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Posts tagged ‘New York’

Jun 27

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No. 2 Tinkle: Hotel on Rivington New York City

The view from the throne at the Rivington

MTM and I wandered into the lobby of New York‘s Hotel on Rivington to claim our Cheap-o Special for Poor People. Situated on the Lower East Side, the building is a glass tower amidst seven and eight story buildings, and it has windows in the shower. We could never afford to stay above the seventh floor, meaning I’ve probably showered in front of countless strangers I’ll never see again. I prepared myself to be an exhibitionist as I waited with our bag.

The lady behind the desk stuttered. This NEVER happens. 

What? MTM shot a me a look that conveyed concern. Did they screw up our booking? Did we even HAVE a room?

Um. Ah. You’ve been UPGRADED. To the Owner’s Suite. She shuffled around the desk like MTM was someone REALLY important, summoned a valet to carry our solo bag and escorted us to the seventeenth floor of the building.

The door slid open into shimmering luxury. Half the seventeenth floor was devoted to the Owner’s Suite, with the entire side of the building sporting a lean balcony that faced Midtown. The master bathroom occupied one corner, with a soaking tub that gave a glimpse of the Williamsburg Bridge. The toilet was front and center, negating the need for reading materials. One could just sit and gawp at the view.

With so many possible activities at our fingertips, we ran around the corner, ordered crepes and hauled our derrieres back up to the room. Why roam around the canyons of New York when you’ve been given the unexpected gift of gazing at it for one whole night?

A postscript: We paid the booked rate for our original room. The next day, our flight was canceled, leaving us stuck in New York for another night. We went back to the Rivington to book a cheap-o and found out the Owner’s Suite went for $2,500 a night.

They offered it to us for $1,250.

We didn’t take it.

This post is part of the series My Top 10 Tinkles. If this is your first visit to this urinary extravaganza, please click here to start the series at the beginning. Thank you for reading my blog, for sharing it, and for spending time here.

Jun 18

66 Comments

My Top 10 Tinkles – A Series

The Press Lounge at Ink 48 Hotel

Until I was 33, I avoided public bathrooms. My phobia bordered on the pathological. While my eyeballs floated in my head, I would drive past interstate exits, leave restaurants with my legs crossed, walk blocks and blocks to a familiar throne in an unfamiliar place, and refuse to use a perfectly good piece of dirt in the wild. Known toilets were always better than strange ones.

Yesterday, MTM and I made a pilgrimage to put another notch in our libation belt. While in New York, we visited the #6 rooftop bar in the world according to Yahoo Travel: The Press Lounge at Ink 48 Hotel. It’s our third rooftop bar of the highlighted ten. Coincidentally, we also visited at #1 and #7 before we knew about the list. To read all about those places, click here.

A public toilet is a necessary by-product of finding a decent bar. I left the swirling breezes of Manhattan, the majestic view up the Hudson River and the masculine strutting of Midtown to find the designated place to tinkle. Our server directed me to a dimly lit stair that rose into a murky tunnel, where I found the doors marked WC. After groping for a light for a couple of minutes, I sighed and did what I came to do in the semi-darkness. The architects clearly didn’t think decent lighting was required, since it would highlight the unfortunate finishes they selected.

I came back into the sunshine fired up. Why do these places ALWAYS have horrible bathrooms??? MTM had to know the answer, because he is architecturally inclined. Instead, he gaped at me, speechless, while our server lurked near our table, her look calculating whether it was time to cut me off. I mean, there was that one bar where the bathroom was amazing. I wanted to take my drink in there and stay, sit on the toilet and stare at the view. And then, there was that hotel one, you remember? The big surprise?

I didn’t stop until I had listed my top ten tinkles in public or semi-public places. Restaurants. Bars. Hotel rooms. A couple of highly unconventional potties made the cut, merely because they came along at the right moment. My series in upcoming days will highlight each tinkle from Number 10 to Number 1. I hope you will find a new spot for that necessary moment, Dear Reader.

Disclaimer: I was not compensated in any way for my endorsement of the facilities in this list. The opinions are my own and were not influenced by any promised remuneration or bartered value.

Jun 16

12 Comments

I Am Superman. I Can Do Anything.

A repost in honor of our dear guide son Cooper. Yesterday was his first birthday, and today is the big par-tay. The words in this post are true for him, and for anyone, at any age.

My Dearest Cooper,

You’re breaking my heart. Between wanting to pinch your cheeks and soothe your obvious humiliation over what you’re wearing, I am one guide mother who is destroyed that I couldn’t be in Beacon for your first Halloween. You are a vision, and you are woebegone, and I’m confident you worked your baby voodoo on everyone you met last night just like you liquify my heart.

How can anyone resist Superman?

Here’s the thing, Coop, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. You ARE Superman. Already. You can do anything, go anywhere, be anyone. Whatever dreams are stored in that gorgeous head, they can come true. From scrutinizing your eyes, I know you are tenacious. You get that from your Mom.

Has anyone told you the story about your Mom? Well, let me tell you, she’s tenacious. From the time I met her, walking the boards of a theater together, she told me she was going to New York to pursue her dream of acting. But, she didn’t just talk about it. She made it happen. She left the comfort of the South, and she went to New York all alone. Almost no one believed she could succeed. Some people even told her to give up before she tried, that she would fail, or worse, end up starring in the sorts of things you don’t need to know about yet.

She listened to her dream.

And, she didn’t fail.

To me, it’s ironic that she met your Dad while performing in a play called “PANIC! How to be Happy.” She had to follow her dream to be happy, and that meant no small degree of panic.

Remember that, Cooper, when people question your dreams. You are Superman. The panic feeds the realization of the reality you seek.

I love you.

Andra

May 28

29 Comments

Lady Liberty Fans the Flame of Memory

It isn’t often that I start a series with a repost, but this one is special. My father served in the US Army in the 1950′s, and he visited London in 1957. His departure for his tour leads a series in honor of Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee, where I will use photographs he took of London in 1957 and juxtapose them with my own modern images to try to tell a story each day. Enjoy a preview shot at the today’s end.

A slide show accompanies the post today, pictures of The Lady taken by Robert Johnson, author of The Quotidian Hudson. The visuals are a powerful accompaniment to this story about my father. Please follow this link to experience both pieces of the story. Thanks to Robert for covering this from his home in Manhattan, and to his daughter Abigail for helping him select the winning shots.

Blasting gusts slammed his face as he stood on deck. He had one night in New York, and he was comatose from lack of sleep and sensory overload. East Tennessee was a backwater otherworld compared to this place, this metropolis of booming experience. Trying to do it all in one day (and one night) had been a mistake. His head pounded, and his mouth still flamed from losing a bet in Chinatown. He didn’t know what he ate, but it was seasoned with the lake of fire. He leaned on the railing and opened his mouth to catch the cooling air.

Nothing helped.

Buildings rose like ragged teeth on the receding skyline. It looked foreign to his countrified eyes, nothing like the rolling greenness of home. He shifted, tugged at the waist of his uniform under his winter-issue coat. How could he possibly memorize such a tumbling jumble of unfamiliar sights? Squinting, he tried to count the spires and narrow rectangles as they undulated with the bobbing of the water. Movement made his eye innaccurate. Or were his mistakes caused by the tears clotting in the corners, threatening to spill mortification down his cheeks in front of everyone?

He was only eighteen. He’d never been away from home. Basic training followed by a swift commission to West Germany left his immature mind muddled. What sounded like an adventure a few short months ago had become………something else. He never thought about dying back then, never considered what that meant. The ease of home was something he took for granted. Now, standing on the deck of a ship, he could see his only touchstone to home disappearing, consumed by the foaming wake. It wasn’t home, but it was. The realization that he might never glimpse it again forced a tear from his left eye. He shifted to flick it away before anyone noticed.

He was scared, though he fought the admission. Who knew what lay on the other side of the teeming Atlantic, what remnants of war were left behind, forgotten for him to find? How would he function with people who were still living amongst the charred wreckage of a long-concluded war? What would he say the first time someone told him about family members who disappeared, or the hard choices they had to make in the pulsating point of a moment? What would it feel like to canvas a village of rubble and have the ground explode underneath him, to have his last seconds consumed by abandoned artillery? Would he remember, in his dying seconds, what home looked like? Would he be given time to conjure it again before he was gone?

Eighteen. Too young to face his own end. He hadn’t lived.

Wiping another tear, his eyes darted for a final image, something he could carry with him on his journey into the hell of what humans inflict upon one another. Liquid was replaced by light, an upraised beacon teasing him across the waves. He took in her serene face, the drape of her clothing, her arm proudly holding the torch.

The promise of Liberty. It was the reason for everything. Through his interminable tour, She would be the unifying image that carried him through.

Carried him home.

To my Father and all other veterans, thank you for the sacrifices you and your families made. Remember on Memorial Day and every day.

Feb 16

37 Comments

You Are Waiting For a Train

Life is a random, mixed-up affair. It makes sense. It befuddles. Uplifting. Browbeating. Whatever it serves, life is coordinated chance.

Take trains. Subway cars. Claustrophobic metal tubes shuttling under big cities. A pixied redhead preceeded me onto a car yesterday, both of us grinning and apologizing as we negotiated the entrance together. She took her orange plastic seat. Eventually, I found mine. Light alternated with murk in lurching bursts of forward motion.

MTM and I were headed for a rendezvous of sorts. A favorite table. A person we grew to like over servings of lush salads, cushiony baguettes and soft-boiled eggs. Logan laughed at the stars in my eyes after she made a table for John Turturro. She was a professional, always remembering us, whether we came in once a quarter or once a year.

This time, we stayed away too long.

The redhead on the train accepted the greeting of an engaging Italian, bantering about the place they used to work. Our place. Our Logan. Eavesdropping on a train is a required hazard of the mode of travel. We couldn’t help it when we heard her name.  Only, the redhead told her friend Logan was gone. We weren’t going to see her this trip.

We probably won’t see her again.

Life is a series of random opportunities. To say thank you. To be friendly. To tell someone what they mean to us. To leave that extra something behind. We make the disjointed story in a simple act. Like making the right choice whilst waiting for a train.

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