Our Visit to Times Square

I never did finish writing about our Christmas trip to Manhattan so I should try to get back to that now since I am feeling well enough to write at the moment.  

I came home from Manhattan with COVID and have been struggling with this virus and complications since then.  (We are now a week into March!)  As if that hasn't been enough to knock me down, I'm also now dealing with a significant re-injury to my extensive spinal injuries which may or may not be related to long-COVID inflammation.  I've had problems with COVID inflammation in other bouts of COVID so I'm leaning toward this spinal problem being triggered by the same.  

So, for more than two months, I have been mostly couch-bound.  Needless to say, I never did finish writing about our trip to Manhattan with Lukey and Kenzie.  I'll get back to that now.

Our pre-Christmas trip to Manhattan was so long ago at this point that I've forgotten about many of the details of this trip.  Maybe some of the details will come back to me as I write about some of the photos.

Our time in Manhattan was pretty short so we squeezed a lot into the time we had.  We were on the go almost every minute we were there.  This trip was filled with late nights and early mornings so we could do and see as much as possible.  

One of the places we made sure to visit was Times Square since the kids had never seen anything like Times Square before this trip.   We had walked through Times Square with them during the day but we knew we wanted to show the kids Times Square at night too.  Our hotel was just a few blocks from the northern end of Times Square.  We could actually see the glow of Times Square from our hotel room.  Honestly though, I think you could probably see the glow from Times Square from miles away considering how bright it is today!

Since I mentioned the brightness of Times Square, I'll start with writing about that.

I've been to Times Square many times over the decades.  This last visit this past Christmas was quite different making this visit the most disappointing visit ever.  Sheila and I both were disappointed but, at the time, we couldn't put our finger on what made it seem so disappointing.  

It wasn't until sometime after we arrived back home that I began to understand why we felt disappointed about Times Square during this visit.  What we did know at the time was that it just wasn't the same...  it seemed to be lacking the character it had for many decades...  but, at the time, we couldn't put our finger on what was so different.  So, once we were back home and I had time to think about the differences between visits and while reviewing my photos that I realized what made it different this year.  It was the lighting.  

Lighting can completely change an environment, an atmosphere.  Color temperature matters.  Brightness matters.  Some places are warm and cozy and it is simply due to the lighting.  Other places even if decorated exactly the same will be cold and stark due to different lighting.  Times Square has become cold, stark and blindingly bright.  The whole atmosphere has changed just by the color temperature of the LCD billboards and the blinding brightness of these billboards.  

For many decades...  actually, for over a hundred years...  Times Square used to have a warmish glow to it.  Now Times Square is lined with monstrous overly bright LCD billboards that emit a sickening bluish light color cast.  What used to be a warm glow of many lights is now a cold, blinding brightness of chaos.  

The color of the light is all wrong for making it feel like the warmly illuminated square it used to be.  To make matters far worse, this cold lighting is far too bright.  If you have ever visited Times Square, you will know that Times Square is far too filthy to illuminate this brightly!  

Times Square really has lost all the character it once had.  

Regardless, Lukey and Kenzie had never experienced a place even remotely like this iconic landmark so it was a lot of fun showing them around Times Square.

I think another change that we found disappointing is that the architecture lining Times Square has changed in recent years.  What architecture is there is now mostly hidden by these blindingly bright billboards.  The buildings creating Times Square seem to be mostly new and rather bland...  I'm a lifelong student of architecture and I find the current state of the architecture in Times Square to be dull, boring and quite disappointing.

Fortunately, it is difficult to see much of this new and boring architecture at night due to the blindingly bright billboards.  The architecture disappears into the darkness just behind these absurd giant LCD billboards.  The classic architecture of the past used to glow in the din of the Times Square lights.  Now it is overpowered by cold, stark and overly bright giant LCDs.

We made our way to the glowing ruby-red glass bleachers so the kids could get a better overall view of Times Square.  I was a little nervous of these oversized stairs with Lukey being on crutches but he did just fine.  

The kids wanted to visit a few specific stores along Times Square so we fought the crowds in a few stores.  Here are a few photos from the M&M store...

This last photo is a series of photos put together into motion.  This was one of the many street performers in Times Square.  I was leaning back on a concrete Jersey barrier while reaching upward holding my camera over my head.  I just shot away blindly...

I'm a bit disheartened to report that Times Square now seems chaotic, messy, filthy, poorly arranged, blindingly bright, cold and stark.  

As I attempt to close this blog entry, I'm just trying to remember what Lukey and Kenzie had to say about Times Square but I can't remember them mentioning it at all.  From the looks of them in the photos, I believe they enjoyed it but I know that expectations can ruin any first visit.  If you expect one thing and then see another, that can be a bit disappointing.  I don't know if today's Times Square lined up with their expectations, exceeded their expectations or if their expectations were higher than what they experienced.  I'll have to ask them the next time we see them.  

What I do know is that Sheila and I enjoyed showing them around Manhattan including our visit to Times Square.  The photos do show a couple of happy kids so that's a plus!