by Fred Seely
Editorial Director
We may go to the symphony, but that doesn’t mean we’re sophisticated. Jacksonville is a long way from New York City, and that’s not just a geographical divide.
So, one goes to the big city with considerable trepidation, and even more so with the obstacles that have arisen since Sept. 11.
It is the most famous city in the world and probably the greatest. It is big, it is daunting, and it isn’t Jacksonville. Our biggest tower would be a low-rise there, and streets don’t roll up at any hour.
When you live in a cocoon like Jacksonville, it is hard to fly like a butterfly.
I recall my grandmother, a true mountain lady, getting ready to go to New York City and pulling out her only suitcase, which usually was used only for trips to the family homestead in Dillsboro (that’s near Sylva.) My great-aunt looked at the luggage and said, “Sister, they’ll know that Asheville has come to town.”
All that being said, off we go. Departure: Wednesday morning. Meetings (I’m a volunteer with a non-profit which had its annual gathering there) all day Thursday and Friday morning. Then sightseeing before the Sunday morning departure.
Airports
Not bad, considering the times. Jacksonville is the best (perhaps because so few people are there) and New York LaGuardia is pretty good. Charlotte is a mess.
Airport security
They warn you to get to the airport at least two hours ahead of your flight time because of the stringent security measures. We didn’t need any more than 15 minutes, but we also had off-peak flights.
Be ready to be frisked, though. They told us they do random searches, picking out every 10th person or so, but that sounds like a politically correct statement designed to avoid any charges of racial profiling.
Airlines
We never found anyone who was happy about airline service, but it’s the only way to go, so quit griping, get in line and suffer quietly.
I goofed and booked us on USAirways via the Internet, which meant we changed planes in Charlotte. For $20 more each, we could have gone direct via Delta.
Lesson: if you have to fly, make it as quick as you can. Forget the savings.
Taxis
Lots of them and excellent. When Rudolph Guiliani was the mayor, he scared the cab companies into submission. We rode a half-dozen times and never had a problem. The rates are better than you’ll find in Jacksonville and the cabbies rank with London’s for courtesy.
It is, however, disconcerting to have a cabbie wearing a turban.
Waldorf=Astoria
Our meeting planer negotiated a group rate ($198 a night!) which meant 1) we got to stay at the world’s most famous hotel and 2) we got a small room. Didn’t matter, as we were hardly in the room, and we got to see the hotel.
It’s still magnificent and you can see why it’s the prime site for weddings, Bar Mitzvahs and parties. Yes, the hotel places an equal sign (=) between Waldorf and Astoria.
Drinking
You won’t find a neighborhood bar in Manhattan. Our group stopped at the Waldorf bar before dinner: two beers, one martini, one margarita and one scotch. $72.
Eating
You’ll pay Ruth’s Chris prices and get River Club food. We ate lunch at the Saks Fifth Avenue department store restaurant and an equally neat place called the Bryant Park Grill next to the library. For dinner, we ate in a neighborhood restaurant and at one fancy-shmancy place named Le Goulue. Wonderful. But expensive.
Getting theater tickets
There are two good ways:
1. Plan way ahead and get on the Internet. Telecharge.com is the best site. I booked three months ahead and we had second-row seats for “The Full Monty.”
2. Go to the box office. The newest play is “Sweet Smell of Success,” which opened while we were there. I went to the box office on Friday afternoon and got two seventh-row seats for the Saturday matinee.
The not-so-good way:
Deal with a ticket broker. A “ticket broker” is nothing but a scalper and you can expect to pay a big premium.
Did I try and get tickets to “The Producers,” the hottest play in years? Yes, even though chances were slim (no tickets available) or none (scalpers are getting a way-out-of-my-range $900 a seat.) The Internet didn’t work (sold out through October) but there’s always a possibility of late returns at the box office. So I went to the box office about 4 p.m. There were at least 50 people, many in lounge chairs, waiting for the box office to open. The guy at the head of the line had been there since 10 p.m. the night before, and the 30th guy in line got there at dawn. I moved on.
The plays we saw
• “The Full Monty” was terrific fun and yes, you get a glimpse of male private parts.
• “Sweet Smell of Success” is a musical, but don’t think it’s funny. It’s a drama with a lot of mean people. Great acting, though. (I assumed John Lithgow was nothing but a sitcom actor — “Third Rock from the Sun” — but he isn’t. His dad produced Shakespeare plays and Lithgow grew up acting in them.)
The theaters
A lot smaller that I expected. Reduce the Florida Theatre by 25 percent, but keep all the fancy stuff on the walls.
The subway
Easy, reasonable ($1.50 each trip) and clean. Not quite as good as London’s Underground, but certainly not the awful place it used to be.
Getting to Ground Zero
It might be the world’s biggest tourist attraction at the moment. Certainly, it’s on the list of everyone visiting New York City.
It isn’t something that they want you to see, and for good reason — it’s a combination cemetery/construction site, and they don’t need people getting in the way.
There are two ways to see it, one good and one not-so-good.
The good: find someone with an office in one of the towers around the site.
The not-so-good: do what most do, and try and get on the single viewing ramp.
Can’t help you with the first; we did the ramp, and we got lucky.
When it became evident that zillions wanted to see the site, the city government knew it had to control the crowds. A big fence was placed around the site, so you can’t stand on the nearest clear street and look in.
Then, they built a ramp at the west end of Fulton Street, which once ended at the World Trade Center. But, to get on the ramp, you need a ticket, and that’s the rub. While the tickets are free, they aren’t easy to get. Don’t be mislead by a story in Sunday’s paper; that was written in the chilly days of winter, and it’s now the warming days of spring. It’s a tough ticket.
They limit ramp traffic to 250 people each half-hour and tickets are distributed to the South Street Seaport, a Landing-like place at the other end of Fulton Street, at least a quarter-mile away. We arrived at 10 a.m. and the ticket line was at least a thousand people deep. We were hoping to see Ground Zero that morning; a guard told us that, if we waited in line (and he guessed it would take us an hour to reach the ticket booth,) we could get tickets for the next day.
No hope. We had theater tickets for a 2 p.m. show, and we were leaving the next day.
No Ground Zero. Or so we thought.
We were walking away from the area, moaning perhaps a bit too loudly about our failure, and a couple came up and said, “We thought we would find someone who could use tickets, so we got an extra pair.” They were for the noon-12:30 shift that day. Yes, angels do exist.
We were lucky. If you go, hope that your fates are equally as kind, or you better get in line at dawn.
Seeing Ground Zero
They herd you along the ramp, trying to keep groups of 30 or so together. When you get to the top, they give you five minutes to see the scene.
You can’t see much.
For one thing, there are construction trailers in your line of sight. For another, the hole is now too deep.
But, you do get a perspective.
How big is it? Huge, much bigger than we thought. Maybe as big as the Northbank business district: river to City Hall, police station to BellSouth.
Landmarks? The ramp that you see when bodies are brought up is to your left (the south side) and it seems to be enormous. You can see about two-thirds of it.
Damage? One big building immediately south of the site seems to have had its face torn off. Other buildings suffered minor damage. But remember, lots of buildings toppled.
One sight you can’t forget. The ramp is adjacent to an Episcopal chapel that may be the nation’s oldest church in continuous use. There’s a graveyard behind the chapel, and the yard has trees. In the trees are pieces of cloth and other debris, all scorched. They landed there on Sept. 11 and no one has taken them down.
The tourist ramp itself is of note. It’s sturdy, but the divider between the up side and the down side is made of plywood and it has almost become a tombstone — as people wait on the ramp, they write messages to the dead.
The memorial lights
We missed them. How can you, you ask? The beams are so bright and shoot so far up that they worry about disturbing bird migrations, and you couldn’t see them? Not from midtown, because there are lots of lights there plus the height of the buildings. We goofed. We ran into a couple who had seen them merely by going a few blocks over to Rockefeller Center and going up to the top-floor bar. They had drinks (no cover charge) and got a good view.
The newspapers
There are four available everywhere. The New York Times is the best, though you really don’t want to spend time reading a newspaper where there’s so much else to do. The New York Post used to be a rag, but it’s pretty good. The New York Daily News used to be pretty good, but it’s a rag. Newsday is the Long Island paper and is excellent, but it’s about Long Island.
Local television
Not much different than what we see here. More reporters, of course, because they cover so much ground, but the state-of-the-art is just as good in Jacksonville as in New York City.
The parade
We were there during the St. Patrick’s Day parade, but we didn’t see it because you can’t — that is, unless you stake out a spot around dawn.
It’s the world’s largest parade and everyone comes — it’s the New York City equivalent of The Players Championship, a signal that the winter is going and spring is coming.
But, we were on the fringes and have two observations:
1. The parade started at 11 a.m. At 5:30 p.m., units were still being lined up at the starting point. Six and a half hours long.
2. I don’t know how many of those people were Irish, but most took advantage of the national stereotype to get drunk.
Traffic
Since returning from New York, I’ve been on Blanding Boulevard, Butler Boulevard., Atlantic Boulevard and I-4 in Orlando. I’ll take New York City. Any day, any time.