Snow Job

Much has been made about the snow cleanup, or lack thereof, in New York City since the blizzard. I have first-hand knowledge of the nightmare conditions the city experienced in the immediate aftermath: my wife and I drove up on Tuesday morning, a bit more than 24 hours after the snow had stopped. We'd booked a day trip back in November for the specific reason of seeing Driving Miss Daisy with James Earl Jones and Vanessa Redgrave, more about which anon. During the snow the previous day we were a but concerned about the drive up, specifically the conditions on the New Jersey Turnpike, but we needn't have been as the Turnpike was near-perfect. All lanes were open and dry, even around Elizabeth City where I heard they got 31 inches. Not only that but in most places both breakdown lanes were clear. That would never happen in the D.C. area under similar conditions. Here we'd have no breakdown lanes open and the snow would probably be piled up in one of the driving lanes for a few days. Certainly the lanes would not be totally clear of all snow and ice. But all the way up the NJ Turnpike it was as if they'd received no snow at all. Kudos to the state for performing a necessary and vital government function with aplomb. As a result of their good work it took us the normal 3 hours and 45 minutes to get from home to the Lincoln Tunnel exit.

And that's where the trouble started. Normally (during the week at noon, when we hit the exit on Tuesday) it would take us about 15 minutes to get from the exit to where we stay in midtown. On Tuesday it took us two hours, crawling the final four miles to the hotel at 55th and 7th. That's 2 miles per hour folks, virtual stand-still conditions. It was a full hour before we got through the tunnel and another hour through the city. It might have taken longer had I not cut over from 10th Avenue to 8th Avenue - I correctly surmised that the inner avenues would not be as jammed as the outer avenues - where I caught a break at about 40th street and got to 56th in a few minutes, where I cut over to 7th and then to 55th. We arrived at the hotel at 2 pm, our afternoon waning.

We'd planned on going to the American Museum of Natural History because we figured it would be cold and windy, not terrific walking conditions. But it was surprisingly nice outside, the sun shining and the wind down. So we walked through Central Park, taking our time. By the time we got to the museum it was nearly 4 and with the show starting at 7 and dinner plans down at 24th and 9th (the museum is at  79th and Central Park West) we had no time to do it justice. So we walked back, again through the park, which was jammed with people enjoying the snow.



We took the E train, the 8th Avenue local, down to 23rd street, right around the corner from Co. (pronounced "Company") for dinner. We'd heard they had terrific pizza but after looking at their website my wife was more interested in the bread. Which was delicious indeed. We sampled the bread with ricotta cheese and the toast with eggplant and both were yummy. The pizza, on the other hand, was nothing to write home about. John's or Angelo's is better. This pizza was burnt, and I think purposely, to judge by the pictures on their site. Once a pizza has even a little black on it that's all you taste, that burnt flavor. There is a fine line between crispy and burnt, and this place crossed it. I was afraid going in that Co., simply from its name, might be one of those places all the in-crowd start crowing about but isn't really that good and my fears were justified. Add to it the exorbitant prices and, well, we won't be back. Let the chi-chi folks have it. Like I said, you can eat better pizza for half the price at Angelo's. But I'll give it its due: the bread really is delicious.

We walked from 29th St. up 8th Avenue, past Madison Square Garden, to the play. It was good. Not great, but very enjoyable, especially James Earl Jones' performance. Vanessa Redgrave seemed a little bit off and I think it was that she never really got the southern accent down. She didn't seem quite right and I was a little disappointed in her performance given her reputation as a great stage actress. But that's a quibble. James Earl Jones was worth the price of admission.

Not our best trip to NYC given the crawl in but any day in New York is better than most elsewhere. I love it there, even with the horrible traffic conditions. Truth be told, I'm now quite enjoying the spectacle of Nurse Bloomberg taking hits from all sides, even the New York Times, because of the city's response to the snow. And the twitter traffic over the past few days has been quite funny, lots of good Bloomberg jokes ("Alert from Bloomberg to city residents: if you must resort to cannibalism eat only people that are low in transfats"; "The real reason the streets are still not cleared is Bloomberg won't allow the trucks to use salt": "If you really want Bloomberg to do something about the snow tell him some people are enjoying it".) That giant sucking sound you're hearing is Bloomberg's future political ambitions being flushed down the toilet. And I couldn't be happier. The pretentious boob has it coming.