Working in the Big City

Even though I’ve been traveling for work for more than six years, I hadn’t had a conference in New York City until last week. The week beforehand, I felt too tired to go, which is often the case. I usually perk up when I smell the airport—I love to travel, and that stale, industrial air smells like traveling. My sleep schedule was off because I’d been staying up late trying to get the Parish Visitor, our church newsletter, ready to be printed before I left. I never get a chance to pack my bag until late the night before the trip, but it’s easy—I only have four days’ worth of clothes nice enough for a conference. I’d love to get a new suit—red!—one of these days. I don’t want it to be too garish, and I don’t want to look like Hillary Clinton, as much as I like her, so it might take some hunting. A nice used clothing store could be just the place.

Anyway, I packed my suitcase with two pairs of shoes, an extra pair of comfortable pants, a couple of sweaters, and my work clothes. My backpack is full of my iPod shuffle, my journal, sunglasses, two books, the camera, a camping pillow, and a swiped airplane blanket from a good ten years ago, when they were blue, fuzzy, and disposable. (Remind me to tell you my hilarious and heartbreaking story of arriving in Liverpool to study abroad—that airplane blanket features heavily.) I collapsed into bed. My coworker and good buddy Karen was picking me up from home in the company car, a manual transmission Jetta, at 7:50 a.m. on Friday. She arrived on time and I had already managed to make Dave a lunch and a mocha, polish off a few dishes, and water the plants. We headed for the airport, taking E-470 despite the fee, which the company would pay back. (Dave and I don’t take toll roads as a matter of principle: see this post and this one for the plusses and minuses of principles.) No problems at the airport, and we were both dying for coffee, so we sat down at Au Bon Pain to get some breakfast and coffee. I had a nice hot plate of oatmeal, which had brown sugar and strawberries—and was served in a cookie bowl! So much for a healthy start to the day. As always, as soon as the stale airplane air hit my face, I pulled my blanket over my head (Dave hates that) and went to sleep. I rarely even take advantage of my free drink anymore, since I’m asleep as soon as my head hits the camp pillow propped awkwardly against the plastic window. We got to New York on time even though we’d had to sit on the Denver tarmac for nearly an hour because of high winds at LaGuardia. We stumbled off and headed for the taxi stand. Both Karen and I are light packers and we hadn’t checked our bags. We got to our hotel, the Marriott Marquis Times Square, at about 6:00 p.m. EST.

I’d been having nervous feelings about New York City, which is kind of strange because I just LOVE cities. Even though everyone is tired of 9/11, it’s still very much a part of our lives. Dave and I moved from Boston to Boulder only days after the attack, and Boston was close to the center. If I remember correctly, two of the planes had originated in Boston, and the police were still raiding hotel rooms when we were packing up our lives and heading west. So I’d been thinking about danger. However, when we flew past (and past, and past) the city, I couldn’t believe how beautiful it was. Building after building, and the sun was sparkling off the river. I had forgotten—I always do, somehow—that cities are always built on water. It seemed unbelievable that a city that big, perched on the edge of an island, hadn’t just sunk into the water. And such a big city! With so much land that isn’t the city beyond it. I love how flying shows you how big the earth really is, compared to the tiny little people with complicated, important, but self-contained lives bumbling about on it. I was just thrilled to see New York, and I was easily able to set the fear aside.

Karen and I checked in, checked out the view from our room on the thirty-fifth floor of the hotel, and headed out into Times Square. The silly thing that came immediately to mind was “it’s just like Tokyo!” I see so many more pictures of Tokyo on TV that I connect the neon and bustle to Japan rather than New York. It was gorgeous, hideous, overwhelming, disorienting, and exciting.

We pushed through the crowds to get to TKTS, hoping to buy marked-down tickets for a show that night. Luckily, Karen and I are both small and quick, so we were able to keep together. We wanted to see Avenue Q, but when we found out that it cost $75.00 to buy the cheap tickets, we took pity on our spouses back at home and decided to see something cheaper. (My spouse was splurging on himself too, but that meant buying more mochas than he was supposed to and replacing the headlights and windshield wipers on the car.) For $30, we could get tickets for a murder mystery called Perfect Crime, so we did. Then we realized that we didn’t have a long time to eat, so we headed back to the hotel to grab a quick dinner and change clothes. We ate pretty decent sushi at the hotel sushi bar and then dashed back outside to the Snapple Theater. It was small, and cute, and we all got to move forward because the theater wasn’t full. The play was terrific! We both really enjoyed it. Astonishingly, the program explained that the lead actress had been in every showing except four since it began running in 1987! I wondered if she’d been asleep the whole play. On the way down the stairs, we bumped into one of the actors and congratulated him. Then Karen asked him to sign our playbills, and he obliged. (We had the sense that didn’t happen too often.) We created a small line of like-minded audience members, and then headed back to the hotel. On the way, we bought cookies and an enormous chocolate stick that looked like a cannoli. Then we went back out to buy a bottle of wine, after asking the concierge where to find one. Karen wanted a pop, so we went into a drugstore at about 11:30 p.m. There were five cashiers and a line! I guess that’s Times Square for you, but I was amazed and charmed that there really were crowds outside at that time of night, like you hear. (It’s a bit hard to tell when it’s night in Times Square, actually!)

The next morning we checked in with the concierge and found out where we could eat breakfast. We ate at a little diner on Restaurant Row and then walked around the city for a while. We didn’t have to be at work until setup at 1:00 p.m. We stumbled on the Hell’s Kitchen flea market, which was pretty fun. I was (again) charmed to be somewhere I’d heard of—Hell’s Kitchen!—and Karen and I both love secondhand stores and flea markets. I found the most beautiful women’s suit, sort of green and gold, which I would’ve paid the $75 for if the zipper hadn’t threatened to burst when I tried the skirt on over my pants. We also found a little indoor arcade where Karen got a chair massage and I got talked into a skirt I never would’ve bought if the little Asian lady hadn’t insisted on bargaining with me. She wouldn’t give up! I almost yelled “I’m American! This isn’t fun!” but that would’ve been rude. I ended up paying $22 for a skirt that would’ve cost twice that at a Nepalese importer in Boulder—hot pink and flowy. It looks comfy, and I’ll wear it, but geez!

Karen and I spent about an hour arranging the booth and organizing the books loosely by field before Lynne showed up. (My boss, the honest-to-goodness Lynne Rienner of Lynne Rienner Publishers.) She has an apartment in NYC, so she walked over and spent the next three hours fiddling and organizing and teaching us how to think about the book groupings. She’s great at that sort of thing. We were set free at 5:00 p.m., when my old friend Renee was due to arrive. She and I worked together at Rowman & Littlefield until she moved to NYC, where she’d always wanted to live. She and her husband and their cat Pig live in Queens, so she took the subway to meet me in midtown. (I learned that everyone laughs if you say something is “downtown” in New York.) Karen came along, and Renee took us by subway to Caracas Arepa Bar, a Venezuelan restaurant featuring arepas, which I’d never heard of. It was amazing! Then we headed over to Bluestockings, a feminist bookstore, where we found all kinds of cool—and distressing—stuff to read. We finally headed back to the hotel and got to bed.

Sunday morning I got up and went to church; I found a reconciling in Christ ELCA Lutheran church about a mile away, so I headed over there. It was a beautiful morning, chilly but sunny, and I enjoyed walking past things like Radio City Music Hall. The church was a strange shape and located directly underneath a huge office building. I walked in to discover that the 8:45 a.m. service was held not in the sanctuary, but in a tiny chapel on the main floor. There were only thirteen people there by the end of the service (a few snuck in late), but it was a really intimate, very liturgical service. It was really fun to hear and sing some of the liturgy I was raised on, since my home church, Mount Calvary, doesn’t follow those traditional liturgies very often. I felt very included, even though I didn’t talk to anyone, and left happy.

I took a bunch of photos on my way back to the hotel, where I found Karen ready to wander about looking for lunch. We walked all over, enjoying the sights, and finally stopped at a Thai restaurant for some amazing soup. We got back to the hotel in plenty of time to change clothes for work, which started at 1:00 p.m.

What do I do at work at conferences? A few things. I meet people I’m already working with who I’ve never met in person. I talk with potential new authors about their book projects. I point out and sell books at our booth. I ask questions about the state of the academic discipline and who is working on good projects. All of it is designed to bring in new books and showcase our published books. It’s really fun! I get to talk about books and publishing all day and meet people who have interesting ideas.

Work ended at 6:00 p.m. on Sunday, and Karen and I dashed back to our room to change our clothes. We were both headed to Long Island to see people: my old Emerson College roomie, Tracy, and Karen’s husband’s aunt. We took the subway to Penn Station, because we had walked the route on Saturday and found that we’d be pressed for time, trying to make a 6:40 p.m. train. I accidentally bought the wrong ticket (Peak/Off-Peak instead of plain old Off-Peak), so we had to run around getting a refund and then a new ticket. However, we made the train and chatted during the 45-minute ride out to Long Island. I got off in Wantagh and headed down the stairs to find Tracy’s car; she described it as “red, with lots of yellow tape. A total piece of crap.” It was just like what she described, so I got in and gave her a hug. Morgan Paige, her new baby, was tucked in the backseat, so we drove home quickly, talking about how long it had been since we’ve seen each other (more than seven years). At Tracy’s apartment, I delightedly took Morgan out of the carrier and walked around with her while Tracy pulled some leftover eggplant lasagna out of the fridge. We put Morgan to bed and then had dinner—delicious, especially since Tracy was not exactly known for her cooking during our year of living together. We reminisced, talked about her life with husband and baby on Long Island and mine with husband in Boulder, and what we hope for our futures. It was just lovely to see her again! (And the baby is adorable.) Plus, she gave me a cupcake—apparently cupcakes are the new thing in New York. I saw a burgers and cupcakes restaurant that sold only burgers and cupcakes!

I took a taxi back to the train station for the very last train headed back to the city. Karen and I had agreed to try to meet at the end of the train, so I waited near the green line that marked the “loading zone.” Five minutes before the train was due to arrive, a young guy stopped near me, unzipped, and began to pee. I dutifully looked the other direction. “Hey!” he yelled. “Hey! Hi!” I turned my head forward, still avoiding him. “Do you ever pee and it just feels SO GOOD?” he yelled. “Uh, sure, sometimes in the woods,” I said, hoping he might pick up on the suggestion that people ought not pee on the train platform. His friends, giggling, hauled him off and the train came. At which point I realized that, in my infinite genius, I was standing at the very, very beginning of the train. So I ran, and ran, thinking that I’d better get on the train, but wanting to get near the end of it so I wouldn’t have to go through the doors to get to Karen. (There are signs saying that you shouldn’t go through the cars while the train is moving, but I’ve since been informed by my native New Yorker friends that everyone does anyway.) Remarkably, I both got on the train and found Karen, who—also remarkably—had made the train despite the unreliability of her husband’s aunt.

Monday was a full work day. Karen and I got up in time to go to Lenny’s for a yogurt parfait (me) and oatmeal (Karen). I had appointments from 9:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m., and I drank a lot of coffee. We were part sponsors of two receptions that evening, so we went to part of each. Renee came by again, so she and I walked Restaurant Row looking for dinner. We started at Brazil Brazil, but the menu didn’t look that good, so Renee faked nausea and we left. We wound up at Dervish Turkish, where I discovered that, despite being a vegetablephile, I don’t like okra much. Oh well. It was great to see Renee again and catch up on our lives and the blog we both read, I Blame the Patriarchy.

Tuesday was another full work day. Karen got up first and got me some coffee and a protein platter from one of the two Starbucks in the hotel. (As you can see, she took very good care of me!) There was a panel about Lynne Rienner’s contribution to the ISA and the field of international studies at 8:00 a.m., so Lynne came by the room at about 7:20 and we all chatted until we had to go down to the panel. Everyone was very complimentary, and Lynne challenged them with some tough publishing questions that led to a great discussion. I ended up feeling very proud to be part of Lynne Rienner Publishers. Again, I had appointments from 9:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m., and then we had another reception. After the reception, we met up with my good buddy Joe Parry, editor at Lexington Books. Joe suggested a restaurant near his hotel, a mile or so away, so we headed over there. They had delicious sushi, plenty of warm sake, and the shrimp I was longing for. No one said anything to us, but as we were paying the staff seemed agitated and when we left, they slammed down the metal grate that protects the store for the night. We would’ve been happy to leave, if they’d just told us they wanted to close! So we stopped for a drink at Joe’s hotel’s bar, where a goofy older man told me I looked like the person who played “Ariel” in The Little Mermaid. He introduced himself as Andy Rooney’s son Jimmy Rooney, and told us that he was the voice of Flounder. Karen didn’t believe him, so he wrote down a website. Lo and behold! He was not the voice of Flounder.

Wednesday was the last day of exhibits. We sell our books at a good discount on the last day, so the booth turns into a zoo. Karen and I managed to get up in time to fortify ourselves for the madness—we went to Lenny’s for orange juice and egg and sausage sandwiches on a roll (delicious!). I only had one appointment, so I had time to help process orders. At noon on the dot, we dismantled the whole booth, ending up with only three boxes and our Lynne Rienner Publishers sign to send back! We had plenty of time to change clothes and get lunch before our flight, so we headed to the concierge desk for the final time and found out where to get good soup and real New York bagels within walking distance. We ended up at The Original Soup Man, of Seinfeld’s “Soup Nazi” fame. I had lobster bisque and Karen had jambalya. There are, indeed, rules. You have to know what you want, have your money out, and then move to the side of the line in the tiny storefront. I HATE having to know what I want without time to read the menu, but it was on a chalkboard out front, so I thought I was all set when I got to the head of the line. I didn’t, however, know that I had to choose a fruit. “Apple, orange, or banana?” the lady asked. I hesitated. “Fruit?!” the lady demanded. “Uh, apple!” I said, immediately wishing I’d chosen banana.

After lunch we bought bagels for our beloved spouses, who had suffered through Valentine’s Day without us. Then we picked up our suitcases from the hotel and headed for the airport. Dave picked us up at 8:30-ish, Colorado time, and he and I dropped Karen off in Boulder before heading over to our friends’ house to walk their dog (they were on a trip to New York).

All in all, a very successful trip. I’d love to vacation in New York City sometime, although you can’t beat the work-paid-for hotel room and food. I got back home energized about following up with the potential authors I’d met. However, I was sure ready for a break by the time the weekend rolled around! And a lovely weekend it was, with Dave cooking me a delicious dinner for our belated Valentine’s Day.