Strike two

With a fistful of Motrin and copious stretching, I'm trying to recover from a full day of activity sans subways.

Yesterday I hopped into a cab for breakfast in the Village. I was feeling a little cocky about the transit strike as I sailed south in a cab with two strangers ... then we hit midtown and people walking on the sidewalks were passing us. It took me about an hour to finally get to the Village, about 80 blocks south of where I started.
The payoff was breakfast with Bill Serrin, a CMU grad who won a Pulitzer for covering race riots at the Detroit Free Press, who went on to write at the NY Times, then become an author, and then head of the graduate journalism program at NYU. We discovered that he lived a few blocks from my mom's house in Saginaw, we graduated from the same high school, he worked at the Saginaw News and Ann Arbor News, as I did, and we even share the same birthday. Kismet.
After breakfast, he gave me a walking tour of the Village. I've been there dozens of times, but Bill teaches a class called Writing New York, so he pointed out things like the place Edgar Allen Poe wrote The Cask of Amontillado and where Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women, plus lots of places that have some connection to Bob Dylan and the beat poets. Bill's students typically love one point of his walking tours: the exterior to the house in the Cosby Show.

After that, I figured since I'd paid 20 bucks to cab it to the Village, I might as well enjoy some time there, so I bought some cheese at Murray's and some bread at Amy's next door, then hoofed it across the island to Moo Shoes, a shoe store that specializes in non-leather products and that advertises heavily in PETA's magazine and Vegetarian Times. They had some cute stuff, but to say the place is poorly run with lousy customer service would be an understatement. What is it with hippies and bad customer service? Do you have to be a Republican to know to greet the only customer in your store, or to clean up the dirt and cat fur on the floor?
I left with no shoes, but I was near Guss Pickles, the only traditional pickle purveyor left in the pickle district of the lower east side, so I figured it'd still be a worthwhile trip. Damned transit strike. I was ready to pick a peck of pickled pickles, but when I arrived, Guss was locked up tight with no sign outside about when they might open.

Back in a cab, with a fantastic driver who knew how to manage a city in gridlock, and home for a bit. Then another cab ride across the park for a second interview at Columbia.

This time I met several of the writers and we talked for a bit about the vision for what The Record could be. It sounds like I have a strong chance of getting the job, if I want it, so my big internal debate is whether to stay in academia and risk getting pigeonholed, or hold out for a job in the media industry, which continues to lay people off in droves.

I shared a cab home with a woman who works in executive education at Columbia's business school, and it struck me that the transit strike does have some upside -- you get to connect a little with your fellow New Yorkers who are making the best of a bad situation.

We were supposed to have dinner with John, Anne's brother, but he's getting sick and decided to rest up before going home for the holidays, as opposed to dealing with annoying travel sans subway.

With our night off from socializing, John and I went for a walk in the neighborhood and made up for the Guss disappointment with a visit to Pickles Olives Etc. The olives are OK, but the pickles are superb and the pickled tomatoes are better than any I've ever tasted. Our fridge is loaded with brine, and while I was wondering if we could finish it all before we go, John's already talking about what we'll buy on our next trip.

So the tally yesterday was about 80 bucks in cab fare, more walking than I want to total, one job interview, one fun meeting, two meetings canceled because of the strike, and a little less than two weeks to go in the city.