So why did I need to go to New York City anyway? I didn't really need points, and if I felt the need for some continuing education, why not just spend far less money and attend our local meeting here in Nebraska? Well, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to go to New York City for the very first time in my life. What began as purely a pleasure trip became quite an education. Stepping off of the airplane, I felt like Dorothy must have as she realized she wasn't in Kansas anymore. But, unlike Dorothy, I was loving every minute of this new, unexplored city, and I wasn't going to try to find my way home anytime soon. (For those of you who have been to New York, humor me and remember how excited you were on your first trip to the Big Apple!)
I met my friend, Jean Whalen, also a court reporter, who resides in the Twin Cities, at the Newark, NJ, airport and there we began our adventure. After finding our way to the Hilton Hotel in New York City, where National just happened to be holding their annual convention, we quickly got our bearings and adjusted to the quick pace at which everything moved. Within a couple hours of arriving, we had eaten dinner and were sitting in our seats on Broadway ready to be entertained. Educational point No.1: It is the size of the theater, not the "quality" of the show that determines its Broadway designation. If a play is on Broadway, it is in a theater that has 500 to 2500 seats; off-Broadway theaters have 100 to 500 seats; off-off-Broadway theaters have less than 100 seats. By the way, I highly recommend seeing, if you have the opportunity, "Wicked," a story about how the Wicked Witch of the West came to be.
As we journeyed back to our hotel after the show, we came upon a big to-do in the street next to our hotel. There were limos and some very excited people in the street. We were never able to get close enough to find out what was going on, but I later learned from fellow NeCRA member Sonya Rector, who was attending the convention, that they were holding the premiere of World Trade Center at the theater across the street from our hotel.
Our first full day as tourists in NYC began early, and we found our way, via a hop-on/hop-off tour bus, to Battery Park, where we boarded a ferry which would take us past the Statue of Liberty and on to Ellis Island. Having just a few months earlier brought our family reunion to fruition, I was eager to see my great-grandparents' entry point into the United States. I quickly learned that they would not have entered at Ellis Island but instead, because the island was not yet open when the German immigrants arrived from Russia, they would have entered at some other point. Imagine my delight at finding, among the unending walls of information
displayed at Ellis Island, the answer to my question.
The other points of entry were Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia, or New
Orleans. There was a goldmine of information to be absorbed there, one little
tidbit of which slightly amused us: A good portion of Ellis Island (as well as
Lower Manhattan) is built on landfill. Ellis Island has evolved over the years,
becoming much larger because of someone's idea to make use of what was no
longer considered usable. (By the way, you probably don't want to know where
the mulch comes from that you buy from one of those home-improvement
After Arriving back at Battery Park, we wound our way on foot through the financial district of Lower Mahattan, taking every opportunity to photograph what we were seeing: Wall Street and the canyon of buildings rising on each side of the street; Ground Zero, which, to someone who had never seen the towers as they stood more than 100 stories, looked like a construction site found
in any city, except for the memorial which sat at the southern edge of the area; Trinity and Saint Paul Churches, where many sought refuge during the days and weeks following 9/11.
As we ate a late lunch at a small Irish pub, we visited with a local, who was, pre-9/11, in international banking and, since then, has been a barkeeper.
Our touring also took us to many other areas of the city: through Chinatown, Little Italy, Greenwich Village, SoHo, the Upper East and West Sides, and Harlem, and past the UN building, Empire State Building, Madison Square Garden, Carnegie Hall, Trump Tower, and Central Park, just to name a few. So much to see, so little time!
The professional tour guides, who must qualify for their positions by testing their knowledge, have information to impart every second of every minute of the tour -- so much so that I almost went on listening overload -- whether they are telling you about the history of Macy's, pointing out Hotel Theresa in Harlem, where Fidel Castro stayed on his visit to NY, or retelling the story about a hotel, now being converted into condominiums, that Ivana Trump inherited in her divorce from the Donald, which she sold for over $700 million.
We did actually take the opportunity, on our second full day there, to attend the awards luncheon NCRA hosted honoring some very deserving people. While at the lunch, a court reporter with a decidedly southern drawl sat with us who we learned, in visiting with her, had been displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Although her home had not been devastated by the hurricane, there was nowhere for her to go to work. Through the assistance of National, she was afforded the opportunity to take a new job in New York as a court reporter in federal court. At this point, as much as I was enjoying the trip, I began having some very twisted thoughts. But I digress.
Another plus was that Jean and I were able to spend some time visiting with outgoing NCRA Director Nancy Braswell, whom we had both worked for when Nancy owned her firm in Council Bluffs. Another good reason to attend National conventions -- seeing old friends.
Our last morning in New York, we took the NBC Studios tour, which was quite interesting; however, my perception of television programming has been forever changed. The studio sets for many popular shows (Late Night with Conan O'Brien, Dateline, Saturday Night Live) are very small. Forty-some-degree air is pumped into the studios to maintain a comfortable temperature as over 200 studio lights hang from the ceilings, creating intense heat. Unless they are broadcasting in high definition, the studios do not pay much attention to detail (or cleanliness, I might add, as I observed a couple grungy-looking chairs). In fact, I was amused to learn that the wood-looking flooring on the Dateline set was really Contact paper with black lines drawn on it with the use of a ruler.
I learned so many things about
life in Manhattan: Jitneys are abundant.
The taxi driving IS as crazy as we
believe it is (one ride was enough to
convince me). New York cheesecake
and pizza is way better than any in the
Midwest, and there is a right way and a
wrong way to hold your pizza which tells
if you're a true New Yorker or not. Only
one in three people owns a car, which is
why I only saw three gas stations the
whole time I was there. A horse will very
tamely trot down the street between a city
bus and a taxi.
The Flatiron Building (made even more popular as the home of The Daily bugle
in he Spiderman movies) is only six feet wide at its narrowest side, creating the
windiest corner in the city, and is the origin for the saying "23 skidoo" (in days of
yore, men would gather at this corner to watch women's skirts rise as they went
around the corner of 23rd Street, prompting police officers to tell them to "23 skidoo"
Most New Yorkers are just sitting down
to their evening meal when we are turning in
for the night. New Yorkers' closets house a
lot of black clothing, the "fashionable" color
to wear.
Because land is so valuable, there are
few, if any, alleys in Manhattan, which means
outside the front door of each business sit
piles of big black trash bags which sit there
until it's trash day (we learned to hold our
breath as we walked past these odorous
mounds).
There is at least one Baptist church on
each block in Harlem; there are at least a
handful of delicatessens on each block in
Midtown; and there are over 150 Starbucks
coffee shops in Manhattan.
The Soup Kitchen, home of the
infamous "Soup Nazi" in TV's Seinfeld, really
does exist. Grant's tomb is located in
Manhattan. The Woolworth Building, when it
first opened, housed cattle for sale on its main
floor. And last, but not least, Pale Male and
Lola, two red-tailed hawks which nested at
the top of an exclusive Upper East Side co-op
apartment building on Fifth Avenue for 11
years, were the cause of quite a flap when
Richard Cohen, chairman of the co-op board
and husband to Paula Zahn, decided they
needed to be removed from their roost.
After much protest by Mary Tyler Moore
and many animal rights activists, the two
lovebirds were afforded a new stainless steel
cradle which was installed just for them where
their perch once was. (Where was I while
all of this squawking was going on?)
There was enough of Manhattan, and
New York City as a whole, that I didn't have
time to see while I was there that I'm trying
to convince my husband that we need to take
the trip together again next year. I enjoy my
life here in Nebraska, but unlike Dorothy, you won't be hearing me say anytime soon, "There is no place like home."
-- written by Pam Weyant, RMR, CRR
