New York - December 2006

I was in New York City over x-mas weekend for a quasi-family reunion. To the extent that I basically had one free day for myself, on Saturday I eschewed going to an art museum and instead took an extended walk through the lower part of Manhattan.

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Starting out from Gramercy, I headed through the East Village, Lower East Side, Chinatown, Little Italy, SoHo, and the Village, then took Broadway all the way down to Battery Park, then back up north past Ground Zero and to a family dinner at a relative's apartment in Tribeca.

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The East Village definitely had the most independent, non-chain restaurants and bars and would be a very cool place to live I think. The most enduring image from Chinatown was a block which had a bunch of fresh fish shops, the smells accentuating the sight of a wide variety of both typical and unusual seafood for sale. Picked up a CD of lounge music at a record shop in the Village. I also saw Café Reggio's, which is referenced in the original "Shaft" movie of the early '70s (as well as "Walk to Reggio's" on the soundtrack). There were a lot of people in Battery Park, and it was very cool to see the Statue of Liberty (seeing an iconic symbol in person always is).

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I hadn't really desired to check out Ground Zero, but since it ended up being on my route I did walk by. I could not help thinking that the giant, gaping gray hole in the ground is a mass murder site, the result of pointless acts that obliterated a symbol of New York whose absence is still acutely felt.

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Though I wore a winter hat and cloth gloves, during the day I could get away with wearing a long-sleeve t-shirt over a short-sleeve one, as the temperature was in the 50s.

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No trip to New York is complete without dining on a slice of pizza and getting a hot dog from a cart on the street (preferably multiple times). The slice should be plain cheese, in order to make for a level playing field in one's comparison of various slices. I had my first pizza slice of the trip at Bleeker Street Pizza in the Village (at 7^th Avenue); a definite thumbs up. The next day I had a slice at Fat Sal's on West 14^th Street, which really hit the spot and wins best slice of my visit.