I should start by saying I could never live in New York City.  What’s the point?  Any money I made would be soaked up by the high-priced rent which would make me feel like a prisoner in my own house, or rather, living area.  And I wouldn’t want to brave the commute each day, each way.  But after my most recent trip to the Big Apple I am certainly reminded of the appeal and energy that the City possesses.  Not that anyone reading this may care, but I felt like jotting down some of my observations from a 24-hour stopover in the City That Never Sleeps.  

5 p.m. Sunday evening.  I head south out the door of my posh Wall Street Hotel and walk the 50 yards or so to the subway.  Even on a dusky, weekend night there is activity as couples walk and hold hands, a kid, maybe 16 or 17 bikes by with a guitar slung over his back, and street vendors are cleaning up their areas from the day. 

By 5:15 I’m on the subway heading under the Hudson and over to Brooklyn to meet my cousin, Jon.  He has asked me to join him for a free reading of an original play.  I agree though my orientation is more sightless than Stevie Wonder.  At Atlantic Avenue, following the quick-noted directions from Jon, I serpentine up through the bowels of the subway station to find myself in the concourse of a mall, and of course, Starbucks, our rendezvous point.  I’m in luck, Jon joins me roughly two minutes later, and after a hug that I am sure was interpreted by passers-by as anything but two cousins greeting each other, we set off to a bar.  Along the way Jon catches me up with his life and informs me we would be seeing a writing workshop perform a play written by the workshop teacher.  The actors, or rather, students, would be reading aloud the piece to an audience of questionable quantity.  There is no RSVP for the event, only the grass-roots hope that those associated with the class will be interested in seeing and hearing this original play.  Three or four blocks into our walk, we arrive at the bar.  It is quaint, dark, and it reminds me that I miss the pubs of London.  We sneak pass the patrons and hook a left, down two or three stairs, to the back room.  Already the six students are seated, scrambling over their pages, ready to read.  Jon and I are hungry.  We have some time.

Jon takes me over to a Chinese/Mexican restaurant.  I don’t know how else to explain it as it is owned and operated by Chinese-Americans who make and sell Mexican food.  Jon recommends, I concur and order chicken fajitas, which we take back to the bar. 

When we return to the backroom it is near 6 and now other people have started to turn up.  We seat, eat, and prepare to watch the reading.  Dozens more congregate and fill the small room.  The play begins. 

After more than an hour, in which the students have truly made this play come to life just by reading the words on the page, the show is over and Jon and I head back to the subway.  It has been a long day for me so we part and confirm our plans for the next day.  By 9:30 p.m. I am back in my room, tired, and ready for bed, though a peak out my window proves to me thousands of people do not share my sentiment.

My alarm notifies me at 6:30 the next morning that I should get up.  I disagree and we settle our dispute with the snooze button.  Prod after prod the alarm begs me to get out of bed, and finally I acquiesce, touching the floor with my feet around 7:15.  Teeth brushed, clothed for a run, I now stretch for a few minutes while Al Roker and the chick from the Today Show tell me about breast feeding findings while on location in Ireland.   I am mildly interested because my wife is pregnant with our first child.  Around 8 a.m., after guzzling a bottle of water, I head down to get a run in.  I have an interview at noon a few blocks up Broadway and I want to run the route, just for information’s sake. 

Alive.  That’s how I immediately would describe Wall Street on this morning.  I was flush against the oncoming suits, pantsuits, long overcoats, and day traders making their way to the Stock Exchange.  Younger and younger do these money managers and cash-grabbers seem than I recall in Trading Places.  I am walking upstream in a river that is not like one in which I swim.  I admire, with intrigue, what their lives are like.  What time did they wake up?  Where do they come from?  Is this a happy life?  At Broadway and Wall Street, in the shadow of Trinity Church, I turn left and step off into a an easy saunter, while slaloming through the hundreds of indigenous folk who are tractor-beaming their way to work.     I pass Pike and notice newspaper stands swapping print for coin.  Pass Warren Street and police whom, along with their K-9 all turn to watch a pretty woman walk on by.  The lights remain in my favor and I have yet to be hindered by the RED HAND at a crosswalk.  A few more blocks and I have reached City Hall and the acreage where the mansion sits.  Fencing surrounds the one thing in this area that doesn’t seem to fit, trees, now enveloped by the concrete and steel jungle.  Finally I reach my destination, 290 Broadway, between Duane and Reade Street where I circle around a large column and head back to the beginning. 

This time I am not as fortunate with the traffic lights, as I am stopped at almost every corner where I am forced to run in place set against the motionless people who surround me.  They read newspapers and faxes, talk on cell-phones and sip coffee.  I breathe heavier than them and I am sweating, clearly out of place.  Light changes and I am off to weave the crowds. 

Southbound I cross over Broadway and slow my pace, then relinquish it fully as I come back to Trinity Church.  I am breathing easier and I happen past a shoe-shiner.  I promise him I’ll see him in two hours and his multi-toothlessness says, “ok.”  Now I stop to stretch along the cemetery fence of Trinity Church.  It is historic but I only know it for one reason; it appeared as a plot point in a Nicholas Cage movie, National Treasure.  I look around to think of the scene in the movie, visualize where the cameras were and where the people must have been.  I stretch my calves and hamstrings while people with more purpose than I hurry by.  I walk back to the hotel. 

After my shower, my breakfast, and an hour of talking to myself in the mirror as interview preparation, it is time to make my way along the run-route.  There is no change to the scenery at 10:50 a.m., it is only brighter and a bit warmer.  I am now among them, concealed in my city camouflage with a two-piece expensive suit that says, if anything, “I belong.”  I don’t.  I see my shoeshine friend and I tell him, ‘I told you I’d be back.’  He seems delighted.

His name is Travis.  At least, I think that is what he says.  Hard to discern his words.  But I do learn that he loves the Knicks; he’s been to one game this year and hopes to get to another one.  He doesn’t like Nate Robinson’s showboating but loves the heart and skill that the 5’9 point guard plays with.  My right shoe is done, brighter than anything in this economy.  I tell Travis that I had originally planned to be on the phone during this process, but decided I’d rather speak with a real New Yorker.  I tell him I think most people in my position may ignore Travis as he works, instead disappear under a newspaper or communication device that states Travis is not nearly as important as the news or people on the other end of the communication leash.  He tells me he loves that I mention this and is appreciative of my attention.  He stops frequently to give me ideas about jobs; thoughts on business, and a five to ten minute shoe shine now pushes 20 minutes.  I don’t mind.  Finally he asks when I’ll be back and I honestly answer him I don’t know.  He says, genuinely, “I just met my new friend, Gabe, and he may never come back here.”  I smile and promise that if the occasion brings me back around my butt will be back in his seat.  I smile and say good-bye and I head north.

11:30ish.  My pace slower than earlier, but the wind is more brisk.  My tie flops as my jacket pushes open and I don’t make any attempt to correct either.  Walking my way is a woman; I guess 40-50 years old, though she has the skin of Don Imus.  She is weathered and leathered.  I cringe inside a bit.  I stop at City Hall to take in the building.  It is old, and as I said, out of place now.  Armed guards are stationed at entry and exit points.  Few birds are present in the garden green area near the parking lot.  I continue on.  I hear languages, multiple languages, that aren’t English.  I see Ground Zero to my left and a dozen or so cameras oriented in all directions capturing the day.  Police direct traffic as a young guy passes me, declaring in his cell phone that he has “to get his s#*t together.  My daughter is four now and she is starting to open up to me.  I’m a grown-up now and I have responsibilities.  I can’t get f&%k up anymore because she’s my life.  I owe it to her…”

11:45, as is my M.O.  I am early.  I enter the building, it’s sprawling and cold, and I get undressed (more or less) to pass through the metal detector.  I purchase a package of tissues from a guy who looks Pakistani but has a thicker New York Accent than Rosie Perez.  I laugh to myself and head over to wait on my interview that starts at 12:15.

3:30.  I think I nailed my interview.  There was a report writing portion, too.  After three hours I am exhausted but have to hurry uptown to Rockefeller Center to meet Jon.  There is no time to get back to the hotel and change.  Two blocks east and I catch the Express 4 to Grand Central.  I engage in some small talk with the locals, mainly to reassure my bearings.  After a switch to the local 6 and one stop to 51^st, I sprint up the stairs and ask a bellhop to point me in the right direction.  He says cross the street and head south three blocks.  I’m running late so I get running. 

I have tickets for a taping of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and I am supposed to be online by 4:15. It’s just ticking 4:05.  I’m on the phone with my wife, in my suit, sprinting through mid-town and looking like a fool.  I tell her I think I did well and will fill her in later.  A city block could as well be a mile.  Jon now calls through, “Where ya at?”  Sooner than he thinks, faster than I thought, I jog up to the ice skating rink and walk into 30 Rock.  The sweat wastes no time accumulating on my back and under my arms.  I find Jon and we settle into line for the next 45 minutes.

On our way through security we walk past Flavor Flav, from Public Enemy.  He, and they, will be performing on the show.  I think I am having a conversation with him but to anyone observing only my words are intelligible.  I have no clue if he is answering, asking, or ignoring questions.  A minute later I end transmission and we are through security up to the studio.

It’s small, as expected, and we are seated n the middle section up near the back.  I welcome the cool, studio air because now I can stop sweating.  The pre-show joke jester comes out to warm us up; does his job.  Now Jimmy’s house band, the legendary Roots, emerges to the leadership of just a tuba.  The sound is all at once mesmerizing and contagious.  We start clapping along to the big-brass pied-piper and when the rest of the band hits their marks the music develops into something I wasn’t expected to feel:  I don’t know the name of this song, or if it exists on a disc, but I want it on my iPod.  After several minutes the music dies down, and taping begins.

Jimmy is revealed from behind the blue curtain and the monologue begins.  I find myself laughing, yet wondering, am I expressing true laughter or expected?  I’m having fun.  Gary Sinise comes out to promote his work on a new documentary I already knew about and want to see, Brothers at War, about a man who traveled to Iraq to learn more about his two brothers who were at war and what their lives were like.  More guests, and finally Public Enemy closes out the show with their well-known “Bring Da Noise,” which, if not for the hard work of the architects might have actually brought the house down.  It was that good.

Jon and I are hungry as we leave the show so he takes me to pretty authentic Chinese restaurant a few blocks away.  We have already had a conversation about how infused our families and Chinese food are, so it seems natural that we would be squeezing our way through the barely passable walk-ways between tables to get to the last table in the restaurant, a two-seater next to the kitchen.  I say aloud, ‘Is there nothing available in the kitchen?’

Over an hour of eating and conversation Jon and I share stories and thoughts on our futures.  He is very likable, unassuming, and wields a broader artistic stroke than I do.  I admire his casual success and am thankful he takes his time to show me around when I come to his city.  We walk along the street and through Times Square.  He mentions he hasn’t been here in some time.  I was here in September.  It is bright, it always is.  Tourists snapping pics of any and everything.  Cops do their thing.  We walk and talk. 

Around 8:30 we part ways again on the subway, hugging it out one last time, as he goes his way and I go mine.  Now I guess correctly and head Downtown to Wall Street on the subway and continue my observation of the local populace.  A fabulous subway performer strums her guitar and sings proudly, and on key.  She doesn’t pass by me and I do not chase her down to slip her a bill or two.  Next to me a woman rests in her beau’s lap.  A tired professional-looking woman across from me has given in to the day and slumps her head against the pole to her right.  Snickers is doing a good job keeping their candy bar in the public consciousness.  The entire car is plastered with their logo and catchy sayings like: “Attend Class at Chocolate Chewniversity.”

Just after 9 p.m. now and I made it back to my room, finally stripping myself of my tie and suit, and prepare for bed.  My trip is about done and I didn’t even begin to scratch the surface of this city.  The City is electric.  But I couldn’t live there.