Broadsheet: I Heart NY

I Second Those Emotions. At length . . . .

78. First visit, at age 13. Chatting w/Red Skelton as he rehearsed during our tour of Radio City. Crossing the street and getting the best view ever of Manhattan, from the long-since closed outdoor deck of the GE ne RCA building.

81. Visit the second. First ride on the Cyclone. First direct personal experience with thousands of lesbians, massed and marching. A sidetrip via Amtrak to DC and my first views of the sweeping East Baltimore rowhouses of my current workplace (visions of which, incidentally, inspired Pere Ubu to title their first album 'Dub Housing').

84. Living in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, just down Willoughby from Spike Lee's future studios. View over the LIU soccer field; they were the champions, my friends, but they'd later get busted for coke. Traipsing -- yes, traipsing damn it! -- all over the city tracking down temporarily sited Henry Moore sculptures. Jogging through Williamsburg before it was hip, with 4-year-old Hassidic kids buzzing like bees around my feet on Big Wheels. Undergrad sociology: dressing as a (sorry ass) hipster and then as an Iowa-t-shirt wearing tourist and walking down the old-school 42nd Street. Getting offered drugs 27 times (!) cutting diagonally across Bryant Park. What's Love Got to Do With It, Burning Down the House, and When Doves Cry on every beatbox. Many walks in bad pre-Rockport dress shoes from Grand Central to the U.N. Falling asleep drunk on the Coney Island beach and waking up none the worse for it. Completely embarrasing myself asking an ostensibly cutting but ultimately incoherent question of Reagan human rights spokesperson Juliana Pilon in front of the frickin' world at the NYPL. Watching a shop keeper come out in the middle of the bustling Fulton Market and get off four shots at a t-shirt stealing kid. DJing at the end-of-semester party in the Union Theological Seminary and wondering what Reinhold Neibuhr would have made of Van Halen's 'Panama.' Most of all, the many MANY times I'd get the 'Gonna Fly Now' whistle or hum as I jogged down Flatbush to Prospect Park.

85: A day spent walking and walking and walking, taking several hundred pictures, from Columbia U to Prospect Park. Trauma: the beloved Broadway Arcade and Amusement Center, pinball palace and home of Lou Reed's pre-Laurie Anderson marriage (#2), is displaced by the Novotel.

96: Finally riding the carousel at Coney Island, and realizing that it's hellbent-for-leather velocity makes it scarier than about a third of the rollercoasters I've been on. Speaking of which, riding the Dragon Coaster at Rye Playland, AKA the Fatal Attraction Coaster. Taking four hours getting out of said park after watching July 4th fireworks.

00: Many weeks in Murray Hill/Gramercy Park spent teaching geeks at Baruch, including notably the day the pigeon shat on my shoulder over lunch. Staying sometimes at 24th and 3rd, others in the shadow of the World Trade Center at Chambers and West Broadway. Jogging damn near the whole island south of 110th Street. Lugging my Visual Basic books past the Chelsea Hotel on occasion and not waxing nostalgic for one second about the useless f*ck that was Sid Vicous. Having a fabulous peppercorn steak dinner with Jeni -- my last real meal out to date in NYC -- at Wild Blue, the less formal baby sister of Windows on the World, atop Tower #1.

01: Driving back from Quebec City in mid-October on the BQE, with the smoke still rising over Battery Park.

03: Taking Dad to NYC for the first time. Circling the island by boat and then, no lie, by car (about five hours, if you're wondering). "It's bigger than I thought," Dad said. Staying at the Excelsior, almost just across the street from the Rose Center - beautiful; the new aquarium addition here in Balto is only 20% as cool, but even at that rate, I can't wait. Visiting Ground Zero, already so far on its way to construction that much of the cringe was gone. Walking then after dark to the foot of the island and seeing the dented remains of the sculpted ball and being more moved. Thinking about the giant Miro tapestry that perished in the lobby of Tower #2 and feeling all the more guilty about dwelling on the art rather than the people. Leaving then the next day over the Verazano, and the night fever was long gone, gawking on the way home at the kitsch Olive Garden family mansions of Staten Island . . . .

Oh yeah: Mindy, er, Pam Dawber in Pirates of Penzance, Into the Woods (!), Sunday in the Park with George and, especially, leaving CATS halfway through, with my date punctuating the experience by puking smack dab in the middle of Broadway.

Pity she couldn't have saved that for Yankee Stadium . . . .