Hi, we’re the lions at the New York Public Library! You might remember us from such films as The Wiz and Roland Emmerich’s The Day After Tomorrow! We have a terrible agent.
Considering how many films have been made in New York, it wouldn’t be hard to create a vacation itinerary made entirely of sights Hollywood has already shown us. Retracing the steps of those filmmakers can be fun, but it’s especially rewarding when they lead you to unexpected treasure.
It’s 7 p.m. Do you know where your billionaires are?
[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]
The back half of our Day Six was like a Family Circus cartoon where a dotted line struggles to keep up with li’l Jeffy while he cavorts and frolics and gambols and flits about from one distraction to the next until he ends his five-mile run roughly three feet from where he started. From Midtown to the East River to Fifth Avenue and back to Weehawken — we were all over the Manhattan map, alternating between those blessedly convenient subways and some overenthusiastic walking whenever the railways fell short of our goals.
As a lifelong fan of Harrison Ford, Anne accepts that Lego Indiana Jones is the closest she’ll ever come to meeting the real deal. But she can dream.
[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]
When you bring a kid or two with you on vacation, assuming you don’t secretly hate them, and assuming you’re not one of those negligent parents who needs to learn a special life lesson about how not to be a selfish jerk, then it follows that your itinerary should have some stops that the kid will enjoy more than you do. And if you should happen to find something interesting about those stops for yourself, then hey, everyone wins.
Thus our family set forth on the trail of the last remaining FAO Schwarz in America. If nothing else, it would make a nice bookend with our visit to the Times Square Toys R Us.
Hi, I’m the Chrysler Building! You might remember me from such films as Armageddon and Roland Emmerich’s Godzilla! I have a terrible agent.
[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]
On this trip we limited ourselves to two modes of transportation: walking and subway. Cabs and buses are popular options with some folks, but cabs are expensive and buses…frankly, I have no idea why we avoided buses. Soon we would learn that New York City’s subway system is extensive, but it doesn’t make every attraction an easy convenience, especially not in 90-degree temperatures.
After spending some time resting and admiring this Chinese mural, a trio of young European girls asked me to take their photo for them. One tourist to another, it was the least I could do.
[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]
After the Sony Wonder Tech Lab, we returned to the subway, rode to 86th Street, and walked due west to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Seeing this entire ZIP-code-sized labyrinth of a museum would take months and require camping gear. In gracious deference to the member of our party with the shortest attention span, we kept a narrow focus on the Asian sections. On our next NYC trip someday before I die, it’ll be my turn to see what I want.
That precious sight everyone treasures whenever they find it in Manhattan: a real live tree.
Because every tourist is required to check in at King Kong’s favorite scratching post, pretend old-fashioned romance awaits us on the observation deck, and then run like crazy before Roland Emmerich finds six more ways to destroy it while we’re in striking distance.
[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]
“MUFASA WELCOMES YOU AND REMINDS YOU TO TURN OFF YOUR CELL PHONES.”
[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]
After plumbing the depths of Grant’s Tomb we had an afternoon appointment for our very first Broadway show: The Lion King. But first we had to get there. The trip down from 122nd Street to 45th Street wasn’t a short one.
Literally the closest we’ve ever been to Harlem, which was a few blocks northeast of here.
There’s that wife of mine, once again on her quest to catch ALL the dead Presidents. It would require our longest subway ride of the week, but a special treat was waiting for us at the end of the line.
[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]
Lin Ze Xu welcomes you to the south end of Chinatown, but not your opium. His 19th-century version of the War on Drugs happened long before Nancy Reagan taught us all to just say no.
[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]
Chinatown was like nothing we’d ever stepped into before — block after block of overpacked mom-‘n’-pop shops, restaurants with all-paper signage, dingy dives with no English names out front, and respectable businesses stacked atop businesses with even more businesses crammed under and between them, their streets teeming with life and bootleg lady-shopper bait (useless against my wife, who’s not into fashion shopping) and the worst smells we hope we’ll ever know, whether from the deadliest spices known to man or from all the endless displays of fresh-slaughtered seafood, some of it still writhing. My son wanted to see every single block of it, even the blocks ruled by Vietnamese or Thai shopkeepers instead of Chinese.
Some movie posters want to sell you happy fun times using all the colors of the rainbow. In terrible times like these, not everyone wants to embrace the dark side. Sometimes even our creepiest antiheroes are redrawn to radiate with kaleidoscopic pop-art joy in hopes of convincing tourists and natives alike that our next trips to the theater will leave us smiling and cheering while murderers and other malcontents save the day. Apparently that’s why the Suicide Squad now stands tall above Times Square looking as far removed from murky Zack Snyder dystopia as possible.
Meanwhile in other universes, other antiheroes couldn’t care less whether you smile or shudder.
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 