Back in New York City!

                                                                                                                         5-18-21

    I've been planning this since last summer: a quick run into the City to make sure it's still there, and that I can still find my way around. I took New Jersey Transit in for just a tiny visit to see the changes in Penn Station (a terrific new escalator with a clear roof to 33rd and Seventh Avenue!)--and above all, the new Moynihan Station for Amtrak and the Long Island Railroad that used to be crammed in below street level with NJ Transit.  

    And it is lovely.  It isn't as vast as Grand Central Station or  the Oculus Mall at the World Trade Center downtown, but it is a beauty--an honoring and uplifting of the public that uses it. It is in what used to be the Farley Building, which was the vast and majestic twin of the old Penn Station across the street, replaced by Madison Square Garden and the low-ceilinged warren of tracks and crowds below.  So this is a return to a kind of public space from the old days  (it was an awfully nice old school post office too).  It's going to have a food mall and and all the necessities--and already has both a Starbucks and a Blue Bottle, but it is already showing off the best roof around plus an amazing light fixture at the 31st Street (I think) made of upside down skyscrapers.  The most fun light fixture I've ever seen for adults. What my phone snapshot doesn't come close to capturing is the glow and the volume.

I made a big walking circuit to explore  Penn Station to be sure I could find my way hither and yon:  a reconfigured waiting room; same old bathrooms; most but not all of the old places to grab coffee (and sushi and frozen yogurt and pizza and donuts, lots of donuts).  It just made me happy to be there:  families traveling, a special space for the Red Caps, kids with too few clothes but many tattoos, scuzzy people, handsome people.  Most everyone masked.