New York, Day Four

Tuesday, 16 Sept '08

Today was a big day with two of the things Chris and I went to New York to do. The day began with us partaking of the hotel's continental breakfast. That was a bit of an odd experience. For openers, it was set up in a special, and very small, room. The usual fare was offered: juice, ceral, bagels, etc. The toaster was of the conveyor type, and was set to such a high rate of speed that I had to send my bagel through three times to get it even a little toasted. For an other oddity,when I was done eating, instead to being allowed to enjoy my coffee, I was chased out by one of the staff, to make room for other guests.

After breakfast I had a small domestic chore to take care of. Even though I had checked a bag, it wasn't a very large bag, and I was low on clean clothes. The hotel advertised that it had laundry facilities for the use of it's guests, but they were out of order. Fortunately in our wanderings around the neighborhood, we had discovered a laundromat just two blocks away. It was an interesting little establishment, complete with a Chinese couple to run it. It offered drop-off laundry service, and a lot of people seem to use it, but they also didn't seem to be in a big hurry to pick up their clean laundry, if the heaps of bags of clothes were any indication. The whole operation was about 15 feet wide and maybe 75 to 100 feet deep, with two dozen fron loading washing machines and half that many dryers. The washers cost $3.75. The dryers were $0.25 for seven minutes, so I ended up spending $1.00 for every load I dried. Soap was $0.50 a box, and dryer sheets $0.25 each. There were no chairs, and no entertainment of any kind. Good thing I brought a book and don't mind standing. Toward the end of my time there Chris called me. I was (and still am) so unused to carrying a cell phone that I didn't even realize it was ringing at first.

When I was done with the laundry I took my leather jacket, which I had brought along but never needed, to a local shoe repair shop that also handled leather clothing. All it needed done was to have a new snap fastener put on the right cuff and a tear in the cloth liner sewed up. The proprietor assured me it would be done at 8 a.m. sharp Friday morning, just in time for Chris and I to head for the airport. Handily the shop was right across Broadway from the 79th Street Station, which would take us straight to Penn Station.

While I'm on the subject of the subway, let me share a few observations about it.

The New York subway system is old, and it looks it's age. Steel or iron pillars hold up the various layers of each station, and ultimately support the weight of the street and all vehicular traffic thereon. That means there a lot of pillars. The ties that hold the rails are made of wood, no station has pristine tile work, and there is a lot of exposed wiring and piping.

Its dirty, too. There was trash on the tracks, on the platforms, basically everywhere. There wasn't tons of trash, but apparently the tracks don't get cleaned very often.

And hot. It was always warm, and sometimes very warm, on the platforms and elsewhere. Clearly, adequate ventilation was not a high priority for the designers, despite all the heat coming off electric motors and friction brakes.

Finally, the stations can be nightmarish mazes. Not all of them are, of course, but multi-layer stations where two or more lines meet are quite difficult to find your way around in. This is in no small part to woefully inadequate signage. The London Underground is, or at least was, vastly better in every regard. The New York MTA could take a few lessons from the Brits as far as I'm concerned.

Lunch today was at a favorite establishment of Chris', Frankie and Johnnies Steakhouse at 269 W. 45th St. It is an upstairs establishment with seating for sixty-six. If I had to describe it in one word, that word would be 'cozy'. Apart from Chris and myself there were just two other customers. The waiter was a elderly Cypriot gentlemen who was funny and engaging who sat down and talked with us after we were done eating. Chris had filet mignon with mushrooms and a glass of Johnny Walker Gold (fifteen years old), while I availed myself of a sirloin with au gratin potatos, chicken noodle soup and a glass of Gragganmore (sixteen years old). My potatos were a little unusual in that they were made with parmesan cheese instead of cheddar, but they were still quite good. And the whole affair set me back just $171.00, including the tip. Some lunch. It was very good, but I'm not sure it was worth that much. Still, I don't reget it.

How was my drink? It was scotch, which somewhat sadly says it all. I used to drink scotch when I was in the Air Force, but I lost my taste for it. Maybe I just decided that the trio of friends in the movie 'Mr. Roberts' were right about scotch. In that film they make a bottle of 'scotch' with water, medicinal alcohol, liquid shoe polish and iodine, and that's pretty much what all scotch tastes like.

After lunch we wandered around lower Manhatten, specifically Chelsea and Greenwich Village. Chris promisied me freak show, but few were to be seen. We later decided that it was too early in the day for the freaks to be out. While in Chelsea we stopped at the Chelsea Market, but didn't explore even a fraction of it. Doing a little research as I write this tells me that the market is in a converted Nabisco factory where the Oreo cookie was developed. I wish I had been paying more attention while we were in the area, because I also later learned that an abandoned elevated railroad called the High Line passes through the market and the neighborhood. I also learned (just tonight) that Iron Chef's Masaharu Morimoto and Mario Batali both have restaurants in the Market, and that Iron Chef America is filmed there. The High Line is of special interest because it is in the process of being converted into an elevated park and walking path.

The other highlight of this day was, of course, going up to the Bronx to see the Yankees play the White Sox. We took the Red Line down to Times Square, the Purple Line #7 to Grand Central Station and finally the Green Line #4 Express to Yankee Stadium. That is the offical name of the stop, by the way, and even though it's part of the subway system, the station and the tracks for a good way to either side are not only above ground, they're elevated. The Express was packed, naturally, and there was a nice crowd at the ballpark. The seats Chris had gotten us were quite good, about halfway up, along the outfield portion of the 3rd base line (in fact we were almost to the foul pole). We chatted with some of the people around us, who were uniformly nice.

I hadn't been to a professional baseball game in twenty years or so, and it was interesting to see one again. The Sox led off and quickly dominated the game. they made a few mistakes, mostly in trying to force plays when they had the lead, but they never lost that lead. Derek Jeter did manage to break Lou Gerhig's hit record at Yankee Stadium by tagging his 1,270th, but the most amazing thing that happened was pure chance. Yankee stadium had a strict ban on cameras and video cameras, but that rule was widely ignored, my myself as well. My new digital camera can also take video, and Chris asked to borrow it so he could make a short vid for a friend at work. So he takes the camera and starts filming, just as a Yankee batter hits a home run. Unbelievable.
Supper this evening was, as you might expect, hot dogs and beer at the game. Chris had a giant pretzel too.

The trip back to the hotel was much quicker and easier that the trip to the stadium. I happened to notice that the Green Line intersected with the Red Line just one station down from the Stadium, so we got off there and and took a much more direct, less crowded train back to the hotel.