It’s the post season, the end of summer.  A couple of weeks ago Suzi and I went to a Mets game during the last weekend of the regular season.  We arrived on the 7 train from Grand Central Station after spending some time in the City.  We would be going home on the Long Island Railroad to Penn Station where we would catch the Path Tube back to Jersey City.  We decided to get our train tickets on the way into the stadium so we wouldn’t have to wait on a ticket line after the game.  The ticket agent said … Continue reading “Wait ’till next year!” The end of the season at Citi Field

On our recent trip to New York, working our way toward midtown we find half of Broadway has become a partial pedestrian mall from Herald Square to Times Square.   Broadway becomes one way southbound,  the old northbound lanes are a pedestrian zone with tables, chairs, food booths and sculpture.  Times Square itself a cleaned up, walking zone lined with theaters running stage version of Walt Disney classics.  But Times Square revival preachers still see it as sin city and urge repentance in the middle this urban Disneyland.   And Off Broadway, south and toward the East River I always enjoy … Continue reading On Broadway! (And Off Broadway)

Every night as a kid, after I was supposed to be tucked into bed, I tuned in my radio to listen to Jean Shepherd on WOR.  A few years later, when I worked at WOR, I got the chance to engineer for Shepherd.  Shep was always telling us to keep our eyes open.  For instance he told me to stand at a certain place on 5th avenue, I would be standing on Murray Hill, which up until that time was only a telephone exchange for me.  From there I could see the contours of Manhattan’s hills looking toward the Empire … Continue reading New York, Seaport

This trip East Suzi and I stayed in a hotel in Jersey City, my old home town.  The hotel was right on the PATH Tube to New York and the light rail that runs along the Jersey City, Hoboken waterfront and takes us to ferry boats (many made in Sitka including the Jersey City) that carry us across the Hudson.  The hotel is near where my Aunt Janice lives and solved the parking problem I usually have when I visit her.  Jersey City is completely different from when I was a kid.  Buildings soaring to 60 stories rise on the … Continue reading Jersey City, Seafaring Town

St. Paul’s Chapel is one building near the site of the twin towers which was unharmed by the attack but, somehow, utterly transformed.  When, as a kid, I made my annual trip to Manhattan, we would always stop at St. Paul’s.  It is an 18th century Georgian chapel and is the oldest public building in continuous use in New York City.  When my grandfather took me there it was all about George Washington, who worshiped there right after he was inaugurated President.   My immigrant grandfather held this place sacred and it was one of the tools, along with the Statue … Continue reading St. Paul’s Chapel, New York

Whenever I visit the city I find something new and striking. This trip I thought it would be the 9/11 memorial, but it wasn’t– it was Brian Tolle’s Irish Hunger Memorial near The Battery.  It transports a stone cottage from Co. Mayo and integrates it with a modern building that has illuminated strips with quotes about hunger, drawing our attention not only to the Irish famine, but hunger and famine today. From some angles it looks like an Irish hillside, with the plants that grew when fields in Ireland went fallow. Since it looks over water from some angles you … Continue reading Irish Hunger Memorial, Battery Place, New York