The miracle on 34th Street? Making it that far

MUCH has been written about Manhattan’s energy and much has been written about dogs that chase their own tails, spinning in circles until they finally stagger off to dinner, hungry and disoriented.

I find certain similarities in the two, although I grant you that there may be destinations beyond tails in the minds of many who rush around Manhattan like laser-guided missiles, cellphones stuck to their ears, eyes fixed on a distant target.

Energy is expended in both dogs and humans in the routines that occupy them in an exercise not dissimilar from running to ease tensions. Even on Fifth Avenue, where strolling was mythicized in song, I never saw anyone actually doing it.

Complicating the ability of New Yorkers to hurry are the numbers of visitors who are crowding every available facility, summoned by a cosmic force to come to the Big Apple at the same time to shop, eat or simply to be in the way of those who rush.

Cinelli and I were among the crowds, pushing our way up Broadway toward West 34th Street like linebackers plowing through a wall of Pittsburgh Steelers. We were on our way to Macy’s and could have easily taken a taxi, bus or subway the 10 blocks from our hotel, but there is something about the city that compels a person to walk.

Visitors from L.A. are often unfamiliar with the process that requires one to leave one’s car and move one’s feet in alternate sequences, thereby propelling the body forward in a slow but steady gait. No gasoline is required and no horn available to inform those in front that they are moving too slowly. While sidewalk rage is always a possibility, we witnessed none during our visit.

It was no less crowded inside Macy’s than it was outside. As we entered the store, I had to move out of the path of a blind man cane-tapping his way through the hordes at high speed, his helper half-trotting to keep up. I was amazed by his ability to move without an instant of hesitation down a wide aisle jammed with humanity. They knocked him aside and he knocked them aside, and they all got to where they were going.

Macy’s was the core of the movie “Miracle on 34th Street,” the smiling-with-tears-in-your-eyes story of a short fat man with a beard who claimed to be Santa. It is shown on television every year about this time along with “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” I block them out with a yearly family showing of “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” on Christmas Eve.

We were in Macy’s for Cinelli to spend a gift card I had given her as a birthday present, because Christmas shopping in Macy’s is as traditional as a silver fizz on Easter morning. She left me at a Starbucks inside the store, across from women’s clothing, said, “See you soon,” and disappeared among the masses. She was out of sight before the impact of the term shivered through me like the first signs of a serious illness. “See you soon” could mean anything from 15 minutes to many moons, and given the fact that this particular Macy’s contained eight floors of shopping space, the latter seemed more likely.

I am good at waiting because I do so much of it, amusing myself by watching shoppers collide at major women’s department intersections and observing moments of peculiarities that compose our world. For instance, a woman in the clothing section decided she wanted to try on a certain top, so she removed her own blouse, stood there for a moment in her bra and slipped on the new blouse, which she ultimately rejected.

Cinelli, whose timing is impeccable, returned at the very moment the woman was half-naked. “I see you’ve been enjoying yourself,” she said. I could have explained that the scene meant nothing to me, but then I would have had to add, “However, if she’d been trying on a dress in a similar manner, that might have been of interest.”

Amazingly, Cinelli had finished her shopping in record time, and we pushed back out onto Broadway, where there were even more people than before, snorting and pawing the pavement. We stopped at a closet-size deli to take coffee back to our room in Hotel Hell. The owner, who only moments before had threatened to kill a woman who may or may not have been trying to steal a bottle of Pepsi, shoved the coffee containers in a bag, still seething.

When we ordered bagels to go along with the coffee, it so enraged him that I thought he would leap across the counter at us. “Maybe we should just skip the bagels,” I said, watching his eyes turn red. I wondered later why a bagel seller would get so enraged at someone trying to buy bagels, but I guess that’s just busy, crazy New York for you. After spending a few days running in circles and nipping at my tail, bagels were beginning to make me mad too.

(To be continued)