Man watching an Anheuser-Busch truck receive a parking ticket the other day in the Financial District said to no one in particular:
"A beer truck getting a ticket? There oughta be a law against it."
It is a ridiculous word, but that hasn’t stopped the sprouting of so many Web sites with perky “I ♥ N.Y.” staycation ideas — Circle Line, a museum visit, a tenement tour and bialy on the Lower East Side.
And, admittedly, it’s a very fun word to say. Staycation. How was your staycation? My parents went on staycation, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt. Our son-in-law threw his back out on staycation.
As is so often the case, this new thing is nothing new in many parts of New York City. It’s just that it was never named by those level-headed working men and women who do not need a tarted-up pseudoword to enjoy a nice week without work.
Wanting to get to the bottom of this mystery once and for all, this week we found ourselves gazing into an empty, gray, 50-foot-long pool in Christodora House’s basement. It was 8 feet deep at one end and sloped up from the center to a shallow depth at the other end. From the looks of it, it hadn’t been used for 50 years.
We also toured an adjacent gym with decrepit, old basketball backboards without rims and a high, cement-slab ceiling barely hanging onto rusted rebar and looking like it was about to come crashing down any second. The gym and pool spaces are zoned for community-facility use, meaning they could be offices for doctors or nonprofit groups. But, according to our tour guide, the building isn’t under any obligation or deadline to rent these spaces. In fact, Christodora tried to convert the gym to residential use a few years ago, but the city’s Board of Standards and Appeals rejected the condo tower’s hardship application.
A list of $12 specialty cocktails, such as the Plum Gin Fizz (Muddled sour plum, 2oz Gin, splash of simple syrup, splash of lemon juice, shaken in a Collins glass) will be served nightly. Bottles of beer are $7 and glasses of wine will range from $10 to $20.
"The Ella staff will fit the theme dressed in classic sexy and sophisticated 1920's attire."