Today marks the unofficial start of summer...the summer when Suspension is at long last released.  A waiting game to be sure.  It was autumn when when I delivered the manuscript to my publisher, followed by a winter when I proofed pages, settled on the jacket copy, and started work with the marketing and publicity departments, followed by a spring which I've spent outlining my next novel and building this web site, all the while exploring New York with about seven hundred people from across the country.

Future entries will strive to answer obscure New York questions (such as, why are there two amputated limbs atop of the Shubert Theater on Forty-fourth, what is the new and alarming announcement made by the Parks Department to all visitors to the Statue of Liberty, and what sign near Wall Street is my favorite advertisement on Manhattan?), but this one is dedicated to the visitors who accompanied me these past few months and provided some of my favorite comments and conversations.

The first few come from three generations of Mississippi belles:

Thirteen-year-old:  "One should always use a straw when drinking Coke, because it's unladylike to tip your glass."

Thirty-eight-year-old:  "So if your wife tells you that she thinks she has a cricket in her ear, then you best believe her, cuz she probably does!"

Sixty-six-year-old:  "Old Miss might not be the smartest campus, but it's the beautifullest."

And from an Orange County twelve-year-old (relieved to be on a warm bus, running her fingertips over her cheeks and forehead):  "It's so cold out there, I feel like I just had Botox."

A young Georgian presented a point to ponder when she asked from the back of the bus, "Why do people always gots to be dyin' before the good stuff?"  At first, I had no idea what in the world she was talking about, but then thought back over some of my commentary.  There was Edgar Allen Poe who died in the gutters of Baltimore unaware of his literary legacy.  There was Emma Lazarus who was never able to see the Statue of Liberty with which her poem, The New Colossus, is eternally associated--returning from Europe, she was too sick to be brought on deck and died two months later.  There was also the story I told at Ellis Island about Christina Jansen who, just days away from reuniting with her fiance after three years, died on her third trans-Atlantic voyage.  Finally, what prompted the outburst on the bus, was the information that though U.S. Grant was able to complete his memoirs while battling throat cancer, he died before they were published.  Hers was, in fact, a valid question that has stuck with me:  At least in my stories, why do people always gots to be dyin' before the good stuff?

A mother from Minnesota came to New York in March with her oldest son, leaving behind five-year-old twins.  Knowing how disappointed they'd be that she was flying on an airplane and sightseeing in New York without them, she had kept her destination a secret, telling them that she had to go somewhere with their brother "for school."  The day before she left, she took the twins to a dollar store and bought them each a stuffed animal.  "Now whenever you miss mommy, you just hug the monkey."  On the second night of the trip, her husband informed her that while one of the twins missed her very much, was sleeping in her robe with his stuffed animal, the other had unfortunately learned the truth.  "I know where you are," said the five-year-old when given the phone.  "And I'm not hugging the monkey!"

Robert (at the eastern end of the Channel Gardens):  Do you all know Gertrude Stein?...Well, she was a great modernist...a poet, novelist, playwright...you might know one of her famous lines--'Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.'  Anyway, after Gertrude Stein first stood here, she said, 'The view of Rockefeller Center from Fifth Avenue is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen ever seen ever seen.'

Baffled boy (raising hand):  What was wrong with her?

During a conversation over coffee with a mother and daughter from Alabama, I was told that New York was by far the largest city the girl had ever seen.  She had almost gone to D.C., but her school canceled that trip after 9/11.

Girl:  Instead we went to Chattanooga.

Robert:  That's nice.  I've never been to Chattanooga.

Girl:  YOU'VE NEVER BEEN TO CHATTANOOGA?!?!?!?

Robert (trying not to spill my coffee):  No, but I'd like to go.  What's in Chattanooga?

Girl:  Well, um, there's this building where all these fish swim around.

Robert:  An aquarium?

Girl:  That's it!  You have been there.

In front of the Customs House, an eighth-grader from (state withheld for the sake of the history teacher) asked me about the different places I grew up.  When I mentioned Hawaii, specified Pearl City on Oahu, he jumped up and down.

Excited boy:  Were you there?

Robert:  Where?

Excited boy:  Were you there when the Chinese bombed Pearl Harbor?

Robert:  ?????

And the last comment comes from Daniel, a high school student from Arizona.  His line has become a personal favorite for the simple reason that I haven't been able to stop using it since April.  There's a moment in the musical, Spamalot, when, with the boom of a cannon, there is an explosion of colored confetti that swirls throughout the entire theater.  After the paper finally settled over our audience, Daniel turned to me, nodded slowly, and with great critical authority, announced:  "Now that's real Broadway."

As promised, I'll start by answering two of last week's questions.

What sign near Wall Street is Robert's favorite advertisement on Manhattan?

On Rector Street, in Lower Manhattan, behind the grave of Alexander Hamilton, that mastermind of American capitalism, stands a shoe store, pictured above.  The letters of the sign are made of metal and each had to be separately attached, so the word probably was part of the original conception and spelled out by what has to be the most honest merchant in the neighborhood...or the laziest, as in, "We're probably the lowest priced in the city, maybe, I don't know, maybe not.  I'm not gonna go walkin' around to every shoe store to find out."

Why are there two amputated limbs atop the Shubert Theater on Forty-fourth?

The arms are relatively new.  Once upon a time (until February), the image in the central window of the Spamalot banner was that of a blonde maiden twirling her hair and blowing a kiss.  This maiden turned out to be a model/actress/saxophonist (if you want to perform on Broadway today, you'd better know how to play an instrument) who sued the producers because they used a photo of her without permission that made her look "foolish, unnatural, and undignified."  The chest area had also been retouched to make her look less like a maiden and more like a strumpet, so the maiden/strumpet/saxophonist claimed that she was being held up to "public ridicule and contempt."  I don't recall anyone on Forty-fourth pointing and laughing at her, but it might have happened.  People can be cruel.

I laughed, however, when she was removed from the facade, because it looked like the producers simply painted over her, leaving only her arms.  But I now realize that those arms, pictured above, are not the arms of the model...as you can see, neither hand is twirling hair.  The original arms were perpendicular to one another--the left hand in front of the right elbow, the right hand twirling the blonde lock.  (Now this is where I would insert a hyperlink and you would click your mouse on it and zip right to the picture I'm referring to, but I haven't learned how do that with this program yet, so if you really need to see the picture, I recommend googling "South African model sues Spamalot.")  The new arms--technically, one's just a hand--were taken from some other source and probably refers to one of the jokes in the show:  "Arms for the poor."  I say probably refers to one of the jokes, maybe, I don't know, maybe not.  I'm not gonna go walkin' up and down Forty-fourth Street to find out.

You've explained three of the six pictures featured in this blog; what are the other three?

Glad you asked.  The fourth photograph was taken at the CBS Early Show on Thursday.  My tour group from New Braunfels, Texas, had been abducted from the Today Show minutes before I arrived at Rockefeller Center.  Too late to save them, I joined them on the double decker bus being used to shuttle the crowd to Fifty-ninth and Fifth, where they were to fill the audience for the recent runner-up of American Idol.  I chose instead to pass the time by walking around the plaza and taking pictures of the 32-foot glass cube that marks the entrance to the brand new Apple store.  As I did so, I thought I might as well take one picture of the runner-up...she's the brunette in the middle, I don't know her name, I'm in no mood to google, though I'm sure she's a wonderful person, she seemed perfectly lovely, and at one point sang Somewhere over the Rainbow with only a couple bars of that American Idol screaming that can scare the crap out of anyone trying to take pictures of the entrance to the Apple store.

Why were you taking pictures of the entrance to the Apple store?

Because on Thursday, May 25th, a tour group from Minnesota, led by my good friend and shining star, Tessa Derfner, visited the new Apple store after their Broadway show.  While trying to leave, part of the group took the elevator and 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."  As of this past Thursday, the elevator was still out of service.  (I'll turn this into a hyperlink later, but for photos of the prisoners and rescue operation, copy into your address bar: http://ranex.blogspot.com/2006/05/stuck-at-apple.html.)

After standing in a lengthy line that winds its way through Battery Park, removing their belts and emptying their pockets inside the screening tent, then scurrying for a seat and choking on fumes before the boat finally pulls away from the dock, most tourists don't listen to (or can't hear) the new announcement crafted by the current National Park Service.  But if they did, they would hear a commentary on the Statue of Liberty that includes a brief history and description of its early symbolism--originally intended to celebrate the centennial as well as the friendship between France and the United States--followed by the assertion that "the Statue of Liberty has since become a universal symbol of our nation's freedom, opportunity, security, and future."  Incorporating the tried-and-true technique of slipping the dubious, devious or most inane item into the third position of a list, the Park Service now claims that the sculpture of a woman holding a tablet and bearing a torch is somehow a symbol of security.

In an informal poll made on the ferry twice last week, not one of my fellow passengers saw the statue as a personal, let alone universal, symbol of our nation's security.  Some even questioned the last word on the list; however, Lady Liberty was designed to be moving forward, leading the way towards enlightenment by stepping into the future, instead of standing astride a waterway like her predecessor, the Colossus of Rhodes.   So I'll accept future, freedom comes with the name, and, owing to the millions of immigrants that floated by her in search of a better life, the statue has definitely come to represent opportunity.

As I administered my survey, I was impressed by the variety of things the woman in the bay has come to signify.  She instantly denotes the United States and New York City just as the Eiffel Tower denotes France and Paris (trivia:  Gustave Eiffel engineered both structures) and when juxtaposed with the Golden Gate Bridge on the west coast, she stands in for the east.  Other interpretations offered by my fellow passengers included hope/promise, welcome/greeting, the melting pot/diversity, as well as concern for the tired, the poor, the homeless, not to mention the huddled masses...

...but security?  How?  Where?  In the tablet that reads July 4, 1776?  In the broken chains at her feet?  In the seven points of her crown?  In her illuminating torch?  The closest I could come to manipulating the symbolism was to work with the lighthouse metaphor, which might possibly provide a sense of stability, but does so in cautionary terms in which ever-present danger is the dominant factor:  a lighthouse warns sailors to keep their distance or risk their lives on the rocks.  That sort of works.

Here's another stretch:  if you consider the statue a symbol of patination (the green chemical compound formed on the surface of metal of which the Statue of Liberty is probably the best known example in the world) and if you take for granted that patination is actually a coat that protects the metal underneath (well, at least for bronze, I'm not sure about copper) then there you have it:  she's an icon of security.

Usually when a symbol is given too many meanings it collapses under the weight and means nothing at all, so it is remarkable to list all that the statue has come to stand for, but to claim what the Park Service does is either a case of slippery connivance or lazy logic. I'm reminded of all the soldiers shipping out of New York harbor during the world wars, who admired the sculpture and embarked with the conviction that they were risking their lives to protect what it represented, understanding (as the Park Service does not) that liberty was something to fight for, a treasure that needs to be secured, and not one that does the securing.

That said, I have to confess that my poll wasn't very scientific.  Maybe on other boats, scores of people were heard to say, "Do you see that, Billy?  That there is the statue of our security."   I doubt it though.  People with terrorism on the mind were most likely distracted by the Coast Guard boats with their machine guns bobbing up and down in the harbor or by the helicopters hovering above the Lower Manhattan.  One tourist from Texas took a picture of the armed boat escorting us and said, "Well, that's scary."  Sure is.

For next Monday :  There's good news, however, about parks on the municipal level.  On June 1st, Liberty Plaza Park reopened for the first time since September eleventh and "Double Check" has returned from his sojourn in Princeton.  Pictures to come.

I’ve been able to visit Liberty Plaza Park four times since its opening on June 1st.  Now called Zuccotti Park (we’ll see if that sticks), most people know the spot as that empty block in a part of town dominated by skyscrapers.  The much needed open space exists because of 1 Liberty Plaza, the hulking giant to its north which consumes the entire lot and rises fifty-four floors, and which was only permitted by the transfer of air space in 1972.  US Steel purchased the two lots together and, with the combined air rights, turned one into a massive skyscraper and the other into a kind of haven where workers, shoppers, and tourists could rest their feet and eat falafels. 

Catercorner to the World Trade Center, the park was damaged in the aftermath of September eleventh by the weight of construction vehicles and has for years been surrounded by a tall wooden barrier painted blue.  This month the walls were removed to reveal an environment redesigned from its foundation, with fifty-four honey-locust trees, five hundred in-ground white lights, permanent benches and tables on a surface of Atlantic pink granite, and suddenly I could see how this area might work in the next several years.  The park is no longer boxy, but rearranged on a diagonal axis, and I felt pulled not towards Ground Zero but drawn somehow to what will eventually be developed there.

The best place to enter is from the southeast corner--and you do if you’re walking north on Broadway from Wall Street--beneath the seventy foot tall red steel "Joie de Vivre" which since 1999 has stood near the mouth of the Holland Tunnel after making its debut the previous year in Paris as part of an enormous outdoor exhibition of the sculptor, Mark Di Suvero's, work.  I'm not sure yet what I feel about this piece, but do notice that my eye always wanders across Broadway to Isamu Noguchi’s 1968 "Red Cube" that stands perched on one of its corners, mimicking (for me, anyway) the Marine Midland building behind it, which is permitted to soar as high as it does because it uses only a portion of its surface area.

You enter Liberty Plaza/Zuccotti Park beneath the legs of the Joy of Life, passing planters with flowers and shrubs, men playing chess again, people reading, eating lunch, talking on cell phones, and then there he is:  in his corduroy suit and polished shoes, looking in his briefcase as he has since cast in bronze in 1982.  "Double Check" by J. Seward Johnson.  In his briefcase is the giant tape recorder and oversized calculator, the pack of cigarettes with a matchbook in imaginary cellophane, loose pens, and, of course, a stapler.  With these tools of the trade, is it any wonder this man has spent so many years sitting in a park?  Who would hire him?  What does he do? 

There are some differences now.  His umbrella which used to lie beside him is missing; there are gashes on his back from the World Trade Center collapse when he was jolted from his bench and subsequently covered by mementos, notes, and flowers, an impromptu shrine to all the workers who were lost that morning; and he is not in his original site, where he used to blend in with the activity of the park around him (the plaque is slightly misleading):  he's now sitting on the corner, in a prominent spot, facing Ground Zero.

Because of what he represented in the fall of 2001, he's become one of the newest memorials of September eleventh (just a week ago, a memorial to the firemen was unveiled on the wall of a firehouse just one block west), joining the damaged globe and eternal flame in Battery Park, the garage door of the firehouse on 48th and 8th, the scuff marks made by boots in the pews at St. Paul's, the bronze tree root at Trinity Church, the lonely staircase within the fence of Ground Zero, among many others that in their aggregation speak to the multiple experiences of that day and aftermath.  "Double Check" was always one of my favorite features in the financial district and I've felt such happiness this month whenever I've seen him.  I compulsively approach, pat his back, look over his scarred shoulders into that time capsule of a brief case and hope that he will be sitting here until the objects inside are not just obsolete but completely forgotten.

On walks through New York some of my favorite stops are at various community bulletin boards or at any surface covered with local flyers.  Recently, I found a call to arms written by an indignant resident on Fort Washington Avenue, hoping to organize a tenants association with the central aim of expelling their super, a man who goes by the name of “Elvis.”  An excerpt from a list of outrages:  “Have repairs in your apartment been delayed and postponed because Elvis isn’t qualified to make said repairs?  Have you had to step over piles of trash in the basement on the way out of the building?  Have you ever come home to find Elvis smoking pot in your living room?”  If true, this last accusation is a shocker, although if you come home and think you see Elvis smoking pot in your living room, you might have to ask yourself who’s smoking what?

This piece of paper, torn down within a few hours (by Elvis, I assume, on his way to buy some grass), reminded me of a newsletter my roommates and I received when living in Brooklyn during the holiday season of 1995.  I’ve kept it, because one feature is among the most deranged I’ve ever read.  The building, you need to know, was part co-op and part rental.  The man who lived in the penthouse was an inept, usually drunk, building manager and owned the largest share in the building.  He was hated by the other owners because he rented out his apartments while maintaining a disproportionate number of votes.  The newsletter was written by one of the owners who was angered by the man in the penthouse who wielded his power that December to keep Time Warner from accessing the building and providing cable television, which was apparently the last acquisition needed for the writer of this newsletter to attain happiness.  The little story was called:  How the Grinch Stole Cable.

Hm.  I can't find it.  Oops.  (This is a blog nightmare!)  I just spent two hours going through folders of receipts, old newspapers and magazine articles, shelves of tax returns, drawers of computer manuals, and shoeboxes of folded, yellowing paper.  No luck.  I wouldn't have thrown the "Grinch" away without backing it up, but can't locate it on my computer either.  I did find many letters and journal entries written during high school and college, which made me wince.  When it comes to teen angst, it turns out that I can teach a summer workshop.  Good to know.

All I can say is that the holiday newsletter will hopefully show up during spring cleaning this July, but the good news is that I came across a gift from this past Christmas and it is just as rife with lunacy.  The small book is entitled 101 Best Stunts, A Collection of 101 Best Stunts for Use at Parties, Church, Home or in Service Clubs (or what I now dub: 101 Things I Can Post Whenever a Blog Is Due).  This second edition of the fourth volume was published in 1942 by Jim Ford.

HUNGRY CHICKEN:  Organizations that go in for stunts in real he-man fashion might try this one.  First blind-fold your victim, and lay him on the floor, with chest exposed.  Then sprinkle on his manly bosom a small quantity of chick-feed, and bring in a hen which has not been allowed to eat for a day.  Better first, however, tie the hands of the initiated behind his back, and warn him not to turn over.

Manly bosom?  Chick-feed?  A starving hen?

LIBERAL GIVER:  Let the President tell the club that a certain good charity needs money badly.  Before the meeting have one chair wired with electricity, and steer your "Scotch" member to this chair.  President then announces that anyone willing to donate $500 will stand.  Then, turn on the current.  Let everybody immediately congratulate him, when he stands, giving him no chance to explain.

Have one chair wired with electricity?  And turn on the current?  I think the scenario would go a little bit more like this:

"OW!  What the *&%#?  MOTHER @*#&&!  Who the *^@&%^# did that?  Was it you, you piece of ^&%#?  You think that's funny, funny man?  I will come up there and kick your funny &^*& funny *&^%$, you &#^$ #,  $&^#*&$%,  ^$#*&^$.  What kind of person would ^&&##, you &$##?  Get the &%#@ off me, %&#@@, *(&%, (*&#$!"

DARN THE SOCKS:  One of the funniest stunts pulled recently by a Colorado club was a sock-darning contest.  It was held at the club's annual ladies night.  Four men contestants were supplied with rather "holey" socks, darning needle and thread, and the fun was on.  The women of course were the judges, and the prize was--believe it or not--a nail clipper.

I believe it.  And this, remember, is one of the funniest stunts pulled by a Colorado club.

WHO KISSED ME?:  A club composed of men in New York State, recently lined up the waitresses before their bachelor member.  He was then blind-folded, and each girl in turn asked him various questions about his matrimonial intention, winding up with:  "Have you ever been kissed?"  At this point a male member slipped up quietly and bestowed a resounding smack on his cheek.  A few moments later the blind-fold was removed, and the fun started, when he began to pick the girl who had kissed him.

"Hm, which of these women has whiskers and reeks of gin?"

An interesting sociological point to many of these stunts is how often waitresses were employed to help pull off the joke.  Today these would be strippers.

STOP THAT:  Tip off waitress (or stripper) to pause several times close to bachelor member of the club.  The next time have her yell out:  "Stop that, Mr. _________; the idea,--trying to grab my hand every time I go near you!"

HiLARious.

My first blog for this site was on Memorial Day when I wrote about some of the best lines uttered by my tourists at the start of the season; since then, my fellow tour guides have shared with me some of their favorite moments, which I'll post here to celebrate the end of the season.

From Bob:  There was a student who met the rest of her group on the front steps at Ellis Island and complained that, though she had gone through the entire museum and read everything in sight, she hadn't found anything at all about Elvis.

While on the way for a tour of Grand Central, Doug stumbled onto the Madison Avenue street fair.  He was thrilled and gave his group some free time to shop and eat. One very sweet woman on the trip, gazed up the crowded street lined with booths as far as the eye could see, turned to Doug and said:  My goodness, I always thought the Grand Central Station would look different than this! I thought it would be inside!

Occasionally, what our American students don't know can be depressing and, when we bring them to the United Nations where international docents take over for an hour, a little embarrassing.  The docents come off the elevator at the end of the tours and look at me with glares of recrimination as if I were responsible for the bottomless ignorance of the nation's youth.  I get defensive, explaining:  "I don't know them.  I just met them at the airport yesterday.  Come back! "  To avoid this, I usually cheat by giving the kids some of the answers to questions I know they'll be asked inside.  I'm not the only one.  Jeff was quizzing his group on the bus as it drove up to the U.N.

Jeff:  So the flags of the member states are in alphabetical order.  The last flag is easy, starts with a z, Zimbabwe.  What's the first?

Group:  AMERICA!

Jeff:  No.  And that's not the name of our country.  Ours starts with a u.  We're near the end.

Group:  ARIZONA!

Jeff:  No.  No.  That's a state.  What I'm looking for is a country.

Group:  AFRICA!

Jeff:  Oof.  I'll just tell you.  It's Afghanistan.

A couple parents in the back:  BOOOOOOOOOO!!

And then he had to explain how we're not actually at war with Afghanistan.  It's not an easy job.

On a better day, Jeff had a group that was inspiring--intelligent, attentive, and curious.  They sat on the steps at Federal Hall, and as he spoke, they leaned forward, listening, nodding, absorbing, and so he continued.  For thirty minutes, he spoke of the early days of the republic, of Washington and Hamilton and Jefferson and Burr, of the Bill of Rights, of the transfer of the capital, of the John Peter Zenger trial and the freedom of press, of the New York Stock Exchange, of J.P. Morgan and the birth of the corporation.  At the end of a productive, eloquent session like this, the teacher usually comes up to you and, knowing how difficult it can be to keep the attention of seventh and eighth-graders (a.k.a., ritalin monkeys), pays you a compliment which you return ("They were very well-prepared.") and the two of you share a moment of satisfaction.  As this group stood, the teacher approached, put his hands on Jeff's shoulders and whispered:  Your fly's open.

In certain parts of the country, the word haggle has a colorful idiom:  to Jew them down...as in "When we go to Chinatown, can we Jew them down?"  Each guide approaches this question differently.  Some, especially the Jewish ones, are very direct.  I have three techniques.  One is to pretend I've never heard the phrase in my life and ask them to repeat it several times, growing more and more appalled as if I just can't believe a human being in this day and age would use such a phrase.  The second is to give a brief lecture on the Jewish philanthropy that supports so many of our city's cultural institutions.  And the third (a two-pronged trick) is to point out that it's a bit ironic to imply Jewish people are cheap when, at the end of the tour, it's usually the WASP groups who neglect to tip their guide.

This spring, Travis faced a dilemma--to correct or not to correct--when one of his people asked, "What's the best way to chew them down?"

And from Tessa:  Having just pointed out St. Paul's, the oldest building in continuous use in Manhattan, she gave the chapel's opening date of 1766.

Inquisitive Boy:  Whoa!  Whoa!  1766?  When was the Revolutionary War?

Tessa:  1776.

Inquisitive Boy:  Okaaaaay, and when did Columbus come over?

Tessa:  1492!

Inquisitive Boy:  Wait a minute.  Wait...a...minute!  What happened between 1492 and 1776?

Many of New York's preeminent tour guides freelance for Briggs, a special events and corporate meetings company based in the heart of Times Square.  At the end of the spring tour season, it's become a tradition for the owners, Tony Napoli and Gary Newman, along with their full-time employees, to host a surprise excursion for these guides, instructing all to meet in front of Sardi's by 2:30.  Two years ago, we journeyed to the Bronx, visiting the Grand Concourse; touring the Hall of Fame for Great Americans, a colonnade lined with bronze busts commemorating great Americans (hence the name); and dining at Roberto's in Belmont where much red wine was consumed and the night turned fuzzy.  Last year, the guides took the big ol' orange ferry over to Staten Island, visiting Alice Austen's House and the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art.  Unfortunately, I couldn't attend as I was in Milan, tracking down Caravaggios in the museums and laughing hysterically at the price tags in the fashion district.

The 2006 destination borough was Queens and this past Thursday a group of fifty boarded an Academy coach where each individual was promptly handed a mini bottle of Corona beer, the clue to our first stop.  On the west side of Flushing Meadows-Corona Park is a community that was first heavily settled in the late nineteenth century.  The development, named Corona (i.e., crown of the hill) by Benjamin W. Hitchcock, was promoted as a workingman's paradise and quickly attracted fugitives from the Lower East Side.  A predominantly Italian neighborhood at the beginning, the area has become one of the most ethnically diverse in the world, housing immigrants from Greece, Puerto Rico, India, China, Italy, Germany, England, and the Dominican Republic (to name a few), which means the sidewalks were relatively empty.  Two words:  World Cup.

We disembarked first at the "Lemon Ice King of Corona" where we were treated to a cup of ice, the flavor of our choosing.  There are more than thirty flavors, and I had a difficult time deciding, which is not unusual by this time of year, considering the number of choices required to get through a day in New York plus the number of choices made when giving tours over the course of four months (e.g., turn here, pull over there, meet me back here, go have lunch there, you have an hour to shop, we'll hop the A, let's catch the 10:20, we'll take Broadway, we'll meet at Trinity, we'll walk across at 72nd, let's leave at 8, this is a really great time for everyone to use the bathroom).  The Italians behind the counter were busy filling several dozen cups of ice, so I didn't feel I could ask, "What do you recommend?" (though I guess the name "LEMON Ice King of Corona" was a suggestion), so I went with one that has three flavors:  rainbow.

We then all meandered over to the small park (except for Marta who went shopping for bargains and Renee who went to use a restroom at a pizza shop, felt she needed to buy a slice, took her time eating the slice, and then lost her chance to use the restroom because the bus was pulling away).  Tony, always prepared, had purchased bocce balls and several games were played on the court.  Linguistic trivia:  the word bocce derives from the Italian verb bocciare, which means to hit or strike, but the word can also mean:  Robert-really-won-no-matter-what-they-claim-his-opponents-are-cheating-bastardi.

Then came the highlight:  a tour of the Louis Armstrong house, which took place, coincidentally on the thirty-fifth anniversary of his death in the upstairs bedroom.  Armstrong was a famous millionaire by the time he moved into this neighborhood with its one- and two-family houses, and he lived in this humble home from 1942 until 1971.  The structure was originally clapboarded; the brick exterior and the walled garden were renovations during the last year of his life.

Selma Heraldo (pictured below) has lived next-door since 1923.  At the time hers was the only African-American family in the largely Italian, Irish and Polish community.  She has since become the unofficial godmother of the neighborhood.  Nothing seems to happen on this block without her knowledge.  (As I stood on the sidewalk, a boy in the street fell off his bicycle and skidded across the pavement. Without missing a beat, Selma Heraldo cried from her porch.  "Jonathan!  I want you to go to the store for me.")  In fact, my tour group owed our docent to her.  Patrick Canela's father, who owns a local store, wanted his son to get a job when he was fifteen.  At the time, Patrick was more interested in hanging with friends and not working at all, but soon Selma Heraldo got involved and secured him a job telling people about Louis Armstrong although until that point he had never been exposed to jazz, never seen a reel-to-reel.  After a fulfilling day helping a woman in a wheelchair view as much of the house as she could, and receiving a small gift of her gratitude all the way from Texas, he was hooked.  Now he's the kind of guide who makes himself available for questions and goes out of his way to show you extra photographs in the gift shop.

Patrick is new to the guiding world, so, reflecting the humility of the house itself, he still incorporates understatements such as: "I think this house is one of the best historical houses in Corona."  Yeah, that's a safe bet.  I myself would venture to say that it's one of the best historical houses in the city of New York.  What makes this tour so fantastic is that the entire house and collection--administered by Queens College (which also preserves Armstrong's one thousand LP's and six hundred fifty reel-to-reels)--is "ninety-nine point nine nine per cent" authentic.

No photographs were allowed inside, so you'll just have to imagine the wall paper that in some rooms covers every surface including the interiors of drawers and cupboards; the bright green in the downstairs loo featured in a 1967 issue of Time magazine's celebrity bathrooms; and the intense blue of the kitchen with its subzero refrigerator and a Crown custom-made double oven with six burners.  There are beautiful artworks representing Satchmo, one upstairs by Tony Bennett in which teeth seem to be the central subject.  The tour is also, naturally, an audio tour that makes use of the system Armstrong installed so that music could be heard in any room, played from the equipment in the office/studio on the second floor where he not only listened to and archived his LP's and reel-to-reels but made numerous recordings.

After the tour, it was my turn to almost miss the bus as I was meeting on the porch next-door with Selma Heraldo, listening to stories about Armstrong's fourth wife, Lucille, who grew up in the neighborhood, danced at the Cotton Club and was sent home in taxis, later limos, by the headliner she was soon to marry.

Before dinner there was one last stop for a group photo facing the East River (taken by Kevin McCormick who incidentally took the author photograph on my upcoming novel).  Socrates Sculpture Park is one of the only parks in the city dedicated to large-scale outdoor sculptures.  It was developed in the late eighties by local sculptors, including Mark di Suvero, mentioned in this blog just three weeks ago as the creator of Joie de Vivre, which now stands in the newly reopened Liberty Plaza Park.  Socrates Park is a suitable location for outdoor sculptures, just steps away from the Isamu Noguchi museum.

The final stop was Astoria where we pulled up in front of a newly opened churrascaria called Pontal, which serves the best flan I've ever eaten...and I had three of them to make sure.  In Brazil, a churrascaria (shoo ras ka ria) is a restaurant where the various meats are cooked in a small oven equipped with spits.  Churrascaria also means "vegetarians can go to hell."  (The hungry guy leaning back from the table in the first photo below is Bruce Racond, vegetarian...and designer of this Web site.)  This is the kind of place where the waiters keep approaching with beef and lamb and pork that they carve and drop onto your plate until you surrender, where customers rotate a dial with two colors--green meaning keep it coming, red meaning please stop for the love of God.  The technique I employed was to run away...to get up from the table and try to walk it off.  As I was making laps around the dance floor, whistles and drums filled the place and I was forced to make a run for it, because Tony had another surprise--a procession entered the restaurant and brought everyone else to their feet.  They danced, performed capoeira and had us all doing the limbo.  (According to Wikipedia, capoeira is an Afro-Brazilian martial art that is always performed with music, which means that before fighting off your muggers, you have to find a drummer.)  This authentic Brazilian performance was followed incongruously by a recording of ABBA's Dancing Queen, traditional only in a small Brazilian community in southeast Stockholm.  (To be fair--because there's nothing incongruous about a Briggs event--the theme of the event was QUEENS FOR A DAY which explains the tiaras and the ABBA song.)  Another hour followed when sangria flowed and a potent house drink burbled and, just like in the Bronx...it all turned fuzzy.  This time it was Janice who almost missed the bus (she was in the bathroom trying to fix her camera which had crashed to the floor) and we returned to Manhattan over the Queensboro Bridge, with Marta Sanders (a name in the upcoming novel) leading us in a boisterous rendition of "Hello, Dolly."  And why not?

The strangest sign I saw in New York this week was in the security tent at Battery Park intended for those visiting the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. 

(I can hear some of you now: "Your last two blogs referred to 'the end of the tour season,' so why are you yammering away again about Battery Park?  Do you take boat rides out to the Statue of Liberty when you're not working?  Are you a lunatic? The answer is no--I do not ride out to the Statue of Liberty when I'm not giving a tour.  And yes--I am a lunatic.  I happened to take a job for two days last week--a nice group from Salt Lake City was in town on Thursday and Friday--and this is how I found myself in the tent at Battery Park in the middle of July.)

Someone had wedged a cardboard box between a horizontal pole and the canvas above the door and on that box was scrawled in black magic marker:  "$50 reward for return of Chevy Camaro.  Will not prosecute.  Just want the car back.  Pllleeeeeaaassse return tomorrow to the Bx Courthouse."  I wasn't the only one wondering why here?  If your car was stolen in the Bronx, why would you put up a sign at Battery Park?  Did the victim really think that someone who had just committed grand theft auto would spend the next couple of days sightseeing?  That he or she would hide the car in a garage and then go look up ancestors at Ellis Island?  I could only assume that the person who placed the sign worked at Battery Park, saw the crowds day in and day out, and came to the plausible conclusion that the entire world must pass through those tents.

As I sat on the boat, I wondered where in New York I would place my cardboard box if something of mine were stolen--pausing to consider if the cardboard box was the best way to go to begin with--so I missed the opening of the recorded announcement played when each boat leaves the dock.  But my ears perked up when I realized that it was all new text.  Victory!  Victory!!  Readers of this blog will remember that on June 13th I wrote about the outrageous announcement wherein the Parks Department claimed the Statue of Liberty has "become a universal symbol of our nation's freedom, opportunity, security, and future."  I lambasted the sneaky way they tried to slip that third one in, conducted polls to see if any of my fellow passengers saw the statue as a symbol of security (no one did), accused the Parks Department of lazy logic or slippery connivance and reminded them that liberty was a treasure that needed to be secured and not one that does the securing.  Now, unless they've stuck it in the opening, which I confess I didn't hear, that inane list has been removed--the full-time staff at robertwestfield.com has brought the Parks Department to its knees.  And to give credit where credit is due--kudos to the writer/s of the new announcement which devotes itself to pointing out sights in the harbor without any trickery.

Now, at last:  the tour season is over!