I first started overhearing chatter about the upcoming storm on Christmas day. People were citing snowfall predictions of 15 and 18 inches. I thought surely these were exaggerations. But the next day it all came through as promised. Flurries started early with the first light of morning. The wind blew the flakes horizontally and we watched the pedestrians from our 15th floor windows and wondered what was being accomplished with umbrellas in this situation. Toni quickly made the “now or never” decision and quickly got into her most formidable winter gear incorporating a few items from my collection and headed out to the grocery store before it got any worse. Good move. Our first Nor'easter had begun.
Views from our apartment
The storm intensified all day long and well into the night. Once it hit its stride it did not let up. At around seven in the evening I only counted about a dozen pedestrians but by eleven o’clock the streets had become a playground of sorts. The numbers kept growing as tourists from the neighboring hotels poured into the streets to play in the snow and push cabs and cars through the ridges left at the cross street intersections by the plows. There were lots of people posing on 7th Avenue and the camera flashing was nearly constant. I found out from later news reports that many of them were from countries around the world and had never seen snow in their lives. Buses stopped running by 8:30 and the airports shut down as well eventually canceling over 4,000 flights. The pressure center of the storm was so low that it was equivalent to a category 3 hurricane. There was lots of thunder and lightning as well. The official snowfall measurement in Central Park topped 20 inches making this the fifth highest 24 hour snowfall total since recordkeeping started in the 1870s and only six inches shy of the all time record.
Today there are only ridges of snow lining the curbs to remind us of what took place.
Tomorrow is the Pinstripe Bowl at Yankee Stadium and they are hurrying up to remove the snow, something they have never had to be concerned with in the past. They expect 40 degrees at kickoff.
I mentioned in my last post that our friends had an interesting encounter with a group of Santas where they had stopped for lunch. Throughout the day we kept seeing large groups of Santas and mini-skirted Mrs. Santa as well. There were more Santas later when we stopped for a nightcap. I honestly didn’t think much about it and just figured much of it was street performers posing for photos with kids for tips. After all there were a lot of Mickey Mouses, Elmos, etc. all over town as well. I later discovered that this was in fact an organized, or not so organized, event called Santacon.
They say not to call it a pub crawl but as far as I can determine that is exactly what it is.
This is a very short video of the start up at Central Park's Bethesda Fountain.
Thousands of Santas and Elves meet up, donate food, and then split up to totally engulf the sidewalks and bars of Manhattan spreading good cheer.
Last weekend we had yet another group of visitors. There were two factions, Fred and Mahvash flew in from Chicago while Thom and Kay came from Kansas City. They met up at their hotel near 38th and 10th Avenue Friday afternoon. Once settled they found their way through Times Square and east to Bryant Park where they shopped some of the temporary Christmas stores set up around the skating rink. This park is totally transformed for the season. The rest of the year there is a huge lawn area in the middle of the park. They take the sod out and install the rink. Most of the rest of the park is devoted to the small shops made of plexiglass sheets. They look a lot more substantial than it sounds.
From there they turned north to our apartment. We hadn’t seen these couples for nine months so there were big bear hugs all around. They took a quick tour of the apartment followed by wines and beers. The girls went to Famous Original Ray’s Pizza around the corner on 7th Avenue and got a couple of large pies, New York style of course. This is not to be confused with other similarly named pizza restaurants. Read this linked article AND watch the Seinfeld video below to fully appreciate this.
After dinner we took a quick tour around Midtown. It was dark and really cold but we were fortified with pizza and alcohol. We went along the edge of Central Park and then down Fifth Avenue to see the high end retailers all decked out for the holidays, outrageous lights on the buildings and even more outrageous display windows. We continued south to Rockefeller Plaza just in time to catch the Saks Snowflake and Bubble animation. From there it was back home for a quick warm up. Our guests had been up since 4 AM so we called it a night.
Saturday evening we all met at Katz’s Deli in East Village for the concert event that brought the Prellbergs to New York. We caught up on the day’s events over pastrami, pickles, and fries. Earlier they had taken the Staten Island Ferry and followed that with lunch that wound up with them doing shots with a bunch of Santa’s at a bar. Just some of the odd things that seem to happen in Manhattan.
We went around the corner to the Rockwood Music Hall 2 to stake out our territory for the general admission show. We snagged the last seats left at the bar. The floor quickly filled up with the standing room only crowd. We were all there to see one of only five shows on Elliott Murphy’s mini-tour. He plays in the US very little and I think it has been years since he has done so with a full band. Murphy is a little known rocker who has been releasing albums since 1973’s Aquashow. He is originally from the Long Island and New Jersey area but he has been living in France exclusively for several years and his latest recordings have only been released in Europe. But despite focusing his career strictly in Europe he still manages a small but devoted following in America. Everyone loved the show and I think my favorite part was part of the encore that he and the band performed totally unplugged, not even a microphone. He included a few cover songs for his encore with Bob Dylan’s “Blind Willie McTell” being the highlight.
We finished up the evening wandering around the Village. We found the “nexus of the universe” made famous in a Seinfeld scene.
Fred at First and First
This clip is extra funny because we now understand the Ray’s Pizza joke. From there we continued on for a little nightcap at a bar on Third Avenue called the Village Pour House. It is a sports bar with 100 varieties of beer. We did not realize it that evening but I found out later that it was a KU alumni bar. http://myalumnibar.com/kansas-village-pourhouse/ There are so many transplants here that most major schools have some bar in NYC that has become associated with their university. Now the two Jayhawks’ stickers we saw randomly pasted on the exterior make sense.
Sunday started out with a pretty heavy rain. This had been forecast so we planned to go to the MoMA with Thom and Kay. It turned out that Fred and Mahvash’s flight back to Chicago was canceled due to snow so they quickly put plans together to stay another night and go Murphy’s next show in Larchmont to the north about 30 minutes. Thom and Kay’s flight was delayed a few hours and the rain cleared so the plans were changed to take advantage of this turn. We took a nice long walk through Central Park followed by a leisurely dinner at the French restaurant across the street. The flight delays gave us some welcome bonus time with our longtime friends and I was happy they were able to spend it with us instead of stranded at the airport. The extra time did not make the goodbyes any easier though.
Toni and Barb with their unplanned coordinated outfits.
Last week we had another flurry of guests. First up was Barb who was here on business for her third time since we have been in New York. She dropped by the apartment for some wonderful omelets that Toni prepared. I think that is one of her favorite recipes.
The dinner party at The Beacon hosted by Jason at the head.
Later Barb had a dinner planned with some business associates at a restaurant that was just around the corner from us. The owner of the company was nice enough to also invite Toni and me to come along with Barb. The restaurant is called The Beacon Restaurant & Grill. It is a rather large place by New York standards but yet has a variety of totally private spaces which are mostly achieved with a complicated series of lofts and staircases which gives the feeling of being in an M.C. Escher print.
We had a wonderful dinner and Barb’s friend, Jason, generously picked up our tab. Even though it was getting late and it was bitterly cold out we went for a tour of some of the store window Christmas displays on Fifth Avenue. From there we went to Rockefeller Plaza to see the tree and the light show animation at Saks but we got there too late and all the lights were turned off. We had no idea they shut down at 11:30. So much for the city that never sleeps.
