It is also the building used as a set for the 1978 Superman movie with Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder. There's still a picture of them in the lobby with Margot sitting on Clark Kent's desk in a pencil skirt split to her hip. I love that picture. In 1978, when that picture was taken, I loved Margot Kidder.
There's a big glass globe in the lobby with recessed mile markers to various locations on the planet (its 1,378 miles to Dallas!) in the marble floors, it's quite a spectacle. The building is in the National Register of Historic Places and it is a designated NYC landmark. There are tourists in the lobby snapping pics next to the globe throughout the day. I walk past them to fetch my coffee.
I moved from near Penn Station, at the corner of 32nd and Broadway, next to Herald Square. Though it is a short ten-minute stroll away from my new location, I am in a completely different neighborhood. I feel like I am walking out on to a movie set when I go for lunch. This part of midtown, near Grand Central, What is this? Grand Central? Uh, yes. is the New York City I imagined before I moved here.
Its crowded, busy, glamorous, fast-paced, expensive, and beyond diverse. I work in Clark Kent's building. I work on a floor just like the sets in the movie. I even have people sit on my desk from time to time.
In 2018, this neighborhood is full of people like me. Pfizer's HQ is across the street, Mt Sinai occupies much of the next block. The UN is down the street.
I moved from Korea-town. There's not a Korean restaurant anywhere in my new neighborhood! There's plenty of restaurants: Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Steakhouses and Irish Pubs. Lunch-time take-out is a big business. "Bowls" are big right now. Mediterranean, Indian, Mediterranean-Indian Fusion and Shanghai street food are popular.
Grand Central Station houses a kind of tony shopping mall with an artisanal food court with the train station. It's close enough for lunch.
The feel of this neighborhood is so different. This is no-nonsense corporate-ville. K-town was a mix of corporate with start-up and immigrant businesses keeping things connected to reality. Turtle Bay, the name of the neighborhood I'm in now, is much more head-in-the-Manhattan-clouds. It's easy to lose touch with the real world when iced coffee is $4.
I am happy I work here. This is effen New York effen City. When I dreamed of working here some day, long before I even thought it was possible to move here, this was what I dreamed of. I'm realizing that, in hindsight, now. It's cool to have that happen to me. I'm a little bit amazed every day I walk into work.
I wonder if this will wear off. Some things do, others' don't.
