It seems to me that more people visit Manhattan each day than live in some large cities.
That could be chauvinism, an exaggeration, wishful thinking, or accurate. I don't know.
Really, that's not even the point I intended to make. Lots of people take pictures of Manhattan, and its skyline is perhaps the most recognizable in the world.
Embedded below is an amazing time-lapse video of Manhattan, created by Mindrelic, from Rochester, NY.
As a boy in the mid-1960s, I occasionally patronized a cafeteria on Huntington Avenue, in Boston, near the YMCA where I learned to swim. It was the most modern restaurant I had ever seen, and I was fascinated by the self-service method. Walking along towards the register, sliding a plastic tray on the three metal bars that made-up the counter, and gazing at the rows and rows of food and snacks: meatloaf with mashed potatoes, salad with fruit and nuts in it (whoever heard of such a thing), diet plates of a plain hamburger patty with iceberg lettuce and a slice of tomato alongside a scoop of cottage cheese), I imagined that I would eat an entire meal in this wondrous place one day.
Instead, with a quarter or a dime in my pocket, I would make my way to the desserts at the end of the line and take a cup of pudding or a slice of pie. I would ask if it was OK to take a glass of water, and I would eat as quickly as I could and rush out of there with the sense that this was a place I did not belong; that this was a place for people with more money than me, a place for grown-ups.
I was eventually introduced to other cafeterias. Some in the basement level of department stores, Hayes-Bickford, Waldorf, hospitals, museums, and other public buildings. Then I found an automat at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital! Oh, the ways that food could be bought and sold!
And then, the New York City-style delicatessen with a turnstile and a cardboard strip that would be punched as you selected each item. You couldn't get out of those delis without a punched card! Though I never saw it myself, I was told that you needed to pay a dime to get out if you didn't have a card and you didn't eat anything: no free ride here.
I have always been a fan of restaurants.
Always, though, the Waldorf was the restaurant I thought of as the quintessential modern restaurant.
Later in life, I learned about the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, and was confused about the connection between the restaurant and the hotel. I learned that the Waldorf-Astoria was a very nice hotel and that many famous people stayed there, and some even lived there. I always thought of Buffy and Jody and Uncle Bill and Mr. French living in the Waldorf.
It's a hotel that's always been mysterious to me. I still have never stayed there, and although I have been in the cocktail lounge and in some of the rooms.
Today I work three short blocks from the Waldorf and I often pass by. Working in Midtown Manhattan will always continue to amaze me. Commuting is sort of like being in a constant television show. Each block feels like, looks like, and in many cases really is the set of a sit-com, drama, news program, or movie.
The downside to this fascinating dynamic of being a New Yorker is that these blocks often ARE being used to film sit-coms, dramas, news programs, and movies! Then there is the United Nations. God bless the United Nations. This venerable institution invites all the world's leaders to New York City each autumn for a big meeting.
Of course, they choose New York City! It looks like every TV show and movie these world leaders have ever seen! Who doesn't want to be in New York City for awhile?
Especially if you can stay at the Waldorf-Astoria!
The popularity of Midtown Manhattan, including (especially) The Waldorf, raises security concerns, and many blocks are often closed to all traffic (vehicular and pedestrian), and those of us trying to get along in life are required to find another way from Point A to Point B.
This is one of those weeks.
I needed to get from 53rd and Lexington to 50th and Sixth. I make this walk pretty regularly, and I often choose the route that brings me past The Waldorf (the back of which is at 50th and Lex), across Madison Avenue, towards Saks and St. Patrick's Cathedral, and into Rockefeller Center. This is a quintessential New York walk. There is nowhere else where the world looks like this, passing so many landmarks in such a short distance. If I am in a hurry, of course, I do not take this route.
This week, however, it is a walk to avoid! Why? Because of The Waldorf. The esteemed hotel, with its address on the East Side, is the residence of choice for the sitting American President. During the week of the UN's General Assembly to which all sitting world leaders are invited, the area is cordoned off differently (it seems) each day (hour?).
I found myself being herded into a runway and across Lexington, downtown on the wrong side of the avenue, past 50th Street. As I saw this developing, I attempted to turn around to go back the way I came, but alas, the crowd was being funneled in so quickly that the police were not allowing anyone to turn back.
Instead of being a care-free, sophisticated New Yorker, I was now part of the unwashed masses, a nobody who was inconveniencing the police and the President and my neighbors. I was in the way, and puny. I was an irritant.
And is there anything more irritating than to be thought of as an irritant?
Well, no. Still, I made my way south to 48th Street, and west to Sixth Avenue and decided to make the best of my detour and walk to Bryant Park before getting on the F train towards Brooklyn.
It's good to be a New Yorker, even when the President is in town, because I get to walk from once famous location to another, and escape into the urban (and urbane) beauty that is Midtown Manhattan.
New York City Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, is a good mayor. Much better than Giuliani was and better than most cities could even hope to have.
Bloomberg wants NYC to cut its carbon footprint and is encouraging New Yorkers to use public transportation, and he brags about how he takes the subway to work himself.
I want Bloomberg to succeed. I want New York City to be a world-class city with a world-class transit system used by as many people every day for as many hours as they want to get around town.
I am confused about the mayor's commitment to the subways. He tells people to use the subway, but the subway keeps getting worse and worse.
He says he uses the subway, and he thinks it works, so he clearly doesn't use the same subway I use.
I do not believe the Mayor has ever ridden the F line (a/k/a the Sixth Avenue Local), because he would be appalled and disgusted by the schedule (or lack thereof), the filthy subway cars and stations (filth that is often covered with artificial strawberry room deodorizer), the surly transit workers (actually, they do a damn good job given the conditions), and general condition of subway platforms. To put it bluntly, the F line stinks! It takes me seventy-five minutes to commute from Brooklyn to my job in Midtown Manhattan. I live ten miles from my office. Seventy-five minuets is a bit long.
There is a rumor that the F line will have an Express train soon, which might cut fifteen minutes off my commute. This is a good idea. The Brooklyn end of the line makes it impossible to be considered for daily errands or casual commuting.
The G train (a/k/a the Crosstown Local) that connects with the F train in Brooklyn is actually terminated right after downtown Brooklyn, instead of continuing along the express track all the way to Coney Island. If people could commute from Eastern Brooklyn to Southern Brooklyn you could probably cut back on some car usage. Especially if you ran the subway cars every five minutes all day.
And don't even get me started about the people who have to commute from Bay Ridge. They only get the Fourth Avenue Local, which might be underground, but is slower than the Sixth Avenue Local ever dreamed of being.
If you live outside Midtown Manhattan and want to use the subway, you are really at the mercy of incompetence and a Republican desire to fail.
The mayor is often photographed on the subway, on his way to work. This is impressive. What the caption under the pictures fails to tell us is that the mayor is driven, by two huge SUVs, from his front door to an Express Train twenty-two blocks away! How's that for an individual person's carbon footprint? TWO SUVs for twnty-two blocks! That's a lot of twos!
If I could have a luxury car drive me from my front door to an express stop twenty-two blocks from my home, then I would think the subway was hunky-dory! I would get a seat and travel to work more quickly. But I don't have that luxury. Neither does anyone else, really. Like a regular New Yorker, I walk from my home to the closest subway and suffer quietly. This mayor does not have any idea what it is like to ride the subway. He knows what it is like to create a publicity stunt that makes it look like he knows about the subway.
This guy is losing more credibility by the day.
It's not even as though I want a mayor who rides the subway. I am not looking for this billionaire to prove that he's just a regular New Yorker. He isn't. He's a billionaire and he's the mayor and good for him!
What I want is for Bloomberg to shut-up about traffic problems and subways until he is planning to actually do something about it besides charge working stiffs more money to simply live like Americans by driving their cars. Charging people an extra tariff to drive in Manhattan will not reduce carbon emissions. It will inconvenience your constituency, but it will really make no change. And somthing has got to change!
Get up to Albany and tell them that something's gotta give. More money has to be invested if we are going to make this public transit thing work. We have to stop privatizing subway services, because it is a failure. We have to add more service to existing lines. We have to add more lines (like a subway along Second Avenue for the East Side). We have to run trains the full-length of their track. Stopping the V in the Lower East Side and the Q at Carnegie Hall is stupid! The people who thought-up those plans should be fired, if they still work for us. The subway has to be redesigned as a four-borough transit system, not a convenience for those in Manhattan.
I believe that Bloomberg wants the subway to work; but, instead of publicity stunts, he has to make things happen.
Let's start with caring for the subway we have today. Force the private contractors raking in the millions for cleaning the cars and platforms to actually clean the cars and platforms. Every day. All day. So that the cars and platforms are actually clean. Imagine?!?!?!?
If we can get the existing subway clean, we can move towards scheduling trains to actually serve New Yorkers. After that, who knows? Maybe some improvements!
Until we can care for what we have, making it more effective is just a pipe dream.
New York's billionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg, boasts that he rides the subway "almost every day" but a quarter of his commute is spent in a chauffeured SUV, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.
The Times monitored the mayor's routine for five weeks and discovered that instead of walking to a local train near his house, Bloomberg is driven to a swifter express train 22 blocks away. . . . Continue . . .
Maybe you could call the Mayor and tell him what you think.
by Dick Mac
