Their town, our town

On the way home yesterday, I read the essay by Nathaniel Rich in the New York Times about his native Manhattan, how it now resembles so much of American “mall culture,” with Crate and Barrels and Gaps filling three floors of real estate on many of the prime streets, bankers and investors occupying the rest. He mourned the loss of New York’s bohemia, and was glad he now lived in Brooklyn, where he could find comfort in the unique and modest spaces that don’t cater to the world’s tourists.

It does stink that, from city to city, what you might find is exactly what you might find at our own MOA. Bright lights, long walls of sectioned windows, spiral staircases, sales on cue in January and July. The patrons might be better dressed or darker skinned but the wares are still the same.

I was on the plane home from five days in Manhattan where I worked a table at a writing conference. The young woman next to me was a kind of Britney Act-a-like. She had shiny long hair and wore those really big sunglasses with the rows of rhinestones on the side. When she got tired she would fling her head on the fold-down tray in front of her, splaying her thick hair to both sides so that it hung on my tray, too. She fixed her make-up three times during the flight and would turn to me with random questions like, “Did you have fun in New York?” and “Are you scared to fly?” When I asked her about the places she had visited she told me Chinatown and then said, “There were some serious smells there.”

Before we took off she spoke on her cell phone with great exasperation:

“Where will you be? Where will I find you? Is this a surprise? Why won’t you tell me?”

And then she turned to her writing friend beside her and said, “I think he’s going to spring it. I really do. And I don’t have any tissues and I look like butt. I really look like butt.” Her friend, who was quite plain, told her she looked beautiful. They were both from southern Minnesota and had made the trek to New York for the writing conference, too.

She told her friend that she would never had gotten involved with this guy if she had known he was in the service. When the friend asked her where her boyfriend was stationed, she said, “Iraq. It’s a bitch. But we’re writers, right? We can handle crazy.” And then she said:

“He doesn’t believe in anything I do and I don’t believe in anything he does.”

When we landed in Minneapolis and we all turned on our phones, hers rang again:

“What do you mean hurry? WHERE ARE YOU?,” she screamed. “Okay, okay I’ll walk to the baggage claim but can’t I stop and have a cigarette first? Okay, okay, I’m just kidding.”

When we all got to the lower level baggage carousel there he was, holding up a big hand-colored sign on white poster board. I didn’t make out the front side but as she got closer to him he flipped it over to the words “Marry Me” and then he got down on one knee and proposed to her. She said yes and we all clapped. Her friends had come with him and they took pictures of the scene. The old couple next to me had only heard the clapping and seen the camera flashes so they said, “Someone is sure happy to be home.” I told them he had just proposed and the woman asked, “Did he get down on one knee?”

* * * * *

It was a cleaner, sparklier New York since the last time I had visited. I was too busy to poke around much but I did have a fun time. On my first day, after I had checked-in and unloaded the exhibit gear, I took a walk near Broadway. A man came up to me and said I should take his ticket to Spring Awakenings, that he had double-booked himself and was going to see the Letterman show. He said it was intermission now but I could walk over in time to see the second act—-it was really good. I knew it was good; I’ve been following that play. So I knew enough of the plot and if I was going to catch only the second act of any play, this would be it. Besides, all those Tony nominations! And at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre. I had never been. It was the perfect New York moment. Of course I went. It was amazing and Jonathon Groff, who plays Melchior, was unbelievably good. The whole cast was! I felt the need to explain to the two women on either side of me—-in our terrific seats three rows from the stage—-why a man sat there for the first act and me for the second (as if we were frugal Midwesterners who couldn’t afford two full seats). But I didn’t.

One of my colleagues was in town for a day on a separate matter so we met for dinner at Resto, a warm and inviting Belgian restaurant. The beer list! We split the beef cheeks roasted with fries in a cast-iron crock, and another hot crock, this one filled to the rim with steaming clams in white sauce. Perfect! Then we took the #6 back up to Midtown to have a drink at The Algonquin Hotel. The famous writers don’t take up residence much there anymore but the infamous cats in the lobby still do. We drank Benedictine and ate decadent chocolate cake.

On Saturday morning, I took a long walk in Central Park. I hiked under the bridges and around the zoo and by the Wollman Rink. There, in the bright Saturday morning sunshine, were loads of kids—-some taking figure skating lessons and some playing in Mite hockey games. Parents filled the bleachers at one end, where I overlooked the scene from the viewing level above. As one team of Mites came skating with the puck towards the end, a parent shouted out: “Tackle him!” A few people laughed but a young guy with a blue jacket with, simply, “COACH” on the back, shouted back, “Sir, we do NOT tackle in hockey. Seriously.”

I bought a shiny green ring at a gallery on 7th and, because it was my last night and I wanted to get away from the writer’s crowd, I asked the two shy guys behind the counter where a person could go for a quiet drink. One said, “Are you willing to go to Connecticut?” and they both chuckled. Then the same one said he liked a place on 2nd Avenue. “And there are tables there so you can sit down. I don’t know about you, but I like to sit down at a table.” I told him, “I do. Sometimes when I sit at a bar my feet dangle and I feel like a kid.” Then the other guy, a noticeably short, rather sit-com character kind of guy, said, “I like to sit at a bar. It makes me feel like I’m up there with the rest of the adults.” The one gave me the address and told me to ask for Philly. He said she was an artist behind the bar: “It would be a disgrace if you went in and ordered a beer," he said. "It’d be like going to the Met and saying, ‘Oh look at how well they’ve painted the walls.” So there I was, heading over in a taxi, following the advice of two strangers, looking for a woman named Philly. But he was right. She took good care of me, the place was cozy and intimate, and I sat by the window, watching the couples walk by, drinking my good drinks, taking notes in my little red journal.

*photo by Sheila O'Malley. For my New York photos, see her website.