A Year In New York

In the kaleidoscope of New York experiences, none are giving me a consistent thrill like a $2 ride on the subway. The good civics of mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg have made the streets of Manhattan quite scrubbed and civil. Walk underground, though, and there’s a whiff of anarchy.

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I met my friend Jen, who is visiting from Amsterdam, at Gizzi’s Coffee in Greenwich Village today to catch up on new projects, and in Jen’s case that means erotic film.
“Is this a gay coffee bar, or is it just a gay-friendly coffee bar?” asked Jen as she settled in, pointing at the tri-corner rainbow [...]

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In  California, the knish is the only well-known cuisine of New York that no one tries to sell you. Bakeries like Noah’s purport to make New York bagels and corner pizzerias make New-York-style pies, but until today I had never even laid eyes on a knish.
What I did know is that knishes are Jewish, so [...]

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I have a confession to make to all my beer-guzzling, baseball-cap-wearing guy friends: I love musicals.
Pathetic, I know. It is perhaps even more pathetic to admit how much I enjoyed tonight’s performance of “A Chorus Line” on Broadway, which is the capital of musicals in the same way that Wisconsin is the capital of [...]

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I met my friend Jacques for a drink in the West Village, where we navigated the bridge-and-tunnel crowd buoyed by political bonhomie and a dangerously strong pitcher of margaritas.

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To live in New York is to walk in New York, and after a month my soles are callused and I lose weight no matter how much white sauce they pour on my gyros. It’s all good; hoofing it, in case you haven’t heard, is hip.

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At the 90th Street entrance to Central Park, 70 or so police cars materialized from nowhere, lights twinkling, like ravers converging at an underground club.

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At 80th and Lexington, immobilized behind a garbage truck, I drum my fingers on the dashboard and contemplate the cruel irony of the term “parking space.” To park there must be space, and in Manhattan there simply is none.

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This afternoon I went to check out Olafur Eliasson’s “New York City Waterfalls.” They have the art critics as excited as kids dancing around a Harlem fire hydrant, but frankly they just made me homesick for the real thing.
All four of the installations can be seen from the tip of Pier 17. I stood against [...]

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I have exited Trader Joe’s and waded into the hurly-burly of 14th Street before I realize the scope of my blunder. My reach – for six bottles of beer, a can of black beans, a 12er of jumbo eggs – has exceeded my grasp. How the hell will I get all this home?

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