AN EERIE BIG APPLE
Many people just adore the holiday season. They devote websites to it, they keep pictures of it up all year in their homes or offices. Houses and offices and public places are decorated. Lights ablaze, decorative presentations, all sorts of stuff. Gaiety and spirit abound.
I, for one, hate the holiday season, and am always happy when it is over. I extend this animus to the Super Bowl. After the Super Bowl, all this forced celebration and festivity is finally at an end. Then I can simply count the days until the real season of joy arrives: Spring Training, and then the regular MLB season.
It isn't a bah, humbug approach, mind you. Or a religious thing.
The commercialization of every little teeny thing, the turning of all things into a supposedly holiday-related event, the appalling zeal of some to force their Holiday Season spirit on everyone else, that's what I find so abhorrent.
But I will admit to one thing that is out of sync with the above. I love the way the city changes visually for the holiday season.
The tree at Rockefeller Center is always a spectacular visual delight.
I've been lucky enough to have friends and associates with offices in Rockefeller Center who have tree lighting parties in their establishments. It is something akin to having a friend with an apartment on the route of the Macy's Parade. You get a great view, you see it all, and the festivities are enjoyed from within a safe, sound, secure, and warm location.
The store window displays can be a source of entertainment. None better than the annual holiday windows of Lord & Taylor. Just going to see that almost completely ameliorates my animus toward all the rest of that holiday garbage.
BUT THIS YEAR IT IS DIFFERENT
Yeah, sure, the Santa's are out there from the Salvation Army and other charities. The lights are up, the store windows are done, holiday regalia is everywhere.
But the aura of sadness hangs over the city like a shroud. The loss of loved ones is always tougher around holidays and anniversaries and such. I find myself thinking of all the families missing a member, a loved one, a relative or a friend or a spouse or a parent, a sibling...gone as a result of the attack of September 11th.
Rudy Guiliani is all over the TV, promoting travel to New York. Come celebrate our city, he implores. Visit our stores, the restaurants, Broadway Shows, the arts and culture available here, like no other place in the world.
During the holiday season, New York City has always been even more the high-gear place than ever: hustle-bustle, shoppers with more bags than it appears one should tote, families from elsewhere with their kids in tow. See the trees at Rockefeller Center and Lincoln Center; see the store windows, go to see the Christmas Show at Radio City Music Hall -- bathe in the riches of the city this holiday season.
The impetus to write all this comes from an e-mail exchange I had with Doc Searls. He'd noted in his blog [1] that I was bloggin again, and offered a link [2] to my How To Spell Hanukkah? post.
Well, Doc meant to put in a link. But an error on his blog had that link going to Jones Soda [3], not to my blog. So I sent Doc a note, alerting him to this egregious error. Now he fixed it. I may have to send him a note, asking him to repoint it, since it appears [4]all the way down his blog, and is, well, like history at this point!
In my e-mail to Doc I go on to bemoan how the city seems so eerie to me. Since I wrote that, I've been in and out of the city again, and am going in for the third day in a row, leaving later this afternoon.
Doc wrote back to let me know he'd repaired the link. And suggested I post to my blog what I wrote to him about the eeriness of the city these days, so seemingly empty and lacking in the usual hustle-bustle and spirit of the season.
So here goes. Some edited excerpts from my e-mail to Doc. Once again, the fellow who inspired me to get this thing going, now inspires specific content (although he is not a fan of the word content [5]).
NYC is very odd this year at this time. First we had Summertime weather for the initial eight days of December. Saturday night, all of a sudden, it is windy, and it is snowing!
I had a meeting in the city this morning. Drove to 111 8th Avenue (at 15-16 Street, the old Port Authority Bldg., now a major Telecom facility), got in incredibly quickly.
After the meeting had lunch, then drove back up to Rockland County. It was very eerie, driving through Manhattan. First Chelsea, then Midtown, then the Upper West Side until I jumped onto the West Side Hwy to the GW. Eerie because the city is seemingly empty. 14th Street, 34th Street, 42nd Street, and 57th and 59th Street just lack the crowds. Usually at this time of year the city is packed, shoppers are all over, toting bags and shlepping stuff.
The emptiness is a cruel reminder of how much has changed. Tuesday is three months to the day since the attack. A quarter has now elapsed, a specifically measurable period in terms of commerce and analysis.
This emptiness, this change, I fear, is just the tip of the iceberg.
Let's hope that at this time next year Ashcroft isn't jailing people suspected of thinking thoughts that he might consider unsafe for the rest of America.
Oops. There I go getting maudlin again.