it's free, no kidding, really

They told me the Staten Island Ferry is free. It said so right on their website. Can you believe it? Back in the Eighties, when I lived in Morris County, New Jersey, the Ferry was my go-to tourist thing when I had in-laws come down from the farm Upstate, especially if a foreign-exchange student was in the mix. Come on down! In those days, you could put your car on it and go across to Manhattan. It was a nominal fee (a few bucks?). It was my preferred thing because it was inexpensive, relaxing, scenic, almost a well kept secret. You breezed by the Statue of Liberty, had great views of the Twin Towers and their environs, the Brooklyn Bridge, Brooklyn, New Jersey, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, the harbor or bay or whatever it is, tugboats, freighters, cruise ships, even a flotilla of sailboats here and there.

So I told KP, "Let's one of these days take a spin down to New York, hop on the Staten Island Ferry, touch Manhattan, sail back to S.I., and drive back. Maybe five hours each way. We could do it."

"Sure. Let's."

It became a hybrid of running joke and dare.

Then I got a new car.

We did it.

In the bronze sunset of an August Wednesday afternoon.

That's the Ferry part.

It was worth it. It will always be part of our DNA and memory databases, individual and dual, if there is such a thing.

It's free.

That knocks me out, as Holden Caulfield would say.

Why free? Someone suggested it's because no one wants to go to Staten Island har har. That would only be half of a round-trip reasoning anyway. Plus, as we rode the Ferry from Manhattan during rush hour there was a healthy crowd of commuters, and tourists like ourselves, headed to Staten Island -- more than the other way around in the evening rush hour.

Thank you, Gotham.

Glad to take advantage of your gracious hospitality. Pleased to mingle with myriad visitors with myriad accents and stories of their own.

I mean, how many cities can claim such gratis generosity? San Francisco's cable cars aren't free. Is the Coliseum in Rome? The Tower in London? The Sistine Chapel? Sure, examples of free stuff for visitors abound. (Tell me some.) Parliaments of many nations, the White House, the National Zoo (not free in the sense of paid for by our taxes if you pay American taxes).

But how many freebies are there that match the scale and convenience of the Staten Island Ferry?

You malcontents who constantly bitch that "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch" and bemoan paying any taxes whatsoever (give it all to me, baby! fuckem all!), take a ride on the Staten Island Ferry. Open your eyes, breathe the windswept air, hear the seagulls and the boat's foghorn, absorb the auditory mosaic of many tongues from near and far.

Enjoy the ride, if you can.

Sail on home. 

Or anywhere.

Manhattan paean

The Slavic voices at Starbucks near the Asian straight black hair cascading off shoulders; the woman talking to herself or the sidewalk air loudly declaring 'I ain't that bad'; leaving the $37 for 24 hours garage on 110th, pivoting from Broadway to West End Avenue, the green lights in synchronicity, counting the cross streets down, even ones one way west to east, odd ones one way east to west, with a few thrown in for both directions, such as 96th; yellow cabs white NYPD black Mercedeses red Mustang silver VW; Verizon cable being snaked downward cranes upward; a city reinventing itself old new old new flashing like brilliant Times Square HD billboards; skimming the tops of skyscraping apartment buildings the splash of late-afternoon sun; amber then red light; honey locusts maples poodles schoolkids fire engines sirens; filigree pedigree wrought-iron gateways doorways window grilles and bas relief designs in concrete from the Gilded Age; uniformed doormen; strollers nannies headphones crosswalk scarf-wearers in the wind; grocery carts; bicyclists insanely threading a life-and-death needle of time and space and daring; tall apartment buildings by the trash transfer station with the tall stack by the car dealers where last time more than a decade ago I parked in a cheap lot with razor wire now gone; West End becomes 11th no one told me; the Hudson River Jersey light nearly blinding; breeze downtown; Lincoln Meatpacking Chelsea Piers; by the water; boulevard; contours; swerve; smooth. Manhattan.