Thursday, March 28, 2024
Miles from the Mainstream
D. R. ZUKERMAN, proprietor

LPR's Images of Midtown
the Day Before Christmas
(With Commentary)

January 5, 2022 --

LPR started the day early on December 24 to go from The Bronx to Congregation Ohav Shalom, on West 84th Street to say Kaddish on the 53rd yahrzeit of for my dad, Sol Zukerman. Dad passed way on January 10, 1969, and the funeral was January 12, 1969, the day that Joe Namath and the Jets beat the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III. Dad believed in rooting for the home team. Accordingly, he probably put in a good word for the Jets Up There. (I was a Colts fan, tracing their history to when they were the New York Yanks.)

6:35 am 12/24


W. 231st St. Subway station 6:30 am 12/24


After the service -- and showing my vaccine certification -- I sat down in a Bagel store on Broadway for coffee, and then headed to Rockefeller Center, to get images of the tree in daylight. 


Rockefeller Center Tree. 12/24 am


The Tree from East view 12/24


On 7th Avenue, between 50th and 51st, I got an image of the marquee for The Music Man, in previews at the Winter Garden Theater.  Traffic was very light this day before Christmas, for car and pedestrians. 


Winter Garden Marquee. 12/24


Radio City, closed for Christmas. 12/24


12/24. 8:45 am (NBC)


Looking to Saks Fifth

A combination of a day off,  and, no doubt, the ongoing fear of the pandemic,  caused midtown to be fairly desolate this morning of the day before Christmas. There weren't many people at the Rockefeller Center tree, but the skating rink below was busy. 

Fifth Ave., Not busy 12/24, 9am


Skating at Rockefeller Center, 12/24 am


Skaters and tree, 12/24 am


Tree, from front, 12/24


Directions on 50th. 12/24


Across Fifth Avenue, few people stopped to look at the Saks windows.  LPR liked the Saks 2020 windows better.  Of course,  no store Christmas windows could match the windows that drew people to Lord and Taaylor (now gone) on Fifth, below the main Library building.   After getting images of the Saks windows, my phone decided it had enough and shut down. 

A Saks window, 12/24


Another window, 12/24


A third window, 12/24


Next day, in NYC, Christmas dis-glowed, proving to be a gray, damp, if mild, day.  Hardly the holiday celebrated in nostalgic Christmas songs.  But Christmas 2021 was suited for the discouraging words we get from the likes of that bureaucrat doctor in D.C. who enjoys giving us a variation on a theme of "Bah Humbug" and apparently does not mind, at all, being a real-live Grinch.