Steven Harper Piziks

After my conference work was over on Saturday, Darwin and I headed back to the New York Public Library.  He wanted to check the geneological collection for some of his ancestors and I wanted to explore the building some more.  And off we went.

On the way we stumbled across a Barnes & Noble and went in.  I found several of my books on the shelf.  My offer to sign them was well received.  Yay!  (Sometimes such offers aren't.)

At the library, Darwin found the collection he was looking for, and I wandered off to explore the library.  They don't build libraries like this anymore, all high ceilings and echoing hallways and rooms you could play rugby in.  Libraries these days seem to be ultilitarian first and architecturally interesting second ("Why are you wasting MY TAX DOLLARS on something LIKE THAT?" wail the masses, and so we're often stuck with dull public buildings).  I like the old school ones that look like a Greek temple, a place where you might find a secret door into an underground chamber, or where a hidden passage might turn up only during the second full moon of the month.

Anyway, I wandered around admiring a number of rare and ancient books and explored the odd nooks and crannies of the library itself to my heart's content.  Darwin, unfortunately, struck out on finding anything about his family, and we retired to the courtyard in front of the library to sit at public tables and people watch.  A wedding party arrived and got its picture taken by the famous lions on the front steps, and I remembered we had to hire a photographer for our own wedding yet.

We shopped--Darwin is looking for a particular style of watch and having no luck--and finally had supper at a delightful Irish pub not far from Times Square. The food (shepherd's pie for me) was fantastic.

And then it was off to Times Square.

Times Square on Saturday night--ohhhh, what a mess.  Crowds so thick you could hardly move!  The TV billboards danced crazily in attempts to get our attention.  Costumed people offered themselves up for photos, including a trio of topless women who wore nothing but g-strings, feathered head-dresses, and body paint.  I wondered if they were actively breaking the law and no one cared or if the law counted Cobalt Blue #5 as clothing.

"Where are the men wearing g-strings and water colors?" I mused aloud.  "Shouldn't there be a set of them, too?"  And Darwin agreed.

We found a particularly dense crowd in one area and realized it was because of the Revlon billboard.  The billboard had a camera in it that threw a wide-angle video of the crowd onto the screen and then zoomed in on one central location and superimposed a heart on the center.  "Kiss!" the screen exhorted.  I assume the idea was for a couple to get caught in the heart and smooch.  But the crowd was eager to get on the big video screen that no one kissed at all.  Instead, they smooshed and jammed themselves together and waved frantically at the camera, hoping to get in the middle.  One young guy with a brown beard waited five or six times so he could get into the heart over and over.

But here's the thing--the video feed wasn't a constant.  Each time the camera did the KISS! thing, the video flipped over to a Revlon commercial.  Then the billboard teased the crowd by showing other kiss camera images, seeming to promise the camera would come up next.  But then there was a commercial.  Then a promise of the camera, followed by yet another commercials.  Finally the camera would show up and everyone went nuts.  Yay!  We're on camera!  Because we've never done that before!  Wow!  Then it was back to several minutes of commercials.

"Genius!" I said to Darwin as we watched this phenomenon from the edges.  "They got an entire crowd--thousands of people--to watch Revlon commercials over and over and over, and all they did was promise to show a random few of them on camera, something they can do any time at home.  These people are giving away their viewing time and not even getting a TV show in return.  Genius!"

"You really need another hobby," Darwin said.

Half the fun of Times Square is watching other people, so we watched other people, along with the billboards.  We tried some shopping, but the stores were simply too crowded.  We did go into a watch store that had the watches on display OUTSIDE the cases. They were wired down with zip ties, but you could still pick them up and examine them.  I liked this much better than the usual watch stores, who hide the prices and don't want you touching anything until you can see the color of your bank account.

Eventually, I realized I'd left my carryall back at the restaurant.  Oops!  We dashed back to the pub and I found it exactly where I'd left it.  Whew!

We returned to the hotel, footsore and fascinated.

I talked about the business side of The Great New York Trip, but didn't go into the social end at all. So here we go:

FRIDAY
Arrived in New York after a lively landing.  Darwin is a nervous flyer, so while the airplane went through a great deal of abrupt slowing and speeding, I smiled and said, "Isn't this fun?" while inside a little voice whispered, "YOU'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!"  But we landed fine.  Really.

Hopped a shuttle for Grand Central Station and walked exactly two blocks to the Roosevelt Hotel, where the Writers Digest Conference was being held.  A feisty Russian clerk named Irina told us our room would not be ready until 3:00, but we could check our luggage.  This we did, and we set out to explore a little.

The Roosevelt opened in 1924, and it housed a lot of interesting people over the decades.  The mayor of New York actually lived there in the Presidential Suite for quite some time.  The location, we discovered, was perfect.  Fifth Avenue, Broadway, Times Square, Park Avenue, and lots of other interesting places are within walking distance.  So we walked.

At one time, I tried to act like I wasn't a tourist when I visited a new place.  This meant looking straight ahead and striding instead of strolling, taking few pictures, and avoiding tourist spots.  This was a way of trying to blend in so natives wouldn't bother me--or worse.

I've long since abandoned this practice.  First, no one bothers me.  It's an advantage of being six feet tall with a shaved head.  People think =I'm= going to bother =them=.  Second, the blending-in practice means I don't get to see anything.  Staring straight ahead means I miss the other 359 degrees.  Tourist spots are usually the =interesting= spots, and it's silly to avoid them just because lots of other people think they're interesting.

So Darwin and I happily strolled around Manhattan, pointing out various buildings to each other and trying to figure out what decade they were built.  We wandered down Fifth Avenue, one of the most famous streets in the world, and window-shopped.  We watched the people, and I decided that New Yorkers were a lot more fashion-conscious than Detroiters.  (Sorry, Detroit, but you lose big when it comes to interesting clothes, especially on the men.)

Eventually, and entirely by accident, we came across the New York Public Library, complete with lions guarding the front doors.  Darwin hadn't heard anything about it, but I had, and I dragged him inside.

The NYC PL is an archiectural marvel, of course. It was built back when libraries were more than half temple.  It feels like walking into one, certainly. You feel like there should be robed priests and an oracle waiting for you. The rest of it is a museum for rare books. (The main branch here isn't a lending library.)  Darwin and I spent considerable time wandering through it until Darwin remembered with a certain amount of excitement that this library housed a rare geneological collection that he wanted to examine.  Unfortunately, the library was closing in a few minutes and we had to leave.

So headed for the Empire State Building . . .