Crime is so out of control in New York City I decided to spend the day there with my son.
Am I doing it right? I don't feel like I'm doing it right.
I've been meaning to get my 14-year-old son up to New York City for some time now. While I've lived in the DC area for years, I'm from New York originally and worked there back in the '80s (and much of the '90s on travel).
It so happens I found myself spending the holidays this year with my in-laws in the middle of New Jersey, so what better time to not be in New Jersey? I mean, what better time to spend quality bonding time with my son? That was not in New Jersey.
I'm kidding, of course, I had a wonderful time in New Jersey, but New York does Christmas up in a very big way, and it was always a nice pick-me-up when I lived there given the winter season has New York City displaying a stunning rainbow of grays that would put Benjamin Moore to shame. (I'll see your "Stonington Gray" and raise you "Scrambling Subway Rat.")
In any case, it took some convincing as my son has seen all those videos of crazy people and crime and filth, etc. As I wrote not long ago, while all that is real, it's over sensationalized. The two can be true at the same time, actual serious problems exist, but fall short of heralding the zombie apocalypse.
What follows is what I saw: The good, the bad, and the crazy.
First, we had to get there. I had no interest in driving into the city, not on the week between Christmas and New Years anyway, and so we planned to drive to Princeton Junction Station just north of Trenton to catch a New Jersey Transit train. This is heavy rail, not the lighter Path trains that whisk many New Jersey commuters to and from the city. This is typically longer haul, for us about an hour, to get to Penn Station (the one in New York, not the one in Newark, a mistake you don't want to make because Newark).
Given the early hour, we stopped on the way to the station for much needed sustenance and these festive seasonal chemical concoctions we found at WaWa (a convenience store chain ubiquitous throughout New Jersey) seemed close enough.
My son got the "Candy Cane Shaped" doughnut.
That's literally how it was described, likely for legal reasons because it tasted like a doughnut.
I got a doughnut shaped doughnut that tasted like a candy cane.
I don't know what's going on in WaWa's pastry division, but these are the kinds of choices couples who are getting divorced make.
Incidentally, "crème filled" was being rather generous. What you see here was pretty much it, a sad little dollop in the corner.
Where was the rest of my crème? I suspect that somewhere in central New Jersey that day, an unsuspecting WaWa customer bit into a peppermint bark doughnut and ended up with 42 ounces of crème in his lap.
In case you're wondering, the difference between "crème" and "cream" is that crème is 98% more pretentious.
In any case, it was off to catch our train. We got there with six minutes to spare. Parking was paid via ParkMobile which is what we use in Arlington VA (located just across the Potomac from Washington, DC) so I punched it in quickly as we made our way to the platform.
This one turned out to be an older, single-decker train.
It had seen better days, but then, so have I, and at least it was clean.
That's not to say that I'm not clean, it's just,... okay, fine. If I had a dedicated crew of certified union hygiene experts I'm sure I'd be clean, too.
Also if I showered more.
The ride was fine and the old girl showed us she could still bring it.
The process on board was a mixture of new and old school. Tickets were checked by a conductor walking down the aisle once you got moving, but your ticket is (or can be, they still have machines at the station) a QR code generated when you use the NJ Transit app. The conductor checks it, and then whips out a piece of paper, punches some holes in it, and tucks it on top of the seat back.
Generally speaking, your nicer properties are not going to be situated next to train tracks, not with the traffic these tracks get (a favorite for "train fanning") which are shared with Amtrak (including the Acela that occasionally whizzes by you like you're standing still) so you get a lot of this.
And then there's the downtowns you speed through. This is New Brunswick
Pretty much right on time, we were at Penn Station.
New York, to be precise.
By and large, it was very clean and well marked.
I was looking at this directory, trying to get my bearings, and these two women were sitting just below the sign. I thought homeless, maybe, but it turned out they were heading to New Jersey to go shopping at the malls. I know this, and a lot more, because they thought I was going to do the same thing and were eager to help me find my way to the right train. After about five minutes of sorting out that confusion and general chit chat, we said our goodbyes and wished each other a merry Christmas. I don't know how much of what they told us was true, they had a little crazy about them, but my son got a kick out of the whole exchange noting how polite and friendly they were.
And that's one of the things people often misunderstand about New Yorkers. It's not that they're unfriendly, just busy. So, if they're brusque and skip certain niceties it's just because they are trying to be efficient. Most are happy to help you, just make sure you pay attention because they don't like having to repeat themselves ifyouknowhatimean.
Penn Station sits underneath Madison Square Garden on 7th Avenue straddling 31st and 33rd Street.
One of the things I like about New York is that despite all the tall buildings, there are a surprisingly large number of clear sight lines to the Empire State Building. This is the view from in front of Penn Station looking east and slightly north (as indicated in the map above).
We'd be heading there later.
Macy's was just up 7th Avenue on 34th Street and itself occupies an entire city block.
We popped in for a quick look around. It was pretty busy, of course, everyone looking for after Christmas sales.
We circumnavigated the block, up around "Herald Square" (more of a Triangle as you'll see later) which is closed off and set up to be an outside eating court with chairs and tables. (We would be availing ourselves of that later.) It was nicely decorated, clean, and pretty lively at 10:30 in the morning.
We cut down to 32nd Street briefly where my son noted his "first" New York homeless people. (He'd be keeping a running count of these things throughout the day.)
What would become abundantly clear to me as the day wore on was that there really weren't all that many homeless people. It gets cold in the winter in New York, so you get fewer lingering on the street, but there were fewer yet compared to when I lived here in the '80s and even the Giuliani '90s. It crossed my mind that they "cleaned up the place" for Christmas, but we went pretty afar from places that would attract that kind of attention and there still weren't all that many.
We were getting hungry at this point as the doughnut shaped like a doughnut that tasted like a candy cane and the doughnut shaped like a candy cane that tasted like a doughnut would only take us so far.
I wanted my son to have a "real" bagel, meaning one from New York. I hadn't done any research beforehand and the places I went to regularly were long lost to time, but I found a place called "Best Bagels and Coffee" on 35th Street between 7th and 8th Avenue.
We headed over there spying this 99-cent pizza place along the way.
Oh, yeah, we were going to be visiting that again later. I understand "the dollar slice" is vanishing from the city landscape so we knew we just had to while we still could.
But first, the bagels.
The place was packed, and not just with tourists. I imagine it's at least part tourist trap and for all I know "real New Yorkers" (the definition of which is malleable depending on the New Yorker you talk to) might eschew it, I have no idea, but it had a good feel to it.
While the line was massive, the workers moved quickly. In fact, my son marveled at how fast the guy behind the counter was wrapping up the bagel sandwiches, finishing each one in seconds.
Two sizeable plain bagels and cream cheese and one bottle of water set us back $13.32 including a 42 cents "surcharge" which based on the amount I'm going to guess is because I used a credit card.
This was 10:52 AM and served as a kind of early lunch. We wouldn't feel the need to eat again until evening, so not a bad deal!
We circled back around Macy's and grabbed a table in the aforementioned Herald Square which was already getting more busy.
I had ordered plain bagels for the same reason I order cheese pizza at a new place I'm trying. You can cover up a lot of mediocrity with toppings, but if you want to know if they can get the basics right, you've got to go with the pure Platonic version, and so plain bagel it was, with plain cream cheese.
Oh, and you never get it toasted. If you have to toast it, it's not a good bagel.
I toast most every bagel in Washington DC.
So how was it?
I wish I could have captured the expression on my son's face when he bit into it. It was a revelation. "Wow, this is good," he said.
It was not the "best bagel" I ever had, but it was a thoroughly competent take on a New York bagel, crunchy outside, dense and moist inside, with subtle bagel flavors throughout and nothing like the dinner rolls that are often passed off as bagels elsewhere.
While it was generally foggy, the temperature was comfortable with no wind to speak of, and so sitting in Herald Square the day after Christmas and eating bagels with my son was just about the most perfect thing I could imagine doing at that precise moment.
Incidentally, I'd be happy to entertain suggestions for places to get bagels for our next trip. Heck, I'll take suggestions for DC as I have yet to find a place that produces a dependably authentic New York bagel. (I've come close, but never quite there.)
Since the Empire State building was just down the street, we decided that would be our next destination.
The Empire State Building (along with the Chrysler Building) has long been a favorite of mine and I loved when people would visit so I'd have an excuse to go back up.
The initial experience has certainly changed, much more commercialized and, more to my dismay, digitized. There was a painful attempt to add a kind of virtual reality experience because I guess the actual reality of riding an elevator (two, actually) 86 stories up and gazing upon one of the most iconic skylines in the world just doesn't have enough "wow."
For example, they had a King Kong hand you could stand in and take pictures while a video of King Kong plays in the background.
Those windows in the background? All video screens.
While that was at least a fun thing for the kids, they had another area where you could get your picture taken in front of an idealized picture of the New York City Skyline because I guess a picture of you standing IN FRONT OF THE ACTUAL NEW YORK CITY SKYLINE isn't 'gram-worthy enough.
That picture would set you back $30 if you wanted to get a copy at the end of the ride, er, I mean visit, not unlike what follows a Disney roller coaster. I can't fathom why anyone would want a fake picture of themselves standing at a real thing.
There was a museum element to this part which was actually pretty cool including a time-lapse video of the construction of the Empire State Building and a dramatization of workers actually building it, but while that's interesting and all in a TV documentary kind of way, there were realities there right in front of your face you could marvel at like the detail in just this hallway that most people blow by to get to the next video screen presentation.
Speaking of which, there is a video that plays on the ceiling of the elevator as you ride up the first 80 stories. On. The. Ceiling. While you ride up a high-speed elevator 80 stories because real life is bor-ing.
The first elevator takes you to the 80th, which has some pretty neat views but is enclosed.
We took the next elevator which gets you up to the viewing platform which allows you to walk around outside for a 360-degree view of the city. (There's a 102-story observation deck as well, but it's enclosed and cramped and I don't think is worth the extra money.)
This was necessary to have here for some reason.
That viewer in the foreground looks like the ones they had when I had been here last (and very well might be) except they aren't coin operated anymore because of course.
As I had mentioned, it was pretty foggy, but the views were still great.
While we were walking around my son noticed how many people, particularly kids, had their faces buried in their phones. "I want to rip the phone out of their hands and throw it off the side of the building," he said at one point, and it's not as if he's not buried in his phone at times, he just knows that this is not the time.
This is looking out back over Macy's towards the Hudson.
That's Herald Square in the foreground where we had just eaten our bagels.
We also got an early glimpse of what we presumed to be the New Year's Eve ball they drop in Time Square getting prepped for the big event.
Incidentally, you need reservations for all this. Or, you can just tell them you have reservations and then frantically make the reservation on your phone as you walk towards the elevators which I may or may not have done. One other thing, they have TSA-level security, literally belts off (you can keep your shoes on) and all metal objects, bags, and jackets, in trays to get X-rayed as you walk through a metal detector.
As we were leaving we came across this intimidating police cruiser.
I can only imagine what this cop did to get that assignment. Probably misgendered a murderer.
My son wanted to check out the Apple flagship store. This has become a thing with us, and to be honest, these big-city stores (DC and Boston are standouts) are worth a visit if you're nearby one. It was located in front of (and beneath) the old "GM" building on the corner of 59th Street and 5th Avenue which literally used to have a showroom on the second floor back in the day. I spent A LOT of time in that building in the '90s for work, not for GM, just a law firm that had offices there as GM had been vacating the building for some time.
The best way to get around New York is the subway of course, and so we caught an uptown local at 33rd Street.
This is the line I used to take to work everyday, so it was fitting this should be my son's first ride on one.
The station was... are you ready for it? Clean. Well lit. Largely safe.
Those two men in the orange vests in the background? They are part of a program launched earlier this fall to use private unarmed security personnel to stand in front of the emergency exits to deter fare evaders.
There are a lot of very cool mosaics throughout the system. I'm pretty sure the middle part of this was done more recently but the border looks original.
Oh, and be careful where you sit. The homeless people surely do.
It was a relatively short walk to the store. It starts with a large glass cube you enter.
And down a spiral staircase to an expansive retail space.
On the top are translucent disks that let light in (you can catch a glimpse of that in the ceiling in the previous shot) and short mirrored mushroom looking things (you can catch a bit of one in the upper right hand corner below).
These are fun because you can look through them if you get close enough (like using a phone camera) making for a disorienting (and somewhat creepy) effect.
Enough of that, I wanted my son to see Trump Tower so he could witness for himself what subtle, understated elegance looks like assuming you think subtle, understated elegance consists of enough pink marble to encase the Vatican.
From there it was off to Rockefeller Center.
Incidentally, this is a fair amount of walking. We took the train (how New Yorkers refer to the subway) from 33rd Street to 59th after exiting the Empire State Building and were now making our way down to 42nd and 6th Avenue. My son remarked upon how much walking we were doing. I asked him a question: "Have you seen many fat people since we've been here?"
"No," he answered accurately, maybe just a handful, and that was mostly tourists.
For all their lack of hiking trails and similar amenities, cities can keep you in shape.
In any case, we checked out the tree at Rockefeller Center because I'm pretty sure you have to by law. Oddly, they had it largely cordoned off.
This was new to me, but fine, we were looking for a store tucked in here that sold vinyl, which my son has really gotten into. We found it facing 6th, a small but very cool shop.
This area on 6th Avenue was done up really well for Christmas.
There happened to be an MLB store in this area as well, which we checked out. My son found a Red Sox sweatshirt he liked (they actually allow these to be sold here!!).
It was $100. For a sweatshirt.
He liked it less. (Note to self: MLB inflated logo wear and Midtown Manhattan is probably not going to be bargain central.) However, we later found him an Abercrombie & Fitch winter coat on sale for less, half off in fact, and that was on 5th Avenue!
We were looking for a place to get coffee that was not a Starbucks (it would be like getting pizza at Domino's) and came across this garish, if eye-catching building.
And yes, that is St. Patrick's Cathedral right next door to the left. I'd have liked to take my son inside there, but the crowds are just too much this time of year. In fact, here's a short video of what it's like just walking down the sidewalk this time of year.
I almost ran into the back of the woman in front of me, lots of people stopping suddenly to carry on conversations in the middle of the sidewalk.
I didn't want to spend the entire day in midtown and so did a quick search and found what appeared to be a genuine hole-in-the-wall coffee shop down in Greenwich Village.
That meant back underground, this time an E train to West 4th Street.
The trains were definitely pretty crowded, but still mostly clean, well lit, and vastly better than when I lived there and largely on par with the Giuliani years.
While Greenwich Village does attract tourists, or at least used to, it's not going to attract the Christmas crowds of midtown, so a nice little taste of a different part of the city.
Nice view of the Empire State Building when we came out of the station.
Greenwich Village was always a bit sketchy, but I would say more sketchy than I remember.
My son started laughing when he saw this sad little ATM machine.
"I wouldn't stick my card in there," he said.
And for those of you unfamiliar with Greenwich Village's claim to fame:
We found the coffee shop I was looking for, Third Rail Coffee, a block off Washington Square and just down the street from NYU (the famous, or infamous depending on your point of view, "New York University").
Here's the view out the window.
It was a true hole-in-the-wall as I had suspected. Six tiny tables in all
And a book sharing service because of course.
That book on top was a bit of a surprise, but then New York is full of surprises. It's aimed at a young adult crowd and and is described as follows:
Whether you have a long-time relationship with God or are new to faith, Live is a joyful encouragement to make the most of each moment, make wise decisions, and always seek the truth of the Bible.
It has a real new agey vibe to it, so maybe not to everyone's taste, but there you go.
We both ordered lattes which were $4 a piece. Not bad, my son said, and better than what you can find in Arlington, VA, where we live.
Then we got them.
There's no scale here, but these were maybe 6 ounces.
On the plus side, they were excellent.
We wanted to check out Times Square, particularly after dark, so we made our way over to the the Christopher Street station to catch the number 1 local uptown.
It was while we were walking over there that we encountered a crazy person, or to be more precise, either a crazy person, or the New York City Police Commissioner as he was loudly proclaiming.
It's New York, so I figured it was 50-50.
As we entered the station, I came across my first obvious bit of vandalism.
I don't know what this was all about, but I do know someone must have really hated Queens.
Another beautiful mosaic. These are all over the place, and this one looks original.
This station was a bit more grungy, a bit more like I remember, but still serviceable and part of a system used by millions of New Yorkers a day going about their lives including people who just want to get home with their pizza.
We got off at 14th and switched to an express. This is a line I used to use quite frequently, so I knew it well.
It was on this train we came across a very well-equipped homeless person, including personal transportation.
I'm pretty sure I had fewer personal belongings in my mid-twenties.
In any case, that end of the car was vacant but for my son and me and the Citibike enthusiast. Everyone else was crammed in the rest of the car.
At least we had plenty of shoulder room.
We emerged from the station unscathed.
You can't do Times Square justice in pictures. It has become a near parody of excess, the most Las Vegasy part of New York there is. This short video is the best I can do.
My son turned to me at one point and said he always wondered if it was really like the way it was depicted in the videos he has watched. It is.
After one more trip to Macy's for a bathroom break (highly recommended if you need to find a clean restroom in this part of midtown) we decided it was time to hit up the 99 cents pizza place.
There was a decent line, and this was another hole-in-the-wall, but it moved fast because New Yorkers move fast.
And yes, this is completely up to code, why do you ask?
We each got a slice.
Folded over, of course. What are we? From Iowa?
Now, this was by no means the best slice of pizza I ever had, but... to quote my son, "this shouldn't taste this good."
No, it shouldn't. But it's New York.
I sent my wife a picture of him eating his slice. "Did he wash his hands," she asked?
This was a little after 5 PM at 35th and 7th, where we stood eating our pizza, technically the garment district.
At this point, it was time to make our way back to New Jersey.
As we were approaching Penn Station, one more look at the Empire State Building, at this point lit up for the season.
We caught our train with about two minutes to spare, a nice time saver given that at this hour (around 5:30 PM, or rush hour) 15 to 20 minutes separated trains. We had one of the newer, and nicer, double-decker cars and settled in up top.
It was a "Super Express" with just one stop before Princeton Junction, so less than an hour.
We got off where we started, Princeton Junction Station, and watched our train depart for Trenton.
We were hungry, so we stopped in at a McDonald's and, inspired by a combination of fatigue and holiday spirit, I thought it was a good idea to get this.
It was not.
The rest of the drive was uneventful.
Overall, this was a great trip. My son did count two subway rats, the first one he felt compelled to text his mother about.
Son: "I just saw my first Subway Rat!"
Mom: " Really?"
Yes, really.
A few observations.
We saw and did a tiny fraction of what there is to see and do, of course, but we did a lot from the most touristy of tourist things (the Empire State Building for one) to things a bit off the beaten path like the coffee shop in Greenwich Village.
And we took the train everywhere.
Overall my son counted two subway rats, three crazy people (two assuming the third was the Police Commissioner), three homeless people and one fare evader. We also came across a group of juvenile delinquents on the number 3 train, carrying a plastic crate full of spray cans they allegedly stole (my son could overhear them where he was standing) and planning assorted acts of graffiti-based vandalism.
There were also a couple scam artists working the tourist crowds my son spied after having done some research, one involving fake monks strapping bracelets on you and demanding money and another people dressing up in costumes and taking pictures with you and also demanding money. He said he'd move so as to put me between him and the scam artists whenever he saw them. Apparently they left me alone because I was completely oblivious to it.
The city has a noticeable ambient noise to it. This is something my son noticed right away. We don't live in a quiet area, we live a stone's throw from Washington DC and are about five to seven minutes from Washington National airport. My father-in-law once visited from rural Pennsylvania and asked me if "it was always this noisy here." I had stopped noticing it at that point. I'm also in DC several days a week which isn't exactly quiet, but New York kicks it up to a whole other level. It varies of course (Greenwich Village was almost peaceful), just be prepared to encounter multiple walls of sound.
The city has gotten some cool updates since I lived there, including tap-to-pay on the subways. You don't need a transit card or an app (or a token as in back in my day), just a chip-enabled credit card (or smart watch or phone so enabled) and just tap and go, like you were purchasing a pack of gum at a convenience store. It's $2.90 a ride including most transfers, and like before, it doesn't matter how near or far you are going.
The subway cars remain vastly cleaner than the '80s and visually appear well maintained. (I understand some lines have become notorious for delays, but things worked smoothly for us all day.)
New York is no more a dystopian nightmare decent people should avoid at all costs than Washington DC. It remains an amazing, vibrant place with all the hazards cities have always had. Things are worse now than a few years ago, and costs and crime are driving out far too many middle class residents particularly people with families while at the same time millionaires are returning. These are problems, and not particularly new ones, but also not insurmountable.
My son very much wants to go back and stay a night or two.
I'm glad he feels that way.
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