‘Gor-bee’ Plays Broadway, Gets Standing Ovation

Sirens screaming, the flying wedge of New York motorcycle police officers screeched to a stop in the middle of Times Square, shouting “Geronimo! Geronimo!” into their radios.

The code word meant one thing: Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev had jumped from his limousine and taken to the streets of New York.

And there, on a seedy Broadway intersection, with night falling, the leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics stood grinning, first on one side of his limo and then on the other, with his hands clasped over his head--a la “Rocky”--as a line of nervous police and security agents used nightsticks to block a surging, cheering crowd of New Yorkers.

“Gor-bee! Gor-bee!” many in the crowd shouted.

It was an extraordinary moment on an extraordinary day. From the financial district to Times Square, where a red-neon, hammer-and-sickle Soviet flag welcomed Gorbachev to the “crossroads of the world,” hundreds of thousands of often jaded New Yorkers greeted Gorbachev and his wife, Raisa, with curiosity and enthusiasm.

The Gorbachevs, in turn, thanked New York.

“We are very pleased by the fact that thousands of New Yorkers have come out to welcome us,” Gorbachev told reporters after viewing New York’s skyline at dusk from the observation deck of the 110-story World Trade Center. “We saw their faces. We saw their eyes. We saw their friendliness. Believe me, this was very important.”

Asked what he had learned in his first full day in New York, the Soviet president replied: “What I personally learned, and my conclusion is, we should travel more. We should see each other more and we should learn about each other more.”

That would be fine with the disappointed thousands of businessmen and brokers who lined the street five-deep outside the New York Stock Exchange. Officials had freshly painted walls and repaved potholes out front, all in the hopes that Gorbachev would come to ring the 4 p.m. closing bell at the chief citadel of capitalism.

Instead, Gorbachev roared past several minutes after 4 p.m., waving from the window of his Zil limousine. “I’m disappointed,” said Mike Recchia, 27, a stockbroker. “I was here for an hour. And he blew right by.”

But in Times Square, Gorbachev did not disappoint. The statesman who had surprised Washington by pressing the flesh on the streets of the capital during the U.S.-Soviet summit one year ago, staged first-rate Broadway theater. He suddenly stopped his motorcade on the corner of 50th Street, midway between an X-rated movie house and the theater where the long-running hit musical “Cats” is playing, and stepped out to meet the crowd, which lined the Great White Way 10-deep in places.

“The cops were totally shocked,” said Michael Chill, 22, an auditor who stood nearby. “He didn’t care.”

“The crowd was going wild,” said Joe Crawford, 17, a senior at Windham Technical High School in Willimantic, Conn. “It was hard for police to keep people back. It was wild.”

“It was amazing,” said fellow student Dan Negrelli, 17. “It was unbelievable.”

Gorbachev stood first on the left side of his car, and then, with his wife at his side, went to the right side to wave at the crowd. Unlike his stop in Washington, he did not push into the crowd to shake hands.

The Soviet leader’s fast-paced tour of New York on Wednesday included a second unscheduled stop, this time in front of the busy Bloomingdale’s department store on 3rd Avenue, although he did not get out of the car. And the tour was largely designed to court corporate investment in the Soviet economy with symbolism that was chosen deliberately.

“I think that political relations between our countries should be supplemented by an expansion of our commercial and economic ties,” Gorbachev said at the World Trade Center. “I think this is a very solid basis for a better development of our relations . . . .”

He added, “All Americans must know that our people deeply respect the American people. All Americans should know the Soviet people want to cooperate with them. They want to have exchanges with them. Our people want to work in peace with the Americans. I think we are now at the threshold, present at the birth, of a new phase of our relations--a phase that promises many good things for both our nations.”

Many onlookers appeared to agree. Don Myers, 31, a visiting real estate agent from Kansas City, took the day off from work just to follow the Gorbachevs around town. He was rewarded with a clear view of Raisa Gorbachev on 59th Street, and after a three-hour wait, saw the couple speed by 45th Street and Broadway. “I figured I’d never get the chance again,” he said.

Gorbachev’s day began with his speech at the United Nations. Outside, hundreds of flag-waving demonstrators demanded independence for Soviet national republics, and Jewish activists staged a mass arrest to protest Soviet emigration policies.

Following a specific plan, police arrested 55 demonstrators who broke through police barriers around a plaza recently renamed for freed Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky. Blocking part of 47th Street, the group called for Gorbachev to “Open up the iron door” and “Let our people emigrate.” All were charged with disorderly conduct and quickly released.

“Gorbachev wants our money,” Rabbi Ari Weiss told the crowd as the demonstrators were being led away. “But there can be no trade without human rights.”

Another group, the Coalition for Soviet Jewry, continued a rally throughout the morning, leading hundreds of youthful protesters in songs and chants and lighting Hanukkah candles with prayers of support for Soviet Jews.

Across the street, in an expression of nationalistic fervor, hundreds of protesters waved the colorful striped flags of Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, the Ukraine and Armenia as they demanded freedom for those troubled regions of the Soviet Union. Even Polish groups joined the display, waving signs celebrating Solidarity, the trade union banned by the Polish government in 1982.

But the protests were overshadowed by the day’s other events. Raisa Gorbachev had lunch with First Lady Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush and other prominent women at the home of Marcela Perez de Cuellar, wife of the U.N. secretary general. And later, she reinforced the theme of economic development by visiting the 37th-floor offices of Estee Lauder Inc., the cosmetics company.

Like her husband, Mrs. Gorbachev emerged from her limousine and surprised security agents by walking across 59th Street to greet a crowd of several hundred New Yorkers. One astonished woman asked how she liked the city.

“I will say after I see more of it,” she replied through the translator.

Pat Whitehead, a physician’s wife, was more affected, however. “I started to get tears in my eyes,” she said, adding she grew faint when Raisa Gorbachev drew near and started to speak. “I think we were in a state of shock. She came in this direction.”

Upstairs, Estee Lauder’s founder presented Mrs. Gorbachev with gifts for her grandchildren, matching “I Love New York” T-shirts for the Gorbachevs, and a selection of the company’s products. Lauder also sprayed her with a sample of White Linen perfume.

Raisa Gorbachev then sped off to join her husband at the Tower 2 of the World Trade Center on the tip of Manhattan. Once there, the couple prepared to board an elevator that would take them near the top of New York’s tallest building in just over a minute.

Then the gaggle of waiting reporters across the mezzanine caught Gorbachev’s attention. Gesturing abruptly to his aides, he marched across the marble floor, stopped in front of the cameras and smiled.

“As always, there is not enough time to see everything,” Gorbachev said apologetically when asked what he most enjoyed about New York. But the gracious, first-time tourist ventured a few observations.

He said he liked the city’s “very special identity and architecture.” But there was something else, glimpsed so far only through the windows of his speeding motorcade, that had registered more deeply.

“We see sincere people, we see open faces, and that’s very good because it shows how the atmosphere in our relationship is changing,” he said.

Gorbachev, ignoring the near-brawls that broke out as panicked journalists jostled for position, also offered his own assessment of his lengthy lunch with President Reagan and Vice President Bush on Governors Island.

“If you wanted one word from me to describe what happened in those two hours, I would use the word that we heard there--continuity,” he said.

On the trade center’s 107th-floor observation deck, more than a quarter of a mile above Manhattan, Gorbachev and his wife enjoyed the breathtaking view and bantered with their hosts. One local official pointed to the tall, cylindrical broadcast antenna on the roof of the other tower and jokingly assured Gorbachev that it was not a missile. The Soviet leader laughed.

A guide then offered Mrs. Gorbachev a pair of post cards, showing the World Trade Center by night and by day. She tucked them in her pocketbook. Gorbachev marveled at the Brooklyn Bridge, but said he was a bit disappointed by the small size of what he thought was Central Park--until a guide informed him that the park was the sprawling stretch of green far to the north.

When a guide pointed out the Empire State Building to Mrs. Gorbachev, she nudged her husband and passed on the word. “I know, I’ve read about it,” he joked.

Later, as the brilliant blue sky turned to a purple twilight, and the lights of the nation’s largest city began to flick on far below, the Gorbachevs stood and stared like so many other tourists.

“Beautiful, just beautiful,” Mrs. Gorbachev murmured, their guide said.

“They seemed truly enchanted,” reported Philip S. Kaltenbacher, chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Officials helped the mood by presenting gifts--including red roses, a silver Tiffany bowl and a Steuben crystal eagle.

At an evening reception at the United Nations for 600 foreign diplomats, U.S. politicians and business leaders, the Gorbachevs met privately in the Indonesia Lounge with former President Richard M. Nixon, former Chase Manhattan Bank chairman David Rockefeller, and former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, industrialist Armand Hammer and New York City Mayor Edward I. Koch.

Nixon said later the discussion was “only generalities.”

In a champagne toast, Gorbachev said the words in his speech to the General Assembly on Wednesday morning were “deeply thought out, well considered, and they are something we wanted to share. We believe the time has come for a new and fruitful effort at the United Nations.”

Times staff writers John J. Goldman, Karen Tumulty and Don Shannon contributed to this story.