Sidewalk Surfing

A few months ago I wrote about the ins and outs of using the New York City cabs. I would be remiss if I did not give the same attention to the other major mode of transportation here. That is walking. Yes, walking is serious business here. It is definitely not a stroll in the park. There are unspoken and unwritten protocols that can determine your mood for the day for better or worse and perhaps even your safety.

The main thing is to realize that in Manhattan the sidewalks generally operate like automobile traffic. You will find it easy to blend in if you handle yourself in much the same way that you do with your car. So, to start as you are coming out of a building you should enter slowly and look both directions.

Once you merge with the flow you need to be constantly scanning your surroundings, taking care to be aware of oncoming traffic as well as people behind you wanting to pass. Walking more than two abreast is a pretty bad idea. There are few places where that is possible for more than a minute or two at a stretch. If you do walk side by side you need to be able to switch to single file in an instant. Eventually you learn to carry on a conversation, have it abruptly interrupted, and then pick back up on it as the situation dictates. Apply the rules of the road to the sidewalk. Just as you would never suddenly stop on the highway you should not do that as a pedestrian either. Check behind you and step aside just like you would go to the shoulder. If you are in a group and have a sudden need for a conference try to consider your fellow walkers and gather in a spot out of the main flow.

In dense crowds like Times Square and rush hour you will get through much faster and with less frustration if you let someone else blaze the trail. Take note of someone moving about the speed you want to be going and just sort of shadow them. They will likely be taking a winding path rather than the usual straight line but if you stick with them you will find it is like coasting or drafting and your mental strain will drop.

Another good pointer is to walk against the car traffic if possible. Usually there are many alternatives in choosing a route to your destination. Nearly all the streets in Manhattan are one-way so if you have two options that are otherwise equal always take the one that is opposite the car traffic. This way when you are at crosswalks the cars turning on the red lights will be doing so in front of you where you can easily see what is happening instead of behind you where your attention is unnecessarily divided.

This leads right into the most critical part of walking safety, the crosswalk. The crosswalk may appear to be simple but it is one of the more complicated functions of Manhattan. At your first encounter you naturally look both ways before crossing and almost immediately realize this is a one way street. Don’t worry as no one else notices. The natives are too busy playing their game of “see who can cross the street first”. They are busy looking at a dozen or more different cues for when it is safe or at perhaps just less dangerous. Don’t follow them unless you are fluent in the art. In fact don’t even go with the herd without looking way down the road for one last cab trying to make the light. The herd saw that cab and knows it can cross. Keep in mind that, as far as I know, there Is no such thing as a speed limit in Manhattan. At least I have never seen a speed limit sign anywhere. That straggling cab can be on you in no time. After a while you will become adept at crossing against the light but don’t be in a big hurry.

Another crossing hazard is the bicyclist or the pedicab. They are supposed to follow the rules that apply to other vehicles of the road but occasionally a scofflaw will go the wrong way and/or run red lights. Near misses are an all too frequent occurrence and can have disastrous results.

When the light does change it will be like two dams bursting at once and you will be part of one tidal wave faced with passing through the opposing tidal wave. It will go smoother than you would think. Instead of crashing into a gridlock the two groups magically swirl through each other like schools of fish. A few seconds later the bunch will spread out and you will be back to the routine of the sidewalk, ready for the next crosswalk encounter as the cycle repeats.


There is no other place that requires a pedestrian to be so attentive. You must constantly scan and reassess your situation as carefully as driving a car in rush hour highway traffic. But with time and diligence you will eventually get into the flow and choreography of the process and you will no longer even think about what you are doing.

Sixteenth Visitor or No Company For Old Men

Tuesday evening we enjoyed visiting with our latest visitor, Jim Lucas. Jim did not come as far as most of the others, a one hour train ride from Connecticut, but he also came from twenty years in the past. Jim and I met when I was in Wichita around 1977. He was a newly minted sales rep for CBS Records and I was relatively new to the record business myself as a singles buyer. He would continue to be my rep until 1991 generally calling on me every other week. Over the years Jim, Toni, and I shared many dinners, concerts, parties, meet and greets, and even a few movies. We also shared much more especially when we had Village Records. The store was our “water cooler” where we would talk about the news of the day, TV shows, movies, oh yes, and music.

Then suddenly in 1991 he was promoted and transferred to the Boston office of Sony Music, which purchased CBS Records in 1987. We have not seen each other since. News of his further promotions would filter back to us through the record business grapevine. Each step was more and more unbelievable.

Jim arrived right on time and true to form with a bottle of fine wine in hand. We spent the next couple of hours trading updates on our adventures over the last two decades. Once Jim arrived in Boston he quickly rose within the company and found himself as the branch manager for all of Boston. A few years later he became branch manager for New York and eventually was promoted to executive vice president / general manager for the entire company. By this time Sony Music had merged with BMG (formerly RCA Records) creating the second largest recording company in the world. The record industry is known for having relatively young executives and unceremoniously dumping them as they reach an age where it is felt they can no longer relate to the young music coming up. The age of this demarcation is usually around fifty years old. I have had several friends in the record label business over the years and this rule of thumb has proven to be hard fast. Jim managed to defy the odds for an additional six years or so and is now enjoying his early retirement.

The three of us went to our favorite restaurant in our neighborhood, Maison, just across the street for round two of our get together. There we were able to continue with our reunion and for three more hours go from reminiscing to sharing our hopes and dreams for retirement and where to spend it. Jim had a long train ride back and it was late and cold. We took a couple of last photos on the sidewalk, shook hands and exchanged hugs. Jim hailed a cab to get back to Grand Central Station while I waited for the light to change. As he climbed into the cab we waved goodbye and like that he was gone again.

This whole evening was totally a result of reconnecting on Facebook. There are many who don’t think much of Facebook but I have to tell you that it is nothing short of magic. I know that we will be able to keep track of each other going forward and we will not take another twenty years to cross paths again.

Outdoor Skating At Bryant Park

Today was unusually warm, well into the sixties, so Toni and I headed out to soak in some of the great weather. We went with my choice, Bryant Park. In the winter they take up the sod in the center of the park and install an outdoor skating rink lined with Christmas shops. At this point the shops are nearly all gone and rink will be removed in another week or so.

Enjoy this short video.

This was a rare day to enjoy skating without being all bundled up. There were lots of tee shirts and tank tops and even a suit or two. We must have been there over an hour with old jazz and big band playing over head. It seems odd that on the sidewalks all around the park crowds of people are moving in such chaos while here on the rink it is just as crowded but everyone is flowing and harmonious.

...Where Nature Ends...

We made it through the holidays. Now the excitement of New Year’s Eve celebrations have faded and all of the city's outdoor Christmas decorations have been taken down and stored. The sidewalks are no longer packed with tourists and we have been enduring the bitter cold and dodging bits of ice, real and imagined. This requires some creativity and spontaneity that we didn’t have to face in the longer and warmer seasons in New York.

One Sunday there was a bit of a break in the weather and I found an exhibit that would be closing soon. It was in a small museum called Neue Galerie located in the “Museum Mile” on the Upper East Side, about midway between the Metropolitan and the Guggenheim. It is in what once was a huge mansion but it is rather small to be called a museum. It has a Fifth Avenue address but I almost missed it as the entrance is actually on the cross street, 86th, with minimal signage. The place was packed but it turned out that most of the people were there for brunch. There are two cafes there on two floors taking up half of the public space in the old building. Both had long waiting lines so I wonder whether the main business is actually art or food. I was there to see a huge collection of art postcards that were produced in Austria from 1907 to 1920. I like poster art from the 20s and 30s and these are simply miniature posters. HERE are some examples. The other display was equally impressive and actually pretty bizarre and creepy. It was a collection of busts created in the 1770s. Take a look at them to see what I mean. They certainly don’t look like other works from that period. I do believe they may have inspired an episode of The Twilight Zone. If you are in New York and in the mood to see some different art remember that the smaller and lesser known places can be great experiences.

A week later Toni took a similar excursion and she takes over here:
I made it to my destination after trudging through the piles of slush and snow from the train station at 77th and Park to The Whitney at 75th and Madison. Once I was warm inside I assessed the space. It was smaller than the MoMA, but larger and more accommodating then the Guggenheim. I decided to visit three floors: first the Edward Hopper exhibit, then the 12 large permanent installations titled “Singular Visions”, and end with Charles LeDray’s “Workworkworkworkwork”. All three shows gave me the lift I needed to shed my cabin fever. The Hopper contained enlightening historical visuals of early 20th century New York City that I have never seen anywhere else. The arrangement of “Singular Visions” isolated each of the pieces so communication between it and the viewer was maximized. Paul Chan’s “1st Light” and Edward Kienholz’s “The Wait” was well worth seeing in person and will be lasting memories for me. Both send strong messages to get out and enjoy life now, something we can never be reminded of too many times. Then I was amazed at the thousands of perfectly arranged ceramic pieces and miniature clothing vignettes of the LeDray exhibit, again something I will not forget and witnessing it in person is the only way to feel their messages. Now with my imagination on fire it kept me warm as I walked down 5th Avenue along the East Side of Central Park until I reached the Plaza Hotel’s new food hall for a late afternoon lunch.


Back to Bill here on:
Then a couple of weeks ago we both went to the MoMA. There we saw a new exhibit called “Abstract Expressionist New York” These works are all part of their permanent collection but we have not seen them displayed in this arrangement before. Works were from artists like Pollack, Motherwell, Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, and more.





After that we toured the second floor featuring the permanent architecture displays. Then we grabbed a bite, an excellent lunch of homemade lentil soup and shared a grilled chicken Panini at the museum’s café. This was our fourth excursion to our little neighborhood museum and we were amazed to find new things to enjoy in it as much as we did the first time we were there in 2006.

Last Sunday was the first really good weather we had in a month so we hauled ourselves off to Harlem to meet one of New York’s hardest working artists, Franco the Great. His works are not located in galleries and they can’t be enjoyed during normal hours, in fact, just the opposite. His most famous works have been painted not on canvas but instead painted on security gates. In order to accomplish that he had to paint them at night when the stores are closed and the gates are down. Of course when the stores are open they can’t be seen so you have to go late at night or early Sunday morning. Normally these gates are tempting targets for graffiti artists but these works have been left intact I suppose out of respect for Franco. You can also meet the artist as every Sunday he has a vendor table set up across the street from the Apollo.

His art is located on both sides of 125th Street and extends for a couple of blocks to the east and west of the Apollo Theater. Since we were going that way Toni called ahead about taking a tour of the theater. We were excited to find out that Sunday was their annual open house and we would get to see the building and some amateur performances for free. What a great bonus.

So, we have managed to survive winter doldrums. Now the days are lengthening, the snow and ice are gone, and every week the temperatures get more and more agreeable. Soon the hordes of tourists and snowbirds will be returning and the cycle will start all over again. We can count on that.

Get Smart Moment

We have recently had a few occasions to go to the Canadian Consulate of New York. It is conveniently located around the corner as part of the huge Rockefeller Center complex of buildings. My first visit was the most interesting. I knew where the building was as we had passed it dozens of times and the Canadian Flag flies outside the building next to the American Flag. But I had no idea where the Consulate was located within the building. There are probably eight separate entrances to the skyscraper and I just picked one at random. I was greeted by a doorman who told me the consulate was closed that day. I was pretty sure he was wrong and I asked for directions. He called on his phone a few seconds later a huge elevator door opened about five feet away. It was empty except for an attendant and it appeared that she was on duty full time. This elevator was big enough to fit a small car in it. She took me down below ground to a small white room and unlocked a door to a long corridor that was completely white and bare and completely void of people this day. As I headed toward the far end I heard the door close behind me and the click. I couldn’t help but think of “Get Smart” at this point and I snapped a photo of it on one of my later visits. The office was indeed open that day. Of course I had to go through what is now the requisite metal detector. After that it looked pretty much like a doctor’s waiting room. I went to the bullet proof window and got my questions answered and some forms and pamphlets.


I went out to retrace my steps in the block long hallway but when I got to the door the knob wouldn’t budge. As it was all white on white I looked around for a bit to see if perhaps there was another door that I had missed but I couldn’t detect any. I knocked on the door for a while but there were no signs of anyone around. I finally gave up and found some unlocked doors at the opposite end of the hall. These led to another hallway that eventually wound around to the Rockefeller subway station and from there I finally found an elevator to get me back to street level. However, to complete the “Get Smart” angle it popped in the middle of a sidewalk at least a block from where I started out. As you can see in the photo the elevator does resemble a phone booth.