Lady Liberty's Crown to Reopen

Closed since 9/11, the crown again will welcome a limited number of visitors

Especially after the recent ill-conceived recent photo op of a "spare" Air Force One flying low over New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty, it is refreshing that the crown will reopen to visitors on July 4. It has been closed since September 11, 2001. The official reason was given as "fire safety," but most of us believe that it was part of the previous administration's promoting an ongoing climate of fear. The airport threat level, after all, has been "orange" since this silly recorded alert was introduced.

Former Colorado senator and now Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced,“This Statue of Liberty really is about hope and optimism for America, it’s also about jobs that come with tourism all over this country, and it’s about President Obama’s agenda. So today we’re announcing that on the Fourth of July, we will open up the crown of the Statue of Liberty here in New York and New Jersey to the entire people of America in a way that we’ll be able to manage the crowds that come into this place."

Just to cover bases staked out by the paranoid, he said,“We have conducted a very comprehensive life-safety review for the statue itself and for the pedestal and there are improvements that are gonna have to be put in place. We’ll put some of those in place before we open it up on the Fourth of July. We’ll then go through a two-year period where the crown will be opened up, where the public — it will be about 30 people an hour that can come up here, it will be managed. And then following that, we’re going to go through a more major rehabilitation that ultimately will increase the number of people who can come up here to about 200,000.”

Timed passes will be distributed on a lottery-style basis, and access is ranger-guided. Even access to the statue's pedestal has been seriously limited to those who have a applied in advance for free monument pass and pick up the morning of the visit. Call 866-STATUE-4 or 212-269-5755. Oh, how unfortunately different this is from my childhood in Connecticut and young adult years in New York, when access to the pedestal and the statue was limited only by visitors' willingness to stand in line and climb a lot of stairs.

The ferries to Liberty Island board their last passengers well before the park's daily closing. There is no entrance fee to the park, which is open from 8:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Park Service passes are not good for ferry fares. Due to the park's security procedures, visitors are advised to allow ample time for their visits. Ferry ticket prices from Battery Park are adult, $11:50; senior (62 and over), $9:50; child (4-12), $4.50, under 4, free.

Aircraft-Bird Encounters Rise

One bird strike made headlines, but many occur -- including Denver

The surprise water landing of a US Airways plane in the Hudson River last January. Investigations revealed that a major bird strike had knocked out at least one engine. All 155 passengers and crew survived, with few injuries, and Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger became an instant hero, making the talk-show circuit and landing a book contract. It turns out that the very aircraft the Sullenberger ditched in the frigid Hudson,

Associated Press reporter Michael J. Sniffen has been looking into bird strikes and has unearthed some amazing figures -- ones we don't generally think about when we fasten our seatbelts low and tight about ourselves and make sure that are seats and tray tables are in their full upright positions. Sniffen reported:

"Airplane collisions with birds or other animals have destroyed 28 aircraft
since 2000, with New York's Kennedy airport and Sacramento International
reporting the most incidents with serious damage, according to Federal Aviation
Administration data posted...The FAA list of wildlife strikes, published on the
Internet, details more than 89,000 incidents since 1990, costing 11 people their
lives. Most incidents were bird strikes, but deer and other animals have been
hit on runways, too.

"The situation seems to be getting worse: Airplane collisions with birds
have more than doubled at 13 major U.S. airports since 2000, including New
Orleans, Houston's Hobby, Kansas City, Orlando and Salt Lake City. Wildlife
experts say increasingly birds, particularly large ones like Canada geese, are
finding food and living near cities and airports year round rather than
migrating.

"The figures are known to be far from complete. Even the FAA estimates its
voluntary reporting system captures only 20 percent of wildlife strikes. The
agency, however, has refused for a decade to adopt a National Transportation
Safety Board recommendation to make the reports mandatory.

"...The Federal Aviation Administration says there were about 65,000 bird
strikes to civil aircraft in the United States from 1990 to 2005, or about one
for every 10,000 flights....air traffic control towers routinely
alert pilots if there are birds in the area."

Alysia Patterson filed a Denver-specific AP report, in which she recounted that DIA "led the nation in bird and wildlife strikes last year" -- 318 during the first 11 months of 2008. Of some comfort to passengers, Patterson was told by the FAA's Mike Fergus that DIA has "an aggressive wildlife mitigation program, [and] pilots are more aware of the problem and more apt to report a strike."

Whenever I've felt a jolt when taking off from or approaching DIA, I have assumed that it was turbulence of some sort. Next time, I'll speculate (to myself, not to my seatmate) that it might be due to a bird strike.

A Downer of a Day in the Northeast

Amtrak from Washington to New York: easy travel but sad scenery

It has been years since I've taken the train on any but the shortest stretch of the Northeast Corridor. I did this morning for the first time in years. I arrived at Union Station in time for the 8:35 a.m. train, one earlier than my reservation. Amtrak is flexible and changed my ticket -- but charged nearly $30 -- not as a change fee but because the earlier train carried a higher fare. When I asked why, the agent told me it was because more people travel earlier. If more people travel earlier, I would have been the only person on the later train. My car, at least, had an extremely low passenger load -- less than 10 percent. I'm guessing flexible travelers were taking the later train, because it's cheaper, but that's just a guess. The trip was comfortable and punctual.

But too often, the view out the window was incredibly sad -- no surprise to those who travel this route often, but a knock in the eye and a punch in the gut to me after so many years away from the Northeast. Especially in and near our cities, I saw long-shuttered factories, their windows broken, their brick walls encrusted with graffiti. Trackside litter: paper, cans, plastic bottles, old tires, chunks of concrete, car parts, hunk of cable. Weeds. Fallen-down dwellings. It sad -- sadder than I remembered. Decay in the fly-over states tends to be shuttered stores in the small centers of depopulated towns, done in by the Interstate highways, the loss of the railroad and WalMart somewhere down the way. In the urban Northeast, decay is in the middle of densely populated areas. I knew it in my head and on one level what it looked like, but I had forgotten how it hits the eyes and the emotions.

My spirit was further dampened by the weather. The sky was gray, as was the landscape. Most of the trees hadn't leafed out yet. The clouds released fat drops of cold rain. Mud made the litter and trash somehow look even worse. I am reading Anderson Cooper's memoir, Dispatches from the Edge, and as the train traveled through scenes of decades of decay. He wrote about the terrible destruction he reported on in New Orleans the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the US, Lousiana and local governments' unpreparedness and lack of response, calling the American system "broken." Having been to too many war zones and seen entirely too many dead bodies, he wrote that he hadn't expected it in his own country. Likewise, while I am bothered by roadside trash and broken-down buildings in developing countries, it seems inexcusable in our own.

When arrived in New York, I allowed myself the extravagance of a taxi to the hotel, because I wasn't in the mood to drag my bags (a small roll-aboard and my laptop bag) up and down wet subway stairs, and I didn't want to get soaked waiting for the two buses I would have to take just to get close to my hotel.

As the cab crawled through traffic, I wondered which African runners had won the Boston Marathon, what the weather was like in Beantown and whether any Coloradans performed well. I later learned that Deriba Merga of Ethiopia won the men's race, Kenya’s Salina Kosgei was the top woman and Americans placed third in both, with Boulder's Colleen de Rueck eighth among women in a race that started on a cool morning and got worse.

After I checked in, I bundled up in my raingear and went for a walk, because tomorrow will be an indoor day. More gray. More rain. Water-filled potholes on every block. Cabs splashing through the water. Pedestrians who have trained themselves to step back from curb. More gray. More rain. I walked down East 45th Street, where I once worked. Some smaller buildings had been replaced by big shiny ones. Two doors from my old office building, now remodeled and gussied up, a three- or four-story Catholic mission used to shelter and feed and homeless men. The building was now abandoned, probably slated for redevelopment -- once the economy picks up. At the nearby United Nations, the news was that anti-Israeli remarks made by Iran's president prompted delegates to walk out of an anti-racism conference.

Deciding to switch from miserable macro-cosmic new, I picked up a copy of a free lower Manhattan newspaper to see what was happening locally. I read it while I nibbled some sushi. It seems that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and developer Larry Silverman are at odds over the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site. They are tussling about the order in which the new buildings are to be constructed and, of course, who is to pay for the construction -- or guarantee the bonds. The year 2039 was mentioned as the completion date for the WTC replacement.

The rain let up, but the evening remained chilly and damp. I know that before I return to Colorado, the clouds will lift, the puddles will dry, the sun will come out and the street trees will be in bloom. New York will look better, and my mood will improve too. It always does.

Couple On Display in Free "Hotel Room"

Hotel room set-up in corner storefront promotes hotel -- and displays guests

Duncan Malcolm and Katherine Lewis of London are spending five nights in a luxurious New York hotel room. The BBC reported that the tradeoff is that they any passerby can look in on them as they relax, watch television and do what people generally do in hotel rooms -- except that the bed is screened from view and there is a private bathroom. This is part of the promotion of a hotel that the BBC did not identify, and the couple view it as an extension of their Facebook presence. Would a free, glass-front micro-tel be the equivalent of Twitter?

TSA Tightens Policies -- After Bombing Suspect Slipped Through

Terrorists are creative; security agencies need to be as well

Little old ladies, families with toddlers and harried road warriors better be prepared for closer scrutiny by the Transportation Security Agency. After permitting Faisal Shahzad, who was charged with last Saturday's (fortunately) unsuccessful attempt to detonate a car bomb in New York's Times Square, screeners permitted him to pass through security at JFK International Airport on Monday evening, and Emirates Airlines let him on the plane.

Shahzad's name had been added to the no-fly list a few hours earlier, but it appears that no one (or at least no one with both responsibility and a functioning brain) at the agency or the airline had bothered to look at the list. He reportedly purchased his one-way ticket with cash in the last minute.Isn't that supposed to be brightest of all red flags? He could well have been winging his way to Dubai International Airport andthen on to Pakistan efore anyone looked at the list. Things changed fast after the close call.

Even though TSA personnel are supposed to match names on airline tickets with photo IDs before letting them proceed to the metal-detector and X-ray of carry-ons, airlines are responsible for monitoring the no-fly list. Everyone involed has gotten a wake-up call.

The government is now requiring airlines to check the no-fly list within two hours after being notified that the list had been updated. Until this new policy was instituted, airlines had had to check for updated every 24 hours. In 24 hours, a passenger boarding an international flight could be anywhere in the world. While TSA agents missed Shahzad at the security checkpoint and Emirates missed him when he checked in, Customs and Border Protection spotted his name on the passenger list and apprehended him before the plane took off for Dubai, Emirates' home base Meanwhile, since the incident,.Emirates, an enthusiastic proponent of Open Skies, does not mention a word of new alertness on its website.

According to a report in Travel Weekly, a travel trade publication, "The U.S. government's plan is to eventually take over the task of watch list matching. In 2009, the government began phasing in domestic flights. International flights aren’t covered by the government yet."

Like the Army is often accused of "fighting the last war," the TSA has been obsessed with the America's big airline incident, namely 9/11. The hijackers took over aircraft on domestic flights, so the security efforts have been directed there. A U.S.-bound Nigerian with explosives sewn into his underwear and a troubled Pakistani-American on the lam for a failed midtown Manhattan car bombing just wasn't on U.S. security's radar screen.

Good that someone was paying attention. And I hope that the TSA can keep its collective eyes and minds open, look for something else "unusual" and lay off little old ladies, families with toddlers and harried road warriors.

West Virginia Coal Miner Play

Current coal mine tragedy brings poignant play to mind

Back in 2005, the Denver Center Theatre Company put on "Fire On The Mountain," an achingly poignant musical drama about about the lives and hardships of coal miners in the Appalachian Mountains. Amid the poverty, the heartache and the tragedy, the performers celebrated the mountain culture, lifestyle, challenges and heroics communicated by Appalachian bluegrass music and dancing that revealed its Celtic roots. With soaring voices, fiddles and banjos, the cast communicated the indomitable spirit of the miners and their families.

"Fire On The Mountain" has played in a few other cities besides Denver -- Chicago, Louisville, maybe some others that I couldn't find and New York. Here's a description of the off-Broadway production as seen through New York eyes:

"From the creators of MET’s runaway hit Hank Williams: Lost Highway — is a masterful blend of musical theater and oral history. Drawn from interviews with Coal Miners from West Virginia and Kentucky, Fire on the Mountain's text is intertwined with some of the greatest traditional music and union songs to come out of America in the 20th Century. Actors and musicians (all from Appalachia) share the spotlight, with the latter made up of some of the finest pickers and strummers to ever grace a New York stage at one time.

Powerful social history, moving family drama, and incredible songs (think O Brother, Where Art Thou?) make Fire on the Mountain one of the most unusual and exciting entries of the upcoming Off-Broadway season."

When my husband and I saw it in Denver, we stayed for a talkback with the actors following the performance. The exchange between cast and audience was both beautiful and sad. Many many audience members came from mining families -- some current, some reaching back into Colorado history -- and all were able to identify with what happened on stage. If "Fire On The Mountain" comes to a theater near you, go see it. If it returns to  this area, I'd gladly go again.

Southwest to Start Service to New York in '09

Leading low-fare carrier braving LaGuardia in -mid-2009

Southwest is planning to start service to New York's LaGuardia Airport (LGA) in June 2009. Since, IMO, LaGuardia is one of the worst, most congested, most unfriendly airports in the country, this might just put a damper on Southwest's high customer approval ratings. LGA, Newark (EWR) and JFK International, New York's major airports, among them are credited or blamed for something like 70 percent of the flight delays in the entire country. That's is the reason that Southwest has for years avoided New York, flying no closer than Long Island MacArthur Airport (ISP), which is 50 miles from Manhattan. That's twice as far as Denver International Airport is from downtown Denver, and about the same distance as DIA is from Boulder.

Southwest, which reportedly is planning to fill the void at LGA when ATA went belly-up, is being quite coy about announcing which airports will be on the other end of the new routes. ATA's gates became available, and Southwest grabbed them -- not that there's all that much competition right now with airlines folding like a deck of cards in a poker game.

Tourists Gawk at Lehman Bros. HQ

New York skyscraper draws tourists -- like the Bear Stearns and Enron buildings before it

I must say that I was surprised to read a Reuters news story that began: "Welcome to New York's latest tourist attraction: Lehman Brothers' headquarters (Reuters photo at right). It may be ghoulish, but as Lehman edges closer to a sale or outright failure, its currency as a tourist draw is rising. While regulators and bankers flocked to the New York Federal Reserve in lower Manhattan on Sunday to decide Lehman's fate, shutterbugs descended on the bank's midtown Manhattan headquarters to catch a piece of history before it disappears."

Call it schadenfreude tourism when people want to see a place where a felled giant once ruled. They're the sort who photogaphed the Enron building when that Texas scam operation came crashing down and more recently when Bear Stearns failed. Their latest target is Lehman Brothers' headquarters at 745 Seventh Avenue (between 49th and 50th Streets), conveniently close to Times Square. Lehman Brothers.

"The company's name is affixed in gray, metal letters to glossy black walls flanking the doors.
The nameplates, usually ignored in favor of the massive screens touting swirling, colorful videos, became an object of curiosity on a humid, sunny Sunday morning as people gawked at the home of the latest financial giant to face ruin," Reuters reported in the story called "Lehman Office Joins the New York Tourist Circuit."

Sidewalk gawkers who know the faces of some of the financial world's movers and shakers might have recognized some Citigroup's Vikram Pandit, JPMorgan's Steven Black and others emerging from limousines to deal with the crisis. "Several people posed and smiled next to the nameplates before a security guard shooed them away," the unnamed Reuters reporter added.

Daily Beast's New Airport Rankings

The Daily Beast studied, rated and ranked 27 US airports

The Daily Beast's provocative headline, "Airports from Hell," is affixed to an analysis of 27 top airports in the US in eight specific areas, including on-time arrivals/departures so far in 2009 and a separate evaluation of holiday arrivals and departures, which is oh-so timely. The subtitle is "first to worst," which means they can't all be "from hell."

The best, according to The Beast, is Houston Intercontinental Airport (IAH) 

On-time departures 2009: 86.19%
On-time arrivals 2009: 84.73%
On-time holiday departures: 90% (ranked first)
On-time holiday arrivals: 86%
Average security wait time: 6.1 minutes
Tarmac nightmares: 22nd out 27
Safety: 5th out of 27
Amenities: 8th out of 27

The worst is Newark International Airport (EWR)
On-time departures 2009: 73.76%

On-time arrivals 2009: 64.14% (ranked last)
On-time holiday departures: 70% (ranked last)
On-time holiday arrivals: 75%
Average security wait time: 7 minutes
Tarmac nightmares: 23rd out of 27
Safety: 25th out of 27
Amenities: 15th out of 27

Denver International Airport (DIA) ranked 17th
On-time departures 2009: 79.23%

On-time arrivals 2009: 80.84%
On-time holiday departures: 84%
On-time holiday arrivals: 80%
Average security wait time: 11.3 minutes
Tarmac nightmares: 9th out of 27
Safety: 23rd out of 27
Amenities: 24th out of 27

According to The Beast, getting through DIA's security lines took several minutes longer than at the speediest airports, on average, and its "Safety" was downgraded significantly after an incident last year when a Continental plane skidded off a taxiway into a shallow gully (often described as a "ravine," making it seem far deeper than it is), injuring 30 people. A hotel at the terminal, fancy Gucci-esque shops and a better selection of more interesting restaurants might have elevated it in the Amenities category. The Beast quoted Matt Daimler of Seatguru.com who said, “It’s one of the better airports to experience.” As for on-time arrivals and departures, IMHO, when there are delays in Denver, more often than not they are due to delays elsewhere in the country's obsolete air-travel system. The Beast's  report is accompanied by a gallery of airport pictures three screens, nine airports to a screen, or as a slide show.

"New York Times" Discovers Denver; Mile High City Will Survive

Know-it-all newspaper doesn't...

The illustrious New York Times assigned Eric Wilson, who usually seems to report on shopping, to write "36 Hours in Denver." He got a lot right but also a fair amount falls under the "not exactly" category.

Wilson wrote about "the imposingly gray state Capitol, a dead ringer for the one in Washington, only made of sound Colorado granite." Dead ringer? Not exactly. Consider the vastly different sizes, the significantly different overall proportions and the very different dome shape and scale. Perhaps these buildings look alike to someone who pretends that the US Capitol (above left) and the Colorado Capitol (right) have identical columns and pay no mind to our state capitol's gleaming gold dome, its lack of massive wings and its absence of a pair of grand staircases such as those that grace the US Capitol.

Special note to Eric Wilson and other New Yorkers: The mere presence of a dome does not automatically create a US Capitol clone. Even the New York State Capitol in Albany has one, but city people don't normally venture very far upstate, let alone, evidently, visit our state.

Regarding food, Wilson writes, "There’s no getting around Denver’s culinary specialty, red meat, the starring attraction at Old West-themed barbecue joints all over town." Even without pointing out what an out-of-date cliche that is, his citation of Buckhorn Exchange and The Fort bear noting. At 115 years old, the Buckhorn Exchange, Denver's oldest restaurant, and The Fort, arguably its most distinctive and most Western, are very worthwhile stops for city slickers from New York, even if only for their artifacts.

Wilson described The Fort as "what appears to be a 1960s rendition of the Alamo." It may appear that way to him, but in fact, The Fort is a smaller-scale replica of and tribute to Bent's Fort along the Santa Fe Trail -- in southeastern Colorado, not in Texas and about 670 miles apart. The Fort is revered for its own role in honoring and even preserving Western history in general and Colorado history in particular. The food is very good, the wine list very sophisticated and the ambiance unique. But "barbecue joints"? Not exactly.

Wilson recommends a visit to Rockmount Ranch Wear for authentic Western shirts but neglects to mention that founder Jack Weil still comes to work every day at the age of 107. In fact, he was alive in 1908, the last time Denver hosted a political convention -- but it was the Republicans who met in Colorado's capital a century ago. This might be the most interesting single factoid about Rockmount.

*******

Note: Jack Weil died on August 14, 2008, having gone to work almost until the end. He was still doing that when Wilson researched his story and when the Times published it.

*******

According to Wilson it was "Larimer Square in LoDo, where gold was first discovered in Colorado in the 1850s." Again, not exactly. If he had visited Inspiration Point Park, several miles northwest of LoDo at Sheridan Boulevard and 50th Avenue, he might have seen a historic plaque inscribed, "One mile north of this point Gold was discovered on June 22, 1850, by a party of California-bound Cherokees. The discovery was made by Louis Ralston, whose name was given to the creek, (a branch of Clear Creek). Reports of the find brought the prospecting parties of 1858 and produced the permanent settlement of Colorado. Erected by the State Historical Society of Colorado from the Mrs. J.N. Hall Foundation and by the American Trails Association and Citizens of Denver. 1941."

As far as nightlife is concerned, he wrote about drinks at Rioja, which is actually far better known for its food, and added that "Within a three-block radius, there’s also a wine bar, Crú; a Champagne bar, Corridor 44; and a nightclub called Open Bar." In fact, Rioja and the three bars/clubs he listed are all on the same block -- the 1400 block of Larimer.

Wilson, the New York shopping maven, inexplicably sends visitors to the tacky Mile High Flea Market. He didn't mention that the flea market is a dozen miles or so from downtown Denver, that it is only open Friday through Sunday and that there is an admission charge -- modest to be sure, but something the "newspaper of record" normally would note.

As part of his practical travel tips, Wilson noted, "A cab from the airport to most downtown hotels is $47." Well, that's a New Yorker's view of the world if ever there was one. Except visitors with big expense accounts or big bank accounts, or parties of more than one or two, savvy travelers heading to a downtown hotel would take RTD's SkyRide from the airport to the Market Street station for just 9 bucks.

Why Can't an Airline Be More Like a Bus Line?

Washington Post compares eight Washington-New York bus lines. Wow!

I was living back East in the last century when Eastern Airlines launched its then-revolutionary Shuttle between New York's LaGuardia and Boston to the northeast and Washington-National to south. Low fares. Hourly flights in both directions. No strings. No TSA screening. Except in the heart of the rush hour, quick cab ride to close-in airports. Business travelers embraced it. And it soared. In those pre-Amtrak days, rail travel on antiquated trains (the New Haven Railroad to Boston, the Pennsylvania Railroad to D.C.) seemed tedious, and buses, for business travelers, seemed déclassé.

Fast forward to this century, and buses seem to be a fantastic way to travel between these two cities. Washington Post reporters rode 10 different buses operated by 10 different bus companies, and all I can say is: with the arguable exception of Southwest, the worst bus line sounds preferable to the best airline these days.

The Post's motorcoach comparison shopping, assembled into a chart called "Rolling With It," reveals low fares (the lowest reported as $1*, the highest one-way fare is $30), convenient center-city stops, online booking with no or modest change fee, walk-up service with no or modest surcharge (but usually cash only) and often amenities that airline passengers can only dream about. Depending on the bus line, these can include free WiFi, electrical outlets, leather seats, free bottled water and free movies that in one case passengers vote on. Most have some kind of frequent-rider deal, with a free trip after as few as four paid trips. Amazing!

*There must be strings to a dollar fare, but I don't know what they are.

The most stinging criticism the Post had was for two lines. MVP was described as, "Our non-MVP bus was pretty dismal. Hindsight lesson: MVP runs its own vehicles Monday-Thursday but uses others on weekends. No WiFi, broken reading lights and the restroom was like an indoor outhouse, unclean and lacking toilet paper and hand sanitizer." Of New Century Travel, the paper commented, "The boarding was unclear — we were instructed to board the Philly-bound bus, but then what? — and the ride was harrowing from start to finish. We want our 20 bucks back!"

I suppose that those Continental Express passengers stranded overnight on the tarmac in Minneapolis last month would have been ecstatic if such had been the worst of their experiences. Click here if you've forgotten that awful true story.

If you are traveling that NYC-WAS route, check the Post's chart with prices, policies, phone numbers, websites and ratings from four buses to a half-bus. If I were still traveling the Northeast corridor, that's what I would do.