fantastic – huge floor area to begin with, and an even larger warehouse in the basement, and all the employees are extremely knowledgeable, able to immediately tell you the specs on any make or model of any type of camera you could care to mention. While I went there to pick some photographic paraphernalia for a friend, I ended up buying a great camera case that fits the 270 mm Vivitar zoom lens on my Minolta X700 as if it was custom-made.
But the really mind-blowing thing about the store is its delivery system. When you make a purchase or want to look at a particular camera, all the salesperson does is punch it up on the computer. In a matter of seconds, a robotic manipulator down in the basement picks up the equipment from a shelf, drops it in a basket, which then rides up a chute onto a system of conveyor belts that run all over the ceiling of the main floor and sends the requested item to the appropriate counter. The entire process is automated and works so efficiently and beautifully it gladdened the engineer in me.
Finally done with all that I had time for, I headed to the subway station to take the train uptown, but not before I squeezed in a quick shot of Madison Square Garden at 33rd Street and 7th Avenue.
I took the one-hour tour that is the only way visitors are permitted to enter the various halls, and while it was impressive to actually sit in the General Assembly Hall and the Security Council Chamber, I didn’t learn much more about the UN than I already knew. They did have some fabulous gifts from member nations on display and a moving exhibit on the immense destructive power of the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Other exhibits documented the UN’s peacekeeping efforts around the world and activities of the various world organizations under its umbrella. And as a bonus, I finally was able to get a good photograph of the Chrysler Building from inside the UN.
I then headed west on the M42 cross-town bus to Pier 86 on 12th Avenue to see the Intrepid aircraft carrier that now houses the Sea-Air-Space Museum, only to discover that the museum is closed on Mondays in the winter season.
Cursing myself for forgetting that all-important fact (I had made a note of it while planning my trip), I headed back towards Times Square to visit Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum on 42nd and Broadway.
While it is more expensive than any of the other attractions, I thoroughly enjoyed the hour or so I spent there, walking through a celebrity party “hosted” by Ru Paul and “attended” by anybody who was anybody, from Julia Roberts to Tony Bennett, then a room full of famous political and artistic figures and through to an excellent display of popular cultural icons like Madonna and Michael Jordan. Along the way I discovered that Salma Hayek is absolutely the perfect height for me, which just about made my day and week and decade!
The statues were so lifelike I could have sworn I saw a couple of them move while I was walking around the exhibit. In fact, on one occasion a lady was standing so completely still in front of a statue of John F. Kennedy that for a brief embarrassing second (until she blinked) I was honestly unsure if she was part of the exhibit or not!
The Empire State Building at 34th Street and 5th Avenue was next, but there’s nothing really spectacular about this one (especially if you hate waiting in line) if you’ve been up the John Hancock or Sears Tower in Chicago, or the Gateway Arch in St. Louis or any tall structure in other cities. It was a hazy day too, which meant that the Statue of Liberty and points south were practically invisible, so after spending the obligatory five minutes walking around the observation deck I proceeded on to the B&H photography store at 34th Street and 9th Avenue, which is reputed to the largest of its kind in North America.
The store is absolutely fantastic – huge floor area to begin with, and an even larger warehouse in the basement, and all the employees are extremely knowledgeable, able to immediately tell you the specs on any make or model of any type of camera you could care to mention. While I went there to pick some photographic paraphernalia for a friend, I ended up buying a great camera case that fits the 270 mm Vivitar zoom lens on my Minolta X700 as if it was custom-made.
But the really mind-blowing thing about the store is its delivery system. When you make a purchase or want to look at a particular camera, all the salesperson does is punch it up on the computer. In a matter of seconds, a robotic manipulator down in the basement picks up the equipment from a shelf, drops it in a basket, which then rides up a chute onto a system of conveyor belts that run all over the ceiling of the main floor and sends the requested item to the appropriate counter. The entire process is automated and works so efficiently and beautifully it gladdened the engineer in me.
Finally done with all that I had time for, I headed to the subway station to take the train uptown, but not before I squeezed in a quick shot of Madison Square Garden at 33rd Street and 7th Avenue.
New York: Day 5
Sunday dawned bright and early for rest of New York I’m sure, but I only woke up around 10 am, already late for my planned trip to the Bronx Zoo, located at Fordham Road and the Bronx River Parkway, which has the reputation of being one of the best zoos in the world. Between getting ready and convincing Luvshack to do the same, we managed to leave the house only after noon and it was already 1 pm when we got the Zoo, which meant that we had to curtail our visit and limit it to specific exhibits that we wanted to see.
Thus, we raced through Jungle World, the Congo Gorilla Forest and African exhibits and then stopped for lunch at the Dancing Crane Café in the Zoo, where I was able to observe in detail the feeding habits of Homo sapiens. Another friend of mine had driven up to the city from Allentown, PA that afternoon and we met up with him in the restaurant en route to Tiger Mountain which due to time constraints was the last exhibit we were able to visit.
I really liked the displays at the Bronx Zoo and their signal service to conservation of various species such as the lowland gorilla. I would dearly love to return there and spend a whole day or two or a lifetime going through all the exhibits.
After about an hour of R&R at home, we rode the subway down to Greenwich Village where we stepped into a bar called The Pure Lounge for a brief while to listen to some live jazz. The place looks kind of shady with dim blue lighting and the band seemed pretty listless too, although Ginnetta, the main performer (and I use that term in several senses), was quite adamant, and not a little irritating, about getting the audience involved even against their wishes.
They wound up their show by 9 pm and there was another band scheduled to follow, but we decided to get something to eat as my PA friend had to get back to New Jersey by midnight to pick up his car. So we ended up at Wild Ginger, a nice Thai restaurant on Grove Street just off Bleecker Street. Excellent décor and ambience and great food.
Thus, we raced through Jungle World, the Congo Gorilla Forest and African exhibits and then stopped for lunch at the Dancing Crane Café in the Zoo, where I was able to observe in detail the feeding habits of Homo sapiens. Another friend of mine had driven up to the city from Allentown, PA that afternoon and we met up with him in the restaurant en route to Tiger Mountain which due to time constraints was the last exhibit we were able to visit.
I really liked the displays at the Bronx Zoo and their signal service to conservation of various species such as the lowland gorilla. I would dearly love to return there and spend a whole day or two or a lifetime going through all the exhibits.
After about an hour of R&R at home, we rode the subway down to Greenwich Village where we stepped into a bar called The Pure Lounge for a brief while to listen to some live jazz. The place looks kind of shady with dim blue lighting and the band seemed pretty listless too, although Ginnetta, the main performer (and I use that term in several senses), was quite adamant, and not a little irritating, about getting the audience involved even against their wishes.
They wound up their show by 9 pm and there was another band scheduled to follow, but we decided to get something to eat as my PA friend had to get back to New Jersey by midnight to pick up his car. So we ended up at Wild Ginger, a nice Thai restaurant on Grove Street just off Bleecker Street. Excellent décor and ambience and great food.
New York: Day 4
What with two days of walking and staying up all night Friday, I only woke up at one in the afternoon, fairly disgusted with myself for having wasted a whole morning in New York. In hindsight though, the relatively relaxed day rested me enough for another assault on the city starting Sunday.
Saturday afternoon my friend and I took the subway down to Soho, with a view to people-watch and take in the World Trade Center site in the process. Our leisurely stroll took us down Broadway through Soho (after South of Houston, a street in Lower Manhattan) and Tribeca (after Triangle below Canal Street), passing the western edge of Chinatown along Broadway.
These areas reminded me very strongly of Brigade Road in Bangalore or the Chowringhee area in Calcutta. Teeming masses of people everywhere, roadside stalls selling drinks, hot pretzels and hot dogs (I couldn’t leave New York without buying a hot dog from a hot dog stand!), and people hawking wares on the sidewalk. Everything is available here, from pirated copies of the latest movies to $5 ties that look so good that I couldn’t resist buying one.
The walk brought us to the corner of Fulton and Church, the site where the World Trade Center stood until recently. While not as poignant a scene as you would think, Ground Zero did give us brief pause for thought. Here, while re-energizing ourselves with cheesecake and hot chocolate, we got a frantic call from Kai, one of Luvshack’s colleagues at AIESEC at whose place we were supposed to be having an international potluck dinner that evening. Forgetting that Americans tend to eat earlier than we are used to, we had assumed that the dinner had been scheduled for 9 pm, but the call reminded us that we had only forty-five minutes to get to Kai’s place. Not being able to cook anything in such a short time, we stopped off at a hole-in-the-wall Bangladeshi restaurant in downtown Manhattan for four orders of chicken curry, vegetables and rice on our way to Queens.
The potluck was fun – AIESEC, being an international student organization, has a very interesting group of people. There was Simonetta and her boyfriend from Germany, Kai from China and her boyfriend Juan from Colombia, Oussama from Tunisia and his roommate Yacina from Morocco, Rickesh from India, and Suzanne from the US. The food was great: another session of brik courtesy Suzanne, Simonetta's "German fruit" (thanks a ton for that btw!) and Kai's delicious beef and chicken dishes. Oussama and Juan contributed as well, but unfortunately by that point I was too full to taste what they had brought or remember their names. However, it was, by all other accounts, superb.
We were supposed to go to a Greek club called Cavo at 31st Avenue and 42nd Street in Queens after the potluck, but being in sneakers, I was denied entry, which actually suited a few others and me just fine. So, while most of the people went in, Rickesh, Luvshack, Oussama, Yacina and I hopped on the subway back to Manhattan.
I followed the India-Pakistan score for a little while but soon the quantities of exotic red wine I had consumed got the better of me and I drifted off into a deep dreamless sleep.
Saturday afternoon my friend and I took the subway down to Soho, with a view to people-watch and take in the World Trade Center site in the process. Our leisurely stroll took us down Broadway through Soho (after South of Houston, a street in Lower Manhattan) and Tribeca (after Triangle below Canal Street), passing the western edge of Chinatown along Broadway.
These areas reminded me very strongly of Brigade Road in Bangalore or the Chowringhee area in Calcutta. Teeming masses of people everywhere, roadside stalls selling drinks, hot pretzels and hot dogs (I couldn’t leave New York without buying a hot dog from a hot dog stand!), and people hawking wares on the sidewalk. Everything is available here, from pirated copies of the latest movies to $5 ties that look so good that I couldn’t resist buying one.
The walk brought us to the corner of Fulton and Church, the site where the World Trade Center stood until recently. While not as poignant a scene as you would think, Ground Zero did give us brief pause for thought. Here, while re-energizing ourselves with cheesecake and hot chocolate, we got a frantic call from Kai, one of Luvshack’s colleagues at AIESEC at whose place we were supposed to be having an international potluck dinner that evening. Forgetting that Americans tend to eat earlier than we are used to, we had assumed that the dinner had been scheduled for 9 pm, but the call reminded us that we had only forty-five minutes to get to Kai’s place. Not being able to cook anything in such a short time, we stopped off at a hole-in-the-wall Bangladeshi restaurant in downtown Manhattan for four orders of chicken curry, vegetables and rice on our way to Queens.
The potluck was fun – AIESEC, being an international student organization, has a very interesting group of people. There was Simonetta and her boyfriend from Germany, Kai from China and her boyfriend Juan from Colombia, Oussama from Tunisia and his roommate Yacina from Morocco, Rickesh from India, and Suzanne from the US. The food was great: another session of brik courtesy Suzanne, Simonetta's "German fruit" (thanks a ton for that btw!) and Kai's delicious beef and chicken dishes. Oussama and Juan contributed as well, but unfortunately by that point I was too full to taste what they had brought or remember their names. However, it was, by all other accounts, superb.
We were supposed to go to a Greek club called Cavo at 31st Avenue and 42nd Street in Queens after the potluck, but being in sneakers, I was denied entry, which actually suited a few others and me just fine. So, while most of the people went in, Rickesh, Luvshack, Oussama, Yacina and I hopped on the subway back to Manhattan.
I followed the India-Pakistan score for a little while but soon the quantities of exotic red wine I had consumed got the better of me and I drifted off into a deep dreamless sleep.
New York: Day 3
Four words. Metropolitan Museum of Art. This gargantuan museum is situated in Central Park at 82nd Street and 5th Avenue, a convenient twenty-minute stroll from Luvshack's shack.
The Met, as this museum is popularly known, houses collections from ancient Egypt through to the modern day. Unfortunately, it was something of a letdown for me, since I had been expecting something more along the lines of the Art Institute of Chicago, which consists predominantly of paintings and sculptures. The Met is, as its name implies, a museum rather than an art gallery – with more artifacts and less art than I would have liked. While the Egyptian exhibit was quite fascinating (as my trigger-happy friend and I will testify), I didn’t find anything else particularly exciting until I reached the nineteenth century paintings section on the second floor. There I spent a happy three hours staring at Gauguin, Degas, Manet, Monet, van Gogh, Renoir and Rodin. In doing so I realized that my fascination for the Impressionist period only grows stronger with each new museum I visit. I also realized, to my surprise and pleasure, that I had begun to be able to identify different periods of art by their style, from the twelfth through to the early twentieth centuries.
Although the Met is open till 9 pm on Fridays, I had to leave earlier to get to Carnegie Hall at 57th Street and 7th Avenue for a New York Pops concert at 8 pm. I had serendipitously obtained two tickets to this show the previous week via an online miles auction on the Continental Airlines website while looking for cheap tickets to New York.
The concert, consisting of popular American film themes, was decent. The guest conductor and pianist, Michel Legrand, theme music from “Lentl” and a song called “The Windmills Of Your Mind” from The Thomas Crown Affair were particularly memorable and I would probably have enjoyed the evening more had it not been for the fact that the main singer, Monica Mancini, Henry Mancini’s daughter, was insufferably arrogant and annoying and that Carnegie Hall, for all its hype and amazing acoustics, is more cramped than the average subway train. Still, being there and (again serendipitously) attending the same performance as former astronaut and current senator John Glenn was a fairly unique experience!
That night, Luvshack and I did the unimaginably geeky thing of playing Unreal Tournament online till 5 am.
The Met, as this museum is popularly known, houses collections from ancient Egypt through to the modern day. Unfortunately, it was something of a letdown for me, since I had been expecting something more along the lines of the Art Institute of Chicago, which consists predominantly of paintings and sculptures. The Met is, as its name implies, a museum rather than an art gallery – with more artifacts and less art than I would have liked. While the Egyptian exhibit was quite fascinating (as my trigger-happy friend and I will testify), I didn’t find anything else particularly exciting until I reached the nineteenth century paintings section on the second floor. There I spent a happy three hours staring at Gauguin, Degas, Manet, Monet, van Gogh, Renoir and Rodin. In doing so I realized that my fascination for the Impressionist period only grows stronger with each new museum I visit. I also realized, to my surprise and pleasure, that I had begun to be able to identify different periods of art by their style, from the twelfth through to the early twentieth centuries.
Although the Met is open till 9 pm on Fridays, I had to leave earlier to get to Carnegie Hall at 57th Street and 7th Avenue for a New York Pops concert at 8 pm. I had serendipitously obtained two tickets to this show the previous week via an online miles auction on the Continental Airlines website while looking for cheap tickets to New York.
The concert, consisting of popular American film themes, was decent. The guest conductor and pianist, Michel Legrand, theme music from “Lentl” and a song called “The Windmills Of Your Mind” from The Thomas Crown Affair were particularly memorable and I would probably have enjoyed the evening more had it not been for the fact that the main singer, Monica Mancini, Henry Mancini’s daughter, was insufferably arrogant and annoying and that Carnegie Hall, for all its hype and amazing acoustics, is more cramped than the average subway train. Still, being there and (again serendipitously) attending the same performance as former astronaut and current senator John Glenn was a fairly unique experience!
That night, Luvshack and I did the unimaginably geeky thing of playing Unreal Tournament online till 5 am.
New York: Day 2
Before we begin, a little background: New York City consists of five "boroughs", the centrally placed island of Manhattan flanked by the Bronx due north, Queens in the east, Brooklyn in the southeast and Staten Island southwest. My buddy Luvshack lives on the Upper East Side at 97th Street and Madison Avenue, in a posh old-money neighbourhood of Manhattan, a block and a half away from the vast expanse of greenery that is Central Park.
Thursday was a gloomy day with a light drizzle. Probably not the best day for sightseeing, but my limited time in the city left me with no choice. So I took the train south to Battery Park to board the ferry to Liberty Island, where the Statue of Liberty is located.
As a tourist attraction it is sort of like the Taj Mahal - you hear and read so much about it that actually seeing it is not as awe-inspiring as it could have been. And it doesn't help that after 9/11 you're not allowed to climb up to the crown any more. In fact, you're not even allowed to set foot on the base, an eleven-pointed star that used to be Fort Wood.
After walking around Liberty Island and taking more pictures and video of seagulls and Canadian geese than the imposing monument, I boarded the ferry to Ellis Island. The island, originally the point of arrival for thousands of people from all over the world now houses an excellent exhibit recording the early twentieth century wave of immigrants entering New York Harbour. I originally thought I'd be done with Ellis Island in half an hour, but the tour was so fascinating that I ended up staying till the 5 pm closing time!
I think part of the attraction of Ellis Island is that the events it describes are old enough to merit a museum exhibit but recent enough to have an immediacy and a sense of belonging that other exhibits lack. There are actual disembarkation cards and medical reports on display, passenger manifests that allow you to search for ancestors who might have entered New York in the early 1900s, interactive displays listing various immigrant populations living in the US today and audio recordings of immigrants reminiscing about their experiences.
The rest of the day was really busy too, albeit completely unplanned. Riding on the subway back to my buddy's place I noticed that the train stopped at Wall Street and Grand Central Terminal, so I decided to visit these two landmarks as well.
Easier said than done…
Walking up Broadway on the west sidewalk, I completely missed Wall Street the first time. The reason, I discovered while walking back down on the other side of the street, is that the most powerful financial market in the world is located in an alley no more than twenty-odd feet wide that ends on the eastern side of Broadway! Quite a shock, but I recovered well enough to take that most predictable of photos: a Wall Street sign in front of the New York Stock Exchange building. (Just as an aside I was carrying my flash-less Minolta X700 SLR loaded with 800-speed film, Canon camcorder and Luvshack's Fuji point-and-shoot digital camera – taking all three along was the smartest decision I made.)
It was about 6 pm and the movers and shakers were swarming in the streets, in their power suits, black (the colour of choice in the City) overcoats, laptop bags, miscellaneous electronic paraphernalia and a uniform sense of hurry. Not being a particularly people person and having had my touristy wants momentarily satisfied, I hopped back on the now-crowded subway up to Grand Central.
The gigantic structure that is Grand Central Terminal is located on 42nd Street and Park Avenue. Here, I noticed signs for a train shuttle to Times Square at 42nd and Broadway and an exit to the Chrysler Building. So after a quick touristy photo of the Great Hall, I walked out to find the latter, but after about ten minutes of aimless wandering with no Chrysler Building in sight I had almost given it up as a bad job. But looking at the map more closely, I suddenly realized that it had been, metaphorically speaking, right under my nose the whole time – at the corner of 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue across the street from the station, its grand stainless steel spire impossible to see from the street so close to the building! So, prevented by geography from taking another tourist photo, I got back into the subway station to take the shuttle to Times Square.
Wheeeeeeow! Times Square is the single most over-the-top lavish garish opulent place I’ve seen (Las Vegas has yet to happen). Incredibly bright lights, spinning, flashing, sparkling signs everywhere – the “Crossroads of the World” is truly magnificent. Every store, even the humble MacDonald’s, is decorated to suit its location. But the display I liked the best was a three-dimensional Washington Mutual home loan ad showing Jack climbing a giant green beanstalk to his dream palace in the clouds. There’s just so much dazzle it’s a wonder that drivers don’t get into accidents more often.
After gawking around in the perpetually crowded streets for a few minutes I took refuge in a souvenir store where I picked up – but of course – an “I 'Heart' NY” pin. Looking at my map in this less claustrophobic environment, I noticed that Rockefeller Center was not too far away, so I decided to trudge my way there.
Rockefeller Plaza, on 50th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues, looks like something straight out of Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead”. I don’t know when the place was built, but it was almost as if Rand had set her book there. More touristy photos later I met up with Luvshack who had bailed out of a yuppie meeting with fellow Yale admits at a bar called Whiskey Blue. After a dinner at the modest T.G.I. Friday’s and cursory glances at Radio City Music Hall, Saks Fifth Avenue and St. Patrick’s Cathedral, we wended our tired way home.
Thursday was a gloomy day with a light drizzle. Probably not the best day for sightseeing, but my limited time in the city left me with no choice. So I took the train south to Battery Park to board the ferry to Liberty Island, where the Statue of Liberty is located.
As a tourist attraction it is sort of like the Taj Mahal - you hear and read so much about it that actually seeing it is not as awe-inspiring as it could have been. And it doesn't help that after 9/11 you're not allowed to climb up to the crown any more. In fact, you're not even allowed to set foot on the base, an eleven-pointed star that used to be Fort Wood.
After walking around Liberty Island and taking more pictures and video of seagulls and Canadian geese than the imposing monument, I boarded the ferry to Ellis Island. The island, originally the point of arrival for thousands of people from all over the world now houses an excellent exhibit recording the early twentieth century wave of immigrants entering New York Harbour. I originally thought I'd be done with Ellis Island in half an hour, but the tour was so fascinating that I ended up staying till the 5 pm closing time!
I think part of the attraction of Ellis Island is that the events it describes are old enough to merit a museum exhibit but recent enough to have an immediacy and a sense of belonging that other exhibits lack. There are actual disembarkation cards and medical reports on display, passenger manifests that allow you to search for ancestors who might have entered New York in the early 1900s, interactive displays listing various immigrant populations living in the US today and audio recordings of immigrants reminiscing about their experiences.
The rest of the day was really busy too, albeit completely unplanned. Riding on the subway back to my buddy's place I noticed that the train stopped at Wall Street and Grand Central Terminal, so I decided to visit these two landmarks as well.
Easier said than done…
Walking up Broadway on the west sidewalk, I completely missed Wall Street the first time. The reason, I discovered while walking back down on the other side of the street, is that the most powerful financial market in the world is located in an alley no more than twenty-odd feet wide that ends on the eastern side of Broadway! Quite a shock, but I recovered well enough to take that most predictable of photos: a Wall Street sign in front of the New York Stock Exchange building. (Just as an aside I was carrying my flash-less Minolta X700 SLR loaded with 800-speed film, Canon camcorder and Luvshack's Fuji point-and-shoot digital camera – taking all three along was the smartest decision I made.)
It was about 6 pm and the movers and shakers were swarming in the streets, in their power suits, black (the colour of choice in the City) overcoats, laptop bags, miscellaneous electronic paraphernalia and a uniform sense of hurry. Not being a particularly people person and having had my touristy wants momentarily satisfied, I hopped back on the now-crowded subway up to Grand Central.
The gigantic structure that is Grand Central Terminal is located on 42nd Street and Park Avenue. Here, I noticed signs for a train shuttle to Times Square at 42nd and Broadway and an exit to the Chrysler Building. So after a quick touristy photo of the Great Hall, I walked out to find the latter, but after about ten minutes of aimless wandering with no Chrysler Building in sight I had almost given it up as a bad job. But looking at the map more closely, I suddenly realized that it had been, metaphorically speaking, right under my nose the whole time – at the corner of 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue across the street from the station, its grand stainless steel spire impossible to see from the street so close to the building! So, prevented by geography from taking another tourist photo, I got back into the subway station to take the shuttle to Times Square.
Wheeeeeeow! Times Square is the single most over-the-top lavish garish opulent place I’ve seen (Las Vegas has yet to happen). Incredibly bright lights, spinning, flashing, sparkling signs everywhere – the “Crossroads of the World” is truly magnificent. Every store, even the humble MacDonald’s, is decorated to suit its location. But the display I liked the best was a three-dimensional Washington Mutual home loan ad showing Jack climbing a giant green beanstalk to his dream palace in the clouds. There’s just so much dazzle it’s a wonder that drivers don’t get into accidents more often.
After gawking around in the perpetually crowded streets for a few minutes I took refuge in a souvenir store where I picked up – but of course – an “I 'Heart' NY” pin. Looking at my map in this less claustrophobic environment, I noticed that Rockefeller Center was not too far away, so I decided to trudge my way there.
Rockefeller Plaza, on 50th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues, looks like something straight out of Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead”. I don’t know when the place was built, but it was almost as if Rand had set her book there. More touristy photos later I met up with Luvshack who had bailed out of a yuppie meeting with fellow Yale admits at a bar called Whiskey Blue. After a dinner at the modest T.G.I. Friday’s and cursory glances at Radio City Music Hall, Saks Fifth Avenue and St. Patrick’s Cathedral, we wended our tired way home.
Sunday, March 28, 2004
New York: Day 1 continued...
When I finally got to my gate, I found that my flight had just left, but an angel in the (very successful) guise of a Northwest Airlines ticketing agent got me a seat on a flight leaving for Minneapolis in twenty minutes, connecting to La Guardia half an hour later and reaching New York at 5 pm, only an hour later than my original flight was scheduled to land!
That evening my buddy and I went to a quaint and expensive little Tunisian restaurant called Épices du Traiteur (which loosely translates to “Spices of the Delicatessen”) on the Upper West Side at 70th Street and Columbus Avenue. We were celebrating the birthday of a Tunisian colleague of his, and it was a fairly interesting evening with a tremendously international flavour to it. There were seven different nationalities represented at that table, so I can only imagine what the office atmosphere at AIESEC must be like!
The food was interesting, although I must admit it’s not something I would enjoy on a daily basis. We ordered a bunch of appetizers and entrees and shared them among us. Most of the names escape me at this point, but I do remember this deep-fried concoction stuffed with tuna and egg and vegetables called brik that was quite tasty. There was also a spinach-and-mint flavoured rice that was delicious and a decent chicken couscous. Most of the food goes well with a spicy sauce called harissa that is very Indian in its flavour.
That evening my buddy and I went to a quaint and expensive little Tunisian restaurant called Épices du Traiteur (which loosely translates to “Spices of the Delicatessen”) on the Upper West Side at 70th Street and Columbus Avenue. We were celebrating the birthday of a Tunisian colleague of his, and it was a fairly interesting evening with a tremendously international flavour to it. There were seven different nationalities represented at that table, so I can only imagine what the office atmosphere at AIESEC must be like!
The food was interesting, although I must admit it’s not something I would enjoy on a daily basis. We ordered a bunch of appetizers and entrees and shared them among us. Most of the names escape me at this point, but I do remember this deep-fried concoction stuffed with tuna and egg and vegetables called brik that was quite tasty. There was also a spinach-and-mint flavoured rice that was delicious and a decent chicken couscous. Most of the food goes well with a spicy sauce called harissa that is very Indian in its flavour.
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
New York Diary: Day 1
Like every other major trip I have made in the last few years, this one was fraught with drama, despite my going to the extreme length of checking in online the previous day so as not to waste time at the airport.
My flight was scheduled to leave Chicago at 10.35 am, so I figured I'd wake up around 6.45 and leave by 7.30 because the train ride to O'Hare takes almost two hours. Unfortunately, what with sleeping late and trying to keep up with the score in the last India-Pakistan ODI, I only got out of the house by 8, but even so I managed to get to ORD by about 9.35. So far so good.
But that's where the fun started. Looking at the monitors in the terminal, I found that NW 1926 to JFK was conspicuous by its absence. Had I gotten the time wrong? Had the flight been cancelled? I pulled out my boarding card to check the time, and there it was. In big bold letters at the top of the page were the letters M D W. My flight left from Midway! (Note to self: write to Mayor Daley denouncing this devilish ploy to confuse poor Chicagoans by having not one, not two but three airports in the same city.)
It's already 9.40 and I don't see any way I'm going to make that or any other flight. But I wasn't going to give up so easily. I'd been looking forward to this trip so much I'd be damned if a mere airport mix-up would keep me from it. So I jumped into a cab and told the driver to take me to Midway on the double.
At that point I was still hoping to make it by 10.30 and beg and plead my way through security check and make my flight. I even called Northwest Airlines en route hoping against hope that some fortuitous coincidence would have delayed my flight. While that proved to be wishful thinking, we raced down the Tri-State in record time, which made me think that I might still be able to make it. But then we hit the inbound Stevenson, which was backed up for about a mile and I, surprisingly un-panicked, watched the minutes slowly but inexorably tick away beyond 10.35.
Still hoping that some miracle had held the flight up, I raced to the terminal, only to be held up another ten minutes at the horrible bottleneck that is the security checkpoint at Midway (note to self: cuss out Midway administration). When I finally got to my gate, I...
So did I make my flight? What do you think?
My flight was scheduled to leave Chicago at 10.35 am, so I figured I'd wake up around 6.45 and leave by 7.30 because the train ride to O'Hare takes almost two hours. Unfortunately, what with sleeping late and trying to keep up with the score in the last India-Pakistan ODI, I only got out of the house by 8, but even so I managed to get to ORD by about 9.35. So far so good.
But that's where the fun started. Looking at the monitors in the terminal, I found that NW 1926 to JFK was conspicuous by its absence. Had I gotten the time wrong? Had the flight been cancelled? I pulled out my boarding card to check the time, and there it was. In big bold letters at the top of the page were the letters M D W. My flight left from Midway! (Note to self: write to Mayor Daley denouncing this devilish ploy to confuse poor Chicagoans by having not one, not two but three airports in the same city.)
It's already 9.40 and I don't see any way I'm going to make that or any other flight. But I wasn't going to give up so easily. I'd been looking forward to this trip so much I'd be damned if a mere airport mix-up would keep me from it. So I jumped into a cab and told the driver to take me to Midway on the double.
At that point I was still hoping to make it by 10.30 and beg and plead my way through security check and make my flight. I even called Northwest Airlines en route hoping against hope that some fortuitous coincidence would have delayed my flight. While that proved to be wishful thinking, we raced down the Tri-State in record time, which made me think that I might still be able to make it. But then we hit the inbound Stevenson, which was backed up for about a mile and I, surprisingly un-panicked, watched the minutes slowly but inexorably tick away beyond 10.35.
Still hoping that some miracle had held the flight up, I raced to the terminal, only to be held up another ten minutes at the horrible bottleneck that is the security checkpoint at Midway (note to self: cuss out Midway administration). When I finally got to my gate, I...
So did I make my flight? What do you think?
Saturday, March 13, 2004
New York, New York (with a little bit of Memphis, Tennessee)
Well, I'm off to the Big Apple tomorrow morning, and man am I excited. I'm in a New York state of mind. I'm finally going to see what all the fuss is all about. And funnily enough, I'm already "heart"-ing NY. Just researching websites about things to do there is getting me high like m---j----. Queensboro Bridge, the Met, Central Perk (and no, that's not a typo).
So my buddy, against his most strident protests, is a total yuppie and lives on the Upper East Side, a block from Central Park and a mile from the Met. Sounds like the perfect place for the crazy hermit to start his assault on the city.
And he's got everything all worked out too. Head south on 5th Avenue and you hit Rockefeller Center, Grand Central Terminal (not Station - tons of websites have corrected me on that), and the Empire State Building. Downtown there's Wall Street, WTC, Battery Park and the ferry to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.
Whole day at the Met, free tickets to the New York Pops at Carnegie Hall (you heard me), Madame Tussaud's, Madison Square Garden, the Intrepid Museum, Times Square, the United Nations, Bronx Zoo. It's going to be a packed six days :)
And this after a road trip last weekend to Memphis to see the B.B. King Blues Club and Graceland. Graceland was cool but BBK was quite a letdown. Any blues club that plays Britney Spears between sets is bad enough. It's infinitely worse if it's BBK and worse still if it's in Memphis, purported to be the birthplace of the blues.
Gracelend, Elvis' estate and home in his adopted city, must have been incredibly lavish by 1960s standards. His ground and first floors remind you of any conventional posh home, but the real treat is in the basement where he has all sorts of bizarre themes and decorations. It's here that his outrageous sense of style got full rein, and some of the results are quite breathtaking.
Descending a staircase down into the basement the first thing that hits you is that the walls on both sides as well as the sloping ceiling are glass-plated. Feeling like something out of 2001: A Space Odyssey you go into Elvis' TV room. This has three TVs, a radio, a record player and other amenities, including a bar off to the right, but the showstopper is another full glass ceiling.
Exiting through another door, you enter Elvis' pool room. Dimly lit, as befits a pool hall, the ceiling is covered in cloth with intricate print patterns and designs radiating out from a central disc, and the walls have more of the same.
Through another door you come out into a large room that is quite extraordinary. Heavy, rough-carved vaguely African-looking furniture with green upholstery, bizarre statues, a huge circular chair and green shag carpeting on the floor and the ceiling give the room a distinct jungle atmosphere. One can only wonder what Elvis was smoking when he decorated this room.
In the grounds of his estate, you enter what used to be his racquetball court but now houses his famously flamboyant costumes and most of his silver, gold and platinum and multi-platinum commemorative records. The sheer number is mindboggling and gives you an idea of the magnitude of his achievements. I wonder if anyone before or since, with the exception of The Beatles, has exuded the kind of worldwide charisma that Elvis the Pelvis, The King, was able to generate.
But I digress. New York Minute. New York, New York. New York State of Mind. New York City. Strawberry Fields. The sheer amount of pop culture that's based in that big bad city is mind-boggling.
And the city that never sleeps won't know what hit it.
So my buddy, against his most strident protests, is a total yuppie and lives on the Upper East Side, a block from Central Park and a mile from the Met. Sounds like the perfect place for the crazy hermit to start his assault on the city.
And he's got everything all worked out too. Head south on 5th Avenue and you hit Rockefeller Center, Grand Central Terminal (not Station - tons of websites have corrected me on that), and the Empire State Building. Downtown there's Wall Street, WTC, Battery Park and the ferry to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.
Whole day at the Met, free tickets to the New York Pops at Carnegie Hall (you heard me), Madame Tussaud's, Madison Square Garden, the Intrepid Museum, Times Square, the United Nations, Bronx Zoo. It's going to be a packed six days :)
And this after a road trip last weekend to Memphis to see the B.B. King Blues Club and Graceland. Graceland was cool but BBK was quite a letdown. Any blues club that plays Britney Spears between sets is bad enough. It's infinitely worse if it's BBK and worse still if it's in Memphis, purported to be the birthplace of the blues.
Gracelend, Elvis' estate and home in his adopted city, must have been incredibly lavish by 1960s standards. His ground and first floors remind you of any conventional posh home, but the real treat is in the basement where he has all sorts of bizarre themes and decorations. It's here that his outrageous sense of style got full rein, and some of the results are quite breathtaking.
Descending a staircase down into the basement the first thing that hits you is that the walls on both sides as well as the sloping ceiling are glass-plated. Feeling like something out of 2001: A Space Odyssey you go into Elvis' TV room. This has three TVs, a radio, a record player and other amenities, including a bar off to the right, but the showstopper is another full glass ceiling.
Exiting through another door, you enter Elvis' pool room. Dimly lit, as befits a pool hall, the ceiling is covered in cloth with intricate print patterns and designs radiating out from a central disc, and the walls have more of the same.
Through another door you come out into a large room that is quite extraordinary. Heavy, rough-carved vaguely African-looking furniture with green upholstery, bizarre statues, a huge circular chair and green shag carpeting on the floor and the ceiling give the room a distinct jungle atmosphere. One can only wonder what Elvis was smoking when he decorated this room.
In the grounds of his estate, you enter what used to be his racquetball court but now houses his famously flamboyant costumes and most of his silver, gold and platinum and multi-platinum commemorative records. The sheer number is mindboggling and gives you an idea of the magnitude of his achievements. I wonder if anyone before or since, with the exception of The Beatles, has exuded the kind of worldwide charisma that Elvis the Pelvis, The King, was able to generate.
But I digress. New York Minute. New York, New York. New York State of Mind. New York City. Strawberry Fields. The sheer amount of pop culture that's based in that big bad city is mind-boggling.
And the city that never sleeps won't know what hit it.
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