You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.
Times Square.
It was the night after Thanksgiving and the temperature was in the low 60’s.
The yellow cab smells of incense and cheap air freshener.
Our driver is named Ahmed. He is obviously frustrated by the thousand other vehicles crammed on the same small street.
The cabbie is flipping off a moving van in front of us in a universal language all of us can understand. The driver of the moving van laughs and motions to the cabbie, flipping the back of his hand against his chin.
Along the sidewalks, the Theater crowd is moving into the buildings that line the neon way.
As we get closer to Broadway the glow of the neon sun can be felt on our face.
After a few more curse words in a dialect from another time, we tell the driver to pull over.
“That’s good driver. We’ll walk from here.”
He grunts like a goat and throws the flag up.
We slide our card through the machine and wish we could tip less than 20 percent.
We move to the street corner and bask in the glow of an exploding atomic bomb.
All around us are TV monitors the size of buildings. Disney and Good Morning America and Barclay’s Bank.
It’s a pin wheel of neon, phosphorescent colors.
I can’t help but stare into the glare. it’s visually intoxicating. I need 30 SPF to protect my skin. I need sunglasses to keep my pupils from
bursting. I am hyperventilating on neon.
The crowd is a jambalaya of colors and smells. I hear French and German and a hint of Ozark Arkansas.
I see women in cocktail dresses and heals. I see guys in wife beater cut offs. I see children and old people. If the airport is a great place to watch people. This is an orgasmic place to watch people.
It’s an amazing array of humanity and technology and excess and commercialism.
I take my eyes off the building’s glare for a moment to look donw while crossing the street. I see 3 huge steaming piles of horse crap.
I quickly point out the log sized obstacles to the others.
We cross and I look back. I watch as a woman from Indiana or Illinois or wherever, staring into the sky steps with her high heel into a slippery mound of mush.
She knows something is wrong as she gets to the curb. She stops and looks down at the street and the mushed poo now clinging to her shoe.
Unbelievable I think to myself.
I see the culprit a few feet away. It’s a New York City Police horse.
I ask the cop if I can take his picture.
He’s an ass, on his steed, and sneers at me as if I am wasting his time.
I snap the picture and feel like telling him to apologize to the woman whose shoe is smeared in poop.
We need a break from the onslaught of tourists banging into each other like Angry Birds, so we step into the Toys R Us.
It’s the mother ship of toys. There is a full sized barbie house you can walk in and a Ferris wheel in the middle of the lobby. It’s truly impressive.
We step outside and begin looking for a cocktail. I see the Ed Sullivan studio and Muppets flying from the rooftops.
I see a naked guy playing a guitar. He’s talking to the crowd. He obviously doesn’t care about his man pouch spilling over his briefs.
We are accosted by street level hucksters who try and get us to buy tickets to a comedy show somewhere, someplace.
“Fah-Get-About-it”
We step into the Marriot Hotel and jet to the View on the 48th floor. My ears pop as we whiz into the darkness.
We exit the elevator and are lead to a revolving rooftop. It’s moving at a mile an hour, but it’s still a bit disorienting.
The cocktail woman is all New York, cock-sure and a voice like a subway grate.
“It’s going to be an 8 dollar a person coverage charge,” she says.
I roll my eyes. 8 dollars a person for the right to buy a 16 dollar drink.
“Yeah, whatever,” we say as we order.
We zip past the Chrysler building and the Empire State building.
It’s a pretty amazing city from above and below.
We buy our 3 drinks and give the waitress damn near 85 dollars.
Wow, that’s maximum effort, minimum result, I think to myself.
We zip down the elevator like exlax through a goose.
“Oh no,” someone in my group says. “Theater is letting out.”
She’s right. The Lion King and Mama Mia and all the doors are open. People are running like musical zombies into the great white way hailing cabs that are suddenly more valuable than water in the desert.
I walk to the cab stand as a cab pulls up. The man gets out, we get in, and we are suddenly off to the Battery, the lights a fleeting memory behind us.
Time Square.
Crazy.