Crusty’s New York Adventure

So why am I sitting in a restaurant between Rachel Maddow and Kent Jones, and no one’s throwing punches?  That requires a little history.

When I was a kid, I used to take old newspaper photos, cut ‘n’ paste them (with actual scissors and real paste) onto typewriter paper, then type up accompanying satirical comments, all for the amusement of friends–a kind of early, self-made “Onion”.  My efforts were largely a success, at least in the limited venue of the Elkhart, IN, public school system.  Hell, the faculty hated them, so to me that positively shouted, “You’re doing it right!”  I grew up and went on to other things, but the love of that particular kind of “fake-news satire” stuck.

Six years ago, health difficulties pushed me into an early retirement–not entirely unwillingly, I confess–and I found myself with a wealth of free time on my hands.  Being of a political bent (in more ways than one), I tuned into the then-new Air America Radio, and soon was pleased to hear someone reading, of all things, satirical fake-news, with the added touch of a Walter-Winchell-esque voice styling.  I had found Kent Jones, one of the wits behind AAR’s “Unfiltered” radio program, along with Lizz Winstead, Chuck D and a previously-unknown news-reader named Rachel Maddow.

Now anyone with more than a passing knowledge of AAR knows that it went through many shark-jumping episodes before finally going belly-up.  One of these involved Winstead and Chuck D moving on, and Rachel getting her own cleverly-named “Rachel Maddow Show”, backed up by Kent as a sort of “pop-culture” observer and commentator.  For reasons not entirely clear even to me, I soon became an active, or overactive, blogger on her adjunct website, as did a handful of other people whom were also following Rachel’s career.  Things went along swimmingly, in that we all clicked personally, to the point of fast and genuine (if electronic) friendship; and when Rachel once made a sort of off-handed comment about some information she had received from her “science advisory board”, four of us readily and without being asked took on the ad hoc mantel, dubbing ourselves thusly (even though only one of us is, in grownup life, an actual sciencey-scientist).  So it was that the Rachel Maddow Show Science Advisory Board was born.

Flash forward to the present, to find Dr Maddow with her own much-deserved TV show, along with her irrepressible sidekick, Mr Jones, and the SAB still going strong.  Through a series of intense negotiations and several often-bewildering (to me) conference calls, facilitated by our illustrious Chair, Madame Chemgirl, we (the board members, and others) were all finally able to get together in NYC–to actually meet in person–with the added hope of having dinner with Rachel and Kent.  I say “hope” simply because the news business being as fluid as it is, people in the profession might understandably be called away at a moment’s notice to deal with new crises, or other opportunities as they arise.  Case in point:  Rachel has been to the Gulf Coast at least twice now since the latest BP crime, and just a few days before our scheduled potential meeting she was in LA doing Maher’s show.  The tension mounted; would she be back in time? wouldn’t she?  should I avoid gassy foods a full week ahead of time?

I arrived in NYC–well, technically Newark–very, very early on Saturday, where I was met by Chemgirl, who was to be my gracious (and extremely patient) hostess for the next few days.  And for those few days, under her more-than-capable guidance, I was to see a good portion of Manhattan–possibly the most incredible urban structure on Earth, something far more esthetically rich and vibrant than anything Paolo Soleri could ever imagine.

A disclaimer is probably in order here.  I’m a born-and-bred small-town boy, and as such not much of a fan of big cities.  I’ve been to a few–Chicago (many times), Louisville (spent a year there one  day, badda-bing), Cincinnati, New Orleans, San Francisco, Seattle, Bangkok–and with the exception of the Big Easy, went away unimpressed:  too many people, too much pushing and shoving, noise, traffic, and no easy way out; crime and soot and soulless towers of steel and glass, with the greater share of the denizens scurrying about down below.  In short, a warren of murderously insane rats, and far too many of them.

I was soon to change my mind…about New York, anyway.  I think I can say in all honesty that the Borough of Manhattan is something entirely different from any other over-built conglomeration I’ve ever experienced.  It’s as if the most dynamic elements of the vast multi-ethnic mélange that is American culture had been shoehorned into a couple dozen insular square miles, then left to develop on its own in a peculiar hot-house of architectural wonders, incongruous juxtapositions and historic import, to finally produce at some point a sort of “population-density phase-change”.  Just as a solid becomes a liquid at a certain temperature, then a gas, then a plasma, so might a huge city, under certain unique circumstances,  shift in some nebulous but very real way, becoming instead a human phenomena, something so different from just one more “big city” that it’s almost impossible to describe, yet when witnessed, equally impossible to deny.  It’s not for nothing, nor is it just another example of typically human provincial pride, that NYC is known as “America’s City”; it is, in my humble opinion, the concentrated wealth of the American experience, distilled and ready for imbibing, 24/7/365.  “The City That Never Sleeps”, indeed; hell, it barely pauses to take a breath.

For example, in four days time I:  walked through Central Park, down Broadway (with its famous Theater District), Fifth Avenue, Madison Avenue, into and through Times Square (once at 12:30 AM, and it was still blasting), and past Radio City Music Hall, Carnegie Hall and the Chelsea Hotel (where apparently every well-known writer, musician, artist and hog-caller in the world has stayed, and occasionally died); saw Macy’s, Grant’s Tomb (and found out who was buried there), and the Bette Midler “Adopt-a-Highway sign on Maj Deegan Highway, the Bronx; visited Ellis Island, the lobby of the Empire State Building, the Strand bookstore (the proud possessor of a room so full of hoary tomes that it nearly reeks of leather and fine old paper) and the Penn Station/Madison Square Garden complex; rode the subway numerous times, where I participated in an adventure that combined live entertainment (including, of course, a hopping hairy guy in the frilly dress) with an olfactory milieu that must be experienced to be believed, let alone described.  We also visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art, specifically the Egyptian section (where I’m afraid this old Nilophile talked my hostess’ ear off for a good solid two hours–I said she was patient), and the King Tut exhibit (where I talked everyone‘s ear off), as well as a basement improv comedy troop that has us all rolling in the aisles.  In short, I think I saw well over half of all the sights we’ve all seen in movies or on TV, or read about somewhere.  Indeed, it would be easier to list the number of places I’ve just mentioned with which most people, here and around the world, have not heard of.  That alone would be heady enough.

But I had been kind of expecting all that; here’s what really stunned me.  Manhattan has a resident population, according to Wikipedia, of over 1.6 million, which works out to a density averaging 70,000 per square mile…about twenty times that of Eugene/Springfield, OR, my home town.  Add all the tourists, off-island workers and just plain visitors, and that figure probably goes up to at least the 100K mark.  Yet instead of all the pushing, shoving and general ill-mannered behavior one would expect to find in a much smaller but just as packed crowd of my fellow Southern Willamette Valley denizens, Manhattanites not only would not stand right in middle of the areas of busiest foot traffic or bottlenecks just because that’s where they happened to stop, they would–automatically, without being asked–adjust their own line of travel so as not to interfere with someone else’s; all calmly and matter-of-factually, not just as a ploy to have praise heaped on them for being “thoughtful”.  “People respect each other’s space,” Kent told me, and I think he’s right.  The reason I think may be simple logistics:  it’s as if everyone–rich, poor, male, female, busy shopper or half-drunk street person–realized at some point that for anyone to function at all in this highly compact mass of humanity, everyone has to quietly, almost reflexively, facilitate the general flow…in other words, to stay out of everyone’s way.  Eugeneans, despite their much- (and largely self-) ballyhooed “friendliness”, could learn a little something of genuine thoughtfulness from the so-called “cold and rude” New Yorker.  So could the gun-nuts who parrot Heinlein’s, “An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life”, when it seems that population density may be a better–or at least lest violent–way of achieving polite social interaction (besides, the Wild West was well-armed, yet hardly mannerly–perhaps in part because it was also thinly populated?)

Sociopolitical speculation aside, however, as the picture shows, we all did finally hook up with Dr Maddow and Mr Jones, and enjoyed an evening of laughter and good camaraderie.  For that, I thank not only Dina, but the rest of the crowd:  Joyce, Debbie, Billy, Chip, Ryan, Susan and Kelly, and of course Rachel and Kent, and not just for dinner but for an unforgettable adventure in The Big Apple.  It was a trip that changed a lot of my preconceived notions, particularly about urban existence; when faced with the wonders of Manhattan, I can now see the attraction that huge metropolitan areas can exert…especially when one ends up on that final night on Bleecker Street, in Greenwich Village, scarfing down a piece of the cheesecake that New York is justly famous for.

But would I move there to live?  No way; even with all the conveniences and marvels, the weather still sucks mightily.  Despite the relatively cool weather, the humidity was almost unbearable; and having grown up in snow country, I can well imagine what winters must be like there.  So while I look forward to my next visit, I’m not in any way, shape or form seriously considering relocation.  Even if I could afford it.

Oh, and before I forget:  the hopping subway guy, in the dress.  Someone really should tell him that backless is not the way he should go, for reasons that are thankfully not apparent in this shot.