by Yvonne Vávra
The love story I’ve been tangled up in for the past decade and a half is quite the affair. It’s not one of those relationships where you blissfully cuddle on the couch. More of an amour fou, with swarms of butterflies so busy I’m often left wondering which way is up. It’s mad love, and it’s perfect.
I’m talking about New York, of course. Big Apple of my eye, love of my life.
But sometimes, on days when the nerves aren’t quite screwed in right, it all gets just a tiny bit too much. Those are the days when the city is playing with me a little too passionately. We do this, it’s fine. All fun and games. Until it’s not, and a fuse blows.
It happened on my way to the park, when I met my nemesis: a whistle. More precisely, a doorman determined to use it liberally in matters of great importance. Like a tenant at the Majestic on the corner of 72nd and Central Park West needing to go somewhere. In a cab. At the Majestic, that’s a situation of public interest requiring a whistle—more than 100 decibels of shrillness, roughly the volume of a jackhammer.
Not to single out the Majestic. The doormen at the Dakota and Mayfair Towers across the street also whistle into the wind to make it known to everyone who’d listen—and we all have to, obviously—that someone needs a cab.
Most days I breathe through it. Can’t have a city without everyone making their choices. But not this day. My whole body turned into an exposed nerve, and in retrospect, I shouldn’t have entered the inferno of Strawberry Fields in that condition.
Steam must have been coming out of my ears and nose, but I made it through the busloads of tourists without incident. And then my least favorite Beatles performer was on duty, having a shouting match with “Let It Be.” It’s not easy to butcher globally beloved songs to the point where you start resenting them.
I passed through as fast as I could, carried by swirls of panic that I might lose it. The tourists were applauding the butcher busker, and I wished it were yesterday and my troubles were so far away. By the time I hit the West Drive and four tourists next to me were still singing “Let It Be,” I knew I was ready to scream something regrettable and give the visitors a proper New York moment to talk about back home. Someone had to take care of me and remove me from the situation. Unfortunately, I’m a grown-up, so it was on me. Off to the benches for a timeout.
I chose my favorite one, the bench from Billy Wilder’s “The Apartment,” where a desperate Baxter settles down for the night, displaced from his own life. It’s on the West Drive between 68th and 69th streets, and latching onto another Upper West Sider’s misery was exactly what I needed. Baxter and I could be miserable together.
Breathe, girl, breathe, and trust the city to make it up to you.
“This is your birthday, you cannot deal with this right now,” said a girl to another girl passing me by. I’m intrigued and completely agree. Birthdays are for cake, not whatever this was.
Next, a man walked by. “No,” he said into his phone with effortless certainty, and I wished I could say no like that.
“I’m living the life she wanted and she’s super jealous of it,” said a woman in a blue shimmery dress to her friend. Boy, the drama on West Drive! My whistle troubles were starting to seem so far away. Good for you, Blue Dress, for leading a life worth being jealous of.
Then a girl sat down two benches to my right, and she looked harmless enough. Still, I kept an eye on her, just in case she gave me something new to get upset about. My inner grump was still eager to spring back into action.
The girl didn’t disappoint. She took out her laptop and put on lip gloss. Then it rang. Wouldn’t you know it, she had the nerve—the nerve!—to do a job interview in the open air and drag the public into the awkwardness with her.
As I don’t speak corporate, I had no idea what they were talking about. Something with interfaces. But I started rooting for her because she was so shy and nervous. Well hello again, empathy, welcome back. I’ve missed you in Strawberry Fields.
The girl looked so relieved and proud when she was done. I smiled at her—a reassuring sign that I was ready to rejoin the streets.
When I stood up, I looked at the plaque on my bench: “GAIL’S BENCH. Happy 60th Birthday! Love Bruce, Jessica & Steven.” That was it. My grump babbled a few last insignificant words and went off for a nap. I hope Gail had the best birthday ever.
On my way home, the tourists were applauding yet another rendition of “Let It Be.” And it was fine. They were having fun. They were in New York, on the Upper West Side. Life was good, and the city and I were back where we belong. Mad love, as always.
Yvonne Vávra is a magazine writer and author of the German book 111 Gründe New York zu lieben (111 Reasons to Love New York). Born a Berliner but an aspiring Upper West Sider since the 1990s (thanks, Nora Ephron), she came to New York in 2010 and seven years later made her Upper West Side dreams come true. She’s been obsessively walking the neighborhood ever since.
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I read this right after reading the West Side Canvas Homebound essay.
There are many wonderful things – evident and not evident – about NYC life.
And there are things that are not great.
Sobering
Love this
Oh, those shrill whistles! I feel your pain, Yvonne. If anyone like me has hyperacusis, the shrill sirens of NYC’s ambulances of all brands do us in. Why must they shriek incessantly? European sirens make their presence obvious with a much more muted sound. Why can’t ours do that?
Strawberry Fields used to be a lovely, quiet area where I could read after an hour’s walk in the park. Sitting in the nearby benches were Nannie’s with sleeping babies and other readers. Now it’s a place to either avoid at all costs or walk through as quickly as possible to enter or exit the park. Yoko Ono turned this tribute to John Lennon into the nosiest, worst possible tourist trap. Although she meant to do something beautiful, it turned into a total mess.
I’m always a bit surprised that people still seek this out … and in great numbers. As many of us are, I’m always happy to give directions to a tourist but when people ask me how to find this I just roll my eyes.
I think one of the purposes of the Strawberry Fields memorial was to give Lennon’s fans a place to gather a little bit away from the Dakota, where they had previously been a near constant presence. It kind of worked!
It’s a big park. Room for all.
Why blame Yoko? Leave her out of this!
We need to take away people’s amplifiers, which are illegal without permits. This would help a lot.
Nailed it, Yvonne; the ups, the downs, the highs, the lows, and love comes back around, and everything inside of a New York minute. Thank you for reminding us all.
What a wonderful piece — glad you’re feeling better, Yvonne! (The “grumpies” do pass!)
Oh Yvonne. Such a lovely piece of writing, once again. I moved back to NYC about five years ago, and have been swooning over my good fortune ever since — even on the days when it’s more like fainting than swooning. Thank you for always helping us see what’s right in front of us: the magic of the moments. All of them. I’ll try to remember, when I’m passing the less-than-Lennons at Strawberry Fields, to just…. well, you know. Let it be.
Riverside Park is a great place to hang out away from tourists with New Yorker’s.
Love Elenor Roosevelt’s presence on the corner of 72nd Street.
Plenty of benches to sit on and relax, read, or just observe folks in the neighborhood.
I would have said (screamed) something to the doorman at The Majestic expressing my outrage. I also would have given the buckster and the tone deaf tourists withering stares. Being in the upper seventies (age, not streets ) has given me license to be a grumpy old man.
By the time I realize I’m going to lose it, I’ve already lost it at least once 🙂
I just love your writing. Simple as that. Thank you, Yvonne.
This reminds me of a passage about another great city:
“Isabel took a drive alone that afternoon; she wished to be far away, under the sky, where she could descend from her carriage and tread upon the daisies. She had long before this taken old Rome into her confidence, for in a world of ruins the ruin of her happiness seemed a less unnatural catastrophe. She rested her weariness upon things that had crumbled for centuries and yet still were upright; she dropped her secret sadness into the silence of lonely places, where its very modern quality detached itself and grew objective, so that as she sat in a sun-warmed angle on a winter’s day, or stood in a mouldy church to which no one came, she could almost smile at it and think of its smallness. Small it was, in the large Roman record, and her haunting sense of the continuity of the human lot easily carried her from the less to the greater.”
I lived around the corner from Strawberry Fields for 30 years, starting when CP was a wasteland, and now am retired to a small town in Northern California surrounded by nature preserves and trails. I have grandkids here, and I love it, but I miss NYC when I read essays like Yvonne’s!
Always love reading your articles! Thank you.
Very punny, too!
What infuriates me is this photo!!!! And I have more. I am sick of seeing dogs sitting on benches. They walk through everything, including plenty of dog pee, and not all their paws are clean. I made the mistake of sitting on a bench without cleaning it and filthied my new pants. I can’t be sure of the source, which may not have been a dog, but all the same: Dogs do NOT belong on benches!!! Nor should owners be lifting them to fountains where they put their front paws to steady themselves to drink. I have seen this twice! It isn’t sanitary, and it’s wrong for people unaware of the potential germs.
Yet again, Yvonne, you nailed the double-edged sword-ness of existing in NYC—I feel less alone in my curmudgeonly cocoon after reading about your shifting emotions on your Central Park foray. Maybe I will stay a little longer in this often infuriating, but always interesting place I call home.