I gave a tour back in March to my annual eighth-grade group from Michigan.  My favorite line of this year's trip took place at Rockefeller Center:

ROBERT:  They wanted the most famous painter in the world to paint the lobby of the RCA Building so they sent a telegram to Paris to "Pierre Picasso."  Why did Picasso not respond?

(CORRECT ANSWER:  Because the most famous painter in the world was named Pablo, not Pierre.)

8th GRADER:   BECAUSE HE CUT OFF HIS EAR!!!

******

This was the same Michigan group I took for a walk in 2005, the winter when Christo and Jeanne-Claude assembled, on paths throughout Central Park, 7,500 gates, over 5 meters high and hung with saffron (orange) material.

8th GRADER:  Looks like Hunting Season.

Setting:  the eastern end of the Channel Gardens in the spring of 2006.

Robert:  Do you all know Gertrude Stein?  No?  Well, she was a great modernist...that probably doesn't mean anything.  She was a poet, novelist, playwright.  Um, 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?

Here's a new one.  When I give a tour I take great pains to be as clear as I can.  Sometimes I wonder why I bother.  These are pictures of "Double Check," a statue seated in Zuccotti Park (Liberty Plaza Park).

This is what I recently told a group of mine:

"In 1982, this statue by J. Seward Johnson was installed in middle of this park.  On overcast days, he blended into his surroundings, resembling one of the many men in suits breaking for lunch.  But because he depicts a businessman looking in his briefcase, he became an impromptu shrine during the days following September eleventh.  Flowers were placed at his feet in memory of the people who worked in the offices of the World Trade Center.  The statue was removed to the sculptor's home until they reopened this park in 2006.  Now "Double Check" sits in a prominent spot, no longer blending into the background, but facing what will eventually be developed at Ground Zero."  

And this conversation took place immediately afterwards:

Passerby:  "What are you all looking at?  What's that statue?"

Someone in my group:  "Robert just finished telling us.  That man right there died on September eleventh and they made a replica of him."

Passerby:  "Wow." 

This week's installment makes a nice companion piece to last week's story wherein I took "great pains" to be as clear as possible and was horribly misunderstood.  This time I was taking great pains to be as clear as possible and came off sounding like a klansman or, since I shave my scalp twice a week, a skinhead earning some holiday money as a tour guide.

On Sunday morning, I was helping a corporate group coordinate the departures of their 160 guests.  All of the participants were leaving their hotel in the morning to have breakfast at a certain store on Fifth Avenue, which is famous for not serving breakfast.  So famous, in fact, that now, for a price, they do serve breakfast.  Anyway.

Most of the guests were leaving straight from the store to catch their flights and their luggage was marked with different colored tags designating which airport at which time, and therefore which vehicle, they (and their luggage) were to board for breakfast.  The yellow-tagged bags belonged to the VIP's who were assigned their chauffered vehicles; the luggage tagged with blue and orange was loaded onto buses headed to terminals at LaGuardia; the luggage with green tags set for a coach going to JFK; and the luggage with red tags was being transferred curbside at the store to different sedans and SUV's that were picking up their customers later that morning.  Got that?  The guests were to identify their luggage, one color at a time, and board the vehicles.

The one group I haven't yet mentioned was comprised of the people who were returning to the hotel after breakfast.  Since they were leaving later in the afternoon, their suitcases were placed in storage, and they were free now to board any bus they desired.  There was no need for them to stand in the corridor of the lobby (now filled wall-to-wall with luggage, guests, bellmen, waiters, and people unaffiliated with our group who were trying to enjoy breakfast), so I invited them out of the crowd and onto one of the buses.  Their tags, by the way, were white, and so this is what hundreds of people heard me announce Sunday morning:

"Okay, I'm looking for the white people.  The white people only.  We have transportation for the white people.  Everyone else, we'll be announcing your color shortly, but for now, will the white people please follow me?"

Because of the enormous amount of reality in New York, you never know what you're going to see when you turn a corner or walk through a door, an uncertainty only compounded by the many people employed to create fictional worlds out on the sidewalks.  I've turned corners to find poor Helen Hunt running back and forth in a rain storm that happened to target the southwest corner of Fifth Avenue and 12th; to have my tour group attacked on Broad by a battalion of armed soldiers; to watch George Clooney being driven up Sixth in a cab which was itself driven on the back of a truck; and to find myself in the midst of numerous crime scenes being catered by Kraft Services.  I still wasn't prepared while walking across 57th Street last September to find Seventh Avenue--and just Seventh Avenue--a scene of post-apocalyptic decrepitude.  The film crew had just finished shooting Will Smith driving down the deserted avenue for the movie released today, I Am Legend.

This last photo should bring solace:  know that even after we're hit by a deadly pandemic, we will still be able to buy hot dogs from vendors on the street.

BEATRICE

"MAMA BEA"

(1922-2007)

FROM THE ARCHIVES

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 old Custom 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:  ?????

Shortly after we finished posting the 46th Street tour, I walked the two miles again, and came up with the following unscientific tally.  I counted only buildings that touched 46th Street, and ignored stores and restaurants that weren't on the ground floor.  So, as of December 9, 2007:

Bank branches:                                         9            (additional bank branches visible during walk:  13. 

                                                                                  According to New York Magazine, there are 1,552 bank 

                                                                                  branches in the city.)

Starbucks:                                                  2            (additional Starbucks visible during walk:  4)

Duane Reade:                                            1          (additional Duane Reades visible during walk:  5)

Restaurants:                                              94          (over 30 on Restaurant Row alone)

Public spaces:                                           5            (playgrounds and seating areas...I didn't include

                                                                                   breezeways or the park at the U.N., because it's

                                                                                   technically international soil and frequently roped-off

                                                                                   anyway.)

Churches:                                                  4             (including the world's first steel frame church)

Schools:                                                     1

Laundry/Dry Cleaners:                              5

Stores:                                                      41

Corner delis:                                              2            (only 2 out of 60 corners!!)

U.N.-related organizations:                       6          (Consulates, missions, centers, etc:  Turkey, Venezuela,

                                                                                  Bahamas, Hong Kong, Botswana, Colombia...not including

                                                                                  the U.N. itself.)

Office Buildings:                                        67        (From the sidewalk, it’s difficult to tell if a building is

                                                                                 residential or commercial.)

Apt. Buildings:                                         130       (Many of these are townhouses.)

Hotels:                                                          9

Nail, Hair Salon, Spa:                               11

Theaters:                                                       6

Scaffolding:                                                 10          (These blend into the background for me so it's likely I

                                                                                   missed half a dozen.)

Construction sites:                                       4

Storefronts CLOSED for business:         17

Parking lots or garages:                            21          (just on 46th!!)

FROM THE ARCHIVES

Here are three of my favorite links found since keeping the blog:

Ever stare at the spaghetti plate of the New York City subway system and wonder how it all began, how it came to be?  Here's a scintillating graphic that starts with a blank map and adds subway line after subway line in order of their construction.  Click here.

I also found a handy little link for hypothetical taxi rides:  nyccabfare.com  

I guess this is a video for people in Japan who want to visit the U.S. but are terrified of being mugged...and so they watch this to get in shape and learn just enough English to file a police report:  I WAS ROB-BED BY TWO MEN.  (It gets stranger each time you watch it.  I haven't watched this in over a year and it is bizarre to me on more levels than ever.)

FROM THE ARCHIVES

(The following anecdote became part of a byte on Crossing Manhattan at 46th Street)

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?"

FROM THE ARCHIVES

(July 3rd, 2006)

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!

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?