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This weekend I was in NYC.  Sadly I didn’t take any pictures, but I’m sure that sort of thing can be found somewhere on the internet.

In lieu of visual proof, I’m left with only a few a documentary testimonials as proof that I was anywhere but the same small apartment I always am…

Arrival at Grand Central.  It’s an impressive building: grandiose but functional, probably one of the better representations of what the American spirit is, or was, or should be.  The inscription over the entrance caught my eye: To all those with head heart, and hand/Toiled in the construction of this monument to the public, service/This is inscribed.  I feel like that could have edited down somehow – the Dante in me would prefer it was shorter – Through labor, creation.

We stayed the night at the Sheraton.  It’s apparently a brand new hotel, only a month old.  Nice enough hotel and no complaints, but the contemporary chic style may have taken a little bit farther than necessary.  Having the elevators hidden from the front desk by a semi-cloistered business lounge struck me as a bit convoluted.  Some of the room furnishings, namely an poorly centered sconce and a cardboard-box-with-packing-tape-esque ceiling light, were too avant garde for my taste.

For dinner we ate at Jekyll & Hyde.  There are apparently two restaurants – we went to the one on 7th near Barrow.  It’s a theme restaurant decorated with animatronic  horror-cliches and staffed by a pair (Jekyll and Hyde) of theater majors that banter with guests.  Not exactly my scene and the whole thing seemed a bit run-down – have animatronics been impressive in the last twenty years?

I do wonder though if book themed restaurants don’t have some potential niche market.  Surely someone would pay to visit a Lovecraft restaurant – manned by the people of Innsmouth and properly decorated in New England antiquarian curios?  Or perhaps a Robinson Crusoe restaurant – a much simpler menu I imagine.  Shakespeare, Sherlock Holmes, and Robert Lewis Stevenson already have their restaurants, but Slaughterhouse 5 doesn’t (right?).

Later that night, I visited Fat Cat, a jazz bar not far from NYU.  The band was excellent and I really do wish that New Paltz had a jazz bar with live entertainment, but the greater entertainment of Fat Cat was the clientèle – I don’t believe I’ve ever seen quite as many nerds assembled in a social setting before.  Chess, scramble, card game tables – pool, ping pong, shuffle board, no dancing whatsoever.  I really could have used a hideout like that a few years ago.  My only complaint was the bar – the beer of choice seemed to be PBR.  How does that swill even exist?  A baffling beverage for a place that I never imagined would or could exist.  If some brave entrepreneur would like to build a chess/jazz bar near wherever I might be living at the time, I’d be more than happy to frequent the place at whatever expense is required.

The next morning was breakfast at the hotel and a two hour train ride back home.  NYC is never really my favorite place and I’ve got too much to do to be hanging around all that long, but it was a good visit – and something a little more enthralling the usual routine.