Tue 9 September 2008
But you can take a cross-town bus if it's rainy or it's cold, and the animals will love it if you do
thirty-eight
NEW YAWK — Just a quick little postcard while the wind and rain assails the windows outside on the 20th Floor, Amsterdam Avenue, Upper West Side.
I have come once again to the capital of the world, New York City. This completes my west to east cross-country trip, really in full, since I was just in Los Angeles (and San Francisco (and Portland)) earlier this year...oh, sure, I had a six-month furlough in the Ohio Valley and the Midwest, and I'll be returning there soon, but it is done; the continent is conquered.
Catching the El at the last minute south down Chicago, switching from the Red to the Brown, scurry across the river to Union Station, then jump on the Lake Shore Limited, 15 minutes before it departs the station — across Indiana and Ohio in the night, I woke up to cloudiness near Ashtabula which only thickened and grew muggier as I was spit out into the moldy sauna chambers of Penn Station, in the bowels of Manhattan, and then out to the E train to Queens and all these people of every color and persuasion and I'm like--whoa, whoa, whoa this is some other city, so much bigger than Chicago...
I feel lazy today, morning almost over and most of my time in New York spent and what do I have to show for it? Some sketch comedy, a walk along the East River, Spaten beer and Greek desserts, a nap in Central Park, I'm kind of glad it's pouring outside. At least I have an excuse that way. Except. Tropical Storm Hanna hit just as I came in the other night and in the short few blocks from the subway to Andrew's pad in Astoria, Queens, I don't think I had a dry spot on me. (This coming after Gustav drenched me two days before in Chicago) I should invest in an umbrella...no sense walking around like a wet puppy. But soon, I go once more into the breach...oh, no...
Somehow, I walked through Times Square twice on this trip, and that's not exactly the side of New York that I go for...but it really gave me these two thoughts...Times Square has an absurd beauty to it, all this unfettered, crass capitalism, everyone trying to make a buck, sell you something, "less, less, mayke a deeealll..." and it's kind of incredible in it's own way. And then I stood underneath Times Square, switching from the N train to the 3 train, and all these mazes of tunnels, all on top of each other, it's a wonder the whole city doesn't just sink into the earth...and then I thought, well, who keeps the posts maintained, the city on its supports?...and for all the unfettered and free market above, it wouldn't do a lot of good if there weren't a collective, a government by and for the people to agree to keep the whole place from falling under...
Off to Philadelphia...
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