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| | | | | | | | Thursday, October 19, 2000
Monday Night Football takes on ... New York City
By Chris Corbellini
MondayNightFootball.com
NEW YORK -- Where do you begin talking about a city that has ... everything? This rock called the Big Apple is an island of sin or sainthood or everything in between, depending on your view of the world.
|  | | Former Jets QB Joe Namath, seen here in Super Bowl III, is one of New York's few great champions. |
The best advice a New Yorker can give a tourist visiting this intimidating little town is to grab a true New Yorker and have him or her show you around. Trying to get a sense on your own will inevitably lead you to Times Square, the biggest electric bug-killer on Earth. Plus, this weekend is one of the best sports ones of the year in Manhattan (can you say Subway Series?), so you've got places to see before this Sunday is over.
It's been awhile since you have seen him and that New Yorker has changed a little, as he stands waiting for you smiling at the top of the Grand Central Station steps at the Vanderbilt Avenue entrance, adjacent to Michael Jordan's restaurant (A MJ eatery in New York? Puh-leeze). He's wearing black jeans, a black T-shirt and a Yankee cap, hasn't shaved since Friday morning and just got back from the gym. He over-tips waitresses and the shoeshine guy outside Grand Central and under-tips the cabby because that bastard drove down Park to get down to Little Italy when he knows the East River Drive would have been a lot quicker.
He also knows sports in New York as well as anyone else in the area -- which is to say pretty damn well about baseball and a little less so about football. It has everything to do with winning. New York is attracted to a likeable winner -- and the Jets and Giants don't have that reputation yet.
Monday Night Football is in town? That can only mean the Dolphins are coming, because it is the only intense NFL rivalry in the area these days ... even if Jets fans have to cross the Hudson into New Jersey of all places to watch the game at a stadium named after the Giants.
He laughs as he stands three feet off the curb as cars whistle past inches from his face on Park Avenue South -- looking for that cab with that middle light on -- when asked if he's a Yankees or Mets fan. Mets fans, God bless 'em, they live in Queens. Yankees fans reside everywhere else in the world. He'll tell you as you get out of the cab on the corner of Broome and Mulberry Streets, looking for lunch in Little Italy, that Mets and Yankees fans come together when it's May and Reggie Miller has the ball and the Knicks lead by two at the Garden.
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Walk on the wild side
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It's nearly impossible to talk about the wild scene in New York. To mention one area over the other is like describing the fence that protects you from falling over the Grand Canyon. But what the hell, here are three completely different places for you to check out. Each will certainly shock you in one way or another.
For starters, Hogs and Heifers (859 Washington St.) in the meatpacking district is a pretty accommodating place for the I-want-to-live-my-college-days-again or the bachelorette party set. Expect tourists from Texas, drunken flight attendants and the occasional celebrity shimming on the bar with the fire-breathing bartenders to the Charlie Daniels Band classic "Devil went down to Georgia." Then watch those same bartenders try to rip off patron's bras and put them on the wall. Just don't be fresh, you crazy thing, or you may get the boot from a bouncer that looks like Blaster from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.
If shots aren't your thing, and you're staying at a hotel in the midtown area, try the ultra-trendy Whiskey Bar (235 W. 46th St.) in the Paramount Hotel. Staring at the models serving you drinks may make you forget the huge bill at the end of the night. This is one of the few places in Manhattan -- especially midtown Manhattan -- where tourists and the so-called fabulous people mingle as one.
Of course, you can show your girlfriend or wife how secure you are in your masculinity by taking her to Lucky Chang's (Building 24 on First Avenue), dubbed the "original drag-queen restaurant." The food is OK, but the show is one of a kind.
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And yes, that's Cindy Crawford with the cell phone attached to her shoulder and her rock-hard midriff bared on Spring and Mercer Streets. Yes, that was Steven Tyler with a cell phone in Greenwich Village. Yes, that was Wayne Chrebet at the Park Avenue Country Club. Don't point! Rock stars, models and NFL wide receivers like to wander around anonymously too. He also reassures you there are just as many smiling faces here than crazy ones, as you stare at the bum with the ratty ski mask pushing a shopping cart filled with plastic bottles on West Houston Street espousing to no one in particular it's time to repent. Must be reaching out to Bengals fans.
You work your way through trendy SoHo up towards let's-chug-some-beer Bleecker Street, and stop at a watering hole aptly named Off the Wagon. The native New Yorker just wants to see the Week 8 scores and the start of the Yankees-Mets game. And no, we're not staying. Bleecker Street bars are highly overrated during the weekends. It's way too busy. Maybe we'll settle in at a calmer place in the West Village or a little more uptown.
You're not going that far uptown, of course. Central Park to a New Yorker is for weekday lunches and weekend jogs. NFL Sundays are for the ESPN Zone when you're with friends from out of town. An ode to attention-deficit-disorder sufferers, the Zone has every game displayed in its mind-numbing glory. You fight through the crowd to the bar on the second floor and the four o'clock games are beginning.
It's a crazy scene in the gaudiest block on the planet. The New Yorker is trying to impress you, of course. He (in this case, we'll go with "he") will show you it's the only place in the world where the sky is not the limit -- sports included. The truest thing he knows is: if you can keep up with New York's frustrating pace, and afford an apartment here, you are on your way to greatness. Joe Namath and David Cone know this already, and you better believe Latrell Spreewell and Vinny Testaverde want to know it.
Now you tell him, tell your smiling New York guide, is he lying? The city isn't that ominous after all if you know where to go. So, with that in mind, here are:
Four cool things about New York:
1. ESPN Zone -- Although the recent addition of Bar Code has taken the new kid status of the suddenly touchy-feely Times Square, the Zone (1472 Broadway) is probably the only hangout in the area where you'll find some locals outside of New Year's Eve. That's because not many sports bars in NYC can boast a theatre-size wall of televisions on the second floor that can broadcast nearly every NFL game. Just get there early, because the tables are set for the 1 p.m. games well in advance from the morning line outside and it's first-come, first-serve on the afternoon ones.
2. Little Italy -- It's a good bet that you'll find any manner of food here in NYC. If you want a restaurant that has say -- a combination of East Timor and Alaskan food -- chances are this city has two nestled side-by-side competing against each other. But Little Italy has some of the finest restaurants in Manhattan within feet of each other and is only a few blocks from SoHo and Greenwich Village. Try Da Nico's (164 Mulberry St.), a favorite of Mayor Rudy Giuliani, for the finest Fettuccine Alfredo on Earth. It also seems like the monstrous Chinatown is eating up Little Italy block-by-block. So make reservations soon!
3. Yankee Stadium (161st St. and River Avenue, Bronx) -- Home to the 25-time world champion New York Yankees, Yankee Stadium is arguably the most famous sporting venue in the world and a must for a sports fan if the team is in town. Good luck this week with the Subway Series being played out.
And you've heard the stories about the bleachers in right field. Here's a toned-down one that happened during Game 2 of the 1998 World Series against the Padres. A guy with a Padres hat was working on a crossword puzzle in the bleachers with the Yanks holding a commanding lead in the fourth inning. A Yankees fan four rows behind him noted this blatant transgression and screamed, "Hey buddy, what's a five letter word for a guy who does crossword puzzles during the World Series? Loser!" The bleacher creatures' laughter obviously distracted them from their sporadic battery throwing, most likely to Tony Gwynn's delight in the Yanks' eventual 9-3 rout. If you can handle this crowd, you can handle anything New York throws at you.
4. McSorley's Tavern (15 E 7th St.) -- If you're looking for a classic New York saloon, this East Village drinking hole fits the bill. The second oldest bar in New York opened in 1857 and women weren't allowed in until the 1970s. Try to weave through the NYU crowd and find a table, and order either "light" or "dark" McSorley's beer, the only types they have. There are so many truly great bars on every corner of NYC that have a larger selection, but hey, why not go old school when you are here? Gramps would be proud.
Final grade for New York City:
New York is the Joe Namath of cities. You wanted a sports analogy, right?
I could easily say it's the greatest city in the world, a Rhodes Scholar, Heisman and Tony Award winner all rolled into one, but where is the creativity in that? Everyone knows Namath. They know he backed up what he said when he predicted a victory over the heavily favored Colts in Super Bowl III. They know he's been on top of the sporting world. They know it wasn't easy for him, with those bad knees and the New York pressure. A lot of people have been chewed up and spit out in his position. And yet he was a resilient champion, and he looked smoother than most in doing so. He was a likeable, stylish winner. He, more than nearly any athlete, represents the best of what New York has to offer.
Chris Corbellini is the editor of MondayNightFootball.com.
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