Christmastime in New York City

The Big Apple -
Above and Below the Shoulders

We all know about New York City. It’s in front of us in the media every day. It’s a part of commercials, morning shows, nightly news, entertainment stars, sports stars, magazine ads, and sadly, 9/11. We know New York as the center of everything… it’s the so-called “Greatest City in the World.” I had only been there once before. That was twenty years ago, and my memory of it was fuzzy good.

If you spend just four nights in New York City now, like my wife and I and a couple who are our close friends did on a boondoggle trip weekend before last, you come away with the feeling that you have seen a great deal of what is good and important in America. This time, I also saw a little of what is not.

We approached the Newark airport at almost five-thirty in the afternoon on Thursday. It was dark, and Manhattan Island looked like a sparkling wonderland across the Hudson River in the distance.

Flying from Alaska to New York is no small journey, but we were drawn there by an unexpected connection. A family friend, the daughter-in-law of our traveling companions, had been selected to dance in the chorus line of the Rockettes this year in their annual Christmas Show at Radio City Music Hall. Blair Chenoweth Robinson, who was Miss Alaska in 2005 and Miss Alaska USA in 2007, is a professional dancer and proud product of the 49th State. She had just landed the biggest gig of her life.

My wife and I and our friends have all lived in Alaska for forty years…and we can’t see Russia from our houses. We are not wide-eyed backwoods people, and in fact are frequent and experienced travelers. I was wide-eyed the first time I visited Manhattan, but this time I experienced real life on this crowded island with millions of other people.

Making the “Ugly” Fun -- The Theme from our Apartment

Our arrival began with a thud. Beware of vacation rentals by owners!

On one of the busiest weekends of the year, we were unable to find a decent hotel room for under four hundred dollars a night per couple. We didn’t realize we were planning our trip on a “tree lighting” and “shopping” weekend in Manhattan.

Using the internet, we found a vacation rental by an owner for a three bedroom, two bathroom apartment on West 47th Street -- right in the heart of the Theater District in Manhattan -- for a little over four hundred dollars a night.  The internet pictures looked fine -- certainly not luxurious, but fine.  The fact that they wanted seventeen-hundred dollars in cash or a cashier’s check up front should have told us something.

Renting an apartment in New York City…

Arriving at our “home away from home,” we discovered that it was in a less than shiny part of West 47th Street.  As we climbed up the narrow, poorly lit, rickety stairway (no elevator here!) in the ancient building, we were hit with the overwhelming smell of marijuana. I looked up the stairwell as far as I could see, and thanked the gods that our apartment was on the second floor.

Reality began to set in when we opened the door. One of the first things I noticed was the tiny refrigerator leaning against the wall. As we explored the place, we discovered that the promised third bedroom (which we actually didn’t need) was just an alcove with a bed stuffed into it that filled the entire space. I pity the next renter who actually needs a third bedroom.

The bathrooms were a special adventure. The bathtubs and sinks in both bathrooms did not have drain plugs in them. Our tub featured big rusted spots and bugs that crawled out of the drain in the night. There was a big hole in the wall next to it. I jokingly told my wife that the mice and rats used that hole to come out at night. She calmly replied that no self-respecting mouse or rat would live in the place.

The bathtub in the other bathroom would not drain, so our traveling companions had to use our bathtub for two days…the time it took to get someone to come by and unplug the drain.

When I entered the street-side bedroom that my wife and I were to use (our traveling companions outran us), I discovered that our bed was a mattress and box springs sitting on the floor. The nice internet picture of the bed showed it sitting on a frame. A cheap broken window shade was lying on the floor. When I tried to close the flimsy shear over that window, the thing fell on my head.

The ad described the apartment as being fully furnished with three queen sized beds. In fact, we had only one small garbage can, one garbage sack, and no cloth or paper towels in the kitchen. The TV only received a few local channels, and the “Internet hookup” never worked. There was no heat control in the place. It was unseasonably warm our first night, so we ran the in-window air conditioning unit all night to combat the heat coming into our bedroom. The next three nights were very cold, so we had to pack towels and pillows in the gaps around the two window air conditioning units to keep the cold air out.

Our contact, “Mo,” didn’t really seem to care about anything. Of the many things we asked for help with, the only one he repaired was the plugged bathtub…after two days.

By the way -- the Internet listing for this place claims that the monthly rent is $5995!

So, how did we deal with it? We bought a six-pack of good beer, a couple of bottles of good wine, a bottle of good scotch…and laughed our way through it all! The reality was that we were all so tired by the time we got back every night that we could have slept on the floor. However, taking a shower in the light of day…that was a different story.

If this is an example of how the slumlords I have always heard about do their business (and the neighborhood looked like it has hundreds, if not thousands, of places like ours), I can understand how they get rich at other people’s expense. As I lamented to our friends, one good cleaning woman and a handyman with a six-foot ladder and two hundred dollars worth of supplies could turn it into a decent place in a couple hours.

Having been inundated with the glamor of New York for years, I found myself unprepared for its underside. There were piles of garbage everywhere off of the main streets. Thousands of dogs (or maybe hundreds of thousands of dogs?) were peeing on the only place they could -- the sidewalks. We had to endure the odors of the dirty, crumbling neighborhoods located just a few short blocks from the high-profile, high-fashion areas we see featured in the media every day. For us this was a rude awakening about the other side of New York. I realize that all large cities have their seamy sides, and I know this was not even the worst of what we could have seen in New York -- but it was still surprising to me.

It all got better. In spite of our rough start, I did not intend for this article to be a put-down of New York City. It really is one of the most fascinating cities in the world.

The Food

Manhattan assaults the senses in many ways, and the attack began the first night when our beautiful Rockette hostess took us on a culinary excursion. It began at a funky little restaurant tucked into a small, narrow space in an old building -- like many other New York restaurants. It was loud, glitzy, and fun -- and the food was great. It was also a good place for me to condition myself to the eclectic mix of people we would see over the next four days. There just aren’t that many places in Anchorage, Alaska where you’ll see two men sitting in a booth, holding hands, and looking dreamily into each other’s eyes. That is not a social comment -- it’s just a fact.

On Friday, we hiked from the Financial District to Katz Delicatessen in the Lower East Side for a late lunch. Opened in 1888, and advertised as the oldest and best deli in New York, it lived up to its billing. It is also the place where Meg Ryan did her famous faked orgasm in the movie, “When Harry Met Sally” (I’ll have what she’s having!) Diners packed the place at two o’clock in the afternoon. The line of people in line to pay their bill wound to the back of the large dining area. Our rewards for being patient (and our rapidly growing recognition of the push-your-way-in New York mentality) were five-inch tall hot pastrami sandwiches too big for one person to eat.

We followed that lunch with a wonderful dinner that night at Carmine’s in the Theater District -- a big, noisy, happy, family friendly Italian restaurant. That was probably the best of the several great meals we had. Running a close second the next night was “Brazil Brazil,” a restaurant we stumbled into out of a cold rain as we searched for a dinner spot near our apartment.

Ah, Sunday! Sunday…football and big screens, dozens of them. While the women took the subway to Wall Street to visit another high achieving beautiful young woman friend from Alaska, the men hit the ESPN Zone. The Bloody Mary’s were great, every football game being played was available somewhere in the building, and the crowd was raucous -- particularly when the one o’clock games started and the guy running the control room went to the bathroom and left bowling on the main screen. We couldn’t help but laugh as the bartender stood in front of us yelling, “Football, football,” at the empty control room.

The Entertainment

Saturday was our day to see the matinée performance of the Rockettes Radio City Christmas Spectacular. It truly was spectacular, and, like all the rest of the Rockettes, our girl was flawless. The show begins with a wonderful 3D trip on the back of Santa’s Sled, and continues to feature amazing digital special effects using one of the largest floating LCD screens in the US. An actual motorized, double-decker bus with the Rockettes on it, travels throughout the city, displayed on the huge screen in amazing detail. I loved the history and precision of the “Parade of the Wooden Soldiers.”  Everything is entertaining, and the Rockettes are beautiful and precise.

2009 Rockettes: “Parade of the Wooden Soldiers”

After the show, Alaska’s only Rockette treated us to a backstage tour, and we got to pet one of the two camels that were part of the lead-in to the Nativity Scene.

On Sunday, we had tickets for Jersey Boys at the August Wilson Theater, which features the lives and music of The Four Seasons and their star lead singer, Frankie Valli. For me, it was a trip back in time. The music was wonderful and the performers were outstanding. The show was surprisingly adult as it took us through their meteoric rise out of obscurity in New Jersey, their clumsy fall, and their eventual recovery, all accompanied by their hit songs. If you like great music, and if you had a pulse in the 1960’s, you would love this.

The Sights

Ground Zero was on my radar screen from the first day we decided to make this trip. As they say, there are a few events that will live in our memories forever…J.F.K’s assassination, the Challenger disaster, and 9/11 for me.

I also felt drawn to visit the World Trade Center site because my wife and I had gone to the top of the Twin Towers to have a drink and take in the view the first time we visited New York. As I walked around the construction area for the new Freedom Tower, I couldn’t help trying to imagine the hysteria, the fear, the grief, the shock and the heroism that had taken place there. I remembered how 9/11 changed the world forever.

We dressed for the weather with warm coats, gloves and umbrellas. From our apartment on West 47th Street, we walked or rode the subway everywhere.  Even though the streets and the subway were incredibly crowded, we always felt safe and confident. There are policemen at every corner, a tainted legacy of 9/11.

Pre-Christmas in New York City is a special time. On our last night we visited Rockefeller Center to see The Tree and took a carriage ride in Central Park. Unfortunately, there was not enough time to see everything. Maybe we’ll go back…and just pay the price for a hotel room.