A Year In New York

Today I’ve been running last-minute errands and pondering what it all means, spending a year in New York City. I’ve worn through a lot of shoe leather in this crazy town and learned some hard lessons,  and now it’s time for me to pass those lessons on to you.
Here goes:

1. The World Won’t End If [...]

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At 6:30 this morning, a small family of raccoons crawled from the shrubs in Central Park. Mom flattened herself under a green wire fence while two little ones scrambled over. They had just collected themselves for the journey across East Drive when they looked up to see a giant! Their mouths almost formed into little [...]

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I knew something was up when I biked by The Lake in Central Park and saw no fewer than ten rowboats afloat, each carrying exactly one man and one woman. And all the lovers were white. How strange. Also, what sort of romantic spark causes people to paddle out on a chilly, overcast Monday at [...]

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I have returned from the West Coast to find New York wrapped in a knee-length wool coat. The thermometer is supposed to drop to 41 degrees tonight, 38 degrees tomorrow night. What happened to that mild, sunny October weather I enjoyed in San Francisco just yesterday?
Fall seems to be underway, temperature-wise, but Central Park hasn’t [...]

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As the sun set behind the towers on the Hudson, Joo and I stepped onto a bus, destination Central Park. If we hurried we’d just make a free showing of “Misalliance,” a play by George Bernard Shaw, staged outdoors and on the run.
Ushers pointed us to a patch of grass on the Great Hill. We [...]

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Back in 1857, when Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux were charged with designing Central Park, they envisioned something both grand as the skyline and as common as grass. “Instead of a playground for the city’s upper crust,” my guidebook says, “they wanted a park where people of all social backgrounds would mingle and [...]

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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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On a run in Central Park, pacing up East Drive amid the throng of sweaty joggers who seem to chug away no matter the hour or the heat, I sensed that some feature, something enormous, lay just to the west through the trees. I turned off to check it out.

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They say the best thing about summer in New York is the free shows in Central Park, so after dark I walked to the Great Lawn to see for myself. The New York Philharmonic was playing and its website recommended arriving early with a blanket, and candles.

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