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waitingmanBrooklyn, Manhattan...
Oct. 12 Friday – New York
It’s a whole new adventure alright... & it started with a traffic jam almost from the moment we pulled away from the kerb, returning Steve McQueen to the National Car Hire office in Manhattan. We thought we’d better allow about ninety minutes for the trip & if we were early, well that wouldn’t really be a problem. So we left our lodgings in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn, drove two streets & spent the next two hours moving at a lame snail’s pace all the way to the Hudson River, over it & into downtown Manhattan, getting another lesson in how to weave through traffic NY style. After being the polite victim last night, today I was a little more aggressive about grabbing positions & holding them & the only time someone blared their horn at me was when I wasn’t blocking an intersection the way the cab behind us wanted me to. He then worked his way around me & barged in front, earning himself some dirty looks & a free counting lesson from Julia (“How many fingers am I holding up, @$$#ole??!!)
We eventually made it to the National office & handed Steve over for inspection. They either didn’t notice or didn’t mind the slight scratches on the front & rear bumpers (origins unknown... I didn’t hit anyone or thing), nor the impact crater on the front windshield from a stone thrown up by a truck somewhere in the mid-West. So no extra charges & the last we saw of Steve, he was being driven into a washing bay for a much-needed bath. Total miles we enjoyed in The Great Escape:- 6900... We’d considered taking a radically wrong turn on the way from Jersey into New York to bring the number up to 7000, but couldn’t find one we could be confident about correcting in time to still arrive on time... Farewell Steve McQueen, we’ll miss you
I certainly won’t miss driving in New York though... twice was enough to convince us that the subway will be our preferred method. Julia had downloaded the app that gives us a map of the subway network, as well as directions & where/when to change trains. So, let’s see how that goes over the next week. Outside the car hire office, we also used Jeeves Navman for the last time, to find a T Mobile shop where we could change Julia’s phone over to a daily rate, now that the one month contract we’d organised back in San Francisco was complete. With this done, we had access to Googlemaps, rendering Jeeves obsolete in this big city... He’d always had trouble with the larger towns & cities anyway & the trip this morning had been no exception...
Breakfast/Lunch was our next priority, so we set off on foot down Broadway, where they say the neon lights are bright, but not at 1pm on a sunny day they’re not... We were heading for the Carnegie Deli, on the corner of 7th Ave & W55th St, known to Julia from a TV show called Bizarre Foods & to me from Kinky Friedman’s detective novels. We’d been forewarned that the queue outside could be a long one, but three minutes after we joined it, we were being seated inside, elbow to elbow with diners on either side of us, all of whom were friendly & obviously used to the cramped conditions. We had two of the House specialties – the hot pastrami sandwich, which is about 3” of pastrami crammed into & onto bread that is instantly overwhelmed & disappears... it’s much easier to eat it with a knife & fork...
& matzo ball soup – dumplings of grain as big as your fist, served in chicken broth that’s incredibly tasty without being salty
The walls of the Deli are covered in photos of the celebrities big, small, past & present that’ve popped in for a sandwich or maybe something considerably smaller. Couldn’t find Kinky’s photo anywhere up there, but a TV screen at the back which showed promos for the Deli, at one point showed the segment from Masterchef Australia where three contestants had a lesson from Sandy Levine, the Carnegie’s owner, on how to prepare the hot pastrami & cheese sandwich they’re justifiably famous for (2021 update: the original Deli is now gone, though there's a smaller outlet in Madison Square Garden & we found another outlet in 2016 when we were in Las Vegas!?!)
Stuffed, but happy, we staggered back onto the street & waddled off in the direction of Times Square, stopping in at the guitar shop formerly known as Manny’s, now known as Sam Ash’s... though the name Manny’s is still on the footpath outside the door. Heading straight for the Gibson section, they had the hollow-body electric guitar I’d fallen in love with in Nashville, for only $100 less... still too much to consider spending on this trip. The aqua-coloured, left-handed American Stratocaster for $1000 was a temptation, but we managed to leave the store without purchasing anything that would mess with our baggage allowance... sob...
Unlike a lot of other landmarks on this trip, Times Square was actually bigger than I’d expected, albeit every bit as crowded. It was all there... the giant advertising screens, the clock with the ball that drops on New Year’s Eve, the pedestrian plaza which is mostly taken up by people queuing for theatre tickets & a tiered observation deck perfectly positioned for photos...
Sometimes it's hard to see what's so special about Times Square, given the overwhelming amount of advertising there... but maybe that is what it's about...??
It certainly still seems to be a popular place to be!!
We decided to head for the Chrysler Building, mainly because it was a closer walk than the Empire State Building, but also because it’s better-looking. It took us a few hours to get there though... First, we stopped in at Toys’R’Us, here we roamed the three levels & rode the ferris wheel
A few doors down from there was Forever 21, where I failed to find anything I wanted to wear, but Julia didn’t. Then we found the HBO Shop, full of memorabilia, t-shirts & souvenirs from all of their most popular show (Sex & the City, the Sopranos, True Blood, Game of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire). Around the corner from there was Grand Central Station which, by this time, was getting pretty crowded as Friday’s business hours drew to a close. We finally made it to the Chrysler Building as the sun was setting – I could see little pieces of reddening sky in between the towers & office blocks. The lobby was an Art Deco tour-de-force with exotic wood panelling, painted ceiling, with gold & chrome plating on anything you could attach it to. Unfortunately, the lobby’s as far as you can get... there’s no public access to the upper levels, so we’ll have to save that for the Empire State Building
Such was our disappointment that Julia decided we needed to find a bar. We found Muldoon’s Irish Pub about a block from the Chrysler Building, found two seats at the bar & ordered a Guinness, a diet Coke & two shots, the polite name for which would be ‘Damp Cats’... say no more. After which, we headed back to Grand Central Station to buy weekly tickets for the subway & buses
After standing in the wrong queue in the wrong place for about ten minutes, we found the right machine, paid $30 each, then put the tickets... & ourselves... to the test by catching a train downtown to 1st Ave & Momofuku, a modern Asian restaurant owned & operated by David Chang, a chef with an excellent reputation & another destination we can thank Masterchef Australia for... As such, we expected to wait about half an hour for a table & were told it would be “about twenty to twenty-five minutes”, by a harassed-looking maitresse d’. No point hanging around the small, crowded restaurant foyer, therefore we crossed the street & found a Tapas Bar, found two barstools & had two drinks before returning to Momofuku, only to find that our name had been called in our fifteen minute absence. So we waited, inside the restaurant this time, for about ten minutes, then were shown to our spots at yet another crowded table. Being one of the few Asians in the restaurant who wasn’t in a chef’s uniform or wearing a waiter’s name badge, Julia was asked a few times by a lady on her left to identify various dishes as they were brought out. Resisting the urge to say they were orang-utan testicles or Sumatran tiger kidneys, or chilled monkey brains was the right thing to do & I’m proud of her. Then our dishes began to arrive. No ‘Snake Surprise’ here... Pork belly rice rolls, goat sausage rice cakes, two bowls of ramen & a peanut butter ice cream dessert later, we were full again & felt that David Chang deserves his reputation & a decent tip on top of the not outrageous bill for the night
Back out on the street, we retraced our steps to the subway station & caught two trains back to our little part of Brooklyn. Standing on the street corner outside the Bedford-Stuyvesant station, feeling & probably looking a little dazed, confused & tired, we were given directions to our lodging by a friendly lady who happened to live on the same street. We could have caught the 43 bus, which would take us close to our doorstep, but decided to walk, even though we were getting a bit footsore after walking all over town since parting from Steve this morning. It turned out to be a shorter walk than expected, however & now we’re home... tired, well-fed & grateful for the chance to sleep in tomorrow with no bags to pack, no car to load, no check-out time to worry about & no hundreds of miles to drive before doing it all again
Oct. 12 Friday – New York
It’s a whole new adventure alright... & it started with a traffic jam almost from the moment we pulled away from the kerb, returning Steve McQueen to the National Car Hire office in Manhattan. We thought we’d better allow about ninety minutes for the trip & if we were early, well that wouldn’t really be a problem. So we left our lodgings in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn, drove two streets & spent the next two hours moving at a lame snail’s pace all the way to the Hudson River, over it & into downtown Manhattan, getting another lesson in how to weave through traffic NY style. After being the polite victim last night, today I was a little more aggressive about grabbing positions & holding them & the only time someone blared their horn at me was when I wasn’t blocking an intersection the way the cab behind us wanted me to. He then worked his way around me & barged in front, earning himself some dirty looks & a free counting lesson from Julia (“How many fingers am I holding up, @$$#ole??!!)
We eventually made it to the National office & handed Steve over for inspection. They either didn’t notice or didn’t mind the slight scratches on the front & rear bumpers (origins unknown... I didn’t hit anyone or thing), nor the impact crater on the front windshield from a stone thrown up by a truck somewhere in the mid-West. So no extra charges & the last we saw of Steve, he was being driven into a washing bay for a much-needed bath. Total miles we enjoyed in The Great Escape:- 6900... We’d considered taking a radically wrong turn on the way from Jersey into New York to bring the number up to 7000, but couldn’t find one we could be confident about correcting in time to still arrive on time... Farewell Steve McQueen, we’ll miss you
I certainly won’t miss driving in New York though... twice was enough to convince us that the subway will be our preferred method. Julia had downloaded the app that gives us a map of the subway network, as well as directions & where/when to change trains. So, let’s see how that goes over the next week. Outside the car hire office, we also used Jeeves Navman for the last time, to find a T Mobile shop where we could change Julia’s phone over to a daily rate, now that the one month contract we’d organised back in San Francisco was complete. With this done, we had access to Googlemaps, rendering Jeeves obsolete in this big city... He’d always had trouble with the larger towns & cities anyway & the trip this morning had been no exception...
Breakfast/Lunch was our next priority, so we set off on foot down Broadway, where they say the neon lights are bright, but not at 1pm on a sunny day they’re not... We were heading for the Carnegie Deli, on the corner of 7th Ave & W55th St, known to Julia from a TV show called Bizarre Foods & to me from Kinky Friedman’s detective novels. We’d been forewarned that the queue outside could be a long one, but three minutes after we joined it, we were being seated inside, elbow to elbow with diners on either side of us, all of whom were friendly & obviously used to the cramped conditions. We had two of the House specialties – the hot pastrami sandwich, which is about 3” of pastrami crammed into & onto bread that is instantly overwhelmed & disappears... it’s much easier to eat it with a knife & fork...
& matzo ball soup – dumplings of grain as big as your fist, served in chicken broth that’s incredibly tasty without being salty
The walls of the Deli are covered in photos of the celebrities big, small, past & present that’ve popped in for a sandwich or maybe something considerably smaller. Couldn’t find Kinky’s photo anywhere up there, but a TV screen at the back which showed promos for the Deli, at one point showed the segment from Masterchef Australia where three contestants had a lesson from Sandy Levine, the Carnegie’s owner, on how to prepare the hot pastrami & cheese sandwich they’re justifiably famous for (2021 update: the original Deli is now gone, though there's a smaller outlet in Madison Square Garden & we found another outlet in 2016 when we were in Las Vegas!?!)
Stuffed, but happy, we staggered back onto the street & waddled off in the direction of Times Square, stopping in at the guitar shop formerly known as Manny’s, now known as Sam Ash’s... though the name Manny’s is still on the footpath outside the door. Heading straight for the Gibson section, they had the hollow-body electric guitar I’d fallen in love with in Nashville, for only $100 less... still too much to consider spending on this trip. The aqua-coloured, left-handed American Stratocaster for $1000 was a temptation, but we managed to leave the store without purchasing anything that would mess with our baggage allowance... sob...
Unlike a lot of other landmarks on this trip, Times Square was actually bigger than I’d expected, albeit every bit as crowded. It was all there... the giant advertising screens, the clock with the ball that drops on New Year’s Eve, the pedestrian plaza which is mostly taken up by people queuing for theatre tickets & a tiered observation deck perfectly positioned for photos...
Sometimes it's hard to see what's so special about Times Square, given the overwhelming amount of advertising there... but maybe that is what it's about...??
It certainly still seems to be a popular place to be!!
We decided to head for the Chrysler Building, mainly because it was a closer walk than the Empire State Building, but also because it’s better-looking. It took us a few hours to get there though... First, we stopped in at Toys’R’Us, here we roamed the three levels & rode the ferris wheel
A few doors down from there was Forever 21, where I failed to find anything I wanted to wear, but Julia didn’t. Then we found the HBO Shop, full of memorabilia, t-shirts & souvenirs from all of their most popular show (Sex & the City, the Sopranos, True Blood, Game of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire). Around the corner from there was Grand Central Station which, by this time, was getting pretty crowded as Friday’s business hours drew to a close. We finally made it to the Chrysler Building as the sun was setting – I could see little pieces of reddening sky in between the towers & office blocks. The lobby was an Art Deco tour-de-force with exotic wood panelling, painted ceiling, with gold & chrome plating on anything you could attach it to. Unfortunately, the lobby’s as far as you can get... there’s no public access to the upper levels, so we’ll have to save that for the Empire State Building
Such was our disappointment that Julia decided we needed to find a bar. We found Muldoon’s Irish Pub about a block from the Chrysler Building, found two seats at the bar & ordered a Guinness, a diet Coke & two shots, the polite name for which would be ‘Damp Cats’... say no more. After which, we headed back to Grand Central Station to buy weekly tickets for the subway & buses
After standing in the wrong queue in the wrong place for about ten minutes, we found the right machine, paid $30 each, then put the tickets... & ourselves... to the test by catching a train downtown to 1st Ave & Momofuku, a modern Asian restaurant owned & operated by David Chang, a chef with an excellent reputation & another destination we can thank Masterchef Australia for... As such, we expected to wait about half an hour for a table & were told it would be “about twenty to twenty-five minutes”, by a harassed-looking maitresse d’. No point hanging around the small, crowded restaurant foyer, therefore we crossed the street & found a Tapas Bar, found two barstools & had two drinks before returning to Momofuku, only to find that our name had been called in our fifteen minute absence. So we waited, inside the restaurant this time, for about ten minutes, then were shown to our spots at yet another crowded table. Being one of the few Asians in the restaurant who wasn’t in a chef’s uniform or wearing a waiter’s name badge, Julia was asked a few times by a lady on her left to identify various dishes as they were brought out. Resisting the urge to say they were orang-utan testicles or Sumatran tiger kidneys, or chilled monkey brains was the right thing to do & I’m proud of her. Then our dishes began to arrive. No ‘Snake Surprise’ here... Pork belly rice rolls, goat sausage rice cakes, two bowls of ramen & a peanut butter ice cream dessert later, we were full again & felt that David Chang deserves his reputation & a decent tip on top of the not outrageous bill for the night
Back out on the street, we retraced our steps to the subway station & caught two trains back to our little part of Brooklyn. Standing on the street corner outside the Bedford-Stuyvesant station, feeling & probably looking a little dazed, confused & tired, we were given directions to our lodging by a friendly lady who happened to live on the same street. We could have caught the 43 bus, which would take us close to our doorstep, but decided to walk, even though we were getting a bit footsore after walking all over town since parting from Steve this morning. It turned out to be a shorter walk than expected, however & now we’re home... tired, well-fed & grateful for the chance to sleep in tomorrow with no bags to pack, no car to load, no check-out time to worry about & no hundreds of miles to drive before doing it all again
(no subject)
Date: 2021-10-17 03:23 pm (UTC)