Social Visit

I was talking with my grandfather, Grandpa Tom (some of my readers who're unrelated to me may know him), while I was visiting Arizona in March, and he asked me what it was that I loved about the City. I mentioned something about the energy, but that wasn't quite It, and he mentioned something that the It could be, something my Uncle Tom had mentioned about being in New York, that it feels like the center of the universe.

When you're living here, that certainly feels like the case. That's pretty much that It we were trying to define. One afternoon, while I was working for the Jean-Georges restaurant Vong, I was taking a break outside and six or eight unmarked SUVs and sedan-type police vehicles were screaming up 3rd Ave. We thought maybe somebody had taken a shot at Mayor Mike. Turns our it was because of Cory Lidle, a Yankee pitcher, crashed his plane into a building up in the blocks of the low 70s and, along with the co-pilot, had died. Plane crashes in this city tend to get everyone on edge. Since I don't have TV, I learned what happened from a call from my mom...

I was talking with my friend Ryan, who's in California, and he mentioned the Sean Bell shooting. Sean Bell was a groom at his bachelor's party in the early morning hours of the day he was to be wed, was unarmed, and was shot and killed in a barrage of fifty bullets. In New York it was big news, and it took a conversation with friends thousands of miles away to put in perspective that the media puts New York in a certain position, a position where big local news tends to turn into national news.

Of course there's sweet stories, like Sully the pilot landing his hobbled airplane on the Hudson River, saving the lives of everyone on board. This country's media affection for bloodlust pushes some headlines farther up and out than others. 

This past weekend, in another moment of weird New York stuff, the President and his wife came to town for a purely social visit. They ate at the Blue Hill, a nice quiet small place in Greenwich Village (the part of the City that looks like a cross between Paris and Prague) and went to see a show, "Joe Turner's Come and Gone". 

You know, just a routine date night for the Prez and his wife.

One thing about that story that cracked me up was that during dinner, the patrons at the restaurant, being the cool New Yorkers they believe themselves to be, politely ignored Barack and Michelle. But, they lost their cool when the First Couple finished and got up to leave, erupting into a spontaneous standing ovation. Dorks. 

I can't say I would have acted differently...