Last Wednesday we headed down to New York City for a mini-vacation, staying in a hotel not far from Grand Central Station. It was a busy few days, so we came home pretty tired, but it was generally fun. And given how NYC dominates the #discourse, I thought it might be worth posting a few comments on the experience.
— Wednesday afternoon we hadn’t made any firm plans beyond “Be in Manhattan,” so we ended up just wandering around in ways that were depressingly cliche. Kate and SteelyKid went to the big Macy’s where SteelyKid wanted to look through something on every floor, while The Pip and I walked around quite a bit. We visited the dog park at Madison Square, tromped up to Bryant Square and got him a hot dog from a street vendor, and generally gawked at crowds and tall buildings like the tourists we were.
— Thursday’s big activity was a trip to Yankee Stadium to see a game, but since that was a 1pm start, we had time for a couple more walking-around-The-City excursions. I went out by myself with the DSLR and took a bunch of random photos (one of which is at the top of this post), and when I got back from that, The Pip was super fidgety, so he and I walked down to the river and took some more pictures.
— We got to the Stadium just before the gates opened, because The Pip had learned about Monument Park and wanted to see it. We had some issues with getting the tickets to display on my phone, so by the time we got in the line for the park was massive, but we squeaked in just before they closed it down and got to see all the various plaques and markers. I didn’t find it all that compelling, but he was over the moon, which was the whole point.
— The actual baseball game was a mixed bag. It started off really well, with Aaron Judge (The Pip’s favorite player) hitting a home run on the first pitch he saw (coming off a three-homer game the night before). We also got home runs from Gleyber Torres and Giancarlo Stanton— Stanton went 4-5 on the day, and was a triple short of hitting for the cycle. (This led to some fun speculation about what it would take for the notoriously slow Stanton to hit a triple— probably a ball into the deep right-field corner, with the right fielder somehow knocking himself unconscious trying to play it…)
The pitching, on the other hand… This was a game without a traditional starter— they ran Michael King out for the first two innings, then Keynan Middleton for an inning, followed by Jhony Brito for two-and-a-bit. With the Yankees leading 3-1 in the 7th, Brito gave up a double, and Aaron Boone called to the dugout; I looked at who was warming up and said “If they’re bringing Tommy Kahnle in, here, I need another beer.” And by the time I got back to our seats, the Yankees were down 4-3.
They did make a valiant attempt to rally— the final out was a Harrison Bader fly ball that came maybe 20 feet short of being a walk-off homer in the rain— but it ended up a 6-5 loss. Which is pretty much the Yankee season in microcosm.
All in all, even with the loss and the rain, it was a fun day at the ballpark. We remain 0-for-Yankee-Stadium in terms of getting foul balls or warm-up balls— first baseman DJ LeMahieu threw nine baseballs into the section just to our left— but that’s about the only thing we have yet to check off the list.
— Friday morning we headed up to the Met to check out some art, having had a good experience at the Corning Museum of Glass the prior weekend. This also wound up being a bit of a mixed bag, because the museum is so huge and overwhelming. They had a really well-done Van Gogh exhibit, but that was a timed-entry ticket, which forced us to wait in the Greek and Roman galleries until our time came around. The kids (SK is 15, TP not-quite-12) were very much not into being around that many nude statues, no matter how ancient they were. They did like the Van Gogh stuff, and were appropriately wowed by the Tiffany stained-glass window in the courtyard of the American wing (we used to have a poster of it in our dining room), and the Temple of Dendur.
— Once again, SteelyKid wanted to hit the gift shop, while The Pip wanted to explore, so Kate and SK went shopping while TP and I did a quick pass through Central Park before getting the train back to our hotel. Very cliche, I know.
— Friday night we had tickets to see The Play That Goes Wrong at the New World Stages. This is a farce that purports to be the opening night of an ill-conceived production of a murder mystery put on by a college drama society— while we were waiting for the show to start, a couple of actors playing the crew for the “show” worked the crowd, one saying they were looking for a missing dog, the other warning that some of the lights might fall.
This is not remotely a highbrow production, but was great fun. It involves a lot of cleverly engineered collapsing sets, and an impressive level of physical comedy from the cast. It made for a late night, but we had a blast. And the seats at the New World Stages were unusually good in terms of leg room— kudos to them.
— Our original plan for Saturday was to retrieve the car then drive to the New Jersey side to catch a ferry out to the Statue of Liberty. When The Pip and I headed out to breakfast that morning, though, it was pouring rain, so we shifted to Plan B, and instead drove up to the American Museum of Natural History to see dinosaurs and the famous blue whale. At least, The Pip and I saw dinosaurs; SteelyKid was museum-ed out, and just went to, you guessed it, the gift shop… After lunch, we got on the road home to Niskayuna.
— Moving to more general reportage, New York remains, for me, the quintessence of “Great place to visit, wouldn’t want to live there.” I’m a really big guy and was clumsy growing up, which makes me profoundly uncomfortable in crowds and cramped spaces, and NYC is nothing but crowds and cramped spaces. I love all the cultural opportunities it offers, but if I had to live and work there full-time, I would go completely insane in short order.
— In a similar vein, I find that I like the idea of the subway system a lot more than I like the actual, existing subway system. The new thing where you don’t need a ticket, but can just tap a credit card on the turnstile is very nice, but the platforms were brutally unpleasant, and the trains are… fine, I guess. As is pretty typical when I visit Manhattan, after one ride I found myself thinking “Well, it’s only like, 25 blocks, I could just walk…”
— Squalor Report: There was less of the piss-and-hot-garbage smell that I associate with summer in NYC than I recall from past years, and a good deal more pot smoke. It’s not clear to me that this is an improvement. Only one of our half-dozen subway rides included a crazy person ranting in a corner, and there were fewer panhandlers than I expected to see in the areas where we spent significant time. On a scale where 1 is “It’s so over” and 10 is “We’re so back,” maybe a 7?
— Hotel Report: We had two rooms, one for the kids with two beds in it and the other for me and Kate with one big bed. The kids’s room was fine from the get-go, but the A/C in our was terrible, so neither of us slept well the first night. They sorta-kinda repaired it Thursday, but it crapped out again in the middle of the night, and Friday we got them to move us to another room on the same floor, which was fine. They didn’t have in-house breakfast but had an arrangement with the restaurant next door, who 1) managed to make scrambled eggs inedible (according to The Pip), and 2) couldn’t actually process the credit we were supposed to get for being hotel guests. So after the first morning, The Pip and I walked a couple of rainy blocks to the Murray Hill Diner, which was pretty much exactly what you’d want from a diner in Manhattan.
— Kid Report: They continue to be pretty awesome. I wish they were a bit less picky about eating— the meals we had were fine, but could’ve been way more interesting— but they were good sports about the touristy stuff we did, and generally got along well with each other. We are extremely lucky.
— In summary: New York remains New York, in ways both good and bad. The Yankees have their moments, but are poorly constructed and managed (which pains me, since I overlapped at Williams with the current owner…). Live theater is fun, restaurants are nice, museums are pretty great.
That’s probably more detail than you needed, but just enough procrastination from preparation for next week’s classes. Here’s a button:
And if you feel so moved, the comments will be open:
Thanks for the report. We've been debating a return to NYC. A lot will depend on our rapidly filling COVID catch up dance card. (Are we THAT old?)
There's nothing wrong with doing touristy stuff. People do it for a reason. The subways sound more or less unchanged. In the 1960s, the debate was whether the system was going to hell or had already gotten there. I'll never forget the first time I stepped into an air conditioned car. I had expected descent to the next circle of hell as per usual, but, instead, it was pleasant inside.
It sounds like the museums are still as great as ever, but the real treat of the city is just walking around, that and shopping. So few Americans live somewhere that let's them just step outside and walk around. I suppose your kids are going through that "embarrassed" stage given your comments on their conservative food tastes and discomfort with nude statues. I followed your blog for years, so thanks for the age update. I guess I'm getting older, too.
Funny schedule, as I went there for the first time literally a week before you did.
I find it is very much a big city, which is great if you like big cities (like me). I didn't end up going to a lot of places. The only ones of note were the 9/11 museum and the American Museum of Natural History (where I did not even know of the blue whale and did not spend enough time with dinosaurs). I was mostly there to meet some internet friends, and we ended up walking across the Brooklyn Bridge and barhopped a couple nights.
As for the subway, it was fine. It works. I agree with all the complaints though. Currently my rankings are Hong Kong and Tokyo, then Taipei, then a huge gap, then Vancouver, then another gap, then Toronto and New York. Although one could say that Vancouver's isn't exactly a "sub"way.