Start Spreadin' the News

“I love New York, even though it isn’t mine, the way something has to be, a tree or a street or a house, something, anyway, that belongs to me because I belong to it.”

--Truman Capote

“The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.”

-John Updike

Still recovering this drizzly Monday morning from a quick weekend trip to the City. For up here in the Southern Tier it's not "New York"; this is New York, and don't confuse us with those people down there. That's the "City", just the City. It's a different world.

Peg's godson Josh arrived on Thursday night, a stop on his cross-country trek sleeping in hostels and in his car as he spends a couple months on the great American road trip. I admire the pluck of it, just getting in his car and driving. And last Thursday his path wound from Niagara here to Corning.

But Josh had never been to the City, and Peg as a former resident herself was eager to play tour guide. Or nervous about playing tour guide, after two decades away.

So on Saturday I was finally able to rouse both of them out the door of Tara to ride over to KELM and climb into the Mighty Columbia for the 53 minute flight to Teterboro Airport, New Jersey. The weather was clear and gorgeous, with a blanket of orange and brown leaves below us as we flew across northeastern Pennsylvania, and descended behind the Poconos into wild, beautiful New Jersey as the radio traffic picked up dramatically and commuter jets whizzed overhead on their way into Newark.

Teterboro's always been sort of a bucket list destination for me, a storied little commuter airport perched just across the Hudson from Manhattan's skyline, which made for a spectacular backdrop to our approach and landing.

I'd called ahead to prearrange a limo into lower Manhattan, where we stayed in a clean little Holiday Inn property on a quiet street (Nassau, for those who know the neighborhood). I also hauled along a bottle of champagne and some red solo cups for the trip, and asked the driver if that was okay. "It's your limo. You can do whatever you want."

So we did, draining the bottle as we marveled at the traffic crawling through the Holland Tunnel. As we emerged from the massive Suburban, I saw an Amex charge pop up on my phone for $363. Was that the avgas? Nope. It was the limo. We were floored.

We had tickets to a 9:30 show, an adventure to which I'll return momentarily, but now needed to kill some time, first with sangria and duck tacos at Mezcali Grill.

Like every other restaurant these days, it seems, the impervious surfaces presented a tough acoustic challenge for these old fighter pilot ears. I did enjoy, however, the new fashion look for the young ladies this season--high waisted mom jeans, loose around the legs, with bare midriff and the sort of cut-off shirt we used to wear under our shoulder pads when I played outside linebacker for the Hemet Bulldogs. The uniform was ubiquitous around Manhattan that day, at least among the under thirty crowd. And there were plenty of those. When did the world become so young, or we so old?

After a late lunch we crawled through traffic again in an Uber, so Peg and I could engage in an act of Southern contrition. At the southeastern edge of Central Park stands a massive statue of William Tecumseh Sherman, which Peg dutifully spat upon when she lived here and I subjected to one indignity or another those few times I came to visit in years past. He was the devil, right?

Well, the Insurrection's sort of cast Uncle Billy in a different light, so we came and made amends.

From there we walked across the street to the Plaza, for a visit at Peg's favorite oak-paneled bar that's . . .

been shut down. When did that happen? The space is still there, cavernous and brooding and filled with ghosts of stylish folks sipping expensive drinks below its murals of old New York.

Here's a photo from its heyday. Sorry I missed all that.

Wandering back onto the street in search of a cocktail, we made our way across to the Pierre, where we found hallways lined with big black-and-white photos from a glorious past, featuring Princess Margaret, Yves St. Laurent, Al Pacino, and other luminaries now mostly below the sod. We also found their basement bar, where Josh, an enthusiastic bartender and future bar owner, struck up a conversation with John the bartender about the creative libations we were sampling. John's the newest bartender there, having started in 2009. The others have been there twenty years or more.

After sampling a couple spectacularly tasty concoctions, we left for a sunset stroll through Central Park, jostling among young couples arm-and-arm, new parents with visages from across the globe pushing strollers in stylish fall fashions, and the occasional very old couple guiding one another along with sweetness and gentleness as their shuffle reminded us we're not that far behind. The crisp fall air and the fading orange light over the trees and the city were breathtaking, simply breathtaking.

After a quick cocktail at the Tavern on the Green, just to say we'd been there, we headed to Columbus Circle and the subway station for a ride back to the hotel to change for the show. An old Korean guy in the subway station played beautiful, haunting music on some sort of Korean violin that made Peg tear up a little and hug my neck. Not all bad, that.

Another uber ride took us up to the Slipper Room, on the recommendation of a friend, for what promised in its ads (which I probably should've studied more carefully) to be a burlesque show. Our driver was a guy about my age on the cusp of retirement, with an accent suggesting a heritage somewhere in the old eastern bloc or maybe south Asia or the 'stans, eager to pass along suggestions for fried chicken, bagels, and museums on our short ride to the theater. I reckon Josh will be hitting one of the museums he recommended today sometime.

The show was, well, not what we expected. But I learned a new word! The name of the show was "Mr. Chaude's Upstairs Downstairs". I thought a "chaude" sounded like something from the Wind in the Willows. This should be charming.

Except . . . except . . . "chaude" is a slang term for a short, fat penis. There would be nothing family friendly about the next hour or so.

So, there we were, as P pointed out "the oldest people in the room", forced to stand in the pressing crowd, jaws dropping as we peered between tall shoulders toward the stage and watched strip-shows punctuating by a female emcee who variously dragged audience members onstage to demonstrate oral sex, dropped obscene sexual references at a machine gun cadence, and generally made us squirm beside Peg's sweet, twenty-six-year-old godson.

We didn't make it to the finale. A dwarf in a white onesie danced around the stage with two sperm hand puppets waving around him ("Is he supposed to be an egg?", I asked bemusedly), when I whispered in Peg's ear, "That's all I've got." And it was. We left, and Josh bid us farewell as he plunged into the young person's tour of the City while P and I scouted a couple greasy pizza slices then walked a mile and a half back to the hotel, Peg in stocking feet the last half mile because her boots gave her pretty little feet some nasty blisters.

Falling into bed at one a.m. we figured on sleeping in, but our geriatric circadian pattern brought us wide awake and back into the world by seven. We strolled downtown looking for coffee and a bagel, Peg remembering again why she felt an affection for this place all those years ago.

The streets were uncrowded, mostly families and folks affiliated somehow with nearby Pace University, judging from the logos on their sweatshirts.

After a forgettable bagel sandwich and passable cup of coffee, we took an uber back to Teterboro (having learned our lesson from the limo ride into town), and shortly thereafter were climbing back into the radio cacophony of New York approach control and over the western Jersey hills towards home.

Peg commented once we were back here, curled up on the couch, that she's in no hurry to return to the City. I'm not so sure. The youth of the place, the dreams on display, the hopes that haven't been dashed yet. There's a vibe, isn't there? And it's not like any other place on earth. Sure, we'll be back. But next time we'll stay in an oak lobbied hotel, and head out on the town dressed to the nines on our way to someplace a little fancier, a place where no one else knows what a chaude is, either.