Big Apple Holidays

Holiday events started on Friday evening with a concert at the almost 100-year-old Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd just a few blocks away. I happened to surf in to the concert announcement on the Meetup.com site. The St. Petersburg Men’s Ensemble sang Russian classics and folk songs a cappella. They were outstanding.

Afterwards at the coffee and cake social, I met Pastor David Rommereim. We had a most interesting conversation, which I look forward to continuing.

Saturday evening was a dance concert at the renowned Joyce Theater in Chelsea. I well remember going there on a NYC trip in 2000. I was staying at the Chelsea Lodge nearby. It’s a great venue (not too large) and the Tango Fire performance was a sell out. It was interesting that the audience responded to the instrumental tango more so than the dance performers. To my surprise, the orchestra got the most rousing applause from the audience at the end of the concert.

My main interest is the dance. These stage performers are very acrobatic, ballet-trained dancers as you will see in the video. However, I much prefer the tango and milonga dancing I watch on YouTube. It’s great to see some of the sometimes-portly older folks and their smooth moves. In the coming year, I’ll find some places to see these types of amateur dancers. It will likely be a ballroom venue.

Be sure you’re over 18 before watching this video.

Christmas day turned out to be a walkathon on my creaky old knees. I went to Manhattan for not one but two walking tours, with my own solo tour in between. By the end of the day I could hardly move. I had walked in a meandering path from 49th street down to 18th street with a lot of standing in one place listening to the tour guides. That’s more stress on the knees than walking.

The Municipal Art Society sponsored the morning tour of Rockefeller Center. I’ve been on a number of MAS tours in the past and they’ve all been memorable events.

The walking tour led by Tony Robins was smack in the middle of a multi-ring circus known as Rockefeller Center on Christmas day. What a show! I could have stayed there for many hours just people watching. I kept thinking about the fact that I really do live in NY. I’m not a tourist or commuter like the old days. It was a great feeling.

After the tour I walked down to the Grand Central area and over to Bryant Park to check out the skating. Then it was a walk down to 18th street and 6th avenue for the “Ladies Mile” tour. Bernie Cohen who is also a fountain of information led it. It was a revelation to see these old department store buildings and the present occupants including The Container Store, Bed, Bath & Beyond, Burlington Mills and Home Depot among others.

This is a “shopping mall” like no other I’ve seen and I’ve seen a lot of them in the course of business and shopping in Southern California. Some may recall that I was one of the pioneers in marketing preserved palm trees. Shopping centers were prime prospects.

There are a few photos posted to Flickr with many more to come including street photography from my daily walks in Balboa Park in 2006. Posting photos with captions and description copy is a tedious job. Flickr can use up a lot of free time, that’s for sure.

Today, I’m off to The Museum of the City of New York. It’s the last day of the Glory Days of New York Baseball exhibit. I was a die-hard Dodger fan back in the late ‘40s and the 50’s until Walter O’Malley stuck a knife in Brooklyn’s heart when he moved the team to L.A.

It will be interesting to reminisce about those years, never to be repeated. Can you imagine three major league teams in NYC? Baseball was King of the Big Apple before growth hormones, steroids, gargantuan salaries and egos. The players I saw at Ebbets Field were real people among real people. I look forward to seeing some minor league baseball at Keyspan Park, home of the Brooklyn Cyclones in Coney Island. I’ll find some new “boys of summer” to root for.

Incidentally, it’s a strange feeling to walk by the site of Ebbets Field on my many trips to the Ebbets Field Middle School. It’s across the street from home plate. The site is now occupied by a large and rather ugly housing project. It’s a sad commentary on what was once there. Oh well, “ever onward and upward” as we used to say in Big Blue.

Those were the days when the Big Apple was sort of the “Big Blue Apple” with the somewhat mythical IBM “World Headquarters” at 590 Madison Avenue. I used to have this picture in my mind of Tom Watson, “the wizard”, sitting in a top floor office slowing spinning a globe of the world while pondering his next move. If he was a “corporate bastard” a term used by many treehugger boomers, he was a benevolent bastard. Many forget who paid for their college educations.

IBM sold the building but the well known atrium still exists with most of its bamboo. I made a good friend there on one of my NYC trips. I met Helen on a MAS walking tour. She lives in Northern California but perhaps one day she will be a Brooklynite again. I’ll go by 590 Madison again one of these days. It will always be the IBM Building to me.