This was not the Sunday I planned to have
May. 3rd, 2010 01:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
healingmirthSaturday night when I went to bed, I had sort of vague plans that I might go running in the morning. Maybe go to the grocery store since I appear to be out of vegetables. Probably clear out some of the DVR backlog.
When I woke up on Sunday, I thought maybe I'd go see The Losers.
So obviously, what I ended up doing was buying a last-minute ticket to see American Idiot again, spending a fair amount of time standing in Times Square looking at either the ABC News ticker's blurb about Times Square or the anti-nuke march to the UN, and discovering that one of my favorite chain restaurants from LA has two locations in New York.
I realize how spoiled I am. I do. I used to do a much better job of paying all that forward. I did an excellent job of it for probably 5 years, and it's been going steadily downhill ever since.
I am also sort of starting to understand why it is that so many people live near New York. Someone's still going to have to explain Los Angeles to me, though. I get Calfornia, I just don't get why anyone would subject themselves to LA.
On the train in, some guy said something to the effect of "this car is reserved for people going to the peace rally, please move to the next car." Since I wasn't all that attached to my seat and there were three more cars, I just moved back, and even got a seat to myself for my effort. When I got off the train, I was stuck behind a wall of (suburban, hippie-looking, white) people from that car, most of them toting handmade signs. One said "war is a capitalist punishment" but none of the other slogans stand out in my memory.
Having accomplished my escape from suburbia and broken free from the protest herd, I bought a scone from someplace-other-than-Starbucks and wandered my way down 44th, this time with 100% fewer people in kilts. I picked up my ticket, and then headed around the end of the block to hide in McDonald's (not ideal, but preferable to buying a plastic bottle of something) and drink something with ice in it to escape the early-afternoon heat.
While I sat there, legitimately reading something on my phone and pointedly not making eye contact with anyone, a big guy with a bunch of tattoos and union t-shirt ate his lunch and stared at me. For ten minutes. I can't remember the last time someone in New York made eye contact with me more than once unless they were panhandling or selling something, but he wasn't ever not, when I looked up.
The show was as good as I remembered in the good parts, and better in the worse ones. More about that elsewhere.
On the way back across Time Square, I had the thought that I wanted to walk back on 42nd instead of 44th again, and found an anti-nuke protest had the same idea on their way to the UN.
For some reason, I have a hard time remembering that the UN is on the edge of Manhattan. I always think of it as being vaguely headquartered in Europe, somewhere, even though I'd know the answer if someone asked.
I don't know whether this was the same protest that the suburbanites were travelling to attend. Half the signs seemed to be in kanji or inexpertly translated English, and at least the section of the march I saw was predominantly ethnically Japanese people.
Because I couldn't cross where I wanted, to go to The Gap (not that I need to go to the Times Square Gap, but it was right there and might've headed off a shopping trip elsewhere at some point) I ended up going around, down 7th Ave several blocks to get to the end of the march. On my way back up Broadway, I skirted around the proselytizers whose flock was being diminished by the people who couldn't cross 42nd. As it turns out, I didn't make it to The Gap anyway, because food happened.
I am totally a sucker for regional chains when I travel to places I used to live. Souplantation/Sweet Tomatoes, Jack in the Box (sourdough jack! curly fries!) and In 'n' Out are probably the top on my list. I can add Waffle House to those now that I'm out of the south. Baja Fresh Mexican Grill was the closest restaurant to campus to the west. We ate there...a lot. I am a little saddened by how excited I was to see the sign on Broadway. And considering that Baja, like the Gap, was totally cut off from the Times Square foot traffic, I can justify being a chain-store sucker by saying that spending my money there was my capitalist good deed for the day.
Once I had dinner in hand a clear a path back to Grand Central, the rest of the day was uneventful.
Last month when I went into the city I saw a guy carrying a sign asking for pot money. Last week, I saw someone panhandling with a cat. A cat in a sweater, even, pretty healthy looking for all that, and eating and drinking, just hanging out on 5th Avenue, as you do. Sunday, I walked past a guy holding a cardboard sign that said "buy me a beer." I can't help but feel that the cleaner, shinier Times Square of the past 15 years even extends to the panhandlers, like there's a screening process that you can only have your hand out in Manhattan if you have a gimmick. Or maybe the city is actually providing services to all of the indigent New Yorkers in the midst of record homelessness in the city, and no one else needs to beg to eat.
When I woke up on Sunday, I thought maybe I'd go see The Losers.
So obviously, what I ended up doing was buying a last-minute ticket to see American Idiot again, spending a fair amount of time standing in Times Square looking at either the ABC News ticker's blurb about Times Square or the anti-nuke march to the UN, and discovering that one of my favorite chain restaurants from LA has two locations in New York.
I realize how spoiled I am. I do. I used to do a much better job of paying all that forward. I did an excellent job of it for probably 5 years, and it's been going steadily downhill ever since.
I am also sort of starting to understand why it is that so many people live near New York. Someone's still going to have to explain Los Angeles to me, though. I get Calfornia, I just don't get why anyone would subject themselves to LA.
On the train in, some guy said something to the effect of "this car is reserved for people going to the peace rally, please move to the next car." Since I wasn't all that attached to my seat and there were three more cars, I just moved back, and even got a seat to myself for my effort. When I got off the train, I was stuck behind a wall of (suburban, hippie-looking, white) people from that car, most of them toting handmade signs. One said "war is a capitalist punishment" but none of the other slogans stand out in my memory.
Having accomplished my escape from suburbia and broken free from the protest herd, I bought a scone from someplace-other-than-Starbucks and wandered my way down 44th, this time with 100% fewer people in kilts. I picked up my ticket, and then headed around the end of the block to hide in McDonald's (not ideal, but preferable to buying a plastic bottle of something) and drink something with ice in it to escape the early-afternoon heat.
While I sat there, legitimately reading something on my phone and pointedly not making eye contact with anyone, a big guy with a bunch of tattoos and union t-shirt ate his lunch and stared at me. For ten minutes. I can't remember the last time someone in New York made eye contact with me more than once unless they were panhandling or selling something, but he wasn't ever not, when I looked up.
The show was as good as I remembered in the good parts, and better in the worse ones. More about that elsewhere.
On the way back across Time Square, I had the thought that I wanted to walk back on 42nd instead of 44th again, and found an anti-nuke protest had the same idea on their way to the UN.
For some reason, I have a hard time remembering that the UN is on the edge of Manhattan. I always think of it as being vaguely headquartered in Europe, somewhere, even though I'd know the answer if someone asked.
I don't know whether this was the same protest that the suburbanites were travelling to attend. Half the signs seemed to be in kanji or inexpertly translated English, and at least the section of the march I saw was predominantly ethnically Japanese people.
Because I couldn't cross where I wanted, to go to The Gap (not that I need to go to the Times Square Gap, but it was right there and might've headed off a shopping trip elsewhere at some point) I ended up going around, down 7th Ave several blocks to get to the end of the march. On my way back up Broadway, I skirted around the proselytizers whose flock was being diminished by the people who couldn't cross 42nd. As it turns out, I didn't make it to The Gap anyway, because food happened.
I am totally a sucker for regional chains when I travel to places I used to live. Souplantation/Sweet Tomatoes, Jack in the Box (sourdough jack! curly fries!) and In 'n' Out are probably the top on my list. I can add Waffle House to those now that I'm out of the south. Baja Fresh Mexican Grill was the closest restaurant to campus to the west. We ate there...a lot. I am a little saddened by how excited I was to see the sign on Broadway. And considering that Baja, like the Gap, was totally cut off from the Times Square foot traffic, I can justify being a chain-store sucker by saying that spending my money there was my capitalist good deed for the day.
Once I had dinner in hand a clear a path back to Grand Central, the rest of the day was uneventful.
Last month when I went into the city I saw a guy carrying a sign asking for pot money. Last week, I saw someone panhandling with a cat. A cat in a sweater, even, pretty healthy looking for all that, and eating and drinking, just hanging out on 5th Avenue, as you do. Sunday, I walked past a guy holding a cardboard sign that said "buy me a beer." I can't help but feel that the cleaner, shinier Times Square of the past 15 years even extends to the panhandlers, like there's a screening process that you can only have your hand out in Manhattan if you have a gimmick. Or maybe the city is actually providing services to all of the indigent New Yorkers in the midst of record homelessness in the city, and no one else needs to beg to eat.
