What I’d like to show you from my first trip to New York City in February 1998 are all the fantastic photos I took of Tim and Timmy and James. The photos from that night eating pizza at Timmy’s and talking about a little project we’d just started that would become the novel It Had to Be You in 2001. Or that amazing night on top of the Empire State Building with Tim and Michael and the great shots I got of them.
But I can’t show you those because I lost the new Canon I’d bought in Manhattan in the back of a cab.
So what I have are photos of views in Central Park and Battery Park and looking out my hotel window shot with my older Canon AE-1 that I hadn’t taken out of my hotel room before my last day in Manhattan because I’d bought that smaller, easier-to-tuck-in-my-coat-pocket camera. Also too-easy-to-slip-OUT-of-my-coat-pocket camera.
Here’s one photo I took from my hotel room looking out at Madison Square Garden.
If I enlarge a detail of it, you can see how a little bit of back-home Texas was with me in New York.
Go Rockets! (I think the Knicks won that game, though.)
I also have plenty of memories. Like James walking my feet off. The Blue Dog Gallery which took us by surprise. Great restaurants. My first time to hail a cab by myself. My first solo subway ride. Seeing places I knew about from decades of TV and movies: Times Square, Union Square, Soho, Greenwich Village, Hell’s Kitchen, Chelsea. How friendly everyone was, which wasn’t what I’d been led to expect in New York. And how women on the housekeeping staff would linger in my room and talk to me because they were intrigued by items I had on my dresser (incense, crystals, rosebuds–my little “get centered” shrine).
Also, my watch died my first day in the city. I could have stepped inside one of many places and had the battery replaced. But Macy’s was just next door, and I grew up thinking of Macy’s and New York as a couple. So Timmy went shopping at Macy’s with me. The watch he picked out is still my main watch all these years later.
The crystal is kind of banged up and the battery’s dead. Should I just buy a new watch? 😉
Apart from the loss of the camera, this post is full of so many good things – NYC, friends, even a Fossil watch!
Thanks–those are all good things!
Absolutely NOT. That watch is a connection to something special.
Good. I can only afford the battery these days!
Ever since that Dish Washing and Ice Cream Scooping job I had in High School, I had all but given up wearing watches (on my wrist). This was because of the rashes I would get from all that guck getting trapped in the band.
I’ve had others instead, like analouge pocket watches (but the crown kept popping out in my pocket rendering them useless) and HandSpring Visor PDAs. There was a period when I had no watch at all, which is totally dangerous for someone like me with no sense of time!
Now that the new iPod Nano can be clipped to a wrist band, I wonder if that would make me accept wearing watches (on the wrist) all over again instead of just keeping a time mechanism in my pocket (like a pocket watch or iPod) or clipped to my shorts while skating.
On an other note, when I first glanced at that photo (not pic) of some garden in NYC, the first thing that popped into my mind was how the buildings have grown. Then, I envisioned even larger entities trimming them if they got too large or didn’t resemble “building” shape or if the AC units were ready for the picking. Then, I saw the trees in the corner…
I rarely wear a watch anymore. Went out yesterday to get a battery for this one, and all my usual places were closed. (On Saturday?!?)
I would not want to be in a building when it was being pruned. That’s probably how birds feel, too.
Macy’s…so many people…bleh.
But I couldn’t afford that other store.
I like your watch, no need for a new one. I think it’s kinda classic …
By the way, I have never owned a watch that didn’t have a cartoon character on it.
Thank you. One thing Timmy and I both liked about it is that it’s silver and gold. (Well, not literally, but you know what I mean.) Because I wear both as jewelry, it goes with all my other stuff.
I think that may be a cool claim to fame: no watch without a cartoon character. You live in a world of magic. =)
my first watch was a Pooh watch , I had an AWESOME Mickey Watch, I have a Goofy, Pluto, 3 Tinker Bells, a Tigger and a Scooby.
I have an old watch that belonged to my grandfather. The battery died in the 80’s and I never thought about replacing it, until a few years ago when I decided to pop in a new battery and the darn thing didn’t work. I took it into a repair shop and found out the gears had rusted from lack of use. The price tag to fix it? Over $300.
I vote for replacing the battery!
Dang. I’m going for batteries for both my watches TOMORROW.