Hot Dog in the Park

 

 

By Francesco Bianchini

 

In the heart of Manhattan, where the city’s pulse beats without pause, there is a block — a piece of the urban puzzle known as the Natural History Museum. This address, whispered among those who care about the essence of New York, is more than a place: it is a barometer of the city’s moods and of the seasonal ballet unfolding along the paths of the Park. (Permit me the capital letter — Central Park is no ordinary park.)

A broad staircase runs the full length of the façade and allows — so it is rumored — the dinosaurs housed inside to stretch their legs in the Park at night. I have never seen them emerge from the museum myself, but from my bedroom window I have admired the otherworldly blue glow of the planetarium, luminous like a meteorite dropped from space. A room that welcomed me over ten years of coming and going in the city.

Few would dare contradict me if I say that New York’s lights are unmatched. A dissonant harmony, majestic in its chaos, spills along sunken streets and endless avenues, amid the glowing bursts of theaters and the blazing stripes of taxis, against an eggplant-colored sky. Every glimmer is a fragment of life, a shadow of a dream, a flash of reality. Strings of lights woven through the bare branches of trees transform the night into a sparkling enchantment — a musical comedy ready, at any moment, to break into a syncopated piano solo.

Day or night, the city accompanies — no, embraces — my wandering like no other place. Nowhere else do I feel such a constant pull to step outside: to go grocery shopping, buy flowers at the corner bodega, stop by the wine shop; to catch a movie at eleven in the morning, spend an afternoon in a museum; to lose myself in pedestrian traffic. Any excuse will do. One never knows whether the outdoor book stalls or the shelves inside the Strand have a small surprise waiting for a few dollars. The Strand, with its scent of pipe tobacco, mahogany shelves, percolated coffee, and that infamous building-wide heating system — the kind that cracks my skin every time I arrive in the city and toasts the pages of library books, the very same volumes whose discards eventually flood its rooms.

Scorching and emptied of its inhabitants in summer, or electrified by the biting cold of its epic snowfalls, I couldn’t say which season I love most in New York. Each shift in the air and in the colors of the Park makes every moment singular, unrepeatable. Seasons may recur, you’ll say — yet to me each one feels so charged it could never truly happen again. With every turn of the calendar, a new line is added to the sonnet of urban life, a new melody serenading the senses.

On the opposite side of the Park lies Museum Mile — a concentration of some of the city’s most important museums. Just beyond the Guggenheim lives Mrs. Kelly, an old acquaintance of my gracious host, herself well along in years. Betty Kelly occupies an apartment as charming as it is crumbling. Her late husband, a lighting designer — among other things, the creator of the chandeliers at the Metropolitan Opera — had arranged it in an avant-garde style in the 1950s. Nothing has been altered since.

The dining room walls are lined with a collection of antique prints, backlit in an original way that now feels like a faded stage set. I would wager no one has ever seen so many books in a single place — unless, of course, it was a bookstore. Shelves overflow in every room and corridor, including the bathroom and kitchen. Betty Kelly owns countless books, but no longer has the eyes to read them. She suffers from a degenerative eye disease and relies on a device provided by the city in recognition of her husband’s service — a machine that transforms the printed page into a photographic negative: white letters on a black background.

When I stop by to pick up Shep, my host’s dog — Betty watches him whenever my friend is out of town — I help her make tea, because someone has to lend a hand with such simple tasks. Somehow she has noticed my rapture in front of her meters — no, kilometers — of book-filled shelves, some bound in sumptuous leather.

“There’s a bit of everything,” she says. “If you find something that interests you, help yourself. I hate the idea of all this ending up on the shelves of secondhand bookstores.”

The Strand, of course.

Do you think I needed to be told twice? I began visiting Betty Kelly more often — helping her make tea, chatting with her — and each time I left with an armful of books, a tactile delight in every sense.

Why am I leading you back and forth across the Park, brushing past that varied urban fauna that always seems to be in search of definitive love, yet must settle once again for peanut butter? Because the Park holds an irresistible attraction — all the more so when, stepping out of Betty Kelly’s building, January’s cold assaults every exposed inch of skin, old snow crunches beneath my shoes, and hot-dog vendors stand guard at strategic points, radiating warmth in the middle of a frozen steppe.

What distinguishes a New York hot dog from all others is that it is cooked right there in boiling water inside the cart and served instantly, with yellow French’s mustard, sauerkraut, and sweet onion sauce.

My eyes fill with tears — helped along by the biting cold, the scorching hot dog against my bare fingers still smelling faintly of old, musty paper, the sharp sting of mustard, and that sense of freedom that comes with a bite of street food. Me, the hot dog, the Park, and my loot.