Oh Dog, you Sleuth!

The frightening Sardis on 44th Street.

Yesterday after work, I invited Jeremy and Katherine to do the Times Square soundwalk with me. The starting point was McHale’s bar and there was a lot of commotion as all three of us tried to get started. Since the little connector port on my ipod is cracked, I’ve been having problems with it crashing and saying it’s out of power (even though it charges all day). So I had my old CD player as backup. And Katherine wasn’t able to get her borrowed walkman to read her CD. Meanwhile Jeremy is already listening to the audio tour and we’re shouting, ‘Wait! Wait!’ cause it’s kind of ruined when everyone is out of sync, which was a little bit of the case throughout anyway.

I was really excited about this one after enjoying the tour of Chinatown. Added to that, the narrator of today’s tour was Speed Levitch, who the subject of the documentary, “The Cruise”, where he goes on and on about cool obscure details of Manhattan encyclopedically and without restraint. And this seemed like a perfect part of town jam-packed with stories and hidden history, so I was frothing at the mouth with anxiousness.

But it really sucked! We spent most of the time on the sidestreets between 7th and 8th avenues hearing about the Broadway theaters, a quick foray in front of the abandoned Scientology building (I gotta say, Hollywood has NY beat for terrifying Scientology headquarters). We stopped in front of and were encouraged to go into Sardis, but those caricatures have always freaked me out ever since I was kid. There was brief detour to Birdland (I always thought it was in the village for some reason), which just looked like a Holiday Inn lounge now (and one of the headliners on the calendar for this month was Joe Piscapo!). Not to mention that Levitch doesn’t come across very well as your guide. He spews every cliche in the book about the area and leaves out all the salty details. I mean, it’s Times Square for christ-sakes!!! Who cares about Shubert’s alley?!?

I do highly recommend visiting Show World on 8th Avenue. The front entryway is this surreal temple decorated with clown statues and hundreds of pieces of tiny mirrored squares. And at the end, Levitch guides you into the Marriott for a sneak ride in the glass elevator, which was pretty thrilling even though it doesn’t deliver on the Manhattan vista as you’d expect from a glass elevator. Overall, I give this tour a D-. Afterward, Katherine had the best idea: that Bobby Young should give one of these headphone tours in the neighborhood of his chosing.

Psychadelic carpet in the Marriott.

Jeremy brooding over what steak combo meal to eat at Tad’s Steakhouse (there’s three in the Times Square area, but I recommend the one on 42nd Street for best wallpaper).

Glasses of wine individually wrapped with cellophane are the classiest! Otherwise Tad’s grossed me out completely. And I still can’t help but think about the dumbwaiter next to the cashiers station, where the chef/busboy lowered dirty dishes to the basement. Being a dishwasher in a basement on 42nd street is going to keep me awake at night for days to come…