As many of you know, I went on a whirlwind trip to NYC yesterday and today in search of a gallery exhibit that I never ended up finding (the exhibit had closed on Monday), but in the process, the following occurred:
The 3:30 Acela to NY was sold out (horrors!) so I had to take the Metroliner. I paused briefly to note the Metroliner used to be the travel mode of choice -- no longer. I could've taken the earlier Acela but that would have cut into my sunbathing time at the pool -- also out of the question.
On the Metroliner, some un-frequent travelers got on and began loudly demanding to be shown to the Business Class car. These people looked about the car they were in, sneered, and said, "This can't be Business...it looks like the whole rest of the train." A few other passengers and I sat there smiling pleasantly at these people who thought it was beneath them to sit with us. Of course, all you Northeast Corridor regulars know that the whole point of the Metroliner (and the Acela, too, for that matter) is that the WHOLE TRAIN IS BUSINESS CLASS. A conductor finally told these un-frequent travelers that, and the loud people sat down among us. Heh heh. They started to discuss amongst themselves that they were going to complain to their travel agent because they didn't see why they should pay extra to sit in the same part of the train as everyone else. The conductor finally came back and told them that everyone on the train had paid the same, except the people in first class, and that they were on an all-reserved train, which is what they had paid for after all. They finally shut up.
The train ride was pretty lovely - my three favorite parts of the train ride are the abandoned Congoleum plant outside Philly (which I think must've been on the losing side of a competition with Linoleum, because the remains of the signs say "Fine Floors"), the Meadowlands, and the big rock mountain by the New Jersey Turnpike in Secaucus just as you begin the approach to the GW Bridge or the Holland Tunnel, whichever suits you. The Meadowlands are particularly pretty in the summer -- there were lots of wildflowers and water looked almost blue, instead of the industrial gray it usually is. Before we got to the Meadowlands and the Secaucus Mountain (which has a real name but I forget it, Snake Mountain, maybe?), one of the loud snobby un-frequent travelers asked a question. We had just passed Trenton and we had not yet reached Newark and the conductor called the station "Metro Center." The unfrequent traveler asked, "Where's that?" What kinda question is that? Obviously it's between Trenton and Newark... ?! This man clearly didn't know New Jersey at all so why would he think more detail would help him? "It's northeast of Edison, sir, on the road to Rahway but not the road to Bayhead...." Duh.
After taking the subway to 59th Street, I checked into my hotel in New York only to find that for some reason they had upgraded me to a room with a view of the park and a private butler. My room was so super special they made me go check in at a totally different desk. At first I thought I had screwed up and made my reservation for the wrong day, and that this nice hotel was going to give me directions to the youth hostel and didn't want to embarrass me in front of the real paying guests.... Apparently it's gauche to come right out and inform a guest that she has been upgraded. I finally figured it out when they told me I had a park view -- usually in this hotel I have either a smashing view of the air shaft or of the garbage trucks on 58th Street. I don't mind the 58th Street routine too much -- sometimes there's a great crawl space that you can reach by climbing out the window. I did that last summer with my college friend Rens -- the same person who joined me on that famous college climb up the outside of St. John the Divine (one of life's stupider moments). Climbing out the window at the Essex was, to us, just like old times. Anyway, I thought it was mean of the hotel to upgrade me when I was only going to be there one night, and why give me a private butler? I didn't even bring an extra pair of shoes for him to shine... I think it's a ploy - upgrade the guest when it costs the hotel the least to accommodate it.
So this morning, after I figured out the exhibit had closed, I switched gears and went up to 116th Street to see if Columbia had changed at all since I graduated from it ten years ago. Amazingly, it really hadn't, and I ended up have a fabulous day. First stop was La Rositas Spanish diner where I had two sunnyside up eggs with yellow rice and black beans and Cuban coffee, just like I did almost every Saturday and Sunday when I was in college. In college my meal cost $3.25, now it costs $4.50. Otherwise, it's identical. The place is still in it's dilapidated 108th St. location, the same lady still serves the food, and the food still tastes so good that you suspect they put cocaine in it. I have been trying to replicate this La Rositas meal at home every since I left NY and I've never succeeded. I don't know what they do but I .... LOVE .... IT.
The conversations I overheard at La Rositas were exactly the same as they were ten years ago. A woman was eating with a friend of her mother's, and the conversation switched back and forth between how the young woman had just started a newspaper that published daily and focused on the reform Jewish perspective on Palestine and how the young woman wanted to know why her friend had never really told her what the young woman's father was like.... Behind me was a younger woman who was applying to college and had been rejected from Barnard and was desolate. The man she was with was older, maybe a guidance counselor? and actively participated in her conspiracy theory about how Barnard didn't want anyone who grew up on the Upper West Side....You get the picture. I buried myself in the NY Times (courtesy of the private butler) and thought how comforting it was that nothing every changed.
After eating I searched for the Barnard Bookforum, which tragically has closed. This was the principal change in the streetscape around school. Below 110th Street nothing much has changed; above 110th Street some restaurants and delis have closed but otherwise things are pretty much the same. Mama Joys deli is gone -- they put a branch of the New York Public library there in stead, and there is a whole block of restaurants which weren't there before but I can't remember what was there before...Except for Barnard Bookforum, the important things were still there; Koronet Pizza (where you could get "a slice of 'za" at 3 a.m.), Columbia Bagels, the Indian Cafe -- which, with its $8.95 entrees of saag paneer, was the height of luxury for us poor college students -- the Chinese restaurant Dynasty where the girls from St. A's hung out, Cafe Pertutti (which we called Persnooty - aren't we original? - ), etc. When I was a senior I would up walk up to class from 103rd St and pass each of those establishments in order, and that is exactly what I did again this morning.
I headed to the main quad of the campus and sat on the library steps. I sat on the steps, looking out over the whole of the main campus remembering how we would sit on the steps for HOURS in school. That's where you'd meet people -- "I'll meet you on the steps after Lit Hum..." -- and that's where we sunbathed and had snowball fights and watched open air concerts and signed up for classes and everything. You could walk over to the steps all by yourself at almost any time of the day and you'd probably find people you knew to sit down and waste time with. People brought their dogs and their toddlers to the steps -- especially visiting Chinese scholars, several of whom I saw today.
As I was sitting there a tour of prospective students walked by. The tour guide said..."These are the steps. To many of you these would look like ordinary steps, but to Columbia students these steps are our Urban Beach...." She was absolutely right.
After wasting time on the steps I went to the Columbia University bookstore and was reminded why Columbia is such a fabulous institution. The section devoted to course books was where the action was -- there were the same editions of the Iliad, and the Decameron, and Euripides, and Aeschylus, and Herodotus, and Shakespeare that we all had to read. Some of them were newer editions but they still had the same covers and everything. Columbia was fabulous at the intellectual thing -- everyone I knew was seriously into his or her classes and no-one was denigrated for intellectual curiosity (which is much more than I can say for law school or even many people at Covington). At Columbia, your "cool factor" was calculated by how smart you were and how many difficult and/or obscure classes you took. The most popular library was the East Asian library, with wood-paneled walls and books in the original Tibetan, etc., lining the walls. Behind that was the Architecture library, with fabulous engineering drawings on the walls and architectural models of famous building set about, etc. It wasn't until I left NYC that I realized the most university's have only one undergraduate library -- Columbia had one for every department, PLUS the massive main library. If it was raining and you couldn't sit on the steps, you met in a library. When I first went to Duke's main undergraduate library later when I was in law school, I couldn't believe how puny it was and how many things it didn't have, and how the students despised it. At Columbia, we LOVED the libraries.... The other great thing about the Columbia bookstore is that when you go to the "Columbia Authors" section you see row upon row of wonderful things.....Sigh.
Then it was time to get back on the subway and go back and catch my train - the Acela this time. The trip back was fast, and rainy and I was in the Quiet Car (Amtrak enforced no-cell-phone zone, second car behind loco on every train) so I promptly fell asleep and slept until New Carrollton.
End result of trip is I am trying to figure out why on earth I ever left New York and what can I possibly do to get back there. Also, am comparing interesting, accessible stimulating NYC to superficial, soporific San Francisco and am wondering why anybody would ever leave the West Side for the West Coast. So, project for the summer -- become independently wealthy in the blink of an eye, buy large penthouse and quit job . . . .
posted by Anonymous @ 9:03 AM
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