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Sept. 14, 2006 I lived in New York City twice, 1982-1986 and 1991- 1992, a total of 4 years and some months. In my first stay, I was desperately poor most of the time, and I could tell a real story about the sidewalks of New York, if I were of a mind to do so, but let me ignore that unpleasant part, and talk instead about the initial period of relative prosperity, when I was having a marvellous time. I had money to spend and spent it improvidently, which gave me cause to regret later, when I needed it. During some months in 1983 and 1984, I had a room in a hotel in mid-Manhattan, near Times Square , for $735 a month. I shudder to think of what it would cost today, perhaps over $2000. I was within walking distance of the great stores of the city, Macy’s, Lord and Taylor, Altman’s and Gimbel’s. The last two are now closed. Farther away, but still accessible by subway or walking, were Saks Fifth Avenue , Galerie Lafayette, Bloomingdale’s and Alexander’s. I used to visit each of these stores at least a couple of times a week. I liked Altman’s best of all, because it featured departments with fine bindings and art needlework, pursuits of which at the time I was mildly enamored. Also and most importantly, I was within walking distance of the five main branches of the New York Public Library. The main, non-circulating branch was at 42nd and Fifth Avenue . Diagonally across was the Mid-Manhattan Library, which featured circulating books. Likewise near at hand were the Annex, on West 44th Street , a morgue for little-used books, the Donnell branch on 53rd, which had books in over 100 foreign languages, and the Lincoln Center branch, near Columbus Circle , with books on music. In those days, using the various libraries, I read Don Quixote and a dozen other novels in Spanish, as well as some books and newspapers in Hebrew. I was just beginning Russian, and would buy Novoye Russkoye Slovo right at the newsstands in New York . Sometimes I’d go to the Slavonic Room or the Hebrew room in the main library, and pore for hours over the Great Soviet Encyclopedia in Russian or Encyclopedia Judaica in Hebrew. I began to dabble a little in Greek too, and had been dabbling in Arabic for several years already. I hadn’t even begun Chinese. Little did I know I’d one day find a way to get to the countries where they speak these languages. I was just hoping. For lunch, I often stopped in one of the restaurants in Lord and Taylor, a block or two from the library, or I’d go to Macy’s delicatessen and buy a small roast chicken. I didn’t attend any concerts or plays. I wasn’t that rich. But I did visit many points of interest around New York, like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Natural History Museum, Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, and Saint John the Divine Cathedral, uptown, at the time and perhaps still, incomplete. I was down at the World Trade Center often, as a subway station was located in the second lower level, and I passed by the Empire State Building all the time. I frequented the Port Authority Bus Terminal, which was very close to where I lived, to avail myself of the stores there. Also there was Pennsylvania Station, a few blocks down, and Grand Central Station, east. Another spot I frequented was Washington Square in Greenwich Village . I was only beginning to realize that Greenwich Village is not exactly what I thought it was supposed to be, but I met quite a few people there. Sometimes I would idle around Stuyvesant Park at Second Avenue and 16th Street . A little out of the way, it had fewer troublemakers than Washington Square . New York had also a great number of bookstores, so I accumulated quite a few books on mathematics and other subjects I like to dabble in. This was before Internet, and even calculators were not what they are today, though I had a programmable. I remember with particular delight that around this time Bloomingdale’s had a close-out sale on fine bird books, large at 15 or 18 inches , glossy, with color drawings by Edward Lear and John Audubon. These coffee-table books, complete with text, were only $12 a piece. Nowadays they’d cost $50 or $75. I took about a dozen up to my room, and would read them admiringly for hours. I remember also that I found in Macy’s book department a large handsome volume of the plays of Shakespeare, with a maroon ribbon and gilt edges. So I stayed up late each night until I had read about 30 of the 36 he wrote. Then I lost track and couldn’t figure out which ones I had read. This was my second or third time through most of the plays. This was a beautiful interlude. Unfortunately, it was to end. Around March of 1984, I found myself on the streets, and lived a nightmare for about two years, when I finally moved to Honolulu to escape the cold that my new circumstances exposed me to. ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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