If you have lived in this city long enough, you find your mind often contemplating the consequences of leaving things of value out in the open. It’s not necessarily the product of a criminal mind, but rather one of seeing too much vandalism and too many break-ins. I lived here through a long period of time when “no radio” signs in car windows were an everyday sight.

The inflexible rule of thumb when parking a vehicle in New York City is to leave nothing in plain view in your vehicle at all. On July 29, 2009, I wrote of this in Urban Coral Atoll, as well as that many owners of luxury vehicles may leave their doors unlocked and “convertibles, top down, parked unattended in the streets of New York City, a clear signal to potential miscreants that there is absolutely nothing of value in this vehicle.” Recently, I saw what appeared to be this anti-vandalism effort mirrored.

Walking along Washington Square North, I saw a Mercedes 380SL convertible with its top down – a perfect photo opportunity to illustrate this proactive anti-vandalism parking approach in action. What was more surprising was that just a short distance away, I found another Mercedes 380SL convertible with its top down. Both bore New Jersey license plates. It seemed likely that the owners were friends who shared a passion for the same vehicle and came into the city together for a romp around town.

Counter measures notwithstanding, owning a luxury vehicle and street parking it in New York City requires intestinal fortitude and some degree of reckless abandon. I have seen owners of Rolls Royces, Ferraris, and Lamborghinis park on the street, even in front of fire hydrants and other no parking zones. If your vehicle is towed, there is the risk of damage in the towing process. Not to mention, of course, the cost of a parking ticket and towing fee, now $185 plus tax.

However, no matter how you plan or prepare, vandalism is always a possibility, and to leave a luxury vehicle on the streets of New York City is unfathomable to me. At times, I feel badly and assume that the owner may just be a visitor, naive regarding the realities of the streets of New York. At other times, I imagine that the owner may be a conspicuous consumer, flaunting the sign value of his car, as if to say, “Don’t worry. I have enough money that if I am towed, a few hundred dollars means nothing. If the car is damaged, I’ll just have it repaired. And if is stolen, I will just buy another one.”

Is parking two Mercedes convertibles with tops down on the streets of Manhattan a case of Great Minds Think Alike or Fools Seldom Differ? 🙂

Things start well enough on Sunday – my mother calls to wish me Happy Birthday, and from my window, I see a partly sunny day. I suggest to my girlfriend that we go to the Bronx Zoo, something which I had not done in years.
We opt for public transportation – the subway has a zoo stop.  A short distance outside, however, and it is clear that this is going to be a hot and very humid day. But I remain optimistic – trains are air-conditioned, and the zoo is shaded and also has indoor exhibits.

This trip requires two trains, a local to the express. When we get to Astor Place, however, the local train is not running at all. Out to the street for a six-block walk to Union Square for the express train.
Signs indicate that the number 5 train is also not running for the weekend. We jump in the first express train which arrives quickly – things are starting to look up.

But once we arrive in the Bronx, I notice the stops don’t look quite right. That’s because only the number 5 runs to the zoo, not the 4 which we had taken. A brief conversation with a passenger confirms my mistake and that I will have to take a bus across Fordham Road. We exit the train, armed with our Metro Cards, expecting a free transfer.
However, the bus driver indicates that we need to go back to the machine on the street and purchase reduced price tickets at $1.10 each for this BX12 bus.
Off the bus. Buy tickets. Back on the bus. The ride across Fordham Road is quite depressing.

Our stop is Southern Boulevard, and the driver tells me I have a choice of two entrances. I forget the East Fordham Road entrance is the main one, which is quite beautiful. Instead, we traipse nearly twice as far down Southern Boulevard for what feels like an interminable distance in the heat to finally arrive at the side entrance. We see “The Complete Experience” listed for $27 per person, with no posting of general admission prices. This already smells of a zoo sadly doing badly. Being late in the day, we opt for general admission at $15 each.

The day’s humidity is almost unbearable, even in the shaded areas of the zoo. We quickly learn that many of the best exhibits are part of The Complete Experience and can be purchased ala carte. $6 more gets us into the Congo Gorilla Forest – can’t miss that. We watch a movie, and the screen lifts to a live panorama of gorillas.

I overhear a disappointed father of a family asking his wife who is reading a map – “No elephants?” (there are only two left which can only be seen from the Bengali Express monorail). We decide to purchase a drink after building up a thirst and $2.75 buys a small bottle of water.

A zoo employee tells me that the zoo closes at 5:30 PM, so I pace myself for that. However, an announcement at 5PM tells us the zoo is now closed, so we barely get to the gardens and exhibits at the main entrance, which I was saving until last.

We exit and make our way back to the Fordham Road bus stop. We purchase those silly tickets for the crosstown BX12 and wait at the bus stop, confident that we have the system mastered. The bus arrives quickly, but it stops inexplicably some distance before the stop and we miss it. Not to be fooled, we move, and the next bus stops behind us. A quick jog in the heat with camera equipment in tow, and we just make the bus.

The train ride itself is uneventful. But at our final stop, I notice a man with a VERY wet umbrella – he confirms a torrential downpour outside. This provides a most amazing photo opportunity and, of course, a wet journey home. The streets are littered with downed tree branches.

We decide to go Indian for a birthday dinner. The place I frequent is typically nearly empty, but tonight the place is packed, and there are a couple of huge parties. We are seated at one of the few remaining tables. We wait for some time, but I have a bad feeling that this will be a painfully slow process, so we leave as gracefully as possible.

My spirits pick up as we opt for Trattoria Spaghetto just a few short blocks away. They are also unusually crowded, and the only remaining table is sandwiched between the kitchen and the service exit to the street used by the waiters. Not daunted by eating on a super highway, we sit and get our menus. I do not need to even open mine, because I am ready to order my favorite dish here: Fusilli Puttanesca. However, our waiter informs me that he is sorry, because tonight there is no fusilli 🙁

As far as money goes, New Yorkers are like most other Americans – they like a deal, and FREE screams loudest to them.
People at trade shows collect enormous numbers of brochures they will never read and wait in huge lines for premiums and freebees worth virtually nothing. I have seen adult men and women practically brawl over free T-shirts thrown into an audience at a Macworld convention.
With free food it is even worse. At the Japan Festival in Central Park on Sunday, people were in lines hundreds deep, waiting in the hot sun for free noodles or a free dumpling.

When it comes to tunnels, bridges, and other roadway tolls, many seasoned New Yorkers consider it a matter of principle and a source of pride to avoid paying a toll. Ironically, in most other ways, New Yorkers spend huge amounts of money for conveniences – prices for items at a green grocer can be substantially more for identical items at a supermarket a few extra steps away. There are endless examples of this behavior. But put the same people behind the wheel of a car and give them the option to wait in horrendous traffic to avoid paying a toll, and they will.

If you are coming from the outlying neighborhoods of Brooklyn by car, you will most likely use the Belt Parkway or Prospect Expressway and then a leg of the Gowanus Expressway. If you are heading to Manhattan, you have a big life altering decision to make: do you take the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel for FIVE DOLLARS, or do you cram into the bumper-to-bumper traffic on the BQE (Brooklyn Queens Expressway) and take one of the bridges for FREE?

By now the answer is obvious, n’est–ce pas? Any self-respecting New Yorker takes the free road and saves five dollars (perhaps to spend it whimsically soon after at Starbucks). Admittedly, five dollars is quite a bit of money for a short tunnel ride. However anyone driving a car into Manhattan is already indulging in a luxury that most can not afford, so why not spend five dollars and go in style?

These were my thoughts on Saturday evening when, coming back from my adventures in Brooklyn after an exhausting day of driving, I decided to do the unthinkable and spend five dollars for the tunnel experience. It was extraordinary. The highway spur to the tunnel (top photo) and the tunnel itself (bottom photo) were virtually empty.
I was back in Manhattan in a few short minutes, while thousands jammed onto the BQE. Of course, many of these travelers were not headed to Manhattan, but trust me on this – if there were no toll for that tunnel, I would have had plenty of company. And, of course, an extra five dollars…

Photo note: Against better judgement, these photos were taken one-handed while driving. Camera shake, shutter speed, aperture – no time for these considerations. After spending $5, I was feeling rather reckless anyway 🙂

I have met grown men – secure, strong, worldly men – who are absolutely terrified of cities, particularly New York City. To city lovers like myself, these fears seem completely irrational. I understand the fear, perhaps, of an older person or single woman walking in a dangerous neighborhood at night – this is courting trouble. But a grown person in a vehicle in broad daylight with an entire family in tow? What can really happen? If you get lost, you will eventually get unlost. In my experience, the worst that will happen is that you will be very inconvenienced for some time.

The worst scenario to me is breaking down in an automobile in the city. Fixing a flat or getting a battery boost, simple acts elsewhere, can be a real headache here. Services are not readily available, and waiting for roadside service on a busy highway in a traffic congested city is certainly not pleasant. And if one would have to overnight in a hotel, that would be mighty expensive or very inconvenient.

There is no plethora of basic services, such as tire repair. Places like that in the photo are generally found in poorer neighborhoods and in out-of-the-way locations. Unless you know a neighborhood well, these places are destinations – the likelihood of finding them when you need them is rather remote. And escalating rents have conspired to make these places all but non-existent. The scarcity has made this type of subject a popular photo.

Certainly being lost in a city or having trouble here, like getting a flat tire, is more troublesome than the same problem in the suburbs, and there is perhaps some risk of exploitation by opportunists (although our suburban or country brethren are not immune to this). In most cases, however, a little cash or credit card will be all that is necessary to extricate oneself from virtually any situation. I remember a conversation with a client of mine when I was younger and very inexperienced in travel. She was much older, nearing retirement and planning to settle somewhere on the coast of Italy. At the time, this seemed like such a fantasy and unfathomable to me for a number of reasons, language being one of them. When I asked whether she was concerned about not being able to speak Italian, she replied that she was not at all worried, because “They all speak American Express” 🙂

Here is an infuriating New York City scenario. You are driving a car or in a taxi on an avenue and need to change direction by turning onto a crosstown street. Now in most situations, you have many choices as to which crosstown street, since most of Manhattan is a grid. There are 20 crosstown blocks to a mile, so for most trips, there are dozens of streets you could take. If you are really knowledgeable about traffic patterns, you can narrow your choices, but nearly always, you will still have many equally good options. Your final decision will have an element of whim.

So you make a turn down a street and, by pure chance, you happen to select the block where a sanitation truck is picking up trash. The street is not wide enough to pass, and sanitation workers will never try to accommodate you in any way. And you know you will be there for quite some time, crawling behind that truck, watching as they go about their business, one can at a time, with no sense of urgency, because this is their job, a job that must be done. And what can you say or do? This is the New York City Department of Sanitation, and you want the city kept clean, right?

Now if you are a Zen master or one who can take life in stride, perhaps laughing at times like this, then you are fortunate. But if you are in a bit of a hurry or prefer not to spend your life waiting for traffic lights or behind trucks, because you have already spent too much of your life here waiting, then you may find yourself stewing a bit. There are better things to do. As time passes behind that truck, time that passes slowly (it will be a long time to go down that whole street stopping at every building) you can easily imagine having chosen another street. Any other street. You can play out all the scenarios and reflect on the odds that of all the streets in New York, you chose this one. No backing up either, because in this city, it is rare that cars are not immediately behind you.

You will have time to exhaust all the things you could have done or should have done, because sanitation workers are in no hurry. They are absolutely immune to any belligerent actions – they have experience on a daily basis with all manner of threats and attention-getting tactics. You can pretend you are relaxed, enjoying music, or reading. But if you are a type-A personality or high-strung, you can work yourself into a livid, absolutely furious state. Occasionally, in a city of extremes, livid will be the emotion du jour. 🙂

Photo note: This photo was taken going south on Washington Square West in the morning, not the classic avenue/crosstown street scenario. There were few trash pickups to be made, little traffic, and some opportunities to pass around the truck. So this was only reminiscent of the real deal, not an authentic ulcer maker.