Direction man
I'm in New York City this weekend unwinding from the end of both my newspaper career (through a voluntary buy-out) and the final throes of my last big project for The Patriot-News, a two-part series on the unsolved murder in the Penn State Library of Betsy Aardsma, a girl from my hometown of Holland, Michigan. Those stories will run Dec. 7 & 8, tomorrow and Monday, and can be read online at www.pennlive.com. I also posted a short film I made about the case.
So here I am on the 27th floor of Skyhouse, looking down on two beautiful old churches, one of them Marble Collegiate Church, where Norman Vincent Peale used to preach, and a lot of office and apartment buildings. My cousin owns an apartment here and lets us use it from time to time when we come to New York from Harrisburg.
My big question when I headed out Christmas shopping this morning was how soon a stranger would stop me to ask for directions. This has happened to me all my life, both in cities where I live and cities, including outside the United States, where I don't. I don't exactly come off as a Ninja killer, so maybe that's why. I don't know.
One of the problems all visitors to New York face is what direction to walk when they come out of the subway onto the street. Because all street corners tend to look alike here, this can be a confusing exercise even after several stops at the same subway station. New Yorkers say there's a trick to knowing, but it's complicated and I honestly can't remember what it is. Suffice it say that when I left the station at Rockefeller Center, I walked in the wrong direction. My destination was the Nintendo store on Rockefeller Plaza, which is just down from the ice rink and Christmas tree, but I eventually (too late) figured out I was heading instead toward Broadway.
A guy stopped me and asked if I knew the way to Rockefeller Plaza. Still in a state of confusion, I told him, "It's right around here somewhere." He thanked me for my bad advice and, unfortunately, took it. I walked in the same direction as him for about 30 more feet and then could see the overhead sign for Broadway and reversed course.
They say the shopping crowds are down in New York City because of the economy, and so far, I would have to agree. I've been to the area around Rockefeller Center in previous Christmas shopping seasons when it was nearly impossible to move. Today it was actually pleasant.
So I'm heading back to Skyhouse with my purchases and get on the D train to Herald Square at the Rockefeller Center station. I'm so absorbed watching parents with four kids under the age of 7 try to keep the kids from running around on the station platform ("stay off that yellow strip!") and in the car, "David, you have to sit down!") that I unconsciously got off the train at 42nd Street instead of 34th. I'm cursing my idiocy, but eventually another D train came along and I got to Herald Square, the stop for the fabled Macy's Department Store and the Miracle on 34th Street.
I had to change here for the N train. I'm standing there and a tall blonde woman approaches, smiles, and asks if this is the stop for Macy's. I assure her it is. She then asks me how to get to Macy's when she and her group left the station (see above). I couldn't help here there, telling her something on the order of "it's a big store and you can't miss it." They happily climbed the stairs and I got on the F Train.