March 11, 2008 -- Tuesday

Today, unfortunately, was our homeward bound travel day. We slept in until about 10am partly because I was out late and partly because Kelly was still sick as a homeless dog. We bailed on our plan to get up early and take a harbor cruise out to Liberty Island--that will have to wait for a next time.

We only had time to get up, get packed and ready, head out for breakfast and then bolt for the airport. We went to Penelope's Cafe again today for breakfast--it was so close by and it was really good breakfast chow. Kelly downed some green tea in hopes that the boost of antioxidants would do him some added good. I stuck with fresh-squeezed OJ and the same oatmeal, eggs & toast and fresh-cut fruit that I had yesterday--goooood eatin'!

We grabbed a taxi right from Penelope's Cafe and made it to La Guardia Airport by about 12:45pm. We made it through ticketing check-in very fast so we had almost two hours to burn prior to our flights out.

We hung out for a while in La Guardia's poor man's version of the Hard Rock Cafe, eating bad nachos and chatting about life. Here's a blurry shot of Kelly and I taken by our cute little server girl. In the background you'll notice a guitar on the wall. It is apparently signed by Elvis Costello, but as Kelly pointed out, "do you really think Elvis Costello plays those cheap Fender Squire guitars?" The answer is of course "no". So we have to assume that Elvis Costello never plucked Note One on that Squier Telecaster. Maybe his signature is fake too?
We decided to say our goodbyes one hour prior to my flight time of 3pm so that I could get through security in time. Kelly's flight home to San Diego left at 3:40pm. There were heavy security check delays at my Gate--it took 40 minutes to pass through. As always, I was sad to say goodbyes to Kelly--I don't see nearly enough of him and his family during any given year. He and I had a pretty good NYC walkabout this weekend even though he had to endure his cold symptoms and the accompanying low energy.
So off we went back to our respective homes, work schedules and reality, leaving NYC behind 'til next time. I did get a half decent view of Manhattan as I flew out of La Guardia, but the photo above is by others because my photo of this view turned out rather hazy.

So, peace, love and good happiness stuff to all my readers, and "on behalf of the band I hope we have passed the audition." (to quote the gentleman shown below).

March 10, 2008 -- Monday

We started our Monday off with a fine breakfast at Penelope's Cafe & Bakery (Lexington Ave & 30th Street)--just a two block walk from our hotel.

We didn't start breakfast until 10:30am since we slept a little late, but the Irish oatmeal, OJ, fresh-cut strawberries, melon and blueberries, eggs and toast restored me with plenty of life. I wish I could say the same for Kelly, but he became more & more sick as the day progressed. He had all those nasty cold symptoms wearing him down, but he made it through all of our day time treks.

We had to leave my credit card with the people at Penelope's Cafe because it was a cash only cafe and I had no cash! So I made a run to a nearby WaMu bank and returned with cash and reclaimed my hostage credit card.

After breakfast we decided to head over to Central Park and take advantage of the beautiful weather. We took a taxi from Penelope's over to Central Park West and 72nd Street--home of the Dakota apartment building (photo below). The Dakota is where John Lennon and Yoko Ono lived and where, unfortunately, John was gunned down in December 1980. The Lennon's had lived up on the top level overlooking the Park.
Apparently John enjoyed walking through the Park near his building and so in commemoration to him a section of the Park immediately across the street from the Dakota has been designated "Strawberry Fields". In the center of its' pathway is the "Imagine" mosaic (photo below) which is perpetually decorated with flowers and memorabilia. There was a class of junior high kids on a field trip surrounding the mosaic. Their young teacher was telling them about John Lennon. It's interesting to think that enough time has now passed since the Beatles and the demise of John Lennon that young teens have to be instructed about their legacy. I guess music that was recorded 40 years ago is pretty far removed from your average 13 year old. Jeez, when I was 13 (in 1979) music recorded 40 years prior to that (1939) was the Big Band music that my father listened to like Benny Goodman and the Glenn Miller Orchestra--stuff that I had to be instructed about.
Kelly & I walked only through the "center of Central Park" because that's about all the time we could really dedicate to the Park. Keep in mind that the Park is huge--it's actually twice as large as the nation of Monaco and eight times larger than the Vatican! IN the photo below Kelly stands in front of the lake with the proud San Remo twin towers in the background. The San Remo is two buildings north of the Dakota on West Central Park Street. It is reportedly the building depicted in the movie "Ghostbusters" from which the "Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man" was inadvertently summonsed-up to terrorize New York City.
We visited the Bethseda Terrace and Fountain (photos below) which were built in the 1880's and have since appeared in about a zillion movies.

Kelly does an "album cover" photo (below) from underneath the Terrace. There are fancy, colorful tiles lining the walls and ceiling space inside the Terrace. It has been re-worked in recent years to keep it fresh looking--can't have shabby 100 year old tile in the Park, eh.
And what would our trip through the Park be without the token dulcimer guy (below)? I thought the tune he was hammering out sounded an awful lot like "Separate Ways" by Journey.
As we walked up towards the Great Lawn where all those giant free summer concerts take place, we encountered the very cool Cleopatra's Needle (photo below).
The Needle dates back to 1600 BC, but was relocated from Heliopolis to Alexandria, Egypt by the Romans in 12 BC--around the time when Cleopatra ruled. It was brought over from Egypt in 1881 courtesy of William Vanderbuilt and was set in the Park where it remains a fixture. Hieroglyphics are easily made out on two of its sides. I would have stuck around for hours to decipher the glyphics, but I didn't think Kelly would have had my same enthusiasm for the endeavor. So, we pushed onward. We walked over to the east side and main entrance to the Metropolitan Art Museum (photo below) with hopes to browse inside for a bit, but we discovered that the museum, as with MANY things in Manhattan, was closed on Mondays.
Upon discovering that our museum field trip had been foiled we took a subway from Lexington and 77th Street down to City Hall (photo by others below).
We wanted to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge during the daylight hours, but we got side-tracked for an hour when I realized how close we were to the 911 Ground Zero site. Our visit to Ground Zero started with a walk through the very old (built 1766) St. Paul's Chapel. The Chapel sets a mere football's toss from the Ground Zero site. This photo shows how close the frail old grave markers are to Ground Zero--why were they not easily blown over?
It is absolutely remarkable that the entire chapel (photo below of west exterior) was not obliterated when the Twin Towers fell--it's so old and frail--but not a single pane of glass was disturbed on that violent day in 2001.
We didn't stay long at the Ground Zero pavilion--just long enough to see what was being done in the hole. There's still very little for the casual observer to see down in the construction site, but I snapped this shot from behind the fence fabric that obscures the view of the site:
After seeing Ground Zero we resumed our pursuit of the Brooklyn Bridge. We decided to take the subway across the East River into Brooklyn so that we could enjoy the view of Manhattan as we walked westward back across the bridge on our return trip. This was a tip I picked up from my friend James Sloan, along with the admonition to eat a pizza at Grimaldi's (photos below) in Brooklyn before walking back over the bridge.

The Grimaldi's pizza was the perfect mid-afternoon hook-up prior to our windy stroll back over the Brooklyn Bridge. As you can see, Grimaldi's is conveniently situated directly underneath the Brooklyn side of the bridge. After leaving the pizzeria we had a look across the East River from the Fulton Street Pier (photo below). There were a few people at the pier filming what appeared to be some kind of low budget student film. The camera man sat in a wheelchair to roll in his shot of a woman sitting at a pier-side park bench. We didn't stick around long enough to see the shot resolved though.
It was definitely windy as we walked over the East River on the Brooklyn Bridge top pedestrian deck. Kelly was getting more and more sick from the elements due to his cold, but he soldiered on without a single complaint. Here he is (below) in another potential "album cover" shot:
I was feeling pretty good though--I had been sick the previous two weeks and was on the mend. I was still marginally affected by the motion sickness from Saturday's rock 'n' roll airplane journey though.
We learned that cyclist commuters riding over the Bridge were not fond of us uninitiated tourists and our careless wanderings into their bike lane. Many of the cyclists would ring their loud bells enthusiastically as they approached and then shake their heads and grumble as they passed us by.

I framed Lady Liberty between bridge cable in this shot looking southward over the harbor:

We rested our dogs on a park bench on the Manhattan side of the Bridge when we completed our cross-over. I really enjoyed the Bridge--I had always wanted to see it up close being the civil-structural engineer geek that I am. I even snapped a photo of the 1869-1883 construction commemoration plaque that was mounted on one of the piers.

Afterwards, we walked through the Financial District on our way down to check out Battery Park. As we passed through we encountered a bunch of TV news cameras, security people and a small crowd gathering out in front of Federal Hall...
...and the New York Stock Exchange Building.
I asked one of the cameramen what was up. He stated that New York Governor Elliot Spitzer had just been discovered in a prostitute scandal. The news had barely broke and they were expecting to nab a headline shot down there on Wall Street--I guess they expected that the governor was in the neighborhood as the news broke. Sure enough, this became a big news story as the week unfolded, and Kelly & I were there at the genesis of it (so to speak).

We didn't bother to wait around to harangue the governor. Instead we walked down to Battery Park to get a view of the Statue of Liberty from the southern-most tip of Manhattan. We had planned to take the boat to Liberty Island tomorrow morning so we popped by while in the neighborhood to see where we would be buying our tickets. We checked out the former World Trade Center's sculpture "The Sphere" (photo below) where it rests on display in Battery Park. The Sphere used to set in the ground level exterior plaza of the Twin Towers. It got battered, but survived the 911 devastation well enough to remain proudly displayed for years to come.
It was just after 5pm when we gazed out over the harbor towards Liberty and Ellis Islands. I got a great sunset shot of the vista:
After visiting Battery Park we made the grand mistake of heading into the subway at the Staten Island Ferry station. It was the NYC Monday rush hour and all those Financial District types were anxious to get the hell outta' Dodge for the night.
After about 20 minutes of waiting for the subway we rode the train into SoHo where I anticipated stopping to find dinner at some hip restaurant spot. When we got off the train I realized that the time was near 6pm and I had to start thinking about getting out to Long Island for the Bruce Springsteen concert at Nassau Coliseum. This being the case I did Kelly the disservice of bypassing our fancy dinner plans for McDonald's fries near the SoHo subway station. My bad.

Kelly was in rough shape by this point so I asked him if he wanted to NOT go to the concert this evening. He opted to forgo the Springsteen concert in favor of an evening of rest in our hotel while I went off alone to the concert. So, we walked through the SoHo streets for a few blocks trying to hail a taxi back to the hotel. I snapped this photo of some lonely signage on one of the SoHo streets we wandered on.
Eventually we found a cab and we were back at the hotel by 6:45pm or so.
Kelly was committed to staying behind at the hotel to rest away his ills, so I tried not to feel too bad abandoning him to go off to Long Island. Here is a shot of "Kelly's Last Stand" there at our little Room 701 of the Thirty Thirty Hotel NYC:
I left almost immediately to find my way out to Nassau Coliseum. I could NOT find a cabbie that was willing to take me out there from our hotel, so I had one cab take me to Grand Central Station where I hoped to find a more motivated cabbie.
I finally found just such a cabbie. Within 3 minutes of picking me up he showed me a booklet which quoted the ride out to Nassau as being $124. I told him to just drop me off at the train station--I wasn't going to pay a cabbie that kind of loot to drive 20 miles. The cabbie finally settled for $80. This was still steep, but I had no time to lose if I was going to actually see the concert. I arrived at Nassau Coliseum at 8pm on the dot. The concert was supposed to start at 7:30pm. I noticed that there were very few people outside of the coliseum--probably because the show was soon to start. I walked around the building one and a half times before I encountered a scalper. He quickly unloaded a ticket to me for only $50 saying "I'm gonna' setchu-up brotha'--half price!" I handed him a fifty and off I went inside the building that the New York Islanders play their home games in--off to see Bruce and his Band.
I managed to find my seat within 5 minutes prior to the start of the concert--how's that for timing when I didn't have a ticket OR transportation to the concert less than an hour prior! I impressed even myself.

I wasn't thrilled with my original seat, so I transplanted myself to an empty seat about 50 feet from stage right and remained there for the rest of the concert.

I enjoyed Bruce and the E Street Band (close-up photo above by others), but it was a rather slow and soulful set list. They didn't rock it up until the encores with standards like "Born To Run", "Dancing in the Dark" and "Badlands". Here is the set-list for this show along with their associated albums:

Night – Born to Run (1975)

Radio Nowhere – Magic (2007)

Lonesome Day – The Rising (2002)

Adam Raised a Cain – Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978)

Gypsy Biker – Magic (2007)

Magic – Magic (2007)

Reason to Believe – Nebraska (1982)

Because the Night – written for the Patti Smith Group album “Easter” (1978)

She's the One – Born to Run (1975)

Livin' in the Future – Magic (2007)

The Promised Land – Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978)

Waitin' on a Sunny Day – The Rising (2002)

Incident on 57th Street – The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle (1973)

Devil's Arcade – Magic (2007)

The Rising – The Rising (2002)

Last to Die – Magic (2007)

Long Walk Home – Magic (2007)

Badlands – Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978)

* * *

Girls in Their Summer Clothes – Magic (2007)

Jungleland – Born to Run (1975)

Born to Run – Born to Run (1975)

Ramrod – The River (1980)

Dancing in the Dark – Born in the USA (1984)

American Land – We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions (2006)

Songs that I personally came to hear, but were not played include:

Pink Cadillac (1984)

Thunder Road (1975)

Tenth Avenue Freeze-out (1975)

Hungry Heart (1980)

Cadillac Ranch (1980)

Cover Me (1984)

Glory Days (1984)

My Hometown (1984)

Tunnel of Love (1987)

Human Touch (1992)

I realize these selections make me a "Hits Only", fair weather Springsteen fan--so sue me.

The concert ended at about 11pm and I grabbed the first cab I could find out in front of the coliseum. As luck would have it, I was able to share a cab with a young couple that was also Manhattan-bound. I chatted it up with the couple on the 30 minute ride back. The guy was a Financial District lawyer and the girl (in her mid-20's and a GORgeous ray of sunshine to say the least!) was just visiting the City from New Haven, CT where she attended Yale Law School. We enjoyed our little cab-ride visit covering conversation topics from concert-going to college degrees and trips abroad.

I arrived back at the hotel around 12:15am or so. Kelly was still awake. He had been tossing and turning uncomfortably, unable to find sleep with his cold symptoms. I gave him a sleeping tablet and we crashed out by 1am after a long day of walking about NYC.

March 9, 2008 -- Sunday

Sooo...we slept in until 9am or so--a solid 6 hours of sleep after the nearly 24-hour ordeal from the previous day of travel hell. I remained a little motion sick for the next two days--even taxi rides had an ill effect on me. But I was still good to go this morning. We had a clear sky day today, though the morning temperature was only about 38F and winds were still around 25 mph.

Kelly and I decided to start our NYC walkabout with a trip to the Empire State Building which was only a third of a mile from our hotel.
This third of a mile translates as only about three NYC city blocks--like so:
We paid some $40 a ticket to a street vendor to bypass some of the crowds there that day, but we had to endure that lame "NYC Skyride" motion-simulator movie first. We arrived at the Empire State Bldg at around 10am and made it to the 86th Floor Observation Deck by around 11am.
It was COLD and it was WINDY up there! Girls with long hair who braved the outdoors at the 86th Floor found their hair standing skyward, rotating like angry, giant drill bits in the sub-zero air. Kelly & I tolerated the biting cold up there for no more than 10 minutes--long enough for a few photos and a quick inspection of NYC.

After escaping from the icy heights of the ESB we hailed a taxi and headed down to the West Village to have a belated noon-time breakfast at the Corner Cafe (643 Broadway) not far from Washington Square.
We were pretty hungry by this time, so the Irish oatmeal, bacon, eggs and French toast were hugely satisfying.

The day was warming up quickly so we decided to explore the Greenwich Village neighborhood a little by foot. Among the views were this pink 5-storey above the Cafe Borgia (Prince St & West Broadway), and Bleecker Bobs Records (118 W 3rd St).

We took a 1/2 mile detour to the east and walked down Little Italy's Mulberry Street on into Chinatown where we hung out and rested our feet for a few minutes at a park situated at the spot where the former infamous Five Points slums (featured in the movie: "The Gangs of New York") once ruled.

But there's no more "Bill the Butcher" there at Five Points, instead we encountered a few dozen Chinese men playing competitive "shangji" (Chinese chess).
I had a sudden and urgent craving for authentic Chinese dumplings or "shwei-jau" as we sat there. We set off to find a place to meet my needs. We hadn't even left the confines of the park when Kelly pointed and said: "How 'bout that place?" He had spotted the Holy Grail of all dumpling salers: "Tasty Dumplings, Inc." (54 Mulberry Street).
Man....this place was perfect! It had incredibly authentic Chinese dumplings of many varieties and it was just the type of little hole in the wall establishment that gave the right atmosphere to the flavor. We each had only 6 pork and cabbage dumplings (with vinegarette sauce), but it was a very satisfying post-breakfast, mid-afternoon concession. Because of the limited amount of seats inside Tasty Dumpling Inc, we sat with a lady and her two college-aged daughters and chatted about movies and travels. It's always fun to interact with strangers when you travel--makes the experience so much fuller.

It was around 2:30pm by the time we had finished our dumplings and I wanted to catch the 3pm New York Rangers game at Madison Square Gardens, so we went out to hail a taxi. Hailing a taxi from Chinatown proved difficult, so Kelly suggested we take the subway.

So, our first subway ride in NYC was from Canal Street near Chinatown on up to Madison Square Gardens.
We arrived at MSG withOUT tickets to see the Rangers, so we spent about 15 minutes haggling with scalpers outside the front entry to the famed arena. The first guy started off asking me for $150 a piece. I started to walk off, so he asked how much I was looking to pay. I said "about HALF of that." He balked at that so I started to walk off again. Eventually he said "Okay, okay, you wait here a few minutes, I'm gonna' hook you up." As I waited another couple guys approached me and offered up good seats at $100 a piece. I was still adamant that I pay only $75 a piece and it ended up in a bit of a verbal battle between two groups of black guys doing the scalping. I finally butted in and said emphatically, "This man was doing business with me first and I'm taking his offer." So, at $75 a ticket, Kelly and I entered Madison Square Gardens to watch the Rangers take on the Boston Bruins.
We found our seats with only a few minutes left in the first period , so we missed a third of the game, but I was just glad to be there. I have a goal to catch an NHL game at all of the 30 NHL arenas in the U.S. and Canada. I have only been to six of them so far--as Kelly pointed out, I have now realized 20% of this goal. I've been to NHL games at Calgary, Los Angeles, Anaheim, Atlanta, Denver, and now NYC Manhattan.

This afternoon's game went into overtime with a 0-0 score. Overtime also rendered a no score, so it had to be finished in a Shoot-out. The Rangers won the shoot-out and we were able to cheer for the home team's victory as hoped.
It was fun to see a game at MSG--the place is so retro, it's like stepping back into 1969 or something. Other NHL arenas are much newer, much larger and are generally tricked-out with fancier gadgets and amenities. MSG has probably not changed a hair since the 70's.

We left the Gardens at around 6:30pm. I was really tired from getting minimal sleep in the previous several days, so I requested that we go back to our nearby hotel so that I could rest for an hour or so. As we slowly waddled along with the exiting throng inside the arena I snapped this shot (below) of the St. John the Baptist Church spire throwing its shadow against an adjacent brick building. I like the earthen tones of the structures and ubiquitous rooftop watershed tanks in the sunset light.
Man, I was glad to kick my shoes off and get an hour's shut-eye at the hotel this evening--I was sooooo tired! We left the hotel again at about 7:45pm. I suggested that we go find dinner somewhere near Times Square and that we actually walk there from our hotel.

We came across Grand Central Station on our way to Times Square, so we went inside for a peek.
I didn't manage to get a decent photo of the interior of the Station (photo above by others), but I DID manage to get a brilliant night shot of the exterior of the Station (below) with the proudly glowing Chrysler Building overlooking:
We continued our walk up to Times Square northward along 5th Avenue until we reached 50th Street where we checked out the huge St. Patrick's Cathedral (daylight photo below by others) before we turned and headed into Rockefeller Center for a peek.
I managed one good shot at Rockefeller Center and a few blurry ones. I find it difficult to get a good night shot on digital cameras, so I really appreciate it when I nab a good one like this one of the tree lights in the foreground of one of the Rockefeller buildings:
Here's a blurry one of Kelly at Rockefeller:
We had zero luck deciding on a place to grab dinner on our walk to and through Times Square, but we did manage to pass by FOUR different franchises of TGI Fridays! There was just no way in Hell that we were going to eat at a TGI Fridays no matter HOW strong the power of suggestion was working on us! After passing our fourth TGI Fridays and a brief encounter with the Naked Cowboy we decided to take a taxi back on down to Little Italy for some proper chow.
It was about 9:30pm by the time we decided on taking our dinner at the appealing corner Caffe Napoli (Mulberry St & Hester St) in Little Italy.
It didn't take long for us to settle on our menu choices: Kelly picked the Parmigiana Pollo and I went with the basic spaghetti and meatballs. My classy beverage selection was Coke.
We ordered garlic bread on the side and Kelly made sure to get the waiter to bring us a separate helping of marinara sauce with which to dip our bread. We even had chocolate gelato for desert.
We were plenty satisfied with our Little Italy (see photo of Mulberry Street circa 1900 below) dinner experience--we left the Ristorante well fed by around 11pm.
We decided that rather than stay out late and find trouble, we should opt to get back to the hotel and get some sleep so that we could get a earlier start for Monday. We took a taxi back to our hotel and were in bed by around midnight. We were both pretty tired out.