Going to the city

I spent Wednesday evening in the city. What city? New York, of course. What other city is there? Even when I lived in Brooklyn, Manhattan was "the city." You never called it Manhattan.

I arrived by train and walked up to the theater district. I would be remiss if I did not mention how interesting it was trying to walk away from Penn Station at 5:05. It's a bit like swimming against the tide, except sweatier and smellier and more likely to get stepped on. But I found a good non-Starbucks coffee shop to hang out and watch the humidity settle on the passersby.

Part of the fun is enjoying the calm I feel as a native in the midst of absolute chaos. I wouldn't call what was happening around Penn Station as chaos; it's quite deliberate and purposeful and insistent. 42nd Street, on the other hand, is genuine chaos. People looking up, down, left, right, behind and forward, stopping suddenly, lining up for this and that. Milling around Madame Tussaud's and Ripley, conveniently located next door to one another. I know exactly where I am and where I'm going and can saunter along toward my destined dinner with my father.

I had realized at some point that I hadn't spent any time with my father in a while. There are many reasons for that, not the least of which is that he lives 150 miles away. But on this occasion we both made the effort to get together.

After the show, I had nearly an hour before my train, so I walked around Times Square. As someone who grew up using the place mostly as somewhere to change subway lines, it took me a long time to see the attraction of it as a tourist destination. Not anymore. At 10:30 on a Wednesday night it was jammed with people walking around, eating, drinking, looking at the giant video screens, having their picture taken with various cartoon characters (lots of Spider-Mans, all wearing backpacks for some reason).

At one point, I walked through a plaza in time to see a policeman holding a guy bent over a squad car, and noticed first that lots of people were taking pictures, second, that the policeman was looking at the camera, and finally, that he then let that guy walk away and then bent another guy over the car and repeated the process. You know, Paris may be the City of Light, and there may be Disney stores all over but you can't get this anywhere but the city.