Stuff to See!

Losing Track of Time

I can admit mistakes.
Some time ago, I wrote that October 25th would be my 10,000th day of existence on this planet. I was 11 days off. It was actually October 14th.
Senility? Perhaps.
So now I'm 10,011 days old. Fine. It blows up any reason for me taking this particular day off, although it's strangely fortunate that I did.
Being a rabid baseball fan, I took advantage of a cheap trip to New York City on Saturday, noting on it fell the first day of the World Series, meaning that I could either try a buy a ticket, or watch New York fester in the aftermath of the greatest postseason collapse of all time.
I think we all know what ended up happening.
So there I was, at 6:30 in the morning, on a good three hours of sleep, sitting on a bus headed for the Big Apple. I decided, just for kicks, to keep a running tally of the Red Sox caps and Yankee caps I'd see.
My bus reached the drop off point (46th St and Broadway) at 11 in the morning. Having made a similar trip less than three months ago, my limited knowledge of the local geography was fresh in my head. In addition to the aforementioned informal tally, my main objectives for this trip involved seeking out a couple places.
Ground Zero? Nope.
The Statue of Liberty? Uh uh.
MOMA? Wrong.
I was looking for toys.
Yes, I know, I can find toys a lot closer to home. I have enough of them at home, for Cybertron's sake. Without leaving my bedroom, thanks to the Internet, I can find dozens of stores, not to mention eBay, which have what I seek.
Failing that, there are about four places within 25 miles that have, among other things, imported toys, not to mention at least two dozen places that have readily available product.
But the trip only cost 30 dollars and I like traveling. Catching sight of the humongous Toys 'R Us in Times Square as I left NYC the last time was enough to get me to come back. I figured that was a point of inquiry, if only just to see it, since I doubted there was anything I didn't already have. As it turned out, I was mostly right, although I decided not to pick up the McFarlane Toys rendition of Brooks Robinson, readily available in New York, but impossible to find in Baltimore. Go figure.
Naturally, I left my addresses and impromptu directions to my stops at home. I had to rely on my hazy memory and limited knowledge of Manhattan's layout. Luckily, Manhattan is a very easy place to get around in if you have any sort of sense of direction, which apparently I still have.
My first stop was FAO Schwartz on the southeast corner of Central Park. I'd heard through the grapevine that it was closed, and so it turned out to be. I'm not sure what I would have bought there, anyway. I was more curious than anything else. After walking around the store to verify that it was indeed closed, I decided to set out for my other two points of inquiry.
The Image Anime shop showed real promise from a scan of their website. I dimly remembered that it was located between 6th and 7th Avenues on 30th St, so I sauntered off in that direction, forswearing the subway for an excuse to check out the local scenery, well known in particular if not in general by virtue of the 78 billion movies filmed in New York (half of them directed by Woody Allen). After stopping in a Barnes and Noble to urinate, I continued down 5th Avenue.
I made a right on 34th St so I could check out some enormous skyscraper. It was here that I ran into two others from my bus, although we didn't stop after greeting each other. By degrees, I came to 30th St and found my second objective.
The store itself was pretty small, although it was packed to the gills with imported toys. I looked around carefully for nothing in particular, all the while listening to a conversation between three men concerning the differences between Alternators and Binaltechs (Alternators are all plastic, whereas Binaltechs have much more die-cast metal, otherwise the figures are just about identical). Apparently I'm not the only one on earth who thinks that Alternator Smokescreen looks a little like a bath toy.
For no particular reason I picked up a Takara Reissue (number 16) Insecticons Set as well as a wine red Binaltech Meister. The total outlay was $103.00 or so. I would have spent nearly $120 locally, so it is possible to find deals in the Big Apple. So now I have a little transforming insect colony of eight. Whoop de do!!
The Meister figure, a 1:24 scale model Mazda RX-8, is available in white and red. The white variant was released as an Alternator, although I've yet to see a live version anywhere on hand. The transformation sequence is pretty complicated compared to the original G1 Jazz/Meister/Stepper/Ricochet quartet, but it's just about the same as the other car figures in the series. I must say that I prefer the 1983 Porsche 911 on esthetic grounds, but the Binaltech isn't bad. I'm still amazed at the almost seamless integration of accurate scale modeling and transformation with these products. I never thought I'd be in the market for scale model cars.
Encumbered somewhat by my purchases, I decided to look for Toy Tokyo. I dimly remembered that it was between St Mark's Place and 7th Street, but not much else. I set off toward 7th Avenue and made a left turn toward my quarry. As I ambled south I eventually spotted an unusual intersection of 10th St and 4th St. Thinking this to be some strange aberration, I continued south. When I reached Houston St, I looked to my right and noticed that 7th Avenue had turned mysteriously into Varick St. It was at this point that I started just wandering for about an hour. On the plus side, I had seen two Yankee caps and three BoSox covers on my way, so that was all well and good.
Somewhere along the line I decided to head back north on 6th Avenue. I ran smack dab into a festival in Greenwich village, an area I hadn't seen since my initial trip to New York eight years ago. Being rather hungry and just a little tired from the walk, I picked up some fried calamari and mozzarella sticks for about 14 dollars. I sat down on the sidewalk, noshed on the excellent fare, and considered my next move.
What began as a snack turned into an epic experience as I fought with the fried bounty to ingest as much of it as possible to fuel the metabolic furnace. Eventually, after what seemed like a lifetime of chewing and swallowing, I defeated my enemy, raised up on my two feet, and made my way east. I found a comic book store on 8th St that had some G1 toys for sale, but since I didn't spot any that appealed to me, I made my way out and back to 7th Avenue, just to see if I had missed something, although the chance of that was pretty slim.
Soon enough, I was back at the intersection of Varick and Houston. Having thrown my adventurous spirit to the wind, I cornered a very nice looking woman and asked after the location of St Mark's Place. She was very kind, telling me that I was about two miles away from my intended location. Having logged roughly 5 miles on my legs, I was still fit for anything, so I marched east, zig-zagging only a little to make my way back toward 8th St.
I stumbled through the Greenwich Village festival again on my way through the general location of NYU, thinking idly how fun it might be to chat up one of the coeds present, but since greater purposes were upon me I discarded that idea. Besides, I wasn't sure that I wanted to make my way to the Port Authority after missing the bus back to Baltimore. So I shelved the heterosexual impulses and staggered through and around the mid-lower east side. Eventually, I made it to 2nd Avenue while on 7th St. I crossed 2nd heading east, turned around, and unexpectedly found my quarry.
Toy Tokyo was a shop I'd heard good things about during my scanty research into this trip. I wasn't looking for anything in particular, but I was sure I'd find something worth buying.
The store itself was a little larger than Image Anime, although no less packed to the gills with imported product. I gave some thought to a KT figure collection priced at 40 dollars, if for nothing else than the bizarre figure of a naked Tai (from the Car Robots series) bathing in small pool while a lascivious Optimus Prime leered on, but something told me not to pick it up, so I left empty handed, save for my purchases from the earlier stop. It was around 2:30 at the time, so I figured it may not be a bad idea to get closer to the rendezvous point back in Times Square. Besides, there's plenty to do there alone.
So I walked back up 2nd Avenue. And I walked. And I kept walking, aside from a stop in another comic shop close to NYU where I bought nothing. The cap tally was even at 5 to 5, although on balance I was seeing more general Red Sox paraphernalia, plus I was pretty sure that 4 out of every 5 people on the street who bore stupid looking grins were Sox fans. I don't know that for sure, but it fit my disfigured understanding of the world to believe such a thing.
Halfway through my trek north I stopped at the Empire State Building. It was close to 3:30 at the time, so I thought about going up to the top of the world, so to speak. The wait time was about an hour and fifteen minutes, so I wavered a little, but in the end decided to continue walking. I half thought about taking a shot at all 100+ floors by walking up a stairwell, which was insane give that I'd logged roughly 8 to 10 miles on foot, but in the end I was spared that particular agony for the sake of more foot traffic north. I stopped in the Toys 'R Us previously mentioned, and aside from the Brooks figure and about 7,000 shoppers I found very little. Eventually, around 4:30 or so, I arrived in Central Park.
Feeling a little tired, I sat down on a bench for about 15 minutes, watching joggers, bicyclists, walkers, and skaters travel by. Another potential destination came to mind, although it was somewhat out of place considering that I was not at all hungry. There was this place I'd seen in my Yankee Stadium trip called Zen Palate that appealed to me for obvious reasons. I wasn't sure of the location, but guessed that it was on 46th St, the so-called Restaurant Row or some such nonsense. Being thirsty, I at least thought about getting something to drink. Weary of foot, I stood up and traveled back south down 5th Avenue.
I knew that the restaurant was on the west side of town, but I wanted to make a second stop at the Barnes and Noble I'd found before, first to urinate again, but then to look for something to read, naturally. I searched for the history section, but found myself looking at the physics section for reasons best known to the part of me that wanders through life. I plucked a copy of A Brief History of Time off the shelf, thinking that some general relativity and quantum physics would provide good light reading on the bus, and then I made my way to the World War II section, searching at first in vain for Winston Churchill's six volume history of the Second World War.
To my surprise, I found a paperback copy of Volume One, The Gathering Storm. Being a history junkie in general I snatched this long-sought volume and proceeded by degrees to the checkout area. I waited 'on line' as they say in New York for about 2 minutes and was then back out on the streets, seeking a moment of Zen.
I made a right turn onto 46th Street, at this point a little more weary than I'd been 6 hours before. I looked up in Times Square for an indication of the time and saw that it was 5 p.m., so I figured I'd kill a little time and eat a little something somewhere, not to mention get something to drink to quench the killer thirst. At length I found the Zen Palate.
Zen Palate is a vegetarian restaurant, which was fine by me. One of the specialties was called Shredded Melody, which just happens to be the name of someone I dated for quite a while, so that amused the hell out of me, although I ended up choosing another dish. Since I was still full from my earlier battle with the joint forces of squid and cheese, I was unable to finish off my tasty entree. At this point, being entirely tuckered out, I made my way back to the general area of the rendezvous point. There was one other stop I wanted to make before leaving New York again.
Another place I'd neglected to notice on my earlier trip this year was the Hershey Store. Chocolate has always been a weakness of mine, so naturally I went there, looking for something to take back to my kin as well as my house. Another 40 dollars later, I had two heavy shopping bags instead of one to lug around for another 30 minutes. Shortly after leaving the Hershey joint I found one of my employees and his girlfriend near Starbucks. Feeling the need for a little caffeine to keep me awake enough to drive home, we went in and picked up some hot drinks. After about 10 minutes, the three of us went back to the bus stop to begin the long journey home.
The end tally for baseball caps was Boston 8, Yankees 7, which pleased me to no end.
Most of the people who went on the trip (some two busloads from my place of business) had a really good time, and I was one of them. As I've said before, I love to travel. I figured it was a good way to honor my 9,998th day on earth.
Even if I was 11 days late.