Taking a Shine to the Big Apple
It's been raining off and on all day. In NYC, everyone walks everywhere. Cabs are too expensive (and slow) to take all the time. The subway is a bit steamy and, besides, nearly everything you need is within a few blocks anyway. I thnk I've walked more in the last five days than I've walked in the last five years. I love being on the streets and getting the rhythm of the city. It's so different from Phoenix. It's still hot. It's more humid. But there's a breeze most days and there's just so dang much stuff to look at.
NYC is an architecture-lover's dream. There are so many amazing buildings, both old and new. The churches are inspiring and often imposing. Every block is a different visual treat. There are world-famous buildings (Empire State, Chrysler, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and so on) to gaze at ... I found Grand Central Station (pictured here) to be breath-taking. The city seems so familiar (due in part, I am certain, to the prolific number of episodes of the LAW AND ORDER series that are filmed here). Yet I have discoverd and enjoy the little-seen and unknown wonders just as much.
Walking around, I've found this whole different underground world. I remember when the Coen Brothers came to Phoenix to shoot RAISING ARIZONA. Marsha McCreadie, the film critic for the Arizona Republic went to interview them about the film. They talked about how shocked they were that there were no basements in Phoenix. They had to re-write the script because the final chase sequence went through a bunch of basements. There just isn't much subterranean life in the Valley of the Sun.
New York, by comparison, has an underground life that I never knew about. Virtually every deli, store, cafe and shop has a set of metal doors in front of it. Those doors open up every day to receive new merchandise, retrieve additional supplies and make the lives of the workers generally more challenging. Up and down the stairs go employees. New Yorkers make use of every tiny bit of usable space.
