Pushing the Season
During this first trip to NYC in over 6 months, we are staying at the Cornell Club at 44th Street and Fifth Avenue. All the university clubs (except, of course, The University Club, which is further up Fifth Avenue) are on 44th Street between Vanderbilt and 6th Avenue (Avenue of the Americas, for you tourists). There are many notable attractions very close to here, but one of my favorites is Bryant Park. That is the park right behind the New York Public Library, you know, the one with the lions that guard the front door on Fifth Avenue and where Jake Gyllenhaal holed up in during the big freeze in The Day After Tomorrow. What I like so much about Bryant Park besides its proximity to both the Library and 42nd Street is the fact that it seems to me to be the classiest park in New York. I know lots of people love Central Park and that the supposed exclusivity of Gramercy Park (I can get you a key to that for $500, so not really so exclusive) appeals to some, but I have always liked Bryant Park for its similarity to the prettiest parks in London. It seems so civilized with its green tables and chairs all around it.
When I first came to live in New York in the mid-70’s, Bryant Park as well as many of the city parks, was suffering from the City fiscal crisis. Like Union Square, Bryant Park was rife with used needles from all the drug addicts. It was not a place you wanted to hang around. That all started to change in the 80s as the City revived itself. In those days, the W.R. Grace building on 42nd Street swooping skyward was one of the prettiest buildings in the City and by the end of that decade, the park was completely overhauled as the Library buried its stacks underneath it and gave the City an excuse to redesign the park above. That did so much for reviving the park that it became an important venue and someone decided that Bryant Park Grill should be built adjacent to the back of the Library and overlooking the park with its 25-foot high windows that make the structure look like a big greenhouse, a nod to the historic Chrystal Palace that graced the spot in the early Nineteenth Century until it burned down.
Bryant Park holds a particularly special place in my heart for an unusual reason. In 1998 I won an HBO story contest. I had seen an ad for the contest in The New Yorker the year before. It was billed as a call for real-life stories about the subway that was being produced by Rosie Perez under the auspicious of HBO. At the time, HBO had its offices in the W.R. Grace building, and they had been convinced by Perez to run the contest to generate true stories from real New Yorkers. The contest offered one year’s worth of tokens for the winning stories, which then might be used to make an HBO movie. I happened to have a train story, so I submitted it and promptly forgot about it for the better part of a year. Then one day I got a registered letter that told me I MIGHT be a winner of the contest and that to be considered I would have to sign away my rights by signing a waiver and returning it. I did that and then heard nothing for months again. Then, one day, on a lark, I called HBO and asked for the producer of Subway Stories. I was put through to an Assistant Producer, so I asked her if my story had won. SHe asked me for the title and I gave her the name I had put on the story, which was Financial Litterbug. She didn’t recognize the name and asked what it was about. When I told her, she said, “Oh, sure, that’s The 5:24.” Since the train I had described in the story was the 5:14 (as in a.m.) I assumed they had, for some strange and inexplicable reason, changed it by 10 minutes. I asked if it was being made into a movie and she said, “Oh, yeah, they are filming it right now with Jerry Stiller and Steve Zahn.”
Now, this young woman may have been immune to the whole make-a-movie thing, but I certainly was not and I just about swallowed my tie. I asked if I could go to the set and she just laughed and said no as she hung up. I didn’t even get to ask where my token prize was.
Then, after a few more pages on the calendar came off, I got a series of “emergency” calls from HBO. When I finally connected, the Assistant Producer, who had apparently been now assigned as my handler, asked me to come over to their offices to do a few interviews in advance of the launch of the film on HBO TV. They wanted me to come over to watch my segment of the 10-skit show and do the interviews. As a prize for complying, they dangled the invitation to the premier, which they told me would be be held on the big screen one summer night at Bryant Park in a few weeks. I agreed and went over to do my duty. That visit alone is an entire story, but let’s jump to the Bryant Park screening night.
Imagine being a guy who hadn’t ever planned to live in New York City for more than a few years, finding himself still there after 20+ years, having written a story about the subway, and then having that story made into an HBO movie that was now appearing on a summer night on a big screen at Bryant Park. Yes, it was a very special night spent hob-nobbing with Rosie Perez, Greg Hines and both Stiller and Mira. That made me think of Bryant Park in a very special way, a way that has stayed with me ever since. When I think of my non-business relationship with New York City, it revolves around the South Street Seaport, Union Square, Gramercy Park, and especially Bryant Park.
In the past 25 years since that wonderful night, Bryant Park has only gotten nicer and nicer. Whenever we have a holiday gathering for any holiday, Bryant Park Grill is a top candidate for us and I am always game to go there. It has nothing to do with the food, which is fine, but everything to do with the memories of the place.
So, today Kim and I had my daughter Carolyn, hubby John and my sweet granddaughters Charlotte and Evelyn for lunch at Bryant Park Grill. What we hadn’t realized is that the Bryant Park Holiday Market and skating rink, which we have been to many times during the holidays, has decided all on its own that the holidays now start the week before Halloween. Time was when that all happened after Thanksgiving. Then, it wandered forward through November, getting earlier and earlier. And now it seems that the Christmas season starts in late October before the Village even gets to have its Halloween Parade or Macy’s gets to have its Thanksgiving Day Parade (which, by the way, goes right past Bryant Park).
I’m not sure where this all ends, but pushing the season seems to have crossed enough lines in the sand at this point that maybe the holiday market will soon just become the Bryant Park Year-Round Market. I guess this means we never have to take down our holiday decorations either…..