Empire State Building
I don’t remember when the last time I was up the Empire State Building was. Surely it was a long time ago, elementary school or something similar. Last week, I had time to kill before the closing, so I did the tourist thing and went up to the observation deck to take pictures:
It’s easier to enter on the 33rd Street entrance: the line to the security checkpoint before you can buy the ticket starts around there. It’s in the basement, obviously a post-9/11 contingency location that apparently stuck. Tourists will be appalled at the somewhat dingy nature of the paint, lighting and hallways: the Empire State Building evokes images of art deco strength and wonder, but, symbol aside, it’s a old office building whose interiors have seen better days. Art deco and the jazz age, after all, is three-quarters of a century past.
Just outside the big room where they form the queues to buy tickets, one of the employees was trying to upsell the attractions by pointing out that, for $22, you can get a combo ticket that includes the observation deck as well as New York Skyride. Looking at the line and realizing that it would take at least half an hour to buy a ticket, I jumped at the combo offer. The difference was $10: the Skyride wasn’t worth that much, but, combined with not waiting for the regular tickets, it seemed like a good deal.
Yes, the Skyride was kind of lame. It’s one of those small movie screens projecting a short, swooping film showing off the city; the seats are mounted on machinery that tilts the audience to augment the movie’s conceit, that you’re in some sort of magical helicopter erratically piloted by Kevin Bacon as he shows you the sights of New York. The illusion of pulling Gs is actually pretty effective, more than I would have thought for just a little bit of tilt on your seat.
After this — about ten minutes — it was off to the main queues for the observation deck elevators. There was another security check as the line snaked around the relatively narrow hallways of the building. The ESB isn’t the WTC in terms of architecture: there are no wide-open spaces and soaring ceilings. But then, there isn’t a WTC anymore, is there?
All in all, the lines moved quickly, and I spent some time on the deck taking pictures. The exposure elluded me at times, so these pictures have some post-processing to boost saturation and constrast. Oh, well.
There was a wait for the elevators to go back down to the 80th Floor skylobby, but we had an option to take the stairs down 6 flights. Being in a bit of a rush, I took that route, came out on 33rd Street, and looked for a bite to eat before heading off to the closing. At Herald’s Square, I saw a guy with a video camera pointing up at the ESB. After he left, I went to his spot and took my last shot of the day and headed off.