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Zero Visibility and other stories (I)
As you can probably tell from the syntax of the previous entry, my trip to New York was exhausting. I slept way too long this morning, and having now caught up on my work backlog a bit, I am ready to tell you some New York stories.
This is long enough that it comes in two parts. This part is mostly about Saturday.
Not Ready Yet
I thought that the track electrification was finished. It obviously wasn't. You still have to use a diesel engine until New Haven, then switch to an electric one there. Can't take a diesel engine in the tunnels under Manhattan, I'd imagine. The change in New Haven takes about ten minutes - less painful than I remember.
On the train ride home we stopped several times because the construction for Amtrak's high speed rail project meant there was only a single track in that section, and we had to stop to wait for another train to come out of it. Funny, on the trip to New York I could have sworn there were many stretches between Boston and New Haven where we only had a single track, and yet we never stopped once on the way down.
Of course, it was also eight-thirty on a Saturday morning, whereas the other trip was six-thirty on a Sunday night.
The Big Red W
I didn't read much on the trip to New York, nor doze, because I was strangely fascinated by staring out the window. I've written on paper about the peculiar scenery from train tracks, and sometime in the future I'll type that up, but the point is that the view didn't matter - something about the idea of scenery passing in front of my eyes lulls me into this trance state and I just bliss out.
The scenery only came in three colors, too - mist gray, pine green, and industrial/rust brown - so that helped with the hypnotic monotony. In two places, though, I was jolted into awareness by color. One was these small fernlike plants with leaves that were such a bright green/yellow you'd have sworn the rail crew had a spray paint accident.
The other was the signs that rail workers hold up as a warning when trains are passing. They are a dangerous red, circular, and they have a big letter W. I don't know whether the signs are for the benefit of the other workers along the tracks or the train driver, but they certainly achieve the goal of visibility from a distance.
Krispy Meme
Last time I went to Manhattan, the island had two Krispy Kreme outlets, one on 23rd at the top of Chelsea, and the other somewhere in Harlem. Now it has many more. In fact, there is at least one in Penn Station, and thus it was that my first act upon leaving the train was to buy two doughnuts.
Saturn, Actual Size
The first ad that really caught my eye in Times Square - even before I'd had a chance to look around - was for the new Saturn LS cars. It said "Saturn, actual size," and there was a full-sized car attached to the billboard, tires and all, with tracks like it had driven along the wall onto the sign. That's wretched excess for you.
Later, I had a chance to stroll around and look at all the billboards and such, but my favorite ad in Times Square was on the side of a bus shelter. It was an ad for an arcade, and it said, "A fistful of quarters can still get you pretty excited in Times Square."
This is only funny if you know what Times Square was like before it became a theme park.
Wrong Hotel
I checked into the wrong hotel. Don't blame me. The Sheraton Manhattan and the Sheraton New York are across the street from each other. The clerk said, "You're checking in at the wrong place, but we can give you a room here, it's no problem." They have the same set of prices, share the same computer data, and don't seem to care much what's where.
The hotel was quite gracious. Because my room had only a queen-size bed, they gave me all sorts of extra perks - none of which I used, of course; I was in my room only for sleep and other bodily functions.
Giant UFO Sound
I had an unusual sandwich for lunch at a chain which is apparently spreading around the city. I can't name the place, of course - I didn't write it down - but they use flatbread, a little like pita bread but chewier, and open it in the middle to insert the fillings. You end up with a low, flat kind of sandwich which tastes great.
After leaving, I was walking across the plaza in front of the sandwich shop and I heard an unearthly special-effects kind of noise, like a UFO landing. I looked down into the sunken courtyard to my left, and indeed, a UFO was landing in it.
No, really. The UFO's a prop, it has loudspeakers that make the noise, and the establishment it belongs to is apparently called Mars 2112. I know nothing more.
Scaffolds and Sidewalks
Manhattan is always under construction. I know, I know, this is probably true of all cities, but I would like once to make a trip here when I do not walk under any scaffolding or suffer a diversion into the street because the sidewalk is closed.
I don't really mind doing either one; the above is just a rhetorical device to express my curiosity that there is always so much construction or repair work being done to the buildings in Manhattan. Boston isn't like this.
One Block at a Time
After checking in, cleaning up, and having my peculiar sandwich, I wandered around for a while before proceeding to Greenwich Village for the reading. I don't have much to report in the way of sights - mostly I was window shopping - but I'd like to note something about WALK signals.
WALK signals are timed exactly wrong. I'm at a corner, say, waiting for the WALK signal before crossing the street, like a good pedestrian. It changes to WALK, I cross the street, and I set off down the block at my normal (fast) stride. No one gets in my way, I don't encounter congestion, the sidewalk is mine. It's a short block (i.e. 32nd to 31st, not 7th Ave to 8th Ave). I get to the next corner just as the next signal is beginning to blink DON'T WALK.
It happened every time. If I started one block when I got the nod to WALK, I'd hit the next corner just when the DON'T WALK was beginning to flash. If I walked anyway, or tried to break the cycle in some other fashion, the next corner would invariably have a solid DON'T WALK - which meant I'd have to stop and wait for a WALK sign, and the cycle would begin again.
I suppose I should thank the city of New York for giving me these enforced rest periods, but I'm not that good a soul. At least once during this visit I ended up riding the subway when I normally would have walked the ten blocks, just because of those damned signals.
Millennial Year
The Budweiser sign in Times Square says "Countdown to the Millennial Year," which I thought was a nice dodge. That way they sidestep the whole 2000/2001 controversy; after all, 2000 can justifiably be called the "millennial year" no matter which side of that argument you prefer.
No More Menus
An odd place, this section of Greenwich Village. I ended up there with nothing to do and too much time to spare. I did not want to arrive early to the party, so I wandered around. I was hoping for more shops with weird clothes and so forth, but didn't find them. Not even Balducci's, which I literally found by accident, could distract me for long. It didn't help that it was mightily hot and a little bit exhausted.
I was amused out of proportion to the event, I believe, when I found out that there is a Gay Street not a block away from the Stonewall memorial.
I passed a shop window - sort of a joke-and-novelty shop - which displayed some bumper-sticker-size signs with a row of Chinese characters, and below that the translation: "No More Menus!"
This made no sense to me, until later, when I was walking past some residences in the same neighborhood and I saw that one front door had a sign on it (handwritten) that said "Please do not leave menus here."
Then all became clear to me. Apparently the Chinese restaurants in the area are a bit too zealous in distributing their takeout menus.
A Brilliant Reading
We all sat at a bunch of tables pushed together in the back of the cafe, and I'm sure the other patrons didn't appreciate our noise level. I hope poor Iko hasn't endangered her friendship with the cafe owners.
I only knew Molly, Patrick, Kymm, and Iko on sight. That would ordinarily not be a fair test, given that this isn't a visual medium, but for whatever reason this isn't a group of journals I normally read. I may have to fix that.
An interesting thing with the readings: Kymm evaluates them on the basis of theatrical skill, but frankly if everyone had done a polished job it wouldn't have been fascinating. What I noticed was that the entries and the voices matched better than I expected. That is, I am amazed at the degree to which everyone's writing style so accurately matched their speaking style. Or maybe that's a fallacy, I don't know. Maybe they were making their speaking style match their writing style. The point is, even the entries which I would not have ordinarily enjoyed reading on the page were interesting when the writer was saying them aloud - and in some cases the way they were saying it was even more interesting than what they were saying.
Near the end of the event, one of the waiters was walking around putting little table tents everywhere. These turned out to be ads for a Tarot reader, which would be okay, except that he had printed his notices on the other side. Comments from people no one has ever heard of, saying things like "A brilliant reading ... very powerful ..."
Only in New York do Tarot readers print their reviews in their ads.
Damned Tourists!
After the gathering ended, sometime around eight, I went to eat at the Comfort Diner and buy some T-shirts there. Then I went back to the hotel room and left my bag, which was beginning to hurt my shoulder, and walked back around Times Suare some more, circa eleven pm.
One thing about this trip to NYC is that I spent more time in Times Square than I ever had before. Times Square is an attitude-changing experience. There is never a time when the sidewalks are uncrowded. There are always huge flocks of people waiting on corners to cross the street. There is always chatter and noise and horns honking.
Although I was a tourist myself, after a few hours I found that I had started thinking unfavorable thoughts about the teeming masses of sightseers. I mean, yes, I was sightseeing too, but there's a difference between doing it intelligently and stupidly. When I crane my neck to look at something, for example, I stop, and I stop in a place that doesn't block traffic. I don't keep moving forward while I gawk and therefore run into someone, or stop in the middle of the sidewalk and therefore hold up traffic.
I eventually got downright malicious about it. I would start crossing the street when the traffic cleared, regardless of the signal (technically known as "jaywalking") just to put some distance between myself and the crowds on the corner. I stopped trying to stay out of the way of people's photographs when I was walking - anyone stupid enough to think they can keep five feet of sidewalk clear of pedestrians for two minutes in Times Square deserves what they get.
I wandered around the general area of Rockefeller Center and discovered the disturbing fact that NBC has a studio store and the tempting fact that Teuscher has a chocolate store (fortunately closed at that hour). I didn't find the Japanese goodies until the next day, though.
Sign being held by a man in Times Square: "Need money for beer, drugs, and hookers." Below that, in smaller letters: "Hey, at least I'm not bullshitting you."
Green Compromises
After a certain hour you must show your room key to the guard before you can enter the hotel elevators.
The hotel room has signs in it explaining that hotel laundry uses a lot of energy, and they're trying to be good, so here's the compromise: If you put sign A on your pillow, it means you want clean sheets; otherwise they won't change them until you check out. Sign B says that if the towels are still folded, or hanging on the bar, they won't replace them with fresh ones. If they're on the floor or the counter, they will.
I thought this was an excellent idea. Of course, I was only staying one night so none of it really applied to me.
I was asleep by midnight.
© Columbine
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