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07.07.01
Saturday

At the bottom of the stairs from the elevated subway station in the Bronx, we weren’t sure how to get to the Bronx Zoo. It’s less than obvious in the sign-deprived borough, which, consisting mostly of residential high-rises and parks, has fewer landmarks than its sibling boroughs. After a couple blocks, at a major intersection finally provided a sign and we headed for the mass of trees a block away. 

Inside, you see why the zoo does not dominate its surroundings – this is a noble attempt blend in quietly to neighboring parks and gradually ease you into a natural world. In this way the zoo is more of a “place” and less of raw, obvious tourist site. What is even more satisfying is that the habitats are not the lines of cages or cell blocks (that’s the friendliest I can describe it) I was used to at the small zoo back home, but rather habitats wrapped around the natural land with less awkwardness.

What swept me away as I stared at the birds, the sea lions, the monkeys, flamingos, ostriches, rhinos…was one striking and possibly irreverent thought: this is God showing off.  This is an elaborate artist’s exhibit, and throughout it you cannot ignore the presence of its mastermind. These square miles of creatures from around the planet are the pages of a magnum opus. It’s like the Ziggy cartoon where he and a child are watching a sunset, and Ziggy, in his philosophical wistfulness, says, “He does beautiful work, doesn’t he?” 

That’s how I felt walking out of the Bronx Zoo: I felt that I had seen someone’s masterpiece, and in so doing, had gotten to know the author a little better. God “puts himself into his work” that way. And really, why else would God create such an explosion of color and life if not to show something of himself, to extend himself in a way only a zillion different animals of inconceivably different shapes and sizes could do for him? 

In art and writing, human “creative” processes, there is an inevitability to them – the author just had to produce the work bottled up inside the brain. To refrain from doing so would be somehow un-human. We can’t make such simple conclusions about God, but I wonder if there’s not something similar to be said: God just had to bring into being (through evolution, if not instantly) this wide array of living things. To not do so would be somehow un-God-like, maybe even ungodly. 

Another thought I may later regret concerned the unnatural, tacky habit we humans have of trapping animals and incarcerating them in these artificial surroundings, feeding them out of dog dishes. Granted, it may be better treatment than they get in the wild, but animals aren’t hotel patrons filling out comment cards.  They’re inclined to be where it’s natural for them to be. The thought I had, though, was that the very effect the display had on me today was cause enough for the animals to endure their cages: perhaps the best way they can serve their creator is to live in one concentrated place with other creatures to bear witness to their maker. Maybe that’s the most they can give back to their source of life – to plod around in their carved-out “habitats” and demonstrate the beauty of how they were made, and who their “artist” is. 

I know they don’t see it that way. But today, I did. 

The zoo was the first time New York’s international stature struck me for a non-human and non-building reason. Until now, I had been getting it to sink in that I was in New York by glancing at the Chrysler or World Trade towers or listening to all the different languages. Seeing an elegant giraffe for the first time, and a lion and elephant, within yards of each other, suggested strongly to me that I was in a special place, and for once, it didn’t feel as tangible or contained.

So our evening event was out of place, then, as we moved from famous natural wonder to famous man-made contraption, trekking to the Empire State Building.  We endured the glacial line of people in a windowless, stuffy basement before taking the long elevator ride up to…the gift shop on the top floor. One you’ve dodged the keychains and knickknacks, you emerge onto the breath-robbing deck almost 100 stories over New York, with the wind whipping its welcome. We did this after dark, which was a change after taking in the Sears and Hancock in Chicago in late afternoons. You see more that way, but night viewing has more awe to it, being perched so high over the city with its dot-like lights and thimble-sized taxis, themselves so oblivious to your high post that it feels like a form of flying. 

Also, after popping out of the ground, prarie-dog like, at various subway stations for these past few weeks, it was helpful to stand in one place overhead and see it all, to piece it all together. So we marked the distance, as the crow flies (though none did that we could see), from the nearby Flatiron Building to the distant World Trade towers to the south; we placed Rockefeller Center, Times Square, and the dark mass of Central Park to the north, and felt squeezed in between the two rivers on the east and west. So the night was disorienting and re-orienting at the same time. 

07.06.01
Friday

The plan was to have supper after work at a mid-caliber restaurant, in between a McDonald’s and a four-star. Unfortunately, Andrea and I discovered few such joints exist in Midtown, at least not that we could find. We shrugged and headed to Friday’s, but soon realized that “America’s Largest!” Friday’s also has the country’s most jumbo prices – almost double what we pay in GR, 13 bucks for a hamburger and fries. So we opted for one of my favorites, Gabriel’s, a cart on the corner of 50th and 6th that offers a hefty carton of chicken over rice for a few bucks, and we ate it on the benches facing the prominent fountains of the towering McGraw building, checking the inane headlines of the Fox News’ ticker across the way on 49th, shivering at the almost chilly evening. 

Our event tonight was The Dinner Party, a Neil Simon play currently featuring TV comedy veterans Jon Lovitz and Larry Miller, as well as a TV actress named Veanne Cox whom Andrea told me was in You’ve Got Mail (I’ve tried to forget that movie). It plays at the cute little Music Box Theatre on 46th.

The play lumbered off to an uneven start, with Lovitz and Miller trading quips in a tone that seemed tight and forced. But things got interesting as Len Cariou (who, I was pleased to learn, guest starred in a recent West Wing episode as a pharmaceutical executive) entered, and Simon’s plot started to weave, a case of narratives playing Twister. Basically, six guests are invited to a dinner party, but as they arrive one by one they can’t figure out who the host is or why they were invited. Eventually they find the party is made up three divorced couples, a ruse sprung by the sixth in the faint hope of reuniting them all. 

The play is subtle enough to make the ex-spouses’ thaw believable, and honest enough to avoid a gimmicky ending – but crafty enough to make you think it’s coming anyway. Instead, the ending is sobered and satisfying. 

On our way out, taking in what is still my favorite sight – Times Square at night – we stumbled across a gawker’s treat: an empty cab billowing thick smoke from its hood right in the middle of everything, on 43rd and Broadway.  As the smoke got thicker and flames appeared, we realized we were part of a Guiness-sized crowd of bystanders, as hundreds from all sides of the square stopped to stare, and traffic backed up for blocks to a chorus of cabs horns. Finally a fire truck inched its way in and got to work, and we, ill at ease by the spectacle and the crowd, detoured to Eighth to catch the subway. I almost suspected this was the stunt of some disgruntled cabbie – I mean, could it really be a coincidence that a cab erupts and shoots flames to the sky in the middle of Times Square? In this crazy city, you never know what to disbelieve.

07.05.01
Thursday

I hadn’t ever been to Shea Stadium, home of baseball’s Mets and the Namath-era Jets of football, and I was pleasantly surprised at how welcoming it was. I had expected a charm-less box of a place, not just because its construction signaled a mid-century era of bland stadium architecture, but also since when I spotted it from LaGuardia yesterday it resembled a blue coffee can unceremoniously dropped in the airport’s backyard. 

Turns out there’s actually a little personality to the place. The bowl isn’t as bland as advertised, and it cuts off at both foul poles to tastefully reveal the night lights of Queens. Shaped like a “C”, its rounded back is to the airport and the distant Manhattan skyline, so it blocks off most thoughts of the noisy city, as baseball should. 

The stands rise steeply on the sides, so much so that when you stand in the upper deck, minus decent equilibrium, you fear falling forward onto the field below. Nonetheless Andrea and I periodically hiked up the cement steps to the top of the stands, pressing our noses against the screen to view the Manhattan skyline after sunset – so distant and recognizable it may as well have been a mural someone erected several blocks away.  The Empire State Building was still lit up in red, white and blue horizontal stripes for the holiday, so it looked like the Rocket snow cones they were selling at the concession stands. 

The surprising Cubs thumped the Mets 13-4 thanks to a seven-run explosion in the third inning. The power surge is best summed up by Ron Coomer, the ordinarily weak eighth hitter in the lineup, who went 4-for-5 tonight with a home run, a double and four RBIs. Sammy Sosa actually had an off night (as he did when Andrea and I went to Wrigley last summer, though we choose to read nothing into that), but he was about the only one.

07.04.01
Wednesday

The M-60 bus to LaGuardia is convenient from Columbia, since it stops by the gate on Broadway before cutting over and working its way through Harlem and into Queens to the airport. I got up early and eagerly made the trip to be jubilantly reunited with my fiancé, who flew in from Grand Rapids via Detroit. 

I came to New York so soon after getting engaged assuring myself that I am a student first, and despite my new marital status my primary function in the time being is still to see the world, take advantage of college opportunities like these New York and Chicago internships. But I admittedly “misunderestimated” (as our president would say) how rough it would be to be so far apart from my fiancé for so long. At last she emerged from the ramp and we embraced with the satisfaction of desert hikers spotting an Aqua Fina machine. 

At night we made the mistake of going down to the Financial District for the Macy’s fireworks show – for the most famous Independence Day display in the colonies, it was amazing how much trouble we had finding details about it. So we had a hefty walk up to East River Park, where we could see most of the show over the treeline. Maybe it was our vantage point, or our bloated expectations, but the display was underwhelming – not poorly done but not riveting, either. It didn’t help that the smoke lingered stubbornly in the sky straight above the launching point, so some of the bursts of color were barely visible through the thick blanket. 

We were also surprised to find how inaccessible public transit is from the Lower East Side of Manhattan – it was a mile or two, though it seemed like far more at the end of the grueling day, before we came upon a subway station. The good news was that the crowd by then had thinned out enough to make the subway feasible on what must be New York’s second-most gridlock-prone day, behind New Year’s Eve.

06.30.01
Saturday

I began a day-long venture into the city’s recent past at the Museum of the City of New York, which passes the years in church-like red brick building with white trim and steeple, on Fifth at the north end of Central Park (it’s moving downtown into the Tweed Courthouse, erstwhile bastion of Tamany Hall, pending renovations). I was disappointed at how empty and unevenly interesting it was – I mean, there was only so much fervor I could summon for an entire wing on children’s clothes throughout the century. 

Most rewarding were some of the artists’ renderings of famous New York intersections from the era of industrialization, when the streets were replete with trolley cars and fancy dresses. The artists are uniformally optimistic – their colors are soft but bright, their scenes always drenched in sunshine, their human subjects invariably upbeat. More recent work has a gloomier tone to match the city’s surfacing urban underbelly. 

Especially worthwhile was the museum’s tribute to Broadway, which includes a wall of pictures of old Broadway theaters. I didn’t know that theaters used to be more common farther south in Lower Manhattan and that the theater district gradually shifted up as space became more coveted.  Another high point was the “New York 100,” a room of artifacts from 20th Century New York history. My favorite item was a broad gray panel with evenly-spaced light bulbs popping out of it as it leaned against the wall under glass. It’s a portion of the old Times Square ticker, since replaced by a digital strip on 42nd Street. Those bulbs flashed more than their share of historic headlines. 

On the top floor is a replica of Rockefeller’s bedroom, which utterly repulsed me and struck all of my anti-capitalist nerves. No one human being should own such an ungodly, decked out as it was in silk curtains, lush carpets, and diamond ornaments, so ostentatious it could earn kings’ envy. If Rockefeller is capitalism’s champion, that tells me enough about capitalism. 

A more egalitarian landmark is the Transit Museum in Brooklyn, which venerates the chariot of the people, the subway. Oddly enough, it is difficult to navigate to by subway, even though the museum is located in an old subway station, the former Court Street stop – you enter it just like any other subterranean terminal, descending stairs from the sidewalk down into the dim underground. The old ticket booth is now the admission booth, and it certainly does not feel like a typical museum, despite all the displays and artifacts under glass. Across from the ticket booth is a row of former turnstiles, ranging from old wooden propellers to the current style of steel arms. If you’re not too self-conscious, you can zig-zag in and out of them, making serial entrances and exits through the years in a form of time travel. 

By the time I got to the bus section, where the front segment of an 80s-style bug-eyed bus rises from the cement floor, and moved on to the wall of old subway signs , I was growing impatient to get to the good stuff, so I hurried down the stairs to the lower level of the Court Street station. There the quiet tracks are stacked with retired subway cars from different decades, idling permanently against the familiar background of white tile on the walls. Walking from car to car, gripping the old straphangers – leather at first, then becoming more sturdy through the years – noticing how the cars progress from dark-colored and sparsely lit chambers to bright diner-like rooms, is itself a form of time travel. I eyed the old ads (which are all from the 80s, but are incongruously posted in all the different-aged cars) and tried to imagine the glamorous destinations of people who dented these seats, back when the car was still barreling down a track in nearby New York. 

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