The Sidewalks Of New York
Down in front of Casey’s
Old brown wooden stoop,
On a summer’s evening,
We formed a merry group;
Boys and girls together,
We would sing and waltz,
While the ‘ginnie’ played the organ
On the sidewalks of New York.
East side, west side,
All around the town,
The tots sang ‘Ring-a-Rosie,'
'London Bridge is Falling Down.’
Boys and girls together,
Me and Mamie O’Rourke,
Tripped the light fantastic,
On the sidewalks of New York.
New York State Of Mind
Some of you asked about the photo accompanying last week’s column. Barbara the Cynic asked if it was taken in front of a backdrop, the twin towers having been gone for almost ten years. Actually, it was taken in the summer of 2000 from the Liberty Island Ferry on a return trip from a visit to the Statue of Liberty. It was Siobhan’s first visit to New York so the SOL was must viewing. Not to mention that I really needed that hat.
Our trip to NYC began inauspiciously. Shortly after our Delta jet rolled onto the runway in Orlando, a little yellow light went on in the cockpit and the captain announced he was heading back to the gate to have the problem checked. Siobhan was optimistic, but Bill has seen this sort of thing before. Takeoff time was moved back from the original ten a.m. to eleven, then twelve, then twelve-thirty, at which time Bill, holder of two nonrefundable $80 tickets to an 8 p.m. play, scurried off to book an alternate flight leaving at 1:45. Siobhan, who has never ever been on any flight in which all of her baggage made it through, was worried and rightly so. It didn’t make it this time, either, keeping her phenomenal record intact. One obvious lesson learned: don’t buy nonrefundable tickets for anything that occurs on the night your flight is scheduled to land. On a flight a year later to Las Vegas, I figured I’d wisely compensate for any delays by purchasing a ticket for a late (10 p.m.) Cirque du Soleil performance. That didn’t work so great, either. The plane arrived exactly on time and I almost went to sleep by the end of the after-midnight conclusion of the show.
But this is about New York. And we did make it to Rent, after a quick culinary feast at a nearby deli, where we won a ‘best-dressed’ award. Siobhan had wisely kept a rolled up dress in her carry-on bag due to previous experiences, so all was well. I know it won the Pulitzer in 1996 and was voted Best Musical the same year, but we didn’t like Rent all that much. The acoustics at the off-Broadway theater (the Nederlander, for Christ’s sake!) weren’t great, the lyrics to the songs weren’t clear and the story, though trite, was still difficult to follow. But maybe that’s just us.
We walked the 19 blocks back to the Park Lane Hotel, one of Leona’s little gems, on Central Park South, through a bustling Times Square, filled at 11:30 with every manner and make of humanity. Exiting playgoers, street hustlers, religious advocates, international gawkers and blasé locals merged into a raucous blend. Times Square had more—and bigger—signs than ever and more people seemed comfortable there since Mayor Rudy wasted all the sex shops.
(Back here in 2011, I recently saw in an issue of Esquire Magazine photos of a new incarnation of Times Square, featuring several reclaimed traffic lanes converted into pedestrian walkspace with a smattering of little tables thrown in, a happy improvement).
Day 2 started with a walk to breakfast around seven, then some picture-taking (partial results above) at the fountain fronting the Plaza Hotel, while awaiting old friend Tom Sutton, an ex-Gainesville guy then rattling around between CNN and occasional movie-acting roles. Tom is one of these guys—and I’m sure you have your own favorite—who is physically incapable of passing a Starbuck’s Coffee Shop without stopping in for a $75 cup of gilded joe. We walked down Fifth Avenue, dipped over to Rockefeller Center (Tom used to work for NBC), checked out the refurbished Grand Central Terminal and moseyed over to the Empire State Building. On a clear day, you can see forever. Clear it was. But hold on, you interject. What about Siobhan’s well-known trepidation with heights? Well, for some reason, it didn’t surface what with the Empire State Building having walls and all. We got a little swaying, but nothing scary. On we marched to Christopher Street, main thoroughfare of Gayland, where my favorite store in the world, Bellardo’s, had recently closed. Paul Bellardo was an icon in the NYC gay community, an artist with a shop for artists. Over the years, we had purchased at least a dozen art objects for Silver City from Paul (who once told Harolyn he would convert to heterosexuality if he could have her, the liar) and it was crushing to see the store gone. It was a similar experience to revisiting the site of a previous residence and having it gone. A visit to the voluminous Strand Bookstore on Broadway is always a requisite and we spent eons there, Siobhan poring over the endless mass of tempting purchases.
That night, we went to Tavern-On-The-Green, thanks to Mary, the Park Lane concierge, one of the few people in town who could get a table. A honey of a thunderstorm appeared from the north over Central Park, but played itself out by 8:30, an hour before our scheduled dinner. Tavern-On-The-Green was still in its heyday in 2000. It had been a regular stopping place during our 20 years of NYC buying trips for the Subterranean Circus and we were sorry to see it close a few years ago after several years of diminishing excellence. It has reopened under new management recently and, hopefully, can regain its former glory.
Day 3 featured the Statue of Liberty visit, a laborious process taking about 3 hours round trip. Much waiting. Bad boy Tom pretended to be sick in order to move to the head of the line and we were forced to go with him. He got a big spanking for that, rest assured. Then, on to Soho for major shopping and sightseeing. Siobhan was fascinated by a doo-wop group. Sutton loved a puppeteer. On weekends, Soho bustles with artists selling their wares along the streets and the work is so good—and inexpensive—that it’s virtually impossible to avoid buying something. So we did. Next time you’re at the house, we’ll show it to you.
Final meal of the trip was at Puglia’s in Little Italy. The place is an institution, so it must be still there. Prices, especially for the house wine, which was great, are very affordable, so many of the Italian families in the neighborhood frequent the place. The food is terrific. On weekends, a singer/pianoman shows up and the patrons, driven by copious amounts of wine-drinking, are on the tables singing and dancing, others forming conga lines around the place, some of which extend out one door and back in another. Tom was horrified at this noisy bacchanal, but we forced him to drink wine and he relented, eventually forming his own conga line. Hours passed and eventually we had to leave, walking through the packed and festive late-evening streets of Little Italy, one of the few places in the world where long lines extend from popular bakeries at midnight. (An important aside here: Siobhan’s brother Stuart optimistically took his family to Puglia’s one midweek evening expecting great jollity and clamor—to little avail. The frenzy is fairly limited to weekends. After all….you can’t be wearing out your little Italians with overuse).
We took a late taxi to the Roosevelt Island tram, a trip which affords a great view of lit-up Manhattan. A final goodbye to Tom and back to the Park Lane.
Siobhan wistfully looks out over the park before retiring, reminisces, and askes Bill what he liked best about the hotel. Sensitive as always, Bill replied “The sex.” Siobhan looks a little meek, not offering her favorite thing.
“Well,” Bill prodded, “what did you like best?”
“I was thinking the electric shoe polisher,” she said, trying unsuccessfully not to giggle.
Siobhan, you really know how to hurt a guy.
Windows On The World
Everyone was stunned when the Twin Towers went down, but especially if they’d ever been there. On an earlier visit to New York with Betsy Harper (she would never have said the electric shoe polisher, I bet), we had dinner at Windows On The World, high up in one of the towers. From your table, you could see all Manhattan through the almost floor-to-ceiling windows, a spectacular explosion of lights. Until, slowly but surely, the lights begin to disappear, first the ones northmost, then, gradually, the remainder, until there are no lights left. Uh oh. Are we going to be walking down a kazillion flights of stairs, Betsy wonders, in these very high heels? Well, our lights didn’t seem to be going out, for some reason. And despite the concerned murmur from the diners, the waiters kept a knowing little smirk on their respective faces, which bespoke reassurance. “It’s going to be okay,” I told her. “The waiters know what’s up.”
Suddenly, the lights began to reappear, in the same manner they departed.
“It’s a cloud,” our waiter smiled. “It happens fairly often.” A relieved audience chuckled its approval. Dinner became particularly delicious.
Sad Racing Report
Cosmic Song broke poorly on the rail, remained trapped inside horses most of the way around while following a slow pace, and could not gain sufficiently on the leaders at the finish, winding up fourth by 4 lengths. The race developed exactly as we suspected it would, but we hoped to be on the lead controlling the pace. The worst part of this race is that we did not learn much from it. Do we have a horse which is best at a distance or do we have a closing sprinter? She was strong at the end but not gaining much. Having just run a mile—coming off a sprint—we’d probably like to try the distance one more time. The next race up in our category is a 7-furlong $50,000 claimer on January 14, however, so we’ll likely go there. And the distance might be perfect. That’s Bill—ever the optimist.
It was nice to see Irana again after a couple of years.
Old College Magazine Joke (from 1964):
Zuckerman was bored, waiting all alone on the platform for a train. He noticed a scale and went over and put a penny in the slot and stepped on. Out popped a card which read, “Your name is Jonas Zuckerman. You weigh 156 pounds and you’re going to Westport.”
“What?!?” cried Zuckerman, astonished, stumbling backwards off the scale. “This is impossible. No scale could know all that!”
He inserted another penny. The message was the same. Thinking to trick the scale, Zuckerman then took off his coat, shoes and hat, emptied his pockets and stepped on the scale again. This time a different card popped out.
“Your name is Jonas Zuckerman. Without your coat, shoes and hat, and with nothing in your pockets, you weigh 150. And you’re still going to Westport.”
“No possible way!” exclaimed Zuckerman. He threw on his clothes and rushed down the platform, where he found a cooperative old gentleman who returned with him to the scale. Zuckerman sneered at his cleverness. He put a penny in the slot, the elderly man stepped on the scale and out came the card.
“Your name is James Miller,” it read. “You weigh 146 pounds. And that damn fool Zuckerman just missed his train.”
That’s all, folks….
