It'll probably vanish by noon, because I'm sure I'll get a strike, admonishing me for giving the musical group any publicity. (It's Kinobe, of course.)

Touchdown at JFK around 11ish. The terminal is very nice, to my surprise. (It would be days later when I realized I was here coming back from England.) The signage is good. The more you travel, the more you appreciate good strong stentorian signage. I am easily directed to the AirTrain, which moves me along to the Jamaica Station, where more clear signage directs me to the LIRR. Off we go.

This was "New York," or maybe "the Bouroughs" when was growing up, knowing it only from TV. Poor people places? Dee-luxe apartments in the sky? Couldn't tell. It was all just a mass of tall brick human-storage boxes.

The LIRR deposits me in the filthy, declining, archaic, dystopian world of New York City.

I hate to use the word - but it's stunning.

It’s new, as you might expect, but it didn’t open yesterday. I can’t imagine how they keep it from being tagged by the illiterate vandals. Perhaps the beauty has stilled their hand, brought about the new sensation of shame! Yes, I’m certain that’s it.

Almost serene. It leads up to one of the finest public spaces in the country:

And then it’s time to fight through the throngs to get outside. Some sort of huge marching funk band is having a concert?

It’s one guy with a synth and a boombox, deafening everyone. Somehow I don’t think he has a permit. Imagine going back to 1927, and there’s a guy outside the front door with a massive loudspeaker playing jazz so loud people cannot hear themselves talk or think, and he’s just standing there, asking for money. I think he’d be encouraged to move along, perhaps as far as the edge of the east river.

Well, now we walk. From 42nd to 46th. Hop skip and a jump, right? Not exactly; I’m going from Park to 7th, through Times Square. It’s a good thing I walk like a New Yorker. I walk like a New Yorker when I’m in Fargo. It’s possibly because I’m from Fargo that I made a point long ago of walking like a New Yorker. Which is fast, direct, strategic, with footwork when necessary. Or you can be the other kind of walker, the plodder with a bag from Zabar’s who’s been in a hurry enough of her life thank you for much and if you don’t mind she’ll move at her own pace. You get stuck behind? Wait until you can make a move.

My hotel was one of the first renovated boutique hotels. Schrager did the Paramount and the Royalton. The former was build in 1928, designed by a theater architect, Thomas Lamb. It was hiphip and chin-chin, the sort of place where you’d sprawl on the big sofas half-expecting Sandra Bernhardt to stroll by and make an arch remark about Interview magazine accepting an Absolut ad. Nothing’s sacred anymore, baby.

Now it seems horribly dated, messy, and dim.

The bar’s gone. Or rather the space is occupied by a bar that is not the hotel bar. The hotel bar is a windowless space in the back of the lobby. As for the signage that informs you it exists, well . . .

The Paramount of my time would never use fargin’ Algiers.
My room wasn’t ready. Check in was at four. Check out is eleven. Why it would take so many hours to clean these impossibly small rooms, I don’t know. You can sweep up with two strokes of a hand-vac.

What to do? Well, finish the London Broil I brought on the plane for lunch. This I did. I garnished it with Peppercorn Mayo: chef’s kiss. Well, we can’t sit here for an hour when New York is out there, being New York. We walk. We plunge into the roiling boiling sea of tourists, come to Gotham for its Christmas pleasures.

MERRY

SHARE THE JOY

SPIRIT THE MERRY

Off to 30 Rock. Full of tourists, of course. It’s all tourists around here. Not like me! I’m an old hand, I’ve come here for the architecture, like a true New Yorker. All New Yorkers are architecture enthusiasts, you know.

Eh. On the way to my hotel I passed a few old friends - Lincoln, Bush Terminal - and wondered who else grew up fascinated by these old buildings. This does not make me special, and in fact makes me quite ordinary: the people who come here are drawn by different elements of the New York mystique. The stage, the kitchen, the studio, the concert hall, and so on.

But architecture ties them all together.

At 30 Rock I wanted to see if I could study the murals.

Not really.

The lobby was roped off. Permanent? Holiday reasons? Don’t know. I do know that you used to be able to walk into the front door and wander around the lobby and study the murals. Perhaps after the holidays are over, you’ll be able to do it again. But if they took that pleasure away there would be a few gripes, but mostly shrugs. Do you really need to go in there? Do you really need to see what it looks like? That’s right, pal. You don’t.

Oh but I do.

I think they're fascinating, and the story behind them is amusing - Rivera slipping Lenin into his work like an edgy teen giving dad the ideological hotfoot. The replacement, which goes by the leaden name of "American Progress, the Triumph of Man's Accomplishments Through Physical and Mental Labor," is a vigorous work, but not exactly the most intelligible or coherent example of the craft.

Interesting what AI does when asked to create the murals:

(Bigger version here.)

Or:

Anyway.

Rockefeller Center is one my favorite places, and I wish it wasn’t such a tourist attraction. You’re not here for the exquisite sense of 1930s urbanism! You want to do TikTok skating selfies! You don’t care about Raymond Hood’s ingenious massing AT ALL

Then I caught sight of my new Enemy Building.

We’ve discussed this before. The new JPMorgan. Now, you may say “why the hell do you care or expect me to care? I don’t live there. You don’t live there. Why does it matter.”

Because it’s great but not good. It’s graceless.

It carries that mass like a backpack. The crossbeams make you think of the John Hancock building in Chicago, but seem decorative, not structural.

I hate buildings that taper in when they reach the street, as if pulling up the skirt to show some ankle.

You want your dance between the old and the new, just turn to the left and take a look. The old building - a massive testament to abiding ideas - is overshadowed by the New, but they seem to have come to an agreement, and entered into a partnership.

Except the new in this picture is old now.

What I value the most, aside from the great old buildings, are the small survivors.

1932, believe it or not. There's a webpage for it, rich in detail and history. And it's one building! One thin building on a sidestreet.

It's buildings like this that seemed doomed:

Especially in the Times Square area. Across the street from my hotel was a vacant lot for a long time, but no more. A massive hotel project is rising.

		Uh - Well, it's different, as we say in these parts. It will have a "public observatory with a drop ride attraction above," according to YIMBY.

I can tell you right now that anyone who lives in the area has become accustomed to the sound of construction. When I got back to the hotel, my room was ready . . .

. . . and when I laid down for a nap, all I cuild hear was the jackhammering.

But what do you expect from Manhattan?

NEXT: Fresh air! Times Square!