Manhattan End-to-End via #1

Let's take a little trip. Let's travel from one end of Manhattan to the other.

Let's traverse this narrow thirteen-mile island that fascinates and captures the imaginations of peoples around the world.

And let's do it via the #1 subway line, noting the most signficant stops along the way, subway stations that are more than just various gateways into Manhttan -- they are portals into American culture, history, and power. 

Now there's something important to remember: Manhattan technically extends beyond Manhattan Island. There is a small neighborhood just north of the island called Marble Hill that is legally part of the Borough of Manhattan. So as we look north from the bottom of Marble Hill, we can look north towards the Bronx.

Then we turn around and see  the northern tip of Manhattan island as well as the bridge with the crosswalk and subway tracks that will take us into it.

Now we'll go upstairs to the Marble Hill 225th Street station and take a look at the subway route on the #1 that we'll be following (as well as map of the geographic route we'll be crossing).

Now the train has rattled into the station, we get on and sit down, and we're off!

After a few stops we hit 181th street street. This is where we'll find the George Washington Bridge. Dubbed "the world's busiest bridge," this northern-most expanse connects the city to the rest of America, with cars flowing in and out of NYC and the rest of the continent. It's also, apparently, a popular place for some lost souls to end their lives -- sometimes to dark, comic effect. 

Few more stops and we hit 137th street and City College. 

This public college in the heart of Harlem is one of the great institutions for American learning. For over a century, poor kids from all over NYC could go to City College and pursue the American dream. The students and graduates of City are extraordinary: ten Nobel Prize winners, mayors, Supreme Court justices, US Senators and Secretaries of State, Oscar-winners, Emmy-winners, Pulitzer Prize-winners, astronauts and founders of big companies, and so many more! Heck, even fictional people have gone to City College: Gordon Gekko from Wall Street and Don Draper from Mad Men most notably.

Also, it's where both of my parents worked for almost 40 years, met, fell in love, and produced Mr NYC.

One more stop and we're in Harlem, above ground, at 125th Street.

What else can I say about Harlem, the capital of the black American experience, where great black artists and pioneers lived and worked. Also, it's also one of the hearts of American culture with Apollo Theater and the Cotton Club.

One more stop and we're at 116th street and Columbia University.

One of the seven Ivy League Universities, this institution of higher learning pre-dates the United States itself, originally chartered in 1754 by King George II (hence the original name King's College). Besides being a great and famous university, Columbia has been a site for brilliance and controversy, where great minds have flowered and fought over decades. 

Now we chug down past several stops on the Upper West Side to 66th street and Lincoln Center. 

Home to ballet, opera, symphonies, musicals and plays, Lincoln Center is the multi-theater complex that, along with Broadway, defines NYC as the cultural capital of America. While encompassing only a few small blocks, its impact across America is massive -- including the many performances that are broadcast from there. I have personal recollections of performing at Lincoln Center and have blogged about it a lot -- including my own experience in partaking in a live broadcast. 

One more stop and we're all 59th Street and Columbus Circle.

The site of the big memorial to Christopher Columbus, it is one of the crossroads of Manhattan, with different avenues intersecting and hugging the lower southwest portion of Central Park. It is also, to my knowledge, the only traffic circle in all over NYC. And these days it is now home to the massive Time Warner building that looms over it.

Two more stops and we're in the most square in all the world -- Times Square. 

Dubbed the "Crossroads of the World" it is the very center of American culture, bedecked with electronic billboards, Broadway theaters, massive chain restaurants -- for many it is New York City, the heart of the heart of it all. And, obviously, it's where the world celebrates New Year's every year.

A quick one-stop and we're at Penn Station on 34th street -- or Pennsylvania Station as it's officlally known.

If the George Washington Bridge is the city's businest car-route into America, Penn is the easily the busiest railway route. Amtrak, New Jersey Transit and the Long Island Railroad all go through it, a central hub that connects the outer-edges of Long Island to the West Coast of the United States.

Penn Station also has a tortured history -- the once gorgeous station was torn down in the 1960s and replaced by a dingy undeground hovel. In the last twenty-years it has been dramatically rebuilt and re-imagined, a vast improvement of what it was but a sad reminder of what we could have had if we had only preserved the original. Hey, at least the new Penn Station now has a Dunkin' Donuts!

Now we go down several stops and hit Christopher Street -- Stonewall Station. 

Christopher Street is actually a quiet, beautiful area of Greenwich Village but it is now of the iconic birth place of American gay rights movement. On June 28th, 1969, right after the death of gay icon Judy Garland, the Stonewall Inn was raided by cops -- and for the first time, gay people fought back. It took decades for gay rights to be enshrined into American culture and law but it has triumphed mightly. And it all started on this small block of Manhattan.

Our journey is almost over but we have one more stop until the end -- the World Trade Center.

Of course it used to be the World Trade Centers -- until September 11, 2001 when it became Ground Zero, then, after an extensive rebuilding, One World Trade Center. 

The story of this patch of Lower Manhattan is one of great triumph and tragedy in American history, where George Washington celebrated his victory in the American Revolution and where American was also brutally attacked two centuries later. It's the symbol of American financial power and dominance. Its where Manhattan and NYC began and where it grew out from. It is the complicated heart and soul of the world's greatest nation and its greatest city.

 

And now we come of the end of our journey. We reach the South Ferry-Whitehall Station aka. the Battery, and we pop up out of our seat and go upstairs into the very southern edge of Manhattan. 

We're right across the street from the entraces to the Governor's Island and Staten Island Ferrys, and we can see (and smell) the vastness of New York Harbor, the watery gateway to city and the force that unites the five boroughs. 

And then we walk down a few blocks, turning to look uptown to see where we came from ...

... and then we look down to the southern tip of Manhattan with the rest of NYC and America beyond it.

I hope you've enjoyed this trip along the #1 subway line, seeing the amazing stops and spots of Americana along the way. You can do it yourself in just under and hour. And I hope, maybe, that you learned something!

Gotta Love New Yorkers

Saturday night I was passing through Penn Station when I saw two men running towards a staircase leading to an LIRR track.

At first I thought I was witnessing the start of a fight and got scared -- the running men were big, tough looking guys, and I was worried that mayhem was about to ensue.

But as I got closer and looked down the stairs, I saw that they were running to help a man -- who appeared to be in his 50s, looking like he was heading home -- who has just collapsed down the stairs. The men tried to revive him and, moment later, two cops bounded down the stairs, taking charge.

I stood and watched for a moment -- hoping, obviously, that the man would be ok, and wanting to be of assistance if possible -- but it soon became clear that my presence as either a helper or as an observer would be unhelpful. So I left, relieved that the situation was well in hand.

Most disturbing, in the short time I was at the scene, was that the man wasn't moving at all, moaning or groaning or making any noise at all, his eyes were closed and he was totally still. It may very well be that he had died. 

I hope not, and I haven't been able to find any information about this incident in the last two days. But seeing how this man's fellow New Yorkers, and the NYPD, leapt to his aid, trying to help and save him, gave me a momentary boost of pride in my fellow New Yorkers and this city and people in general.  

Bad & Beautiful Perspectives of Penn Station

 

Penn Station Redesign

Meet "Grand Central Madison": LIRR East Side Access Is Here!

You might not have realized it but quietly, diligently, for the last fifteen years, roughly the lifespan of this blog, tunnels have been dug under the East River and East Side of Manhattan. Also, a brand new train terminal has been built underneath Grand Central Central that, in December, will open and be known as Grand Central Madison.

Grand Central Madison (I assume it'll become known as GCM), will connect all 11 lines of the Long Island Railroad to Grand Central Station. This means that commuters from Queens, Brooklyn and Long Island who work or want to visit the East Side of Manhattan, now won't be forced to go to Penn Station on West 34th Street and then tack east. 

Instead ... they'll be right there, able to get out and walk to their desired location or hope on the 4/5/6 subway lines. 

This is, in a word, huuuugggeee -- this is the most massive transformation of NYC transportation in the last century. It's a bigger deal than any of the bridges that Robert Moses built because it will greatly reduce commuting times in and out of Manhattan and will, no doubt, transform the economy of the city. 

I can't wait to see it!

The Fishko Files and the Art of the Radio Essay

Blog posts are, in many ways, a bunch of essays of varying length that are collected, chronologized, and streamlined on this platform called "da blog." In the analog world, essays usually appear in newspapers, magazines, books, or other various tactile media, usually with a similar logic applied to their aggregation.

So where does that leave the radio essay?

For decades the radio essay was ephemeral, existing only for as long as it was broadcast across the airwaves and into the minds of its listeners. Then it vanished into the ether of time. Alistair Cooke, both before and after he hosted Masterpiece Theater on PBS, produced radio essays for the BBC called Letter from America. He broadcast thousands and thousands of them, from 1946 to 2004 (!), commenting on everything from the re-election of Harry Truman to the Second Iraq War. Most of those radio essays no longer exist but more than a thousand have been rescued and now, thanks to the Internet, are easily accessible.

The radio essay is now more lively and powerful than ever!

Which brings me to The Fishko Files, a wonderful oddity in the world of present day New York City radio. Broadcast on WNYC every Friday morning, and freely available online, they are short essays by culture critic Sarah Fishko. She covers the whole swath of culture in NYC and elsewhere, both past and present -- art, architecture, music, movies, TV, even unknown or recently discovered recordings. She "writes" about Leonard Bernstein, James Dean, Woody Guthrie, Scott Joplin, Andy Warhol, the architecture of the Old Penn Station, movies about the Holocaust, the new Whitney Museum, film composers, and many, many more. It's an audio feast of culture, a compendium of cultural essays from the cultural capital of the world.

Sarah Fishko has been producing these essays for WNYC for more than 20 years and you can listen to them all now -- whenever, wherever, however you want.

The radio essay is homeless no longer. 

Moynihan Station and the Future of NYC Transportation

Happy New Year!

New York City has a major new transportation hub -- out with the old Penn Station, in with the new Moynihan Station!

As Governor Cuomo dubbed it, the new station is "a work of art" -- a vast skylight ceiling, a huge Art deco clock, modern art, waiting areas that resemble hotel lobbies, it's a big new addition to the NYC firmament. It's named after the late great Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan who dreamed of this project long ago. 

This station is also, in many ways, the correction of a massive error in the city's history -- the tearing down of the original gorgeous Penn Station in the early 1960s. It's a remakable achievement, particularly in this day and a age of dysfunction, to complete something like this -- especially in the middle of a pandemic.

Of course, a shiny new thing is not a substitute for a much more fundamental need -- the need for more public transit overall. We still need the Gateway Project -- more tunnels, more trains, much more capacity to handle the strain of ridership. This station, while making the experience of boarding and exiting the train more enjoyable, does not fix this massive problem. After all, it took almost 50 years to build three new subway stops on the Upper East Side -- how soon can we expect to give in and out and around NYC a whole lot faster?

So when it comes to meeting the needs for transportation in NYC, new station or no, we have a longgggggggggggg way to go. We have this great new station -- now lets have a transportation system for the whole city that's worthy of it.

RGB RIP

Sad news for NYC. Sad news for America.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg -- child of Brooklyn, legal genius, feminist icon -- died on Friday, September 18th, aged 87.

Even if she hadn't spent more than a quarter century on the court (she was confirmed in 1993, after almost 13 years serving on the US Court of Appeals, so almost 40 years total as a federal judge), she would be a legend. Ginsburg blazed a trail as one of the few women graduates of Harvard Law of her era, then became one of the first female tenured law professors at Columbia. In the 1970s she advocated for gender equality in multiple cases before the Supreme Court, winning almost all of them. Then, as a Supreme herself, her votes and decisions on gender equality, gay rights, and other social justice cases helped to make America a somewhat better, somewhat fairer place. She dissented a lot -- such was the make up of the court -- but her voice was always heard. 

And she had a long, happy marriage to her husband Marty, a legal genius himself. I heard a story about Marty and Ross Perot -- after he and Ruth had moved to DC, he became a professor at Georgetown Law. Ol' Ross was have a legal problem and, during one lunch with Marty, Marty solved it for him -- saving the Texas billionaire a lot of money. Ross then endowed a chair for the man at Georgetown. But, in many ways, Marty built his life and career around Ruth, such was his love for her.

I found out about the death of RGB this past Friday evening as I was standing in a deli kiosk at Penn Station. I was holding a strawberry parfait thinking, "I guess I'll buy this and eat it on the train," when the TV above, tuned to CNN, showed "BREAKING NEWS." I've become a little cynical about "BREAKING NEWS" because so little of it is usually news but then I saw them say that RGB was dead -- and my heart dropped. I'll never forget it.

Rest in peace, Ruth. We didn't deserve you, and we were lucky to have you for as long as we did. 

What We've Lost

We lost JFK Jr. almost 20 years ago.

We lost the old Penn Station more than 50 years ago.

Granted, they couldn't have been more different. One was a living breathing person and other was a train station. One died tragically in an accident while the other was deliberately and carefully destroyed. But this city lost them both, and we feel the lack of their presence to this day.

And what's crazy, in a way, is that their very existences were built on previous losses, previous tragedies. 

In the case of JFK Jr, he was the living legacy of a president who also died tragically. In the case of the old Penn Station, it existed on land that had once housed mostly black people and who were displaced so this Guilded Age monument could be built.

In their days -- in the case of JFK Jr, the 1980s and 1990s, in the case of the old Penn Station, the first half of the 20th century -- they helped to define this city's culture. They were beautiful, glamorous, awe-inducing, inspiring -- or, as we like to say these days, aspirational.

JFK Jr. created a magazine that fused politics and pop culture together at a time when this was a novel idea and not the horror show it is today. Penn Station was a tribute to American "ingenuity and know-how", an example of what this country could achieve, building something that rivaled the great palaces of Europe -- but that was "for the people" instead of the nobility.

Both scaled the heights -- and invited us to join them.

Then they were gone, and now all we have are pictures and memories. We lost something when they went away -- a piece of our collective hope was chipped away, our faith in humanity was dented, our joy in the world besmirched. Not destroyed -- but diminished. 

Certainly, this city lived to see another day -- even in the aftermath of something like 9/11 or Trump, we've survived -- but how much better could we have dealt with those horrors with JFK Jr and the old Penn Station still around?

That's what loss is all is all about -- wondering what might have been. But we go on ...

Preserving the Future

American society loves The New. It loves the "latest trend", the "fresh face", the "hottest" this-that-or-the-other-thing. Our society is constantly churning out bright shiny objects that quickly fade, that become, to quote that sage Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "so five minutes ago." 

But in NYC we've learned to love and preserve, not so much the old, but the forever precious. Ever since the old Penn Station was knocked down in the early 1960s, we've come to appreciate what we have as much as what we might get. And yet, in preserving things, they need to change.

Here are some perfect examples:

The Bowery, that wide remote avenue on the Lower East Side, used to be where deadbeats and drunk and peep shows and all sorts of wild stuff use to exist. Now? It's beautiful and respectable. It's been preserved and (arguably) improved – although CBGBs is long gone.

Same thing with Film Forum: this fifty-something classic movie house, an "elder statesman of New York cinema" is being saved from the fate of so many other revival houses through the efforts of its fans, including by another NYC elder statesman and well-preserved commodity, Ethan Hawke.

Finally, Madison Square: today it's best known as the location of the original Shake Shack, an absolutely incredible playground (if you have kids), and interesting art installations. It's been beautifully preserved. But did you know Madison Square Park is also where the Manhattan grid system and baseball were invented? Where the first sky scraper, the Flatiron Building, was built? Madison Square teams with NYC history and, as it changes and evolves, its history becomes all the more important -- and easier to appreciate.

And then, of course, there’s the Highline.

So while it’s easy to mourn the changes to our city, it’s also important to remember that some of its most valuable artifacts are being safeguarded for our future.

Curtis Sliwa Stalks My World

NYC is a city of 8.5+ million people so it unusual to run into the same person, either on the street or elsewhere, multiple times. 

Any yet, for reasons that dumbfound me, I've encountered Guardian Angels founder/radio host/TV commentator/NYC character extraordinaire Curtis Sliwa more times than I can remember.

The first time I do remember: it was back in the mid-1990s, I was walking down 8th Avenue, and he walked right by me. Then I saw him in the subways a few times with his Guardian Angel compatriots.

Lately, he's been popping up in the most odd places. 

Last year, taking the LIRR, he walked into my car, looking exhausted. Then I saw him at the Douglaston-Little Neck parade where he marched (he does this every year). And then, just last week, I was in Penn Station and saw him at McDonalds.

I've seen Curtis Sliwa more than any other random New Yorker I can name. I don't see him every day but it's weird that he's just around ... here and there, popping up ... He's ubiquitous.

So yes, Curtis Sliwa (sorta) stalks my world.

And if you're reading this ... Hi Curtis! 

This Is New York, 1950

Narrated by a booming "voice of God", this little movie has a creepy charm all its own. But what makes it most interesting are the beautiful images of NYC from an a more innocent time.

It was such an innocent time that this move even refers to NYC as"Baghdad by the Sea" I doubt that anyone would call it that today. And remember: "Hit the "doit!"

Stout

You'd probably think that a restaurant/bar in the Penn Station/Madison Square Garden area would be a madhouse -- and you'd be right. That said, as midtown madhouses go, Stout on West 33rd street is one of the best.

Stout is big. Really big. It not only has a huge bar area but also a couple of spacious dining rooms -- separated from the bar -- where you can sit and eat comfortably. We got there at about 6:30 on a Tuesday night, at the height of the after-work bar scene, and got a table right away. There's also a really big bar area downstairs where I went to a party once, and the people weren't all jammed in together like in most bars in this town. One could drink and walk around comfortably. Also, it has a decor I really like, a non-pretentious old-time pub look.

Their selection of beers is really good too, and they even have daily special brews. I had a lager that I forget the name of but enjoyed immensely. Their food, particularly the burger and fries, is above par for bar food, and comes in sensible portions. Best of all, the service was excellent, and we had one of the friendliest and nicest waitresses that I can remember in a long time. Considering that she was working in a midtown bar at the height of happy hour and waiting on a lot of people, I was doubly impressed.

Stout even has good bathrooms. In one of them they had a hand-drier that was so intense it completely dried off and warmed my hands in about 5 seconds. I also liked that Stout had TVs everywhere so you could get your ESPN fix and the music, while loud, is not deafening like at a lot of other bars.

So if you find yourself in midtown and are looking for a place to hang with friends, you really can't do any better than Stout. Mr NYC highly recommends it.

Canadian Donuts Invade NYC

If you like They Might Be Giants or the girl who played Juno in Juno, then you might like the newest Canadian import that's hitting NYC this week -- Tim Hortons. Little known in the USA (they have some stores in the Midwest), they're now taking the biggest city in the country by storm.

Tim Hortons has shrewdly managed to take over more than a dozen Dunkin' Donuts franchises including ones in Penn Station and Times Square. They are even going to be a couple of stores in Brooklyn (in fact, I think there already are). These new stores virtually materialized overnight and it's been catching some of our fellow New Yorkers off guard. One day it's a Dunkin's and the next it's a ... Tim Who?

This is quite an audacious business move. Whoever said Canadians weren't good capitalists?

So is Tim Hortons as good as Dunkin' Donuts (which I love)? Sorta. I actually go to Canada a lot and have eaten there several times but never had the donuts. Tim Hortons also sells sandwiches and soups and full meals (at least in Canada) and the food was pretty good when I had it. As for the donuts (including maple donuts), I can't say but I'm willing to give them a shot.

Still, for my money, nothing in the world can beat Dunkin' Donuts coffee.

So welcome to NYC Tim Hortons. If you can make it here, etc.

Now if only we could get In'N'Out Burger in NYC then Mr NYC would be really, really happy.

Coming of Age in NYC: "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist" and "The Wackness"

I recently caught up with two movies on DVD that came out last year: Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist and The Wackness. Both of these flicks are about teenagers "coming of age" in NYC and, as a former teenager who came of age in this great metropolis, I obviously felt compelled to watch and critique them.

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist: Technically this is about teenagers from New Jersey but the movie takes place in NYC and is where the youg'uns "find" themselves so I think it counts. Anyway, Nick is a high school senior who loves, loves music and is in a band with a couple of gay guys called The Jerkoffs. He's just been dumped by his girlfriend who's a giant raging bitch but, like most dumb guys, he can't get over her. His ex goes to school with, and is frenemies with, Norah who is also a giant music geek. So one Friday night, just before Nick and Norah graduate, Nick's band plays a gig at Arlene Grocery. Nick and Norah meet and, in an attempt prove to Nick's ex that he's over her, kisses Norah. After that, hilarity ensues: Nick, Norah, and the gay guys fail in their attempt to take Norah's drunk friend Caroline back to New Jersey, Nick's ex decides she wants to get back with him, and all the while they are trying to find out where a band called Where's Fluffy is playing (apparently this band is so cool and so good that their gigs aren't announced until the last minute and they always play at weird times and places). Needless to say, love and music triumph, as Nick and Norah realize they are the only two people cool enough to understand each other.

I REALLY wanted to like this movie. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist had the potential to be a great early 21st century, coming of age, NYC, hipster flick. Also, it clearly understands how important music is to some people and how growing up sucks. And it's a very affectionate love letter to downtown New York: the movies rushes from place to place, from Arlene's Grocery, to Gray's Papaya, to St Mark's Place, to Penn Station, to Brooklyn, to Veselka (easily my favorite East Village hangout). But the characters of Nick and Norah aren't really developed, I never come either to like or identify with them really. Micheal Cera from Juno and Arrested Development plays Nick and basically the movie doesn't give his character any complexity -- we're basically supposed to love him because he's cute, his character loves music, and we loved him in Juno. Someone named Kat Dennings plays Norah (I'm totally unfamiliar with her other work) and her character makes no sense: one moment she's a tough, smart, and resilient broad, the next she's a little wimp. Totally illogical. As for the story, it's hopelessly contrived. The whole "finding where Where's Fluffy is playing" is lame, just an excuse to have the characters run around the city. And the ending is very dumb. So sadly, as much as I would love to tell people that this is a great coming of age in NYC flick, I can't.

The Wackness: Much better movie. It has its problems but in terms of story and character development, it's a quantum leap above Nick and Norah. So Luke (played by some kid named Josh Peck who I never heard of but he's really good) is a pot dealer. He's just graduated high school but his college plans are almost derailed when his parents go bankrupt. He has a shrink named Squires (brilliant performance by Ben Kingsley) who Luke pays with pot, and Squires is also the stepfather to a girl named Stephanie that Luke went to HS with and is in love with (Stephanie is played by Olivia Thirlby who played the best friend in Juno; she is an amazing actress). Anyway, it's the summer of 1994 and Luke has two missions: deal enough pot to pay for college and hook up with Stephanie. The only flaw in this plan is Squires, who becomes a bigger and bigger part of his life. Squires is basically going through a mental breakdown, his marriage to Stephanie's mother crumbling, and Luke begins to view him as the father he never had. Events and hijinks and misunderstandings ensue and, unlike the previous movie, The Wackness is totally unpredictable and has one of the weirdest and most strangely satisfying endings I've seen in a while. All ends well ... sorta.
The Wackness really moved me. Personally, I don't know how anyone who wasn't a teenager in NYC in 1994 can't appreciate it but, if you were one like me, you'll love it. This movie gets 1994 down PERFECTLY. I really felt like I was transported back to that time, when teenagers still thought they were cool by drinking Zima and sporting beepers, and Giuliani had just taken office (you may recall my previous blog posts on remembering the cultural impact of 1994 that we still feel today). The only big problem I had with this flick is in the character of Luke: on the one hand, he's this brilliant pot dealer (never gets caught) but at the same time he's a total loser with girls (until Stephanie). Here's the deal: if you're a drug dealer in NYC and you're smart enough to make a lot of money at it and not get caught, and even graduate high school in the process, then you are smart enough to know how to score chicks! Drug dealers have no problem getting laid! Women love hooking up with drug dealers! They friggin' offer themselves up to drug dealers! So I couldn't really buy this whole part of the movie. I realize the writer probably thought that this made Luke a more compelling character (hard nosed drug dealer, wimp with the ladies) but the logic left me cold. However, Josh Peck's performance is so wonderful that you forgive this and, with all the other great characters that populate this quirky flick, you give The Wackness a chance and, as character of Luke would say, roll with it. And Ben Kingsley is so incredible that it's worth seeing the movie for him alone.

Of course, if you want to see a much, MUCH darker coming of age in NYC movie, then watch Kids from 1995. It'll make you have a mental breakdown.

Mr NYC Rubs Some Shoulders

I wasn't able to blog yesterday because I was hanging out with ... other bloggers! This was my first time meeting my fellow NYC bloggers and I had a great time. The event was organized by Alejandra (of the food blog Always Order Dessert) at the bar Stout near Penn Station and she was a lovely host.

Among some of the bloggers I drank and chatted with:

• The spirited creator of Debonair Debacles, a personal blog that's remarkably insightful and well-done. She talks about everything on here: herself, politics, popular culture, food, books, you name it. She told me she gets over 200 hits a day (Mr NYC is just a wee bit jealous) and you can see how she's earned it -- it's simply a delightful blog. Check it out!
• A lady who calls herself Madam Breakfast -- yes, a blog devoted to the first and most important meal of the day. Breakfast Lab is a very informative blog (about guess what) and has lots of great advice about what constitutes a healthy breakfast. I can honestly say I've never seen anything quite like it. Definitely worth a look.
• Finally, someone with not one, not two, but three advice blogs, one of them on nerve.com. They are: SelfHelpMe, Stephanerd, and the Modern Materialist. Very smart blogs, and very funny

So all in all, I consider my first blogger meet-up a success. I can't wait for the next one!