24 hours in the Big Apple

Every year for some time now around this time I go to the Big Apple for meetings. It's a great excuse to visit this wonderful vibrant city and if I have time I do try to go out and visit something new. So I planned the trip to arrive in New York on the Monday, de-jetlag and then be ready for the meetings that start on the Wednesday. This year was a little different in that Viv and I had been in Sri Lanka for 10 days immediately prior to my leaving (we returned to Penang on the Sunday!) so I basically got off one plane and rose at 4 am the following day for my hideously long but early start flight to JFK. In all it took 29 hours including layovers and the usual messing around at the beginning and end of the journey.

I am usually OK on long flights. I don't usually sleep that well but I know that and usually have a nap when I get in and am pretty much up for things immediately afterwards. Not this time and I put it down to my new neck pillow.

It is a very nice neck pillow and really does allow you to get your head in a comfortable position from where you can actually sleep a bit. So I think I did sleep a bit. Of course this would have been in between getting woken up by the flight attendants to eat or drink something (I don't usually eat or drink much on long flights as it makes me uncomfortable) which always happens at the most inconvenient times so any sleep that I did get was broken up. Still it was more than usual so I thought I'd readjust easily.

That didn't work this time as for some reason I have been consistently waking up around 3 am every morning (a week later still the same) and around 3 pm each day I have felt incredibly sleepy. It is bugging me I can tell you. But for the purpose of this post it did mean that on my one day at leisure in the Big Apple I was up with the larks, probably before them actually, wondering what I should do for my day's adventures.

Luckily it was sunny so whilst brisk it was a great day to walk the streets. But first breakfast.

Now I love corned beef hash so a proper New York Jewish deli had to be the way to go and luckily courtesy of Mr. Google I chose Sarge's at 548 3rd Avenue, a great midtown diner.

I expected a normal person sized helping but did note in passing it came with 3 fried eggs and home fries. It was a huge bucket load of really fantastic corned beef hash, so much that I couldn't eat again for the rest of the day... except of course that I did so should really say that I shouldn't have eaten for the rest of the day rather than couldn't. Go there. Sarge's is wonderful. Ridiculous portion sizes though so be warned.

I had some shopping to do, tennis related, so thought I'd see if I could find the tennis shop belonging to a guy I'd met a few years ago at a tennis camp, Woody. He had a couple of shops, one on 35th near Macy's and the other at Flushing Meadows, the home of the US Open. His shop is called NYC Racquet Sports (website: www.nycracquetsports.com so do visit) and is well stocked. Woody was there as well busily stringing racquets. Lots of them with people coming in all the time to get him to do theirs.

Woody told me though that his business and by association all of retail is being seriously harmed by the internet. As I had just ordered some tennis shoes from Tennis Warehouse and am an enthusiastic shopper on Amazon, I really didn't feel I could say much and did feel rather abashed about the fact that my shopping choices were adversely impacting my buddy's business.

It did make me think about the rights and wrongs about this and it is a tricky one for small businesses like Woody's cannot hope to compete on price and choice with the likes of the big internet retailers and I'll focus on Tennis Warehouse for now. Every piece of inventory that Woody holds he has to pay for out of his precious cash flow and it cannot be as large. It is simply too much money. Tennis Warehouse has hundreds of pages of stuff with dozens of different suppliers. Not everything they advertise is in stock so for those items they have to go out and source them before sending it off to the buyer. We the buyer are OK with that if it is the specific thing we want and we ... important point here ... do not blame them for not holding that particular item in stock. But if we do go to a small retailer like Woody and he does not have that specific item, we roll our eyes and go somewhere else. The likelihood of us returning as a result of this is lower too. We have been disappointed once so why try again when there are alternatives? So we the buyer now have double standards when dealing with the small retailer and that is before considering price. Really difficult for the small business to compete which is really tough as what they do provide is service and advice. You don't get that from an internet retailer. When I was in Woody's shop, probably a dozen people came in with racquets and he discussed with them each time their requirements. One particular lady hadn't played in some years and told him she wanted string tension to be 59 pounds. Apologies to non-tennis players here but for the racquet she had, recommended tension by the manufacturer is 54-55 pounds but regular players would chose 52-53 pounds tension. 59 pounds is like playing with a piece of wood. Woody calmly and quietly said all this and put her right. If she starts playing again she will thank Woody for his advice... or rather should but in all probability will not which is a shame. This is what you pay that little bit extra for.

I left Woody with the intent on changing my buying behavior immediately in favor of the small business. Then I went and bought coffee from Starbucks. Grrr.

The day really was glorious and for some reason I suddenly realized that the UN HQ is only a few blocks away from my hotel.  It is down by the East River and is probably a thriving place bubbling over with interesting stuff. So I walked the few blocks until I found the building and looked for the ticket office opposite.

I was surprised for the UN is one of the most important global organizations bar none and one would have thought that there'd be oceans of visitors. It was virtually empty. No lines. I was greeted by the security guard who had a nice chat with me... oh nice, Bermuda, eh. That's great. Love to go... all that sort of thing before he ushered me through the door into the ticket office. Sorry deserted ticket office. I joined the line, or rather would have done had there been a line but there were those line divider things in expectation for the crowds. Just in case. The lady behind the counter called out "Next" and I went up to the counter.

She asked me how many, I said one. She asked for my ID and I provided my Bermuda drivers license. She didn't know where or what Bermuda was so I explained. She entered my details into her 'system'... yes the bloody 'system' again ... and told me that Bermuda was not one of the options in her pull down menu. I said in that case why not just put in Great Britain as Bermuda was a colony still. She said she couldn't do that because I gave her a Bermuda ID, not a GB one. I didn't have my passport. So she went over to a colleague who gave her a book and I must say I was very surprised that such a book should exist for it was a book alphabetized by country showing all types of acceptable ID. I was looking at it upside down but it looked like it had drivers licenses, passports, social security cards, and a bunch of others. She couldn't find Bermuda. Mind you I think part of that was due to her inability to figure out that Bermuda would come after Belgium in alphabetic order. I tried to point it out but instead she called for a supervisor. He looked at my ID and said 'yeah Bermuda, well that's OK'. He'd never been there either but had heard of it and most importantly he was able to find it in the book once he figured out the alphabetic thing. In fact the picture they had on the page was a Bermuda drivers license very similar to the one from me that he was holding.

In all this took around 20 minutes to complete and at conclusion there was still nobody else in line. I just cannot imagine what would happen on a busy day.

I don't know why but I still thought that there'd be others jamming up the public parts of the UN building but I was welcomed through the outer gates, personally greeted through security and made my way pretty much alone still into the main hall where I nearly jumped out of my skin as I thought they had a statue of Johnny Barnes right in front welcoming all and sundry. I was wrong of course for on closer looking it was Nelson Mandela. The main meeting room was also less than half empty and it looked like not much was going on.

And I have to say that was my experience of the UN HQ building. It was all rather disappointing that on the one hand nothing much appeared to be going on, debate wise, and on the other that there were not crowds of people visiting one of the most important buildings in the world. It made me rather wonder if the UN really is becoming something of a nothing really and running that thought further along whether being Special Ambassador to the UN was actually a positive career move. During the Soviet era, I think it was probably a bit more important, but now? Well I don't know.

All in all though it was still a great day to be strolling the streets of this wonderful city. And yes by 3pm I was really dragging my feet!

OK on replay they don't look the same but they do both have their arms outstretched to greet you! Sorry guys.

Ch..Ch..Ch..Ch..Changes

I've been coming to Toronto since 1987 mainly to attend an entrepreneur's course called Strategic Coach but also for fun.  Its a great North American city, now ranked #3 in terms of population after New York and LA, with lots going on.  In fact the Immigration officials find it difficult to understand why I like coming back here and are relatively disbelieving when I say its for fun. But it is.

This also means I've been witness to lots of things happening in Toronto, particularly the construction. But there's been lots of other change too that in retrospect seem inevitable but at the time came as big shocks.

Sam the Record Man

Who doesn't remember Sam's?  Touted as the biggest record shop in the world, when I first started coming to Toronto Sam's was a mecca for me.  I could always find hidden gems of music by artists that I couldn't find elsewhere and at great prices too. Living in Bermuda this meant carrying armfuls of first LP's, then cassettes and later CD's back home.  They weighed a ton!

Then came iTunes and downloading music and Sam's gone completely.

Other stores such as HMV made the transition to DVD's (and not music DVD's at that) more quickly than Sam's and so found a somewhat longer lease of life but with Apple TV, Amazon and Google everything, these stores are redundant.  Obsolete.  Some are hanging on but the opportunity for the mainstream has gone completely.

Some may survive in stripped down mode as niche players because vinyl really does provide better music reproduction but for the most part, the digital equivalent is well good enough… including myself.  I still have my records and a turntable but rarely play them.

Some of my records

Time has moved on and the industry has been decimated by digital with Apple's iTunes in the van now that pirate operations such as Napster have been closed down.

Book Shops

I love books and bookshops and have never thankfully made the transition to Kindles or other iBooks.  But I am a dinosaur.

Actually young people don't read these days.  Well not more than the headlines and maybe an executive summary, but certainly not Dostoevski type books where the central character, Joe the mujik, endures untold hardships and miseries before tragically dying or committing suicide on page 972. The type of books we were asked to read at school for our exams in fact (I still shudder when I think of Thomas Hardy's Trumpet Major -- a hideous book for a 14 year old).

Since Amazon sold books online and then Apple and others digitized books of all types, traditional book shops have been under pressure.  Barnes & Noble's owner is currently trying to take the company private as he figures all their high street real estate is worth more than the business.

I still set aside time to browse and immerse myself in the wonders of book shops and always, just always, come out with a couple of new treasures.  But as I said before, I am a dinosaur.  Virtually nobody else buys books.  Even professional qualifications such as CFA disseminate their required reading list in digital form so no longer do candidates have 4 or 5 feet worth of books to hold somewhere at home.

They don't cost any less though.

Sadly the biggest bookshop in the world near to Sam's just closed down too.

Photo Shops

Time was that I used to have much of my photo developing done in Toronto when I visited.  Bermuda was very expensive for this so waiting a few weeks was really no problem at all.  Photography shops such as Blacks proliferated.

Then came the camera phone and digital camera.

The first ones weren't so great that the quality was better but the ability to have your photos lodged on your computer instead of stuck in albums was a huge step forward for the new generation.  I still have a couple of dozen albums from before 1990 at home that I keep promising myself to transfer to digital format and put onto my computer so I can throw out the hard copies.

Furthermore with old technology you had to keep and develop the crummy photos too.  How many times have you had only a couple of good ones from a roll of 24 or 36?  If you're a lousy cameraman like myself, the answer is quite often.  The ability to take hundreds of shots without fear of running out of film therefore is compelling.

So is the quality today. I have friends who are 'real' photographers and say that the old film format produces better shots and as with vinyl and music I can believe it.  But I really don't care.  The new digital camera on my iPhone produces results that are just fine for me.

Blacks recently closed their megastore near the Eaton Centre and I happened to go in there a couple of times in the last couple of weeks.  The first for a picture frame and the second to develop some photos on an underwater camera where I have no idea what the results will be.  They are now niche players in a digital world again providing more services than simple photo development.

Copying and Printing

This is more of a work in progress as legislation hasn't caught up with technology yet enabling the use of digital signatures and storage at a total level.  Someone told me yesterday that Canada last year passed laws allowing digital signatures… so the need to print and physically sign has gone.

The only thing that remains is the ability to do absolutely everything digitally via computer apps storing paperwork in someone's cloud.  That is coming.

I attended an Apple workshop today discussing the role of iOS (their mobile operating system) for business all of which centered on the growth and diversity of apps available for all types of business.

Where is Kinko today?  Not around for sure.  Again the major office supply shops such as Staples and Office Depot are still around but most printers have been relegated to niche players providing specialist services generated by someone else's digital medium.

Scary prospects for someone who keeps a hand written diary!

And as for construction, the subway is still the same size as it was 20+ years ago crazily but the view of downtown is simply canyon walls everywhere.

The lake is somewhere over there...