My Weekend in New York

A vibrant cultural experience involving margaritas.

I want to start by apologizing to the commercial aviation industry. In my previous Substack I was harshly critical of the airlines, but my flight to New York last Friday departed right on time, despite a last-second effort by Wayne from the Takeoff Prevention Unit (TPU), who can be seen in the photograph below sprinting down the Miami airport runway trying to stop my plane so he can replace the auxiliary catheterization sequencer.

The plane also landed in New York on schedule. In fact the only impact of the federal government shutdown that I noticed was that the air traffic controller who handled my flight was also my Uber driver.

(Click arrow for rim shot:)

Anyway, New York was great. It’s an amazing city, a world-class cultural center with so much to offer: The museums, the theaters, the symphony, the ballet, the opera... these are all things I may have walked past on my way to the restaurants. Because the main cultural activity I engaged in there was eating.

Of course I didn’t eat at any of the really trendy restaurants; I wouldn’t have been able to get a table. Nobody can. That’s why they’re trendy. The way it works is, an important influencer or a famous celebrity such as Taylor Swift eats at a certain restaurant, or the New York Times prints a rave review, and immediately thousands of New Yorkers attempt to make reservations there, which creates a logistical problem because the typical New York restaurant has roughly the same square footage as a yoga mat. So pretty soon the restaurant stops taking reservations altogether, which means if you want a table you have to go there in person and wait in line (or as they say in New York, on line). This only makes the restaurant more desirable to New Yorkers. These are the same people who become visibly annoyed if somebody in front of them on the sidewalk is walking slower than 16 miles per hour, yet they will patiently stand motionless for hours outside a restaurant in hopes of getting a tiny table jammed in so close to another tiny table that you sometimes accidentally take a bite from a complete stranger’s entree. And the longer the line outside is, the trendier the restaurant is deemed to be. In fact the ultimate New York restaurant would never seat anybody. It wouldn’t even need to have an interior. It would just be a closed door with a long line of trendy New Yorkers staring at it hopefully.

If you think I’m exaggerating, consider this: At the moment, the trendy pizza place in New York is Ceres. On this trip I talked to some people who ate there; they said the wait was two hours, so a member of their group — I am not making this up — paid a guy $55 to wait in line for them. For pizza. In New York City, which according to Google has more than 2,000 pizza restaurants, the vast majority of which have no lines at all. So you know Ceres pizza must be really special and different, to attract that kind of discerning crowd.

I did do one semi-trendy thing in New York: I went to a nightclub called Cafe Wha? on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village. It’s a legendary music venue that has been around since 1959. A lot of big-name performers, including Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, played there before they became famous.

This actually wasn’t my first visit to Cafe Wha?. I was there in the early Sixties, when I was a suburban teenager trying with very limited success to be cool. Back then Cafe Wha? had a beatnik-y vibe. It was basically a basement with a small stage; you’d drink coffee and listen to poets being obscure and folk singers being sincere. You never knew whom you’d see perform there. I dimly recall listening, all those years ago, to a tousle-haired young man playing guitar and singing in a nasal voice. Little did I know then who that young man would turn out to be. I still have no idea. For all I know it was Dick Cheney. It definitely wasn’t Dylan.

Anyway, that was then. Cafe Wha? is very different now. Before I went, I kept hearing from my daughter and her friends — all in their 20s — how much fun it is, and how great the music is. I was skeptical, because as an ancient Boomer fart I do not believe that These Kids Today, with their “celebrity DJs,” know anything about Real Music.

But I was wrong, and the kids were right. The music at Cafe Wha? is excellent. They have an absolutely killer house band that can play anything, including some songs that were written after the presidency of Gerald Ford but are still, I have to admit, pretty good.

And the audience actually danced. I didn’t think young people danced any more; I thought they just sort of bounced up and down in front of the celebrity DJ while scrolling on their iPhones. But the crowd at the Cafe Wha? was on its feet totally grooving (if we can still say that) right from the start, crowding the spaces between the tables and shaking its collective booty. Even I got up and danced after several margaritas, the influence of which is visible in the video below, wherein I can briefly be seen making a fanning gesture to cool the hands of the lead guitarist during a blistering solo.

I make no apologies for my behavior. The man’s fingers were literally burning up. Also those were strong margaritas.

This video was taken by my daughter, Sophie, who was the real reason for my trip to New York. I was there to participate in a charity event she organized, for reasons that require me to give you some background.

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In August 2018, two days before she was supposed to start college, Sophie, who was then 18, woke up paralyzed from the chest down. Michelle and I took her to the hospital, where a neurologist did some tests, then came out to where Michelle and I were waiting. Her first words to us, which I will never, ever, forget, were: “This is very bad.”

She told us that Sophie had a rare disease called transverse myelitis. She said a third of the people who get it recover fully. A third have a partial recovery.

A third never walk again.

So as all her friends headed off to freshman year of college, Sophie lay in a hospital bed, unable to move or feel her legs, attached by tubes and wires to beeping machines, prodded and poked by an endless parade of doctors who had many questions, but no answers. That was a terrifying time. That was by far the worst thing that ever happened to me, and it wasn’t even me it was happening to.

After eleven agonizing days, Sophie’s left knee moved a half-inch, and we started to breathe again, a little, allowing ourselves to hope she might make it out of that nightmare. And, long story short, she did, although it took many more days, and a lot of work. Here’s a photo of her in rehab, learning how to walk again.

It wasn’t easy, but Sophie managed to finish college with her original class; she’s now in New York, starting a career and living a full life. But she hasn’t forgotten what happened to her, and she’s very aware that other people, and their families, are going through similar ordeals, or worse. So she has become involved with SRNA, an organization that helps people affected by rare neurological diseases. Last Saturday, Sophie and some other volunteers held a charity Walk-Run-N-Roll at Pier 45 in New York, and they raised $28,000 for SNRA. It was a beautiful day, and beautiful event.

We even had an appearance by a celebrity, Matt James, who starred on the reality TV show The Bachelor. He had nothing to do with Sophie’s event, but he was in the vicinity, and he was basically ordered by the women in our group to come over and pose for pictures, which he cheerfully did. Here he is with Sophie:

Anyway, that was the actual reason I was in New York. I’m really proud of my little girl. And now it’s time to:

On Sunday I attended a fun event in Madison Square Park. Here’s a photo of some spectators taking in the action:

The reason you can’t see the action itself in this photo is that it’s all happening approximately six inches off the ground, in the form of Dachshunds. This event was a Halloweenie Costume Parade, featuring wiener dogs in a variety of outfits, some of them quite dapper.

Here’s a wiener dog dressed as the Brooklyn Bridge meeting a wiener dragon.

And here’s a wiener cowboy horse sniffing the butt of a croissant.

I have never personally attended the ballet or the opera in New York, but I have a hard time believing that either one would be as entertaining as the Halloweenie Costume Parade. I hated to leave, but I had a plane to catch out of...

(Click arrow for scary violins:)

...LaGuardia.

But incredible as this may sound, my return flight was also right on time, despite the fact that this time Wayne, who apparently followed me to New York, flung his clipboard at the plane as it left the ground.

So the truth is that, despite all my bitching last week, both of my flights went smoothly. And that’s why I want to conclude by saying to all the hard-working employees of the aviation industry: Thank you, and please accept my sincere apology. Also please make sure Wayne never gets hold of a missile.

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