Christmas in NYC

Flatiron Building

"It will be like this until after New Year's."

The resigned and weary words of my longtime city dwelling friend as we gazed out the window of our restaurant at a stalled 9th Avenue at midnight Saturday.  A constant state of Black Friday frenzy from Thanksgiving until January 2nd.  Times Square, theaters, restaurants, department stores--all literally clogged with people to the point of them oozing out and more dramatically at times being birthed from doorways onto the sidewalks.  Hundreds of people inside squeezing around awkwardly placed Christmas display tables that literally prevent and trap shoppers from actually shopping.  There is a point of saturation not observed during Christmas time when the displays feel more like barricades rather than lovely things to look at.

Sex and the City view

Stylish wreaths becoming a world class city

But for two days we were ready for anything the crowds could dish out because we have been shopping together for nearly 30 years and well, we've got sharp elbows.  Ally and I flew in for a quick weekend to our respective hosts, the uncles for her, the ladies for me.  Such a seamless trip that I worked most of the day Friday and she went to school and yet both of us were dining and in my case wining by 9:30pm in Manhattan.  All thanks to a direct flight from Madison to LaGuardia that is beyond simple in this day of body scanners and yellow alerts.  Must not be a terrorist preferred route.

me and the birthday girl

Coffee together, our collective favorite part of the day together when we can laze over our cups and catch up on our news in our PJ's.  The marathon shopping day began at 10am and ended at 6pm, six miles or 16,000 steps according to the pedometer of the middle aged. Rockefeller Center, Saks, The Strand, Fishs Eddy, ABC, Union Square Christmas Market, Mario Batali's Eataly (too crowded to eat but not to smell, touch and see).  Pooped out finally at a CVS near Union Square.

Rockefeller Center.
The tree's behind us but you'll have to take my word for it.

They have always been my personal shoppers going all the way back to Uptown Square and Filene's Basement--the real one.  And it's only the rarest of friends that can pick a fragrance for you and I would trust any of them to do that.  Whatever makes them able to do that also gives them the ability to combine Lillet and gin in a perfect martini and dates, dolmades and cheese into a delicious appetizer plate.  I need a recipe to work it, but that's just not their style.  They are all artists and my best friends and no wordsmithing can describe my love for them.

My manager, stylist and agent in deep negotiations about
what direction my fragrance needs to move

Blood orange martinis, Sprite and a Bourbon Bloody Mary at the Vynyl Diner
in Hells Kitchen.  Great place for a bite to eat after the theater.  The blood
theme relates to our show, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson.

But so as not to end on a treacly note, I've got to just make a plea to the regular New Yorkers who have felt it necessary to dip their fingers far too deep into the Dippity Doo cosmetic surgery jar.  For Jesus sake, how much collagen can a face take?  The thing of it is there's a growing army of women and men with faces altered into cartoonish and ghoulish scowls as if that's the new normal for people of a little older certain age than me, wearing clothes off the rack and shopping for lettuce.   It is not a look, people!  And I can't help thinking it's just more of the same from a generation and a half that refuses to let go of their youth.   Maybe at your granddaughter's wedding you are the rocking-est granny in the photo but once you go to animate that look of plastic puffiness punctuated by padded cheekbones and misshapen lips it's all a bit grotesque.  When regular folks shopping at Duane Reade resemble Joan Rivers, we've got problems as a society.

Some people like that.

A whirlwind girls' weekend in New York for self-indulgent and debauched purposes turns into an educational and emotional history lesson linking me to my ancestors.  I hate when that happens.

The weather was picture perfect--9/11 perfect upon my morbid reflection-- as our ferry set sail for the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.   We naively intended to see it all in half a day.  A most absurd miscalculation.  Darryl the tour guide, fond of leaning way into our faces repeating words emphatically like Henny Youngman and snapping them like rubber bands with his sing-song New Yawk accent, knew better.  He ditched us at the Statue of Liberty with directions back to the subway and a Yankee cap full of funny memories.

A room with a view

Ellis Island restored today

"This building once housed an aquarium.  An a---quari----um....WITH FISH."
"It's a chandelier.  SOME PEOPLE LIKE THAT."
"Woolworth was photographed surrounded by bags of nickels and dimes....FIVES AND DIMES."

Ellis Island was an unprecedented marvel of people moving, processing 12 million people from 1892 to 1954 and turning away only 2% of those people for basically only communicable disease, criminality and of course, being craze-uh.  The origin of the open door policy it seems, but for every 98 people who made it through, two did not.  Grandmothers, fathers and even children returned to their countries of origin while their families remained.  It's very emotional reading and hearing the very personal and heart wrenching stories, looking at little shoes, personal effects and letters, bits of scrawl on preserved walls where those who couldn't stay left their only and final mark in America.

The Great Hall 

As I walked the Great Hall on Ellis Island I could feel relief of reaching land after days or weeks at sea.  I get queasy in my kayak.  I could feel fear of not knowing English and bewildered by benevolent barking government officers.  I could feel excitement and I could feel pain as a loved one was taken out of line for further scrutiny.  A child, a parent, a grandparent separated from their families, potentially forever.  These people were my family and they were your family, too, and they were brave and strong and resilient and in many cases so desperate to escape persecution and poverty at home that they made this unthinkable leap of faith...or maybe for them it was just a leap.  Live free or die.  Freedom from persecution and abject poverty was a dream made reality and its profound effect stayed with them.   Sixty years later, as these Americans recounted their families' journeys so long ago, they were as emotional as if it were yesterday and they still couldn't find the words to describe the feeling of being free for the first time.

Little Miss America

In a political and social climate of suspicion and intolerance for immigration and a paranoia even toward those that would come here and pay taxes and do the jobs we ourselves refuse to do, I know what I know which is that the 12 million people who streamed here from 1892 to 1954, aided and assisted and nursed to health in many cases by our own government, are the real founding fathers of my modern American life.  Thanks to my Uncle Barney and his brothers among others.

Ok, we had some fun, too.

Katz's Deli

The birthday girl celebrates pastrami

When worlds collide....

in a wonderful way....

Fun in Chinatown

Thanks Mayor Bloomberg for the cafe tables in Times Square to sit and have my morning coffee

Walking the Highline with my brothers-in-law, getting all Gehry up in here

Central Park

John Lennon's birthday vigil and tribute band, Central Park

All in a day in NYC