We’ve all heard about the Aboriginal tradition of young people going through a rite of passage when they come of age and go forth to explore the broader world around them but more distant than what they have known in their upbringing. Its’s a time of reflection of the soul, a return to one’s roots and family ancestry, a joyous revisiting of the wonders of the natural world. For someone like me that has spent his life in many different places, my roots are in Ithaca, Costa Rica, Wisconsin, Maine, Rome and New York City. I guess I should add Utah, which was never a primary residence for me, but 15 years of ski houses and 25+ years of motorcycle trips has made it an honorary member of the club.
At this point, I have to admit that I am more a New Yorker in terms of my roots than anything else. The simple fact is that I spent most of 45 years in Manhattan both working and living, so it gets very hard to deny that New York is my heritage and where my roots run deepest. Most non-native New Yorkers have a hard time admitting that they are from New York, but I have sort of embraced the concept because I simply never lived anywhere else long enough to compete with that 45 year history. Now that I’ve become a Californian, I don’t have any trouble saying to people out there that I’m from New York, but now that the concept of walkabout has entered my mind I’m wondering if revisiting my roots and heritage in New York City constitutes an old age walkabout.
This morning, after a long and talkative breakfast around a large round table in the Cornell Club dining room, it became obvious that the nice weather (no rain and mild temperatures) meant that we really were supposed to go out for a walk to embrace the holiday season on the bustling city sidewalks. My dislike for walking was not going to get me out of this one and even though my son Roger was nice enough to ask me if I was OK taking a walk, I explained that my recent loss of 25 pounds made me more willing to venture forth without complaining too much about the exercise. Roger had the idea that we should walk over to Times Square and see what he had read of the Caine’s Chicken store windows, which were supposed to be the best in New York. I know enough about New York to know that two long East/West blocks is not a short hike, but it did seem manageable. We set forth on 44th St. headed west to see what this year‘s holiday in New York was going to feel like. Once we realized that this was a case of social media overhype, it was off to Bryant Park, back along 42nd Street for another two long crosstown blocks. The walk totaled 2.4 miles of pavement pounding.
While the streets of New York have not changed in many ways in the last 50 years, in other ways, they tell a story of our times that is quite different from those days when I first arrived here. To begin with, what was a Bonds Clothing or Wallach’s Clothing store is now, appropriately, an Urban Outfitters. The food scene which used to be dominated by dirty water dogs (Sabrett’s Hot Dog carts) and stale pretzel vendors, is now one ethnic food stand after another with gyros, souvlaki, falafel, and Halal food, which now make up the majority of the purveyors. I also noticed in the pre-noon rush, a lot of people rushing around with carts stacked with saran wrap, covered bowls and platters of lunch food presumably being catered to various corporate offices. I’m not sure that’s such a change, except to say that in the old days, I remember, we used to have an in-house kitchen that provided all of that sort of catering and it was unusual to go outside for this sort of lunch catering. Perhaps that was a big company perspective.
One of the wealthiest companies in the world is the French company LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessey) the luxury conglomerate that has driven luxury goods and pseudo luxury goods to the moon. It is now standard operating procedure for the West African immigrants.(particularly Senegalese for some reason) to sell knock offs of every luxury item produced by LVMH and to do so from a blanket put down on any sidewalk in Midtown. They are not fooling anyone about their authenticity, but that doesn’t seem to slow down their pace of sales. Everyone wants to look rich, especially here in Manhattan. I think the street vendor on the southeast corner of 44th and Fifth is the same one who has been there for 50 years and while his product array has changed and trended more to the knock off trade, he pretty much still sells hats, gloves, scarves, and umbrellas, and seems to do well enough to afford to keep coming back day after day, rain, or shine.
On the way across town, I think I saw three Santa’s in costume of variable ornateness and one person dressed up like Buddy the Elf. People will literally wear anything at this time of year on the streets of New York. I saw one reasonably attractive young woman with a holiday sweater that read “Take Me to London” across the chest. As simple as that concept may sound, it is actually a very complex notion when splayed like a definite but opened-ended proposition on a comely young woman in Bryant Park. It was all the more intriguing since she was skating on the ice rink and therefore kept circling around with her message flashing us on every rotation. Imagine what’s being said on other sweaters that I can’t understand? You see, walking around NYC these days is a multi-cultural experience with as many different languages being spoken as exist. I would literally suggest that there was less English being spoken than anything else.
Unfortunately, many more than normal retail spaces around midtown look to be vacant this holiday season. There are no shortage of banks…they can still be found on almost every street corner, but who they serve is beyond me. To add another interesting angle to the new commercial reality of the City, I know that the storefront retail has been supplanted by the sidewalk African contingent (maybe they use the banks?), and they use storage rooms as their warehouses and maybe even their factories, but I have also discovered their head office facilities (keep that pun in mind for a moment). I went into the public bathroom on the sidewalk near Bryant Park. Luckily I only needed the urinal because all the stalls were occupied and sounding like a foreign exchange trading floor. It seems business was being done from the cans, buying, selling and negotiating in every language other than English.
Walking around New York has been quite an interesting experience this year. My walkabout has been a time of reflection of our collective soul, a return to humanity’s roots and somebody’s family ancestry (just not mine), a joyous revisiting of the wonders of the natural world as the far reaches of the world take over a world I hardly recognize any more.