 Yeah, walking down memory lane in East Village. Okay. And if you're a New Yorker, you know exactly what that means. I'm Jay Fidel, and I was originally a New Yorker. And for a time, Ken Rogers and I were New Yorkers together. And that was before most of you were born. This is ThinkTec. And we're talking about community matters, about a community that has long since passed. Because after how many years, 60 years, Ken and I went for a reunion to all the old places in Lower Manhattan and Upper Manhattan, for that matter, in memory lane. And it was a great reunion just only a week or two ago. And we wanted to tell you what we found, the changes we found. You can't call it the underside of New York City 60 years later. Hi, Ken. Hi, Jay. I thought we were going to, you know, kick the old tires except when we got there, none of the tires were there. Exactly. That's the message here. So Ken and I were at the Joe Weinstein Hall, which is brand new at the time, at the intersection of Washington Place and what is it, Leica Street, I guess. And we were resident counselors, graduate counselors there. And we had two floors of undergraduates who were our charges. The place was brand new, spanking clean. It was Po-Ed, men on one side of a courtyard, women on the other side. It couldn't have been nicer. It couldn't have been prettier. And it was in, you know, the Greenwich Village. That was then, at the time, really famous. It was the time of Jack Karowek. It was the time of the hippies. It was the time of some very rich people who lived at the foot of Fifth Avenue, only a block away, and Washington Muse, which had great historical value. And it was Caddy Corner across Washington Square from NYU Law School, where I went to school. And Ken's school was a graduate business school, GBA down on Wall Street, right near Trinity Church. But all that has changed. And we went together to look. And Ken, what did we find to our amazement, our disappointment, our chagrin, and our revelation? Well, some things were disappointing. And others were not so disappointing. For example, Weinstein Hall, a wonderful place where we got to allegedly be in charge of a bunch of undergraduates. But the whole feeling of that place was totally different. When you walked in the front door, the first thing you were confronted with was security, more security, and additional security. And there was no way that it even looked like the nice, open, welcoming place that I remember so fondly. It did not seem to be well upkept. The people were pleasant enough, but it really just was not an inviting place at all. They were doing some renovations that might give them a bit of an excuse. But I thought compared to the other pieces of New York University that we saw, most of the other places were an improvement, or they were better. They were cleaner. They felt nicer. But Weinstein Hall didn't feel nice at all. If I were a senior executive in the NYU system, I would feel that that's a disgrace compared to the rest. Yeah, I agree. It's that whole thing with hosting little notices with scotch tape on the walls about some event or some activity and leaving it there for months for years after the activity has taken place. And I agree with you about this security. Jesus, there were so many people. And some of them were friendly, as you say. And even worth chatting up, but others were not friendly. And that's because of COVID. It's because of the threat of violence by people with guns. And so NYU reacts that way, as a lot of schools do. And the same thing at the law school. I went to the law school with somebody who had taught there recently as an adjunct that told me that my name would be in a big book, a book of graduates of NYU Law School. And I went there twice, one for an LLB time, and then later on for an LLM. And indeed, I walked in and I told the guy, I was the security guy, that I was in the book. And he looked me up. And there I was twice in the book. And then I told him that I had been advised that if I was in the book, then I could walk around and say hi and whatnot, go see my old classrooms, even my teachers, if they were still alive, probably not. And then I said, well, now that I'm in the book, can I walk around? And he said, you have been misinformed. You cannot walk around. Because to the extent that system was in place before COVID, it is not in place now. And you're going to have to leave now, even though you're in the book. And I said, well, look, I need to go to the bathroom. So could I walk across the hall and go to the bathroom? And he said, well, since you spent six years at NYU, paying all the tuition and studying late at night, why don't we let you go to the bathroom? I went to the bathroom and kid, I'm here to tell you the bathroom was very nice. And I came out of the bathroom and I said to him, you know, six years and all that tuition and studying late at night and two graduation ceremonies, I finally got a chance to pee on NYU. And that was really very gratifying. It was a great bathroom. And it was nice of him to let me do that. So suffice to say it's all about security, as you said, and it's all about COVID. And so, you know, universities, especially universities, downtown like that, you know, in Greenwich Village, they're different now. In fact, the whole neighborhood was different, wasn't it? Yeah, it really was. I found that the general neighborhood was a lot cleaner than I remember. You know, one of my, you know, ancient thoughts about New York City was it was a pretty filthy place in terms of, you know, stuff on the street. The streets all look very clean, particularly Washington Square Park, I thought, you know, was very attractive. The one of the interesting factors in that neighborhood was that the New York University has obviously had a lot of endowment money since I was there because they own a large number of the buildings surrounding the area. And they're very well kept. They looked pretty sparkling. But on the Washington Square itself, I found there was nobody looked like a beatnik, which was, you know, a very common looking person back in the 1960s, the early 60s. But you had every type of person you could think of. And one of the unique things about Washington Square Park, it was so busy that the people watching was really the dominant thing that was happening and that compared to anywhere else in New York, when you saw some, you know, young lady from, you know, age eight to 60, they didn't have their hand in front of them with a phone as they were walking along. They were too busy, as were you and I, watching all of the people, you know, I can remember crossing Washington Square Park in the middle of the day on a weekday. And you'd have, you know, a few people sitting around playing chess, you know, and it was pretty quiet. You'd walk all the way across and, you know, you'd not have the monstrous crowds of people that were there. It was very enjoyable. Yeah. I told you my story with Paul Steinman. I went to school with Paul Steinman, you know, before I went to college. I was in grade school with him, in high school with him, and Art Garfunkel. In fact, they were stars in the city music, you know, the New York City music scene, even in high school. I forget their band name, but they had a band and they had a song that was a top song. Anyway, at one point in high school, Paul asked me if I would join their band and sing with them. I said no. It's lucky you didn't. Well, maybe, maybe, maybe not. And Garfunkel said, yeah, why don't you join us today? You know, you could, you could, you know, be part of our group. And you can hit a number one, you know, citywide hit also. And I said, no, no, I can't do that. I got to go to law school. Okay, fast forward to law school. So just as you say, people would play chess and it was quiet in Washington Square Park. And Paul, you know, wasn't doing much. As I recall, he went to Queens College with me. I saw him in Queens College and Garfunkel went to Columbia. And so this was the kind of reunion. I met him around the fountain there in the center of Washington Square Park. And we sat on the fountain and it was quiet. It was intimate, if you will, getting on the fountain and, you know, having a rendezvous, talk about the good old days. And I said, how are you doing, Paul? He says, I'm terrible. I don't have a job, you know, and I'm not in school right now. And I don't know what I'm going to do with my life. I have no idea where I'm going. He said, I really envy you, Jay, that you're in law school, you know, across the way here at NYU. And I'm not. And I hope I can find something equally useful to do. I'll never forget that meeting, because it was shortly thereafter, within a year anyway, that the graduate played, and all of a sudden, Simon and Garfunkel were catapulted, you know, to national, international fame with their music in the graduate. And guess what? Guess what, Ken? I wasn't in the graduate. I wasn't in their band. I wasn't there. I was still banging my brains out in law school. So there you go. That was the nature of Washington Square Park in those days. So what did you feel about the masks? You know, we walked around and we saw all these people in New York City, and it was still COVID, you know, then New York was having a surge of COVID. But what are people doing about the mask? Well, it was hit and miss. There was lots of people with the mask, but an awful lot without. In the Washington Square Park area where there were these large crowds, you know, there were not very many people with masks. Whereas, you know, we're at one of the big theaters in Midtown Manhattan, one of the required masks in the theater, and everybody was right on board. I mean, there were not people with the mask below their nose and the kind of thing you see, you know, from some of the obstinate people that you run into all the time. There didn't seem to be that lack of cooperation at all in that theater, you know, but I was surprised, you know, as we approached the theater, you know, we went by, you know, one of the fire exits and there were, you know, two policemen there, you know, or extra security guards and, you know, got the feeling that the security type of thing that we had encountered elsewhere applied in all kinds of places in New York that wasn't there 60 years ago. Oh, no. What did you think of the play, The Music Man? What did you think of the play, Ken? It was super to go, you know, to a New York theater where it's so large. I enjoyed the dance, the dancing part of that play was exceptional. They have a very good theater in Kelowna in British Columbia, even though it's a it's a teeny-weeny city compared to New York, but they don't have the scale, like the number of actors that are out there, you know, doing the dancing. The choreography and dancing was outstanding. I was very surprised with the crowd, though, that the crowd cheered at anything and everything. That sounds like Honolulu. They do the same thing here. Whatever they do on the stage, the crowd is giving them a standing ovation. And indeed, there was a very long standing ovation after this play was over, wasn't it? Yeah. Well, I mean, I can remember, you know, theater, even though when I was there 60 years ago, I was poor as a church mouse, so I didn't get to go to the theater too often. But then, there were only cheering and clapping when it was deserved. You know, that's the standard that we have in Canada, at least in my area in Canada, is if something is really good, they get a clap and they wait and, you know, not as often as was done in that huge theater in midtown Manhattan. Yeah, the Winter Garden. But, you know, it isn't always thus. I remember going to, I was telling you, I remember going to Tosca, the opera at the Metropolitan Opera. And the crowd didn't like the performance. I liked it. I thought it was just fine. My wife liked it. She thought it was just fine. But the crowd were all, you know, opera devotees and they knew a thing or two about opera. And when it was over, they booed. They booed. They booed all the players. They booed the orchestra. They booed everybody. So, you know, it doesn't always thus. It depends on who the crowd is and how good the performance is in their eyes. So, yeah. Now, so let's move downtown a little bit. So we went looking for a GBA, the Graduate Business Administration School, where you took your PhD. And, you know, it was not in the same location. They moved. It wasn't there. It didn't exist in the Wall Street area, which really, really surprised me because when I went, virtually all of the students that were in either a master's or doctoral program at NYU Business School, they were all part-time students. All the classes were, you know, in the evenings. And the first year I was there was really the first year that they ever had full-time day students. I took most of my classes along with the part-time students at night. But all the part-time students were people that worked in the Wall Street area for the most part. So that when you had a class that started at 5.30, they'd kind of walk over from their office and go to class. And, you know, there was a class from 5.30 to 7.30 and another from 7.30 to 9.30 every weekday. And that was how I went to school. You know, that was the timing that I went because that's when all the really good classes were on and the big, big name profs were available. And so I tried to always get into the classes that had the real experts, you know, at that time and still NYU ranks so highly in the finance area compared to all of the colleges in the world. You know, I suppose it's not surprising since it was New York City and it was in the Wall Street area. But when they moved that graduate business school to the Greenwich Village area, it would be pretty difficult for executives that worked or let's call it the employees in the Wall Street area to get to the Greenwich Village to get to the classes there. It wouldn't be, it would not be as convenient. So I don't know how their enrollment has changed in terms of those part-time students. But, you know, they still seem to have the ranking in the area of finance. Now, I have the same experience in the NYU graduate LLM tax program that all the classes were in the evening. And, you know, the students came from Wall Street. They managed to get up town and they came directly from their law firm offices or the government offices. And it was quite, it was quite different than it is now. I think now you have these graduate programs and they're all day long. And it's difficult to get those same people to come up from Wall Street at the time of the classes. So it's different. I don't know exactly how different, but it's different. So we also went to one Vanderbilt, one Vanderbilt Avenue, I think it is. And that is a huge building, 96 stories as big or maybe bigger than the Empire State Building, which is not far away. It was a really interesting experience to go that high in a building that was built, that was dedicated to visitors, tourists, and guys like you and me who wanted to see for miles and miles and miles. What did you think of that? It was a fantastic building. It's pretty startling to be looking out a window and looking down at the observation deck in the Empire State Building, which was, you know, not that far away, of greater surprise to me. And sort of another one of the main changes was that one of the most gorgeous buildings when I was in New York 60 years ago was called the Pan Am Building. And it's the one that kind of straddles or it's right behind the Grand Central Station, while this new building, one Vanderbilt called the Summit, from the observation deck, you look down at the roof of that building that's now called Met Life Building, anyhow, Met Life that dominates it. But the top of that building was a heliport. And I can remember, you know, as a poverty stricken student, thinking that, you know, it would be really quite something to be able to land on the top of that building. And, you know, a couple of years after I had graduated and had earned enough money to build at least a paper and airplane, et cetera. And I took my wife to New York and, you know, as a special treat landed on the top of that building. And I was startled to find out that they don't use that heliport anymore, you know, because these buildings are taller than it. I don't know why, but obviously somebody had called it a security question. But, you know, they probably not, you know, I've watched enough helicopters land in emergency scenarios to know that, you know, those pilots could land on, you know, on a teeny weeny, you know, somebody's backyard without hitting anything. But, you know, obviously, for security reasons, they don't allow that. But it's kind of startling to look down upon a heliport that used to exist and it was 70 floors in the air. So let's talk about the Statue of Liberty. We went to the Statue of Liberty. It was a really hot day and a million tourists around. And we had to take a boat. The boat stopped at the Statue of Liberty, Liberty Island, and Ellis Island with the immigration building there from around the turn of the century. That was really interesting. And I have to admit to you, I hadn't been there, if at all, for many, many, many years. What was your impression of the Statue of Liberty? Well, it was a lot bigger than I thought it was. You know, I had taken a little cruise around the New York Harbor and the same time that I had taken my wife there. But, you know, it was, you know, I think it was five cents cost to ride the Staten Island ferry back across the harbor and back, you know, and that was what we did at the time. But everybody took their dates to Staten Island because for 10 cents, well, I guess it's 20 cents, you know, round trip. You can have this beautiful view of New York Harbor and beyond the ferry. It was all very romantic. Everybody took the Staten Island ferry. I would assume that with the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, that doesn't exist anymore. You know, I think they still have that. I'm not sure. But I doubt that it still costs a nickel. Totally, totally. I did see Governor's Island, though, from our boat and that was interesting because I spent some time in the service on Governor's Island. It's no longer a Coast Guard base, but it is still a very impressive island in the middle of New York Harbor. Moving on, though, we not only saw Washington Square Park, which was the circus, as you described it, but also we went to Central Park and we walked around there. And of course, there was a similarity between Central Park and Washington Square Park. But what did you think of Central Park? It is certainly the center of Manhattan. Well, I was very cognizant of the difference in the people from Washington Square Park to Central Park. Central Park, certainly the southern area of it that we were at, it was very much a family type of place. There was a lot of small kids. There were very few kids in Washington Square Park. Perhaps the odd one was a son or daughter of a tourist. But most of the people in Washington Square Park looked like they were local New Yorkers, where everybody in Central Park looked like a New Yorker and looked like they were there with a family outing. That tremendous park, really a people's park. Every city should have a park like Central Park. So much going on, so inviting actually. But before we run out of time, I want to ask you about my neighborhood. You were kind enough to accompany me back to my neighborhood. On the best mode of transportation we could find, namely the subway, which is actually a very efficient system and relatively cheap and fast and no traffic jams on the subway. So we went out to my ancestral home, if you will, back in Queens and I showed you my schools when I was a kid. I showed you my streets, my neighborhoods. And of course, you didn't see it then as I did 60, 70, 80 years ago. But let me tell you there were things that were remarkably similar, the same unchanged. And there were also things that reflected the new world, the new New York, the new country we live in. And I guess that's a piece I want to ask you about. What did you think of Boris Till's and Regal Park in Queens as an expression of diversity, as an expression of middle class living, as an expression of a prosperous, well prosperous may not be the right word, but a thriving community? Well, my definition of a middle class community is very different than a New Yorker that, you know, I come from or was born and raised in a city called Calgary in Alberta, you know, which is now about 1.6 million people. But everybody lives in a single family home in a suburb, as opposed to, you know, the apartments are something that are basically a new way of living, a condominium. The percentage of people in condominiums is very low, where everything in Queens was a condominium. But the startling piece to me and kind of got the hint on the way there as I don't know which cab driver we had a couple of cabs, but one was from Nepal and another one was from Uzbekistan. Well, you know, I tend to think that Vancouver and Kelowna, you know, in the areas where I, you know, near where I live or in Calgary, that they're very cosmopolitan type places, but you don't run into people from, you know, very, very unusual places. So New York's still kind of a melting pot and, you know, when we got to Queens, you know, there was a theater that you had mentioned you and your brother used to go to, you know, and it was a Russian community-centered type of thing that there was clearly, you know, a change in the, you know, ethnic population with a, you know, fair emphasis from, you know, whoever was there when you were there to, you know, a lot of new immigrants from the, you know, old Soviet Union era. A lot of Russians there, but, you know, it changed gradually because every time I've been there, I've noticed more and more that it's very diverse and, in fact, it's become, what do they call it, the bedroom community for the United Nations? Indeed, in every single language, you know, every single culture, every single country, all represented and, you know, it's a swell neighborhood. I wouldn't mind living there. And by the same token, when we were walking around in Manhattan, I remember there was one street corner where you could hear any language, every language, and I turned to you and I said, Ken, is there anybody here that speaks English? Because it wasn't clear that anyone in the, anyone down the block spoke English. New York is very diverse and it's not only diverse in terms of, you know, the ethnicities that live in the country. It's diversions and all these people come from all other countries and they all manage, they all get jobs, they all get housing and maybe tougher for some of them than others. But the fact is, it's a relatively friendly, relatively, what's the word I'm looking for, tolerant kind of place. And we had, you and I, we like to chat people up, right? We like to chat up strangers. We had so many fun conversations. It was really easy. You know, it certainly was a very welcoming community and the people were really friendly. You know, some had accents so thick, you had a little troubled understanding what they were saying, but you know, they certainly tried hard to communicate and be friendly. Yeah. So we're, we're at a time, I'm afraid, we could go on, as we did in New York, which was a wonderful trip with such a nice reunion and it's so nice to see you now to talk about it. We could go on for a long time just, you know, kind of examining what happened and finding conclusions and lessons in that trip. But let me ask you one last question. What's your, what's your general impression of it? What's your takeaway? What would you tell people about this trip, you know, to explain the change, the delta factor between then 60 years ago and now and our experience in sort of reentering the city after all this time? Well, when I was a student there and I really thought, you know, New York was not a great place to visit. You know, I just thought it was, you know, a big, hustly bustling place and that going as a visitor was really, really a lot of fun. It really is a nice place to visit. But you wouldn't want to live there. There was an article in the paper a couple of weeks ago about how a studio or one bedroom in the East Village and we walked in the East Village make at the West Village, I'm sorry, goes for $4,000 a month, really small, really small apartment. And so you wonder how you can make enough money to support a lifestyle with that as the rent. And then of course, food isn't cheap, restaurants are in cheap, nothing is cheap. On the other hand, you learn, you learn to be parsimonious. You learn to negotiate. You learn to only buy what you need. That sort of thing. Well, it was a great experience, Ken. I really, I was so happy to meet you there. Thank you for coming to meet me. And we had a wonderful time, unforgettable. I'm still, I'm still living through it. My memories are still popping up in any hour of the day of our rendezvous in New York. And I hope we can get to do it again. Well, everybody here says so, you know, you know, since my, you live in Hawaii, why the heck would I meet you in New York? Go to Hawaii instead. So anyhow, that's the impression of my neighbors. Thank you, Ken Rogers. Ken Rogers was my roommate in the early 60s at NYU in Weinstein, Joe Weinstein Hall. And we had so much fun. Such a good time together in the days of the hippies in Washington Square Park, just a few feet away. Thank you so much, Ken. Talk to you soon. So long. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn and donate to us at think.kawaii.com. Mahalo.