Tag Archives: Rare Event

Part of our walking tour of New York City involved either visiting sites that I mention in The Rare Event, or peering at them from a distance. It was rather strange to walk around knowing that these are Ricky and Jon’s haunts.

Just because of our route, the first place in the story that we located was the hardware store where Ricky urgently needs to buy something at midnight.

Even in NYC, Home Depot, or “Homo Depot,” as Flatiron Mike called it, on 23rd Street, closes at 10pm. Ricky ended up at Nuthouse Hardware, on 3rd Avenue.

Farther up 6th Avenue, we found Ricky’s apartment building. He has about 600 square feet here, for around $4000 a month. I get a little queasy thinking about that.

From the top of the Empire State Building, Eden and I waved at some other venues. At the south end of Manhattan, we could see the financial district, although my knowledge of the area isn’t enough to let me pick out the  Manhattan Life Insurance Building, which contains the offices of Wolfe Gorman Equities and Araucaria Hedge, other than to say that it’s about in the middle, about 5 blocks from the shore.

And looking north toward Central Park, we could see the building with the Hogenboom family apartment, where Jon grew up. It’s the tall brown one.

And of course, we had to find where Jon lives. It’s visible from the top of the Empire State Building, and has come in for some potshots for being modern glass and aluminum construction.

All of these venues were only places on a map for me until this trip: it’s very different to see the places “in the brick.”