Some of it, I miss.
On the lower level where Two Boots Pizza currently resides, there used to be stairs and a ramp up from the lower level to both entrances of the subway – the one the sits on 42nd Street and the other that is close to the Lexington Avenue exit of the South Passageway. I miss those because they made it infinitely easier to get from the lower level to the subway than it is today.
But then again there are some things that are better...
There are days when I actually like that the Grand Central Market is there in what was previously unused space. And I do like the fact that they opened up seating areas on the lower level. That can be a bit nice at times.
I like that they removed the caps over the ramps by the Oyster Bar so you can see that big interior space that is the main room of the terminal proper. And the mirrored staircase on the east side of the main room is nice too although I do miss that big Kodak billboard that was up there for so very long.
But what I wanted to talk about today was what was going on while they were renovating the station to bring it up to the standards that we know today.
Over the course of that arduous construction period there was a considerable amount of time where a good portion of the terminal had these wooden walls blocking off areas where construction and renovation was going on.
And because just putting up walls without any kind of adornment struck someone as a bit bland, the MTA or whomever was responsible for it at the time decided to put up a series of drawings on the blank wooden surfaces. Basically they were supposed to be snapshots of a kind, caricatures of different people the artist had run into as they made their way around Grand Central.
I didn’t like most of them but there was one... one that for some reason or another just really caught my fancy. And I can’t really explain to you why it was, but in my mind I had built up a story and a past for this caricature, this person if you will. And in every way that person came alive to me, it endeared itself.
And that’s the Friendly Man, the drawing above. Every time I saw that image, it just seemed to me as if the Friendly Man was someone who I knew. Someone who I had run across at some point over the course of my lifetime.
The Friendly Man was from the Caribbean and he spoke with a deep, resonant voice. The cadence of his speech had a bit of a musical quality to it and it was heavily accented but at the same time it was warm and of course, friendly.
The Friendly Man was someone who had no airs, a man who accepted his lot in life but that didn’t mean his life didn’t have room for fun. No, there was an enjoyment and a zeal somehow that belied what outwardly would appear to be a meager existence.
In short, the Friendly Man was one of those people who made your day a little better.
And throughout that whole time that Grand Central was undergoing this transformation and these images were up, I would make my way in each and every day and rush through the terminal on my way to and from work. But, every day, seeing that image of the Friendly Man somehow made me happy. It made me happy in a way and for a reason that I am at a loss to explain but I know it did even looking at the image now something stills pulls at a thread and I am trying to figure out what it is I am seeing, where that connection is, what memory it is triggering, the person I can’t remember who the image reminds me off tugs at the corners of my memory.
Just another one of those mysteries.
And Madame Ex knew very much how much I liked the Friendly Man and as she was so very good at doing, she tracked down the artist who had made a book that all the images plastered around Grand Central appeared in.
This is the book:
And the artist’s name is Maira Kalman check her out.
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