A Beautiful Day in NY

The weather has been just perfect the past several days – sunny and 70’s. It really doesn’t get any better than this. Most shop doors are open, and restaurant tables have spilled onto sidewalks everywhere - kind of like the way the women have spilled out of their low-cut tops everywhere. My word! Who needs a “gentleman’s club” in NY? You can get the same view on the street.

Anyway, tonight I needed some fresh air, so I took a walk at 8:15, just as the sun was setting. The sunset was breath-taking – a huge deep-red ball sitting atop the end of 50th Street. I wanted to stand in the middle of the street and just stare at it but didn’t want to risk getting hit by a taxi.

Speaking of getting hit by a car, the law stating that pedestrians have the right of way is not adhered to in NYC. In Seattle, yes. I’ve seen cars slow down for some idiot crossing a Seattle street nowhere near a crosswalk. To me, that’s carrying politeness to the extreme. But here in Manhattan there is no such thing as polite driving. Don’t even consider it. You have to learn defensive walking if you want to live to tell about your NY experience. When walking down a NY street, just think of yourself as being “on point,” like in a military patrol, and you should survive.

Last week a local news station aired a segment about five different people getting hit by cars. One poor guy was interviewed from his hospital bed. And believe me, he LOOKED like he’d been hit by a car. This guy was trying to hail a taxi on the edge of a street in midtown around 10pm when a taxi hit him at full speed and never even stopped. The victim suffered compound fractures in his left leg. All of his left ribs were broken. And his head looked like one big black and purple bruise spotted with bloody contusions. When interviewed, he still had windshield glass in some of his wounds. I couldn’t believe the news program would show someone in that condition, but they did. At least the guy lived.

The fact is, there are 10 hit-and-runs a day in Manhattan. Yes, ten. At the time that news show aired, there’d been 17 deaths so far this year. Those numbers are astronomical. I mean, with traffic always jammed up everywhere in the city, how does a driver get away from the scene of the crime? The furthest he can get is the next intersection. If it’s a taxi, I can understand that. All taxis look alike in Manhattan – same make and model car. I can see the perpetrator blending in. But TEN hit-and-runs a day? That’s insane. And that doesn’t even count the hit-and-stays.

Even in Seattle I would look both ways before crossing. But here in NYC, where a couple weeks ago I almost got run over by a speeding bicyclist going in the wrong direction on one-way street, I look all FOUR ways before crossing. That’s walking defensively.

Sunday was another beautiful day. I took the D train all the way to Coney Island. I’d never been, and the new fancy Stillwell St. subway station had just opened up at Coney Island. The trip took an hour but was neat because this particular subway went over the Manhattan bridge – instead of under water – and stayed above ground all the way through Brooklyn. I’m not used to being in a subway that travels above ground. With daylight streaming through the graffiti-scratched windows, it’s a whole different experience.

It was a lovely day for the beach, and obviously several thousand other people felt the same way. I took my Teva sandals off and walked in the sand. The soothing feeling of warm sand between my toes was something I hadn’t experienced in a long, long time. And I think it had been about 18 years since I’d touched my toes in the Atlantic. The water was freezing, but there were kids and one or two adults in the water.

I’ve never seen such a diverse group of people on a beach in all my life. Let me tell you, Coney Island is not where you go to find the beautiful people. This isn’t Kirkland, Washington. (As my old friend Patti’s boyfriend once said to my size-10 friend, “You’re not skinny enough to live in Kirkland.”) This is Coney Island, where there is no restriction on body size for bikini-wearing women, and no age limit for Speedo-sporting men.

I walked on the boardwalk and around the new Key Span baseball stadium, which displays a touching 9/11 memorial on one exterior wall, commemorating Brooklyn firefighters who gave their lives trying to save others. I walked up the sidewalk on the main drag after that, which was packed with people eating hot dogs and ice cream cones. I bought a corn-on-the-cob, sat down to eat, then headed home on the N train – which moved a lot faster than the D.

So, in other words, now I can say that I’ve been to Coney Island. And I see no need to do it again.