Stay in School

Muddy Karpitz here again, people, with a reminder that today’s installment is brought to you by the letter “E” for education. On our last day in West Village, Dusty and I set about cleaning up the tiny-but-cute 2-bedroom apartment we’d been staying in, making sure it was in tip-top shape for our temporary landlord, who was due back later that afternoon. Being models of Prussian efficiency, we’d finished our shared housework chores, and had an hour to kill before we had to check out. So, we decided to decamp to the nearby Hudson Street Diner for a late breakfast.

Like so much of what we’ve seen and heard in New York City, this diner was just like the ones you see in the movies. Booths with vinyl bench seats. Glass-covered table tops to soak up all the spilled coffee. And when you ask for coffee, they plonk down a big ceramic mug, fill it to the brim with hot black coffee, leaving you to add “cream” using these tiny disposable plastic containers of milk supplied by the waiter/bus boy. And the breakfasts were large, cheap and plentiful. Dusty had French Toast with eggs-over-easy and ham, while I settled for scrambled eggs, sausage and French Toast as well.

But the real highlight for us was just listening to the conversations between the head waitress and her regular clientele. She sounded just like the actress who played Carla on the TV sitcom Cheers. “Hey, Barbara, you want coffee? Haven’t seen you for a while.” Sitting to our right was a professorial gent, tapping away on a laptop, who was soon joined by what appeared to be one of his young male students. They were settling down for a no doubt earnest conversation, when the waitress stopped by with her ubiquitous coffee pot, and said (without drawing breath), “Hey, professor, how are you? Is he studying hard? Make sure he studies hard, and stays in school, get an education, ”, before she swept off to attend her next table.

An absolutely classic Noo-Yawk moment. We’ve only been here just over a week, but we’ve fallen for this town in a big way.  Because it really is just like how we’ve seen it in movies, on TV, or read about in books. 

Steam from the subway belches out of manhole covers. Dirty, slushy piles of snow are heaped along the sidewalks. School buses are yellow. Fire escapes scale the length of old brownstone buildings like creeping vines. Sirens of all description can be heard throughout the day and night. Uniformed doormen lurk discreetly at the entrances of Park Avenue apartment buildings. 

Thin, expensively dressed women saunter along streets with tiny dogs straining at their leashes. Evangelical preachers ply their trade on crowded subway trains, proclaiming that even “atheist scientists” acknowledge that the world will end, just like the Bible says it will. Supermarket-sized drugstores share prime retail real estate alongside with Midtown psychics and tarot card readers. It’s just like a giant movie set, with one key difference – it’s real. It’s New York City.

Love this town.