Getting Old in NYC

The Grim Reaper waits for our bones on 47th St.
I was sitting in a generic cafe during the heatwave, trying to reboot my evaporating brain, when an old man sat down at the next table.  His parchment skin was oily with sweat, and he wore a tank top and shorts nearly as old as he was.  He immediately got to work researching a pile of books, scribbling away with a pencil, without a thought in the world about his hunched, archaic appearance.  It got me thinking about getting old in NYC -- just like getting old anywhere else except that you do it in public, surrounded by the bustling multitudes.

The Bad Things

- You can't get a job, because businesses would rather hire youths still gullible enough to work like cult members for the glory of the corporation.

- You realize you may never fulfill your dreams, like inventing that attractive bullet-proof refrigerated vest suitable for everyday use.

- You will likely have to live on a limited budget, which means you'll be dependent on the kindness of strangers -- never a good lifestyle -- and even kind people will suspect you're being friendly just to get them to carry your groceries upstairs.

- The aging process is basically one humiliation after another, with hair and stiffness everywhere but where you want it, until you pray a bus runs over you as you crawl across the avenue to buy a lottery ticket, hoping to win enough for a body transplant in Bulgaria.

The Good Things

- You can't get a job so you don't have to go to work.

- When you overhear youths make cracks about old people, you can say "Yeah, I hope that never happens to you," meaning you hope they drop dead long before they get old.

- When it's hot you can walk around outside in a tank top and shorts, with a hand towel draped around your neck to mop off sweat.  You can wet the towel in a park drinking fountain and drape it over your head, then wring it out and gum it for a while to rehydrate your parched flesh.  And you can walk around your sweltering apartment with the windows open wearing nothing but flip-flops.  If your neighbors injure their eyeballs looking at you -- at what lies ahead for them -- that's their tough luck.

- You don't have to plan for the future anymore, because odds are you don't have one.  Eat like a pig from a menu of exotic combinations of forbidden food -- a pound of bacon smothered in hot pepper cheese, chased with peanut brittle and a big bowl of spumoni swimming in schnapps -- while you watch sexy aerobics instructors work out on TV.

- You realize that, thank God, you won't live forever, and that soon you'll shuffle off this boiling planet and leave it to the festering multitudes, so completely used up and unhinged that you'll be absolutely sure you're headed for paradise!

1400/1410 Broadway 1

Left: 1410 in reflected light.  Right: The Empire State's spire over 1400's shoulder
I've featured 1400 Broadway before, with its dramatic scaffolding (here) seen from 6th Ave.  It's a huge building that wraps in an L around its prettier sibling at 1410 Broadway.  I didn't understand how they fit together until I saw an aerial photo at Google Maps (3D block version to the left, with 1410 at the block's top left corner).

Both 1400 Broadway and 1410, aka the Bricken Casino Building, were designed by Ely Jacques Kahn Architects.  According to a few accounts, "In 1937, Ayn Rand worked as a typist without pay in Kahn's office to research her novel The Fountainhead."  At least Khan had the sense to not pay her.


I used the term "sibling" above because the buildings have some common underlying elements and their setbacks are nearly identical, as you can see just above, and best in this 1931 photo at Flickr [eralsoto].  Unfortunately I haven't found out where the Bricken Casino Building, below and top left, got its name.

Escape from New York Recipes

Coming soon: Creamed Banker Beef on a Shingle,
pictured here under a heat lamp in Hell
Escape from New York

The Tea Party will soon be in power and close down the federal government.  Society will collapse within days, and all the bankers, corporate moguls and media elites will flee New York City, as crackheads take the streets and bloodthirsty mobs chase down stragglers, feed them to homemade guillotines, and use their severed heads to turn the avenues into gruesome bowling alleys.

Without the FAA's air traffic controllers, elites will have to escape by land.  They'll head for their fortified Rockie Mountain compounds in Humvee convoys, guarded by contractors back from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Heartland Meth-Head

But they'll never make it, because the U.S. heartland -- full of crazed, toothless, acne ravaged meth-heads suffering withdrawal from Fox News and armed to the teeth -- will lay waste to enough banker beef to make a buffalo skinner weep with nostalgia.

Before the wild dogs and orphans eat it all, get some for yourself and try a few of the following recipes.

Banker Burritos

Chop up assorted body parts -- toes, ear lobes, and pituitary glands are especially flavorful -- and grill them.  Place the fixin's on a large wheat tortilla, smother them in black beans, salsa, and tofu sour cream, then roll up the burrito.  All that flavor makes it hard to believe you're eating the flesh of one of the most vile predators to ever walk the earth.

Banker Tofu Scramble Orange Julius

Use banker brains, which taste just like tofu, for a new twist on the classic scramble.  Banker brains, fine-tuned for high frequency robbery, are extra large and extra gray.

Chop the brains and saute them in garlic, Thunderbird wine, and Worcestershire sauce.  Then pour the mix into a blender, add six organic eggs, a can of orange juice concentrate (minus the can), and a half pint of vanilla ice cream.  Blend on "liquify" until the concoction starts foaming out the lid of the blender.

Then pour a pint from the blender into a Kool-Aid pitcher, add a quart of 199-proof bathtub vodka, and serve!

Serves six, if you can still see well enough to find another quart of vodka.

Corporate Mogul Tomato-Free Gazpacho

Same recipe as just above, but use the moguls' cheeks -- both facial and buttock -- in place of banker brains.  Mogul cheeks, ripened from a lifetime of gluttony and perversion, impart a smoky tang that will make it hard to believe the gazpacho is tomato-free, and leave you wondering "Where the hell is that bacon smell coming from?!"

Media Elite (Fox News Anchor) Fajitas

(Warning!  Be 200% sure the anchor is 100% dead before you handle them!)

Chop off the anchor's fingers and throw away the rest of the body, as it contains poison concentrated enough to kill a small solar system.

Grill the fingers over a gasoline fire.  Then throw them away too.

Serves all of humanity.

World Trade Center Construction

Tower 3, at the southeast corner of the site

The new 1 WTC (aka Freedom Tower, left) reflected in 7 WTC

Above and below, the top of the new 1 WTC from the Westside Highway.  The wind that day and the charcoal tufting of the tarp made the sight a little unsettling, especially lower left.