New York, New York, It's a Wonderful Town

This past weekend I made a whirlwind trip to New York City, to attend the combination birthday/ anniversary party of a couple of old friends. I know Fae and Jim from when I lived in Boston, but they now live in California. Fae is from New York (ah, those mobile Americans), and goes back to visit nearly every year. This year they decided to throw this big party while there, and invited me. This girl does not turn down the chance to go to a party...or to visit the City.

I hadn't been in New York in many years, and found it as exciting and stimulating as ever. One thing that struck me was how many jillions of cabs there are on the streets, surely more than when I lived there (admittedly, a long time ago). It is absolutely great to be able to walk out to the curb, hold up your arm, and in less than a minute have a cab pull up.

However, riding in those cabs can be a truly hair-raising experience. These guys drive like maniacs on the lam from the asylum. Why there isn't an accident every three minutes is beyond me, the way they flit from lane to lane, squeaking in front of each other with maybe a quarter inch to spare. Lots of horn honking. And think of driving like that for hours on end, six days a week! I think the bravest people in New York are all the people riding around on bicycles -- in that mad traffic -- and the second bravest are the cabbies, who contribute heavily to the madness.

I love the variety to be found amongst these madmen of the streets. In a total of five cab rides (I felt like I was in a Woody Allen movie, always taking a taxi, whereas when I lived there I, like most people, went everywhere by subway), my drivers included a man from Pakistan, who had been driving a NYC cab for ten years and assured me the police were too hard on taxi drivers, a man I guessed to be Korean who was very ready to call it quits for the day ("I drop you off, I head for the [Queensborough] bridge."), a Caribbean islander with that distinctive accent, a black man of indeterminate background, and a skinny white kid in Goth dress with spiked hair.

I was surprised to learn that for the past few years there have been bicycle taxis, official name, pedicabs. My god, shades of southeast Asia. Guy peddling away, a passenger lolling in the little carriage in back. The woman who was telling me about them said she'd seen one in which the passengers were a grossly fat man and his wife, and I couldn't help thinking the fellow was either a sadist or incredibly thoughtless. On the other hand, another woman who was listening said, it was probably the sort of fare a sensible pedicab driver would pass on. I myself can't imagine asking another human to peddle me around.

I saw one of these throwbacks to another time and place, unencumbered by any sort of passenger, on my drive uptown to the apartment of Fae's brother, who was kindly providing me with lodging for the weekend. This was on 8th Avenue, on the edge of the theatre district. The pedicabs are most prevalent, I was informed, up around Central Park -- like the traditional horse-drawn cabs -- which was the very area we were approaching. When I had boarded my own cab, down in the West Village where Fae & Jim were staying in a tiny, borrowed apartment, and told the fellow where I wanted to go on the Upper East Side he'd asked me, "Which way you want to go?"

"The fastest way," I'd said, and he'd laughed, and whisked me up 8th Avenue, then across the middle of Central Park along the green, green, stone-walled Transverse Street. thus transporting me effortlessly from the West Side to the East (the street was thick with taxis utilizing this traffic-light-free shortcut).

Tomorrow I'll tell you about the restaurants.