Welcome to the Big Apple

St. Vincent Ferrer Priory on New York's Upper East Side.

I have had a lifelong love affair with New York City that began during Spring Break in April of 1984.  My Uncle, a Dominican Priest, was living in New York at the time, and invited me to visit and stay with him.  He lived in a Priory attached to St. Vincent Ferrer's Church on Lexington and 66th, on the Upper East Side, in the heart of Manhattan.  It seemed like an acceptable neighborhood - Richard Nixon's townhouse was around the corner - so how could I refuse St. Vincent's hospitality?

I landed at New York's John F. Kennedy (JFK) airport right at the height of the evening rush hour.  Traveling light, as always, without any checked bags, I walked right off the Pan Am 747 and straight to the curb.  I found the Carey bus stop and hopped on the big bus to Grand Central Station in midtown Manhattan.  I didn't mind the slow rush hour traffic, as it gave me a chance to gradually take in the City as darkness fell and we crept closer.  The bus went through a toll booth, down into the Midtown Tunnel and under the East River.  We came up a few minutes later and I was right in the middle of Manhattan for the first time in my life. 

As a film buff, my expectations of New York drew from famous films shot on location in New York - I'm walking here!  Are you talking to me!  It's showtime!  Attica!  Attica!  - including All That Jazz, Annie Hall, Dog Day Afternoon, Fame, The French Connection, Godspell, Midnight Cowboy, My Favorite Year, Network, Taxi Driver, Tootsie, West Side Story and, of course, Woody Allen's masterpiece, Manhattan.  All those movies made it seem as if New York was the center of the universe. 

I walked off the bus across the street from Grand Central Terminal, my backpack slung low across my back, and was momentarily stopped by the sensory overload that was, and is, New York City.  So many people!  Such huge buildings!  What were all those awful smells? 

My uncle had told me to be sure when I got off the bus to walk in to Grand Central Terminal and take it all in before I hopped on the Lexington Avenue subway.  The inside of Grand Central was, as advertised, awe-inspiring.  The ceiling was huge.  I tried to navigate this bewildering place to find my subway line uptown.  This was going to be a little bit different than riding B.A.R.T. back home in the Bay Area.

Nothing about the process was clear, friendly or automated.  A bored, older lady sat in a small booth, pushing subway token after subway token through the small hole in the plexiglass that looked about a foot thick.  I pushed a dollar through the hole and she pushed a tiny metal token out the other way, so it dropped into the hole on my side of the booth.  I stared at it for a moment, looked at the woman, reached for the token, grabbed it and moved toward the subway turnstiles. 

I was looking for the Lexington Avenue - that's the Green line - subway line uptown towards the Bronx.  Like Jon Voight's hayseed cowboy in Midnight Cowboy, I just stood there for a moment trying to navigate my way in the correct direction while hundreds and hundreds of New Yorkers jostled around me in every direction.  I double-checked my pants pocket for my wallet.  The energy, as my Uncle had always told me, was incredible. 

I made it safely up to the mean streets of the Upper East Side and went out to dinner with my Uncle.  We walked out of the Priory and my Uncle immediately hailed a cab.  I now felt like I was off and running in my own New York movie.  I'm still amused how even the shyest, most docile New Yorker can become a human megaphone when they're trying to hail a cab - Hey!  Taxi!

Moments later we were speeding through Central Park, heading over to the Upper West Side, to meet a couple who were friends of my Uncle's, one of whom was an actor and the other a playwright.  We had a great night eating at a neighborhood Italian place and winding up at their apartment for desert and late night New York/Theatre talk.  I was amazed how small their apartment was and how long they had lived in the same place.  They told me once you find a good rent-controlled apartment in New York, you usually have to live there for rest of your life, if you're staying in New York.

The next day my Uncle had some things to do, so I headed down to Times Square by myself to see what Broadway shows were available that afternoon for half price down at the TKTS booth.  I looked at the board and saw the latest Stephen Sondheim show that was still in  previews.  It was set to open the following week.  It starred Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters.  I didn't recognize the title or know a thing about it, but I figured Sondheim was a good bet.  After waiting thirty minutes in line, I reached one of the windows, put my thirty dollars up on the counter and said, "One for Sunday in the Park with George, please." Yes, that was my first Broadway show.

Sunday in the Park with George, my first Broadway show.

The show was fantastic!  I was entranced for two and a half hours.  I rarely see previews of shows, but there's something to be said for walking into a show when you don't know a thing about it.  It was the first and only time I would see either Mandy Patinkin or Bernadette Peters live on stage.  Patinkin was very hot at the time in New York, fresh off his run in Evita.  Peters had not appeared on Broadway in ten years, and I must admit, I knew her mostly as Steve Martin's ex-girlfriend and co-star in The Jerk.  She would become Broadway's darling by the end of the decade.

Even sitting in my half-priced seat in the very last row of the Orchestra section, the show just completely blew me away.  It's still my favorite Sondheim show.  Patinkin and Peters were both incredible.  Their stage presence and magnetism extended to every seat in the theatre. 

I walked out of the Booth Theatre thinking to myself, "Well, okay, I really get the draw of this Broadway show thing."  Little did I know then that I would go on to see dozens and dozens of shows in New York, but I don't think I ever topped that one. 

The show also, of course, made me a huge Seurat fan.  It would take me years, but I vowed some day to travel to Chicago to see the painting that inspired the show, Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on the island of La Grand Jatte, at the Art Institute of Chicago.   

George Seurat's Un Dimanche Après-Midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte (1884).

 

 

The next couple of days I spent hours and hours in the Metropolitan, Guggenheim and Modern Art museums, with the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) becoming my favorite.  I've never been able to draw or paint anything, and other than my Father's sister, there isn't any evidence of artistic talent in my family.  I have no recollection of either of my parents ever taking me to an Art museum as a child.  I have no idea why or where I acquired my appreciation of great paintings, but I think it was solidified on that trip to New York.

New York's Lincoln Center performing arts complex on Manhattan's Upper West Side.

Sensing I could use a little high culture at some point during my trip, my Uncle had purchased us tickets to the Mostly Mozart festival in Lincoln Center to finish my visit.  I don't recall the pieces that were played that night in Fisher Hall, but the theatre was beautiful and the New York Philharmonic sounded incredible.  The fountain in the middle of Lincoln Center is always a scenic place to be at night.

I bought a small, laminated New York subway and museum map that I used so much during that stay that I thought I was going to wear it out.  I would continue to use it so much during my New York overnights as a flight attendant, that I did have to buy another copy ten years later.

New York had everything you could possibly want in a big city.  Great food, shows, movies, museums.  It was so compact and easy to get around.  People could be a bit rude and abrupt compared to California, but everyone I met during my stay seemed friendly and intelligent.

Unlike many a young romance, my New York love affair has never waned.  I've always wondered what it would have been like to have lived in New York for a few years when I was younger, but then I doubt our affair would have continued this long. 

It has now been over five years since I've been back to New York.  That's the longest stretch since my first visit.  Of all the cities I flew in and out of in my 18 years as a flight attendant, New York is still the one I miss the most.  The approach into LaGuardia airport  from the south never got old.  You only saw the city's beauty from the air, especially at night, but yet it still looked so close that you could reach out and touch its sparkling lights. 

Once in a while, a van driver would take the 59th Street Bridge into Manhattan from the airport, and I was never too jaded not to enjoy that view.

My Uncle stayed in New York for a few more years.  He ran the New York Marathon and encouraged me to do the same.  I finally went back and ran it in 1987, sealing a love affair with a great city that I'm sure will endure as long as I live.

My oldest son is heading back to New York City for the first time in a couple of weeks.  I won't be traveling with him, so I'm a little jealous, a little nervous, but mostly, I just hope he has a great trip and sees her like I did that first time, and falls in love with the same city I did  twenty-seven years ago.