A BYTE OF PUBLISHING NEWS

On Tuesday—Super Tuesday!—Absolute Brightness, by the multi-talented James Lecesne, hit the bookshelves.  As an actor, he has performed in a number of plays (once with Vanessa Williams as his backup singer) and has appeared on television (once berating Carrie Bradshaw for being late to a photo shoot).   As a writer, he wrote one of the final episodes of Will and Grace for NBC and More Tales of the City for Showtime.  His short film, Trevor, won the Academy Award for live action short and has gone on to inspire the Trevor Project, the only national suicide hotline for gay and questioning teens.  Most recently, James helped launch After the Storm, a non-profit committed to the youth and arts in the post-Katrina New Orleans community.

Now we have the latest in his bold contributions:  his debut novel, Absolute Brightness.  This funny, frightening and profound story is narrated by Phoebe Hertle, a fifteen-year-old who is completely put out when her oddball young cousin, Leonard Pelkey, comes to live with her family, but who is even more put out when he one day disappears.  I read an advanced copy last summer and couldn’t put it down.

James’s Web site (JamesLecesne.com) is on the way, but you can read more about the book here and purchase the book here.

A BYTE OF CRIME STATS

One of the first bytes we posted way back in March was set to dispel the ridiculous myth--still subscribed to by people outside of New York--that Central Park is one of the city's most dangerous places.  In 2006, with approximately twenty million visitors, the park had only 101 complaints of crime.  Well, the new precinct report has just come out and, in 2007, there was an increase.  Of 2.  The total crimes in Central Park for 2007 was 103!

Again, the biggest crime was Grand Larceny (57).  There was no murder, but there were ten felonious assaults (all of them committed by me when one of my tourists asked if Central Park were dangerous and I shouted “It’s dangerous now!”  before going ballistic and attacking them with a wooden plank I tore from a bench).  In 2007, Central Park also saw its first GLA in several years, and I still, sadly, have no clue what a GLA is.  To check up on your local precinct, click here.

A BYTE FROM TIME OUT NY

Last week Time Out New York published a great issue expanding their “It Happened Here” column by listing 107 historic events, which fans of Little Bytes of the Big Apple should love.  They also launched an interactive feature that lets you can contribute your favorite site-specific bits of trivia for their “ever-growing Google map.”  Check it out.

And for my most recent “It Happened Here”:

A BYTE OF NYC HUMILIATION

OR:  MY LADY MACBETH MOMENT OF THE WEEK

At F&B Gudtfood on 23rd Street between 7th and 8th, I added a humiliating episode to my long list of humiliating episodes that have occurred everywhere, from a stage at Lincoln Center to the top of the Empire State Building.  Located right across the street from a major movie theater, F&B has great inexpensive food (the best veggie dogs I've had) as well as a hand sanitizer near the counter.  As I waited for my food at the end of a long writing day, my mind still very immersed in the novel I've been working on, I wasn’t paying close enough attention as I approached that Purell dispenser, stopping two feet too early, and pushing hard on another plunger--the one for ketchup.  A long line of customers stared at me, the freak with a handful of tomato and vinegar, but I refused to explain myself.  A veteran of these kinds of things, I just said, “oops” and looked for napkins.

A BYTE FROM JAPAN BY WAY OF KANSAS

In a recent blog I reposted a link to a youtube video (I WAS ROB-BED BY TWO MEN) that just gets weirder and weirder every time I watch it.  Whitney B., a childhood friend now living in Kansas, wrote to me:  “One of the students who works for me actually saw that mugging video in a class on the postmodern Japanese society.  The professor is quite fun-loving and thought the class would enjoy it.  (His research area is popular culture--he's an expert on Godzilla!)”

Then Whitney sent me a link for another video from the same series that is even MORE BIZARRE, if possible.  Click here if you dare. 

I watched this video with the serious doubt that cultural chasms could ever really be bridged, and as I stared slack-jawed at women doing aerobics to the refrain I have a bad case of diarrhea, I realized that my family lived in Japan until I was almost four, which has to explain why my earliest memories are so twisted.

A BYTE OF NYC POETRY

(for Valentine's Day)

The of my favorite selections from Poems of New York published by Everyman's Library Pocket Poets.

LOVE

He looks like a bowling pin, she looks like the ball.

All over the neighborhood, I meet them,

walking hand in hand, his stretching way down to hers.

They waddle walk as really fat, or stupid, people do.

When I climb the stairs and pass their apartment

I see them sitting at their kitchen table.

They always leave their door open at dinner time.

The smell of cabbage and old linoleum overpowers

          the hall.

His face is like a shy bell, fat and friendly at the bottom.

Her shape is shapeless with an overall impression

          of round.

He has a gray-flecked crew cut and an expression like

          a cow.

She has wispy mouse hair and cackles through rotten

          teeth.

I make small talk with them as they lumber up the stairs:

"You're out late," I say.  "We're out late," he giggles.

"We're out late," she echoes.  "It's late," he elaborates.

Poor, stupid, mismatched and ugly, they have love.

Yesterday, the Super told me that she was dead.

She had stepped out between parked cars and

got run over by a truck.

I walk up the stairs past their closed door

and picture him sitting on the padded chrome chair,

staring at the pearly formica of the kitchen table,

his big, shy hands hanging between his knees, unheld,

and I cry.

--DOUG DORPH

As I was typing this out, it occurred to me that, as much as I love this poem, it's probably not the ideal Valentine's Day offering.  This is one of the reasons I don't work at Hallmark.  "Go on, enjoy your date tonight, smell your flowers, order the special.  There are people whose loved ones have died, but go on, imbibe your wine. " 

This is one of the poems I read on my Pubs and Poets tour.  What's wrong with me??  My group gathers around me at Chumley's with their cold pints of ale and I open to page 192 and suck all the joy out of the room.  Ah, well, c'est l'amour.

TWO BYTES OF RECOMMENDATION

There are two events in NYC next Wednesday, February 20th, that you should catch, though they're happening at the same time.

The first is a literary event at Borders at Columbus Circle.  I wrote about Absolute Brightness by James Lecesne last week when the book hit the bookshelves.  Next week is the official launch and check out the three fantastic writers participating with James in a conversation about the books that made them.

The second event begins at 6:00 and is a new screening of TWILIGHT BECOMES NIGHT, as part of

the NewFilmmakers Documentary Series. Virginie-Alvine Perrette's 35-minute documentary follows

the widespread closing of neighborhood stores in New York City and examines the devastating impact

this transformation has on the city we love. She'll be there that night to answer any questions after the

screening (Admission $5).

LOCATION: Anthology Film Archives. 32 Second Avenue (at 2nd Street) (MAP)

I will be writing more about this film and Virginia in the future.  Here are some links for further reading:

Documentary Double Feature and Vanishing New York: Twilight Becomes Night.

In a few weeks, in one of the upcoming videos, we'll be showing you how bad it's gotten--on one four block stretch near City Hall, there are two Starbucks, two Duane Reades, and eight banks.

A BYTE FROM GRAND CENTRAL

For those of you who haven't seen it yet (3.5 million have), over two hundred people froze froze for five minutes in Grand Central Terminal for an Improv Everywhere mission.

A BYTE FROM MADISON SQUARE GARDEN

                                                                           AP Photo                                           Shannon Stapleton, Reuters

BYTES OF ORANGE COUNTY

In February, I give tours to a couple groups from Orange County, California, and they always give me a funny line or two.  My favorite is still one from a few years ago.  A twelve-year-old girl, after running  with her classmates through a frigid Little Italy, climbed onto the warm bus and said, running her fingertips over her cheeks and forehead, "It's so cold out there, I feel like I just had Botox."

This year, my favorite half-line was:  "At the L.A.X. in Reno..."

This scene took place on the morning of our visit to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Some of the girls were asking me about the boat, and I told them that I couldn't give them an answer, because the boats that I knew so well, the ones that had been in operation for YEARS, were gone.

ROBERT:  A new company's in charge now.  The same company that the runs the boats out to Alcatraz.

GIRL (thrilled, jumping up and down):  "ARE WE GOING TO SEE ALCATRAZ?!?!?"

(In New York Harbor?  That would have been a Great Escape--moving the island prison to the East Coast would have completely disoriented the guards.)

FEBRUARY 21st IN NEW YORK HISTORY

Forty-three years ago:  Malcolm X is assassinated at the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights.

Sixty years ago:  NASCAR is incorporated.  NASCAR still has very little to do with New York City no matter how many times they park their cars in Times Square or at Rockefeller Center.  Most of us don't find much thrill in the sport, probably because we take yellow taxis through midtown.  (Without helmets.)

Sixty-one years ago:   At a meeting in NYC of the Optical Society of America, Edwin Land, founder of Polaroid, demonstrates the first "instant camera."  With the Polaroid Land Camera, photos taken would be developed in about a minute.  Today, an "instant" and a "minute" are different concepts.  Speaking of cameras, meet Eric, a student from Austin who was on my tour last week.  Constantly brandishing his new digital camera, he snapped hundreds of candid shots and documented acres of the city.  At the Metropolitan, he took at least fifteen pictures of Roman busts.  I enjoyed looking at his captures and we all frequently asked for the most recent tally.  245 pictures.  312.  540.  654.  789.  821.  902.  At Ellis Island, he was at 966, nearing a thousand.  Sad to say, he didn't break out of the triple digits.  On our way to board the ferry, he realized that he was no longer brandishing his new digital camera.  Forty-five minutes of searching later, we gave up and took the next boat.  "Isle of Hope, Isle of Tears."    

I like to ask kids at the beginning of a tour for the first thing that pops to mind when they think of New York.  As they're departing, I ask what they think of now after their three or four or five days in the city.  Eric's answer, after a long pause, was inevitable:  "Ellis Island."  I felt very bad for him, so I kept myself from pointing out, "Well, at least you weren't deported or diagnosed with trachoma."

(Word problem:  How many hours would it have taken Eric to develop 966 pictures if he had been shooting with the Polaroid Land Camera, first demonstrated in 1947?)

Eighty-three years ago:  The New Yorker is first published.  In 2006, my father would give one of the best reasons to leave a party early:  "We're staying at the Algonquin and I have to finish reading all the cartoons on the wall."

LINK OF THE WEEK

Created by an anonymous writer in New York, posting as Brooks of Sheffield, LOST CITY is a fantastic urban blog full of histories and photos of the places we New Yorkers (and many of the visitors) are distraught to see vanishing before our eyes. 

The site was inspired by the death of McHale's at 46th and 8th, a loss I remember all too well.  McHale's and a third of that block have been replaced by another luxury condo building.  You can see the nonentity under construction in the Little Bytes tour, Crossing Manhattan at 46th Street.  (The Eighth Avenue byte.)

LOST CITY features lists with the headings: Recently Lost Landmarks (I've written about how bad 2007 was);Threatened Landmarks;Owns the Building (Landlord Safe); and Doesn't own the Building (Landlord Prone).

THIS WEEK'S TRIVIA QUESTION

There's a statue in Central Park that irritated the designers because it was taller than the trees.  (Those nearby now rise above the sculpture, but not by much.)  Olmsted and Vaux wanted the park to be a landscaped retreat from the city, a natural haven from the stresses of urban life, not a dumping ground for monuments, memorials and political gestures.  They didn't have anything against the man (he was very popular in the Northeast) and a household name nationwide.  A century after his death, he was named posthumously as one of a certain group's five outstanding members (1957).

Today, however, if you stand near this statue (hint:  somewhere south of Harlem Meer and north of the zoo) one of the most common questions you'll hear people asking is, "Who's this guy?"  The statue's so large and the pose so pompous that people usually pause to read the name.  Then you hear the mumbling. "He was very important."  "I think he was a president."  "That's part of a title...something about a devil."  And the most frequent, proclaimed knowingly by guides, by teachers:  "This is the man who wrote the first dictionary."

No, he didn't...and neither did the man with whom they're confusing him.

Who is the subject of this sculpture?

Bonus:  Can you give three facts about him?

Answers next Thursday.

THE BATTLE FOR BELVEDERE CASTLE

During the season's first winter storm last Friday, a day when most news outlets focused on the Serbian protesters setting part of the U.S. embassy ablaze or on the Turkish forces crossing into Iraq to engage Kurdish rebels, a much less publicized battle raged at Belvedere Castle, high above Turtle Pond.  It was my mission that morning to lead an unruly squad of forty-two eighth-graders and four of their teachers across Central Park.  After stocking up on rations in Times Square, we were transferred by the local B to our starting point at 81st Street.  A few in the ranks reported that the Metropolitan Museum of Art was closed due to snow, but they were from California and didn't know the difference between the Metropolitan Museum and Metropolitan College or whatever school would have announced its closing on the news that morning.  I ignored them and entered the park through the Hunter's Gate.

My plan was to march them south, then east to the Swedish Cottage, where we would turn north and then east to cut between the Delacorte Theater and the Great Lawn, slipping below the East Drive via the Greywacke Arch to reach Fifth Avenue and approach the Met from the south.  At the West Drive, however, I decided that we couldn't rush through such a beautiful winter landscape and I led them instead into the Ramble and up the windy path to Belvedere Castle.  I alerted my fellow guide, who was responsible for an additional forty-eight students and teachers, to our whereabouts.  He replied that they too would make the climb.

A thought occurred to me as I looked down on Turtle Pond, observing the ice punctured by snowballs arcing from the gloves of my ragtag crew.  (The term ragtag is used loosely here as these kids came from Palo Alto.)  I called my colleague to learn his group's coordinates and discovered they were approaching from the west, just passing the lavatories at the Delacorte Theater.  We had mere minutes.  I shouted orders and all forty-six raced to positions along the western wall to fortify the defenses.  A middle-aged couple who had been admiring the view when we arrived, fled the scene, two refugees forced into the Ramble for their own preservation.

The one true challenge to my battle plan was the man leading the forty-eight.  Travis Stroessenreuther hailed from Wisconsin and had spent his entire childhood in the outdoors of that frigid wilderness.  Part Viking, he was also still bearing a grudge against anyone who had cheered for the New York Giants over his Green Bay Packers in January.  If he led the charge, was there anything that could stop him?  A rifle would take him out, yes, but that morning we were restricting ourselves to snow.

As my forty-six hid beneath the parapet wall, preparing snowballs, I stepped down onto the northern outcropping of rock to reconnoiter the scene.  Travis and the first of his forty-eight appeared in the Shakespeare Garden below.  I turned to face my group, pretending that I was addressing an audience seated out of sight.  Vikings weren't famed for their intelligence and I hoped that Travis would lead his followers right into the trap.  Loudly, I lectured about the dimensions of the park and dispensed some trivia about the New York Shakespeare Festival.  There were some Vikings apparently among us who kept standing up and trying to listen to the tour instead of waiting for the signal.  "Get down!  I'm a decoy!" I frantically whispered before starting a monologue about the Great Lawn.

Travis was not falling for any of it.  He saw the heads bobbing above the snow-covered ramparts and he let his forces gather below--out of reach--occasionally shouting a few Central Park numbers over his own shoulder.  The first skirmish was turning out to be a vocal exchange not of insults but of random factoids.  The real battle would begin soon, but we felt no fear, perched as we were high on Vista Rock.  Anyone who knows the geography of this part of the park understands that the far better approach for them would have been from the south.  From the west, they had to charge the castle practically at its base and climb two flights of stairs, completely exposed at all times to their enemy above.  The only worse approach would have involved swimming through Turtle Pond before pulling themselves up the rock and castle walls.  This time, not a single bet would have been laid on the Green Bay team. 

At last, Travis called the charge and led his forces at a sprint up the path.  I gave the go and my forty-six stood, throwing all of their snowballs at the advancing troops.  In the first five seconds, a rough reckoning would count at least one hundred snowballs hurled from the castle alone, and as the invaders laid seige to the castle, my defenders, pushed all of the accumulated snow off the western wall and onto the heads of the army below.  Travis later reported that it was indeed an awe-inspiring sight to see an entire sky filling with spherical projectiles.  But it was also an awe-inspiring sight to see a troop of snow-covered eighth-graders breaching our defenses.

It was now a full-scale battle for the castle, almost one hundred people in an all-out melee.  I changed my tactics and kept snowballs in hand--for every person that hit me, a snowball was duly returned.  This was also obviously the time to go after the kid that we adults didn't like, but it was difficult to find him in the crowd.  People began to retreat beneath the wooden shelter in the northwest corner of the terrace, declaring it a neutral zone and amazingly, despite the chaos of the trajectories, it remained safe.  I threw my last snowballs, even turning against a couple of my own group, before retreating to sanctuary. 

In the shelter, I met my fellow leader, powdered from head to toe, and we agreed to merge the armies.  I would walk ahead to advance the Met, purchasing all of the admission buttons and gathering the floor plans for the museum by the time Travis led the group inside.  It was a peaceful walk.  I strolled to the Met, checked my wet coat at my secret downstairs coat check and then went to the desk in the Great Hall to obtain the buttons.  I was warm, dry, completely relaxed, looking forward to perusing more of the Cypriot collection (my new favorite section), when the ninety-four entered, dripping with melted snow.

One of the Met employees pointed the group out to me, wondering how they got so wet, and I answered, "I have no idea.  I've never seen anything like it." 

(Photos courtesy of our embedded photographer, Jennifer Hutsell.)

FEBRUARY 28th IN NEW YORK HISTORY

Sixty-eight years ago:  Fordham University plays the University of Pittsburgh at Madison Square Garden in the first televised basketball game.  Spike Lee, born 1957, cannot be spotted in a courtside seat.

One hundred twenty-three years ago:  The American Telephone and Telegraph Company is incorporated in New York State.  Their most famous building, constructed between 1915-1922, just south of St. Paul's Chapel, still holds the record, I believe, for columns--more than that of the Parthenon.

One hundred fifty-nine years ago:  The SS California arrives in San Francisco after leaving New York Harbor almost five months earlier.  Regular steamboat service between the east and west coasts has begun.  Slowly.

Speaking of the steamboat, one of its most important inventors and engineers, John Ericsson (there's a statue of Ericsson near Castle Clinton in Battery Park) had the darkest day of his career on a February 28th. One hundred sixty-four years ago:  During a demonstration on the Potomac River for the USS Princeton, a gun, not Ericcson's but the one designed by his well-connected rival, explodes, killing eight people including--are you ready for this?--the Secretary of the Navy and the Secretary of State!!  Ericcson would not work with the Navy again until the Civil War when he was persuaded to design the Navy's first ironclad, built to combat the Confederacy's Merrimack.  Built in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the USS Monitor went from planning stages to its launch in one hundred days, less time than it took the SS California (above) to travel from New York to San Francisco.

ANSWERS TO LAST WEEK'S TRIVIA

The subject of the Central Park sculpture, which irritated the creators of the park and befuddles many people who walk by it, is DANIEL WEBSTER.  (Noah was the lexicographer credited with the first American dictionary.) 

--Webster is considered the greatest American orator of the nineteenth century.  (Although Lincoln wasn't shabby.)

--Webster was born in New Hampshire in 1782 and was an early student at both Phillips Exeter and Dartmouth.

--As a young lawyer (and orator) he became famous for a speech that, while opposing the War of 1812,

also urged his fellow angry New Englanders cease calls for secession.  Shortly afterwards, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

--As a constitutional lawyer, he argued several important cases in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. 

--He served as Secretary of State under Harrison and Tyler and later under Millard Fillmore. 

--In 1957, the U.S. Senate was the group that selected him as one of the five most outstanding members in its history.  He is best known as a senator, famous for his tireless work to preserve the Union, a career beginning in 1827 and culminating in his role in the Compromise of 1850, which effectively ended his career in the Senate.

--He ran for president several times and was offered opportunities to be vice president to which he famously replied:  "I do not propose to be buried until I am dead."  He made his final bid for presidency in 1852, lost to Winfield Scott, and in October fell off a horse at his home and died.  Then he was buried.

DON'T MISS THIS WEEK'S VIDEO TOUR:  BOWLING GREEN, PART ONE:  THE LITTLE TOURIST WHO COULD. 

BYTE OF CONFESSION--SUBMITTED BY AN ANONYMOUS GUIDE

TOUR GUIDE TRICK #37632-B-87:  If you're assigned to bring a group to a gallery, store, restaurant, etc. with which you're unfamiliar, and you have no time to do a dry run, no time to check online, no time to call ahead and ask about the proper entrance, or if the phone number only gives you a recording...then you walk slightly ahead of your group, asking passersby inconspicuously to point out your destination, pretending to your group all the while that you've been there a number of times.

WHEN TOUR GUIDE TRICK #37632-B-87 BACKFIRES:  Years ago, Anonymous was taking her group of middle schoolers to the Mercantile Exchange in the World Financial Center.  To get there, she had to lead the group through the maze of corridors connecting all of the office buildings of the World Trade and Financial Centers.  She knew the general direction of this Mercantile Exchange, but needed help, so she walked several steps in front of her group, whispering to security guards:  "Where's the Mercantile Exchange?  Ssshhh!  Just point, just point!"  As she tried to keep a few paces ahead (and out of earshot) of her group, two of the boys tried to keep up with her.  (There's always a couple who want to attach themselves to the guide's hip.)  Feeling them directly behind her, she picked up her speed so that neither of them would hear her asking directions from the long line of security guards pointing her towards the river, and just as she sensed she knew where she was and where she was going, she let the boys catch up with her and turned to discover that no one else was there.  She had lost the rest of the group way back in the labyrinth.

TO MAKE MATTERS WORSE:  Anonymous told the boys to stay put while she took off to try to find her people, leaving the two kids unattended when the other half of the group, led by another guide, and including the school's principal, turned the corner.  Sadly, that was her first job with this particular company; interestingly, it was also her last.

A CALL FOR PICTURES

Many of the people who have gone on my tours tell me that they usually return home to find an inexplicable photo or two on their camera.  If you have a picture that you can't identify or if you took a weird picture and have no idea why, send it to me at Robert@LittleBytesOfTheBigApple.com.

LINK OF THE WEEK

If the posting of the weekly videos are too slow for you or if you want to explore more of the city street by street or avenue by avenue, visit the addictive website of Jim Naureckas:  New York Songlines.  This is a also a great site to access via your iphone or PDA:  as you walk from Point A to Point B, check to see if you're passing anything interesting.

DON'T MISS THIS WEEK'S VIDEO TOUR:  BOWLING GREEN, PART TWO:  CONTINENTAL BULL.

COFFEE BREAK AT THE MUSEUM

Last weekend, as my tour group strolled through the fossil record, I bought a cup of coffee and tried to get some writing done in the basement food court, stupidly forgetting that the basement food court at the American Museum of Natural History is where children come to throw their grandest tantrums.  Billed as NYC's top family attraction--and I have no doubt that it is--there's not a place in the tri-state area with a higher quota of screaming, crying, and whining children or of parents fuming, mutually loathing each other, resenting whomever had the bright idea of a trip to the museum, regretting every decision in their lives that brought them to this moment.  Night at the Museum is about a security guard at the Museum of Natural History who discovers "an ancient curse (that) causes the animals and exhibits on display to come to life and wreak havoc."  This is a comedy.  A horror movie would be entitled Coffee Break at the Museum and would also involve an ancient curse that transforms all the children who come through the doors of the basement food court.  I gave up writing and decided instead to transcribe the pandemonium around me.  Here are selections from one ten-minute period.

"Sit down."

"Do you want me to cut your pizza?"

"We're not getting one of those water bottles."

"Whyyyyy?"

"Because we don't need it!"

"But I waaaaant it."

"Sit down!  Sit down!"

"Eat your pizza."

"I need you to tell me why you're upset."

"Keep acting like that and the next stop is going to be the parking garage."

"Use your words."

"Let your mother eat."

"Sit down now!"

"Benjamin, pull it together.  Act like a big boy."

"Do you want a time-out?"

"No more juice!  No more juice!"  (From what I initially thought was an anti-semitic mother.)

"You're so tired."

"No, I'm not!"  (Child breaks down and begins to wail.)

"Do you want pizza?  Yes or no?  Yes.  Or.  No."

"Stop playing!  Yes, you are!  Eat your McNuggets."  (Note:  We were not at McDonald's.)

"No, no!  Aww! "

"Joshua!"

"Quick, hold still."

"Here's some water."

"Joshua, you were using a straw."

"I forgot."

"Relax."

"It's all over his shirt."

"Did you pack another..."
"No, I did not pack another shirt."

"Why..."

ICY STARE.

"Come on, sit down."

"Eat your McNuggets."

"You're ready for another time-out."

"That's it!"

THE WORST SEED

A mother and daughter sat near me.  The mother looked like she was at her wit's end.  She was exhausted, she needed food.  She opened her daughter's drink and then turned to her own salad.  The girl, who I would guess was four or five, took a sip and made a face.  "I don't like this kind."  "But that's what you wanted."  "I don't like it."  "I asked you three times if that's what you really wanted."  The girl began to cry.  "I'll get you a new drink, but please let me eat some of my salad."  The girl continued to cry.  "Stop it.  You just wasted our money, but I will still buy you another drink.  Just please let me eat something."  The girl continued to cry.  "Have some of my drink."  The girl shook her head and continued to cry.  The mother ate a bite of salad.  "Start eating and I'll get you a new drink soon."  The girl did not eat but continued crying.  The mother tried to negotiate; the girl would have none of it.  Like a rat in its cage repeatedly hitting the lever for the pellet that comes as long as you keep pushing, the girl kept crying, refusing food, forbidding her mother to eat.  She learned a long time ago how to swap out her juice. 

It took about four minutes, but the inevitable surrender happened:  "Fine."  The mother left to find the brat's special drink, and as soon as she did, the girl's tears dried up.  She straightened, lifting her head from the counter, and began eating.  I stared in dumb terror before she turned to me, grinned, and winked.  Let the record show that it might have been a blink, but such a chill ran up my back that I threw my coffee away and and hurried for the exit. 

DON'T MISS THIS WEEK'S VIDEO TOUR:  THE CANYON OF TRIVIA .

DANIEL WEBSTER...YET AGAIN!

I can't let it go.  I can't get past the Daniel Webster statue, which I wrote about on February 21st and February 28th, without having to explain the man, because people keep spouting erroneous info.  I was walking by the statue this Sunday, resolved not to mention Daniel Webster (because no one really cares anyway) when I heard a tour guide walk by with his group and say, "Daniel Webster, yeah, he was a congressman (a senator, in fact) from somewhere in the 1800's."

So I had to stop.  I gave my group a brief history about the subject and reminded them that he was not NOAH Webster, who himself did not INVENT the dictionary, but is credited for writing and compiling the first AMERICAN dictionary.  As we began to walk towards the Bethesda Terrace, a visitor from the South--one of the thickest accents I've ever heard--took a picture of the sculpture and said to me...

WOMAN:  Webster?  We learned about him this week.  He invented the dictionary.

ROBERT:  Not this one.

WOMAN:  Yeah.  Merriam-Webster.

ROBERT:  Noah Webster.

WOMAN:  You do?

*****

And last week, theater director and NYC guide, Janice Goldberg, stopped her group at the statue to tell them about the famous (or completely unknown) senator. 

JANICE:  ...famous for his compromises in the years leading up to what war?  One of our biggest wars?  In the 1860's? 

A long silence...and then:

STUDENT:  We're only up to the 1840's.

CRANE

This past Saturday a crane that rose nineteen stories broke away from its construction project--yet another high rise condominium building--and collapsed on buildings as far as a block away, crushing a townhouse and killing seven people, including a woman from Miami visiting the city for St. Patrick's Day.  Last fall, we posted a byte on other crane collapses and stranger objects, including a helicopter's rotor blade and a bowling ball, that fell to the streets below.  For this video, visit Crossing Manhattan at 46th Street for the Park Avenue byte "Things That Fall from the Sky."

DON'T MISS THIS WEEK'S BYTE:  CITY HALL PARK, PART ONE:  TWICE THE PRICE OF ALASKA .

A BYTE OF THE DOG

While giving tours, I sometimes yield the floor to a specialist in the group--an engineer, architect or historian--or to a student who might have just finished a report on the subject for school.  On a recent stop at the statue of Balto in Central Park, an eighth-grader volunteered to tell the story.  Since she was from Ohio, I thought it possible that she was an authority--the real Balto lived out his life at the Cleveland Zoo and was subsequently stuffed and put on display at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. 

Judging from her lecture, quoted below, her research was clearly not conducted at a museum but came exclusively from the 1995 animated movie.

"Balto inspired the Iditarod race, because he brought medicine through a snowstorm all the way to a far part of Alaska.  They needed it or people would die and nobody thought he could do it.  The other dogs made fun of him and there was a rival dog who didn't want him on the team and there was a lot of prejudice because he wasn't a purebred, he was part wolf..."

I cut her off before she got to the love interest or Balto's comic sidekick, Boris the goose.  I had to explain that there were some differences between the movie and history and pointed out the well-known fact that, besides humans, only reindeer make fun of each other.

A BYTE OF THE MAN

Here's a laugh, courtesy of a great high school drama club from Littleton, Colorado.

Whenever I talk about the evolution of air rights in New York (watch the bytes, Hogging up the Sky and A Park without Air), I explain the various zoning laws that permit real estate developers to buy cubic feet of air and transfer that air to their lot in order to increase the number of floors they can build for their (usually generic condominium) towers.

Of course, I'm referring to cubic feet of space, not cubic feet of oxygen, but I like to end with a dumb joke:  "It's illegal to steal air in New York City.  If you breathe in, you HAVE to breathe out!"  It takes a couple seconds for people to get it, but on Monday, one of the students became apoplectic, outraged at yet another example of The Man's intrusion on our individual rights:  "Are you SERIOUS?!?!?"  

Maybe you needed to be there, but I'm telling you it was hilarious!

A BYTE OF THE BEAR

Two Sundays ago, Bear Stearns, one of the world's largest investment banks, whose stock last year hit $171, was sold to JPMorgan, under the supervision of the Federal Reserve, for $2 per share!  This week's New York Magazine features several interesting behind-the-scenes stories on the Bear Stearns fallout.       

In a byte posted last September on the tour, Crossing Manhattan at 46th Street, we featured their headquarters, which was recently valued at over $1 billion.  (Last week, someone taped a two-dollar bill to one of the front doors.)  To watch the byte, click the following link and scroll down to the Fifth Avenue video (even though the building is on Madison...we cut one of the videos into two parts and had to shuffle... anyway, doesn't matter.)  And don't be offended:  we made this video last year and, like I say in the byte, "It's just a joke, relax."

DON'T MISS THIS WEEK'S BYTE:  CITY HALL PARK, PART TWO:  BARGAIN BASEMENT BONES .