The ice skating rink at Bryant Park—New York City’s only FREE ice skating rink—is open for business. From now until mid-January, you can skate in the shadow of the Empire State Building and the Public Library.
I don’t participate in winter sports. I tried skiing for a few years in high school but it seems the focus was more on how much weed you can smoke on the chair lift than honing your downhill skills. Consequently, I never advanced past snow plowing. Plus, I never had the proper equipment or clothing so the sport never took. I’ve never been on ice skates either, but I do enjoy watching the skaters at Bryant Park.
The music they play over the PA systems tends to be very, very bad Broadway show tunes. Not cool ones that later became American Popular Standards; songs by Gershwin, Sammy Cahn and the rest of those guys that were recorded outside of the realm of musical theater by the likes of Sinatra and Billie Holiday. The songs they play at the Bryant Park rink are crappy, obscure forgettable show tunes that only annoying musical theater purists could identify. It’s nothing an iPod can’t cure. Pop in your ear buds and suddenly the skaters are gliding gracefully while Ella Fitzgerald sings Midnight Sun.
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I had another meditation class last night but I wasn’t feeling the vibe so I snuck out early. After a lovely opening meditation, they tried to tell us what happens after we’re dead. Fix your karma or you’ll be reincarnated over and over again until you get it right. Horseshit. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; nobody knows what happens after you die. No. Body. If they keep annoying me with this stuff I might stop going altogether. If I want to hear fairy tales about the afterlife, I’ll go back to the Catholic Church.
Exile on Pain Street 
I love your comment about afterlife fairy tales and the catholic church.
rob: The rink’s primary advertiser is the Canadian Board of Tourism. There are others as well. So much, if not all, of the cost is defrayed by corporate sponsorship. I would think that you are culturally predisposed to ice skate! Isn’t it a national requirement? And I have mad respect for your spiritual leanings, but I am jaded. I’ve seen so many hucksters and politicians misuse religion that my knee-jerk reaction is inclined towards doubt.
Is that the rink in the John Cusack movie Serendipity?I do believe in reincarnation but I believe that we are not thrust unwillingly back into life as punishment. We come back willingly to work on ourselves and learn lessons we have decided we need to know. Punishment is self-inflicted if you want to look at it that way.
You’re kidding me. Ugh if I ever get to NY skiing is one thing I plan on learning to do.