Tijuana of the Northeast

The rising value of the pound against the plummeting value of the dollar means that New York is now the Tijuana of the Northeast, for the British, at least:

Sheila Riley came for Macy’s, evidenced by the pile of telltale red bags piled around her feet. Russell Whitehead and Robert Archibald made the trip for “Wicked.” Jeff Taylor wanted to propose.

Seb Sims’s goals were admittedly more prosaic and yet they pleased him. “I came to New York to go shopping and get drunk,” said Mr. Sims as he headed for a southbound No. 1 to “Greenwich.” (No, not Connecticut, but why embarrass him?)

I guess it’s not all that different from cashing in on cheap Canadian toothpaste in Montreal (at 30 percent off!), but still . . . shopping and getting drunk?

The Times, observer of all that curious in the world, notes several quirky things about our visitors from abroad:

Some random facts about British visitors, gleamed from several days of observing them:

¶They have an almost alarming interest in shoes, particularly sneakers (or, as they call them, trainers). “I got loads of Diesel trainers,” said Mr. Whitehead, an actor from London. “They are a quarter of the price here. I bought three pairs for $25 each.”

¶They drink such concoctions as dry vermouth with Sprite (called a martini and lemonade) and Stella Artois beer with a shot of Rose’s lime juice. “They also get really tickled about fancy cocktails,” said Sara Najjar, a bartender at the Hotel Metro, which is a veritable outpost of tourists from England and Scotland. “I guess because they can only get beers in their pubs over there. It’s just crazy!”

¶They flock to Macy’s as Americans might flock to Buckingham Palace, and at the department store they sate their appetite for hats, watches, handbags and coats. The store had more than 20,000 British shoppers last year, and company officials report they take advantage of the store’s 11 percent discount for international visitors more than those of any other nationality.

And Anglophiles beware — dry vermouth and Sprite aside, they may be cultured in an Old Europe kind of way, but they still understand and appreciate the occasional good old fashioned chain restaurant:

On Tuesday afternoon, Gerald and Moira McGinty, who live outside Glasgow, waited nervously for their son David and his friend, Liam Hanlon, to join them in the lobby for their car trip to the airport, which was arriving in minutes. Seems some last-minute (shoe) shopping was occurring on Eighth Street.

Among their bags was an electric guitar, bought for $1,400 rather than £2,000 in Scotland. They had their Tiffany key rings. They had their “Chicago” programs. And, sorry Jean-Georges, they had their memories of TGI Friday’s.

In the great community of nations, who among us does not love TGI Friday’s?

On behalf of all New York-area Bridge and Tunnel Club members, I proudly welcome the British to our fair city. Enjoy!

Administrative Note

The New York Times is “considering” charging people to view its website. The nerve of them:

N.Y. Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. was quoted in the article as saying: “It gets to the issue of how comfortable are we training a generation of readers to get quality information for free. That is troubling.”

No! How would we be able to poke fun at the Sunday Styles section? Give them grief over that saccharine Metropolitan Diary feature? First the MTA bans photography, now the Times wants to charge us. The golden era of the internet may be over!

Then again, if, say, the New York Post wants to pick up the slack (permalinks, please!), I wouldn’t be opposed. Guaranteed web traffic — not to mention a great way to justify all those goddamn pop-ups!

Of course, the Daily News already offers free access with permanently linked stories. They may be the one to look towards.

“Immigrant Street Poetry”

Yes, “Immigrant Street Poetry.” Ugh. The Times details “The Grate Amrican Dreem”:

This may be the age of Internet pop-ups and text-message marketing, but lots of businesses – especially small businesses – still do most of their advertising with old-fashioned low-tech signs. And just as the eyes are said to be windows to the soul, these storefront signs – which often come with fractured grammar and mysterious spelling – can be portals on a great city that is regenerating itself with a flood of new immigrants.

The signs are there to lure customers, of course, but they can do much more. Four out of 10 current New Yorkers were born in a foreign country, more than at any other time since the 1920’s, and many have gone immediately into business. Their signs can form a style all their own, and style, as E. B. White, a passionate New Yorker at heart, once observed, is sometimes nothing but “sheer luck, like getting across the street.”

With such luck, the errors in usage add unintended meaning, like the East Side pizzeria that for a long time listed “1 litter” bottles of soda on its menu. So many one-liter bottles end up as litter that such a change might be appropriate.

Which is a long-winded way of saying, all you all can’t spell for shit but you’re loveable just the same!

But as usual, our hard-working, slightly less literate bretheren have the last laugh:

One pizzeria on 41st Street has spaguetti with clam sause, and a lunch cart on Lexington Avenue and 46th Street helps out-of-towners by spelling knish “kanish.”

“People tell me it’s wrong and I told my brother-in-law, who is the owner, but he doesn’t want to change it,” said Wael Ahmed, 39, an Egyptian immigrant who works at the stand with kanish and chees steak on the menu. “Sometimes people on the street also tell me it’s wrong, but I tell them it doesn’t matter because we don’t sell knish anymore.”

To crudely paraphrase New York City uber-Historian Ken Jackson, history is for losers — step off, Times!

Ringing in the New Year

Sounds like the 100th New Year’s Eve in Times Square went well — at least according to the Times, which was on hand to sketch a scene full of sawhorses, dropped balls, flashed abdomens and the occasional transvestite:

Last night, 100 years after the first organized New Year’s celebration in Times Square, close to 1 million people crowded Times Square to welcome 2005.

The weather was unusual. The temperature at midnight was 50 degrees, and there was no rain, sleet or snow, just showers of confetti.

At midnight, with blizzards of plastic rainbow confetti erupting from the tops of skyscrapers, police officers lit cigars and flipped open their cellphones to call loved ones. Couples kissed, and on the main stage, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Secretary of State Colin Powell, who pressed a button that dropped the ball, locked arms and swayed awkwardly to Frank Sinatra’s version of “New York, New York.”

The lines of police barriers overtook car lanes, becoming a maze that corralled an unexpectedly large number of revelers – one officer said there appeared to be more than 750,000 there to watch the ball drop.

Old-timers grumbled, recalling the years when sawhorses were fewer and when onlookers were allowed to flood Times Square without having to leave lanes open for satellite trucks and V.I.P.’s whom nobody recognized.

Or years when it was so cold that only the truly courageous proved themselves by enduring five hours crushed between barriers like ice cubes in a metal tray.

Cue hapless tourists:

Among those on hand was David Pepsny, a carpenter, who found himself crushed into a crowd that had mushroomed suddenly at Eighth Avenue and 49th Street about 5 p.m.

After an 11-hour drive from his hometown, Ashland, Ohio, Mr. Pepsny and two friends had arrived in what they thought was New York City. Actually, they were in Jersey City, but just a short while later, they reached their destination, the Ramada Inn at Kennedy Airport.

“Our hotel lady was kind of laughing at us,” Mr. Pepsny said.

. . .

Another Ohioan, Nate Thobaben, a West Point cadet, lifted his shirt and flashed his abdomen at young women nearby.

Mr. Thobaben, 19, said he was only trying to cool off.

“It’s really warm, but then again I’m from Ohio and we already got 10 inches of snow in one night,” he said.

Of course, it’s not a Times article without noting how the other half lives:

Ringing in the year in Times Square was not for everyone.

Miss Trixie, a transsexual who said she was an actress between jobs, was on Avenue of the Americas in Greenwich Village talking about how she had been sober for 49 days and was determined to make it 50. She said she was returning to Brooklyn as soon as she finished hustling for small change.

“Old people and old places,” she said about Times Square, a veneer of 5 o’clock shadow showing through her made-up face. “People and places you want to stay away from.

“My goal in 2005 is to be a productive citizen in society working for some establishment in New York City.”

She rattled the coins in her Taco Bell cup as people walked by.

On an E train to Parsons Boulevard, in Queens, with a few hours left in 2004, Gerardo Rivas, 29, pulled off his royal blue jacket and settled onto a bench seat.

Mr. Rivas, who moved to New York from Mexico four years ago, was going home to his apartment to spend New Year’s Eve with his wife and two children.

His youngest, a boy, was born in 2004. Mr. Rivas, who said he was grateful for his new life in the city, gave him an American name: Steve.

Mr. Rivas said he was also staying home to get a good night’s sleep before going to work in the morning. His goal in 2005 was to provide more for his family.

Then the train pulled away from 50th Street, pulling him toward the new year.

And with that, we give thanks for what we have and look forward to a happy, healthy and productive new year.

Red State Revolution

In honor of our visitors from the so-called “flyover states” (and because no one else is around), the Times op-ed board extols the virtues of tailgating:

The proposal for a $1.4 billion Jets football stadium on the Far West Side of Manhattan has many flaws, which we’ve enumerated on other occasions. Now the Times sports columnist Dave Anderson has added another. The new stadium would offer mostly garage parking, and would thus interfere with a pastime that a lot of fans find more enjoyable than watching the Jets themselves: tailgating.

On two recent Sundays, Mr. Anderson toured the vast concrete parking lots surrounding Giants Stadium in New Jersey’s Meadowlands, and conducted an admittedly random and unscientific poll of about 150 tailgating fans.

The results were clear: 80 fans wanted to stay where they were, 55 would attend games at a stadium on Long Island or in Queens (like Shea, where the Jets once played, and where fans could keep tailgating). Only 15 preferred a stadium in the city.

Proximity to one’s home was a factor, but the most important reason to oppose the stadium plan was the feeling that a Manhattan stadium would not just trifle with the tailgating tradition, but pretty much destroy it. The Jets, who say they have conducted polls in which the “West Side came out on top,” insist that fans will be able to gather on the streets and at local bars and restaurants.

But that’s not tailgating. Tailgating is acres of S.U.V.’s and pickups, grills and trestle tables groaning under mounds of chicken and ribs and burgers, tents to keep out the rain and the cold, and R.V.’s to house the TV for watching another game.

“Your team can’t always be great,” Mr. Anderson quoted one fan as saying, “but the tailgating is.”