George Discovers New York City…Part Two

In my last post, chronicling the beginning of the action-packed day when I toured Manhattan with George, a young visitor from Greece, we encountered the Museum of Natural History, Columbus Circle, a series of three-star restaurants, and various street people on our way to Times Square.

When we got to Times Square, they were already setting up barriers and cameras in preparation for the next day’s New Year’s Eve dropping of the ball at midnight, which would be witnessed by an estimated one million people packed into the area (plus 6,000 cops hoping to keep them safe.)  One professional cameraman, setting up his tripod, said the ball would fall from just above the Toshiba sign above.

George took photos in all directions, and so did I.  The crowd frantically waved at the huge Revlon billboard, which kept zooming in on the people in the street below, including us.  It’s a kick to see yourself on a lighted billboard above Times Square!

Next George led me into the nearby Hard Rock Café, where he bought a tee-shirt, saying “We don’t have a single Hard Rock Café in Greece.”   Then it was on one block to Madame  Tussauds where the line of people waiting to get in stretched for what seemed like miles.

When we finally got in, after paying $40 each, we were herded into a large elevator to the 9^th floor, called “Opening Night”, filled with film stars dressed in red carpet garb.  We would walk down to the other floors, each with a different theme.  The first statue to welcome us was Kim Kardashian and then Kanye West, seen here with George.

On the next floor I enjoyed seeing John Wayne with this elderly fan, and then Jennifer Lawrence with a much younger admirer.

Jimmy Fallon was interviewing this young lady.  And Don Draper was already celebrating Happy Hour.

I made George pose with Lucille Ball and Ernest Hemingway, even though he had no idea who they were.  There were floors with scientists and writers and inventors and a theater where we watched a six-minute 4-D Marvel Heroes film.  Evidently 4-D means that, when you see splashing water or a bullet whizzing by or a punch in the back or an explosion, you experienced it yourself, sitting right there in your chair, with water in the face, air whizzing by, and a poke in the back.

We passed through the floor featuring presidents past and present with their first ladies.  Obama and Michelle didn’t seem to mind two teenagers taking over the presidential desk.  And finally George reached the floor he had been waiting for, where he got to spar with Mike Tyson and Muhammad Ali.

When we left Madame Tussauds, we walked across to Fifth Avenue, looked at the Library lions, then set out to walk up Fifth Avenue to see the  famous Christmas tree.  The sidewalks were so crowded that I kept thinking about how, in India on religious holidays, people who fall down are trampled to death by the crowds.  Luckily I didn’t fall down before we got to see the tree, with the skating rink in front of it and all the beautiful  lighted angels lining the way.  George was determined to be photographed with a New York police officer (don’t know why) and this gentleman obliged.

Finally, because George wasn’t able to mount the Freedom Tower or the Empire State Building the day before due to fog, we bought tickets to go to the Top of the Rock --the observation tower atop what we oldsters call the RCA building, right behind the tree. (In 1988 it became the GE Building and last year the Comcast Building.)  Halfway to the 67^th floor, everybody got out and filed through a security checkpoint just like at the airport.

It was worth it, and the $32 tickets, because from the top we got amazing views of Manhattan at night, including the Empire State building that was decked in red and green lights for the holidays.

Once we were back on the ground we sprinted over to Loi Estiatorio on 132 West 58^th Street where Nick was waiting for us.  There the owner and chef, Maria Loi, the official “Ambassador of Greek Gastronomy”, shared some of her cooking secrets with George.

After we caught our breath, George declared that he had seen a week’s worth of New York City in two days. I had to agree.

Touring New York City with George, Who’s 20…. Part One

 You often hear long-time New Yorkers say things like: “I’d never been to the Empire State Building (or the Statue of Liberty) until a friend came from out of town and wanted to go.”

That was pretty much my story, too, until George, a young man from Greece, came to Massachusetts and told us that his dream was to visit New York City.   And he had his own list of must-sees: The Empire State Building, Times Square, the Apple Store, the Hard Rock Café and especially Madame Tussauds. “Madame Tussauds?” I said. “I thought that was in London,” but George assured me there was one in Manhattan.

And because George is a budding chef, his must-see list included the famous New York restaurants that have three Michelin stars (there are five of them in Manhattan.)  He could recite the names of their chefs, just the way movie fans recite the names of their favorite film stars. We had only two days to show George all of that-- Dec. 29 and 30-- so we drove to Manhattan to stay in daughter Eleni’s apartment, which was empty over the holidays.

The first day, Nick took George to Ground Zero and the Empire State Building, but they didn’t go up either one, because heavy fog had covered the city and there was zero visibility.  But George did manage to get photographed outside the restaurant he most wanted to see – Eleven Madison Park (chef Daniel Humm, tasting menu $295. excluding beverages).  And Nick took him to the bustling Apple Store at 59^th and Fifth Avenue, where George pondered buying a tablet.

The next day I was the tour guide and we had to pack a week’s worth of sight- seeing into 24 hours.  First stop was the Museum of Natural History. George had seen the film “A Night at the Museum”. We arrived before the museum opened at ten and the line of waiting families wound around the block.  As soon as we got in, we hit the high spots:

Here’s George, wearing camouflage,  posing in front of the elephants.  Next came the battle between the whale and the giant squid.

 Here’s the famous 94-feet-long blue whale hanging from the ceiling of the Hall of Ocean Life.  And of course the dinosaur skeletons, although they did not scamper around as they did in the movie.

Next we took the subway from 80^th Street down to Columbus Circle, where we photographed the window washers dangling from the Trump International Hotel and Tower.  We admired the statue of Columbus in the center of Columbus Circle and I told George the story of how Mafia Boss Joe Colombo was shot right there in 1971  while addressing a huge crowd at the Italian Unity Day Rally, protesting the media's use of the word “Mafia.”.  (Nick covered it for The New York Times.)

Then we walked across to the Time Warner Center where we found, on the 4^th floor of the Atrium, two of the three-star restaurants, Per Se (chef Thomas Keller, 9-course tasting menu $325 excluding beverages) and Masa (chef Masayoshi Takayama, prix fixe menu $450 excluding beverages.) We took pictures but we did not eat at either one.  You can probably figure out why.

Instead we walked  down Seventh Avenue to my personal favorite Greek restaurant Molyvos, between 55^th and 56^th, where we enjoyed the three-course Express Lunch menu for $28, with some nice wine from Santorini. Then we went around the corner to see the very trendy Milos Restaurant, whose chef is Costas Spiliadis—one of George’s idols.  We walked in to see the famous “fish market” in the back, where diners go to choose their seafood.  It's flown in daily from Greece and the prices start at $125 a pound and go up.

From 55^th Street we started walking down Seventh to see Times Square.  I knew it would be crazy on the day before a million people crowded in on New Year’s Eve (plus 6,000 cops). As we approached, we encountered this homeless man, holding a sign that read, “Happy New Year!  No Family.  Nowhere to go. Please help raise $48 for a hostel.  Thank you! I Miss the Good Life.”

I gave him some change, he continued sleeping, and we moved on, encountering the infamous Naked Cowboy.  I had warned George about the scam artists who populate Times Square; topless women in bikinis and men dressed like Sesame Street or Star Wars characters. They come up to you, say, “Take a photo with me” and then demand $20 . So we stealthily photographed the Naked Cowboy from the back and moved on.

Next Blog Post:  George and I survive Times Square, shake hands with VIPs at Mme. Tussauds, marvel at the Christmas Tree at Rockefeller Center, and ride 65 floors up to the Top of the Rock.

Times Square, Pompeii, and Japan

 (Please click on the photos to enlarge them)

Every time I return to Manhattan I’m reminded of why it’s my favorite city in the world.  Nowhere else can you find such a mix of faces, languages, rituals, talents, and incredible sights.  This past weekend, as the weather turned spring-like, I was constantly reminded of a P.R. slogan from the 1970’s, (when Manhattan was so much scarier, dirtier and less friendly),  that we single working-girls would toss around with heavy sarcasm during the  sweltering, foul-smelling hot months:  “New York is a Summer Festival.”  This past weekend, the city was indeed a spring festival with crowds on every corner in a party mood.

On Friday, we walked from the hotel at 56^th and Seventh Avenue.  It was the first time I had seen Broadway and Times Square since they turned it onto a pedestrian walkway.

In the olden days, the only moving sign on Times Square was the Camel-smoking man on a billboard who blew real smoke rings into the air.  Now, all the billboards seem to move with mind-blowing activity and color. 

One huge billboard projects the actual crowd of pedestrians on the sidewalk below, who are frantically waving at the camera.  There is a pretty woman on the billboard with a magnifying glass who periodically magnifies some of the eager wavers.  In other words:  go down to Times Square and you can be on a billboard like all the models and actors.  After some searching, I decided that the pretty girl a with magnifying glass does not actually exist—she is virtual, but the waving tourists are real.

Of course I photographed the statue of George M. Cohan. (For you youngsters, he was the guy who wrote “Give my regards to Broadway”—a song that inevitably gets stuck in my brain and drives me crazy.  He was a songwriter, playwright, actor, singer, dancer and producer who lived from 1878 to 1942.)

Crowds of eager tourists surrounded the sight-seeing-bus stops and watched an artist who seemed to be creating his paintings out of spray paint and selling them on the spot.

Times Square is a photographers dream.  

The reason we were going to Times Square was that I wanted to see the Pompeii exhibit which had gotten a good review in the New York Times.  I realized that, even though it was tourist-y, that was probably the closest I’d ever get to the real Pompeii, which has always fascinated me. 

At the climax of the exhibit,you are herded into a closed room where a vista of the city of Pompeii and the volcano Vesuvius are projected on one wall. Thanks to special effects, you see the slow pattern of destruction as the volcano smoked, then erupted over a period of about 36 hours.  The floor shakes and the sound intensifies as the roofs collapse. There is smoke, fire, lava, and then at the climax, a giant wave of hot ash and intense heat overwhelms everything including the audience.  The winds whips by you and then the wall in front of you opens and you see the white plaster casts of the dead bodies (including a dog and a pig curled in their last agonies.)  You can walk among them--the family of four including two children and the man who died trying to crawl up a staircase, the couple reaching out to each other and a room full of 12 skeletons including nine children. These casts were made by pouring plaster into the hollow impressions left by the bodies that were encased by the ash as they died.)

Although I had planned weeks ago to visit the Pompeii exhibit, the drama was made so much more real and poignant by the tragedy in Japan. It was impossible to watch the tsunami of ash coming at you without thinking of the thousands of innocent people there who suffered a death much like those who died in Pompeii, but they were swept out to sea without  even the memorial left  by those who died in 79 A.D., who were preserved in solidified ash so that we can share their agony two thousand years later.