November 4, 2024

BIG APPLE’S THE BEST AND WORST OF AMERICA WORTH VOTING FOR TOMORROW

NEW YORK CITY — On the eve of the U.S. election a Canadian’s observations and reflections on a recent bite of the Big Apple.

A working holiday last week in the epicentre of the American experience is like a walk-off grand slam in the World Series. Explosive!

Watching from a packed Times Square bar as Freddie Freeman’s screaming homer rocked Yankees fans to their apple core was heart-breaking and exhilarating.

Like the city’s five boroughs and eight million divided Democrats and Republicans.

Downtown under the green guise of the Statue of Liberty and garishness of Broadway, the American dream is alive for moneyed Manhattans and tens of thousands from the 50 states for whom NYC is a bucket list dream trip the same as going to Disneyland or Disneyworld.

Both alike. Amazing and artificial.

**NYC hits a home run with many tourists where Times Square draws most visitors including MuskokaTODAY.com’s Mark Clairmont and Lois Cooper. It’s America at its best and worst. Photos Mark Clairmont**

But a few days out from Nov. 5, Trump v. Harris wasn’t the subject du jour in bagel shops, widely debated or seen on signs in the streets.

A few Trump supporters were hard to miss — like a bus parked at Columbus Circle — for its brash red meat MAGA madness message plasterered top, bottom, front and back.

And largely amusingly ignored if not downright distained.

Harris-Walz signs equally don’t dot the corners of gold-gilded Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue. Democrat supporters haven’t tagged it.

Surprisingly Central Park — the beating heart of the city — seen during a must-take carriage ride through it; or during a hop-on, hop-off top-side day trip and a night trek through Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens and Staten Island aren’t teeming with red, white and blue elections signs where millions live work, pay and play.

Minds must be made up in New York State where they have courted Trump for decades and most especially the past eight years.

**The U.S. often feels the world revolves around it, as here at Columbus Square in New York City. It’s a mecca for Americans from 50 states and countries worldwide.**

On the surface here America is doing great — glittering gold and marquees lighting up the night like grand slam fireworks launched from lalaland and landing on the shores of the Hudson River at the base of Lady Liberty.

But burrow deeper in to the boroughs where tens of thousands of workers take the G train downtown to staff hotels, restaurants and gaudy entertainment emporiums and it’s a different story, I learned visiting a relative on the Upper East Side.

Talking to blue collar elevator repairmen, busy bartenders and orange hard-hatted construction workers tearing down scaffold in the middle of the night — and women in running shoes racing to skyscraper jobs on Wall Street and up the old Empire State Building or new One World Trade Centre memorial building (at 1,776 feet highest in the U.S.) — they are all too willing to share a city and country filled with too many pockets of wealth and poverty.

**The Statue of Liberty is the iconic symbol of America, but even its image abroad is tarnished sees Lois Cooper.**

Inside The Met, the Guggenheim Museum and MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) their stories and art reflect a divergent society deep with 248 years of roots that have always been at odds.

All with an immigrant past, present and future by ordinary and extraordinary people who have care and control of a mighty country as flawed as any, but still with tremendous potential if democratically driven by partners in crime and profit.

A daunting challenge. One that is laid bare in all its towering grandiose, glory and ugliness in NYC.

And that Americans annually flock to by the millions from domestic and international worlds so far apart — yet close to their hearts if not home.

As divided as U.S. workers, children and retirees are in demographics and politics, a recent slice of the Big Apple shows it’s worth voting to preserve for God and country’s sake.