NYC observations

It was good to see, during a recent trip to The City, that newspaper journalism appears to be flourishing there -a hopeful sign for the dying industry. A lot of people still read papers there.

Despite the fact that that newspapers - which are struggling to get advertisers and are losing circulation to the web, TV, and because of the slumping economy - are gasping for breath, the giant recycle bins were filling up at Grand Central Station. After their Metro-North train ride, passengers dumped their Wall Street Journals, New York Timeses and New York Posts into a tall metal cylinder. Many were commuters from Stamford, Greenwich, and surrounding towns like Darien. who probably read for financial information. But, nonetheless, readers are readers. While papers like the Hartford Courant fail to understand how to adapt to the changing times (terrible redesign and format!), others still survive, and seem to be doing it fairly well.

Great headline: The day after an Iraqi journalist threw his shoes at President Bush during a press conference (Bush ducked out of the way), the New York Post runs "Lame Duck" on its front page.

Other things I noticed during our family trip to NYC:

There doesn't seem to be an identifiable middle class in the City. You're either barely making it or you're Upper West Side affluent. Not a lot in between. Maybe it's me. People barely making it are doing the service jobs, and somehow affording to live in or near one of the most expensive real estate markets in the country. The affluent control the country's financial industry or are independently wealthy enough to hang around, wearing expensive clothes, putz around bountique stores, and eat at great restaurants.

New Yorkers seem to not get fat because they walk so much. We walked more than 50 blocks total! My feet are killing me!

If you don't know where you're going in an unfamiliar city, you get stuck eating lunch at restaurants like Mars 2112, which is where we ate. Oh, man. The place was underground, dark, with red lights, and decorated like Mars, the planet, which apparently has a temperature of -85 degrees Fahrenheit. The food was very, very bad. But we did take a picture of a guy dressed as an alien who was greeting people sitting at their tables, which isn't something you see everyday.

The Abercrombie and Fitch, unlike the mall stores every place else which have mannequin half-naked people, had real half-naked people standing just inside the door greeting people.

Metro-North RR is a great thing. I wish we had commuter service around here, or high speed train capability from Hartford to NYC or Boston or Providence. We met some cool, friendly people on board, and it was nice to not have to drive into New York. We took the train from Stamford, and it was a fun time.