1 - Dispatch From the Big Apple

It was all I feared. Coming to the surface from the bowls of Penn Station onto what I always imagined New York City to be - 



gridlocked traffic, horns and all those rushing people - rude people, poor people, greedy, ethnic, dirty people and all of it moving thru dark concrete canyons like flotsam in a flood.  






I have hated the thought of it, of them, all my life.  Can some place have all those reviled traits, but in a good way? 

Can I overcome decades of dread and take a bite out of this apple?  Jean has wistfully made that challenge every time we have flown past the tall skyline, waterways and bridges, flying thru LGA, JFK or EWR - going somewhere else.  “Stanford is playing at Army and what-do-you-know ... then the Giants play the Mets and then the Yankees.  Do you want to go?” 

Front Door (Open sign)

“Sure, why not.”  That was all it took and next thing I know Jean has us in a tiny walkup bootleg studio behind a nail salon in mid-town Manhattan - no windows and a steel door with lots of locks.  Only perfect.

Room with a view

Outside crazies pass out flyers, pushcarts sell everything, famous landmarks pass with every block, trains whisk us everywhere - and surprisingly friendly New Yorkers bask in the weather we brought in from California.  

That Girl

I am grinning like Marlo Thomas.  I think I can dig this place ...  maybe I was wrong about the Big Apple.

- Swayed Stew

Bryant Park Lunchtime

Flyer Flinger

2 - Dispatch From the Thin Gray Line

George Washington started this place, a point of land at a strategic bend on the west bank of the Hudson River.  Benedict Arnold tried to give it to the British before they were sent home - taking him with them.

Soon after, it became West Point, a school that Thomas Jefferson hoped would educate the young leaders that a new nation needs.  It always has, and it still does.

We come as visitors, both as fans of our adopted Stanford football team, and my ingrained Army loyalties.  

The two schools have many parallels - beautiful campus, long traditions, high standards and alumni that fill the history books.  

But there are differences best illustrated in the lives their founders - Washington, who spent a lifetime of service protecting America, and Stanford who spent his building California ... and making a profit.  Mr. and Mrs. Stanford are entombed on campus but West Point’s soil holds the blood of a nation.

The “Thin Gray Line” lost to the  “Robber Barons” on the gridiron, but we stood to salute the service of the men and women of the United States Military Academy - who we all hope will never be lost.

- Saluting Stew

Honor Code

"Flirty" where cadets can hold hands

3 - Dispatch From Wall Street

Holland started this place - not the country but the Dutch West Indies Company.  It was all about business then - buy it, move it, package it, sell it.  It was all about closing the deal ... and it still is.

Screwing the other guy started here in 1626 when the island sold for $24.  The former owners were evicted and a little fortified trading port was built on the south tip of Manhattan - with water on 3 sides, and a wall across the back.  Over the next 350+ years the sides sprouted docks that import and export anything that can be moved - and that wall became “The Street” - the capital of capitalism.

Wall Street displays a 7000 pound bronze bull to symbolize this system of making money without actually making anything.  Rubbing his horns is suppose to bring you stock market luck.  I wanted to kick his other end, but he is behind bars - fenced in under 24/7 police guard because protesters “might paint him.”

Caged Bull - BS

In 1910, some stolen military explosives damaged the Statue of Liberty’s arm - it is still closed.  Wall street was cart-bombed in 1920 - now it is a walk street.

WTC Memorial Park

The former site of the World Trade Center is likewise fenced behind airport level security.  The two stone-lined sunken fountains representing the twin towers, are even less fragile than the bronze bull - yet 100 cops have been assigned to just stand around there, day and night.

The sign says, “We will never forget.”  In 1898 it said, “Remember the Maine.” But who still recalls the bombing of the LA Times in 1910, the UN in ‘48; the Olympic Park in ’96 - Lebanon barracks, OK City, even Pearl Harbor - and all the rest?

How much do we fence in and for what?  The new WTC fountains were flooded by rising seawater during super-storm Sandy.  Do we overreact to the terror-du-jour, build and guard monuments to the past - while ignoring the future?  While the deals go on, I wonder who is getting screwed this time.

- Bought and Sold Stew

Everything made elsewhere

4 - Dispatch From 5th Ave.

DNA is the most interesting human discovery of our time.  Science can now tell me where my mother’s and father’s ancestors spent the last ice age - and extrapolate how long humans have been evolving from the slime mold thru fish into mammals, and so on.  Each of us still has just a tiny bit of all those “lower” animals in us - and it affects our actions and reactions.

A running man rounds the corner just as I clear the end of a dark building and my fists tighten and pulse raises - I am preprogrammed to flee or fight just like any survivors in my pre-human gene pool.  Jean walks past a designer’s shop on 5th Ave. and an ancient bit of leftover aquatic brain draws her to a shiny thing in the window.  Her head turns just like a bigmouth bass watching a #4 Rapala lure.

She tries the door but the sign says, “Temporally closed for client consultation.”  I pump my fist in salvation - but no ... the sales lady ends my celebrations by unlocking the door.  

She and Jean do the sell/buy dance but I am more mesmerized by the “consultation” going on behind.  A grown woman showing laptop photos of her pet to help this big-time New York jewelry designer come up with a silver and stones collar for ... her DOG!

And that is why I put the “quotations” around “lower” animals.  Oh look - there is a cool hardware store.

- Regression Rod

5 - Dispatch From the House that Ruth Build

The San Francisco Giants once lived here in New York.  In those days, before TV and jet planes, the Giants cross-town rivals were in Brooklyn, the hated Dodgers - who are still hated even as they moved to Los Angeles. 

Some of the old NY Giants baseball fans remained true, and none more true than those who frequent Finnerty’s - a bar on the Lower East Side.  Giants regalia festoons the place, orange & black are the fashion statements - and SF Anchor Steam is on tap.

We join the bar’s annual invasion of the local ballparks.  First to meet the expansion NY Mets, and then the old team of Cobb, Mantle and Babe Ruth - the also hated NY Yankees.  





Busses full of fans, hands full of beers and hearts full of hope that the Giants will prevail - and the Yankee fans won’t kill us.

The lowly Mets went down 2 games to 1 in their park where Giants colors outnumbered the locals.  But the hated Yankees are playing for a chance to make the playoffs, are sold-out and are not anxious to have a bloc of rabid rivals taking up seats.  

They give us the farthest highest section in Yankees Stadium where even Babe Ruth couldn’t hit a ball.  The anthem has me looking down at the flag - but all the Yankee fans can look up to our sea of orange, and can hear us too.

We cheer the Giants, the Yankee fans respond with a loud collective “BOOOOOOO!”  The beer vendor changes loyalties (trade before team), and the Jumbotron in centerfield judiciously avoids showing our section.  Great fun - until the most hated player on the hated Yankees - ARod (Alex Rodriquez), hits a grand slam homerun to win the game.  The Babe would have been proud.

- Ruthed Rod

Waitin' for the busses

Ball from an Angel (Pagan)

6 - Dispatch From Broadway

New York, New York is full of names from song, history and even everyday lexicon.  Uptown, Downtown are places here.  The Bowery, Hell’s Kitchen and Bronx evoke civilizations (or lack thereof).  Wall Street IS our economic system. 

Jean and I make our own "West Side Story" for lunch, drink a "rosé in Spanish Harlem," "go up on the roof" of Rockefeller Plaza and peek "under the boardwalk" in Coney Island.

She wants to "give our regards to Broadway" but the cost of tickets to sold-out favorites would "just give me the blues."  So she makes her own luck again, walks up to the window just behind someone turning in today’s tickets to the hottest show in town - Kinky Boots.  “Are they good seats?”  “Oh yeah!”

As I sit front row hoping to be envied, I ponder the industry that lights the whole NYC Theater District.  The program advertises about 25 running shows ... say about 1000+ seats each x 7 performances per week x ticket pri$e = about 1.1 BILLION bucks per year!  That is why "the neon lights are always bright on Broadway."

- Steppin’ Out Stew

PS  Kinky Boots will never close in San Francisco.

Hell's Kitchen Music

Rockafella

Boots from Brooklyn

7 - Dispatch From a Tenement

“Give me your poor, your hungry“ pleads Ms. Liberty to the world.  And they still pour into New York and move into tenement housing.  

These old buildings are pre-elevator, up to 7 stories - made to cheaply store the Irish then Jewish, then Italian, then Latino and now Asian immigrants.  Newcomers stay until they become Americanized and move on up - pushed by opportunity and as the next wave of those “yearning to breathe free” arrives.

We tour thru the Lower East Side tenement rows with our old friend Gloria.  She was born in a New York tenement and makes the visit personal.  

Her wave’s addition is still seen in the neighborhood, as are the others - Italian deli, Yiddish sign, Chinese market.  Like America, New York is a whole made from many diverse parts.

So what to eat?  Gloria goes after some Italian, Jean for a kosher deli, and me on the lookout for hot and spicy.  Immigrants brought in new foods, new ideas, new workers - and new problems.  Our very system of constant economic growth depends on them coming.  We take the go-getters from other lands to keep a bottom rung on our ladder.   So a Little Italy turns into a Chinatown.

New “tenement” rows have gone up while the old ones are torn down or converted to trendy apartments.  The current wave of immigrants busts butt to move on to a better place - while new faces move in.  

I see beards and headscarves. Who knows?  Gloria might sell her pricy house in California to a guy that made a fortune selling fried camel humps.

- Resigned Rod

8 - Dispatch From a Rider

Stop!  Don't Stop!

On a bus back to the airport, I see trains and boats and bikes - they all suit me more than the California car culture.  NYC uses all three to great effect allowing her 9 million to zip about without looking for a place to park.  






The also have to look at each other face to face - broker next to butcher, dancer sitting by director.  Taxis are just too slow for NYC traffic.

The subway took me a bit of practice - at reading the map and plotting where to change trains - but then with a little walking, the whole city becomes accessible.  I would hate to be back in my wheelchair though, as this place was built long before the disabled were taken into account.  A few elevators access stations are marked, but even curb-cuts are not always found.  It may be my imagination, but car free New Yorkers seem leaner than most - and it is not from lack of food.

What are these?  

I expected to smell the sewers but found the aromas of restaurants and street food carts far more prevalent.  And variety - I don't doubt that even those serving the most esoteric cuisine have several competitors nearby.

Broadway theaters get the fame but most subway rides have entertainers passing the hat.  The pretty parks are filled with public art and free music, both professional and ad hoc, and sidewalk kids dance in competition crowded around a boom-box.

Music in the Park

Yep, it is a BIG city with grit, grime and crime - but it seems to work just fine and I am happy I came.  A couple of weeks - even ones as packed as Jean's organizational skill have made it, just scratches on the peal.  I think someday soon I will have the itch to return for another bit of the Big Apple.

- Someday Stew

Click here:
Subway sounds you don't want to hear
https://soundcloud.com/rodonisle/subway/s-R3M9q

Stop walking?