Tag: New York City

  • Staten Island Ferry

    I need to admit to myself, that as long as the kid is young enough to need me to get around the City, that every Spring Break will be a week of me entertaining the kid. There is a voice in my head that keeps saying that it’s not my job to keep the kid entertained, and that is true. But “entertaining the kid” for me means that I am keeping her off a screen for a couple of hours.

    To that end, we rode the Staten Island Ferry yesterday. It’s free, runs every thirty minutes, and gives you an amazing view of the Statue of Liberty, and Ellis Island. That also means the ferry is loaded with tourists. But if you know what you’re getting into, it can be a lot of fun.

    The kid had never been on the ferry, and she also hadn’t been to Staten Island before. I mean, she is a natural born New Yorker, and if you’re going to be a New Yorker, you have to have visited all five boroughs.

    I love riding the ferry. It used to be one of the “go to” attractions I would take people to when they came to visit, but I hadn’t been on the thing in close to eight years. It’s fun to cross the upper harbor and see the City from the water. I like trying to imagine what it was like to live there, 500 years ago, before the Dutch arrived. But then to also think what it must have looked like when the British Navy blockaded the harbor and invaded Brooklyn. The history buff side of me goes into over drive thinking about how many events and persons have passed through that harbor. You know, once it got so cold that the harbor froze, and you could walk across the ice from Manhattan to Staten Island.

    Watching the kid experience the ferry was a parental treat that I enjoyed deeply. Seeing her enjoy the cold air whipping her hair around, and asking me questions about ships, and New York, and the old forts that ring the harbor. It was fun to have these moments of entertaining her for the afternoon.

  • ODDS and ENDS: Baseball, Spring in NYC, and Walking the Dog

    (Insert Silly Comment Here)

    Baseball has started, and it’s early, but the Cubs have a losing record. They started off the season with a W, which was great, and then dropped three games. Eh… It’s the Cubs. Even when they do bad, they’re still fun to watch. That is, if you like punishing yourself. Right now, I’m just checking scores on my phone, and I follow the team on IG. I do have a far off cousin who is a Die Hard Cubbie, and she posts every day on Facebook with any developments on the team; good or bad, she reports it and has an opinion on it. That helps me stay apprised on the team. But… It is the Cubs. And even with the curse broken, they are still the Cubs. Well, here’s to hope, and hoping that it doesn’t kill me.

    I am always caught by surprise when Spring arrives in NYC. It seems like in the matter of one week, everything things blooms, buds, and pops up. There are daffodils everywhere, especially around the park entrances, and the handful of cherry trees we have in our neighborhood have exploded in flowers. And Spring always arrives right at that moment when I am fed up with winter and desperate for warmer weather. I know that this also signals that the “old man” version of me is beginning to emerge. Soon I will be comparing Springs, and making predictions of how hot Summer will be. And even if this is a cooler Summer, it still won’t be anything compared to that perfect Summer we had back in ’09. Yup, I’m becoming a very old man.

    I have to walk the dog. I like walking the dog, but it is still a chore. Also, my dog has a bad rep in the neighborhood. They call her “Murder Dog,” because she wants to murder every dog she sees. But my dog is great with people and kids. It’s just that she hates dogs.

  • Hot Water – A Rant (Unedited)

    Nothing ruins my day easier and faster than not having hot water. I live in an old building; a generic NYC tenement styled walk-up. I’m not fooling myself here, I know that the hot water is destined to give out frequently, as the boiler was installed during the Coolidge administration. Still…

    I grew up in the suburbs outside of Dallas, in a newly built ranch styled home. The water heater we had lasted about fifteen years. It gave out at the most inopportune time when we had family visiting, but it was quickly and as my father liked to remind all of us, expensively replaced. It’s still going strong, again, my father likes to point this out as well.

    All the other places that I lived, in and out of college, and I lived in some pretty rundown places, always had hot water. Once or twice, I think, it went out, but it was such a rarity. And when it happened, it think it was due to repairs being done on the system.

    And then there is New York City. Everybody has hot water and heating issues. I got a friend in the Meatpacking District, real swanky place – he has water issues. New construction, old construction, pre-war, modern; it doesn’t matter – everybody has this problem. How is it that all the heater and boilers around the entire country work, but when you cross into New York City, they all go on the blink. Is there a curse, or is it all run by the Mob?

  • ODDS and ENDS: Rats, FA Cup, and Spring

    New York City has always had a rat problem. When the Dutch founded their colony almost 400 years ago, they brought many things we are still dealing with to this day, but none are more ingrained in the fabric of the City than the rats. Face it, when the nuclear holocaust comes, it will be the rats and the cockroaches fighting for supremacy. And I have my money on the rats. The problem has become so bad that Mayor Adams appointed a Rat Czar to deal with it. Many proposals have been made like placing rat-proof trash and compost cans around the City, to banning the restaurant sidewalk sheds. These ideas might work, but walking around town I see a more practical answer right there in the open: Cats. My local bodega has a cat, and that place has been rodent free since it opened. I’m not kidding about this. My grandfather grew up on a farm and they kept cats in the barn to keep rats and mice away, and according to him it worked well with very little effort on his part; The cat kind’a knew what to do. So, just think about it- cats.

    Who needs an FA Cup? Not Tottenham Hotspur, that’s for sure.

    I know we are only on the third day of March, but I’m ready for Spring. I’m ready to open up the windows, and start hiking again on the weekends. Maybe even a little disc golf as well. I’m ready for green and color to return. I’m ready to transition to the next thing.

  • The Kid has Learned Well

    Last week, I mentioned that the kid was off from school for her “Mid-Winter Break.” I do not know of a single parent in the City that finds this “break” enjoyable. It is a week of scrambling to find things for the kid to do, so she doesn’t sit in front of a screen the whole time. I think I did an okay job last week. She surely didn’t have less screen time, but she didn’t have more.

    I mean, I’m not an idiot here. I do understand that I am receiving a wonderful gift, which is getting to spend time with my kid, at an age where she still likes and respects me. (The clock is ticking until that goes away…) She is forming her own opinions on music, and movies, and books she wants to read. She is just now taking the first steps in trying to figure out the world around her, and where she fits in. Being a witness to that is a great fringe benefit of being a parent.

    The kid did pepper me with lots of questions last week about growing up in Texas during the 90’s, in the suburbs, where it was warm or hot all the time. Describing growing up outside of Dallas is a fascinating and odd tale that my daughter, with her urban New York City upbringing, has a hard time wrapping her head around. Of all the things I have told her, she finds it amazing that the D/FW area will totally shut down at the first sight of snow; Not a blizzard, or sub-freezing temperatures, but just the tiniest of snowflakes falling would wreck North Texas.

    I think my story telling had an effect on her, as this morning, when getting ready for school, she told me she wanted to dress like a “90’s kid.” I was puzzled, so I asked her what a “90’s kid” looks like? I was told “90’s kids” wear; light blue jeans, All-Star shoes, baggy long sleeve tee-shirts, and listen to cd’s.

    She wasn’t wrong.

    And I also find it rather amazing that my daughter so succinctly summed up a very formative decade of my life. The only way she could have been more on the money is if she wanted a pack of clove cigarettes and a beat-up paperback copy of Naked Lunch to read.