New York Without Luggage, Reservations or Fresh Socks

Articles - News - Ideas and more

New York Without Luggage, Reservations or Fresh Socks

Author: Laura Glendinning

Article:

New York is an impossible place - an overbuilt island with a
nasty climate, horrendous traffic and . . .magic. What's not to
love? Our day trip to Manhattan was typical John and Laura -
last minute. It was post Christmas and very cold after a
snowstorm. The sky was bright blue and the wind was piercing as
we stood at the bus stop in John's New Jersey hometown - Kearny.
I, weak and pathetic after years of mild L.A. weather, huddled
in a nearby store while John, the native, stood in the cold
without gloves or scarf. He deigned to wear a hat, at least. I
had in my pocket $40, an American Express card and a lipstick.
Oh yes, and a one use camera. Little did I know we wouldn't be
back in Kearny for almost two days.

We took the excellent DeCamp Buslines bus over, warm and comfy.
I watched the gritty landscape pass by, crumbling and
winter-cracked overpasses, plenty of graffiti, salt-beaten cars.
This is not a romantic way to get to NYC but a warm one. My dad
the Scottish immigrant actually arrived via ocean liner and his
first sight of America was of the Statue of Liberty. He even
passed through immigration at Ellis Island. Now that's an
arrival in New York. We got off at the grungy Port Authority
where a taste of the winter wind had even John admitting he
needed a scarf. He bought a post Christmas bargain for $6. One
thing you can do and want to do in New York is walk and we were
soon warm enough as we marched out into the late morning and
headed to the Metropolitan Museum. The place was thronged with
families off school and work, plenty of art students and a
well-organized staff. I was finally warm and very reluctant to
get into the long coat check line and surrender my security
blanket, but the line moved fast and we soon had our coat tags
and dove into the crowds. John knows his modern art and we
visited a lot of his favorites after an elegant snack in the
café. The American Express card got its first of many uses
there. We then traded off putting up with exhibits for each
other. I examined the vintage baseball card collection for him
and he joined me for the costume exhibit, focusing on the Duke
and Duchess of Windsor's elaborate clothing. God those two could
really dress - but then again maybe that was all they really had
to do. . .

A couple of hours in a museum was plenty for us so out into the
air we went. It was warmer at last. I hadn't been to New York
since a lone high school trip many years before, so I had to see
some of what I had seen before just to compare notes with
myself. Central Park was easy since it borders on the Met. Yep,
still a big beautiful park. In winter kids were sliding down the
modest hills and dogs romped - well they were dogs whose owners
lived on the park so maybe they sashayed. The Plaza Hotel was
also on the list of places to revisit. The lobby was as lavish
as I remembered but it seemed smaller. Do all things shrink year
by year? Or are they so big in your memory the present can never
match the past?

New York is one of those places where the present does exceed
the past, because it always has something new to show you. Last
time I had done three theater shows, had a carriage ride through
Central Park, visited the Statue of Liberty and Empire State
Building, watched the St. Patrick's Day parade, all in four
days. So this time I could relax, right? Well why relax in New
York? We had cellphone numbers for our respective friends and
were secretly grateful when we couldn't reach any of them. The
night would be ours - the plan was to catch a late bus, train or
something back before they all stopped running. Rather than the
subway, we used our all day transit passes and took the
aboveground buses, which may not seem hip but run all the time
and stop at convenient places. Cabs are not the necessity you
might think they are. John wanted to show me the Village, one of
the places where he had lived during his 6 years in the city.
Dusk came quick and our first stop was an Internet café to check
email. That's when the idea to stay over started brewing. Maybe
we could get some kind of online deal for a last minute hotel
for that night. We mulled it over at venerable McSorley's, a
beer-only bar where women were not allowed until the '80's. The
waiter remembered John and found us seats in the raucous holiday
crowd. We somehow ended up at a table of college friends
reuniting after stints in Arizona - or were they all headed to
Arizona? The beers were flowing and the facts got fuzzy. They
took our picture - recording us for posterity in the kind of
winter get-up we'd never be wearing in California. McSorley's
serves two kinds of beer - light and dark, both their own brews.
Snacks consist of cheese, onions and hot mustard. And, oh yeah
you have to order beers in sets of two, no splitting. Sawdust on
the floor and dark wood complete the picture. After the beers it
seemed to make sense to stay over and spend a great New York
night without worrying about catching a bus back to New Jersey.
We booked the Soho Grand for an okay rate and knew one thing for
sure: at last we would be sleeping on a smooth surface after
four sleepless nights on a sheet stretched over lumpy rocks -
otherwise known as the ancient family guest room mattress.

Before the Grand was dinner - we decided to walk around and look
for a likely place. John has no trouble asking local-looking
people where they like to eat and they were happy to help.
What's this rumor about bitter New Yorkers? Of course I was
introduced as the visitor from L.A. so they had all the more
reason to be sure I got something besides sprouts, tofu and
sunflower seeds. We stopped in for raw oysters and champagne at
a small but packed restaurant. It got to be around 9 and we
figured we had a shot at getting into Balthazar without a
reservation. Sure enough, we only had to wait about 45 minutes
at the bar, pacing ourselves on the drinking by this point,
believe you me. Dinner was quite wonderful, though I let myself
get talked out of a local fish - cod - and talked into Chilean
sea bass, which is unavoidable in L.A. restaurants The waiter
had obviously spent his childhood pushing cod around his plate
and pretending he'd finished it. John's ravioli was phenomenal
and led to him to keep perfecting his pasta and ravioli from
scratch.

We rolled to the Grand with no bags to check in - I didn't even
have a purse. I don't lug purses around as they are a drag to
carry and a magnet for muggers. We stopped at a bodega and
bought a toothbrush, toothpaste and contact lens solution for me
- $9, not a bargain but who cared? We then hit the hotel and
noted the hopping scene at the bar - and walked right past it.
We fell into bed and slept blissfully - though by morning's
light we discovered the room was tiny. Didn't this used to be an
old SRO hotel? They certainly didn't increase the room size when
it was converted to a profit center. John pointed out the view
from our window and what it was missing - the World Trade
Center. Solemn moment.

We got a late check out and debated what to do. Well, eating was
going to happen, but first some great walking and a truly
wonderful cup of coffee at a place we ducked into. Don't ask me
the name. New York is teeming with picturesque side streets with
tiny cafes, shops, galleries and what not. We ended up at
Veselka around 2 p.m. This is a classic Eastern European
restaurant at 10th and 2nd Avenue. I got stuffed cabbage and
borscht and even went for dessert. We read the NY Times at our
window table and watched the world go by. But the break was
over. One of the people we were to meet at last returned a cell
call. Okay, I admit it, we turned the phone off for hours so as
to be unreachable. I mean, ahem, conserve the battery. We
arranged to meet him in midtown and walked all the way (40
blocks or so, but John the native assured me they were the short
blocks, not the crosstown blocks). The walk took us across the
strange diagonal which Broadway becomes and I started to get a
feel for the geography of the city, something that's hard to do
in a cab, bus or car. We met my friend for drinks at another
"guys' bar" with an after work crowd culled from Wall Street.
John had a White Russian that seemed to be made with maple
syrup. More of a beer and scotch place I guess.

Then it was time for a hellish run to the Port Authority, both
needing to find a bathroom and desperate to catch the bus in
time to make it back to Jersey and a long-arranged night with
the family at the Scots-American social club. Back in Jersey,
Manhattan was a vision across the water again. John's
brother-in- law Joey kept the wine and beer going as it was his
night to tend bar, but after the night before we kept it light.
I persuaded my native hosts to go back to Manhattan the next
day, this time to hit the Natural History Museum. We drove over
with John's Pop at the wheel of his car, nice enough to drive to
a city he hates. He used to have a sidewalk stand in the
Village, where John sold his original paintings as well. He
reminisced about those days, and the really old days, when he
met John's mom at a Catholic dance in 1949 and by age 18 was
married.

We tried for close to 25 minutes to find parking near the museum
and actually succeeded. Pop and I were on the lookout for a spot
while John napped, still catching up on sleep after another
night back on the lumpy mattress. He woke up just in time to
find a spot for us, claiming we needed his expertise. Okay, but
who drove up and down ten square blocks until we found an
undiscovered street? Now I was feeling the real New York. Scour
the place for parking or pay the astounding rate of $24 for 2
hours. Pleased with our find, we trudged to the museum where a
huge line meant we could not possibly get in. What to do?

How about a trip to Hoboken? But first I felt I had to see
Ground Zero. It was a crisp December Saturday as we edged
through typically hellish traffic down to the tip of Manhattan.
Everyone had warned me that it was just a big hole in the ground
surrounded by a chain link fence. We couldn't park or get much
closer but circled a little. I could see the fence was decorated
- and perhaps still is - with tattered mementoes of the dead.
Pictures, ribbons, poems, posters. A faded picture of a young
woman stays in my mind. She is smiling in a stiff pose; maybe
it's some kind of studio shot. I glimpsed hawkers selling
shirts, flags and buttons - the post Christmas vacation crowd
had a festive feel but I didn't get close enough to feel the
other vibe I knew was there. The sad one. And the angry one.

So it was back through the Lincoln Tunnel to Jersey. We toured
Hoboken, where both John's parents were born. We drove past
Sinatra's birthplace, very well marked and easy to find within
the two square miles which is Hoboken. We then prepared to
double or maybe even triple park, per tradition, outside
Biggie's Clams. It was a 1940's social club/illegal gambling
joint that served food so good it had become mostly a restaurant
by the '50's. I had raw clams on the half shell and was very
content. East coast seafood is cold water seafood, somehow
brinier and crisper than the Gulf seafood where I grew up. Maybe
there is an argument for cold climates after all.

We were soon back at Pop's, greeted by his cat Duke, standoffish
as ever. The guys had managed to find a New York Times for me
after three tries at local Kearny newsstands. They watched
football and I read the paper. We drank hot tea and ate cake and
it was hard to imagine that the high rises of New York were so
close to this cozy middle class street. There was more eating
that night. Italian food, of course. Huge portions for your
average "gavone" - Italian for what I had become on the trip
-someone who eats everything in sight. But, New York in the
winter is made for eating…when in Rome.

About the author:
Laura Glendinning is a travel writer and Content Director for
www.threedayweekends.com