Finding My Way ('Cuz I keep losing it!)

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

So, I have been in New York three weeks now. Long enough to learn that the same “color” subway line will end up in six different places on opposite sides of town, that express trains don’t stop at the black dots and may not stop at the white dots, that local trains move about the speed of a tired horse, that cross town buses apparently serve no function because I can walk faster than they can drive, and that the same people who designed the international transfers and arrivals section of the Philadelphia airport must have designed the New York subway stations (i.e. for their own entertainment from wherever they watch us and laugh). You can forget calling anyone to tell them you have screwed up, again, and will be late, again, because there will be no cell signal until you have emerged into the light of day, or more likely night by the time you escape. I sit in awed fascination as REAL New Yorkers analyze and debate the most effective route through the illogical complexities of the transportation system with the same passion as they debate politics. It is like listening in on a conversation in Swahili. Actually, Swahili might make more sense…

I’ve learned that Madison originated as the “back alley” for 5^th Avenue and Lexington as the back alley for Park Avenue which means I can now remember the order east to west from Central Park – 5^th, Madison, Park, Lexington. Just to complicate matters, Park Avenue is also 4^th Avenue. I doubt I will ever learn when Broadway runs East of 4^th or west of 9^th or somewhere in between. You see Broadway, New York City’s longest street to this day, was once an Indian trail known as the Bloomingdale Road. When the city fathers developed the grid plan in the early 1800’s, the trail was so strong it maintained its position, becoming a diagonal snafu to the fresh-mowed-wrigley-field rows and cross rows of streets that make up Midtown. Because of its entrenched position and diagonal oddity, over time Squares were formed everywhere Broadway cut across an Avenue – Union Square at 4^th (Park) Avenue, Madison Square at 5^th, Herald Square at 6^th. When Broadway crosses 7^th Avenue, it intersects just a few steps above 42^nd Street creating the double triangle intersection that we know as Times Square. Of course it has only been Times Square since 1904 when the New York Times tower was built there. The paper decided to celebrate its opening by counting down the last minutes of 1904 from the top of the tower. Two years later they lowered a ball at midnight and, well, they still do to this day. I must say I like the sound of New Years Eve in Times Square much better than Long Acre Square!

I’ve learned that Avenues, in keeping with transportation lack of logic and Chinese reading rules, are numbered from west to east and Streets are numbered from south to north, beginning north of Houston – which, unlike Texas, is pronounced here as ‘house’-ton not ‘who’-ston. South of House-ton (which by the way is what So-Ho stands for – SOuth of HOuston), the streets create a tangled mess of named and lettered streets weaving madly to cram themselves into the pointed end of the most densely populated island in the world. The tip of the point is Battery Park - which, by the way, is the most recently built area of Manhattan having been a landfill project created from the dirt excavated to build the Twin Towers, at one point the largest buildings in the world, now merely two beams of light reminding us of the frailty of man in the face of his fear.

I’ve learned that a Mench is something positive, though it sounds negative when they say it, that Macy’s is, much to my surprise, the largest store in the world, that Central Park is larger than one can fathom, and that even here in the hustle-bustle of the Big Apple, people are incredibly kind, helpful, generous, caring, and friendly. Most importantly I’ve learned, no matter how illogical the transportation system, no matter how packed the streets, no matter how expensive it all is, I love this city and I intend to stay – well, at least for awhile anyway. After all, where else can being lost all the time be this exhilarating!

Comments

[jerry]

Gotham is the best history on NYC that I know of.

jsg