On Thursday we walked via Times Square to Pier 83 on the Hudson for a 1 1/2 hour boat trip down the bay, past the Statue of Liberty and up the East River to the Williamsburg Bridge.
That was far enough. The boat is called The Circle Line and does trips all the way round Manhattan. Believe me, it takes 2 1/2 hours and we saw the best bits yesterday. Our guide, unexpectedly, was excellent. He was strong on architecture and history and threw in enough trivia to keep everyone happy. The skyline has changed a lot since ‘83 both on Manhattan and in Brooklyn and Jersey City. The latter has a lot of high rise offices which I suppose are cheaper than their equivalent on Manhattan.
Poster by Jean Cocteau for the 1911 Ballet Russe season showing Nijinsky in costume for Le Spectre de la rose, Paris.
”The Ballets Russes was an itinerant ballet company begun in Paris which performed between 1909 and 1929 throughout Europe and on tours to North and South America. The company never performed in Russia, where the Revolution disrupted society. After its initial Paris season, the company had no formal ties there.” (Wikipedia)
I like the understatement: “disrupted society”. But I digress. Many Russian émigrés found their way to New York after the revolution including members of the Russian Imperial Ballet, who founded the Russian Tea Room, next to Carnegie Hall in 1926. I had been before and so was not surprised by the 24 carat gold ceiling, red leather baguettes and abundance of Russian art on the walls. The food was good too.
This is a Tesla you will not see in the UK or EU. Like many people in the US it is too heavy (3 1/2 tons) and EU and UK regulations also ban exterior features with sharp edges to protect pedestrians and cyclists. The Cybertruck’s stainless-steel body panels and rigid structure do not meet these safety standards. In my opinion it looks sinister, ugly and doesn’t look like a pickup truck.
We call those monstrosities dumpsters on wheels – motorized rubbish bins to you. I think I shall petition my member of parliament to look into our safety regulations as well. Thanks for the tip.
An acquaintance, a contractor, has a Tesla cybertruck. I was surprised to see how much it could hold. In early 2025, he was driving to Mass, and was flipped off by another parishioner, a pedestrian.
The cybertruck reminds me of the Pontiac Aztec, a car that nobody ever called handsome. I think that the Aztec also tended to catch fire now and then. But the model has long been retired.
How does one get off the Circle Manhattan ferry boat before the circle is completed I wondered. Googled: when one takes the Landmarks Cruise, operated by the Circle Line, with the promo ‘short on time big on views’, but nonetheless a circle not.
I closed the circle in 1984, the first of many – and for a while annual -visits, a gawking antipodean, a hemisphere change confounding up with down and left with right, and needed to ask of the two burly welcoming fellows which side of the boat to sit, unsure which direction we would take.
“Waddayawanna see? Manhattan or Joysy?”
“Manhattan”.
“Hey Joe, how come nobody wants to see Joysy?
Have to love New Yorkers.