Finally! Some Snow!

Perhaps it came because it was supposed to. Just in time to lend this Holiday Week a little flare, don't you think?

So, my son and I were gifted by Mom with two tickets to see "A Little Night Music" at the Matinee showing on the day after Christmas. I would meet him there - so what does the Street Teacher do? He walks there.

Here I am walking down the west side of 5th Avenue, passing the Pulitzer Fountain, which features the bronze allegorical figure of Pomona - the goddess of abundance! Ah, Christmas is only partially over.

The snow has yet to begin falling in volume, but it is beginning to shower down.

As I look across the intersection of 57th St. and 5th Avenue toward Tiffany's, I see the dampened street, and can see the flurries of snow beginning to whiten the black truck as it crosses. Yes, the forecast was definite: there will be snow.

I walk on down 5th Avenue, and over at 54th Street - just because, you see - and re-discover the great walkways between the blocks of 5th and 6th that can take me through to 52nd Street! Brilliant! Not everything has to be at right angles - or, at least, at such great lengths between them.

So, I begin my walk down the Alley.

Wow, I thought, looking at the Equitable Building portion (on the right) - this is great in the snow.

I wonder how many people really discover this part of the city? It's like opening gifts sealed with velcro: you can leave them, and "close" them up - and come back and they're still fresh. Look -

Now, I really wonder just why an elephant is here. Perhaps I'll take the time soon to ask someone in "authority" there if there is a reason. Perhaps some of you know already. If so, please write a comment - teach me. I'm open to news of all kinds.

But it is a beautiful creation - and the dancer on his head?

Well, why not?

But, that's not all.

I am getting close to my destination - the Walter Kerr Theatre at 218 West 48th Street - and one of the two theaters named after a critic (Kerr won the Pulitzer Prize; Brooks Atkinson is the other critic with a theater) - so I'm hoping I'm just minutes away.

Yet, before I reach the end of my magical alley, there's a leaping rabbit! Seeming so incongruous, don't you think? Looks as if he is leaping out of a hat. Curiouser and curiouser.

But there it is - the theater.

My son's there somewhere - and in we go to see the show. Which was, by the way, fantastic. After all, when you're in the second row, orchestra, and so close to the stars, the magic of the stage just rises up to your brain and charges all your nerves. And we were seated behind four lovely ladies from Florida who loved the theater: Hope, Patti, Susan, and Ginger. They could have such theatrical last names, don't you think?

I took no photos of the show as I was watching it, of course. Take it from me, since the show closes January 9, you would have a very enjoyable evening or afternoon. (And this may be one of the few shows that will close twice within a year. The first production, starring Catherine Zeta Jones and Angela Lansbury, closed June 20, 2010, but re-opened with Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch on July 13.)

By the way, the songs in A Little Night Music were written by Stephen Sondheim (who now also has a theater named after himself). The show's song list is: Overture and Night Waltz, Now - Later - Soon, The Glamorous Life, Remember?, You Must Meet My Wife, Liaisons, In Praise of Women, Every Day a Little Death, A Weekend in the Country, The Sun Won't Set, It Would Have Been Wonderful, Perpetual Anticipation, Send In the Clowns (perhaps the most well known), The Miller's Son, and Finale.

So, after the finale, we left the theater to - snow and wind. Brrr!

Windbown and dazzled by the lights, and left by my son who immediately went off to meet one of his friends, I walk on back homewards.

Radio City glows among the snowflakes on W. 50th Street, and shines over the traffic on 6th Avenue. Something warming about that, I think.

I walk up 6th Avenue a couple of blocks - and I really didn't expect to see one, but here it is: a hot dog vendor.





Would you have thought one would be out in this weather? I didn't go up for a dog, or to see how he was doing, but most of the vendors I've seen lately do their best to cheer you up by with their enthusiastic participation in the whole holiday cheer.

I wonder if the doorman at the Warwick Hotel, right behind him, ever comes over for a little refreshment?

I was able to walk pretty efficiently back that evening, you should know, because, well, there weren't many cars at all - even on 5th Avenue.

But it only made the lights on the Fendi store (the one on the right) so much brighter.

I walked over toward Madison, and in a few blocks I was into the residential neighborhood of the East 60's between Madison and Park Avenues.

The homes on East 64th Street are freshly layered in snow, and the expanse of Park Avenue as I look to the left, northward, is empty of vehicles.

These are the times that make living in the City almost intimate encounters with its essence. Each of us will stage our own encounter as if we would imagine an ancient narrative.




I look down Park Avenue to the south, toward the Waldorf and Grand Central Terminal - invisible in the far snow shadowed distance, but present in my mind nonetheless. But I'm heading north and east, away from that world.

I walk down my street - and when I reach those bright lights, well, I'm home. Time to let all these images settle. Good night!