AMTIFY™

Manhattan, New York

Musings on a Trip to "The City"

In the old days I took the train into Manhattan and back. Every day.

I drove to the station, parked the car, walked to the platform, and got on the train. An hour and twenty minutes in, an hour and twenty minutes back. Rain, snow, heat, cold. Every day. I read the paper and some stuff in my obligatory briefcase, took a nap. No devices to play with, this was back in the dark ages.

I never liked it much, but it was part of the price of rural living, so I traded time for woods and gardens. I wasn’t alone, many of my friends did the commute, and between them, the train friends created on the 6:18 every morning and then on the 8:28 every night, the routine went by fast, invisibly, leaving only a deeply entrenched dislike of traveling into Manhattan by any means whatsoever.

A few weeks ago, I took the same train into The City, (not the 6:18 am, but it might literally have been the same train…), but without carrying the planned distractions or knowing the people around me. It provided a different ride, defined by the experience of actually watching the changing backdrops as the train rolled through Connecticut, Westchester County and The Bronx, (not Bronx, The Bronx) on its route to The City.

Looking out the train window coming from the northern suburbs, you pass through areas and neighborhoods that were as different as night and day. In the suburban areas the tracks followed the business districts. Then you reached The Bronx, where the elevated view provided a long stretch of old apartment buildings.

All old but some still old, covered with graffiti and years of neglect, balconies crowded with clotheslines, broken furniture, and dead plants, alternating with refurbished buildings looking brand new, balconies filled with gas grills, patio furniture, and blooming flower boxes.

The side streets were lined with attached houses and local stores. Groceries, laundromats, hardware stores, and local churches. All of them looked up at the elevated train tracks and all of them endured the rumble of Metro-North and Amtrack trains passing through at all hours.

Leaving The Bronx and crossing the Park Avenue Railroad Bridge over the Harlem River, the train entered Manhattan. At first glance it looked a lot like The Bronx, each building looking the same as the one beside it but taller. The attached houses on the side streets were now called brownstones, named for the stone they were built from. But the commercial stores on these side streets were the same, with a few local restaurants added. The scene brought to mind old photographs of Harlem.

Park Avenue Bridge

As the train moved south along Park Avenue, you could see the imperfection meld into the beauty of the historic street. First chain-link fences surrounded concrete playgrounds. There were always holes cut in the fences so kids could get in after the parks closed. Basketball hoops hung crooked from aging backboards. Graffiti covered walls, sidewalks, and just about anything that didn’t move, and even a few things that did.

Then, somewhere around 90th Street, things started looking different. The same buildings became nicer. The streets became cleaner. The parks had grass instead of concrete and blacktop. The brownstones and side streets looked more welcoming.

That was also where the train disappeared underground.

I've always suspected that the good people of what Park Avenue depicts preferred not to have commuter trains rattling past their windows. It would clutter the view and would certainly lower property values.

Once underground, the train entered a maze of tunnels that eventually spread into nearly seventy tracks and dozens of platforms. The passengers, packed together but barely noticing one another, poured out into the vast space of Grand Central Terminal.

Grand Central Terminal

Even after all these years, Grand Central is impressive. The huge concourse, the marble, the soaring ceiling with its constellations painted overhead. Commuters rarely look up, the tourists stop and stare. The tourists have it right, it's remarkable.

Like ants, people moved with purpose. Some headed for the subway. Others went straight to the streets surrounding the concourse. Many made a beeline for the taxi stands. The regulars knew exactly where they were going, the tourists were befuddled. Perhaps that’s why they stared at the ceiling.

Manhattan has always fascinated me. It's a huge city on a surprisingly small island, thirteen miles long and less than two and a half miles wide. Nearly two million people live there, and millions more arrive every day for work. Yet somehow it all functions.

Food carts line the sidewalks. Street musicians play for tips. Construction crews hammer away. Delivery trucks double-park. Somebody is always honking. Somebody is always late. And it's busy. Always so busy.

Among the people who live there are every socioeconomic group imaginable. Some sleep on the streets. Others own apartments worth untold millions of dollars. Some spend their entire lives within a few city blocks, others have jobs that bring them to distant boroughs, others travel the country and the world. The contrasts are endless. The wealthiest of the wealthy live alongside the poorest of the poor. Success and failure, ambition and despair, greed and generosity all occupy the same few square miles.

Manhattan can be frustrating. It can be exhausting. It can be overwhelming. And yet, every time I go back, I understand why people love it. It has everything, all world class. Museums, Broadway shows, Central Park, collection of old to new architecture, everything. For all of its noise, all of its crowds and all of its contradictions, the electricity, the diversity, and the energy you can palpably feel, makes it one of the most fascinating places on earth.

And probably still the most exciting city in the world.

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JUST THROWING OUT SOME FATHER'S DAY THOUGHTS...