October 29 – Day 53: Visiting the Dead, But Not Getting Visited Back

Ah, the day off. What we wait all week for: the chance to do laundry.

I didn’t have a lot to do during the day, so I slept in, then gathered up my laundry for my final load of New York wash. (Anything I wear this week, I’ll just wash at home; the greatest thing about being a homeowner is that I can do wash whenever I like.) My two biggest challenges were making sure I had enough detergent (not quite; I had to buy a box of soap from the machine) and not too much money left on my card. I kept having to refill it in one-dollar doses. (I think I ended up with something like 29 cents on it.)

Surprisingly to me, there weren’t too many people at the laundromat. I’d expected to have to deal with the usual assortment of those doing their own wash and that of others, but there were only about four or five people, all of whom seemed to be self-employed. I picked my machines, loaded everything up, and set about my work of filling out my California ballot and voting. It surprised me how long that took, but I had to research the propositions and local candidates, and that took some time. I dried everything, came up two socks short, and searched my bag to discover I’d neglected their mates. They’ll just have to wait until next week to be reunited.

I stopped at the post office to mail the ballot, then came home to polish off the last of my newspapers and the blog posts I’d been neglecting during the World Series, and watched some television. I thought about getting a snack somewhere before my evening appointment, but it was just a bit too chilly to consider.

My plan for the evening was to do a ghost tour of the Village. Pidge had seen an article about this particular tour in Time Out, and it sounded like fun. I’m always up for this kind of thing, and even though I didn’t expect anything unusual to occur, you never know.

It was a cold evening. The temperature was in the low 50s, but there was a pretty stiff breeze, which pushed the wind chill down. I was bundled up enough, though, that it wasn’t too bad, especially when I was walking. The tour gathers at St. Mark’s in the Bowery Church at 2^nd Avenue and 10^th Street, and we were supposed to be there between 6:45 and 7:00 for an approximate two-hour walking tour.

I got there, checked in, and waited for things to begin. The guide was lively and seemed like she was into the subject, but, unfortunately, once she started things, she was a little canned and kept mispronouncing words; it was like going on a tour with Mrs. Malaprop. She kept using words that were close to the right ones, but that just missed. This had nothing to do with her, but I knew we were off to a bad start when she took us to the graveyard of the church to talk about Peter Stuyvesant, who is buried there. The graveyard itself was full of stands selling food and crafts, and I kept wondering what kind of a church desecrates its graves by having people sell stuff over the bodies of their former customers. (I suppose that’s between them and their parishioners.) Anyway, the guide started talking about Stuyvesant and how his ghost had been sighted on numerous occasions. The reason they knew it was Stuyvesant was that the ghost had a peg leg. (Why he wasn’t made whole in the afterlife wasn’t dealt with …) She then explained that Stuyvesant had lost the leg in a naval battle in Kurrakow. It took me a moment to realize she meant “Curaçao,” which is (of course) pronounced “Koor-a-soww.” It was all downhill from there.

After two of these tours now, I have to wonder if they just can’t get people who can seem like they’re talking off the cuff and not just parroting stuff they read, or if those people have better things to do. It seems like a perfect job for actors, but I guess actors aren’t interested? Seems like it’d be preferable to waiting tables or doing administrative assistant jobs.

Now, this isn’t to say the tour was a bust. I did learn some interesting things (like, for instance, that Washington Square Park had been a potter’s field for most of its existence and that there are 20,000 bodies buried there, or that the oldest tree in New York is in the northeast corner of the park. And I finally got to see the site of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire (it’s now NYU’s chemistry department). When we were standing across from the Triangle building, some NYU student insisted on riding his skateboard on the nearly-deserted street, making a tremendous racket. My only consolation there was that every time he tried even the simplest of tricks—like riding up on the curb—he wiped out. I also noticed a rival tour across the street and heard its guide describe the fire and its aftermath.

We ran into that rival tour twice more. Once at a church on 5^th Avenue and 10^th Street with an apparently fabulous mural behind the altar that has a haunted history. Our guide described it to the best of her ability (even if she mangled her language), but the other guide (who was passed on the corner) had a photo of it. I felt envious.

The tour finished at a non-descript house on West 10^th. I’d read about this house after my visit to the Samuel Clemens house in Hartford all those weeks ago. Clemens had lived in this house in New York from 1900-1901, and is apparently still there, along with 21 other ghosts. It’s got a pretty grisly history, obviously, going all the way up to 1987, when Joel Steinberg murdered his illegally-adopted daughter. While we were standing in front of the house, the other tour passed through our group on the way down the block. I don’t know if they were going to another house, or if they just didn’t want to compete with us.

It wasn’t a bad tour, by any means, but could have been a lot better. The history was interesting, and I’m grateful that they don’t do any phony “haunting” stuff, but they really need to get some guides who can bring some excitement to the proceedings.

After the tour, I was cold and wanted some kind of supper, so I consulted Yelp and was thinking of a couple of places when I realized I really wasn’t that far from Boucherie, and I could finally go back.

Now, longtime readers of my other blog about my previous New York trip may remember that, one bitterly cold and rainy Sunday evening, I was determined to get a steak frites in the Village (why I felt compelled to go to the Village, I have no idea, since I’d spent the evening up on 55^th). I kept consulting Yelp to find restaurants that were open, and each one I went to had, between the weather and it being Sunday night, closed early.

Allow me to quote from my original post:

“Desperate, I found a fourth place, Boucherie, whose website indicated a 1:00 am closing. After going the wrong way on Seventh Avenue, I finally found it, saw two patrons sitting at a table and one at the bar, and went in. I saw the host way at the back and asked, hopefully, if they were open. No, they’d closed at 11:00. I expressed my disappointment. He asked what I was after, and I told him I was desperate for steak frites. He raised his index finger in a ‘wait a second’ gesture, and told me to wait there. He went back, consulted with the kitchen staff, and came back, telling me to sit at the bar while they made me something.

“I sat down, freezing (it took a good fifteen minutes to get feeling back in my fingers), ordered a drink and waited. After a little while, he brought me a platter with a perfect steak and marvelous fries.

I didn’t gobble it up, but savored it; it was really one of the best things I’ve eaten here and they went out of their way to make it. (I later gave them five-star ratings on both Yelp and Facebook.)”

So, with that in mind, I felt I owed them a second visit. It was early enough that there was little danger the kitchen would be closed (even on a Monday), and even though there was next to no one in the place, they were indeed open and I sat, ordered, and had another great meal.

Monsieur starts with a small arugula salad ...

 ... and finishes with steak frites.

Even though it was cold, there’s really no efficient way back to the East Village from the West Village, so I walked back in a half-hour, watched some television, and turned in.