We recently went on a fact-finding trip to New York City. There are millions of stories in the Big Apple. This is one of them. Seeming like a good idea at the time, we took coach seats on the midnight train to New York.
If you live in Fayetteville, you have probably heard the whistle of the 12:59 a.m. Silver Meteor. It delivers you to Penn Station around lunchtime where a swarm of gypsy taxi drivers each strive to take you on a ride and relieve you of a chunk of money.
Groggy from the red-eye train, we let a fast-talking hustler, who claimed to be an Uber driver, grab our luggage and put us in his vehicle. Poor decision. Pro tip: always use the Uber app. If a stranger comes up to you claiming to be an Uber driver, he is not. Sixty dollars later for a $20 trip, I realized my error. Life goes on.
Our hotel was only a block from Times Square. The desk clerk was a gentleman wearing purple-framed glasses with a long beard festooned with purple flowers and silver stars. Quite impressive. Back in the dark ages of the late 60’s, Times Square was a squalid cesspool of dirt, hookers, thieves, girly shows, porno theaters, and greasy spoons. It was pretty cool. Not so in 2025.
Now it is the Disney version of the Las Vegas strip. It is surprisingly clean, packed with gawking tourists, more giant digital signs than you can shake a cataract at, and stores that would fit in any upscale mall in regular America.
There are few homeless folks visible in Times Square, maybe they are staying in tax-paid hotels. The homeless we did see sported homemade cardboard signs showing sparks of humor. One gentleman had a sign that said “Screw you. Pay me.” (Verb modified as this is a family paper). Another had a sign stating, “Need Money for Weed & Women.”
A third had a sign with the humble brag “Need money for penis reduction surgery.” But mostly it was non-English-speaking tourists craning their necks at the adrenaline-inducing flashing signs.
We traveled with our son Will and two friends from Newton Grove. Arising early, I took the subway to Greenwich Village to Caffe Reggio for a cappuccino and a muffin. The Reggio features the first espresso machine to come to America. Massively impressive, the silver machine is the equivalent of the Blue Origin rocket of its time without the benefit of Katy Perry or Gayle King. A visit to Reggio is highly recommended. We visited the Met Art Museum, Museum of Modern Art, and the Frick Museum.
The Met has world class stuff from Monet, Manet, and Van Gogh. The Modern Art Museum demonstrates Andy Warhol’s quote that “Art is what I can get away with.” My favorite item in the MOMA was a large triangle of hairy Swiss cheese. Hair plugs in a dairy product equals high art. A display of different-sized paper bags was equally entrancing.
Seeking even more culture, we went to three plays: Cabaret, Hades Town, and Oh, Mary! Hades Town, based on a story from Greek Mythology, set somewhere between New Orleans and Hell, was the best.
No trip to New York is complete without a visit to McSorely’s Old Ale House, where Abraham Lincoln used to hang out when he was in town. Your choice is either dark or light ale. The mugs are small, but you get two with each order. The subways are much cleaner than I remembered them being a few years ago. No one tried to push us onto the tracks, which I counted as a plus.
We went on the Mafia Walking tour led by Tony, a retired disabled NYC Police narcotics detective who had grown up in Little Italy. Tony had led a colorful life before entering the police department: running numbers as a child for the Gambino family, doing collection work for bookies as an adult, and having only one felony arrest but no conviction before joining the force. He was very open about his past misdeeds, including holding a debtor by his ankles over the edge of a tall building to convince said debtor to pay up. He paid. Tony was a charming sociopath, which is what most sociopaths usually are.
He was a highly entertaining guide, pointing out various locations where the Mafia had killed or maimed people, had their headquarters, and their favorite restaurants. He discussed what it was like to pretend to be a drug dealer buying wholesale amounts of heroin from seriously bad guys. In a word: Dangerous.
Unfortunately, we had to leave the tour before it ended, thus missing out on a free Cannoli.
The Big Apple is bigger than ever, even without King Kong climbing the Empire State Building.
I give it 5 stars. Go see it.

(Illustration by Pitt Dickey)