Bleecker Street
The concert was on Saturday, so Friday was a free day. We started the day by sleeping late, and then relaxing over coffee (there was a Starbucks just a block away). I went out to take a few pictures of the neighborhood.
Bleecker Street
Across the street, the entire block was one nightclub after another:
Peculier Pub (not misspelled)
Wicked Willy's
The Bitter End
I was quite impressed to discover that we were staying directly across the street from The Bitter End (w). It's a very famous club, and if you check the Wikipedia article, you'll see an impressively long list of famous acts that have played there. We planned to visit one night, but alas, it never happened.
We then went out to Chinatown for dim sum. And at this point, allow me to digress for a few paragraphs: As I mentioned, my grandmother lived in New York when I was growing up. The apartment she lived in was right across the street from Chinatown, and she became friends with a pair of sisters, Nancy and Betty, who ran a gift shop in Chinatown called Wing On Wo. The shop - which is the oldest store in Chinatown - is still in business, and is now run by Nancy's granddaughter.
Sometime in the 80's - I don't remember the exact year - Terry and I spent a week in New York City. By that time, my grandmother had moved to California, but she still owned her apartment - actually a co-op - in New York. So we had a free place to stay. While we were there, we visited Wing On Wo, and Nancy took us out to lunch for dim sum (w). Now, for those of you who may not be familiar with dim sum, a few words of explanation might be in order. Dim sum consists of a variety of small plates - things like egg rolls, shu mai, dumplings, potstickers, etc. Instead of ordering from a menu, waitresses roam the restaurant with carts, each with a variety of dishes, and you ask for what you want. Experienced customers don't even ask, they just point.
Well, at that time of my life, I had never had dim sum, and I wasn't aware of the protocol. So I'm sitting there waiting for a menu - and suddenly, there's food on the table, and I didn't know how it got there. But of course, I dug in, and by the time I had finished the first things that had landed on the table, even more things had shown up. It took me a while to figure out what was going on.
Anyway, back to the present. So Terry and Guillermo and I wanted to go for dim sum, and we were trying to remember where we had been that time so many years ago. Terry remembered that it was a very short walk from the store, maybe even next door. So we ended up at a restaurant called Ping, right next door to Wing On Wo. And all I can say is that it might have been the same place, but I couldn't be sure.
I considered dropping in to Wing On Wo to say hello, but decided against it, since there's no one there any more who would remember me or my grandmother. But I did take a picture of the store from across the street:
And I asked Terry and Guillermo to wait for me for a few minutes while I went and took a nostalgic look at Grandma's old apartment building:
The red dot marks the approximate location of her apartment.
And then we spent some time meandering up Mott Street, which is the heart of Chinatown. As we walked, I noticed that Chinatown seemed to divide into two distinct sections. First there was the "touristy" section, with all the gift shops - the good, the bad, and the tacky. But after a few blocks, that gave way to a more "local" section, with lots of Chinese groceries, with sidewalk stalls loaded with all kinds of fruits and vegetables, most of which I couldn't identify. At one point, we stopped in at a Chinese bakery for some pastries. And I took this pictures of an impressive church building:
I took another picture of the church steeple, but I accidentally deleted it. I also took a picture of another impressive church building. It wasn't in Chinatown, but I don't remember where it was, so I might as well throw it in here:
I also took some pictures of something that always fascinated me when I visited New York as a young boy. You see these all over the city - openings in the sidewalk that lead to stairways leading down into basements:
Underground New York
I sometimes think there's at least as much of New York below the ground as there is above it.
I also took a picture of something else that caught my eye - buildings with water towers on the roof:
As we walked along, we passed a storefront advertising foot massages, and on the spur of the moment, Terry decided that she wanted one. So Guillermo and I left her there, and walked on back to our apartment. We rested up for a little while, and then went out to catch a Lyft ride back to pick up Terry. And that was when I realized that I never got the address of the place where we had left her! Thank goodness for Google Street View - we were able to remember about what block we were on, and what side of the street the shop was on, and I used Street View to scan down the street until I spotted the place.
After we collected Terry, we headed uptown to meet up with several of our fellow choir members for an evening on the town. A group of us had bought tickets to see a show on Broadway - well, 45th Street, actually, just off Times Square. On the drive, I noticed a familiar building rising above all the others:
The show we saw was "Come From Away" (w). I'm sure most of you remember how, after the 9/11 attacks, U.S. airspace was shut down for several days, and many flights that were on the way to U.S. airports had to be diverted to other locations. Come From Away tells the story of the small town of Gander, Newfoundland (w), and the passengers from 38 U.S.-bound flights that were stranded there. If this show ever comes to your neighborhood, do yourselves a favor and go see it. It was incredible. I was moved to tears several times.
Here are a couple of pictures of the theater:
After the show, I took a picture of the theaters lining 45th Street:
...and then we all went across the street to the Marriott Marquis hotel, where we rode glass elevators:
...waaaaay up to the View, a rotating restaurant high above the city, for drinks and a late buffet dinner. The interesting thing was that the buffet itself was on the stationary part of the floor, with the result that every time I went back to the buffet, it was a longer walk! And eventually, I started walking back around the other way - and then the walk kept getting shorter. Here's a picture of the view from the View:
And then we went back to the apartment and tried to get some sleep, in spite of the very noisy party going on in the apartment upstairs.