new york

Missing NYC traditions this year

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I was supposed to be in NYC now, for Thanksgiving, but I canceled due to family issues.

I will miss being with my cousins for Thanksgiving and seeing and participating in all the holiday things the city has to offer – all decked out for Christmas already, the ice skating, the bazaars around the city, the parks, the big Christmas tree in the center of the MET museum, etc.

We usually go to Southampton for the Christmas parade, a couple of days after Thanksgiving. Last year we did the Montauk lighthouse instead, which I liked, but I prefer the Southampton thing. Above is the Christmas tree lighting at the Southampton parade and at the Montauk Lighthouse being lit last year.

I’ll be home with my family in Miami for Thanksgiving and of course Christmas.

My mother used to always say, “You are the only person who goes away for the holidays, everyone comes home for the holidays.”

I would say, “It’s only Thanksgiving, Mom. I’m here for everything else – Christmas, New Years, Easter, birthdays, etc.”

I am in NY for July 4th, though. July 4th, Independence Day was my mother’s favorite holiday. One year for her birthday, I bought her all sorts of 4th of July things – decorations and red, white and blue stuff. She loved it. She used them all for years, the stuff always came out every July.

My favorite holiday is Thanksgiving. It used to be Christmas and then Halloween, now it’s Thanksgiving.

Hopefully I’ll be back in NYC next year, which will be the 100th birthday of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. I’d like to be back for that and all of the rest of the NYC things – and my cousins, of course.

The one good thing is that I don’t have to travel, which has not been fun these days or this past year. So that’s the good part.

Till next time . . .

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Fall in NYC: Warm October Days

I’m back in New York. Perfect month – October. But it’s a bit hot – close to 80 degrees, and it may pass 80 over the weekend! Glad I didn’t pack heavy.

Did my usual and as you can see above, I had my first Mister Softee of the Fall. I actually ate my way through the city today.

I’m already noticing the polite way the city runs. People are holding doors for each other, smiling and saying hello in elevators, things like that. Unlike a lot of what I see at home in Miami.

Even at LaGuardia airport cars stopped so I could cross the street to get to my Uber.

But I did have one altercation, and maybe I was the rude one, but I don’t think so. It was with a Ramona Singer type at a deli, I’ll talk about that in another post, we had our own little reality show going on in front of everyone in the store! Stay tuned for a future post! Subscribe here so you don’t miss it.

I’ll be going to New York Comic Con on Thursday, so I’ll report back on that. I’ll also be going pumpkin picking with my cousins, I think that’s next weekend, when the weather will be cooler and perfect for pumpkins and apples.

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The lake house

For the longest time, I wanted to move to upstate New York.

We do go up to pumpkin pick in the fall, but really not upstate, while we travel an hour or so from NYC, upstate is considered further up, and we did that this past weekend.

One of my cousins got married in Hudson County, at a place called the Basilica, so we all headed up to there. Other cousins, my immediate family and everyone trekked up.

I took two planes from Miami. The smaller plane from Washington, DC to Albany was quite cramped. My carry on bag didn’t fit! I had to cram it in.

The best part was the lake house one of my brothers arranged. It was something I had pictured in my head for a long time. And there it was in person.

It was very large, on a lot of acreage, on Lake Sleepy Hollow – not to get confused with the town of Sleepy Hollow, which is south of this place.

My cousins, my family and I enjoyed the area, only it’s quite boring if there are no other people around. While I had always wanted to live up there, I think I need more civilization.

The wedding was beautiful and I met up with relatives who I hadn’t seen since the last wedding a few years ago.

It was a memorable weekend. something I’ll always remember. A few days later, we drove down to the city and I’m in NYC now for a small while.

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Why train travel is a special adventure

A Metro-North Hudson Line train along the Hudson River

We’re going to a wedding this summer in upstate New York, one of my favorite places. I say we, because there are a lot of us – my immediate family including all my cousins.

After that, we are all heading back down to NYC. I had booked a train ticket, because I was going to leave before everyone else, but now everyone is headed down to the city on the same day, so I canceled the train ticket and I’ll ride with one of them in their cars.

I sort of regret it because the trains to and from New England, and upstate New York go through incredible vistas.

What’s interesting is that when trains were new in the 1830s and 1840s and beyond, the tracks were built going through towns that were big and small – mostly small towns and some not even existent yet.. So if you take a train trip these days, you pass through and stop at stations that are literally in the center of town. You can get off the train and be in a coffee shop, library, hotel or whatever, in what literally is steps away, in many places.

I’ve taken the train from Boston to NYC often and it’s amazing how you ride through and stop at the center of towns like Providence, RI; Mystic CT; New London, CT and so many more small towns. It’s how it was done in the past.

Upstate New York trains take you right next to the Hudson River, literally feet away. If the tracks were built today, I would guess that waterfront property would be full of houses and buildings, feet from the water. But luckily it’s not that way due to the train’s right of way. It’s a wide open view.

These small towns grew up around the train stations so it makes a lot of sense.

I believe if the trains were platted today, they most likely would be in warehouse districts or unseen places, away from the cities, sort of like airports, where we would have to Uber into town.

But since train tracks are permanent, we get to see the cities and towns that they encouraged to grow over the years. And in the beginning, they were built close to and inside of towns, and where there were no towns, towns were started and grew up.

A train ride is an adventure in itself. It’s about the journey, not the destination.

There’s a tv show I’ve seen called Mighty Trains, where this guy Teddy Wilson takes us on a trip through various countries – from one end to another. It’s enjoyable all because of the scenery and small towns along the way.

Another show I have seen in Railroad Alaska, where we follow two trains which travel from southern Alaska daily – one a passenger train, the other freight. The adventure comes in where the track workers have to clear the tracks of Alaskan elements – landslides, broken tracks, avalanches, etc. All while the railroads are running.

People live along the routes and flag the trains down to catch a ride – there are no stations along the way. It’s quite enjoyable.

If you have the time – train travel is worth the trip; and adventure. There are books here geared to train travel in the U.S. and around the world. Check them out for a new type of adventure.

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Ghosts of the L train

I just got off the L train. I met my cousins in Ridgewood, Queens, and took the L from Union Square to Myrtle-Wyckoff Avenues. Ridgewood is the new up and coming neighborhood in New York. There was SoHo, then the Lower East Side, the Meat Packing District and Williamsburg and now it’s Ridgewood. The L train is the train into Hipsterland, but not so long ago, it was the link between Manhattan and a working class Brooklyn.

As I took the train this time and usually when I take the L train, I think of days past, days before my time, and I think of the ghosts of the subway and the Brooklyn neighborhoods that we pass through. Bedford, Graham Avenue, Lorimar Street, Montrose Avenue and so on. They are names from my past, you see my father and his sister and their mother (my grandmother) and a lot of our relatives lived here so many years ago. I picture them in Brooklyn 1945 and thinking of them on this same subway line. The trains of course, were different and they called it the BMT, (Brooklyn Manhattan Transfer), my aunt told me Saturday – they changed it later to the LL, rather than L, to differentiate it from the EL, which was the elevated train. But it was the same route, the same stops and even the same tiles on the wall that spell out the stations. Those same exact tiles were seen and perhaps touched by my father and grandmother 70 and 80 years ago.

I had an old aunt, who in the 1980s, told me about the first day the line opened in 1905 and how that first week the rides were free to the public; they were a nickle after that. She told me of her first hand experience, remembering it vividly, she must have been seven years old at the time. I read a book once called “When Brooklyn Was the World.” That’s the time period I think of as I ride the L train today. To me the train is “The footprint of a lost world,” a quote I got from Anthony Bourdain.

Now as I ride the line I see hipsters who have taken over the neighborhood. There they are with their ipods and iphones and skateboards and beards and manbuns and fedoras; acting all cool and as if they have discovered something new. Do they ever think about the people who were there before them? Probably not.

It’s the same with all the train lines in the city, there is so much history, but visiting Graham Avenue and Lorimar Street and Bedford, as a child and hearing so many stories of my father’s childhood, it makes me think of all those ghosts of times past. My mother grew up near Coney Island, so those train lines have meaning too, but I don’t take them as often as I take the L train. I think of my father taking the train to Ebbets Field, or my grandmother taking him to the doctor’s office or visiting relatives, in a time that was much simpler.

People have come and gone, but the subway lines are still running, on the same routes on the same tracks, among all those ghosts of happy times past.

Here is an old film of the 1905 subway in New York. It isn’t the L line, but you can get the idea of the time period.