Kurt Vonnegut referred to New York City as “the capital of
the world” in passing, in Palm Sunday. The United Nations is
headquartered there, so it makes sense in that regard. Immigrants came to Ellis
Island, seeing the Statue of Liberty. King Kong attacked the Empire State
Building. Terrorists brought down the World Trade Center as a symbol of
American financial power, but Wall Street still functions in New York City. Who
hasn’t heard of its five boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, and
Staten Island? Or neighborhoods like Greenwich Village, Harlem, Bed-Stuy, SoHo?
Or Central Park, Chinatown, and so on.
You can feel you are in the most important city in the world
when in New York City. As Sinatra sang, “If I can make it there, I'll make it
anywhere” in a “city that doesn't sleep.” It may not be the cleanest or safest
place on earth, but you feel like things are happening there. New music.
New ideas. New people. New technology. New adventures. I have visited New York
City eight times, and each of them was an adventure. The cast of characters
includes my family, friends, actors, comedians, musicians, artists, and
authors. I will describe them all, spending the most time on my sixth visit in
1984. I hope you enjoy reading them at least a fraction as much as I did living
them.
My first time in New York City was in February 1972 in honor
of my younger brother Nathan’s tenth birthday. I was 11, and we took the train
with our dad from Washington, DC, where we lived. (See Boys’
Trip: New York City 1972, which is a transcript of my handwritten diary of
that trip.) My second visit was during my senior year of High School. I was
editor of the Wilson High School Beacon newspaper and went with a group
of journalistic classmates to a Columbia University conference on high school
journalism. It was March of 1978, and we took the train from DC. My notes from
that trip have references to partying we somehow found time to do.
In December of 1979, I was a sophomore at Northwestern
University, at home in DC for winter break. I took the train to New York to
visit my new girlfriend’s family on Long Island. I went from the train station
to meet her at a Manhattan hotel where her father had arranged a (possibly
charity) concert by Tony Orlando and Dawn. I got to see a few songs before they
finished, including “Knock Three Times” and “Tie a Yellow Ribbon.” It was weird
because I went to see The Who the night before at the Capital Centre near DC.
At her parents’ house, her father showed me the first Sony Walkman cassette
player I had ever seen or heard of. I think he may have given it to me.
On July 6, 1981, my band, The Front Lines, played at The
Ritz in Manhattan. We were on a self-booked “East Coast tour”. You can read
about that at Strejcek.net/bands.
In July of 1983, I took a Greyhound bus to
New York City, visited my high school friend Gabriel, whose family had moved to
Brooklyn, then took the train to DC. I played The Front Lines single for
Gabriel and his younger brother Jem. Jem was impressed and/or skeptical that it
was actually my band. The band was almost history by then. In the evening, we
walked around Greenwich Village with beer cans in paper bags, which was legal
(or winked at). Concealed carry? We saw comedy elder statesman Henny Youngman
(king of the one-liner) standing outside the Comedy Cellar or some such club.
Gabriel said something to him and Henny’s retort was clever. Too bad I can’t
remember either line. Walking near Times Square, I bought counterfeit batteries
at a table on the sidewalk. It was a tourist rite of passage in NYC. To be
clear, I didn’t know the batteries were counterfeit when I bought them. I can’t
be sure this happened on that trip to the city. The last four lines sound like
a joke without a punch line.
However, my most memorable – and at my age that means
something – visit was in May of 1984. I was two years out of college. The band
I had been in had broken up. My college roommate Neil had gone to LA for a PR
job, and had returned to Evanston, having lost weight and gained a leather
jacket, driving a Volvo P1800. Roger Moore drove one in the 1960s TV show The
Saint. After some time, we both had somewhat stable jobs.
We decided to go on a road trip to New York City and
Washington, DC. We would visit two friends separately. He would stay with his
college friend Rob, and I would stay with Gabriel. We would continue to DC so I
could attend the wedding of my friend John Berger. We didn’t have lots of
vacation, so it would be a long Memorial Day weekend, leaving Tuesday night
after work, returning on Memorial Day. Three vacation days, two weekend days,
one holiday: almost a week!
However, we would not drive the P1800, but in
Neil’s Chevy Citation, handed down by his aunt. It was just as well. Neil and I
had a double date once, going in the P1800, my date and I sitting facing each
other on the back seat, which was really a shelf. It was a sporty car designed
for two, not four.
Left: Neil and his P1800, c. 1983. Right: an old Chevy Citation ad, not Neil’s blue two-door.
Tuesday, May 22, 1984:
After our respective workdays, Neil picked me up in the
Citation. I didn’t have a car. We both still lived in Evanston. We drove to the
old Thai Hut on Devon Avenue in Chicago for dinner. We wanted some spicy food
to keep us awake. We drove all night from Chicago to New York. I assume we took
turns, sleeping fitfully in shifts, chatting, listening to mix tapes on the car
cassette player.
As we approached the New York City skyline (which still had
the World Trade Center), we listened to “Feats Don’t Fail Me Now,” by Little
Feat, on the car tape deck:
Don't the sunrise look so pretty,
Never such a sight
Like rollin' into New York City
With the skyline in the morning light
Roll right through the night
We had rolled through the night and were seeing that skyline
in the morning light. It was really quite cinematic and still vivid in my
mind’s eye. It was now:
Wednesday, May 23, 1984:
Neil and I separated in Manhattan at lunch time. He took the
car and met Rob for lunch. I took the subway with Gabriel to Brooklyn, where he
lived with his parents.
I think I slept on the couch. I don’t remember dinner. I
think I was exhausted.
Thursday, May 24, 1984:
In the morning, Gabriel and I took the subway into Manhattan
and Times Square. There was a tent-looking set-up with railings to keep people
in line. It was TKTS, where you could buy same-day tickets to Broadway shows. Like
standby airline tickets, you picked from whatever was left (or left behind). We
ended up buying tickets to Noises Off for that night, at 8 pm, for us
and Neil and Rob.
Gabriel,
though living in New York, had not been up the Empire State Building. I had been
there in 1972 (see Boys’
Trip: New York City 1972), so I convinced him to go with me. We may have walked
there, which is not too far, but maybe we took the subway. In New York, the
subway goes everywhere, and in Manhattan, many things are walkable.
On the way, we saw Linda Hunt on the street. We didn’t greet
her or anything. She had won the Best Actress Oscar in ‘82 for The Year of
Living Dangerously. It was remarkable at the time because the role was a
Filipino man, and she was neither a man nor Filipino. I later found out she was
playing Audrey Wood in End of the World at Broadway’s Music Box Theater.
We arrived at the Empire State Building. It was a clear day,
and we went up to the open-air observation deck. I don’t remember it costing
anything, but it wasn’t the $44 they’re charging now.
We met the Six Million Dollar Man on top of the
Empire State Building. A film crew was there. An assistant director walked over
to us and said that they were filming a movie and that we could stay there,
just don’t look at the camera. Up walked actor Lee Majors, tall, hale and hardy
in a Texas cowboy outfit. He said “It’s called The Cowboy and the Ballerina.
I’m the ballerina, ha ha!” He tipped his cowboy hat and went back to do his
scene. We walked over to the railing and looked out at the horizon. When we
heard “Action!”, we made sure not to turn around.
Months later, I saw the made-for-TV movie on CBS broadcast
TV. Sure enough, towards the end of the movie, there’s a scene atop the Empire
State Building. For a second, you can see Gabriel and me in the background. You
might even recognize us if you know what we looked like from behind forty years
ago. Trivia note: Christopher Lloyd was in the movie, with a small part, this
being the year before his breakout hit, Back to the Future. He was not
present the day we were there.
After all that, Gabriel, Neil, Rob, and I went to see Noises
Off, which was a successful comedy, in that not only did we laugh, but it
ran for hundreds of performances and was nominated for a Tony award. Of course,
if it had won, I would not have mentioned that it had been nominated. (Similar
to how a beer that is “one of the top three beers in Japan” must be the third.)
Anyway, in the first act, you see a dress rehearsal of Act One of a fictional
stage play (Nothing On) where many things go wrong. In the second act,
you see the same Act One, but from backstage, where more errors occur and
nerves fray. In the third act, the same Act One completely falls apart. “Noises
off,” by the way, is a scripted stage direction for the audience to hear offstage
noise.
In late-breaking news, I learned that Noises Off was running
at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre through October 23. Coincidence?
Friday, May 25:
On Friday afternoon, we decided to go into the city to see Indiana
Jones and the Temple of Doom which had just been released. It was also near
Times Square, where we saw a commotion. A group of people looked to be
surrounding a speech or rally there. We tried to shoulder our way into the
crowd to get an idea of what was up. Gabriel sees someone in a brown uniform
and says maybe it’s some neo-Nazis. We finally got to see through the crowd
that it was Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd in jumpsuits. There was a camera, and a
small film and production crew.
It turns out they were filming part of the music video for
the Ghostbusters theme song, a movie which would be released two weeks
later, but of which we were unaware. Ray Parker, Jr. and the cast of Ghostbusters
are in the video, which is mostly Parker and a female model and some scenes
from the movie. At the end, Parker, Murray, Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, and Harold
Ramis are walking in formation to the beat, lip synching. Murray does some fake
break-dancing.
Then we went on to the movie theater. The second Indiana
Jones movie was not as good as the first, in our opinion. Bugs instead of
snakes. Kate Capshaw instead of Karen Allen. Thugees instead of Nazis. Child
sacrifice instead of world war. A heart gets ripped out of a living person,
which was different, and led to a new MPAA rating: PG-13. It was a prequel, and
I have trouble now remembering the location. I had thought it was in China, but
Wikipedia reminds me that it started there, but most of it took place in India.
Like many sequels, it seemed to have a different purpose than the
original.
That evening, we saw Chicago’s Second City improv group
perform at the Village Gate Downstairs. Their show was titled “Orwell That Ends
Well.” It included some performers I had seen in Chicago: Meagan Fay, Rick
Thomas, and John Kapelos; and Northwestern alum Richard Kind, among others. We thought
we saw Treat Williams in the audience. Outside, I saw an old girlfriend and
went over to say hi. She was there with her boyfriend, who was still inside. It
was awkward. After we left, Gabriel says, laughing, “You are a wild man.”
“What?”
“You were humming ‘Torn Between Two Lovers’ while she was
talking. More like singing it.”
Songs often subconsciously enter my mind at weirdly
appropriate – or inappropriate – times. Sometimes it’s a blessing. Sometimes
it’s a curse. I should have had that looked at.
Saturday, May 26:
Saturday morning, I said goodbye to Gabriel and his family and reassembled with Neil. Neil
and I had planned to drive to DC, and Rob and another NU alum, Didier, decided to
join us. It’s four to five hours to drive from New York City to Washington, DC.
I had a wedding to attend in suburban Rockville, Maryland, that night at 7:30. We
passed the time recounting our NYC adventures, then playing a memory game,
which I don’t remember. However, Rob recently filled in the blanks for me. You
start with a word, then each player adds a word, having to remember all the
previous words, up to 100 words. One player sits out and writes down all the
words as referee. My guess is that Rob was the winner.
The remaining memories of this adventure are sketchier, in
the original meaning of sketchy, as in not fully drawn, but only in outline.
We arrived in northwest DC, near the border with Bethesda,
Maryland. I directed us to a deli on Wisconsin Avenue there, named Booeymonger.
In line, I said I would order a toasted poppy-seed bagel with cream cheese. Rob
was doubtful that they could make it like the storied New York City delis. Would
they use enough cream cheese? Yes, they laid a slab on each half. I dare say Rob
was impressed.
I recommended the Jefferson Memorial, and we visited it. It’s
a little away from the Mall, where the main attractions are – Lincoln Memorial,
Washington Monument, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the reflecting pool. Putting
aside Jefferson’s own slave-owning history, his words carved on the walls,
including part of the Declaration of Independence, can still affect me. Knowing
his slaving past, some of the quotes are just puzzling.
I borrowed my mother’s car to get to the wedding,
I think. I remember being at the wedding in Rockville, Maryland, but recall
nothing about a meal or drinking. John and I are pictured below. I think I
stayed at my mom’s house in DC, and Neil may have stayed with Didier, whose
family lived in DC. Maybe Rob stayed there too.
John Berger and me at his wedding.
John was the original bassist for The Lines (later renamed
The Front Lines), whose story is told with haphazard detail elsewhere. He left
Northwestern after freshman year and continued later at the University of
Maryland, and now is Dean of the Energy and Materials Program at the Colorado
School of Mines.
Sunday, May 27:
On Sunday, I had lunch with my dad, Barry, and Yvonne, his second
wife, and Brendan, my half-brother who was three at the time. We went to the
Smithsonian and walked around the Mall and environs. Brendan, 20 years younger
than me, seemed more like a nephew at the time.
Monday, May 28:
I think I took a bus back to Chicago leaving DC at 1:30 a.m.
That would get me into Chicago at 9:30 pm. How did Neil get back to Chicago?
Did he drive Rob back to NYC, perhaps with Didi? It would take over 12 hours to
drive from DC to Chicago. He can’t remember either.
Further New York Visits
Since 1984, I have been to New York City several times. In
October of 1987, I was working at Paul Baker Typography in Evanston. Paul,
vice-president Katie Houston, and I attended Type 1987, held by the Type
Directors Club at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Manhattan. This was back when typography and fonts
were valued as an art form and not ubiquitous and taken for granted. On an open
evening, Gabriel and I went to see The Princess Bride,
which had just opened. We had driven from Chicago to San Francisco in July of
that year, so I brought him a second copy of all the photos I took from our
western adventure. He told me that he wished he had taken more pictures on the
rest of his quest, which circumnavigated the continental United States,
starting in New Haven. I think Gabriel should write about that.
 |
Gabriel
at the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, when we visited in 1987.
|
In
July of 1988, I flew into New Haven, and
with Gabriel, drove to New York. I had decided to attend the New Music
Seminar, organized by College Media Journalism. I took demos of the band I was
in then, Friendly Fire. I think I saw Northwestern classmate Scott Byron there.
I picked up two promotional T-shirts of the Love & Rockets band. After
that, we drove to Toronto, stopping at Niagara Falls, and stayed with a friend
of his. We went to see Robert Gordon at a small club. My main memory is that Gordon
arrived quite late, which apparently was normal for him. From Toronto, I flew
back to Chicago, where my new girlfriend Cathleen was.
In April of 2009, I went to Long Island for the CA (formerly
Computer Associates) Architect’s Conference. I never actually touched NYC, flying
from Chicago to Philadelphia, then to Islip. There was a wonderful, somewhat
unlikely, presentation by Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic
Orchestra. Among the things he tried convey to us were: that in the problem of
connecting 9 dots with 4 straight lines, we are often told to think outside the
box, however there is no box; that modern orchestras perform Beethoven’s Fifth
Symphony slower than the allegro con brio instruction, which Zander conducts faster; that Bach signed his compositions “Soli Deo Gloria” or “for
God’s glory alone.” He shared that last tidbit after he had a student cellist
perform a Bach cello solo, live in the room. He related some moving life lesson
stories. He closed by having us all sing Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” a capella,
and I think in German. He managed to loosely connect all of this to the
creativity that software developers need to succeed. It was the most memorable
workshop at the conference and one of the best music lessons I ever had.
Epilogue
Forty years later, Neil and I are still friends, still live
near Chicago, and see each other now and again. At least once a year, except
during lockdown. My wife Cathleen and I attended Neil and Edie’s first son’s
wedding in July, and Rob was there too! Neil has
had nine nonfiction books published, writes for the Chicago Sun-Times,
and his daily blog Every Goddamn
Day. Rob wrote and drew for years at Games magazine, and
cartoons for The New Yorker. Gabriel has written one
nonfiction and five fiction books, and teaches in the Writing Program at
Pratt Institute, in Brooklyn, where he lives. Me, I went from studying
journalism, to graphic arts and setting type, to database administration, to
technical writer, to “technical materials developer.” I married Cathleen (see How
I Met Your Grandmother), had two sons, and the first now has three sons,
making us triple grandparents.
References
Vonnegut, Kurt, Palm Sunday, Delacorte Press, New
York, 1981, p. 319
Opening photo from iloveny.com.
