I want to talk about what happened today, but I’ve got to finish up our New York trip.

So while we were at supper with Mike, I asked him to show off his new iPhone, which, of course, is what every iPhone owner loves to do. I heard on Morning Edition the day before they came out an interview with one of the few reviewers who got to hold and touch one ahead of time. Renee Montagne asked him, “So is it as good as everyone says it is?” and he answered, “No. It’s better.”

And it is. The screen takes up nearly the whole front of the phone. The phone itself is so thin. Everything is touch screen. If you’re looking at a picture you’ve taken and want to zoom in, you just put your thumb and finger on the area you want to expand and pull them apart, like you’re stretching the picture. Want to look at it lengthwise? Just turn the phone 90 degrees, and it moves the picture to be upright the way you’re looking at it as well (requires some gravity, will not work in space). You can browse the web provided you’re in range of an open wireless network. Google Maps is especially useful this way if you’re on the street. And of course, it is an MP3 player as well. I even told Mike something he didn’t know about it already (from the same NPR piece): pinch the ear buds cable once to answer a call, twice to ignore.

One thing I forgot to say about Google is that they have a couple of engineers working full time on Firefox. Isn’t that cool?

We only got a few hours of sleep before it was time to get up and head to the airport. Berck took pictures of me waiting for him to get ready when he should have been packing his shirt in the closet.
We rode the A train to JFK without too much difficulty (even though it arrived on a different platform than it should have; we just followed the bleary-eyed group of people heading to work down the stairs when the sound of the approaching train came from the wrong place).

Then we bought tickets for the overpriced AirTrain for the privilege of riding it around the airport. Security wasn’t too bad (nothing can be as bad as Hartsfield at 10am). The guy in front of us put a huge duffel through, only to have it be spit back out (knocking off the bags and trays of coins and shoes at the end of the line off the conveyor belt. “Sir, do you have any electronic devices in your bag? Please take them out and put them in the tray.” The duffel was full of CD’s. He looked a little worried but started pulling handfuls of them out until the bag was empty. I forgot to take my one quart Zip-lock of liquids out of my bag and put it in a tray, but no one said anything. Ha ha, I’ve successfully smuggled toiletries past the TSA. All it takes is a shifty looking guy with a duffel full of CD’s in front of you, I guess.

The worst part about going through security is that it takes Berck 20 minutes to put his boots back on.

We were the first people to arrive at the gate for our flight and sat there for an hour, so I think we allowed ourselves enough time. It was drizzling again that morning, even though the weather had been perfect for the last three days, pretty clear with a cool breeze blowing through the canyons of buildings at times. Our flight was uneventful. I even got to watch part of a Buffy episode on FX (the one where she and Faith trade bodies; is it wrong that I think Eliza Duskshu makes a better Buffy?). Have I mentioned that I like JetBlue? Then I watched a History Channel show about bootlegging and then one about cocaine, but I fell dead asleep watching it until they started serving drinks and snacks.

As we approached for landing, it was so nice to be able to see miles and miles of prairie without any buildings or people or sidewalks that constantly smelled of urine. And as we put the top down on the car and fastened our seat belts, it was nice to be able to go wherever we wanted, without Metrocards, without having to wait in subway stops the temperature of saunas (seriously, how hard would it be to put a fan at one end?).

I insisted Berck get a drink containing caffeine for the ride home because he was not reacting very well to traffic. We spent the rest of the day in a dazed fog, exhausted.

I weighed myself the next morning. I hadn’t gained an ounce, despite all the food I’d eaten. I guess all the walking worked it off.

I was surprised at how polite New Yorkers were. I mean, they’re certainly more impatient than the rest of the country, but they’re nowhere near the sheer inconsideration of Greeks (or most Mediterranean countries). People whispered, “Excuse me,” when they passed by you. Everyone gave you a proper amount of American personal space, thank goodness. New Yorkers are Americans, just like the rest of us, even if they don’t use credit cards. No wonder New York was known for muggings… you’ve got to carry a ton of cash everywhere you go!

There’s still trash everywhere in Sydney’s neighborhood, though other places aren’t as bad, and a street sweeper comes by pretty regularly (doesn’t get the sidewalk, though). Sydney’s neighborhood is slowly being taken over by white yuppies, and when it does, I don’t know where the poor West Indians and Arabs will go. I never felt unsafe (though after wandering the worst part of Athens by myself, I rarely do anymore), though that may have been because I was usually accompanied by a big man with a scary looking beard and a guy with blue hair. The trick to never getting bothered is to always look like you know where you’re going, and I always do, with Berck behind me saying, “Are you sure this is the right way? Are you? Are you? Why do you think this is the right way? What makes you so sure? Tell me!”

Still things are much improved since the last time I was in New York with my family in 1988. Then All the shop windows were covered in bars and those pulldown metal doors that were covered in graffiti overnight. We passed by dozens of vehicles on cinder blocks, cars that had stalled and had their wheels stolen before a tow truck could arrive. Dad stopped at a self car wash and had the plastic mats from our van stolen while he vacuumed our conversion van… not the mats that came with the van, mind you… the strips of plastic that he’d cut to fit down the van’s aisle. Everything Once you stole those, what would you even DO with those??? I don’t know if it was all Giuliani’s doing or partly the natural cyclical nature of things, but New York is not a crime filled hell hole anymore.

I’m glad my family went, though, since we got to go up to the top of the Twin Towers. On September 11, I kept thinking that I’d never taken Berck up there. He’d wanted to go to New York, but I tend to hate big cities.

Berck is right about the segregation in the city. We were always the ONLY white people on the A train going into Brooklyn, and there were NEVER any black people on the F train to the other part of Brooklyn, even though stops between the two trains are within walking distance for quite a while.

Another thing that surprised me is how reasonable the prices were for food most of the places we went. That may have been Famous Fat Dave’s influence. New York may be expensive, but at least you can eat. And eat well.

I’m getting a nice sized bonus this month (I get 2% of BA gross), which will help pay for our gluttony… and maybe even the plane tickets. And I’ve been going in to work a half hour early most days to make up for the four days I took off.

When you look at a political map of the US, NYC is as blue as it comes (see this post by Dave). Folks like Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton (carpetbagger as she may be) are the biggest advocates of liberal issues like making sure bathrooms in every state are handicapped accessible. I’m not saying letting the physically challenged easily pee is a bad thing; my stroke afflicted grandmother couldn’t use a toilet unless it would fit a wheelchair, and I helped her many times. But I did not visit a single bathroom in NYC that was handicapped accessible, much less one that would fit a wheelchair. Most of them barely fit me; some you could wash your hands and pee at the same time, in case you wanted, with no room to spare. In a wheelchair and want to ride the subway? Good luck. It was a very rare station indeed that had an elevator in addition to the stairs. There are pictures everywhere of middle-aged in suits slipping down the stairs, saying, “Be Careful!” It just seems unfair that the folks where the most places live get to dictate to the rest of the county that a little mom & pop has to have a huge bathroom with a tall toilet and bars all around it or else can get sued and fined, while the big city is completely exempt, like any European city. I guess that’s the libertarian Westerner in me.

In any case we’ll be going back. We didn’t get done nearly enough, though we took a pretty good bite out of the Big Apple, I think. Maybe by then Sydney will be a rich and powerful lawyer and can take us out to the really nice restaurants. Or maybe I’ll finally get a chance to get a 50 cent hotdog from Grey’s Papaya.