A BYTE FROM ROCKEFELLER PLAZA

(Submitted by a friend from college)

I work about 20 feet from The Today Show, and breeze past it each day on my way to work.  Every morning I take a quick glance to see which stars are there - David Hasselhoff, Jennifer Garner, Spike Lee, and always, of course, Al Roker.  One morning the crowd was so dense, and there was so much screaming, that I just had to stop and see which band was playing.  There was a stage, but I couldn't see over the people's heads.  Finally, I leaned over the barricade to a throng of blond-haired, blue-eyed tourists, clad in pastel and fanny-packs. 
 
"Excuse me," I asked, wearing heels and a purse slung over my shoulder - an obvious working woman and New Yorker.  "Do you know what this is?" 
 
"Yeah," replied the fifteen-year-old girl."  Slowly:  "This is the TODAY Show."

A BYTE FROM THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

Overheard by one of my tourists in a gallery of European Paintings.

BOY:  Why is that man stabbing that woman?

LAZY MOTHER:  Um, they used to do that.

A BYTE FROM THE SUBWAY

Overheard by one of my tourists on the downtown R.

MAN #1:  After you got out, did you have to register as a sex offender?

MAN #2:  Sshh.

DON'T MISS THIS WEEK'S BYTE:  OUTTAKES WITH HUDSON.

KEEP YOUR WALLET IN THE FRONT POCKET...

AND YOUR STOVEPIPE IN THE HAT BOX

This week I returned my wallet to my front pocket after two or three years of wearing it in the back.  A number of events and recent trends reawakened my vigilance.  My first tourist in twelve years was pickpocketed, her wallet removed from her purse in Times Square, and another tourist discovered that someone had rolled her suitcase away from the hotel sidewalk while the bags were being unloaded from the bus.

Thieves and con artists are multiplying in the streets.  Three people were arrested at another hotel for trespassing after reaching over the front counter, snatching a room key that had just been dropped off and boarding the elevator.  (Were they going to steal dirty towels or just use the bed for a few hours?) The guys at the food carts are back to their old scams--selling a hot dog at the sausage cost, or peanuts for the price of almonds, or, my favorite, giving the unsuspecting mark change for a ten though the tourist paid with a twenty (they have a Hamilton ready to show you if you insist you gave them a larger bill).  And the hordes of West Africans selling counterfeit crap from their proliferating garbage bags are getting more brazen, though they're merely supplying the growing demand--tourists are foaming at the mouth for cheap and ugly purses.  In fact, many would forego the Metropolitan, Central Park, or the Statue of Liberty to spend their entire three-to-five day trip shopping up and down the grimy sidewalks of Chinatown.

If the economy's not tanking, people sure are acting like it is, and if the U.S. isn't a developing country, its currency seems to be.  How else to explain the largest number of English visitors in the city since the British Occupation of the Revolutionary War?  One of these Brits, who was funding her entire trip by purchasing iPhones at the Apple Store to resell at home, told me that visiting the States was like visiting a third-world country.  Because of the phenomenal exchange rates (for them), New York City excursions are advertised in every paper in the British Isles, which is a reason New York is the only American city to raise its hotel rates.  This past winter, many domestic corporate companies couldn't afford to bring their meetings or incentive trips here, forced to hold out for the summer rates, but I was in three restaurants over the holidays where literally every single one of my fellow diners had a British or Irish accent. 

I started assuming there was an express line through Customs for anyone with a U.K. passport, so it was a surprise to learn that one particular British voice was recently kept out of the country.  Sebastian Horsley is the author of Dandy in the Underworld, a very funny, smart and moving memoir published last month by my publisher, Harper Perennial.  The book and the author are constantly referred to as "out there" and "revolting," which promote the sensationalist qualities of the book (and warn off easily offended readers), but fail to point out that Dandy in the Underworld is also an intelligent memoir in a long literary tradition.

Reading it on the subway, I grew tired of reaching for my pen to underscore a funny line or interesting passage, so I began reading the book with pen clutched in hand.  Then I grew tired of removing the cap to underscore a funny line or interesting passage, so I began reading the book with uncapped pen clutched in hand.  I'm on page 162 right now, in the midst of a brilliant and seemingly random swimming-with-sharks section, and I'd guess I've made marks on well over one hundred pages.  Here's a sampling: 

"Artists are easy to get on with--if you're fond of children."

"Dyslexia is the term posh people use to describe their children's stupidity."

"Mother was a poet.  A real poet.  She did nothing.  Not even write poems."

"From the very start I wanted to be the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral and the baby at every christening."

"He loved the poor, the downtrodden and the queer.  But his favourite were the blacks, whom he loved unashamedly--he certainly wouldn't have had his servants any other colour."

And one last quote that proved prescient:  "Style is when they're running you out of town and you make it look as if you're leading the parade."

The book, employing irony like a chisel, is full of wit and self-aware subversiveness and, always, there is a clear literary division between the author and the subject, the older speaker writing about his youth, the outsider writing about the class into which he was born.  The dandy seems frivolous, but never is.  And Sebastian is a serious writer.  In her review of the book for The New York Times, Choire Sicha wrote that Horsley,  "...spent most of the last decade writing his memoirs. Like his forthrightness about vulgarity and degradation, that’s admirable. He labored long over something that looks dashed off; most addiction memoirs look quite the opposite."

So what happened?  Why wasn't he allowed into the country?  As far as I can tell, from all reports, it's because he dressed up.  (Which is an integral part of the persona of the dandy!!!!)   Gone are the days of Oscar Wilde who could make such an entrance:  "I have nothing to declare except my genius."  On his arrival in New York, the papers gleefully quoted him in their headlines:  "Wilde Disappointed with the Atlantic."  His lecture tour was wildly popular and his ironic epigrams and costumes were part of the joy of the game.

Cut to 2008.  Sebastian Horsley was wearing a stovepipe hat (designed for him last year for a fashion show in London but which can also be seen as a nod to the land of Lincoln), a Saville Row suit, and fur-lined gloves.  He was promptly stopped.  Nowadays, apparently, if you're not wearing a sweatsuit or jeans and unwashed hair, you're immediately pulled out of line for questioning.  His girlfriend was asked why Sebastian was wearing a stovepipe hat and she answered, "Because it wouldn't fit in his suitcase."

Not good enough.  He was detained for eight hours and then sent back to London on charges of "moral turpitude."  They apparently read passages of the book and thought it was a how-to manual on addiction.  Not the sharpest readers.  Sebastian, for the record, has been clean for several years.  To reject someone on the grounds of moral turpitude is to admit a fear that said person is a threat to our nation's moral security.  Thinking of another former alcoholic and drug addict occupying the White House for the last eight years, l don't buy their claim.

The good news is that the book is in stores nationwide and this embarrassing incident has garnered an enormous amount of press on both sides of the Atlantic.  A part of me thinks the whole thing is brilliant and Perennial should encourage more of these high profile deportations in the future--it creates far more publicity than most books ever receive and it saves the author from having to do so many readings.

Of course, we don't want to live in a society where talented writers are treated like criminals (or maybe we do), so my advice to publishers is to send a form letter to all of their international writers visiting from abroad.  Feel free to include the following:

"If you are entering the United States, please remember to dress down.  Leave the top hat at home, wear drab colored clothing from the Gap and, above all, for those of you with euros or pounds, move your wallet to your front pocket--these are desperate times." 

DON'T MISS THIS WEEK'S VIDEO TOUR:  WASHINGTON SQUARE, PART ONE:  "SMOKE, SMOKE"

April 17, 2008

A BYTE OF STRAWBERRY FIELDS

(Submitted by actor and NYC guide, Mike Timoney.)

"On a warm, sunny afternoon I had just finished talking to my group at Strawberry Fields.  Standing nearby and listening with a woman on his arm was a distinguished-looking well-dressed man aged about 60, and the moment I finished speaking, he addressed me in a loud firm voice.

He mentioned Mark David Chapman by name (something I don't do, by choice), and said that I should also tell my group that John Lennon's killer was up for parole and that he should never be let out and that he should spend the rest of his life behind bars.

My group was a bit taken aback, as was I.  But only a second after he finished talking, another well-dressed woman about the same age spoke directly to him in a pleasant but equally firm voice, and said 'John Lennon would disagree with you.'"

RECENT BYTES OF THE RIDICULOUS

On meeting the group.

ROBERT:  So where exactly is your school?

STUDENT:  We're forty minutes west of L.A.

ROBERT:  West?

Arriving at Ellis Island.

STUDENT #1:  Have we been here before?

ROBERT:  No.  That was the very first time we ever took a boat.

STUDENT #2:  Is Chinatown on this island?

ROBERT:  No.

STUDENT #3:  Isn't this place also called Alcatraz?

ROBERT:  No.

STUDENT:  #4:  Is there anything here about Elvis?

ROBERT:  ...........

At the Empire State Building.

STUDENT:  Where's the Eiffel Tower?

ROBERT:  That's in Paris.

STUDENT:  No, it's in New York.

ROBERT:  Are you thinking of the Statue of Liberty?

STUDENT:  No!  The Eiffel!  Tower! 

On Wall Street.

ROBERT:  ...a massive explosion that killed thirty-three people and wounded four hundred.  Pieces of the horse that pulled the wagon with the TNT were found up at Trinity Church (almost a hundred yards away).

STUDENT:  Did the horse die?

On bus, after discussing Leo, the world-record-breaking cat.

STUDENT:  Robert, do cats really have nine lives?

ROBERT looks at her, trying to figure out the question.  Is she serious?

STUDENT:  No, no, I didn't ask that.  No, no, never mind, never mind.

ROBERT resumes the tour.

STUDENT (quietly, to a friend beside her):  I KNEW that was a myth!

A BYTE OF CANDY

A friend who's a fan of this blog was sitting with me in the concourse at Rockefeller Center when an eighth-grader ran up to her group and shouted:  "I just spent $30 on candy!"  My friend laughed and said, "She's right out of your website.  That's so sad."  I pointed out, "She's also probably part of a group that won't tip their guide.  Which is even sadder."

DON'T MISS THIS WEEK'S VIDEO TOUR: WASHINGTON SQUARE, PART TWO:  A SPRINTING TOUR

ELEVATORS, ELEVATORS AND MORE ELEVATORS

THANK YOU, NICK PAUMGARTEN

Nick Paumgarten published another fantastic article in last week's New Yorker, this time about elevators (click here to read).  I've already used a few of his reported facts in a couple of my step-on tours, and as I try to commit more of the article to memory, I should warn those of you coming on tours of mine in the near future, that you will most likely be hearing a great deal about the history, the technology, and the future of the vertical transportation industry.

Paumgarten tells the story of Nicholas White who in 1999 was trapped alone in an express elevator of the McGraw-Hill Building at Rockefeller Center from 11pm Friday night until 4pm Sunday afternoon.  There's a time-lapse security video posted on YouTube--forty-one hours of his ordeal compressed into three minutes.  I still haven't been able to watch all the way through.  Although I don't have an elevator phobia, this video makes me very nervous.  Maybe it's the music.  Click here to watch...IF YOU DARE!

Here's an excellent excerpt from the Paumgarten article:

"The elevator, underrated and overlooked, is to the city what paper is to reading and gunpowder is to war.  Without the elevator, there would be no verticality, no density, and, without these, none of the urban advantages of energy efficiency, economic productivity, and cultural ferment.  The population of the earth would ooze out over its surface, like an oil slick, and we would spend even more time stuck in traffic or on trains, traversing a vast carapace of concrete."

Bravo!  And underrated indeed.  Whenever I ask my groups to name the two most important things needed for a skyscraper (answers:  steel frame and elevator), "the crane" is almost always offered first.  Frequently "elevator" isn't even mentioned until I give the big hint:  "You can't rent out the ninetieth floor of your building unless you have aNNNN __________."

Some interesting facts from the Paumgarten article:

--There are 58,000 elevators in New York City and these make eleven billion trips per year (thirty million per day).

--The world's tallest building, the Taipei 101 Tower, has the world's fastest elevators--fifty-five feet per second.  "The cars are pressurized, to prevent ear damage."

--The first express/local elevator system was designed for the World Trade Center in the 1970's with the introduction of sky lobbies.

--The Marriott Marquis hotel in Times Square used to have the worst wait times in New York.

(LITTLE BYTES TANGENT:  I can attest to this.  People with tickets to 8:00 performances at theaters less than one block away could miss the curtain if they didn't leave their rooms by 7:30.)

This was because the hotel was designed with the lobby on the eighth floor, which required the elevators to do extra work.

(LITTLE BYTES TANGENT:  The reason the lobby was placed on the eighth floor was because the developer wanted to keep the riff-raff of Times Square out of his hotel, even though this lobby and hotel were sold as a continuation of the public space of the square.)

To reduce the elevator wait times, the Marriott Marquis installed a "destination dispatch" system, the first in the U.S. to do so.  You now press the number for your desired floor on a central console and are then directed to the elevator which will take you there.  There are no buttons inside the elevators--with fewer stops, you are taken more quickly to your floor.  Other buildings in New York with this system include "the headquarters of the Times, of Hearst, and of the News Corporation."

--The new 7 World Trade Center is home to the "most advanced system going...their destination-dispatch system is integrated with the security system; it reads your I.D. card at a turnstile (registers the floor where you work) and assigns you to an elevator."

--"With destination dispatch, the wait in the lobby may be longer, but the trip is shorter.  And the waiting may not grate as much, because you know which car is yours.  In Japan, the light over your prospective elevator lights up...even if the elevator isn't there yet, to account for what the Japanese call 'psychological waiting time.'  It's like a nod of acknowledgment from a busy bartender."

--"In the old system--board elevator, press button--you have an illusion of control; elevator manufacturers have sought to trick the passengers into thinking they're driving the conveyance.  In most elevators, at least in any built or installed since the early nineties, the door-close button doesn't work.  It is there mainly to make you think it works."

I have to stop myself.  Here's the link again to the article:  READ THIS!  Trust me, it's fascinating.

ANOTHER BYTE OF ELEVATOR CAPTIVITY

You might remember this from almost two years ago--I posted this blog in 2006.

"On May 25th, a tour group from Minnesota, led by my good friend and shining star, Tessa Derfner, visited the new Apple store (on Fifth Avenue) after their Broadway show.  While trying to leave, part of the group took the elevator and these five soon found themselves completely trapped inside the glass cylinder.  Employees of the store tried but could not rescue them, so the NYPD had to be called and the hydraulic fluid had to be drained.  For forty-five minutes, they were stuck in the middle of the illuminated cube, in the center of the plaza, objects of "public ridicule and contempt" to the surprising amount of people walking by at midnight. They spent their time in captivity recreating numbers from Chicago, until the elevator was lowered, the doors were pried open and they climbed up to safety, but not without two of them burning their hands "enough to blister on the hot lights in the shaft."  Click here to read one of the student's accounts.

MY OWN OTIS ELEVATOR ANECDOTE

For his article, Paumgarten visited the Otis testing center in Connecticut and shares the Otis claim that their elevators carry "the equivalent of the world's population every five days."  Otis is the world's oldest and largest elevator manufacturer.  Elisha Graves Otis installed the first safety passenger elevator (in the E.G. Haughwout Building in SoHo) in 1857 after inventing the safety brake in 1853 and demonstrating the brake at the Crystal Palace the following year.  In 2003, I gave tours for the Otis company during the festivities celebrating their 150th anniversary. 

One morning I helped escort guests to the Hammerstein Ballroom on 34th Street for a party/meeting.  As we entered the old opera house, we encountered actors dressed in nineteenth-century costume standing on a wooden platform.  "Mr. Otis" explained his new brake, which was there to catch the platform when it suddenly fell as part of the demonstration reenactment.  We applauded politely--we had had 150 years to get used to this technology--and then a curtain parted on the other side of the auditorium to reveal a giant screen.  Music began to play and we were all drawn towards the projection of famous buildings and structures equipped with Otis elevators.  History nerd that I am, I was still surprised that tears were actually filling my eyes with the images of the Eiffel Tower, the Woolworth Building, the Cities Services Building, the Empire State and Chrysler.  "Look at all the skyscrapers!" I wept with the musical accompaniment, unprepared for what was about to happen.

For this to make sense, you should understand that if you are an editor creating a video montage with photographs, you usually try to add movement, say panning across the photo or zooming into it, but if the subjects are skyscrapers and the elevator is the theme, then you are limited to vertical choices--you either tilt up or you tilt down, and if the montage is FULL of skyscrapers, you alternate. So the camera that morning went up one skyscraper and down the next one, up another and down the one after that, and somewhere in the 1970's, it started getting uncomfortable.  I wasn't the only one in the audience who was reminded that the skyscraper is the ultimate phallic symbol.  As we got closer and closer to the 2003 mark, this Otis-sponsored pornography increased in tempo--up and down and up and down and, faster, faster, up down up down up down, faster, faster, updownupdownupdown until the music crescendoed, the screen went to black and a giant O appeared followed by the letters TIS.  During the wild applause, glances were exchanged--did that really just happen?--and then some of us went for water, others outside for a smoke.

DON'T MISS THIS WEEK'S VIDEO TOUR:  ASTOR PLACE:  RIOTS AT THE OPERA.

AND COMING APRIL 28TH:  A VIDEO ABOUT THE FIRST BUILDING WITH AN ELEVATOR SHAFT... NOT AN ELEVATOR, JUST THE SHAFT:  COOPER SQUARE:  FROM LOCOMOTIVES TO JELL-O

A BYTE OF ELEVATOR KARMA

I received several emails and comments about the last elevator-related blog, and my favorite was from Aileen Trebesch, a teacher from one of my recent California groups:

"I thoroughly enjoyed this week's elevator blog...my dad was an Otis constructor and then later maintenance and on-call mechanic, just retired after 36 years.  I remember him watching Flyers games on Saturday, he'd get beeped, calling him to rescue someone in downtown Philly, and at times he'd wait until the end of the period before leaving on this 'emergency'.  I figure I'm doomed to be trapped at some point to pay for this."

A BYTE OF CELEBRACADABRA

My friend, Chris Martin, is the producer of a new reality show he's been working on for the last year at VH1.  It's broadcast on Sundays at 9pm.

Follow this link--Celebracadabra--to find out who these celebrities are. 

You can see Chris in front of the camera at Little Bytes of the Big Apple.  He helped me out by appearing in three of our earliest bytes for the First Hoparound Tour.  He is one of the passersby in The New Star of the Skyline who knows everything about Norman Foster; he's in the crowd running around the fountain with wife and son in The Cathedral in Central Park, Part Two; and he's the man in the background who snatches the child (his own actually) out of the stroller in 20 Million Visitors, How Many Crimes?

I've also written about Chris and his wife, Laura, in two blogs:  they're the ones who have the elaborately-decorated house (witch on the roof, cemetery on the front lawn) in Maplewood where I spend every Halloween; and they're the proud parents of Phoenix, the wee little guy I visited in the hospital last July.

QUESTION OF THE WEEK

STUDENT:  Hey, Robert!  What's the exact name of that guy who made the Statue of Liberty?  I know it's "sump'in, sump'in, sump'in."

ROBERT:  You're close.

LINK OF THE WEEK

The beautiful building which Barnes and Noble now occupies on 17th Street was built (1880-1881) for the home of the Century Company which published the remarkable Century Magazine from 1881-1930.  Thanks to Cornell University, issues from 1881-1899 can be read online.  For hours of browsing the original pages filled with works by Mark Twain, Emma Lazarus, Frederick Douglass, William Tecumseh Sherman, Henry James, Joel Chandler Harris, and Theodore Roosevelt, click right here.  (WARNING:  HIGHLY ADDICTIVE.)

DON'T MISS THIS WEEK'S VIDEO TOUR:  UNION SQUARE, PT 1:  GANDHI AT DEADMAN'S CURVE.

BYTES OF THE HAWK

One of my favorite things about living in New York is how close we are to nature.  This morning, for example, I watched a groundhog chase a pack of feral cats beneath the trees below my apartment and I remember waking up from a nap a few years ago to see a Red-Tailed Hawk watching me from a branch outside my window.  He sat there perched for twenty minutes and I studied him for just as long.  How often are you that close to a hawk? Then he flew away, and I rolled over and took another nap. 

This week, my friend Tessa, a frequent director of Little Bytes who is currently serving out her first year as a New York Teaching Fellow, sent me an incredible series of photos with the notes below:

"Look at these beautiful pictures. Two Red-Tailed Hawks have picked P94M on the Lower East Side as their new home. We are so honored. They spent weeks building a nest (well, the female did all the work - typical) and she even insulated it with plastic bags she found. They had three eggs she incubated during the cold months and just recently three little fuzzy heads popped out to greet us. This is great proof against those who think we live in an asphalt jungle. 8 years in Alaska and I never once had a hawk roost on my secretary's a/c!"

These beautiful photographs were taken by F. Portman, a professional photographer brought in by Bill Tatton, the school custodian.  There are MANY more incredible shots at Bill's Web site: http://web.mac.com/tatbil. Choose "Red Tailed Hawks" and the "Red Tailed Hawk babies" or the podcast slideshow.

Francois Portman. www.fotoportmann.com"

A BYTE OF CANDY THAT EVERYBODY SHOULD WANT

This past Tuesday, my friend, fellow Harper Perenellian, MySpace genius, Out columnist, and author of the hilarious, moving and bestselling memoir, I Am Not Myself These Days (2006), Josh Kilmer-Purcell published his second book, his debut novel, Candy Everybody Wants. 

There are great New York set pieces in Josh's work--from the magical Christmas Eve on Fifth Avenue to the delirious motorcycle ride through the East Village--and I still can't pass the Church of St. Luke's in the Fields without thinking of the beautiful scene that concludes Part One of I Am Not Myself These Days.

I haven't read his newest book yet, but I do know that much of the novel takes place in 1980's SoHo where the protagonist, a gay teen from Wisconsin, squats in an abandoned warehouse on Wooster Street and that a few famous NYC settings include Serendipity, Studio 54, and the Delacorte clock.  I also know that Josh took great inspiration from Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City series and look forward to reading the results.

Lastly, I read with Josh at McNally Robinson last summer and attended another reading at KGB, and I can attest that his readings are lively events.  The one with James Frey took place on Tuesday--too late--but here are two upcoming readings in NYC:

TUESDAY JUNE 3: Borders Books and Music @7:00 pm, 10 Columbus Circle  

WEDNESDAY JUNE 25: Word for Word at Bryant Park @12:30pm, 500 Fifth Avenue

QUESTION OF THE WEEK

This sign is now chained across the stoop of a certain building on a particular Greenwich Village street (which incidentally is supposed to double in TV Land for a street on the Upper East Side).  After years of stepping around people posing for pictures here, residents or neighbors have had it!

Where does this sign now hang?

HINT:  The sign (along with the video surveillance) has been installed just in time for the premiere of the movie and another wave of camera-toting, cosmo-drinking fans.

DON'T MISS THIS WEEK'S VIDEO TOUR:  UNION SQUARE, PT 2:  "What's up with THAT?"

ANSWER TO LAST WEEK'S QUESTION

This sign is now chained across the stoop of a certain building on a particular Greenwich Village street (which incidentally is supposed to double in TV Land for a street on the Upper East Side).  After years of stepping around people posing for pictures here, residents or neighbors have had it!

Where does this sign now hang?

HINT:  The sign (along with the video surveillance) has been installed just in time for the premiere of the movie and another wave of camera-toting, cosmo-drinking fans.

I keep picturing Carrie Bradshaw trying to step over the chain in her high heel shoes after a night of drinking it up at the newest downtown club.  Title of episode:  Blood on the Brownstone.

BEFORE SEX AND THE CITY, THERE WAS SEINFELD...

...and I took my group from Georgia to the Westway Diner on Ninth Avenue for breakfast last Saturday.  This is the diner where Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David created that famous "show about nothing."  I gave my group the history and afterwards took them to their acting workshop around the corner.  In the hallway outside their studio, I ran into Kenny Kramer, the inspiration for Cosmo Kramer, who's a comic and has been giving Seinfeld tours since 1996.  I told him that my group had just eaten at the Westway Diner and he was gracious enough to surprise them by popping into the studio and chatting with them about the inception of the show and watching himself transformed into a television character.

Sadly, about six or seven of the eighth-graders had never seen Seinfeld, which wasn't a surprise, because several of them had never heard of The Beatles either.

It's all subjective though--I just found out that Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus are the same person.

BUT THERE WAS AN EVEN BIGGER SURPRISE AT THE WESTWAY DINER

Heidi H., a teacher and one of the group's leaders, walked to the Westway Diner that morning with no idea that her boyfriend had driven up to New York City to surprise her...with an engagement ring. I had been privy to the info since Thursday, and stepped inside to see where he was sitting.  I spotted the nervous Georgian (not since General Sherman's march...) before calling Heidi inside and sending her towards the back of the restaurant.  She walked a few steps before recognizing him in a booth on her left, at the only table in the restaurant garnished with a long-stemmed red rose.   

No, he did not propose to her over scrambled eggs at the Westway Diner.  That was just the first stage of the plan.  They talked quietly as I found tables for the rest of the thirty-five and hoped to myself that Heidi liked him as much as he liked her.  Back at the hotel, I had left Heidi's suitcase near the door of the luggage room so that she could claim it before the rest of us returned for the bus to the airport.  She wasn't going to be flying back with her group; if all went according to plan, she would be driving back with her fiance instead.  (It was this third stage of the plan that I questioned.  Surprise:  I'm in New York!  Surprise:  Will you marry me?  Surprise:  We have an eighteen-hour drive.  Get in the car.)

Soon Heidi and her beau stood to go.  She said goodbye to us all--her eyes as glazed as my doughnut--and left to retrieve her suitcase.  A few hours later, after breakfast, after Kenny Kramer, after the improv workshop, after the free time at the Ninth Avenue International Food Festival, as the group was unloading the bus at the airport, I got the phone call.  So I passed on the news.  The gentleman with the rose had taken Heidi to Central Park, where he rented a boat, rowed her out on the Lake, and then pulled out a diamond ring.  "She just said yes!" I told the mothers and daughters, and the vibration from the collective scream of delight is why all flights at LaGuardia were grounded for thirty minutes on Saturday afternoon.

A BYTE OF SCHIST

Here's a photo courtesy of Leah Norris from Hazlehurst, Georgia, who took this picture a couple weeks ago of me standing on a "pile of schist."  (By the way, nothing makes you more popular than telling the kids the name of this rock.) 

Manhattan Schist is the rock that serves as anchorage for many of our skyscrapers and can be seen popping out of the ground throughout Central Park.  Heavily striated from the glacial retreat during the last Ice Age, the rocks are among the oldest objects seen on any tour.  (Although I know a couple guides...)

As Eric Homberger puts it in The Historical Atlas of New York City:  "The stone upon which New York City sits is hard metamorphic rock, Manhattan Schist, and Inwood Dolomite, formed during the Archaeozoic era.  That is, the dark stone which nudges above the surface of Central Park...dates virtually from the formation of the Earth's crust."

Put it that way, and Mamma Mia hasn't been running that long at all.

NEXT BLOG:  LITTLE BYTES OF SAN DIEGO

I'm traveling for the next couple weeks and will post the next blog when I return.  Today, I'm off to San Diego, California, one of the many places I lived while growing up.  I haven't been back since my family drove into the desert towards Las Vegas the day after Ronald Reagan was shot by a Jodie Foster fan.

And why am I heading to our nation's southwest corner?  To visit my cousin and his wife...and to meet my newest relative, this little dreamer...

DON'T MISS THIS WEEK'S VIDEO TOUR:  DOWNTOWN OUTTAKES

June 5, 2008

LITTLE BYTES OF SAN DIEGO

Two weeks ago, I set off for the west coast to play the tourist myself.  I started off by spending six days in San Diego to meet and spend some time with my cousin's new daughter.

But we did tool around a bit, visiting the city were my family briefly lived (1979-1981).  I've told my San Diego groups that we lived right next to the Mexican border, but my cousins were suprised at how close--the last exit before the International border.  Growing up previously in Japan and Hawaii, this was my first "border," so in 1980 when I heard on the news that the Soviets were at the Afghanistan border, I walked into the backyard to see if I could get a better view of the tanks.

This driveway incidentally was the driveway where my mother drove over my brother's leg.  He had slipped partially out of the car as we drove up the incline and when I excitedly told my mother that she had just driven over Brian, she panicked, threw the car in reverse and drove over him again.

On this trip, as we drove down to visit the old house, neighborhood and school (Los Altos Elementary), I spoke to my mother on the phone to collect addresses and directions.  The social butterfly that she is, she wanted me to stop and knock on neighbors' doors to say hello and catch up, even though we hadn't been in touch for almost thirty years.  Did our old neighbors even still live on Marzo Street?  My father on the other line kept telling me to hang up and ignore her "ridiculous" pleas, but if I had hung up, I wouldn't have heard this classic line--and remember, we're on the border:  "Well, if you look across the street and see a Mexican man or woman, say hi."

IF I LED TOURS IN SAN DIEGO...

...I would most likely share these three timeline tidbits from the San Diego Historical Society:

February 4, 1870:  San Diego becomes the first city west of the Mississippi to set aside land for an urban park. This 1440 acre tract becomes the site for City Park, now Balboa Park...;

1899:  Andrew Carnegie donates $60,000 to build (the) San Diego Public Library, (the) first of his libraries west of (the) Mississippi...;

1916:  Dr. Harry Wegeforth brings the San Diego Zoo into being when animals imported for the 1915 Panama-California Exposition are quarantined and not allowed to leave. He's reported to have exclaimed to brother Paul, "Wouldn't it be wonderful if we had a zoo." He put a notice in the newspaper, asking for support. 

(And I would obviously have to reference the Mississippi, as in:  "The zoo would become the largest zoo west of the Mississippi."  See, I could give tours in San Diego.)

BYTES OF CONNECTION--FIVE THINGS OUR TWO CITIES SHARE

The Manhattan Institute recently named New York and San Diego the two cities where immigrants assimilate the fastest.  (NYC was runner-up to San Diego’s #1.)

San Diego and New York are home to two of the largest metropolitan zoos in the United States.   The San Diego Zoo (100 acres) has more than 4000 animals and the Bronx Zoo (265 acres) claims 6000.  The San Diego Zoo's Wild Animal Park in nearby Escondido, however, almost doubles San Diego's number of animals while adding 1800 acres. 

New York's Madison Square boasts the first community Christmas tree (1912) while San Diego’s Hotel Del Coronado claims the world’s first Christmas tree covered in electric lights (1904).

Two of the greatest Billy Wilder movies, filmed back-to-back, are set in New York (The Apartment) and San Diego (Some Like It Hot).

And both cities are home to my favorite bridges. The San Diego-Coronado Bay Bridge, which is two miles long, is the first I remember as a child, awed by the curve and the rise of the structure.  I realize now that I set my first novel in New York, and as the Brooklyn Bridge played a vital role, I titled it Suspension, but if my first novel had been written in San Diego, the title might have been Prestressed Concrete/Steel Girder.  A competely different book.

A BYTE OF POPULATION PERSPECTIVE

According to the census posted at Wikipedia:

A change in the land area of New York City (updated above) was announced by the media the day I left for the airport; what for years had been reported as 322 was reduced by seventeen square miles.  This comes from a refinement of measurement and not erosion or rising sea levels.  See the New York Times article for May 22nd.

And my favorite number in the chart above is missing:  Manhattan alone, the smallest  of the five boroughs, less than 23 square miles, has a larger population (1,611,581) than San Diego, the eighth largest city in the United States.  In fact, the only cities in the U.S. with a larger population than Manhattan would be, in order:

1) the rest of New York City, 2) Los Angeles, 3) Chicago, and 4) Houston.

DON'T MISS THIS WEEK'S VIDEO TOUR:  MADISON SQUARE, PART 1:  NEW YORKERS TO THE RESCUE

LITTLE BYTES OF SEATTLE

Many of my groups this spring knew I was planning a quick trip to Seattle to surprise one of my friends for her 40th birthday party.  Several even helped me decide on methodology.  For those of you in the focus groups, you'll be happy to know that we went the theatrical route.  One of my other friends, her husband, worked with their four kids to create a play for Mia as a way of kicking off her birthday weekend festivities.  Yet another friend drove me over, parking down the block where we waited for Mia's car to leave the driveway on the 5:15 errand.  We had ten minutes.  I rushed into the house, said quick "hi's" and hid in the basement until "Places."  Mia returned, father and kids gathered backstage (the kitchen) and I crept up the staircase to wait for my cue, something about a giant coming to the rescue.  The play involved songs, a sleeping spell, knights battling an evil wizard, and then the denouement:  the entrance of a man with arms raised above his head, a man who looked a lot like Robert, but Robert was way too busy in New York, he had already called to say he couldn't make it out to the west coast...

Mia later told me that the moment was the biggest shock of her life.  Whoo-hoo!

Mine was learning that four children under the age of nine kept the secret for two whole days!!

A TOUR GUIDE'S NIGHTMARE...NOT MINE

Tom, my former East Village roommate, and a Seattle resident for the past seven years, took me on a tour of the city but got turned around.  When he tried to pass off the I-5 bridge as the Aurora, I challenged our location and his authority (this was my ninth trip to Seattle), telling him it was impossible and that unless he was joking we were lost.  Tom responded like any tour guide faced with mutiny:

After several minutes, he stood up and we walked towards the restaurant, which was a lot farther than he remembered.  "Well, we parked way over there," he explained, "so that we wouldn't have to pay for parking." 

Here's the kind of sign that greeted us when we reached the restaurant: 

BYTES OF CONNECTION--FIVE THINGS OUR TWO CITIES SHARE

1)  Each of our cities have a building by the starchitect, Frank Gehry:

2)  Each of our cities have a Isamu Noguchi statue with a hole in it:

3)  Each of our cities have a statue of William H. Seward,

the Secretary of State responsible for the purchase of Alaska:

(And speaking of Seward, this week's byte features this very statue!!  Madison Square, Part 2:  Westfield's Folly)

4)  Each of our cities have a park designed by the firm, Olmsted and Brothers

(the sons of the Frederick Law Olmsted, the co-designer of Central and Prospect Parks):

5)  And each of our cities have at least one of these:

I think one picture should suffice.

This is the store in Seattle, the very first one, the mom and pop that started it all...

RECOGNIZED IN THE NORTHWEST

lt has become a joke among my Seattle friends that whenever we go out, I run into someone I know, whether it's a waiter in a restaurant on Capitol Hill (who I met on Cape Cod) or a host in a Thai restaurant in Wallingford (also Cape Cod), so Tom was barely fazed when we were strolling at Pike Street Market and heard the words, "It IS Robert!" This time the people were not from Cape Cod, or friends from Seattle, or someone with whom I catered or temped or went to college.  They were on one of my New York tours back in February.  (This was the group in which the boy lost his brand new digital camera right before their flight home...33 shots away from 1000 pictures.)  Interestingly, they were not one of my many Seattle groups.  They were Haley, Sara, and Brooke of Austin, Texas, whose school had ended the previous day and whose Alaskan cruise began the following one.

A BYTE OF POPULATION PERSPECTIVE

According to the census posted at Wikipedia:

LITTLE BYTES OF SAN JOSE

For the last couple of years, the Morgan Quitno Awards, which rank the safest and most dangerous cities in the United States, have named New York the fourth safest city with a population over 500,000.  El Paso and Honolulu usually battle it out for the second and third spots and the safest big city goes to San Jose, CA.  (Overall, the safest city in the U.S. was Brick Township, NJ and the most dangerous was St. Louis, MO.)  Follow the link to see where your city lands.

This week I had a group from San Jose and here they are on Wall Street looking like a civilized group of law-abiding citizens...

...just before they knocked me unconscious, stole my watch...

...and tried to crush my head with Isamu Noguchi's Red Cube...

...only pausing to pose for a group picture.  Sick. 

San Jose might be the safest big city, but that's only because their residents commit their crimes while traveling. 

*****

This season students from Alabama, Colorado, Georgia, Texas, Ohio and California have been inspired by my hats and bought their own.  This is the most recent:  Jonathon from San Jose who, after taking this picture, beat me up and stole my wallet.

FOUR BYTES OF THE CUMBERSOME

One of the San Jose students in the Red Cube picture above is carrying an unwieldy rectangle--a cardboard framed piece of sidewalk art depicting Times Square at night.  Here's a closer look.

Now she bought that souvenir the previous night and was afraid that it would be damaged when the hotel staff transferred the luggage from the room to the bus, so she carried it with her all day--on the walk to the diner for breakfast, back to the hotel for bathrooms, on the subway into Manhattan, through the line for the ferry, through the crowded security tents, on two boat rides, into, up and around Ellis Island, through Battery Park and Bowling Green, up Broadway to lunch, down Wall Street, around Federal Hall, to the picture at the Red Cube, over to Ground Zero and ultimately, finally, onto the bus bound for JFK.  Of course, at the airport, she had to carry it through security and onto the plane, keeping it from cracking or wrinkling all the way home, which means that she had to carry or protect that picture for approximately eighteen hours of her day. 

She's not the only one willing to tour with cumbersome cargo.  There was a boy a few years ago who wore an oversized backpack that forced him to lean forward. Waiting for the group to gather, I asked him what he was carrying in the bag, and he told me his school books and folders. He explained that he hadn't had time to go to his locker before he left school that day, so he just brought everything with him. (All the way home, all the way to New York, and then out on every tour.)

There was also the boy who bought miniature metal copies (one foot high) of the Statue of Liberty as gifts for everyone in his family.  One for his father, one for his mother, one for his one sister, one for his other sister, one for his brother, one for his grandpa, and one for his grandma.  They all lived in the same house.  Seven statues for seven cohabitants.  As I was trying to picture where these would all end up, rain began to fall, and his paper bags gave way, dropping seven Statues of Liberty onto the ground.  He went to work finding new ways of carrying his seven purchases--three in his backpack, two in the teacher's plastic, one in a friend's satchel, and one tucked beneath his arm.

What I love about these kids is that they never complain.  They just carry on.

Behold, for example, the smiles on the faces of the two Georgians below.  Brandon, the one in the front, bought a giant stuffed cheetah from F.A.O. Schwartz  for his sister and he and his friend carried it up and down Fifth Avenue, repeatedly running into poles and pedestrians like a comic team in an old silent film bit, through the Radio City Music Hall tour, back to the hotel, and all the way home to Georgia.  (They traveled by bus, not airplane.)  Notice, by the way, that the loyal, helpful, smiling friend's purchases fit into a small, sensible red bag.

LITTLE BYTES OF JUNE

These first couple weeks in June are two of the busiest of the entire season.  For a New Yorker, this means you can find yourself suddenly surrounded by sixty tourists at a time and can do nothing but stand still and wait until the horde passes.  For a guide, this means you can run into friends around every corner.  Below are pictures of a few recently spotted at Ellis Island--all have appeared in various videos. 

TWO BYTES OF RECOMMENDATION

One of my favorite artists, MARTA SANDERS, whose name appears in Suspension as a cabaret friend of Sonia Obolensky, and who appears in several Little Bytes ( The Cathedral in Central Park, Part Two; Tranquilizing a Tourist; Times Square, Part One--Broadway with Marta; and Madison Square, Part One--New Yorkers to the Rescue) will be performing this weekend at the Metropolitan Room.  I'll be there Saturday.

*****

Another of my favorite artists, the brilliant and ridiculously talented, ZOE LEWIS, will be in town next Tuesday to perform and celebrate the release of her newest CD, A CURE FOR HICCUPS, her second release with Judy Collins' new label, Wildflower.  Zoe is part of a long line of troubadors who plays everything from the piano and ukelele to the saw and spoons.  She writes joy-filled, seemingly simple but actually fairly tricky songs about love and travel and the ordinary things we often miss as we move through our lives.  Her performances involve the audience--singalongs are not uncommon--and when the show is over, you are saturated with glee. 

I know Zoe from Provincetown, but she performs all over and her songwriting is popping up everywhere:  Small Is Tremendous was used as part of ad campaigns for both Pringles and TJ Maxx; the incredibly catchy Sheep, written on a trip Down Under, was recently #1 in the children's satellite radio charts; and she just wrote the soundtrack for the Vagina Monologues documentary.

Come join me and be part of her audience next Tuesday, June 24th, at 9pm. Rodeo Bar (375 3rd Avenue).

DON'T MISS THIS WEEK'S VIDEO TOUR:  HERALD SQUARE, PART 1:  It's Not ALL Macy's

LITTLE BYTES OF SAN JOSE, PART TWO

I just had another group from San Jose, but there are no pictures, because this week the ruffians from the safest large city in the U.S. beat me up and stole my camera.

TODAY IN NEW YORK CITY HISTORY

June 26, 1927:  The Cyclone starts terrifying passengers on Coney Island.

A BYTE FROM BERGDORF GOODMAN

I've been telling groups about this all season but have forgotten to post this nugget of absurdity here:  Bergdorf Goodman is offering a custom-engraved tube of lipstick from Guerlain, a French company of cosmetic "innovators."  The lipstick called "KissKiss Gold and Diamonds" comes in an 18-karat gold tube decorated with over two carats of diamonds as well as rubies and emeralds. 

The price?  $62,000.  I'm rooting for the pickpockets.

A BYTE OF INSPIRATION

Tessa Derfner, my great friend, former classmate, fellow guide, and a director of many of the bytes in the first three video tours, became a New York Teaching Fellow last year and hit the ground running--attending a grad program while working at one of the more difficult schools in New York City as well as creating a Theater Department out of nothing and winning a Shubert grant to produce a spring musical (Annie) .

On June 13th, I made my way downtown to the Lower East Side (Houston and FDR Drive!!) and was inspired far beyond my expectations.  The kids fed each other their lines, sang all the songs together (including the solos), disappeared for bathroom breaks when they were supposed to be on stage, and waved to their parents who were recording scenes and taking pictures with their cell phones. Yet it was one of the few shows I’ve seen in the last several years that deserved its standing ovation. 

And now something to boggle the mind.  Last June, Tessa sat in the audience at Avery Fisher Music Hall for her orientation along with 2000 other new teachers.  Last week, only one year later, she was invited to stand on the stage and address the new batch of 2000 about the challenges and rewards awaiting them.  After her speech, she introduced her kids who performed It’s a Hard Knock Life.  Needless to say, it led to another spontaneous standing ovation from the new teaching fellows who have left their careers to work with students in the public school system.

Check out the report on the rehearsal process at NBC NEWS. 

CSI:  THE VATICAN

Down the street from where I live is the Cabrini High School and shrine where America's first saint is interred.  For many months now, as the buildings undergo renovation, the statue of Jesus that faces Fort Washington has been wrapped like this:

It makes for a disturbing walk to the subway.

DON'T MISS THIS WEEK'S VIDEO TOUR:  HERALD SQUARE, PART 2:  Actuality...