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On Your Own Now, Buddy

Polisphilius, listen. I am going to walk you down to Cafe Viand at 74th and Broadway. I want you to fortify yourself with an egg-salad sandwich and a Beck's. I have to leave town and take care of some other business. Promise me you will take the train up to the Cloisters. Live long and prosper.

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Weather is too damn cold.

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72nd and Poetry

When Theodore Roethke came to New York, he liked to stay at the Hotel New Weston. The building has since been razed, but it used to cater to fashionable people. Here is one of Roethke’s most famous poems:

The Waking I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go. We think by feeling. What is there to know? I hear my being dance from ear to ear. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. Of those so close beside me, which are you? God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there, And learn by going where I have to go. Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how? The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair; I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. Great Nature has another thing to do To you and me, so take the lively air, And, lovely, learn by going where to go. This shaking keeps me steady. I should know. What falls away is always. And is near. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I learn by going where I have to go.

Let’s walk up to 72nd and then down to Central Park West. We will pass the place where John Lennon was killed. The Dakota, where he lived, is the Upper-West-Side’s Plaza Hotel (designed by the same architect, built in the same decade.) We will turn north and head towards the Natural History Museum. “We think by feeling. What is there to know?” What is there to know? Something, I believe. Roethke is right, though: None of us can explain how Light takes the Tree. But wait. When Roethke observes that ‘Light takes the Tree,’ can he mean the Light of the World who took the axle-tree? I can’t think the poet meant this. But the fact is: He alone—Christ—can tell us how. He tells us how to wake to waking. Imagine...Here is a little poem for you: Behind McAfee's Knob The sun sets behind McAfee’s Knob. Orange blazes out, below the cloudline, more brilliant than day allows. I believe that back there behind the mountain they are tanning without sunburns and rocking out to my iPod. Who? Cash-register workers and people who pay: all are locked in an embrace. (No counters in between.) Dogs are looping but not pooping. It’s an InBox with no spam. A vesper hymn sounds behind me: Rush-hour traffic in harmony, keeping time, rolling west... Christmas is here, and it is coming. Everyone has a tumbler of coffee, drunk with no hangovers. The man says, “Come here, I have a secret to tell.” He licks his lips. The secret is a kiss.

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We will have to zig zag

"You're sending me tulips mistaken for lilies..." The Upper West Side is bounded by two parks. To the east, our old friend Central Park. To the west, a ribbon of green along the Hudson called Riverside Park. The “Main Street” of the Upper West? Broadway. The most magnificent architectural façade? The Ansonia at 73rd Street. The best meal? Peking Duck at China Fun on Columbus Avenue between 71st an 72nd. Hungry? Starting from Dante, let’s walk right on up Columbus Ave… Lincoln Center is marvelously unattractive on our left. This is where “West Side Story” took place. The slum was torn down to build this space-station-like campus. Regrettably, we cannot stop in to read the paper at Café Mozart on 70th Street, because the place is closed. What we can do, though, is walk and discuss.

The Broadway-Seventh Avenue Interborough Rapid Transit built the Upper West Side. The subway from City Hall to West 145th Street was the first underground train route to open, in 1904. An uptown building boom followed. Columbia University had recently moved from mid-town to Morningside Heights, fifty blocks up Broadway from where we are now. The original history of the UWS is the life that Jewish émigrés made for themselves here in modest apartments with pianos, nourished by gefilte fish and the crispiest pickles. Where are you going to go for the coolest concerts in town? The Beacon Theater, of course. 74th and Broadway. Someone I know saw Bob Dylan play there in 1988 and met Allen Ginsberg in the crowd. Ironically enough, Natalie Merchant (who does NOT approve of Beatnik-ism) played the same stage just two months later.

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Reverence for the Mother

I almost forgot to tell you that we have to shoot down 63rd Street. We are going to visit the statue of Dante Alighieri, canopied by the trees across Columbus Avenue from Lincoln Center. FYI: When Dante wrote his poems and books, everybody thought that Latin was the language for smart people, since it is such an excellent language. Dante spoke Latin as well as Julius Caesar ever did. But the Florentine loved the language he learned at his mother's knee more than the Latin he learned in school. He loved his mother tongue like he loved his mother land. Dante had enough reverence for his mother tongue to see that he owed his very existence to it: This vernacular of mine was what brought my parents together, for they conversed in it, just as it is the fire that prepares the iron for the smith who makes the knife; and so it is evident that it has contributed to my generation, and so was one cause of my being. If our parents had never spoken to each other, we never would have been born. Our parents could not have spoken to each other without our native language. Therefore we must love our native language like a mother or a father. Beautiful! We love you, o venerable English of the Queen! May we use you worthily, respecting you with the deepest humility.

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UWS Odyssey Begins

Do you ever wake up with the feeling, ‘I really need to hear some bassoons rocking Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King” right now?’ Let’s hop on the #1 train at the South Ferry subway station and head for Columbus Circle. When Frederick Law Olmsted designed Central Park, he had envisioned a grand circle at the southwest entrance. A statue of the great Genoan seafarer was erected to commemorate the fourth centenary of the discovery of our continent. After the Twin Towers downtown were destroyed, Time Warner built another set of twin towers here. A young man I once knew admired a young woman who lived with her parents in an apartment on Central Park West. He told the dark-haired beauty that he would wait for her in Columbus Circle until she came around. He camped there for several months, and she finally came. Columbus Circle is the gateway to a unique realm. We will step through this portal and begin our exploration of a land flowing with milk and coffee: the Upper West Side. We are trying to get to Lincoln Center at 66th Street to see if they have Peer Gynt on this evening or not. The chances are one in a hundred, and even if they are performing “In the Hall of the Mountain King” this evening, the chances are less than one in a million that there will be tickets available which we can afford. If we find a rich benefactor in front of Trump Tower, we’ll try to get some Philharmonic tickets. Otherwise, we will just listen to Bernstein conducting on our iPods. Let’s stroll up Central Park West. I will write you again in a week or so, dear Polisphilius.

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Bassoons!

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Sunny Side

Let’s take a run down Bay Street to Von Briesen Park. We can look out over Fort Wadsworth and the Narrows. We can admire the skylines of Brooklyn and Manhattan. We can marvel at the $13-toll bridge. After running back downtown, let’s walk up the hill to the Dunkin’ Donuts on Stuyvesant Place and drink some coffee. Then back to the ferry terminal to look at the fish in the aquarium. We will catch the next ferry.

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A-Rod's 600th homerun, on August 4. Still wears the calf socks. My man.

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The 'Fifth and Forgotten' Borough

In which borough of the City of New York are we likely to see a sign like this? …The New York harbor is a vast expanse of wonderfully calm water. Our ferry ride brings us to the St. George terminal on Staten Island. Borough Hall stands on the hill. To the right is Yankee Stadium. Okay. It is actually Richmond County Bank Ballpark, the home of the Class A Staten Island Yankees. The House that Ruth Built—er, rather, the successor to the House that Ruth Built—is a few miles north, in the Bronx. Arriving on Staten Island provokes a couple questions: 1. What does ‘Staten’ mean? It is Dutch for ‘state.’ 2. Why did the five boroughs of New York consolidate into one practically unmanageable behemoth of a city? After all, if New York City were a country, its GDP would be the seventeenth largest national Gross Domestic Product on earth, just behind the Russian Federation and just ahead of Switzerland. With more than eight million residents, New York City would be a more populous country than Ireland, Switzerland, New Zealand, Israel, and all the Scandinavian countries besides Sweden. The New York City Police Department would be the twentieth-best-funded army in the world, just behind Greece and just ahead of North Korea (Source: New York magazine). Forty percent of the population of the state of New York resides in ONE city—New York City. Back when the boroughs consolidated in 1898, the population of the city was FIFTY percent of the population of the state. Yeesh. Why patch together such a big Frankenstinian monster? Our friends here on the ferry have wondered the same thing. In 1993, the Staten Islanders voted to secede from New York City. But Rudy Guiliani was elected mayor on the same ballot. He was a) Republican, like Staten Island, and b) he made the Staten Island Ferry free, which soothed a lot of Staten Island feathers. So the secession did not occur, and the Yankees did not have to fight another Civil War. But why did the boroughs consolidate in the first place? At the time, the consolidation amounted to the unification of the two cities of New York and Brooklyn. Consolidation was presented as a win-win, with no deleterious effects. Both cities voted in favor of it, as did the sparsely populated counties of Queens and Richmond. (Staten Island=Richmond County.) (The Bronx was already a part of New York City in 1898.) We can talk more about this over a Bud and a burger at Karl’s Klipper, across from the ferry terminal on Bay Street. We are NOT going to do what most tourists who ride the Staten Island ferry do; that is, they never leave the ferry terminal, but just ride back on the next ferry. We are going to explore downtown Staten Island!

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Through Whitehall

Polisphilius, are you telling me that you have never read Anna Karenina? Seriously? What are we going to do with you? How can anyone hope to understand himself without reading Anna Karenina? Let’s walk through the “Winter Garden,” restored to its pre-9/11 splendor. (There were many shattered glass panes when the towers fell.) If only there were a place to get a finger of whiskey in here… We have to cross West Street somehow; then Ground Zero is before us. Let us pause and pay our respects. This place is, after all, first and foremost a cemetery. From here we turn right on Church Street and head south. We are in the heart of the original New Amsterdam, where the Dutch futilely tried to keep the British invaders at bay in 1664. Wall Street is to our left. Battery Park lies at the bottom of the island. This is where we would seek a ferry berth if we were going to Liberty or Ellis Island. But we are boating to Staten Island. The Whitehall ferry terminal is around to the left of Battery Park. We will get good looks at Lady Liberty from the deck of the Staten Island ferry. And the Staten Island ferry is free!

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Spinning South Again

Did I mention that we are going to Staten Island for supper? Let’s head over to the Hudson River. From Little Italy, we will sidle our way through TriBeCa, the triangle below Canal Street. This is an early 20th-century industrial area, which was abandoned by industry and then reclaimed by Robert DeNiro and co. to be briefly the epicenter of the cool universe. Now it is expensive real estate with a lower coffee-shop ratio than a lot of other neighborhoods. We will cross our old friend Hudson Street, which parallels the river of the same name. If we press on, and brave many lanes of traffic, we will gain the lovely bike path. If we were feeling really spry, we would rent bikes and ride all the way up to Grant’s Tomb at 122nd Street. How about we walk south and discuss contemporary literature instead? How about Colum McCann’s novel Let the Great World Spin? Haven’t read it? It is a “New York” novel, intended as a means of recovery from 9/11. As we read the book, we enter the heads of a fairly large cast of characters: A city-court judge, his wife, her black friend from a Vietnam-casualties-mothers’ support group, the mother of the girls the black friend adopted, the brother of the Irish monk who befriended the girls’ mother, the wife of the drug-addict artist who caused the car wreck that killed the monk and the mother…

Sound complicated? Well, New York City is socially complicated. The novel is regarded as a tour de force, won the National Book Award; Oprah loved it. Why is it so painfully unsatisfying to read? In my humble opinion, it is difficult enough for a writer of fiction to produce one believable narrative voice in a single book. Why is Huckleberry Finn such a great novel? All its sources of narration are believable; i.e., it has one, and it is believable. Ditto Moby Dick. Ditto The Great Gatsby. In The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner undertook to narrate from multiple points-of-view, and he pulled it off, because a) he is William Faulkner, and b) the price the reader pays is having no idea what is going on for hundreds of pages. Is it not the height of presumption for a bleary-eyed, typically grim Irishman to attempt to narrate a story from the point-of-view of a black Bronx prostitute? Or a Guatemalan geriatric nurse? I think it is. The best part of Let the Great World Spin is the first chapter, told from the point-of-view of—yes!—a bleary-eyed, typically grim Irishman. I was just getting into the novel, just getting interested in the characters, when, bam! the chapter ends, there is a new point-of-view, and the old one I liked never returns. Gyp. A gyp. Tell your story from beginning to end, man. Stick to your guns. But no—you’ve got to take a tour of the inner lives of people you don’t really understand. Well, tours of the souls of characters whose inner lives are projections of the inner life of a bleary-eyed, typically grim Irishman start to get boring right quick. Lots of excessive drinking, lots of morbid, loss-of-faith memories. Yadda. I am certain that New York is, in truth, both darker and brighter, both more boring and more exciting, than this “multi-novel.” Alright, let’s walk south along the Hudson. Before we know it, we will reach the “Winter Garden,” and it will be time to turn inland again.

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It-ly on the East River

We are trying to get to Little Italy to eat a plate of pasta, drink a glass of chianti, and savor a cannoli. To get there, we have to cross Canal Street. Remember the canal they built to drain Collect Pond? Well, now it’s a street. Canal Street is unique in a couple ways: 1) It is the only street that truly crosses town. The Holland Tunnel from New Jersey empties onto Canal Street on the west side of Manhattan Island, and the Manhattan Bridge from Brooklyn lands on Canal Street on the east side. 2) Canal Street may be the only place on earth where you can buy 15 Rolexes for $50. The thing about Little Italy is: It is very little. Just the two blocks of Mulberry Street north of Canal. But these blocks are cozy and deliciously quiet (relatively speaking). Chinatown is nice, but we did not walk up here to eat dim-sum. And while there aren’t any Italians who live in little Italy anymore, the restaurants they run here have the same soccer-fan ambience as the restaurants their second cousins run in actual Italy, the country. So let’s settle in for a while, rest our weary legs, and tuck into a little bowl of penne alla vodka or a prosciutto panini. Perhaps we will even be able to enjoy the second-hand smoke of the waitress’s Camel Light.

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In case you didn't get a chance to watch "Man on Wire," here is the schoolchildren's version.

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Colonial Skate Rink

We just crossed the point where the northern wall of the city was in 1755. Back in those days, the colonists came up here in the winter to ice-skate. Believe it or not, there was a large pond here where Centre Street is now. When the industrial revolution occurred, the pond became polluted. They built a canal to drain the 48 acres of water into the Hudson. (Keep the canal in mind, if you would.) The landfill was poorly done, so the result was a veritable swamp in the middle of New York City. Anyone with money fled the neighborhood. It became the world-renowned slum of “Five Points.” Charles Dickens walked through the area and wrote: “In respect of filth and wretchedness, Five Points may be safely backed against the worst slums of London… Debauchery has made the very houses prematurely old. See how the rotten beams are tumbling down, and how the patched and broken windows seem to scowl dimly, like eyes that have been hurt in drunken frays.” Thanks to the crusading Jacob Riis, the slum was razed during the Progressive Era, clearing the way for the courthouses. The poor people moved a few blocks away to the Lower East Side. As we walk north on Centre Street, Chinatown is to our right. Perhaps we should dive in and snoop around.

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"City Hall Park," by Guy Wiggins, painted in 1912. The point-of-view is looking north. Old city hall is in the foreground to the left; the then-new Municipal Building looms behind.