In Part 1, I vented 'n' whined about how the NYC in-store appearance for my new Ramones book didn't go quite as well as I would have preferred. Today, we deal with a considerable positive part of the trip:
I GOT TO GO BACK TO NEW YORK CITY!
That is not a small thing. I love New York, and I always have. My first visit was in 1972, during which time I went to Yankee Stadium, the DC Comics office (then located at 909 Third Ave), Little Italy, and a movie theater screening Charlie Chaplin's 1940 film The Great Dictator. The DC Comics stop was brief--they didn't allow visitors--but Old Timers Day at Yankee Stadium gave me a chance to actually meet and get autographs from Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, Whitey Ford, Phil Rizzuto, Bill Dickey, and other pinstripe legends. And, although exhibition games don't count in the record books, I got see Mickey freakin' Mantle hit a home run. I was twelve. I loved New York.
My love of the Big Apple notwithstanding, I've had relatively few opportunities to get there. There was an eighth grade class trip in 1973 (Statue of Liberty, Radio City Music Hall, Jesus Christ Superstar off Broadway, and--most importantly!--a meal at the Automat, plus dinner at a steakhouse that may or may not have been Peter Luger), a DC Comics convention in '76, and my first visit to Staten Island in '79, mostly to meet Brenda's parents, but squeezing in a Staten Island Ferry ride to Manhattan to see the Flashcubes play at Gildersleeves on Bowery.
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| The Flashcubes |
There were scattered trips to New York in the '80s, and only a handful of visits since then. My most recent was in 2019, when Brenda and I took a Greyhound day trip to hang out in Manhattan, at which time I saw my first-ever on-Broadway show, Oklahoma! We planned to make these excursions an annual event. What could possibly get in our way?
Oh, right. 2020. Yeah, that disrupted more than a few plans, didn't it?
With a book to promote, a return to the city that never sleeps seemed a welcome prerequisite. Plans were made, and Brenda and I caught the 7 am train out of Syracuse on Wednesday the 28th. We were forty minutes late pulling into Penn Station, but our timetable was open, so no worries. We took a subway to our hotel in Chinatown, and I'm very impressed with the improved ease and efficiency of the NYC subway system. It was still too early to check in, but we were able to drop off our bags and start walking toward the Village.
Aside from my scheduled appearance to hype the book at Generation Records on Thursday night, our only specific intent was to get together with our old friends Brian and Lisa. We've known Brian since my senior year in college, 1979-80, when he was one of the guys living in my dorm suite. He's the only one with whom I've maintained contact, though we haven't seen him in many years, and it's been even longer since we've seen his wife Lisa.
We met up with them at Generation Records on Wednesday, and the time between vanished as if it were no time at all. We chatted, joked, laughed, reminisced, and had a fabulous time together. We walked from Generation to The Strand Bookstore (where Brian, bless 'im, bought two copies of my book), and then wandered back to Chinatown to finish checking in at the hotel.
JG Sohotel is a little place at 120 Lafayette Street, and I need to finish writing this blog thing so I can give that business a rave review. The staff at JG Sohotel could not have been nicer or more helpful. Our room was tiny but...adorable! The bed was comfy, the AC worked, and the shower, though small in size, was one of the best hotel showers I've ever used. Noise from the street was noticeable because, y'know, CITY THAT NEVER SLEEPS!, but the hotel provided a supply of earplugs in the room for those who needed to keep the sounds of the city at bay. I let the noise wash over me, unencumbered. I was in New York.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. With our bags stashed in our li'l bitty room, we walked with Brian and Lisa to Little Italy for a delicious meal at Sofia's of Little Italy. The food was great. The sangria was very great. But nothing was as great as conversation and time spent with old, dear friends.
We knew the evening had to end. We prolonged it a little bit by stopping at a bar close to the hotel, but the witching hour was growing near. Brian and Lisa had a previous (and unbreakable) commitment in Jersey City the next day, and would not be able to attend the book event. Spending Wednesday evening in their company was special indeed. Friends. Can't beat that.
Brenda and I slept well. We got up early on Thursday, grabbed coffee at Starbucks, and took the subway to the High Line. Brenda had been wanting me to see the High Line for years, ever since her first time seeing it with her cousin in 2015. We walked the High Line to Chelsea Market, looked through the Market for a bit, and caught lunch while we were there. Then we returned to the hotel to recharge.
Later in the afternoon, we set out again, this time intent on fulfilling one of my goals for this trip: a pilgrimage to the former site of CBGB, the nightclub where the Ramones made their name. I regret that I never made it to CBGB when it was active; I remember walking by the club in 1979, when Brenda and I were on our way to see the Flashcubes at Gildersleeves. Oh, I wish I'd had another opportunity to go there. That opportunity never came.
Today, a clothing store called John Varvatos occupies the 315 Bowery address where CBGB used to be. We made our way to Bowery and Bleeker and popped into Varvatos. My Ramones t-shirt was clear evidence of our mission, and the clerks--no doubt accustomed to this very thing--smiled and politely let us be as we looked around. The store's decor incorporates a lot of rock 'n' roll images, iconography, and instruments on its walls and on display. I think that includes a little bit of the original CBGBs surfaces, still plastered with bumper sticks from various bands. They have vinyl. I wish they sold CBGBs t-shirts, but nonetheless: pilgrimage accomplished.
We snapped a picture of the street sign for Joey Ramone Place at Bowery and East 2nd Street, walked past the (not even remotely iconic) former site of Gildersleeves at 331 Bowery, and also by Beauty Bar on E 14th, where I first met singer-songwriter Eytan Mirsky in 2001, when I was there for a release party for Bubblegum Music Is The Naked Truth, a book to which I'd contributed. We moved on to our next stop in the Village: Stonewall.
Stonewall is a bar in Greenwich Village, recognized as the place where Pride began. It's not the same bar that stood in 1969, when a riot became the flashpoint for recognition of gay rights. The Stonewall of today remains in that spot as a monument to the importance of what happened there. By coincidence, our visit to Stonewall was one day after the 54th anniversary of the riots, and one day before six reactionary justices on the U.S. Supreme Court effectively ruled that religious-based discrimination against the LGBTQ community is, in the Court's view, just fine and dandy. That is, in MY view, a big ol' pile of piggy poop. Love is love is love. The fight goes on.
Brenda finished her cider, I finished my beer, and we left Stonewall to walk toward Generation Records. They still didn't have any copies of my book on hand, but by then I would have been shocked if the shipment had arrived. What would the Ramones do? Simple: 1-2-3-4. Hey ho, let's GO!
My cousin Maryanne had already arrived from her home in Jersey, my friend and This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio listener Michael Mitsch came in shortly thereafter, and so did Maryanne's daughter Andrea and granddaughter Alex. I'm so grateful to all of them for being there. After the event sputtered to an end, Marianne had to get back home, but Andrea, Alex, and Michael joined us for dinner and drinks at Carroll Place on Bleeker. Swell food, swell company, and--like Her Majesty's Ramones the Beatles once promised--a splendid time guaranteed for all.
As we bid our company farewell, both Brenda and I felt kinda spent. We passed The Bitter End, didn't even consider stopping in, and returned to JG Sohotel for the night. I watched TV game shows until I got tired enough to sleep.
We both woke up quite early the next morning. We had booked a mid-afternoon train back to Syracuse, but we figured we might as well get moving. We grabbed another dose of caffeine from Starbucks, and checked out of the hotel. We had some time to kill.
Brenda was born in Brooklyn, but grew up on Staten Island. With not much agenda in place for the day, I suggested we take a ride on the Staten Island Ferry. We caught the subway to South Ferry, and got on board.
As we rode across the waves, I remembered what was probably the last time I'd been on the Staten Island Ferry. August of 2001. We'd brought our daughter Meghan, then only six years old, to see her mom's point of origin. All those years ago, we took a picture of Meghan on the ferry, the fabled New York City skyline behind her. In the picture, we could see how cloud cover made the World Trade Center appear as an almost spectral image behind Meghan. The World Trade Center would be gone, suddenly and horribly, within less than a month.
No one knew. There are so many occasions where we look back and shudder about things no one knew at the time.
Back to this far future world of 2023. Brenda marveled at how different that area of Staten Island near the Ferry looked. There's an outlet mall there now. She showed me the baseball stadium where the Class-A Staten Island Yankees play their home games. We looked around for just a little bit before boarding the next Ferry back to Manhattan.
When Brenda and I were planning this trip, Meghan and her fiancé Austin recommended a Japanese restaurant called Abiko Curry. Seeing that Abiko's W 32nd Street address wasn't far from Penn Station, Brenda and I had already determined we would have our lunch there before catching our train. Lunch at Abiko was delicious and quite spicy (my own fault for mistakenly ordering medium spice instead of the mild seasoning I meant to say). But yeah, good recommendation, Meghan and Austin!
We finished at Abiko with, I think, another two hours before our scheduled train departure. That wasn't nearly enough time to entertain notions of doing something else and hoping to get back to Penn Station on time. So we waited at the station until our train was called.
Our mood was mixed at best. Ultimately, the positives of this trip far outweigh the negative, even factoring in the hour-and-a-half delay in Albany that made our arrival back in Syracuse later'n late. But we got there. Meghan--no longer six years old, for some mystic reason I can't quite comprehend--picked us up at the Syracuse station and taxied us home. All in all, it was a good trip. Please don't let anything else I say dilute that message: It was a good trip. New York City really has it all.
We need to get back there. We need to see another Broadway play, visit MoMA, ride the subway and the Staten Island Ferry, walk hand-in-hand another nine miles a day like we did last week, see friends, see sights, and absorb the experience of being in the greatest city in the world. Who knows? Maybe we'll even go to The Bitter End.
I'll take Manhattan. Any day, any time. If we can make it there, we'll make it anywhere. We need to make it there more often. It's up to us: New York, New York.
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Carl's new book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones is now available, courtesy of the good folks at Rare Bird Books. Gabba Gabba YAY!! https://rarebirdlit.com/gabba-gabba-hey-a-conversation-with-the-ramones-by-carl-cafarelli/
This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, and on the web at http://sparksyracuse.org/ You can read about our history here.
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