The LAF (Lost and Found) Award

My previous postings on the subject of being Lost and Found focussed, unfairly it would seem, on the subway as a major cause of visitor disorientation in New York. My apologies to the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA). We have discovered two worthy competitors. The first is Macy’s. Undoubtedly a great shop. However, it wins the award for Getting the Allens Lost in their Search for Winter Socks for Ann. It is a tribute to their imagination that they provided six possible destinations for the purchase of socks requiring three lifts, four escalators, a redefinition of the word hosiery, a coffee break, one domestic dispute, five enquiries of helpful, but uninformed, assistants, and a trip to the Christmas Store before we found the (excellent and very warm) socks. But this challenging, near traumatic experience was easily surpassed by a day out in Queens.

So Ann and I have just left Agnanti’s, a great Greek restaurant sitting next to Astoria Park by the river. Astoria, is part of Queens, New York’s most ethnically diverse borough. It includes 20,000 Greeks and has North America’s largest Greek supermarket. The lunch has been excellent, better than any we ate in Athens last year, and everything that Greek food can be. We decide to follow it up by finding this ‘largest Greek supermarket in North America’ and head off down 23^rd Avenue looking for 31^st Avenue (remember that number 31). That suggests we should be about eight blocks away. A somewhat conceptual looking map advises us to turn right at 23^rd Street. It’s a lovely day, and we are very relaxed and two 23^rds in a row do not raise an eyebrow. We do not wonder as we then pass 23^rd Road, but start to worry at 23^rd Drive and panic at 23^rd Terrace. It is not helped by realising that if we had turned right at 29^th Street instead of 23^rd Street we would also have found a quite different 23^rd Road (Concentrate). Fortunately, a new number appears (we suppose they ran out of words to go with 23^rd) and we pass by 24^th Avenue, quickly followed by 24^th Road. If you’ve been using your fingers, you will have worked out that we have already covered eight blocks and have only moved from 23 to 24. Success, however, no Terraces or Drives for 24 and we hit 25 and then wonderfully a street with a name. We have concluded that Streets with names are a better bet, there can only be one. Not so in Queens. Hoyt Avenue turns out to be both Hoyt Avenue North and then Hoyt Avenue South. A bonus, the map seems to suggest that there is no 26th Street. Sadly, not only is there one, but there are three, one heading West, one North West and the other approximately South by South West. We avoid the temptation of choosing and keep on in a straight line. There is only one 27^th, 28^th and 29^th, and here we are heading into the thirties with two 30s and three 31s. You don’t have enough fingers to know that the eight blocks have turned into 20. Our excellent lunch and my earlier advice to believe that, in New York, you are never lost, only looking to be found, have served us well and we have retained our good humour. At last we reach 31^st Avenue where we have been advised to turn left.  We are almost, we assume, at our destination. The smell of a Greek supermarket in our minds, we head left and find ourselves at 24^th street. What?! Have we gone backwards, in a circle, into another meta-world? We plod on through 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 and 31 Streets. Eventually we arrive at our luscious destination. 

Before I go any further, here's a test. You find your way!

 

A Greek restaurant at one end and a Greek supermarket at the other end have made our journey ultimately a fruitful one, and have just about allowed us to avoid despair or to rail at the mental capacity of urban planners. We acquire some very Greeky treats and head back home to 50^th Avenue, which helpfully if unusually sits between 51^st Avenue and 49^th Avenue. But this is a rare outbreak of rational thinking. Not far away from us is 47^th Road and Avenue, 46th Road, Drive and Avenue, 45th……. So, congratulations to the bureaucrats of Queens. You are a worthy competitor to the MTA. The Lifetime Award for helping Rob find himself is yours.

Filthy Lucre

 

I love this picture that Ann took as we walked up Wall Street towards Broadway and Trinity Church. Dwarfed by the incarnations of western capitalism – the Stock Exchange, banks, finance houses – the church glimmers assertively. Trinity Church used to be the largest building in New York, the centre of Christianity in the city, and has survived all the subsequent development and destruction, apparently a bastion of morality vs Mammon. Or so it would seem. Except for the following recent newspaper headline: Trinity Church Rector Gets Pay Cut…. Well, we know that the Church struggles and many have closed. But the newspaper then went on to explain that the pay cut was from $352k a year to a mere $339k. Not only that but the Reverend James Cooper’s total pay package was $1.2 million once his church-owned Soho town house, (valued at $8.2 million), and a $118,675 housing allowance for his Florida condo were taken into account.  

It seems that the church reflects its’ environment. It has assets of $2bn, and an income of nearly $200m a year. It owns large chunks of the land on which those Wall St. banks and finance houses sit. It is a property developer. It is Wall Street incarnate. Rather late in the day perhaps, the parishioners have noticed this curious ambiguity and many turned on the incumbent Rector claiming that he seemed more intent on finance and capital than his flock, philanthropy or the problems of the world. He has now moved back to his condo in Florida.