The Big Apple Revisited

As much as I like San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Chicago, I'm forced to admit that New York really is the Big Apple.  It's the only city in America that compares with London or Paris as a "big city" --  cosmopolitan, diverse, beautiful, and ... well, huge.

I try to drop by every few years -- not all that easy to do from here in the Northwest Corner -- and remind myself why I like it so much.

And so, I returned last night from a four-day visit.  I often visit in November, and have never been disappointed by that month.  The weather was rather cool the evening I arrived, but became progressively warmer each day.  And the many trees of the city were proudly showing off their fall colors, resplendent in the daily sunshine.

I've long since adopted the Upper West Side as "my" part of town.  Unfortunately, I'm apparently not the only one to do so, as hotels in that neighborhood are increasingly being renovated -- and their rates jacked up accordingly.  So I abandoned my favorite hotel on W. 77th, and stayed for the first time at a hotel on W. 87th,  just off Broadway -- which is as far "uptown," as I've stayed to date.  As I rapturously posted on my Facebook page, I'll never weary of wandering the residential streets of the Upper West Side, and exploring the beauty to the east and west, respectively,  of Central Park and Riverside Park.

The "events" around which I centered my visit were two Broadway plays -- This Is Our Youth and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.  The former is essentially an interaction in a one-room apartment between two twenty-something young men, played by Michael Cera and Kieran Culkin.  Cera's character is immature, hyper-active, insecure and submissive.  He is bullied by his "friend," Culkin's character, who is a drug-dealing, brash, overbearing jerk.  As one would expect, as the play progresses, neither character is adequately described by these initial impressions.  Cera' acting, especially, was brilliant -- at 26 years of age, he is capable of looking and behaving ten years younger.

Curious Incident is based on the best-selling novel by Mark Haddon.  It's the moving story of a brilliant, autistic, British teenager, and of his growth and development into a more adequately functioning young man as he goes about trying to solve the mystery of who killed his neighbor's dog.  The staging is unique and "digital," with lighting effects that vividly demonstrate the boy's mental reactions to events about him.  (The play co-stars Toby, the white mouse, whose story was told today in an article in the New York Times.)

Those two plays -- and the logistics of getting to and from them -- consumed a substantial chunk of time.  Otherwise, I did  a lot of walking -- not merely around the Upper West Side, but throughout the city. Just to say I did it,  I followed Broadway from my hotel on 87th, all the way through mid-town and lower Manhattan to its termination (or origin) in Battery Park.  I'm sure I've walked every block of that route, at one time or another, but this was the first time I'd walked the entire route in one fell swoop, and it gave me a coherent picture of how various Manhattan neighborhoods are knit together.  We brag about Seattle's Pike Place Market, but the twenty blocks of Broadway from 34th to Union Square is virtually one long open-air market selling produce, meats, clothing, odds and ends and souvenirs. 

I also revisited the High Line.  I posted to this blog in 2009 about the first segment of this elevated walk, one that follows an abandoned freight line along the Hudson.  Two more segments have since been opened, and the High Line now stretches from the far southern reaches of Chelsea to the tracks behind Penn Station, where it bends toward the river, then crosses the  tracks, and ends up on 30th.  Like light rail lines in other cities, the High Line has prompted new development.  The northern third of the route is surrounded by construction sites, and the Penn Station rail lines will be covered over in a few more years by a skyscraper development to be called Hudson Yards.

It was all fun, but I may remember most vividly small moments -- sitting on a rock outcropping in Central Park, looking across one of the park's many lakes at the dense autumn foliage, and at the skyscrapers beyond; coffee and a sandwich in front of  "The Boathouse" in the park, trying to fend off hordes of small birds who wanted to share my food; watching crowds ice skate at the Trump rink in southern Central Park, and at a city rink in Bryant Park (in 60 degree temperatures); staring with awe at the beautiful new 79-story Two World Trade Center building, just completed; and being impressed by the helmeted small children of affluent families pushing scooters around Upper West Side sidewalks -- and mentally contrasting that sight with images from those days when "New York" meant "deadly juvenile delinquent gangs" to folks from other parts of the country.

It's a city we can be proud of, as the hordes of tourists speaking languages other than English will gladly attest.