A Cheap Bastard Goes to Manhattan

Manhattan challenges cheap bastards in the same way a friendly Rottweiler might challenge a feisty Chihuahua. Which is to say, we cheap bastards pose no risk to Manhattan, which allows the borough to toy with us.

Take for example our quest for New York pizza. You know the kind – crispy thin crust, and a modest layer of delicious toppings. Years ago we escaped a freezing downpour by popping into a Manhattan pizzeria. Obliged to buy a slice, we did, and found that there is a very big difference between “New York-style pizza,” which you can buy anywhere, and actual “New York pizza.” New York knows how to bake pizza like nowhere else.

We couldn’t remember the name of that first pizza place, so we trusted the universe when we wandered into Baked by Luigi. Like the vast majority of Manhattan pizzerias, Baked by Luigi is a tiny narrow place, with just a few tables across from a counter displaying the restaurant’s offerings. We were looking at those offerings, about to buy a couple slices, when Luigi came over and said, “Don’t decide now. Let me give you a couple of slices.”

“Give us some pizza?” I was genuinely confused.

“Sure,” Luigi said. His accent may have been from Brooklyn. There certainly was no trace of the Italy suggested by his name. “Let me give you each a slice. If you eat it and don’t order more that’s okay, but get the hell out of my restaurant and don’t ever come back.”

Luigi meant what he said, but he also was having fun with us. We accepted his challenge.

We ate Luigi’s sample slices, which were larger than I expected.

They were delicious.

We ordered more.

See what I mean? The Rottweiller Manhatten let the cheap bastard have some free pizza, an unexpected and pleasant surprise, like finding a five dollar bill in a jacket he was about to give away. But when it came to his most important demand, a reasonably priced hotel, Manhattan picked up its oversized head and let out a bemused bark, a signal to everyone that they should come see the prank it is about to pull on the noisy pipsqueak that has been yip-yipping for just a tad too long.

I don’t know about you, but that last sentence tired me out. Maybe you think I should edit it, make it two or three shorter sentences, but I won’t. An occasional run-on sentence is the closest I come to jogging these days.

I digress. We were talking about finding a cheap hotel in Manhattan. But it couldn’t be just anywhere in Manhattan. I wanted it within easy walking distance of a subway station, Times Square, Broadway, and Central Park. We would have only one full day and we wanted to see all the sites we missed during our last two visits.

Hotels meeting all my demands were outrageously expensive. Several hundred dollars a night. Luckily (I thought), I happened upon a quaint boutique hotel called The Carlton Arms Art Hotel. “Art hotel,” I thought. Here I am, married to a retired art teacher, and the most reasonably priced hotel bills itself as an “art hotel.” “Kismet,” I smiled while clicking the “Book Now” button.

Two weeks later I was standing on a sidewalk, sandwiched between our two fifty pound bags, looking up the steep stairway leading to the Carlton Arms reception desk. I again thought “kismet,” but this time I was not smiling. I had seen this once before, in Amsterdam. It is what fit young people call a “walkup.” It is what I call an effin nightmare.

It wasn’t just the fact of a long narrow stairway. I could see that the bare wood treads were sagging. I knew they would feel soft as I trusted my weight to them. The gaily painted murals were designed to distract the public from clear evidence that this building is in a serious state of disrepair.

I argued with Denise. She always wants to tote her own bag, no matter how unwieldy or heavy, up stairs. I always win these disputes, but only after I get loud and insistent in a manner I dare not adopt when she actually wants to prevail.

I argued that carrying a bag up this steep stairway would be a challenge even for me, and I have the strength of ten men, so she must allow me to take the bags up, one at a time. She let me have my way, thereby implicitly agreeing that I am incredibly masculine and a terrific lover.

I got to the top of the stairs and looked around. Ahead was a dark hallway. I could see a sign that said “toilet.” Another said “shower.” I saw a heavy middle aged woman wearing the kind of lingerie I might have seen my mother wear, assuming my mother was the type to let someone see her lingerie. She was leaning out of a doorway, presumably to find the source of the loud stair-clomping she just heard. She looked at me reproachfully, as if I had been spying on her, and popped back into her room.

This foyer, like the entire hotel, was painted with amateurish but mostly charming murals, and it was populated with lots of kitsch gewgaws. There were two pay phones. It had been years since I saw a payphone. I wondered if each was just another gewgaw. Part of the intentionally kitsch atmosphere.

By the time we left I had not seen anyone use the payphones. I was pretty sure, however, that the devices were fully functional. This seemed the type of place that might attract folks dependent on payphones.

I muscled the second bag up the stairs and then spoke with the young man in the office, on the other side of a glass divider. He gave us the key, which looked like an old fashioned skeleton key, to Room 9.

Room 9 had two beds, one more than a married couple should need. Pulling a string hanging from the ceiling light fixture proved the lighting adequate. The bathroom was mostly clean and functional.

True, the hotel made a poor first impression, but we had a warm surface to sleep on, and a private toilet and shower. You have to be pretty picky to demand more, right?

Denise wasn’t so sure. She lifted up the worn blankets and looked at sheets that probably were white when new, but that time may have been beyond the reach of any living person’s memory. Her expression was familiar. I last saw it when we were at home, on the couch, watching TV. Denise looked up from her ice cream, that same expression on her face, and said that either I or the small old dog next to me had quietly done something very rude.

Being a gentleman, I chased the dog outside.

Once again, I digress. We were talking about Room 9, where we spent the night sleeping on top of the blankets.

The room was far enough removed from the Internet router that I took my computer to the foyer for a better signal. The young man in charge was playing an electric guitar, which was plugged into a small amp. The sound filled most of the hotel, but the same distance that left Room 9 without Wifi also spared us from the young fellow’s guitar solos. Actually, “spared us” was an unfair comment. He was pretty good and I enjoyed listening to him play.

We were staying in a hovel, but the rock concert was totally free. Score!

In the morning we found an older gentleman had replaced the young guitarist. We asked if we could leave our bags until the afternoon, when we would take our business to a Comfort Inn by the airport (JFK). He agreed and showed us to an unlocked storage room. There was nothing of value in our two big suitcases. I built a little fort of them and some other items in the room, and hid my backpack, which held some things I valued, inside the makeshift citadel.

That afternoon, after walking approximately one hundred miles through Manhattan, we reclaimed our bags and took the subway to a station near JFK. From there we hailed an Uber and rode in comfort to the Comfort Inn.

You may have some negative opinions about economy hotels like Comfort Inn. That is because you have never stayed at the Carlton Arms Art Hotel. Everyone should stay, just once, at the Carlton Arms Art Hotel. The experience makes a human appreciate the sumptuous luxury of clean sheets.

Let me close by saying a word about New Yorkers. They have a reputation of being rude. This is unfair. We found the subway workers very pleasant and quite patient. They happily helped us navigate the city’s complex web of underground tunnels. The New York locals were quick to warn us that a fanny pack was unzipped, or that a suitcase was not being properly monitored. True, they issued the warnings with a bark, and a suggestion that we were idiots, but the important thing is that they were watching out for a couple of strangers.

My warm feelings for New Yorkers do not include the TSA workers in JFK.

The TSA serpentine roped queue was way longer than it needed to be, it being about a mile long, and there being only a quarter mile of people waiting their turn. We had just begun walking through the long twisting pathway when we heard a woman shout, “Hey, lady!” Most of the women in line turned toward her. She shouted again, “Hey, lady!” She did this until a gray-haired woman in a wheelchair, clear across the room, looked up from her lap. “Yeah, you! Come here!”

The lady was in a tight space and had to move the electric wheelchair first forward and then back, and then several times repeat the maneuver, like a driver trying to get out of a tight parking spot. The shouting woman was young and NOT disabled, and in about ten or fifteen seconds could have made her way to the elderly cripple. She could have done that and spared everyone the shouting and the elderly woman the embarrassment, but she did not. She stood with crossed arms until the wheelchair finally made its way to the annoyed TSA bureaucrat.

I’m sorry to say that the lady yelling at the wheelchair woman was not unique. As we approached the x-ray machine we heard incessant shouting. “Put all electronic devices in a separate basket! Take off your shoes! Put your jacket in a basket! Why are you still wearing a watch!? Get all liquids out of your bags! Have you people never flown before? Get your belt in a basket!” And then, I suppose for the sake of irony, “Hurry! There are people behind you!”

Perhaps you are thinking that you have heard this kind of brusque directions before, in some other airport. Think again. The shouting was loud, in your face, and nonstop, like a drill sergeant making an example of Private Pyle. I ignored the barrage, concentrating on filling several gray baskets with electronic devices and various articles of clothing, until the woman got right in front of me and shouted “Hurry, people are behind you!”

I looked at the woman and said, “This barking is not helpful!”

Everyone in line applauded my courageous stand against tyranny. The drill sergeant hung her head in shame and thenceforth everyone was happy.

Actually, that is not what happened. I voiced my protest and, other than a young male TSA employee smirking his amusement, I got no reaction whatsoever. The barking continued, unabated. I might just as well have protested dawn’s early hour.

Eventually we made it through the TSA gauntlet. Denise pulled out her phone so that she could report these TSA workers to their supervisor. Before she could do that, however, she found a Huffington Post article identifying JFK as having the rudest TSA in the country.

The supervisors presumably know the quality of their team. Possibly they send the team for training to, like, Quantanamo Bay.

Yip, yip, New York!