Manhattan Hillbilly

Subway Etiquette: You Can't Dance If You Want To

I've watched people curse, spit and pee on subway platforms. No police.

Apparently, however, you can't dance. 

We're Also "Judgmental" About Your Spelling

Do "Mad Men" Next Time You Visit New York

Like to tour the sights in New York City? Love AMC's TV show "Mad Men?" Now you can combine your two loves.

Courtesy of our friends at the Hufington Post, here's a map that shows all the sights that have been mentioned or served as settings in the show. So make sure to have a martini and don't forget your hat when you leave. 

Yankees Begin Humiliating Red Sox Early

Boston was celebrating the 100th Anniversary of Fenway Park Friday night by hosting the Yankees. Needless to say it didn't end well, with the Yanks handing their AL East rivals a 6-2 loss. 

I'm not a Yankees fan, and I'm certainly not a fan of Rupert Murdock's style of journalism. But spectacular, classic Ford-To-City-Drop-Dead headlines? I'm all over that. Here you go:

Movie Night At The Nursing Home

Here's the Movie Night poster for a home for the elderly in Queens. Maybe they should pick a different movie. 

92-Year-Old Cabbie Still On The Streets

Want to know what it was like to drive a cab in New York City in 1945? Ask Johnny "Spider" Footman -- he's still doing it. 

Quote of the Week: "They had sex in the back [seats] in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s,” he recalled with a twinkle in his eye. “The cabs were a lot bigger then."

H/T: New York Post

Love Bacon to Death? Now You Can

J&D Foods, inventors of bacon-flavored just about everything, add a Bacon Coffin to their lineup.

Enjoy the video and then buy yours. 

My guess is they start taking orders April 1. 

 

New York in the "Mad Men" Era

AMC's Mad Men returns to TV Sunday night. The New York Daily News has a great photo archive of what it was like to live in New York City during the early '60s. It's worth checking out. (Warning: Slide Show)

Go Vols in Harlem!

Walking down 125th Street in Harlem yesterday and saw this fire truck parked at the light:

 

 

 

At first I assumed that putting University of Tennessee "T"'s on fire trucks was part of a neighborhood beautification effort. In fact, it's the "Freedom Engine," donated to New York City in a fund-raising campaign by East Tennesseans after 9/11. While it's had some ups and downs (New York is notoriously tough on its equipment) rest assured it's up and running, and doing its job in Manhattan.

 

Filling Out My Subway Bracket

God bless the comedy geniuses at the FakeMTA. They've developed these brackets for all New York City subway riders. There's no doubt the Thieves/Gropers are going to overpower the Subway Agents in the first round of the MTA Ineptitude Region, but I have the Stinky Beggar edging out the Sick Passenger in the final. 

Get The Crowbar If You're Parking in NYC

If there's a skillset that's necessary to drive in New York City, it's the ability to parallel park. Sadly, it's a skill that most Southerners -- softened by decades of Wal-Mart parking lots -- don't have.

I've previously documented the insanity of Alternate Street Parking. But being able to twist your giant SUV into a small space while dozens of cabs are lined up behind you impatiently honking their horns is a true gift. A large percentage of New Yorkers own Mini Coopers and Smartcars to take advantage of those tiny spaces that grown-up cars can't squeeze into. 

The Missus has quickly mastered this ninja parking skill, and is now the designated parker on those occasions when we need to bring her mother's car into to city. Want proof? Here's her most recent parking job. Here's how far she was from the car in front of her:

 

 

 

And here's how far she ended up from the car behind her:

 

 

And here's the overall view showing the size of the car and the amount of space she was able to back into:

Again, both the car in front of her and behind her were already in place! So how did she manage to back in and back-and-forth herself into this spot with such a tiny margin for error? Either she's very good ... or I married a magician.

24-Hour Cupcakes!

This is why I moved to New York: A 24-Hour Cupcake-Dispensing ATM. 

Subway Ad Stupid

I'm a big fan of the ads in subway stations, and sometimes those who use grafitti can add something that makes them quite funny.

That said, I think the people who posted this ad weren't thinking about how people might use the QR code.

 

 

No St. Patrick's Day? Fuhgettaboutit, Hoboken!

 

The city of Hoboken had a problem. Each year, a sizeable part of the crowds attending its annual Hoboken St. Patrick's Day parade was getting rowdier and rowdier. And with the holiday falling on a Saturday this year, the city fathers (of whom many are actually female) decided discretion was the better part of valor -- so they cancelled the entire event. 

Some suggested the death of the parade was an inevitable curse because an Italian-American TV baker was the grand marshall of last year's event, which skews heavily Irish. 

 

But if the city council thought just cancelling the event would end the celebrations, they might want to read up on this little thing called the internet. Because now, to protest the decision, online organizers have created "Lepri-con," a crowdsourced celebration at the city's bars March 17 destined to bring an even larger crowd than in past years.

The city council is still trying to grab the tiger by the tail, trying to change the city laws so bars can't open until at least 11 a.m. that Saturday. Right now, they can open at 6 a.m. in Hoboken, which seems a little late for a bit of the creature and some grits and toast.

Voyeurism In The City

 

Once you start living in New York City, you discover an insidious disease that gradually creeps into your psyche. It's something most aren't proud of, but no one can deny that it becomes a part of their day-to-day life: You become a voyeur. 

Sharing a tight space with 8.3 million other people makes it inevitable. You can't help but stare at the 200 people who share your subway care at 5 p.m. each day. Your apartment window backs up not to just one or two other apartment windows, but dozens of them. Most are open, and most have people wandering back and forth in front of them, in various stages of undress and obviousness. The old Friends character of Ugly Naked Guy was no accident. It's amazing what you can see just looking out your back window.

With that in mind, there's a theater experience currently available in New York that allows you to take your voyeurism to the next level --  to celebrate it, hone it, and spend an evening reveling in it. 

Set in a warehouse that has been built up to represent an old Victorian hotel in the 1930s, attendees first wend their way through dark corridors to a lounge, where a smoky atmosphere and haunting singers channeling a mix of "Putting On The Ritz" and David Lynch entertain until you're called to the elevators. I had the unnerving pleasure of attending Sleep No More last fall. While the performance is almost impossible to adequately describe, I'll make an effort. 

You're directed to put on bizarre white masks and told you may not speak as you wander the "McKittrick Hotel." Please don't touch the actors, they say. Other than that, there are no rules. You're welcome to wander the multiple floors of the hotel at will. You can touch props, pick up books and read them, look over actors' shoulders at things they write or leave behind. 

The performance is loosely based on MacBeth, but it's not linear. You can follow individual actors as they wander the halls, confront other characters and either make love to them, fight with them, or even bathe with them. Yes, fans, many of the actors perform nude for short parts of the show. 

Lewis Grizzard famously noted that "nude" means you have no clothes on, and "nekked" means you have no clothes on and you're up to something. These actors are definitely up to something.

But it's not the performance that's unsettling. It's the fact that you're an anonymous witness to it. Safely hidden behind a plastic mask, you live an Eyes Wide Shut experience, safe to do what you wish within the boundaries, with no consequences. You can rifle through people's papers. You can stare at two naked people in a bathtub washing blood off each other. You get to watch a bar brawl without having to get involved. You're present, but not culpable or accountable. And since you can't talk to those you came with, there's no one to help you process it or dismiss it. 

The hillbilly in me wanted to dismiss the idea before attending as "Cousin Clem's Haunted House on Steroids." Having spent two hours roaming through the McKittrick Hotel, it's far more than that.

Traffic Signs With Attitude

You gotta problem wit dis?

Congratulations to The Giants

While still not officially a fan, I was cheering for the Giants to win Sunday night. I figure since both Mannings are Southerners, I should always root for their teams.

BTW, this was officially the most-empty, most pathetic, most sad and lonely store in New York on Monday:

Watching Someone Die In Front Of You

 

I have a lot of respect for MTA employees. They put up with an awful lot, be it surly passengers, cleaning filthy subway stations, bus drivers fighting New York traffic. They do it all, and for not as much money as you'd think.

The Daily News today has a riveting article about motormen (subway train drivers) haunted by the memories of people they've watched commit suicide by jumping in front of their trains as they've pulled into stations. Each year an average of 90 people either jump, fall or on rare occasions are pushed in front of a moving train. 

[Motorman Jermaine] Dennis, 39, was driving a northbound A train that day. He approached the Aqueduct station at about 6:30 a.m. The sun was shining. Another summer day was unfolding.

The platform wasn’t crowded. One of the few commuters was a woman in her late 50s. She wore a long, flowing dress. Dennis didn’t know it at the time, but she had taken off her shoes and placed her pocketbook on the platform.

“I was going about 30 [mph],” Dennis said. “As soon as I came into the station, she just tipped over. She was moving and then she fell onto the tracks.”

The woman died a few hours later. In a haze, Dennis secured the train by manually setting brakes on each car. He was taken to an MTA clinic where he was tested for drugs and booze and sent home.

“That night, I couldn’t sleep,” Dennis said. “I took it hard. I kept blaming myself, asking myself what could I have done to prevent it.

“I felt for this lady. This was someone’s mother or grandmother, and now they are alone. It took a toll on me.”

That first night, Dennis paced the house as a lightning storm rolled over the Bronx. With each flash of light, the ghostly image of the woman appeared.

“She was in a white gown,” he said. “Emotionless. She just stared at me.”

It's a really powerful article, although it left me wanting to know more. I encourage you to read it all.

 

Hillbilly Fire Alarm

Courtesy of the Hillbilly's pal Theresa Wooten

A Cold But Colorful Chinatown Parade

Following my discussion last week about ethnic diversity, the Missus and I got to enjoy our first Chinese New Year Parade Sunday in Chinatown. The plan was to meet for dim sum beforehand, but a one-hour-plus wait to be seated meant we settled for bacon and eggs on a roll (a dietary Chappaquiddick, but that's a subject for another day). 

When I was growing up in the hills of Tennessee, you'd be hard-pressed to find enough Chinese Americans to set off a bottle rocket, much less organize a two-hour parade filled with floats, streamers, bands, dozens and dozens of prancing dragons -- in short, everything we got to enjoy Sunday. In fact, without fire trucks, tractors and tow trucks, you'd be hard-pressed in the South to put on a parade at all.

Here's some photos from the celebration. Enjoy, ya'll.

 

 

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•