MetaChat - Attention All NY Mechazens.....I, LT, Have Finally Seen The Big Apple....

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27 December 2008

Attention All NY Mechazens.....I, LT, Have Finally Seen The Big Apple.... →[More:]
This afternoon Miko and I made a kamikaze raid into the heart of Manhattan to see the Broadway White Christmas show, and it was my first time to the city.

We didn't have enough time to arrange a proper meetup, but I am hopefully going to be able to arrange some time in February for a three-day trip and if so, I'll make sure we all gather.

The highlights from today:

- Walking the streets of Little Italy, and hearing all the aproned restaurant owners walking right up to me and telling me to "come in! come in! Hey - you don't like it, you don't pay! Come in!"

Later, as we were walking to the subway, two waiters were standing out on the stoop and one looked at the other as we passed and said, "Marco, you touch me one more time and I'm gonna pop you right in the mouth!"

- Getting to ride the subways! Your subway system is awesome - so old! so dark! The tiles and the paint peeling from the ceilings and the walls, and yet it's so damn quick and shiny and efficient. I love how you can wait for the train in these old catacombs, but then board this hyper-fast car with electronic readouts and chirrupy station announcements.

- The swarm of Times Square! The sick, heaving crowds of people all streaming through the intersections under those outsized video screens. I loved the crush of it - the constant tidal awareness of people after living in a tidy little New England town for two years. The two-story pixilated movie trailers and rock videos while the taxis zoom by.

There's so much more that blew my mind - Grand Central Station, 30 Rock, Macy's - with the cool, drippy blue electric trees out front.

I promise to come back and revel with all you locals -for all it's Loch Ness weight, New York was surprisingly intimate for me. I want to go out to Brooklyn, and up to the Cloisters, and to the Met and the Library, and all of that.

In short, I loved it. New York is beyond beautiful, even in the mad hunt of tourist-driven midtown madness. So share what you love about it with me here, if you want.

post by: Lipstick Thespian at: 23:33 | 16 comments

So glad you had fun!

posted by ThePinkSuperhero 27 December | 23:37

So share what you love about it with me here, if you want.

I love the architecture. I'm a huge fan of Art Nouveau, Beaux Arts and Art Deco, and New York provides an abundance of wonderful buildings.

I like the fact that, unlike London, so many people actually live in the centre of the city, which keeps the sense of neighbourhoods.

I like that you can walk just about everywhere you need to get to, if you want.

I LOVE the air-conditioned subway cars in the summer (the London Underground is barely ventilated, never mind air-conditioned)

Oh, and my boo is there. That's the best thing.

posted by essexjan 28 December | 02:21

Yay!

posted by special-k 28 December | 02:26

heh lipstick, i work in nyc and the fun part is that i dutifully ignore everything you list above. thus i say like all good new yawkers, fuck it! welcome!

hee.

posted by eatdonuts 28 December | 02:57

I interned in upstate NY a few summers back, and once I figured out how the trains ran I was heading down to the city nearly every weekend.

It's the most alive place I've ever been. There was always something to do or something to see or someplace to go - or I could just hang out on a corner and bask in the sheer glorious insanity of it all. And back then I was even more of a shy dorktastic little antisocial dodohead, and as fantastic as the Met and the Philharmonic and all that stuff were, I've always been kind of sad that I didn't stay long enough to really break out of my suburbia-raised comfort zone.

posted by casarkos 28 December | 03:21

An LT-and-Miko-themed meetup would be awesome! Sign me up toute de suite.

What I love about NYC is that mix of old and new. Reading your description of the tiled "catacombs" being intersected by high-tech subway cars with automatic readouts made me really appreciate the old stations in a new way, all over again. I wish that there was more being done to preserve the old in a way that makes sense, but that's a battle that should be waged in a different thread.

My other favorite thing about NYC is that there are pockets of activity for almost everything you can think of that you might want to do. Wanna sit outside and drink coffee while working on your latest screenplay? There are tons of cafes for that, both in the Starbucks and non-Starbucks variety. Take in an offbeat show before dinner in a tiny restaurant? You can do that, too.

Jon Stewart once said that NYC citizens have the same concerns and values as people who live in small towns and he's absolutely right about that. We want our police force to protect us, we want our roads and streets (and subways and trains and bridges and tunnels) to be easy to navigate and kept in good repair without costing too much, we want our politicians to be honest, and we want to be able to give the next generation of New Yorkers the same kind of wonderful, safe (if you keep your wits about you), and welcoming (also, if you keep your wits about you) city that we grew up in or chose to live in once we reached our maturity.

(Well, all except my uncle Ken, that is. He wants to return to the days when New York was dirty and bankrupt. I think jonmc and my uncle Ken should have a drink sometime...)

posted by TrishaLynn 28 December | 08:45

I lived in New York for about 10 years. One day I was standing at the counter of the Second Avenue Deli, and one of the countermen, not the one that was helping me, was trying to get my attention.

"Young lady .. young lady! Yes you! I want to tell you something. We can fix a wonderful corned beef sandwich but we can't fix a broken heart."

I just nodded and said, "thank you."

I don't know why he said that to me. I don't think I looked particularly sad and I didn't have a broken heart. But I've always remembered it and encounters like that are one of the things I love about New York.

Another time my mom was visiting me from Cleveland. There was a huge snowstorm, the kind that cripples the city. It was also fiercely cold. This would have probably been in 1994. We were walking down Park Avenue South, after venturing out to pick up a few provisions, when we saw a business-type man approaching.

He was carrying a briefcase and his coat was unbuttoned and flapping in the wind. My Midwestern mom stopped him as we passed and said, "Sir, where is your hat? Where are your gloves?" He scowled at her, didn't say a word, but reached in his pockets and took out a hat and put it on. "Now button up your coat", she said. He handed her his briefcase and did as she told him. Then he reached for his briefcase but she held it away from him. "Now, where are your gloves?" she asked. This time he gave her a murderous look, reached in the other pocket and took out a pair of gloves and put them on. She handed him back his briefcase and we went our separate ways.

posted by Kangaroo 28 December | 09:37

Most recent conversation between jon (in kitchen) and pips (on couch):

pips: LT's never been to the city before?
jon: He's from out west.
pips: They were in the city... why didn't they let us know?
jon (looking down at the cast on his foot): What were we gonna do?

By February, though... Anyway, glad y'all had fun. For a first-timer, you describe it all very well, LT. When those super-polite automated voice subways first came out, though, much as I appreciated how clean and comfortable they were, I found it very amusing hearing that, excuse the expression, "ultra-white" voice making announcements riding through the Bronx. I'm rather fond of the loud, rude guy who runs one of the Times Square shuttles who yells at you to "Stand clear of the closing doors!" in a thick Brooklyn accent and then slams the doors on people. He really knows how to keep things moving.

(Well, all except my uncle Ken, that is. He wants to return to the days when New York was dirty and bankrupt. I think jonmc and my uncle Ken should have a drink sometime...)

Yeah, I'm a bit like this, too. We both prefer how it is now, push come to shove, but we do miss the grit of the 70s/early 80s. I think it's why we like watching episodes of Barney Miller and movies like Taxi Driver and Midnight Cowboy so much. Weirdly nostalgic.

posted by Pips 28 December | 10:48

I played a gig there once. I thought it was a dump. A bacteria colony is also a very alive place.

posted by Wolfdog 28 December | 11:47

STANDCLEAHOFDACLOSENDAWS!

posted by jason's_planet 28 December | 12:12

Oh man, I can do without the 70's grit - there's plenty of it left, Pips. On our way to the subway to go home, we passed a man pissing on a wall.

I don't know, New York was absolutely mythic last night. We saw the spire of the Chrysler Building rise out of the fog like in a Georgia O'Keefe painting.

Trishalynn is spot-on. I was only in the city for half a day yesterday, but I was completely undone by the sheer volume of choice you had available - I definitely had the feeling there was nothing I could want in the city. If I could ask for it, there's a place in NY that has it. I'm sure there's a website somewhere or a story about how someone tried to Stump NY, I'll have to find it.

I can't wait to come back. All you locals are a privileged lot. I'm sure there's a ton to hate the city for after you've lived there awhile (I once had a friend tell me they had to vacate their apartment after an elderly man upstairs died in obscurity and literally rotted through their ceiling and into their kitchen).

Look for us in February.

posted by Lipstick Thespian 28 December | 12:28

What I like is there's a lot of stuff to do and interesting places to eat. I didn't go to lectures that much until I moved here.

I would have LOVED to have gotten together with you two! When in February? I'm going out of town the 10th for a few weeks.

posted by brujita 28 December | 12:40

[this is miko]

pips: LT's never been to the city before?
jon: He's from out west.
pips: They were in the city... why didn't they let us know?
jon (looking down at the cast on his foot): What were we gonna do?

Believe me, it more than crossed our minds. But our parameters were pretty tight, and having grown up going into the city as often as I could, I'm now very wary of overplanning. This was LT's first trip and we had about 3 hours before the afternoon matinee for which we joined my parents - we had dinner with them, then checked out Rockefeller Center and headed home. I definitely want to do an NYC meetup, but didn't want to try to shoehorn it into an already busy day with some deadlines in it - you know? It can get so hectic that all you do is worry about meeting times and places and can't do anything else.

We did consider going to the Strand to troll for jonmc, but it seemed like with the cast and all, you were staying home, jon. So we just had the breakfast pastry at Ferrara and then did the midtown sightseeing thing. Which is always great.

posted by Lipstick Thespian 28 December | 13:05

No worries, folks... I just thought you find the conversation amusing (and it occured before I read the post). Just don't do it again. ; )

STANDCLEAHOFDACLOSENDAWS!

JP: Yay! You know him! I love that guy.

posted by Pips 28 December | 14:38

I love living in New York. I grew up in rural New Zealand, and I never find the city intimidating. It's just a bunch of neighborhoods. I don't think of it as a whole. I miss living in the East Village though.

posted by gaspode 28 December | 17:03

@LT: So far, no one's stumped the group of locals (mixed natives, transplants, college students) and ex-patriates I co-moderate over at the New Yorkers LiveJournal community. And if there's no answers to a post? It's 'cuz we didn't feel like answering your question. ^_^

posted by TrishaLynn 29 December | 13:05

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