Yes, we've been to New York. ...and no, that's not me.		Yesterday's  Issue

From: daveymitch

Subject: BARTCOP GETS A PLUG ON C-SPAN!!!

Bart,

Congrats on a very well placed plug on C-Span courtesy of The Nation's Eric Alterman.
It was broadcast today 05/19/01.  In the interview Alterman referred to his new article
recommending liberal web sites that pose "an alternative to right-wing politics."

The only two he mentioned on the air were Bartcop and Media Whores Online!
The interviewer specifically asked Alterman about your site and Alterman referred
to it as "highly entertaining" and "very smart."

Again, my hearty congratulations to you Bart (raising tumbler of Maker's Mark).
Hoped you enjoyed your stay in NYC (although I didn't hear from you *sniffle*) :-)

Take care,
Dave
 

Dave,
If it makes you feel any better, nobody heard from me.

I even had an invitation to meet my good friend Joe Conason, but if we met,
once I said, "Joe, good to meet you, I'm a big fan," then what?
It'd be the same with meeting Ol' BartCop.
Once you say, "Nice page," ...then what?

Sometimes I get the feeling that people who get the jokes on  bartcop.com
might think meeting me would be like meeting Robin Williams or some comedian
who could go into a "bit" and be spontaneously funny on command.
In real life, I put the "b" in boring - just ask Christian.

But would you like to hear about my trip?

It started with a plane ride.

The flight to Newark was so boring, I was afraid I'd have nothing to write about.
I was hoping an engine would catch fire or something, just to cause a stir, but things
livened up a little when the pilot appeared to be lost.

As we got closer and closer to our (hopefully) intended target of Newark Airport,
I was expecting to see tall buildings. The plane went east for a while, then north,
then east, then north - making me think he was searching for the New York area.
I've flown lots of times and I've never seen a jet "search" for a major city before.

I thought about passing a sugggestion to the stewardess that if we flew east until
we saw water, we could ask the damn passengers to help the pilot look for tall buildings.

As the search for New York continued, I read a newspaper account of famous Republican
animal killer Ted Nugent being sued by former fans. Ebay had an auction where the "winners"
got front row tickets to a Nuge concert and dinner with him afterwards.
(I'm glad they didn't say what "dinner" was - probably whatever Ted killed that day.

The high bid was $1535, if you can believe someone would pay that for a show and dinner
with the Motor City Madman, Mr Wang Dang Sweet Poontang.

Sidebar:
If you like Ted's music - fine. Let's agree to disagree on what good music is.
But don't write and say you're dumping bartcop.com  after all these years because
I said something less-than charitable about a right-wing Republican fund-raiser.
 

But instead of front row tickets, they got 30th row tickets and instead of dinner,
they got a "How ya doin?" from Ted, so they're suing their former rock idol for fraud.

The pilot was a wiseguy, always pointing out things for us to look at.
For instance, he said, "If you look out your window, you'll see Columbus, Ohio."

So I did, and here's what I saw:

Ya gotta love a major airline pilot with a twisted sense of humor.

A while later, he came on the PA and said "Below us is Wilkes-Barre, PA," so I looked again.

Gee, Wilkes-Barre looks a lot like Columbus.

Eventually we landed in Newark, but still, I saw no tall buildings.
We met the lovely Christian Livemore (CAL) and her friend Ray.
Since we landed at 4:30, Ray knew traffic would be impossible, so he took us on the
New Jersey tour on the way to the George Washington Bridge that would take us into Manhattan.

          Our first peek at the tall buildings.

We stopped at Jersey's Liberty Park and saw the Statue of Liberty.

I was shocked to learn that the wording on the statue's base had been changed to:
"Give us your roughnecks, your engineers and your geologists.
  We already have enough poor darkies, ...thank you."

It's good to have a Dad in the CIA...

So, we're getting closer to the city - THE city.
New York, I've always said, is the center of the universe.
If, for example, you're a big rock band, and you haven't played New York,
and you haven't won them over, then you're not a big rock band.

If you make it there, you make it anywhere.
New York - about 30 years ahead of K-Drag.

After our Jersey tour, we were ready to meet THE city.

Of course, there's that little traffic problem, but we had an expert at the wheel.

Sidebar:
I need to say this before I forget.  CAL's friend, Ray, not only had a car,
and knew his way around, but he was an encyclopedia on New York.
Any time I pointed to a building and said, "What's that?" he knew the year it was built,
the architect, the current occupants - the works.   If you ever make it to New York, hire him.
He knew everything. To an Okie, being in New York is like being 30 years into the future.
Having an extremely well-read and intelligent guide meant the world to me.
It was like Stump the Band. He knew everything.
 

As we approached the hotel, it was hard to find because they lied so much
on their website and brochures. We were staying at the Chelsea Savoy,
which was located in the Chelsea district of New York, which, they say, is gay.

I'm so naive, I didn't even know New York had a gay part of town.
We sure don't have any gay parts of town in Oklahoma.
Know how I know there's no gay parts of town in K-Drag?
Because they haven't been burned to the ground, that's how.

Here's how http://www.gay-sanfrancisco.com/gay-newyork/stay/savoy.html described it:

Located behind one of the city's ugliest facades, this is your best bet for an amenity-laden,
mainstream hotel experience in Chelsea. You'll find comfortable, anonymously styled rooms
that feature private bathrooms, color cable TV, goose down pillows, irons, hairdryers,
climate control, soda and ice machines...the works.
 

Private bathrooms?
Color, cable TV?
Air conditioners?
Soda and ice machines equals "the works?"

That describes every Motel 6 from Bangor to San Diego.
Are the gay people in San Fransisco that easily impressed?
Jesus Christ, for $180 a night, you should get ...well, let's not go there.

Anyway, here's the artist's conception of the way the hotel looks.

Pretty impressive, eh?
A free-standing building with a big neon sign on top and colorful awnings.
Check out that giant, white awning covering the front door at the lower right.

If only.

We drove past it a few times, because all they have is a teeny-tiny sign
and about ten feet of street exposure. Here's what the front door really looked like:

You can't even make out the name, ...but,  ...what the hell.
I'm in a good mood, and we should all give the gays a break.

So, we're checked into the second-most expensive hotel room ever,
(Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas holds the title)

We did a ceremonial shot of Chinaco Anejo.
You didn't think we'd forget the Chinaco, did you?

And now, for the first time in our lives, we're going to do New York.
We took a quick NY taxicab ride to "the Village," Greenwich Village.
(For the newbies, it's pronounced "gren-ich.")

We just started walking.

Block after block - mile after mile of little shops, restaurants, bakeries, bookstores,
and every small business you could think of, block after block - mile after mile.
It was like nothing I'd ever seen before. I have samples coming up - wait for it.
Besides that, we had some great conversation, we were laughing and making jokes,
it was an exciting start to an exciting vacation.

But the walking got to me after a while.
I told a while back I was out of shape, ...so,  ...Mrs. BartCop & I joined a health club and we've
been 15-20 times on the treadmills and bikes and rowing machines, so I thought we could walk.

No...

We walked and we walked.
We got a week's worth of geography in just a few hours.
All the time, Ray was answering questions about Manhattan, the other boroughs, the subways,
New York cabs, local government (Ray's into  bartcop.com ) so we were absorbing more important
data than Spock failed to record on "City of the Edge of Forever."

As we continued to walk, my dawgs started barking.
Maybe CAL and Ray have built up some immunity, but we did some walking.
In New York - you don't drive.
You take a bus or a subway near where you're going - then you finish it.

In New York, "next door" means within a mile, and "nearby" means the subway don't even go there.

So we end up at the Chat & Chew.
I know, Chat & Chew won "worst restaurant name" the last three years running, ...but the food.

Sidebar:
Never trust anything you read on the www or see or read in the whore media, but trust this:
New York is the king of food.
Don't worry, I have my case laid out in dozens of photo exhibits, but that's a fact.
 

The Chat & Chew was the only normal restaurant we'd see this trip.
CAL said she'd heard good things about the Thanksgiving Dinner Special.
I, of course, immediately flashed back to Thanksgiving 1999 debacle at the Rio in Vegas,

The Chat & Chew turkey dinner was spectacular.
I know - you're thinking it was only turkey with all the fixins, right?

Lemme tell you, this turkey was sliced paper-thin.
Where have you ever seen paper-thin turkey before?  Ever?

The potatoes were real, the stuffing was crunchy-perfect, the cranberry was tangy
and under the cranberry, there was some kind of veggie mix that broke the bank.
I don't even like vegetables, but this was tastier than Brooke Burke in a thong.
I can't even tell you what they were - a bunch of stuff - but it had some sauce or
something on it that made those veggies taste like they were Chinaco-based.

CAL said there was lots of places in New York that served food this good.

I didn't believe her.

 The New York story II

 The first thing I noticed was her well-toned calves and her firm...
 

 Wait, wrong story - hold on...
 

 Here we go...
 So we left the Chat & Chew and started walking again.
 We walked everywhere.  After a couple of miles, we stumbled into The Cedar Tavern.

 It was more noisy than Ward Connerly finding out a negro made it into UCLA.
 We couldn't hear each other speak, so we continued The Death March.
 After another couple of miles, we found The Reservoir, which was better.

 They had no real tequila, of course, so I think I had a beer.
 Right after the bartender served me, I noticed they had Long Island Ice Teas - on tap.
 I had no idea they could pre-mix that and have it taste OK, but then again, I didn't try one.

 So we headed Back to Bataan, where we eventually found Union Square Park.
 It was one of the coolest stops of the whole trip.  It's hard to describe, expecially for a quarter-wit,
 but there was maybe 100 people on this corner of the park, and they were just hangin'.
 There were some teenagers trying to do tricks with their skateboards. There were kids and
 old people and cops and black folk and Asian people and they were just hangin' and doing nothing.
 By now, it must've been midnight, and there was a big crowd of people doing nothing.

 I thought how hard it must be for someone to grow up with that kind of excitement,
 then move to a small town where nobody was hangin' anywhere but the damn Dairy Queen.
 

  Sidebar:
 Do you know who Bob Simon is?
 He might still be, but he was a foreign correspondent for CNN or CBS, and in 1991,  he was
 covering the Gulf War a little too closely. This bonehead drove a jeep out into the desert, toward Iraq,
 looking for a story like he was Lois Lane with Jimmy Olsen's signal watch - and he found a story, all right.
 The Iraqi army grabbed his dopey ass and slapped him around a little bit and threw him in an Iraqi prison.

 Seems like they kept him for 60 days or something, then let him go. Then he whined about how unfair
 it was that he, a semi-partially-respected "journalist" was held by the Iraqi hun. In truth, the nut was
 lucky to get out of that alive and then he goes on 60 Minutes to whine like Terry Anderson.

 The reason I bring him up was he walked right past us on the street with a woman.
 I'm sure it was him, I pointed him out to Mrs BartCop and CAL, and they agreed.
 I don't even need to "swear to Koresh" on this one because if I was going to lie
 about spotting a celebrity, I'd think of some big star like Bob DeNiro, not Bob Simon.

 There was only so much excitement my knees could take, so we took a taxi home.
 That was a helluva first day in THE city.

 ArtCop

 Saturday we woke up and looked out the window.

 New York is nothing if not busy.
 It's the only place I've seen that's as busy as New York is Las Vegas.

 Time to take a quick shower and hit THE city.
 The water looked clear in the sink, but it's brown in the tub.
 CAL told us NY has a great water supply, it's just that the pipes in the 100-year old
 buildings are all rusted to hell, so the clean water came out in brown chunks.

  Eeeuuuuuuuu......

 Waiting for a cab, I noticed how many rollerbladers there were.
 Rollerbladers, small dogs and gay men.
 They were everywhere.

 We hopped in a cab and I said, "Guggenheim Museum."
 The cabbie went ape-shit with his driving.
 This was Saturday morning, and the streets were less-than totally gridlocked,
 so the cabbie (Solomen Teddesse) was driving down Sixth Avenue doing 45 MPH.

 Dodging and weaving, it was the thrill ride that Dave always talks about.
 (It was one of the most exciting rides ever, but more on that in the Thursday section.)

 Soon, we arrived at The Guggenheim.

  Sidebar:
 Old-time readers might remember when we went to DC in 1998, we travelled with
 a world-class architect. When we told him a month ago that we were going to NY,
 he mentioned that the plans for the Guggenhiem were either drawn or stored in his apartment.
 (He studied under Frank.)

 Do you know what the crazy feature of this museum is?
 You take an elevator to the top floor, then you get in a golf cart and let gravity deliver the goods.
 All you do is go in circles, and hit the brakes when you want to see something.
 That's pretty damn impressive.

 So we get to the front door and we see the inevitable sign:
 This museum is under renovation.
 The spiral part is closed, ...but
 - the Maplethorp Exhibit in the square part is open!

 Perfect!
 Just what I came to New York to see - a Maplethorp exhibit.
 They also had some Thannhauser exhibit, but who ever heard of him?
 It's a conspiracy to deny me a good time, I told myself.

 Broken hearted, we started walking towards The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

 The Met was showing the "Jackie's Dresses" exhibit - yawn.
 (That was the gig where Pickles snubbed the women of Washington by not attending.)
 It said "Two Hour Wait" for Jackie's dresses, and I don't have two hours to waste.

 Mrs. BartCop remembered that they had some Vermeer's, so we began the search.
 Vermeer is Ruebenesque, so we like him.

 Walking thru the halls of the exhibit, there wasn't a sound, which was odd since there were
 a hundred people in this little 40x40 room. They were all so silent and well-behaved.
 Let's hear it for the mellow people of New York!

 My favorites were:

 Jacob Vosmaer's "A Vase of Flowers."

               Damn, look at him go!

 Paulus Polter's "Cattle & Sheep in Stormy Landscape."

 This is real good when the picture is bigger.

 Vermeer's  "A Glass of Wine."

 Nice stuff, eh?
 That's good for what it is, but nothing beats the Impressionists.

 The Impressionists - the rule breakers.

 You got your Monet, who's a low-rent Van Gogh.
 You got your Manet, who took fewer chances than Monet.
 And then you have your Vinnie Van Gogh, ...the Jimmy Page of leaded paint.

 Van Gogh is the only oil man who ever made me cry (until Bush was elected)

 Check out his "First Steps (After Millet)"

        Click for a great, detailed enlargement

 You can't see much in this photo, but when you're a foot away from this masterpiece, you see the emotion
 coming from the father - reaching out with great anticipation for his daughter's first steps - coaxing her to come to him.
 You also see the baby's eagerness to please Daddy.

 That kid isn't stumbling, she's taking off.  She knows she's going to make it to Daddy.
 You see how Daddy has dropped his important farming duties to share this victory with his daughter?
 Look how straight his arms are - he really wants her to succeed.

 Son of a bitch, this is a great, great work of art.
 Van Gogh fucking rocks!

 I have no idea how Vinnie could grab a brush full of emotion and slap it on a canvas.
 But then again, I don't understand how Jimmy Page can made a steel string vibrate with emotion, either.
 How unreal to get an emotional punch in the stomach from a painting that's 111 years old.
 If you want to start a fight with me - call Van Gogh a bum.

             Wheat Field with Cypresses

 This is what happens when you eat the lead paint - genius!
 I should go to art school just so I can learn the words to describe this stuff.

 I could go on and on, but the Internet's not that big.
 If I could ever get the Trip to DC Pt 2 finished, I could tell the tale of the time
 I came face to face with  Wheatfield with Crows.

 (It was finished after this was first written - click - it's pretty good)

 It's the greatest painting ever done.

 Christ, I have tears in my eyes just typing the words as I flash back.
 Until October of 1998, I had no idea paintings had that kind of power.

 I gotta move on, cause I could stay here forever.

 Before we left the Met, we checked out some lesser artists, just for laughs.
 Gaugin and Seurat are pikers.  They made me laugh out loud, causing the guard to "shush" me.

 Cezanne isn't bad.
 His 1880's work was Van Goh-wannabe, which really was his best work.
 His pre-1880 work was nothing to write home about, then he had his spurt of mediocrity
 until about mid-1890, (which isn't a bad run) but then he completely turned to crap.

 He painted a picture of his wife that should be burned.
 I'll bet she hated it as much as me and let Ol' Paul know about it.
 Maybe that's why his career went to shit in mid-1890.

 Show me anything Cezanne did, pre-or-post 1880's, that's worth a cheese sandwich.
 Maybe museums hang the weak stuff as a donation to his family.
 I'm sure they get paid by the painting.

 Wait, there was another great painting:
 It was "Florinda" by Franz Xavier Winterhaller.

 Portrait of the Empress Eugénie Surrounded by her Maids of Honor,
 1855, oil on canvas,
 Musée National de Palais de Compiégnie.

  ha ha

 That's not true!
 They're lying!

 That's "Empress" Eugenie, ...semi-sorta, but not quite, because she's still a virgin.
 The only way that title is truthful is if you're Mr. Peabody and you own a Wabac machine.
 The view you're seeing is that of King whatshisname, hidden, leering thru the bushes
 as he decides which virgin he's going to force into womanhood that night.
 This is a gaggle of young maidens in Spain, being spied on by the suddenly-one-handed king.

 See the lady in white, middle of the left side?   That's Eugenie.
 As Paulie would say, "Honey, this is your lucky day."

 Well, the King chose to have her that day.

 Later, ( I was reading real fast) when Eugenie's daddy found out what the King had done to his baby,
 he made a deal with the Turks or the Arabs or the Visigoths or somebody to come up thru Morocco
 and overrun Spain, and they did, and that bit of Monica affects western Europe to this day.

 Men are so stupid!
 (Chris Farley pulling on his hair...)
 

 "Nations go to war over women like you, it's a form of appreciation."
        -- Sheena Easton/Prince
 

 Oh, well,  I could do, "Art with BartCop," forever.
 But we had a great time checking out the art in New York.
 

 So, we continued to walk the streets.
 By now, my dawgs were barking worse than Custom's metal detector on Columba Bush.
 We got to the MOMA and they had some problem, so we didn't go inside, but across the street
they had a string of vendors selling art, cokes, falafels, hot dogs, and things you can't find in Oklahoma.

 There was a table behind which was seated an elderly Japanese calligraphic artist.
 He said he'd write anything in Japanese for eight dollars.
 Hey, I got eight bucks.

 Do you know Japanese?
 Do you know what this says?

From: LocutusTDP@aol.com

Subject: RE: Your Big Apple Visit

Hey BC!
I had no idea you were such a fan of art. You could even add another
"subpage" to your site to highlight your appreciation....and you could call it "ArtCop"......

Glad to see you back. Some of the time you were gone, it appeared to me
as if Team Smirk were timing events to coincide with your absence....

Keep up the good work, continue to grow the pie higher & higher* (homage to W &S) .

LocutusTDP
 

Loc, art is like music - I love the good stuff and can't stand the crap
Van Gogh is one of the very few I really like..

 The New York Moment
   by Stephen Sacco

 Click  Here

 Ok, back to New York

 It's still Saturday afternoon, and I'm behind, so I'll critique fewer pieces of art this issue.

 I'd just picked up the Japanese art I had commissioned, and we continued walking.
 That's a busy-ass part of town, 53 Street and Fifth Avenue...

 Next up was St Patrick's Cathedral, where America has said a lot of sad goodbyes.
 Helluva building, ...so to speak.
 The doors were open, we went in.  The doors must weigh 4000 pounds each.
 I had to lineback the door to make it move.

 There was a mass going on.
 The smell of hundreds of candles hasn't hit my nose in decades.
 They do that, they use that aroma therapy to dull your senses.
 Even yearlings file that smell, so as to trigger the shame and self-doubt later.
 At twenty months, that organ music sets the tone, too.
 The frankencense, the hushed and reverent tones, the slamming of the kneelers...
 ...it formats the brain for dependence on the ghosts with the losing percentage.

 Sorry, now isn't the time...
 

 On the other side of the street was NBC and Rockefeller Center.
 We looked at the Cheers t-shirts and the Friends coffee mugs...
 You can buy ER scrubs, if you're into buying silly stuff.
 It got boring real quick, but at least it was a rest from the walking.

 Continuing on, Mrs. BartCop spotted a street vendor with $5 jewelry.
 She bought so much stuff we had to make a run back to the hotel to dump it all.
 My knees were hurting big time by then.
 Remember the toe I broke last year?
 New York reminded me of that night, a little more than once per second..

 But - the Lord provides!
 Mrs. BartCop gave me a Vioxx, and I became Jesse Owens.

 We called CAL and Ray from the hotel and said, "Let's go walking!"

 We took a subway to Manhattan's foot.
 From there, the four of us walked to Battery Park.

 Nice place  ...clean, ...intact, ...grass was cut, and it was right on the water.
 - remember what they said about Mussolini?    This park ran on-time!

 Walking, telling stories, telling lies and laughing, and the weather was perfect.

           ...shot from the Esplanade

 A shot of the sun starting to set.

           Being "arty" with my camcorder

 We walked so far south and then so far west, I glanced back east.

                        Tall buildings

   A tax cut means another boat for the rich
 

    The water entrance to the Trade Center
 

           Close-up of a tall building

 Oh, it's the World Trade Centers!
 Let's go up to the top floor and have a drink.
 Isn't it exciting?

 We were right next to the building entrance, so I reached out and pulled on the door and said,
"Well, should we go to the top of the tower?"and Ray said,"You may never be closer."
 

                        It was 7:45
 

 Just like The Rio, they closed so the tile people could come in.
 So we did a SnackDown at the Krispy Kreme.

 Ray'd never been to one before.
 I suggested the raspberry tart.
 (Picture not available.)

 Back on the streets...
 My dawgs was starting to bark again, but there were more sites to see.
 It was fully dark now, and we were wandering the streets of lower Manhattan.

           Not sure,  but that's a cool shot

 Looks like a movie poster, doesn't it?
 I think Zore the Gatekeeper lives there.

 Then, a sad note.

         The grave of Alexander Hamilton

It makes sense that he's buried here:

Sidebar:
See how much faster we're moving?
I did some cypherin' and figured out if it took me two days to explain each day,
it's be a long time before we got back to smackin' Smirk, and I'm ready!)

From the NYSE, we walked to Staten Island.
Damn, that's a long way.

Lucky, we had a ferry.

   NY skyline from the Staten Island Ferry

 This brought a tear to my eye.
 It reminded me of the old days,
 when our president was chosen by citizen vote.

 Back on the mainland, after 10 PM, back to the subway.

Look how clean the subway is on a Saturday night.
You know who we have to give some credit to?

  ...and they say fascism isn't a viable system.

 We got off the subway near Ray's Original Pizza at 11th Street and 6th Avenue.
 They say this is the best of the Ray's Pizza's, which is New York Pizza.

 This 11th at 6th Ray's has signs saying,
 "We are not affiliated with any other Ray's Restaurant.
   We are the only original Ray's."

 Damn, that's some fine pizza.
 More on that in the big Thursday issue.

 After pizza, we walked over to Washington Square Park.
 Guess what?

 As we stepped foot into the park, a NY cop was proclaiming:
 "This park is closed, you must exit the park immediately!"

 ...New York, ...Las Vegas, ...they f-ing close when they see BartCop coming.

 We took a cab back to the hotel, where a Van Gogh print hung on the wall.

 ...end of  New York Part  III.

 Tomorrow is the Empire State Building, Times Square, Grand Central Station,
 CAL and Ray, Brooklyn, Mexican food, The Sopranos, Super Brownies and more.

 My Favorite New York Memory
   by Charity Nolan, 15

  Click  Here

 Back to New York

 Gotta speed this up, gotta give fewer details.

 Sunday morning we were up with the sun.
 Not sure why, but the sun was up at 5:30 on the east coast.
 Perhaps it's another Giuliani directive to fight crime.

 Non-sequitor Sidebar:
 One funny thing?
 In K-Drag, if you live between 25th Street and 26th Street,
 your address will be something like 2540 E. Whatever Street.

 Not in New York.
 In New York, if your address is 1125 E. Eighth Street, you're between 11th and 12th, right?
 In New York, if your address is 1125 E Eighth Street, you might be between 25th and 26th.
 It makes no sense - no wonder those Iraqi cabbies can't find our hotel.

 They need to start next Monday and redo all the addresses in New York City
 to make them logical and more user-friendly to the bread-and-butter tourists.
 

 Today's agenda included the Empire State Building.
 That meant ...another cab ride.

 During the ride, I asked cabbie Rolo Hassain how much a cab would be to the Newark Airport.
 (We had to plan for next Saturday) Rolo said, in whatever language they speak where he's from,
 "If you ask a taxi to take you to Newark Airport he will kiss you. You make him rich"

 Hey, he picked us up in Chelsea, so there's no telling what he was thinking...

 This is the best map I found of New York, posted inside every cab.
 With this map, I'm an expert on New York.
 See that "pill" in the upper left?
 That's Madison Square Garden, it's in Chelsea, where our hotel was.

 Just below Chelsea is The Village, where they have all the shops and restaurants and bakeries.
 The arch in the center is Washington Square, the buffer between The Village and Soho.
 Soho exists to be a buffer between The Village and Little Italy. (They don't get along)

  Flashback:
 Just above the pill is the Garment District, which reminds me:
 Friday nite, our first night when we saw superstar Bob Simon?
 The Garment District, was one of the many districts we walked that night - we saw models.

 One young thing in particular was really striking.
 She was very young, I'd say 15-17, and she was about six feet, rail-skinny, straight blonde hair and
 cuter than Phoebe Cates in that red bikini in Fast Times.  She was just standing there, gorgeous as hell,
 talking to some lesser models outside, on the street, just hangin' with the other supermodels-to-be.

 I wasn't lusting after her, at least not like you'd think, but it was just so damn interesting to see a
 real-life gorgeous mammacris in it's natural habitat. I didn't have the camcorder, dammit,
 but it would've made a real good picture, like some Benneton ad, but with less shame.

 Back to the Empire State Building, or we'll never finish this.
 They open at 9:30, maybe, I forget. We got there Sunday morning a half-hour before they opened,
 which was smart because my boss went six months ago and stood in line four hours to see the ESB.
 I told CAL, I wouldn't stand in line four hours to see Brooke Burke model bikinis.

 After just 15 minutes, they sold us tickets and herded us into a new elevator.
 Damn - I was hoping to ride a century-old elevator pulled up by a frayed rope.

 The plate on the elevator wall said, "This is a Helmsley Property."
 Wanna bet Leona voted for President Weak & Stupid?

 Here we go, are you holding onto something?
 Grab your stomach, this goes real fast.

 Damn, that was fast - you OK?

 The doors open on the 80th floor.
 80th floor?
 I thought it was 100 stories high...

 They pushed us out the elevator and down the hall with the cool neon lights.

 Then we go into another elevator, that takes us to the 86th floor.
 I asked if we could go higher, and the usher said, "That part's closed."

 The city that never sleeps?
 Maybe, but they sure close a lot of shit.

 We took the last elevator to the 86th floor and there we were.

 Looks like a scene from Cuckoo's Nest, doesn't it?
 It was a pretty clear day, we saw lots of stuff.

                         ...a shot downtown

 Did I mention is was cold?
 It was only in the 50's or so, but the wind blew harder than Kato Burn on her last birthday cake.

   See the Statue of Liberty, on the right?

 This is my favorite shot from the top.
 It's the only time I saw THE bridge.
 Did you know they only built the Brooklyn Bridge after the Eads Bridge (over the
 Massabama River in downtown St Louis) proved it could withstand it's own weight?

 That's a true story I should tell sometime - how the GOP riverboat moguls swore that a bridge over
 the Massabama would never hold because they wanted to keep their lucrative steamboat monoploy
 alive instead of allowing - gasp - people to cross the river without paying their outrageous fees?
 Just like BIG OIL is doing today.

 They could be developing wind and solar energy, but it's FREE, and there's no reason for
 BIG OIL to give up those trillions just to do the right thing for America.

 Madison Square Garden,
 where they shot the Zeppelin movie.

 Check out this floor design, shot as we were leaving.
 Not only is the ESB tall, it's historic and it has art deco floors.

 Done with the tall building, we started walking - again - this time towards Times Square.
 It was close, less than a mile, I think, and my dawgs began to bark after a while.

 This is for my buddy Rich - no, not the drummer.

 Rich won the first vintage Corvette ever given away on  bartcop.com

 Rich sometimes hangs at BB's on weekends.

 Walking onward, look what we saw!
 The theater showing the greatest Broadway show of all time.

 On the next block, we found out what happened to Frasier's ex-wife, Lilith.

                Lilith with no pants

 Now we're full into Times Square.  Check this building out:

 You can't really see what's going on, but the whole curved building it a TV screen.
 Besides the TV screen U2 toured with in 1998, it's the biggest I've seen.

 Then I turned around and clutched the pearls:

   Chris the Screamer on the Jumbo Tron

 Walking further, knees are just about to give out by now...

 This next photo is untouched.

 At the Whore Street Journal, they've turned into such obvious prostitutes
 that they put up a giant   "PINK"  sign over their front door.
 They want everyone to know what's for sale (or rent) at the Whore Street Journal.

 The knees were getting weaker and weaker, but we knew Grand Central Station
 couldn't be more than 10-12 blocks from here, so we pressed on.

 There it is - it was really something.
 I thought, there must've been hundreds of millions of people who've passed
 thru these doors, with two world wars and millions of tourists for decades.

 It was time to go back to the hotel and re-group (read, "sit down")
 From the cab, we saw another highlight of the trip.

 We saw three blind people on one dog.
 No, not like that - you should be ashamed of yourself.

 It was funny as hell.
 A blind guy had a cane in his right hand and the dog harness in his left.
 A second blind guy had his left hand on the first guy's right shoulder, and a third
 blind guy had his left hand on the right shoulder of the second blind man.

 So how did that happen?
 Twenty minutes ago, they musta been having coffee when one suggested they walk to
 the corner restaurant and the second one said, "Who's dog should we take?"
 They decided, perhaps to save energy, to all go on the same dog?
 Mrs. Bart thought it was sweet.

 ...and don't write and say I made fun of the blind.
 It's a funny thing we saw.

 What, ...I can mention something funny I saw if it involves blind people?
 Don't they have a sense of humor?

 (Back after this)

 Subject: sniffle!

 Bartcop, you are making me so homesick with those pictures!
 I downloaded all of them except the one with Chris the Screamer & the Whore Street Journal.
 I'm going to make a picture screensaver out of them.

 What a city, huh?
 No wonder people LOVE New York - 3 blind guys on one dog??
 Where else are you going to see that - ONLY in New York.

 Thanks for the tour.

 Cecilia

 Click  Here   to see Part Two of the New York Report

 Think of it like a