Driving and Eating In New York City

The past week has been another mini-tour of New York, starting off in Albany and ending up in Long Island, with one detour to Connecticut. It was a good week with no tight flight departures or luggage hassels, but I caught some horrible cold and usually fell asleep by nine.

Friday ended in Long Island. People in New York City, while very friendly and always willing to help, always seem to have a chip on their shoulder. Their demeanor can be mistaken for rude: there are no responses to my well meaning "Good Morning!" or cheery door holding, and it's not that they don't appreciate it, I guess it's just expected that strangers be nice only when approached. Now this is only on the basis of one-on-one, personal contact. The rules change when a New Yorker gets behind the wheel of his or her car. Driving in the city is like a cross between racing in Nascar and fighting the Imperial Forces in Star Wars. Those white stripey lines on the road that designate lanes have no meaning in New York. Driving in the right lane is only a good idea if you're about to double-park, and when you do, you don't use any sort of signal: you just stop the car and get out. The cars behind you can fend for themselves, and they do so without complaint. Unless honking is complaining, but the honking in New York is as natural as birds chirping. You don't only honk if someone is about to crash into you or if someone doesn't notice the stop light turned green. Drivers in New York just honk. Maybe they honk because the sky is blue and the sun is shining. Maybe it's a mating call. Maybe New Yorkers just like to be noisy and sometimes the only noise to be made is a good old honk of the horn. Anyhow, I saw no reason for it.

My weekend in New York was nice and uneventful. I showed up at my old pal Mitch's apartment on Friday night around 8pm where I met his roommate Jim. They live in a neighborhood called "Washington Heights" which is on W. 170th Street. It's also known as "Uptown," but they say "way up town." Most of the residents in the area are Dominican, and everyone spoke Spanish and English with perfect New York accents. We spent Friday night drinking beers in the apartment and heading down to the general store to buy more beer where a bunch of Dominicans hang around inside drinking beer and listening to loud music, escaping the cold. They were a festive bunch who laughed at my dancing.

Saturday morning I headed to the East Village to get good and cultured. My first lesson was that in New York, everything is done outside, even in Winter weather: ordering coffee, eating, and catching up with neighbors on the front stoop.

I enjoyed a cup of soup outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art before heading in to appreciate paintings I've only seen on postcards. I think my favorite works were a bunch of lithographs designed by Cyril E. Power:

The Tube Train, Cyril E. Power
This image summed up New York for me: a whole lotta people and no one to talk to