Self-Aggrandizement: Dropping the Ball

For the past five years, I've lived in Hell's Kitchen - a fast-gentrifying neighborhood to the west of Times Square. And I really like Hell's Kitchen. Especially as Ninth Ave., between 42nd and 57th, is full of an ever-increasing array of interesting little restaurants and bars.

Jess, however, hates Hell's Kitchen. She thinks it's dirty, overrun by tourists, and perhaps not even really a neighborhood (a contention backed earlier this week by my cousin Barbara, an editor at the NY Times).

This time of year, from Thanksgiving through New Years, a part of me can't help but agree with her.

My previous commute, to an office in East Midtown, took me daily through Rockefeller Center. Except during the holiday stretch, when I'd walk five blocks out of my way, just to avoid the tree-gawking crowds.

Now my commute takes me just a couple of blocks through Time Square, to the 49th St N/R/W subway stop, en route to Cyan's newer Union Square digs. Yet most evenings this month, emerging from the subway, I've barely been able to elbow my way back home, past tourists so overwhelmed by the display of neon lights they apparently lose their ability to walk or step the hell out of the way.

And it only gets worse. On New Year's Eve Day, the police barricade off our corner, as people begin streaming in by 9:00 in the morning to secure themselves ball-watching spots. Getting in and out requires ID, or (as in past years, before I relinquished my Californian license) toted phone and electric bills.

Which is one reason why, ideally, Jess and I may not be heading out at all. Despite a handful of celebratory possibilities, I'm not sure any of them compete with mini egg rolls, pigs-in-blankets, crap champagne, and a chance to stay quietly in our apartment, pretending we don't, at the stroke of midnight, live a few blocks up from the temporary epicenter of the entire world.

Dropping the Ball Filed Wednesday, December 19 2007.

Dropping the Ball
Filed Wednesday, December 19 2007.