November travel log

It’s been a while since we’ve contributed any written work to this blog. We started exploring the use of home video to tell a story in place of prose, and it was a lot of fun to chronicle our experiences this past spring and summer by the visual media. We are in the closing stanza for this year and wanted to publish a video chronology and brief story of a fun weekend this November. We are fortunate to have our children in locals that are far enough away to justify a “ROAD TRIP!”, but not so far away that logistics become a major decision issue. Best of all…a visit their way gets us to our favorite city.

Daughter #3, Nichole, now works in Staten Island, and lives in Manhattan. We joined her for a benefit dinner Thursday night after a mad run down from Lowell. The Dr. Theodore Atlas Foundation contributes financial and material support directly to many people needing help, and we are proud Nichole is a part of that organization and effort. Our oldest daughter Christina joined us; traveling in from Pennington, NJ. So we had our little Bates gang there for the soiree. We got to dress up, and meet a celebrity or two. The dinner was pretty good considering it was hotel food and they had to serve 800+. People of well deserved notoriety were on hand from the sports, entertainment, business, and under worlds. The highlight was getting a couple of pictures with Tony Sirico, aka Paulie “Walnuts” of the Sopranos. He is in real life like the guy in the fictional series. Life imitating art? Or did the producers and casting director just pick the real deal for the job? Eve and Christina had some fun taking a picture with him while Erik held Tony’s drink like a low end gangster flunky. After the shoot, he asked Erik with a pointed finger and raised eyebrow “You didn’t fuck my drink, right?”

It was an open bar for the night, so Erik came out fast with dry vodka martinis as his fuel for the evening’s festivities. Eve, Christina and Nikki were more careful in their choices of libations. Later on Eve and Nikki carried on with the glitterati at the hotel bar while Christina demurred to get her beauty sleep. Erik had to retire.

We were staying in Staten Island for Thursday night’s benefit dinner, and scheduled to check out Saturday morning, with the exception of Christina who checked out the next morning to return to NJ. The remaining three of the Bates clan decided to kill some time in Manhattan on Friday and rode the Staten Island ferry over. This ride is part of Nikki’s daily commute between her work place and apartment.

Nikki’s building is quite attractive. We took pictures of the lobby entrance, which is “TA DYE FOH!” Pastel ceiling frescoes and clay friezes on either wall, with spot lighting, present a classy vibe to the initial impression. We rode the elevator up to her floor and took a tour of her place. It is quite spacious for a three person apartment; contemporary in layout and finish. We rode the elevator back down to the beautifully appointed terrace on the 25th (?) floor. From this perch one can overlook Battery Park Place at the southern tip of Manhattan, and Staten Island across the bay with the Statue of Liberty to the right of the field of view. A tenant can rent the terrace for a party. It’s big enough to hold maybe twenty-five to thirty people, and still fit a four piece jazz combo. However, a glance over the chest-high stone wall, and the l-o-o-o-o-n-n-n-n-g way down gave us pause. It would not be the place for a wild, dance-on-the-tables-alcohol-fueled party. But if there is ever a place that should be nominated for upscale cache for the single person in the big city, this is it.

We descended to street level to begin our unplanned adventure and walked north. The joy of wandering down town became muted during our walk past Ground Zero. Out front and across the street from Nikki’s apartment building is a wrought bronze work that stood in front of the Twin Towers complex. It was damaged in the catastrophe and salvaged as a monument. It stands as a stark reminder of the fragility of things we take for granted, and the exemplar of the human spirit. Construction at Ground Zero is in full swing, but it looks like a big job for some time to come.

A couple of train exchanges later we were in the Greenwich Village. We managed to stall our day by simply wandering around with only a vague sense of any destination. A deep resonance happens to those of us in our mid life years when we immerse ourselves in the bohemian vibe. The 60’s are alive and well. So aren’t the 70s, 80s, 90s, and new millennium for that matter. The riot of sidewalk displays along Aston Street is colorful, creative, and semi-legal. But we didn’t “get” one particular store that had us gape-mouthed as we walked by. In the window display there were huge stuffed evil clowns, broken dolls stacked up by the hundreds, and…..what could only be described as a human form completely encased in a black rubber bag locked up with zippers. It was suspended from the ceiling by a chain attached to a slowly rotating turnstile. The bored looking store attendants standing outside the store front doorway smoking cigarettes were festooned with tattoos, piercings, chain belts, black clothes and spiked hair. Our two groups looked each other over and probably came to a mutual conclusion: they must have stepped off a ship from Mars. There is some regret that a photo opportunity did not come to mind.

Our highlight for that Friday night was dropping in at Groove NYC to hear some live funk-soul music. We had to eat bar food and drink a couple of rounds while waiting for the band to come on, but it was all good just enjoying the locals synchronize their karaoke to music videos on wide screens around the bar. Eve and Nikki looked like deer in the headlights after coming in the door because of the crowd and energy. They eventually relaxed and started bobbing to the beat. The evening’s entertainment was a band called Soul Survivors. They were fun, funky, and tight. Manhattan provides a lot of quality entertainment, so a band coming on stage has to have the chops, even if the place is just a bar.

Later that night our little group took the train back downtown, then the ferry back to Staten Island. We kept the car at the terminal parking lot all day so it was a simple matter to take our own transportation to the hotel. Nikki came along to stay on the futon in our room. We had an early day planned for Saturday at the Dr. Theodore Atlas Foundation headquarters. The head of the foundation is Teddy Atlas Jr., the famous boxing trainer to Mike Tyson in Tyson’s early days. Teddy Jr. established the foundation in his father’s honor. Teddy Junior’s celebrity and contacts have enabled the foundation sufficient financial support to provide assistance every year since its inception. We came to the foundation’s headquarters with Nikki to help hand out turnkey dinners, and it felt very rewarding to help a good cause with our labor.

By mid day Saturday all three of us headed off to visit Christina and Alaa in Pennington NJ. Nikki took her own car because she was going to be heading in a different direction home from us upon our departure to Lowell on Sunday afternoon.

Saturday evening after arrival at Alaa and Christina's we gathered up food stuff at the local market. The menu item for dinner was Erik’s three-cheese French Onion Soup. Erik has a lot of fun making the soup but is very particular about how it is to be made…from scratch. Everyone enjoyed the soup and a lively round of chatter. We did not stay up too much longer after dinner as we were fairly exhausted from the previous 36 hours.

Sunday morning greeted us to partly cloudy skies and a cool breeze. Nothing to do but sit back play our CDs and watch the landscape go by.