Sabbatikos

Black Friday morning in Midtown felt dazed and hungover. The streets were still closed and being cleaned of the sensory overload of Thanksgiving, as if the city were quietly gathering itself before the coming retail chaos. We had no interest in shopping yet. Instead, we slipped beneath Bryant Park and into the catacombs of the city’s subway, carried south toward the West Village amid the screech of grinding steel and the echoing thumpity-thumps that form the distinctive song of New York’s subterranean trains. Clara surfaced with purpose, heading off to meet her friend Cal for breakfast, while Tawny and I emerged into the Village with nowhere to be and all the time in the world, our only mission a proper New York City bagel. It was cold. We pulled our jackets tight as winds off the lower Hudson whipped us down the street like the last leaves of fall.

After leaving Clara, we turned a quick corner and found ourselves at Christopher Park, the site of the Stonewall National Monument, where in the summer of 1969, the LGBTQ community stood up to years of oppression at the Stonewall Inn in riots that sparked the modern LGBTQ rights movement. Given the current administration, it felt more poignant than ever to see the site preserved, and unsettling to consider how easily that protection could be undone with the stroke of a pen. It was a sobering place, further punctuated by the nearby New York City AIDS Memorial.

Bagel. We needed a warm, soft New York City bagel to atone for the truly lousy ones we had endured in Williamsburg on our last trip. I searched for bagels nearby and the map lit up with options, but one place, a bit of a walk away, stood out with an almost suspiciously high rating of 4.7 stars. Apollo Bagels. We headed that way and, a few blocks out, saw the line snaking from the door. Normally that would have been enough to send us elsewhere, but we had time and this felt like a good sign. We took our place about forty people deep.

The menu was beautifully simple. Plain, everything, or sesame. Butter, cream cheese, or scallion cream cheese. Add tomato, smoked salmon, or whitefish. That was it. Less is more. Do a few things and do them well.

Thirty minutes later, we were holding freshly made, warm, toasted bagels and crossed to the park across the street to eat them in the biting cold of a Black Friday morning in the West Village. “Dammit,” Tawny said, genuinely distressed. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “This bagel ruined me,” she replied. “It’s so good I don’t think I’ll ever enjoy another bagel again. Nothing will compare.” She was right. It was good. Damn good.

We walked it off with a slow lap around Washington Square Park, a place that still carries memories for me from when I used to ride the train down from Bard College on weekends to stay with friends attending NYU. From there, we caught a cab to Little Island, a place we had stumbled upon by accident on our last trip to New York and immediately grew fond of. Clara and Cal had wandered there after breakfast and met us huddled in the amphitheater, taking in striking views of the Hudson, Chelsea Piers, and New Jersey across the water.

The wind was bracing and cold. Little Island is a visually stunning pocket of green perched over the Hudson in Chelsea, just steps from the Whitney and the High Line. We wandered without a plan. It was cold and windy, but the sun was out and offered just enough late fall warmth to make the chill forgivable. From there, we drifted along the High Line and into Chelsea Market. That was a mistake. If you dislike crowds, Black Friday at Chelsea Market is not the place to be. We entered at one end and spent our time jockeying to exit the other.

After saying goodbye to Cal, we wandered past the historic Chelsea Hotel, a fabled home to countless artists and icons, before catching a train back uptown. We circled Macy’s to take in the holiday window displays and were promptly swallowed by retail chaos. It was pure mayhem, something to witness and experience exactly once. I did not know what enochlophobia was before, but after stepping into Macy’s on Black Friday in New York, I certainly do now, and I think I now have it.

After a short rest, we gussied ourselves up for a proper night out in the city. Dinner and a show. We headed to Bea, a bar a few blocks west of Broadway, where we met Cal again, and his girlfriend Angelique for drinks and dinner. Bea was a delightful find. The cocktails were inventive and theatrical, and one in particular felt perfectly timed with the Thanksgiving release of Wicked For Good. It was called the Wicked Witch of the West Side, a smoky, concoction of mezcal, amaro, saffron liqueur, grapefruit, and lime, finished with a salted rim and a small stick of incense burning dramatically on the foot of the glass.

Classic films were projected onto the walls, with scenes from Cool Hand Luke and Double Indemnity flickering across the brick and giving the room a distinctly cinematic, retro vibe. The drinks were inventive, the food was excellent, and the company was even better, exactly what we had hoped for.

After dinner and cocktails, we said quick goodbyes to Cal and Angelique and hurried off, hustling several long blocks to make our show, Death Becomes Her.

Yes, the 1992 comedy horror classic directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn, Bruce Willis, and Isabella Rossellini has been transformed into a Tony Award winning Broadway musical. The lights dimmed, the curtain rose, and our seats were close enough to catch every expression on the actors’ faces. It was raunchy, raucous, and wildly fun, a perfectly dark and theatrical black magic ending to a magical Black Friday in New York.