Our 2011 Road Trip #25: Our Last Times Square Parade

New Year's Eve ball!

This New Year’s Eve ball may be retired, but it’s still got enough magic in it to perform random countdowns to nothing in particular. Kids love countdowns.

[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]

Sooner or later, everyone who can’t afford to live in New York has to leave New York. With a handful of hours left on Day Six, it was our turn to start spreading the news and leave here today. We voted unanimously for one last walk through Times Square — one last chance to immerse ourselves in that vibrant hodgepodge teeming with life and lights and wonder and costumes and tourists needing directions and open-air claustrophobia, often not in that order.

Continue reading

Our 2011 Road Trip #24: Washington vs. Columbus

Washington Square Arch!

[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]

After lunch at Peanut Butter & Co., we walked another block-‘n’-a-half northeast through Greenwich Village to Washington Square Park, one of those diverse, bustling, happy public places that all the best city parks aspire to be so they can attract the attention of Hollywood location scouts.

Continue reading

Our 2011 Road Trip #23: Peanut Butter and Dragon Fruit

Dragon fruit lady!

This outgoing saleslady spoke just enough English to SELL! SELL! SELL!

[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]

When we had been brainstorming alternatives and last-minute requests the night before, a return to Chinatown was at the top of my son’s list. Those four hours of walking ourselves to death on Tuesday had yielded very little in the way of strange new foods for him to try. We can’t get him to touch pasta at home unless he can make eye contact with a Chef Boy-Ar-Dee logo, but he bore no such prejudice against the untested grounds of Chinatown merchants.

Continue reading

Our 2011 Road Trip #22: Winnie the Pooh and Ghostbusters Too

New York Public Library!

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.

Continue reading

Our 2011 Road Trip #21: Grand Central to Fifth Avenue and Back Again

Trump Clock!

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.

Continue reading

Our 2011 Road Trip #20: Welcome to Our World of Toys

Anne + Lego Harrison Ford!

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.

Continue reading

Our 2011 Road Trip #19: The Long Road to the United Nations

Chrysler Building!

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.

Continue reading

Our 2011 Road Trip #18: A Day at the Met

Chinese Tapestry!

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.

Continue reading

Pokemon in All the Wrong Places

Rattata!

Teaser image of Rattata from Eli Roth’s next horror film I Catch Pokemon on Your Grave.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: while waiting at Indianapolis International Airport for our (delayed) flight to Manhattan, I downloaded Pokemon Go as an amusing experiment just to see what would happen. Three weeks later, I’m still toying around, curious to see how much longer it’ll take me to get bored with it and move on. Yep, that should happen any week now.

Continue reading

Our 2011 Road Trip #17: The Empire State Building on $0.00 a Day

Empire State Building!

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.]

Right this way for mandatory Empire State Building pics!

Our 2011 Road Trip #16: Bright On Broadway

Lion King Mask!

“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.

Continue reading

Our 2011 Road Trip #15: Grant’s Tomb Raider

Grant's Tomb!

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.]

Continue reading

Our 2011 Road Trip #14: Chinatown!

Lin Ze Xu!

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.

Continue reading

Our 2011 Road Trip #13: The Brooklyn Bridge and Enough Gold to Buy It

Brooklyn Bridge!

To learn more about the Brooklyn Bridge, MCC recommends you check out David McCullough’s The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Brooklyn Bridge. I’d loan you my wife’s copy if you lived nearby and we thought you could be trusted.

[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]

The World Trade Center Visitors Center offered more emotions to explore and lessons to impart, but we had to skip their basement displays because we had an appointment to keep. The walk down Liberty Street, as with numerous other neighboring streets, was made of claustrophobia. I can’t imagine Storm of the X-Men flying through some of those passages without hyperventilating.

Continue reading

Our 2011 Road Trip #12: Freedom Under Reconstruction

Freedom Tower!

One World Trade Center as of July 2011. Reboot in progress.

[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]

The E train took us south from the Port Authority to the world-famous World Trade Center complex, a week after Independence Day and ten years after 9/11. Someday the area will be usable and photogenic again. At this point, unless your idea of photogenic is lifesize Tonka Truck construction playsets, no such luck. But it’s interesting to dream what’ll be made of the place.

Continue reading

Our 2011 Road Trip #11: Seeing Hamilton for Free

Alexander Hamilton!

You, too, can see Alexander Hamilton in Manhattan without tickets.

[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]

Hey, kids! It’s Hamilton! And some other special guests from previous centuries.

Continue reading

Our 2011 Road Trip #10: If Only Central Park Had Central Air

Central Park!

[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]

The east side of the Natural History Museum faces Central Park, one of the larger stops on our brainstorming list. This felt convenient enough that we sashayed on in to see what we could see before we succumbed to the summer heat.

Continue reading

Our 2011 Road Trip #9: Natural History Repeats Itself

Stuffed Octopus!

Unda da sea! Unda da sea! Pretty you betcha, until they getcha! You’d betta flee!

[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]

The B train carried us from Rockefeller Center underground up north to the American Museum of Natural History. Our primary motive wasn’t to search for correlations between the real museum and its counterpart in Night at the Museum. We’ve previously visited the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC in 2003 and Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History in 2009. Checking out NYC’s own Natural History museum seemed a logical step to continue that tradition.

Right this way for mandatory fossil pics, plus my weight on a comet!

Our 2011 Road Trip #8: Shadows of the Empire

Anne + ESB!

Tourist Anne can tourist like no tourist ever touristed before. I love you, Tourist Anne!

[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]

“See the Empire State Building!” all the travel guides say. “Ride to the top of the Empire State Building!” they say. “The Empire State Building was in good movies! See NYC from the Empire State Building! Empty your wallet inside Empire State Building!” Getting a scenic view of Manhattan is a must, but the Empire State Building isn’t the only skyscraper in town. And what luck that we had one next door with public elevator access…for a price.

Continue reading

Our 2011 Road Trip, Part 7: Not Necessarily the NBC News

Anchorman!

“America’s Most Trusted Newsman” are four words that appear nowhere in this chapter.

[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]

Once we’d had our fill of the Today set, many of the remaining minutes before our 9:45 appointment were wasted on scrounging up a meal for my son, who hates breakfast food and had refused any solids at the Bouchon Bakery because his appetite never awakens till an hour or two after he does. Some tunneling through the underground Rockefeller Center shops brought us to an everyday Subway franchise, thankfully willing and equipped to serve lunch before 10 a.m. While we strode back to where we needed to be, he did his best to cram an entire five-five-dollar-five-dollar-footlong chicken teriyaki sub into his gullet as quickly as possible without choking.

He had only a few bites left of his special-needs meal when we arrived at the NBC Studios Store to kick off our official NBC Studios tour.

Right this way for the no-photos tour, a never-before-shared video, and then a few photos!