My son, Alex, moved Wednesday, so I decided, even though he is a perfectly competent, adult individual, that he still needed me when he moved. Ahh, to be needed again. So I hopped a Peter Pan bus to New York and, in my fashion, hit the open road. Here’s my view of the not-so open road from my bus seat.
There I was amongst the aging and the aged, plus a few young people. After all these years of wondering how a bus company would have chosen the name of Peter Pan, I suddenly get it. They are marketing themselves to oldsters. The young and poor who can’t afford the train will use buses anyway. It’s the oldsters who have a choice who might go the extra mile via a bus of eternal youth. In the picture above, you can barely see the Peter Pan in green above some old heads.
The other bit of naming that surprised me was that my bus seemed to have a name of its own–Tidy Tom. That illegible scrawl at the top of the window is “Tidy Tom” backwards against the wall of a white-sided truck we were passing.
I saw some art despite most of Chelsea being dark, what with August vacations and installations in progress for September. I was stalking Patty Chang and William Eggleston, and they did not disappoint, plus by serendipity I saw some other swell work. Chang is the next post, then photographers, and art from or influenced by Asia.
After melting on the gallery crawl, it was off to Times Square to meet Murray and watch the McDonald’s rolling light show rotate on and off–food as entertainment. McDonald’s has clearly caught the mission of the culture–everything that you can buy is sold as entertainment.
Then off Murray and I went to Alex’s old apartment to help him with the move. Here the guys are looking for the movers, who didn’t turn up until 9 p.m. Murray and I got back home at 4:50 a.m. I went to sleep. Murray went to the Melrose for breakfast and the early edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Then he picked up a U-Haul to help our daughter Minna with her four-block move in Philadelphia. Having ourselves moved one block 33 years ago, we reaffirmed what we already knew. A one block move or a four block move or a cross-country move are all pretty much the same–horrible.
