5109 Surreal City

Tuesday, August 22, 2017

On the 10th, Daughter, Hercules, Nugget, and I went to Manhattan and visited the 9/11 memorial.

We drove north to some NJ town (I forget the name) across from our target, parked in a multi-story garage, walked about a block to a train/metro/subway station, and took the train under the river, emerging about a block from the memorial park.  All very efficient.   

The station we came out to was huge, all white marble, multilevel with hundreds of very expensive glittering shops, amazingly clean, more like a mall in Dubai than the subway stations I remember from when I was taking company classes in NYC in the '70s.  There were hallways leading off from the cavernous glass-roofed central section, and everywhere there were stairs!  Stairs stairs, and more stairs.  I can "do" stairs, but I don't trust my right knee, so I take stairs with one hand gripping the railing, and two steps per tread.  Yes, there were elevators at either end, but you have to go up and down stairs to get to them.  Very poor design. 

It was surreal.  New York City wasn't New York City.  Not the way I remember it, anyway.  In all the walking we did that day, I didn't see one single rat, squirrel, panhandler, or pigeon the whole time we were there.  No pigeons!  None.  What did they do to them?  What is Pale Male finding to eat?  The sidewalks, streets, and curbs were all clean, not so much as a scrap of paper or cigarette butt or melted ice cream puddle anywhere, which was doubly strange because there were almost no trash barrels anywhere, either.  I found exactly two over maybe ten blocks of wanders.  There's no way it could be just this neighborhood - if there are were pigeons up the street, they'd find their way here.  They fly, you know.  Surreal.

So, we went to the pools.  They are the footprints of the buildings, so I expected them to be larger.  The first name I read on the wall was a woman "and her unborn child".  That was too sad.  I didn't read any more names.  

Water pours down the inner walls and then into a smaller deeper pit in the center.  I wondered where the water came from and where it went.  

Then we went to the tall building.  I don't know what they call it.  Seems like it's still called the world trade center.  I don't know what businesses might be in the building, didn't see any identifying signs.  We went in a tourist door bypassing the long line because we had tickets, and were herded through a security check, and to a bank of elevators, down corridors with moving pictures on the walls, and all I could think of was the herding at Disney.  

We were going up to the observation deck a jillion stories up.  The elevator walls showed moving pictures of the view we were to see, and there was NO feeling of movement.  The Sears tower in Chicago isn't as high, but a.) I remember my ears popping there, a lot, and b.) the elevator didn't go all the way up in Chicago, you had to switch halfway up to a second elevator to go the rest of the way.  This elevator went all the way up in seconds (how?), and my ears only slightly clicked.  It started to feel like it wasn't real.

We emerged to a reception area where the windows had a covering showing more moving pictures and people nattered at us for a bit.  You can rent for $15 an ipad thingy that you point out the windows and it shows the view and has labels on the things you can see.  Daughter and Hercules didn't want to rent one, but I did because I wanted to know what I was looking at (but it wasn't intuitive and for the first hour it wasn't "looking at" the same view I was). Then the panels over the windows rose, and we saw the real view, and everybody oohed and aahed. 

We moved up a level, and were in an area with windows all around, 360 view.  Walk around, point ipad, lose Daughter, find her, lose Hercules and Nugget, find them, lose everybody, call on cell phone, rinse, repeat.  Everything was labelled "world", but that's not the world out there, it's Manhattan and New Jersey.  And the haze was preventing seeing the upper end of the island or very far into New Jersey.

There was a large circle at one point with a glass floor, and supposedly you could stand on the floor and look down on the streets below.  But, uh, what's below that floor is the inside of the building, folks.  Hercules said we were actually probably looking at a televised view of the street.  And that's when it all got very weird for me.

The hallways at the bottom had projections of street views.  The elevator had projections on the walls.  There were no buttons in the elevator, we just got on and it went up.  No feeling of movement, no ear discomfort.  The "glass floor" was a projection.  I saw nothing out the windows at the top that would convince me it was not ALL projection.   All of it out those windows, just Plato's shadows.  I sensed no sway.  Seems like there should be some sway.  Maybe we actually just went up six floors, and we're just looking at a big screen wrapped around the building.  No pigeons?  Clean gutters?  Maybe it's all been fake since we got off the train?  WHERE ARE WE?!?!

I really seriously started to doubt it all.  Really.  Seriously.  No kidding.  It was not a good feeling.

After we left there, we went looking for somewhere to eat.  We walked a few blocks up West, and finally I picked a place with an outdoor patio, my treat.  Nugget got two deviled eggs, Daughter got a salad, I got a hamburger and fries (which Nugget ate), and Hercules at first refused to order anything, complaining about city prices and repeating that when he worked in the city he always carried his lunch, but I think Daughter convinced him to order some small appetizer, Gramma's paying, remember?  I forget.  Anyway, it came to $80.  It felt like NYC again.

We walked around some more, then Daughter and Hercules decided they wanted to walk in the park along the river.  I knew my sauntering would slow the three of them down, so I found a place to sit next to a real honest-to-gosh trash can on West Street, near the entrance to an indoor mall, only the second one I'd seen all day, this one with an ash tray arrangement on top, and told them that it was an ideal place to sit and people-watch for an hour.  Besides, my memories of the city included filthy streets, so I had worn closed shoes, (but without socks, because it's August), and I was working on a blister on the back of my heel, so sitting would be nice.  Daughter said, "Sir next to a trash bin?", and I pointed out that the freakin' thing was spotless!  It looked polished!  In fact, over the next hour or so I put two butts in the ashtray, and damn if each butt wasn't gone the next time I turned around.  Like magic!  Better than Disney.  It was getting surreal again.

And then we went home.  That was Thursday.  The next day was my ophthalmologist's appointment where I got the totally painless shot in my eyeball, and then on Saturday my hips started complaining - but not very much.  I actually was rather proud that I was able to walk so much.  I have GOT to start getting more exercise!

And, seriously, I am still worried about what they did to the pigeons.  And the panhandlers.  (I did see one dirtywaterdog cart.  I guess there's still some NYC in NYC.)
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