Developing His Street Smarts in New York

I’d like to challenge one myth about New York City. The people we encountered were not rude. As we stood on street corners gawking at the skyscrapers about us, or waiting for the traffic light to say WALK while the locals surged across against the DON’T WALK sign, several locals, recognizing us for what we were, stopped to ask if they could help us.

We must have quickly taken on the appearance of New Yorkers, because soon other tourists began stopping us and asking directions to this or that landmark. One woman with a face like Pat O’Brien asked us the way to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Fortunately we had just passed it and, with gratifying self-assurance, I told her how to get there.

The Times that morning had reported the city’s outrage over the fatal shooting of two of New York’s finest in separate incidents. One was an undercover narcotics detective who was shot by a drug dealer.

I realized that the city was an incredibly complex machine that must run constantly at the edge of a calamitous breakdown. Its millions needed water, food, trash and sewage disposal, sidewalks, transportation, housing, schools, medical care, protection from fire and crime and violence; and at the same time they must be made happy and their souls must be fed.

Russell Baker had put his finger on it in his column that morning: “A mayor’s job is to collect the garbage, and keep the streets paved, and if he wants to be unlikeable while doing it, let him . . . “

During a Giant-Jet game in that past Sunday, an item in the sports section reported, there had been 15 arrests and 41 “incidents” among the crowd. The item noted that an incident was any disturbance reported to security, and that one incident might involve half a dozen combatants in a brawl.

As the World Series was to prove, West Coast crowds are more polite and law-abiding.

That evening we ate in a little Japanese restaurant in the theater district and went to see “Cats.” Artie Pine, my New York literary agent, had obtained seats for us in the third row center. We felt like celebrities. The house was full. They had even stuffed customers into seats at the back corners of the stage, left and right.

At the intermission we went out to the bar for a glass of wine. People were crowded six deep around the small bar. A woman was working our end. She was hard-pressed and trying to hold her own. A woman asked for tea. She said, “This isn’t a tea shop. I’m a bartender. What do you want?” I finally reached a corner of the bar and waited for her to recognize me. I didn’t dare to shout for attention. Finally she got around to me and gave me two plastic glasses of already-poured wine for $8. I picked up my $2 change and started to leave. “Thank you, sir,” she said with heavy irony. I put one of the dollars back in her dish and skulked away.

When we left the theater there were no taxicabs in sight. Half a dozen limousines were drawn up at the curb and their drivers were hustling the crowd. Though my legs were beginning to feel like logs, we walked back to the hotel, from Broadway to Park Avenue.

We stopped in the bar to see if the game was still going on. Incredibly, it was. We took a booth and watched the game on TV, trying to see around the heads of people seated at the bar. When they flashed the score I couldn’t read it. I had no idea what the score was. I got up and asked a couple of men at the bar if they knew. They had no idea. Evidently, now that the Mets were out of it, nobody in New York cared. I asked the cocktail waitress. She had no idea. She came back and said that the score was tied at 1-1, in the ninth.

Finally Mark McGwire came up with Jay Howell pitching. He hit a home run and the A’s spilled out on the field. The game was over. I read in the paper the next morning that the A’s had won, 2-1. But the Dodgers led, 2-1, in the Series.