The Words Of The Prophets

This year of travel has been strange. And by that, I mean really, really strange. I spent more nights in hotels in 2024 than I have ever spent in any single prior year I've been alive. I took the longest single trip (to Singapore, Cambodia and Malaysia) of my life. And I feel more weary from packing and getting on trains or in cars or in planes and then unpacking at the other end than I have ever felt. That all should make me super, super happy. But somehow, I ended up writing fewer blog posts about travel than I have written since I started this blog 11-1/2 years ago. Go figure.

I blame that whole situation on one thing: business travel. It's changed a normal travel year into a very, very non-traditional travel year. And not for the better. I've been on the road a whole lot but a whole lot of that whole lot hasn't been all for me. Or us. Two one week plus vacations is not enough for an entire year. It's honestly been a bit of a drag. But it's also driven me to change how I gather value from travel. This year, I've taken to squeezing in little experiences that make me feel like I've been traveling in between all the work assignments. It's a way different way of exploring than I ever would have thought of five or ten or even two years ago. And I don't want to do this as a substitute for real travel again.

But it has been a huge part of my 2024 travel narrative. So to close 2024, I'm going to write two posts about how this year has featured a lot of trips that are discontinuous but have reinforced a common theme and which ultimately, have built into something cohesive and coherent, even if these experiences were assembled in a way that I don't want to do again.  But both are part of my travel narrative this year. 

But before I get to all that, a little rant about business travel.

Mary Miss' "Framing Union Square". Union Square (L / N / Q / R / W / 4 / 5 / 6).

I dislike traveling for work. It sounds great (I mean it's free travel, right?) but it's never as fun as it seems like it should be (probably the work thing...). At its worst it can involve early morning breakfasts followed by a full work day with working lunches concluded with dinners with coworkers that last for hours until late into the night. It can be really pretty draining. Way more work than travel. You can probably tell by all the "work"s in this paragraph.

I guess I've been fortunate to travel some, but not a ton, for work over my career. I don't really think I've spent a lot of time on the road for my employers but for sure I've traveled a bit. Over my 30 plus years working I've ended up in hotels in Boston, San Francisco, Dallas, Chicago, Los Angeles, Orlando, Houston, Austin, Jersey, upstate New York, Charlotte, Roanoke (yes...Roanoke), Miami, suburban / rural Maryland (twice), Denver and maybe one or two other spots.

But over the last 15 months or so, I've had a regular travel-for-work gig and it's been to one of my favorite places of all: New York City. When I first took on this assignment, I spent my time in the City doing something resembling what I described two paragraphs ago: going to the office; going back to my hotel (which was really very close to the office); eating dinner (also very close to the office and the hotel); and then repeating until it was time to go home. After a couple of months of doing that I decided I had to do more. I had to accept that I was there for work but I also wanted to maximize the opportunity that I had to be living rent-free in New York two or three days at a time. I had to make my nights something more.

William Wegman's "Stationary Figures". 23 St (F / M) station.

So in January of this year (four months or so into my NYC assignment), I decided to do start exploring. I found izakayas and ramen places. I went to the 9/11 Memorial. I tried out different hotels. I went to a jazz club. I met up with old friends. I went to the opera. I explored Grand Central Terminal. I went to a play. I found different ways to see the city. It's definitely been rewarding for me. I feel like I've got something out of this in addition to my employer getting something out of me. 

I knew my time where I'd be making regular trips to New York was going to end at some point and in about the middle of this year I decided the appropriate time to cut this off would be at the end of 2024. I have to admit that deciding to terminate this assignment was sad. No more free meals at world class restaurants. No more hotel points or Amtrak points. No more opportunities to explore my favorite city for (almost) free. But it had to be done. 

I decided a needed a personal send-off. And I decided that send-off should be art focused. Do you know how many art museums there are in New York City? Me either. And it really didn't matter that much because my plan wasn't to explore art at the MoMA or the Met or the Guggenheim or the Frick or the Whitney or anywhere else that had the word museum in it. My plan was to go see some art for free. Or maybe an admission fee of $2.90 at a time. To do that, I headed underground. 

Leo Villareal's "Hive". Bleecker Street (6) and Broadway-Lafayette St (B / D/ F / M) Station.

Did you know that one of the best collections of art in New York City is in the Subway? Yes, the thing that has trains that take New Yorkers all over the City. The Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) has been purchasing and commissioning permanent and temporary works of art by emerging, famous and non-famous artists for decades. They have amassed quite a collection. Some of their art sponsorships are ephemeral (for posters that fill unused advertising space on Subway cars) but there is a lot that is not. And a lot of their collection is pretty world-class.

Now for sure, viewing art in the Subway is way different than doing it in an art museum. You can decide to roam around the Subway system randomly and just look at what you like as I sometimes do in new museums that I visit, but the collection is pretty de-centralized and, in most cases, you'll have to get on a train to go find the next piece. And it might not be something you appreciate. 

Their collection also sometimes takes some finding. They are not all like William Wegman's "Stationary Figures" ("Station"ary...get it?), which I found myself staring at when my F train stopped at 23rd Street station one night on the way back from dinner in the first half of this year.

Fortunately for the wannabe Subway art appreciator, there's a guide to art on the MTA's website and it's organized by borough. So for this last not-a-resident-but-so-in-love-with-New-York work/tourist quest, I decided to organize at least one night per trip starting in August around going to see some art, even if it was just one piece. If I could do it as part of a trip to dinner or some other spot in the City I wanted to see, then I'd do that. If not, maybe I'd just have to make a special trip. If it had to be a special trip, theoretically it's a $2.90 admission fee (the price of a ride on the Subway), assuming I can go see the piece I wanted to see and come back without exiting the system. Do you know how much it costs to get into the MoMA or the Met? $30. $2.90 is a bargain.

Ann Schaumberger's "Urban Oasis". 5 Av / 59 St (N / R / W) Station.

My intentional visits to the MTA's fantastic art collection started on a Tuesday night in August with a trip on the Q Train to legendary hot dog stand Papaya King on the Upper East Side (or UES to New Yorkers). Two hot dogs with mustard and 'kraut and a papaya drink if you must know.

The 86 Street Q-Train-only station less than two blocks from Papaya King houses Chuck Close's 2017 installation "Subway Portraits". That was my first quest. To see that piece. It's a series of large scale portraits intending to depict regular New Yorkers you might encounter on the Subway. That is if you consider Philip Glass, Lou Reed and Close himself to be regular New Yorkers. The works are huge, spanning from almost the floor of the station to almost the ceiling. And they are incredibly impressive. If these things were on display at the MoMA or somewhere else, people would be standing and gazing at these things in wonder rather than just hurrying past when I stopped for a while before heading to Papaya King. 

Like many works of art within the MTA system, "Subway Portraits" are executed in super durable materials. Mosaics of glass and ceramic or just straight up ceramic tile. This has to be one of the most hostile environments that someone can intentionally decide to place art and so it makes sense that the choice of medium be something that can withstand a lot of abuse. And I don't mean intentional. There's just a lot of stuff that happens in the Subway that is pretty down and dirty. Beautiful things need to be able to protect themselves. 

Close up of three "Subway Portraits". Eye. Eye. Nose/moustache.

On my way back from 86th Street, I stopped by the 5th Avenue/59th Street Station on the east edge of Central Park to see Ann Schaumberger's "Urban Oasis", her de-centralized tribute to the animals at the Central Park Zoo. I love animals (just not zoos) and some of those in "Urban Oasis" hit a chord big time, including the monkeys (I was born in the Year of the Monkey), the penguins and the macaws. 

I feel the representation within Schaumberger's work is definitely different from "Subway Portraits". And by that I mean less high art (if that's even a term and if it is, I know I'm being a snob). I can't see the monkeys and the penguins and the macaws on the edge of Central Park being on display in some museum in the City. And that's totally OK. On some level, these works are supposed to enliven commutes and provide relief from what is potentially a stressful rat race in America's largest city. They don't all need to be worthy of hanging in the MoMA or the Met.

I headed back to my hotel with some satisfaction that I had started something travel related that could be pretty special and I was doing it for almost free.

Over September and October and November, I continued to explore. Wegman's Wiemaraners on the way to dinner when I was staying at the Hyatt House on 28th Street. Stumbling across Tom Otterness' little figures who seemed to be everywhere in the "Life Underground" installation at the 14 St Station. A special trip to Ann Hamilton's transcription of the United States Declaration of Independence and the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights in her "CHORUS" work at the newly constructed WTC / Cortlandt Station. Hamilton's work is inspiring and uplifting, as flawed as the Declaration of Independence might be in its attitude towards the "all men" who are "created equal". It was calming and reassuring on an early November night.

Otterness' whimsical little men and women and rats and crocodiles and other sorts of bronze figures are an amusing distraction when you are not in a hurry to catch your Subway train on the way home or to work or wherever else you are headed. I love the image of these little mini-men taking care of business (including toting around giant Subway tokens) while us full size humans are passing them almost without a thought and largely unaware.

Tom Otterness' "Life Underground".  14 St (A / C / E / L) Station.

As I explored, I started to notice something as I was going from one of these installations to another, roaming around stations (some of these things are huge!!!) trying to find the latest work on my list. And that is that these things are EVERYWHERE. I started to notice more art installations that I wasn't looking for than I was looking for. In some stations (yes, Union Square and Times Square-42 St, I'm looking at you), there is more to see around every corner. Not just one piece of artwork, but multiple works in a single station. Everywhere. I'm telling you.

I visited stations all over Midtown on my way to work or dinner or somewhere else and bumped into works of art when I got to platforms or when I entered stations or when I got where I was going. Roots and plants and pipes with words of wisdom written on them near Bryant Park. Art Deco-like women performing theater and dance on the way to Lincoln Center. Recessed little square boxes in the underground walls at Times Square. And of course, I saw them while I was riding the Subway itself, fleeting glimpses of mosaics or glass seen through the open train doors during a brief stop at a station or even briefer looks when viewed from an express train that has no intent of stopping at some stations.

Some provided unexpected surprises and got a smile or two. During a stop at 23 St on the R or W (can't remember which), I looked up from my phone or whatever else I was paying attention to and saw a series of hats of all types rendered in tiles on the walls. And yes, when someone waiting for the train was standing in front of one at just the right height, it looked like they were wearing the hat behind them. I get it. Funny. Who wears a top hat any more?

Here's the other thing I noticed: there were other people noticing too. I was not the only one stopping and looking and studying and taking pictures. These things work. They ARE appreciated by people moving through this system, even if it looks like most are just hustling by because that's exactly what they are doing.  

Had to stop and look on my way to the 42nd Street Shuttle. 

It's now December 2024 and I just finished my last three nights in New York for this year. That brings me to a total of 44 nights in the City in the past 12 months. What a ride! Or more accurately a stay, I guess. That's probably not going to happen again but who knows. 

I didn't deliberately visit any Subway art on this last trip despite having a couple of spots left on my list. My off hours in December were spent with friends who had made the trip up to NYC with me to go explore the City in all its pre-Christmas glory while I slaved at work. And because I knew that's what December held, I knew when I visited in November that would likely be my last underground art time in 2024.  

So I had to do something special.

Roy Lichtenstein's "Times Square Mural". Times Sq-42 St (1 / 2 / 3 / 7 / N / Q / R / W / S) Station.

One of my favorite artists of all time is Roy Lichtenstein. Put him up there for me with Warhol, Jasper Johns, Gerhard Richter, J. M. W. Turner, Van Gogh, Mondrian, Magritte and likely too many others that I can't think of right now. I am always drawn to Lichtenstein's renditions of ordinary objects, famous works of art and works that look like they are torn from a comic strip in the style of those same American comic strips. It seems like most of the times when I see Lichtenstein's works in museums, they are among my favorites and I usually end up with a few pics of something by Roy on my phone.

And yes, there's a Lichtenstein in the Subway. Like an original work commissioned especially for the New York City underground train system. It's called "Times Square Mural" and it's at the Times Sq-42 St station (which is admittedly enormous) in the middle of a transit area that seems to be constantly flowing with commuters and tourists and art aficionados passing from the street to the Subway or one line to another or the Subway to the street. It's a futuristic Lichtenstein-yellow Subway car pulling up to the platform at 42nd Street and it's just glorious. And it's all yours to see for the low, low price of $2.90. What a bargain.

I found this work on my last underground art pilgrimage. I went there deliberately and specially to see it. I wasn't passing to or from Times Square or anywhere else. I rode the Subway specifically to see this piece and lay eyes on it for myself. It was well worth the price of admission.

If you decide to ever go seek out some of the works in the MTA's permanent collection, I am sure you will find something that resonates with you. I am also sure that you will find some other kinds of art down in the Subway while you go looking. And I don't mean more stuff hanging on the walls or little bronze men. By that I mean you'll likely find someone, somewhere performing some music. Rock, folk, classical, rap, whatever. I did when I went to see the "Times Square Mural" and it elevated that experience to something greater than I could have possibly imagined.

It was opera. 

Yes, standing in front of Roy's glorious mural when I visited on a Wednesday night, there was a young tenor (he's on the left in the pic below) standing in front of an "Opera Collective" sign with a collection bucket nearby singing the most gorgeous vocal parts to some sort of classical music coming out of the boombox next to him. It was inspiring and uplifting and impressive and spectacular. And it made my night as the perfect accompaniment to that magnificent yellow train pulling into some imagined 42nd Street station.

This aria emphasized to me the point of getting out there. Go. Explore. Find. Be curious. Adventure. Seek out something that you love or may love or will love. And every so often, you'll find it. And sometimes, it will be amazing and incredible and even better than you ever thought it (whatever it is) could be. Travel...I'm telling you...

Grand Central

I'm about halfway through blogging about our Southeast Asia trip but still traveling. OK, maybe a bit less than halfway through. Time for a blog post break from Cambodia, Singapore and Malaysia (with a bonus country added on the end) to check in on our U.S. travels. I'll get back to SE Asia, I promise.

I've never really traveled much for work. I am fortunate enough that my job has taken me all over this country of ours but not for a very long time or very regularly. Honestly, traveling for work sucks for me. It ends up being a plane or car or train ride; then straight to the hotel on arrival; back and forth to the office; some substandard restaurant for dinner; and then sitting in my hotel room and repeating until it's time to go home. I'm not cut out for that stuff. It sounds fun and glamorous. I don't find it that way.

But late last year, I got asked to take on an assignment that required me to spend two to four nights in New York City each month. I love New York so I eagerly agreed but the first couple of months doing that went just as described above. So this year, I decided to change that. I made it my mission this year to live a little on these trips. Rather than hitting the closest restaurant to the hotel and going straight back to my room, I resolved to explore a little at night. Pick out a ramen place a few blocks away or get on the Subway and go somewhere further. Maybe I didn't need to stay at the same hotel every time up there. And I wanted to try to hit a sight or two at night in the City that I'd never seen.

Last year and January of this year, I'd been focused in an office in the Financial District so I'd always stayed down by the Staten Island Ferry terminal in lower Manhattan. But in March that assignment moved to Midtown and for my March trip I picked a hotel right next to Grand Central Terminal, the great train station on 42nd Street that has been transporting people to and from New York for over 100 years. I thought I'd use that venue as an opportunity to explore Grand Central a little at night and on the following weekend. I'd never stayed this close to this important civic building but I'd been an admirer for decades. Time to dig a little deeper.

When I think of Grand Central, I think of my dad. My first memories of transiting to the station (and I'm using "to" deliberately because it's a terminal stop) were the few trips my dad and I used to take in the 1990s down to New York Knick games from my parents' house in Connecticut. We'd drive most of the way to the City but then hop on the Metro North train for the last little bit which would deposit us in the bowels of the station an hour or so before gametime. 

From there, we'd walk up into that magnificent public space that is the Main Concourse. What an amazing way to enter New York. It is truly one of the great interior spaces in this country of ours. I feel confident making that statement without (certainly) having been to every interior public space that's ever been built in the U.S. That hall is the connection hub between New York and the rest of the country that is served by the trains that take people to and from the Terminal. It's a grand mixing bowl of residents and workers and tourists.

When we first started going down to the City, the ceiling of the Main Concourse was black. We assumed it had always been that way. We'd read stories about the ceiling having the heavens painted on them with lights for each star but we just figured the effect relied on the pinpoints of light that shone through the holes in the vault that covered the space. 

Then one day we arrived there and a piece of the ceiling had been cleaned and it was this copper patina green color in that patch, not the black that we'd always seen. And there were lines and figures connecting the points of light. It was amazing, the first step in the grand restoration of that space. It's a pretty amazing space but it's better with a clean ceiling. Now, of course, it's completely clean and it's glorious.

The current Grand Central Terminal was created by accident. Or I guess more accurately, it was created by an accident. 

The current Terminal is not the original Grand Central. There were actually two earlier Grand Centrals: one called Grand Central Station and one called Grand Central Depot. When Grand Central Depot was built in the 1860s on 42nd Street it was considered by some to be too far to realistically serve the city of New York. But it quickly picked up business, as evidenced by its demolition and replacement with the second Grand Central.

That meant more business. So much business, in fact, that by the time it got to the beginning of the 20th century a couple of years after the start of construction on the second Grand Central, the area north of the station was a dangerous mix of steam-filled tunnels, malfunctioning signals and employees that saw little point sometimes in staying at their post to operate said signals because, well...what's the point if they don't work to begin with?

It was no big deal, though. There had been proposals to get rid of steam engines in New York and go electric but those suggestions had been put aside. Too expensive! Why fix what wasn't broken? Visibility in the tunnels wasn't that bad. The railroad magnates who had set up and were operating under this accident waiting to happen were raking in money hand over fist and nobody was getting hurt. What's the problem?

Well there wasn't one really. Until there was. 

One of the original chalkboards with train departure and arrival information. Chalkboards!!!

On the morning of January 2, 1902, a man named John Wisker was driving Train 118 south towards the old Grand Central Station. Maybe he was late. Maybe he was rushing. Maybe he ignored a signal. Maybe the signal was obscured by smoke or steam or fog. Maybe the signal didn't operate. Maybe the signal operator didn't even turn it on. Or wasn't able to turn it on. But one thing we know did happen: Wisker drove Train 118 right into the back of another train stopped and awaiting a go signal to proceed to Grand Central. 15 people died in that crash. It is still Manhattan's (not New York's) deadliest train accident.

Two things happened next. 

First, they tried to pin the whole mess on Wisker. But there was so much evidence of things being broken and so little evidence that Wisker actually did anything deliberately wrong that no conviction was ever reached.

Second, things started to change, mostly driven by the state of New York. The railroad owners (and particularly the Vanderbilts), who were mostly responsible for the whole messy situation to begin with, proposed some action. A new station and a new system of getting trains in and out of it. Nobody ever charged the Vanderbilts or any of the other railroad tycoons with any sort of crime, by the way. Ain't that always the case. Sure they had to spend a whole bunch of money to clean their own mess up, but I'm guessing they got way more back.

So, how do you get a new rail station designed in New York? How about holding a competition? Good idea! Especially after your main rivals, the Pennsylvania Railroad, just did the exact same thing and got a gorgeous new station on the west side of the city a few blocks south of 42nd Street. Have to keep up with the rivals.

The competition ended up with two winners, two separate architecture firms who were assigned to work together to pull the whole thing off. See if you think there's anything sketchy about the process here. The main functional design of the building was conceived and executed by the firm of Reed and Stern. "Reed" of Reed and Stern was the brother-in-law of William Willis, who happened to be the chief engineer of the New York Central Railroad. The exterior of the building was designed by the first of Warren and Wetmore. Whitney Warren was a cousin of Cornelius Vanderbilt's grandson.

Nepotism, anyone? I guess it doesn't really matter any more. The result is spectacular.

Vanderbilt Hall (the old waiting room) just off 42nd Street.

Before March of this year, I had never really done anything in Grand Central Terminal outside of the Main Concourse. And that was not that much even then. I'd traversed through that space many times between the tracks and the city but that time is pretty ephemeral. I'd also eaten dinner with my dad a few times on our trips down to New York in one of the restaurants that used to occupy the terrace at the west side of the hall. More recently, I'd dragged friends to that same space for drinks where we could talk and gaze at the magnificence of the place. But outside of that? Nothing. I knew there had to be more to the place than that. 

If you exit out the front of Grand Central and take a left, you will find the Hyatt Grand Central New York hotel. You don't even have to cross a street to get there. It's on the very same block as the Terminal. That was my home for four nights in March, selected deliberately so I would be able to do something more than just work and eat and sleep. I wasn't going to mess up this opportunity. 

Did you know there's a whole dining concourse at Grand Central that's below the main level of the station? Honestly, I didn't and I'm sure anyone from New York reading this post is rolling their eyes right now. I also didn't know there is an indoor gourmet market on the main level between the Main Concourse and Lexington Avenue to the east (cue more eye-rolling...). In my four days in my hotel on the same block as Grand Central, I ate at (or from) each one. I didn't intend to. I just discovered something that I thought sounded good at mealtime and took a chance.

But I DID know there was at least one restaurant at Grand Central and it's one I've wanted to eat at for decades: Grand Central Oyster Bar. It's not quite on the dining concourse. It's halfway between the main floor level and the dining level. The Oyster Bar was the first stop I planned when I knew I'd be near Grand Central. I think any time you can check something off a wish list that's been on there for decades on a work trip, then that's a worthwhile work trip.

Grand Central Oyster Bar: outside and in.

The Oyster Bar and Grand Central Terminal are virtually inseparable. Two weeks after Grand Central opened for business, the Oyster Bar opened for business. It's been there ever since. 111 years and counting. It is truly a New York City institution. It's in a gorgeous vaulted space deep in the heart of the building and the vaults are completely covered with tiles and a ton of lights. It's straight out of the opulence of the 1920s or thereabouts over a century into its lifetime. 

And the food? Seafood. They still serve super-fresh fish and other sea creatures that are flown in or caught daily and they still run out later in the day. That definitely means it's fresh because no way do you run out of frozen fish. They also are still firmly entrenched in the idea of serving commuters. Want to eat at Oyster Bar on weekends? You can't. It's closed.

I love all that.

Our experience at the Oyster Bar was just that: an experience! The decor is amazing. The menu is amazing. The service and the prices are New York (or New Yawk) all the way. It's old school food and old school service. Don't know how you want your fish or whatever else you are ordering to be cooked? Don't worry, your waiter will tell you. In fact, he'll tell you even if you DO know how you want your food prepared and served. I'm sure you have input but it seemed pretty definite that we should order how it was suggested. I got the fried oysters. No preparation suggestions there. How could I not get oysters?

Daytime...

One of the great things about staying very, very close to place like Grand Central is that you can take time whenever you want to walk down from your second floor hotel lobby and around the place, both inside or out. That is definitely something I took advantage of a lot, especially to check out the exterior on multiple days and at multiple times of day. Whether it was just walking past the place on 42nd Street and seeing how it looked from street level or taking a walk down Park Avenue which literally wraps around the station (you cannot actually walk all the way around Grand Central on Park Avenue). 

The views of the front of the station from Park are definitely worth savoring. The station which looks so gigantic from street level looks really, really small when viewed in front of the MetLife Building (formerly and more famously the PanAm Building). It is to me one of the best views in New York City. I admit I walked down Park Avenue to see it this way at least three times in the four days and nights I stayed there. 

What can I say...I'm a fan. Have been for a while.

And that second floor lobby thing in our hotel? There are few ground floor elevators in New York City around Grand Central. The space below the entirety of the neighborhood around the station is occupied by train tracks. No basements. No below grade elevator pits. Meaning no elevators at grade.

and nighttime.

But to really get into Grand Central for real, we decided to take a tour. Not a self-guided one. A paid one.

A company called Walks operates a few tours in New York City, including the official tour of Grand Central Station which they run pretty much every day of the year at 11 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. I have taken I don't know how many tours of buildings in my life (I mean I AM an architect, after all) and I have to say this tour is one of the most engaging and informative that I have ever taken. Maybe it's because my baseline knowledge of the history of Grand Central was lacking, but I thought it was well worth the price of admission, even after walking around the building a few times on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights before our Saturday tour.

I won't blow by blow it but I might spoil a surprise or two. 

The main hall, with the Information Booth front and center.

Did you know that the term "commuter" was invented at Grand Central Terminal? It's true.

There was a time when the future of train travel as a means of getting to work was way less than the sure thing that it is today. Or maybe that's written wrong, because going to the office at all seems to be less than a sure thing following the recent global pandemic. But in the first half of the 20th century, the railroads using Grand Central figured folks could use a cost savings to take the train on a daily basis into Manhattan. 

So to encourage daily business travelers to use rail to get to work in Manhattan, the railroads advertised that they would "commute" part of the fare for regular travelers who used their services on an everyday basis. Those with commuted fares who traveled through Grand Central eventually started to be called commuters. 

Did you know that Eastern Standard Time was ALSO invented by Grand Central? That's also true. Or maybe mostly true. Or at least the first clock displaying Eastern Standard Time was installed at Grand Central. It's in the Graybar Passage that connects the Main Concourse to Lexington Avenue to the east.

I honestly had no idea how time zones were invented in this world of ours but apparently, they were invented by the railroads in the United States. As rail travel to move people long distances became more and more common, the railroads found that different passengers from slightly different places might be keeping slightly different time. By this I mean that someone from Philadelphia might set their watch a few minutes ahead of New York which might be a few minutes ahead of someone in Pittsburgh or Albany or wherever.

The problem with all of this, of course, was that people kept missing trains. So the railroads got together and standardized times so their operations would have a chance of working smoothly. In Grand Central, they installed a clock with the words "Eastern Standard Time" carved into the stone in the building. It's still there today, even though Daylight Saving Time is in effect for about half the year. That idea was implemented after Grand Central (and the carved-into-stone words above the clock) was finished.

Oak leaves above the entrance to Tracks 107 and 108.

Speaking of clocks...

There are two other prominent clocks at Grand Central: one atop the Information Booth that sits right in the center of the Main Concourse and one that adorns the front of the building. The faces of the clock above the Information Booth are milk opal. It's apparently worth $10 million. And the one on the front of the building? Tiffany stained glass and 14 feet in diameter. No way does it look that big.

Look close at the Information Booth and it looks like there's no way in or out. There are absolutely no doors to the thing. But in the center of the Booth there's a spiral stair which takes people down (and out of the booth). Look closer and you'll see an acorn on top of the clock. The acorn was the symbol of the Vanderbilt family. You'll find acorn shaped light fixtures and oak leaves in some of the carvings too.

I'd put the acorns and the spiral stair in the Easter egg category, little surprising gems of information that you only know if you know. The best one of these in Grand Central for me was the discovery of the Campbell Bar, the gorgeous old converted reception space of the office of one John W. Campbell, who rented out a suite in the Terminal as his private office. The expansive reception space is now converted to a high end bar, with the original decor (minus a Persian rug supposedly worth pretty much a fortune) intact as installed by Campbell.

Who would have even known this thing is here? It's not accessible from the interior of the Terminal. You have to go outside, around the west side of the building, under a porte cochère and up a couple of staircases to get there. If you go, bring money (not meaning cash; meaning be prepared to part with some). We ordered a beer and a bottle of water and paid $23 (without tip). A small price to pay to spend 20 minutes or so inside the space. It's not like we are going to go here every time with visit the City.

There was a time that Grand Central was threatened with demolition. The station that Grand Central had been built to rival (and best), Pennsylvania Station, had just been torn down, viewed by some as a relic of a time and a mode of transportation no longer relevant to society in the 1960s. Once they got rid of Penn Station, Grand Central was next.

Fortunately for us today, the demolition of Penn Station was the rallying cry that pretty much started the historic preservation movement in this country in a serious way. Grand Central particularly has Jackie Kennedy Onassis and architect Philip Johnson to thank for its protection. As an architect, I have mixed feelings about historic preservation. Some of what we protect is, in my opinion, just old and not historically valuable. Where to draw the line between the two seems to be a constant balancing act which sometimes gets priorities wrong. I'm pretty sure in stating, though, that those words do not apply to this station.

I'm grateful it's still here in the 2020s and I'm grateful I decided to spend a little portion of my March work trip (and maybe a day or two extra on my own dime) to dig a little deeper into this New York icon.

The hidden staircase to and from the Information Booth.

Finally, just a note about that black ceiling that my dad and I had seen the first time we walked into Grand Central. We assumed (or maybe it was just me; I don't want to assume that my dad made the same mistake as me) that the ceiling was black due to all the smoke belched out into the building by steam engines that served the building. This couldn't have been true because steam engines were banned in Manhattan before the building was completed. 

Deep down inside, I really think I should have known this. 

When it came time to launch the cleaning effort on the ceiling and get rid of the black color and get back to that gorgeous copper patina green, the folks engineering the restoration made the same mistake I did. They assumed they would be cleaning soot off the ceiling and designed the cleaning methods for that kind of remediation. It didn't work. And if I think deep down inside I should have put two and two together and ruled out steam engines as the cause, then I really think professionals hired specifically to address this problem should have figured it out also.

What caused the black color? Nicotine. Cigarette smoke. How disgusting is that? There's one small spot on the northwest corner of the ceiling that they left uncleaned. It's super small. But tobacco was the cause. Dropping the mic on this post now. Back to Southeast Asia next.

A picture of the postcard of the Campbell Apartment we got "free" with our $23 beer/water. Taking a pic of the actual space with an iPhone proved more difficult than it would seem.

New York Hot

This post is about visiting a couple of jazz clubs in New York City over the fourth of July weekend this year. 

Actually, that's not true. It's not really about that at all. Yes, this post appears to be about visiting a couple of jazz clubs in New York City over the fourth of July weekend this year, but it's not. It's really about my dad. And me chasing him.

For as long as I can remember, I've had jazz in my life. My dad was (and is) fanatical about jazz. It's one of his many life's passions and loves. I can remember on weekends when we were kids growing up in England, every time the record player was on in our living room, jazz was pouring out of the speakers. Sounds cool, right? Awesome to have such a hip dad? I mean how with it is my dad to have jazz playing all the time?

I didn't like it. I mean, I really, really didn't like it. It was loud, it was discordant (I would not have used that word as a kid) and there were no words. How could you listen to an entire record with no words? And then another. And another. This is what I grew up with. I didn't appreciate it. I didn't want it. But it was there. I spent time hearing it at home. My dad received magazines about jazz. I spent time in record stores with my dad in London and Birmingham as he looked through piles of albums for hours. It was always there. Jazz, jazz, jazz! I didn't get it. At. All.

Eventually, my dad's love of music made its way to me. But it wasn't jazz. My favorite artist when I was a pre-teen was Billy Joel, and that wasn't really cool at all back in those years. But I started getting into music a little more broadly in a semi-serious way when I was a freshman in high school. Then I started buying records (yes...records) in about 1983. Def Leppard's Pyromania started it for me, but I moved on pretty quickly to other things. Duran Duran. Spandau Ballet. INXS. Genesis. The Moody Blues. Marillion (so much Marillion; like a ton!). Pink Floyd. The Beatles. Bob Dylan. David Bowie. Linda Ronstadt. Motown. Cowboy Junkies. Mark Knopfler. Brandi Carlile. Taylor Swift. There were and are many more in there. Too many to list. 

I believe my dad is at least in large part responsible for my love of music. It is also one of my many life's passions and loves and I give huge credit to my dad here. I can't tell you how many dollar or two dollar used records my dad helped me out with at Integrity 'N Music in Wethersfield, CT.

I figured one day I'd meet my dad a little musically and get into jazz, but honestly it never really happened. Whatever rock or pop music or whatever you want to label it is, I love most or all of that. My interest in all sorts of that type of music has led me to the blues, which I also love. And I do mean LOVE! Classical? Country? Rap? Easy listening? A little bit (very little bit) of opera? Sure, sure, sure, sure and sure. All of it. Well, like old country. And only a little rap. But not jazz. Not on records. I've intentionally visited New Orleans and listened to jazz in clubs and liked it. But sitting down, putting on a record or CD and listening to it at home...that's different. I never got into it. I tried, I swear. Didn't happen. I knew one day I'd be inheriting an amazing jazz collection (which I'd already pledged to honor and take care of) but I just couldn't get into it.

Then one day last fall, I got to a tipping point. My mom told me she and my dad had decided to sell my dad's jazz record collection. Not the CDs. Just the records. 

Hold on! Hold on just one second.

I wanted some. 

This music is an important part of my childhood, even though the irony of my complete rejection of this music is front and center with my objection here. So, while I was over at my parents' place one weekend a couple of weeks after my mother's pronouncement, I asked my dad if he would pull out a curated assortment of the very best jazz records ever made from his collection. He couldn't do it. Couldn't recall enough about individual works to pass along the best in his collection to me. My dad's memory is failing. It's a problem. It's frustrating for him and it breaks my heart. And not just because he couldn't pull out his favorite jazz of all time.

Lacking my dad's input, I sort of tried to do it for myself that weekend. I did a quick search on the internet for the best jazz albums ever made, found some (like honestly just five or six) in his collection and came home and started playing them. John Coltrane. Charles Mingus. Art Blakey. Miles Davis. One or two from each plus a Howlin' Wolf record. And while I played them, I continued to look online and make a list so that the next time I visited my parents, I could look properly and find what I was sure would be an instant legit classic jazz collection.

Some of what used to be in my dad's record collection.

The names on that list I made...Duke Ellington. Charlie Parker. Sonny Rollins. Grant Green. Kenny Burrell. Wayne Shorter. Eric Dolphy. Freddie Hubbard. Herbie Hancock. Dexter Gordon. Thelonious Monk. Count Basie. Lee Morgan. Django Reinhart. Cannonball Adderly. More Art Blakey. More John Coltrane. More Miles Davis. These were all names from my childhood. I knew them all. I just didn't know anything about any of them and I never listened to their music. 

The next time I visited my parents, I found most of what I was looking for in one single spot in my dad's bedroom closet. Most everything on the list I had made was recorded on Blue Note Records and my dad had all of them together in one giant treasure trove of a find. Now is not the time and place to talk extensively about my dad's record filing habits but he used to organize his music collection by label, not artist. He's mostly changed that now but it makes sense given his history that I would find all the classics in one location. They were all on the same label (Blue Note).

Since I found that stash, I've been slowly working my way through that collection. It's difficult to get used to a sizeable collection of music that is totally new but I've been doing it one by one. I definitely have favorites and some that I love. I also haven't even gotten to some of it and I also can't stand some of it and I swear it's not scars from my childhood. 

It helps that they are vinyl. There's something about dropping that needle down onto the wax and hearing the same pops and clicks sometimes that my dad used to hear. I feel like vinyl's the right medium for this music. It just feels appropriate.

Photos on the wall of The Village Vanguard.

As far as I was concerned when I was a young kid, my dad's love of jazz was confined to our home. I'm sure that's the limit of my childhood memory kicking in. I'm sure he went to listen to jazz live in England and I know he had a jazz club he used to go to every so often in Connecticut near where we lived. But eventually, he started to travel to listen to jazz in the places where men and women made it famous. I remember him taking a couple of trips to New Orleans with my mom, including one where they drove to the Crescent City all the way down from Memphis. On that trip, they visited Sun Studio where my mom literally bumped into Carl Perkins and stepped on his shoes.

The other jazz trips I remember my dad taking were to New York City. He had a lifelong friend and fellow jazz fan who used to visit us here in the States and the two of them used to head down to the City for a long weekend for what seemed to me like several years in a row but was likely really just two or three. They'd grab a hotel room, spend each night jazz club hopping until 2 a.m. or whatever in the morning, crash until late the next morning and then do the same thing over and over again. Birdland. Blue Note. The Village Vanguard. Some others probably that I don't even know about and which my dad cannot remember.

One day I thought it would be great if I could have taken my dad back to some of those places but I know enough to know that he's never going to be jazz club hopping in New York ever again. But I thought now that I have a portion of his old jazz record collection, I could do it without him. I've followed the memory of Gerry Rafferty to a pub in London and visited a hotel in Alabama where The Rolling Stones once stayed and had a late night snack in one of Ernest Hemingway's favorite restaurants in Madrid. Why shouldn't I now do the same thing and follow in my dad's footsteps to one or two jazz clubs? He's had way more influence on the person that I am today than Hemingway, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards or Gerry Rafferty. A three night trip to NYC seemed to be the perfect time to start following my dad to jazz clubs.

The Ravi Coltrane Quartet. Birdland. New York City.

I focused my jazz club search in New York on six places: Birdland, Blue Note, Dizzy's Club, Smalls, The Village Vanguard and Zinc Bar. From there, we picked where we were going mostly, but not entirely, based on who was playing, although our choices turned out to be somewhat limited on Monday night, July 3, when most were closed.

There is some real jazz history in some of these places and some of these names. Sure, Smalls has only been open since 1994 and Dizzy's Club is even younger (despite borrowing jazz legend Dizzy Gillespie's name) and Blue Note was opened in the early 1980s. But Zinc Bar is in the same space that used to be called Club Cinderella where Thelonious Monk worked as the house pianist in the 1940s and the Birdland club is one of the most legendary jazz spots named after Charlie Parker and opened way back in 1949 (although admittedly, the current location is the third iteration of the club and there was no Birdland at all from 1964 to 1986). Of all the places on my list, The Village Vanguard is the boss; it's been in the same location since 1934. And pretty much everyone who is anyone in jazz has a live album recorded at the Vanguard.

We picked Birdland and The Village Vanguard. For the artists. For the history. And because I know my dad has sat in both spots listening to jazz and being happy. 

Before we get into my very brief synopsis of our experience at each place, let me just say what an amazing place that New York is. I've said this many a time but if I could afford to live in Manhattan and maintain my current lifestyle that I enjoy living here in northern Virginia, I'd do it in a heartbeat. I love this city. I was very selective with my choice of clubs to visit but where else on this planet can you find the number of jazz clubs that there are in New York. I've listened to jazz in other cities in the world including New Orleans, Paris and Brussels but for the amount of top quality music every night, New York is the best. This doesn't just apply to jazz clubs. Like everything about New York is the best. LOVE it.

We ended up seeing the early show of the Ravi Coltrane Quartet at Birdland on Saturday night and the late show of the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra at The Village Vanguard on Monday night. From a music perspective, I enjoyed Ravi Coltrane (who yes, is the son of John Coltrane) way more than the VJO. Coltrane is leading a band of professional musicians who are making a living playing jazz and making records that are creative and original. They are also (from my limited jazz knowledge acquired in the last nine months or so) playing music pretty close to the 1950s and 1960s stuff I've been predominantly listening to since I pillaged my dad's record collection. The VJO is a big band and the big band era is long gone. That's not to say there's no value in that kind of music or that it wasn't entertaining; just that given a choice one night to see one or the other, I'm picking the quartet.

Venue-wise, they both had their own appeal. When you step off 44th Street and into Birdland, it's like you are a million miles away from the New York City sidewalk with just one step while still very definitely being in New York. There is no doubt you are in an historic jazz club. I'd go back to Birdland any time, particularly if we could get seated in the front row like we were last month (it's first come, first served seating and you know I was early).

The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, just before they started playing (no pics once the music starts).

But it is difficult to replicate the atmosphere of the Vanguard. It's a basement space which you access through a pair of doors probably 4' or maybe 4'-6" wide between the two doors and down a staircase which I feel fairly certain doesn't meet today's building codes. But it's a magical space. It's dark. It's old without being smelly. And the triangular floor plan focuses all the attention on the small stage and the south end of the joint. We were packed in there like some kind of puzzle pieces making up some kind of larger, glorious bigger picture. You can feel the history in that place, even without the faces in the pictures on the wall looking back at you (Birdland has similar walls-full of pictures). I’d go to either club again, but the Vanguard is the space with the legit history. The music that place has heard over the years. Just legends upon legends who have played there. It's tangible.

I'll say a couple of more things about this experience. 

First of all, I'm amazed at how well the bass playing comes through in these small clubs. Listening to records at home, I seem to get everything except the bass. Horns, drums, piano, whatever. But I miss the bass. It comes through magnificently in person. I have no idea how they get a bass down into the Vanguard but we did ask bassist Dezron Douglas at Birdland how he gets his bass moved around the city. Apparently he can get it in a big cab (I can see that) and on the Subway (I can't imagine how but I trust him).

Second, one of the things my dad liked best about his jazz club visits to New York was the fact that he got to talk to the musicians between or after sets. I remember him talking about his conversations with pianist Marian McPartland in some club while he was on his visits. And sure enough after the Coltrane set, all the musicians were available for conversation, pictures or whatever. It's a completely different post-show vibe that you get at a rock or pop show. Most musicians (but admittedly not all) disappear after the shows. It was cool to see that sort of thing still gong on that my dad remembered so fondly. 

I am pretty sure that my jazz collection is going to get bigger (I just got a new record for my birthday...) and I am also pretty sure I have not visited my last jazz club (already started looking at shows at Blues Alley in DC...). These couple of visits were about getting closer to the music that I've been exploring over the last few months but they were also a conscious gesture to honor and respect and get closer to something my dad loved and loves. I have very few regrets in life but not engaging with this music earlier is one of those. I'll just have to do the best I can with what my dad has intentionally or unintentionally passed to me here. I promise I'll do the best I can.

Birdland: Show over!

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Coda

A couple of final notes about my dad's love for jazz and my own jazz journey to date. I'll take those two in the opposite order I just wrote them because my thoughts on this type of music are clearly less important than my dad's thoughts. At least from my perspective. 

I have not spent much of my life listening to jazz but I will say that as an art form, it was far, far more sophisticated in the 1950s and early 1960s than anything labeled rock and roll or something like that. I guess I'm also surprised based on my toe-dip in the last nine months or so at how contemporaneous this music is with the emergence of rock music. Put another way, I had no idea that the music my dad was listening to when I was growing up was just 10 or 20 years old at the time. 

I will say that I appreciate incredibly the following six albums that I've discovered since this time last year. I'm picking six for a specific reason, and not because beer comes in six packs. At least not this time.

• Cannonball Adderly: Somethin' Else.
• Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers: Moanin'.
• Kenny Burrell: Midnight Blue.
• John Coltrane: Blue Train.
• Dexter Gordon: Our Man In Paris.
• Grant Green: Idle Moments.

In 2022, I was not able to get a list of essential jazz albums out of my dad. However, I did ask him in the early 1990s for a list of his must-have or essential or desert island disks or whatever you want to call them top jazz albums of all time. And I still have that hand-written list 30 years or so after he wrote it down.

Here's my dad's list of essential jazz albums which he called Foot Tapping List #1. Do with this what you will. Unfortunately, there will never be a List #2.

• Count Basie and His Orchestra: The Atomic Mr. Basie.
• Miles Davis: Ballads OR Greatest Hits.
• Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges: Back to Back.
• Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong: Ella and Louis Again OR The Best of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong.
• George Lewis: Jazz Funeral In New Orleans.
• Big Joe Turner: The Boss of The Blues.

My dad's list is way different than my list. And I think that's OK. It might reflect the fact that I like different things from my dad or it might reflect the fact that I don't know anything about jazz. I've tried my dad's list. I even asked him for copies of his CDs of his list about 15 or 20 years after I asked him for the list which he made me (mostly; he made a couple of substitutions because I think he didn't have all six on CD and easily copy-able when I asked him). The Atomic Mr. Basie is some good stuff. I'll keep going back to the rest. Maybe when I know a little bit more and can appreciate the nuance and subtlety a little better.

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