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.