Matthew Dicks

Times Square: The place that New Yorkers love to hate

I get annoyed when I hear New Yorkers complain about Times Square, which they seem to do a lot.

Yes, it’s crowded, and yes, tragically, many of the people crowding the streets are not New Yorkers, so they are not nearly as enlightened as the rest of you. They look up a lot. They pose for photographs in front of things that you find benign and commonplace. They crowd street corners and fail to act quickly when the light changes. They wear colors other than gray and black.

I know. It’s terrible. Inexcusable, really.

But three things:

1. You have chosen to live in the most densely populated location on planet Earth. Complaining about the crowds in Times Square just makes you sound stupid and pretentious.

2. All of those people are bringing dollars to your city. They support your vibrant theater district and fill your hotel rooms and eat in your restaurants and buy your hats and tee shirts. Cities would kill for the kind of tourism that Times Square promotes.

3. It’s not nearly as bad as you want us to think you think it is. Not even close. 

Get over yourselves. 

Odd business combinations

I spent the evening at the Latchis Hotel in Brattleboro, Vermont, at a writing and booksellers’ conference. My publicist arranged the accommodations, so I was not familiar with the hotel when I arrived. It turns out that the Latchis, an art deco hotel according to its website, is actually a combination hotel and movie theater, and this unique redesign afforded some interesting architectural features.

For example, a square support beam, about two feet wide on each side, ran through my bathroom from the floor to the ceiling, nearly adjacent to the edge of the bathtub, which required me to walk around the beam in order to turn on the water for my shower, then turn and go back around the beam in order to get into the bathtub.

An odd but memorable feature.

I also had the pleasure of catching the final minutes of The Hangover, a film I very much want to see. Sadly, I only caught the muffled sounds of the film’s audio track emanating through the wall, so following the plot was difficult.

Please don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining. The hotel was clean, comfortable, and was equipped with Wi-Fi. And it was just a block from the site of the conference, in the center of Brattleboro, close to many restaurants and bookstores. 

What more could a guy want?

In fact, I found myself wondering if my publicist arranged this room on purpose, perhaps aware that my current manuscript centers on an equally odd combination of funeral home and chicken shack.