56 hours in bedlam

12 04 2011

As the Amtrak Keystone Service train slid along the tracks northward, I prepared myself for my 2-day New York City visit by trying to recall details from the time I lived there, in 1991-92.

20 years ago? Lord.

Somehow all I came up with were a couple of big blanks across my consciousness. Nothing more than a few fuzzy scenes of alleged ivy league glory. I was a graduate student, and I literally rode to hell and back in an academic year. There is nothing more to tell.

The distant skyscrapers of midtown Manhattan slipped into view…wow, that was quick… it seems like we just left Philadelphia. (It’s this close?) On the New Jersey Turnpike this trip seems to take a lot longer than by train.

We passed towns I know well from those Turnpike exits: Rahway, Elizabeth, Harrison; inching ever closer to that biggest of Apples. Planes approached the south end of Newark airport’s runways, Path trains on neighboring tracks waited for their scheduled departures. Buildings moved closer, emerging from the blue haze, their edges becoming sharper. Unlike my memories.

The biggest apple (core).

Once in the city, it took me less than five blocks to remember why I left New York all those years ago, and only ever come back to visit. If I had to live here again now, the city would eat me whole. For breakfast.

Recently I met a non-native New Yorker who has lived in the city for almost 20 years. She told me that her New York is actually just a small part of it. It’s not the whole megalopolis, from Staten Island to the Bronx, from the Hudson to Long Island Sound, but rather a tiny corner of it in which she lives, works, shops, breathes and exists. She said that the entire city all at once can be overwhelming, even for someone who lives there… every person must carefully and consciously carve out an individual community from the endless opportunities beyond one’s doorstep.

And then a tourist comes and thinks she needs to swallow NYC whole because she is only in the city of cities for a short period of time. That’s impossible, even for the hardiest of souls. I’m glad a nouveau New Yorker confirmed this for me. Some folks think I’m just too sensitive.

My couple of days in New York were full of experiences impossible to replicate anywhere else. It’s that simple. Still, I couldn’t wait to leave.

I didn’t look back when the Amtrak train left Penn station and emerged from the tunnel on the Jersey side. 56 hours in the city was enough for my delicate constitution and I don’t need any more of the smog, dirt or weirdos for the next long while. I’m done with the city and look forward to all the other wonderful places on this great earth that I will have the privilege of seeing. I gladly leave New York to those who can handle the bedlam.

Couldn't have said it better myself.


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Categories : Americana, Cruisin', Just another working stiff, This & that in the real world, Uncategorized

A town called Philadelphia

7 04 2011

Philadelphia is the most underrated city I know.

Whenever my European friends plan their monumental trips across America, they mention their highlights with visible pride: San Francisco, Chicago, Miami, New York. For some strange reason, the city of brotherly love, home of the pretzel and the greatest ice hockey team to populate the NHL as well as the actual birthplace of the United States of America is hardly ever on the itineraries of allegedly interested European travelers.

The original is here, folks!

Philly is often simply overlooked, left on the right hand side of I-95, the gleaming skyscrapers of Liberty Place off in the distance, as these travelers breeze down the highway from the Big Apple to our nation’s capital. And that is a real shame.

(Irony if ironies: The highway is in New Jersey, the nation’s toxic waste dump.)

There’s a lot to criticize about my hometown, but then again, what city is perfect? I know of none. Philly has a kind of unpretentious air about it, sitting in the shadow of NYCs bright lights and smog off to the north. It’s much smaller than Manhattan, but still has a healthy, diverse cultural scene and is a center for higher education. For those so inclined, there is an active and colorful Gayborhood, a Chinatown (with a big gate), and an Italian Market area in South Philly. And of course, the sports teams, which include the aforementioned Stanley Cup champions, some World Series winners and I think probably the one or the other Superbowl champ, too. (But I’d have to check on that to make sure.)

A friend of mine is a professional photographer here. He grew up in the area, and decided not to leave. He is phenomenally successful and does not know what to do with all the cash he is raking in. An artist of his caliber and business acumen would tend to move on after a while. But he stayed. And his logic was simple: “Either I stay in Philadelphia and I’m a really big fish in this pond, or I go to New York and be a guppy.”

It’s a gritty but friendly town. In the past couple of days I have reacquainted myself with the city I left long ago, and which I didn’t even know really well back then. It’s been a real journey of discovery, of joy. I walked everywhere I felt like going on a whim… by my count, 160 blocks in two and a half days. Aside from the history, which is fascinating, the tree-lined streets of Center City wrapped me in a feeling of comfort and normalcy. The regularness of it all is what’s special.

I never stopped being an unofficial ambassador for Philadelphia, but these days I am more so. Every time some professional European traveler tells me s/he is going for an all-American tour, I try to put the place on her/his maps. Unfortunately, not many of them listen to me. I’m not sure what it would take to get them to pay attention.

Though dwarfed by the gleaming office towers that have grown up around him in the past two decades, William Penn still stands tall atop of City Hall at the intersection of Broad and Market Streets. It’s good to see him up there. Enough to make me feel whole again.

Master of all he surveys.


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The sad state of inline skating in the USA

1 04 2011

Coming to the land of new innovative sports and the birthplace of inline skating, I thought I would arrive in an El Dorado for rollerbladers, the likes of which I will have never seen before. Especially in Florida, where the weather is conducive to outdoor sports pretty much the whole year round.

Sadly, that is not the case.

Before I arrived here in Florida, I found a group on the Internet that conducts a weekly night skate. I was ecstatic. I imagined hundreds if not thousands of skaters, collectively taking back the streets, just like they do in every European capital at least once per summer month. (Think: Skaterparties in Paris, Berlin, London…) Even in Zurich our Monday Night Skate attracts anything from 2000-6000 participants every second Monday from May to September.

The Wednesday night gang.

The first time I joined the skate group here in Hollywood, I found eight people waiting at the assigned meeting point. And I asked… “Is this the skate group? This is it?” One of the other skaters answered, “Oh, this is a great turnout.” Last night’s group was 14 strong, a real army.

This is how I discovered that the skater demographic here is um… small and not really, shall we say… sustainable.

The folks I met in the group and also when I’m out skating on my own are great – very friendly and chatty people, we have a grand time. But they are all… well… middle-aged. There are Tom and Dave, who are in their late 40s probably; Karen is a few years younger. Then there’s Harry, who I would have guessed is in his late 40s but is actually 62 (a true testament to the youthful effect of skating). Those are a couple of the regulars. I have never seen anyone at the meetings that was under, say, 35.

Then there’s also George, who looks like he’s 70, but is probably 85. He is out every morning at 7:00 a.m., skating his laps along the beach like there’s no tomorrow.

They all complained to me that for some reason young people are not interested in the sport. And even though the group officially has more than 370 members (according to their website), only a fraction of those show up for the weekly meetings. Kids don’t seem to find skating “cool” anymore.

There is no decent skate shop in a 100 mile radius and I know of no organized races within a day’s drive.

George told me that for a few years, Disney organized an annual skate marathon in Orlando, but declining participant numbers prompted them to cancel it. Unfathomable for us in Europe, like the folks at the Berlin Marathon, who have to turn away hundreds of skaters every year because the event is sold out six months before the race.

My skate friends here say that for the monthly Miami South Beach Friday night skate (the epitome of coolness if there ever was one) usually about 50 skaters show up. If the weather is good, maybe five more will come. That event is tomorrow night, and I can’t wait to cruise through the Art Deco streets, escorted by police, past curious onlookers and irate motorists. I’m sure it will be a blast.

And I will be wondering where the thousands of other skaters, who would make it truly an experience of a lifetime, are hiding. They must be out there somewhere.

South Beach at sunset.


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This land is my land.

28 03 2011

Now that I have been in the United States for A WHOLE MONTH already, I have come to realize that there is a lot about the culture here that I can still totally identify with, even after spending the past almost 20 years overseas. I feel like I would feel completely comfortable easing back into society here, and pretending I had never left.

For example, take… people. I understand their language, their jokes, their mentality and their concerns. I can talk shop on baseball, hurricanes and inflation in the cost of an ice cream cone. And everyone is just so nice to each other. That’s what I really like about Americans.

In the past couple of weeks, I have also been noticing stuff that is maybe a little under the surface… things you take note of only when you are here a longer time, that are so very different from my life in Europe. A couple of days ago, I started writing down a few of these, and thought I’d share them.

Here an incomplete list of fascinating stuff I have (re-)learned about the USA:

– Freight trains, though not as plentiful as in Europe, are exponentially longer than in Europe. The other day I was stuck at a railroad crossing in downtown Hollywood, FL as a cargo train passed. I counted 150 wagons, not including the two locomotives that were pulling it.

– There is a good reason it’s called commercial radio. When there is a commercial on the station you happen to be listening to, there will be commercials on all the other radio stations, at the same time. It’s like all radio stations have together conspired to simultaneously flood their listenership with paid advertising. The exception to the rule is, of course, (commercial-free) National Public Radio… that is in the middle of its Spring fund drive.

Radio Gaga.

– And by day four of the above-mentioned NPR beg-fest, any intelligent and loyal NPR listener is ready to pick up the phone, not to pledge but to tell them to please, please STOP! There is only so much penetrating, public on-air groveling I can tolerate before it seriously grates on my nerves. And you’ll notice that the voices get more desperate the closer the deadline creeps. (“Please, pledge NOW! We need your money!”)

– One more thing about advertising. The U.S. oil and natural gas industry is currently paying millions to bombard television viewers with the message that “the deeper you go the more good you learn about oil and natural gas.” Really?  Deepwater Horizon, anyone?

– March Madness is not some kind of psychotic illness that runs rampant in the Springtime, but a basketball tournament that everyone seems to get real excited about. (OK, maybe it is an illness…)

–  To end on a positive note: Americans volunteer more than any other population I know. There are opportunities to do unpaid social work everywhere – coach a team, chaperone kids or help old people. If only there were as many paid jobs as there are volunteer opportunities, this country would be in fantastic shape.


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When to hold ’em and when to fold ’em

4 01 2011

On a transatlantic flight recently, I decided to test the aircraft entertainment system’s electronic poker game. Within about 20 minutes, I turned 200 units (call them dollars, francs, dirhams or rupees) into 12,100 units. Not much thinking and equally little effort and I was rich.

So…Why doesn’t this ever happen in real life?

In a real casino two days later, I burned through $300 (real dollars) in the same amount of time.

And here I always thought I was perfect. I don’t smoke, I drink in moderation only and I exercise regularly. But unfortunately, I do have one vice – Black Jack. I blame my husband though, he is a casino fiend himself, and the one who encourages this demonic recessive trait of mine out into the open.

R. has all the accouterments at home – purchased in a casino supply store in Fabulous Las Vegas: His own green Black Jack table layout, semi-professional chips of various denominations, and a shoe full of used (real) casino playing cards. I think our current set is from Circus Circus, after we played five decks from Caesar’s Palace into the ground.

What is wrong with this picture?* (Answer below.)

Though technically illegal in this country, we hold regular Black Jack tournaments in our home behind closed doors and curtains, for money. Little money, but still. We are hoping that someday the bank will have collected enough winnings to sponsor a nice meal out for the two of us.

Someday. Because in the meantime our customers have actually been doing quite well at the table. On every game night in the last couple of weeks the amount in the pot has shrunk ever so slightly. Call it beginners’ luck or shrewd gambling. Or maybe R. and I just haven’t stacked the deck(s) well enough in our favor.

One recent gaming round over the holidays included friends of ours who will travel with us to Sin City next May to make their debut at the Luxor. We are teaching them how to play the game by the book, so that they will hopefully make a decent impression, and won’t be run out of town. In a best-case scenario they’ll be able to finance their hotel stay with the winnings. That means following a strategy which mathematically increases one’s probability of beating the house by as little as 0.1 percent – even if the book’s “rules” are occasionally rather counter-intuitive. This is the part that’s sometimes tough to wrap one’s head around.

Contrary to popular opinion, there really is a lot the beginner can do (“wrong”) that will attract the consternation of seasoned gamblers. Fortunately though, there are also enough tables in Las Vegas to accommodate the greenhorn just out having fun as well as the hardened desperado focused on making enough to pay next month’s rent.

Only practice makes perfect, and we have just five more short months to practice. Knowing when to hold ‘em and knowing when to fold ‘em is certainly integral. But any player will tell you that knowing when to walk away is the toughest part of the game.

************************

* It took six cards for the dealer  (top) to hit 21 – against every probablilty calculation in Black Jack. That means all four players (bottom) lose the hand, despite themselves holding cards that would be considered pretty good under normal circumstances.


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Categories : Americana, Cruisin', Sports that can kill, This & that in the real world

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