there was no specific reason for me to hit the restaurant at the old parc lincoln. not tonight, at least. it is just something i’ve intended to do for a long time now.

if you are just tuning in, the Parc Lincoln was a shit hole hotel that I lived in for about a year after I moved to New York in 1990. nothing has ever rivaled the Parc Lincoln in terms of filth, discomfort, and all around shitholery. i have stayed i a few dingy and dreary hotels and motels, and in some less than accommodating arrangements with friends and nearfriends, but however miserable any such place may have seemed i always reassured myself by saying “at least it’s not the Parc Lincoln.” i would wake up to clucking of pigeons on my window sill, woken up at all hours of the night to find cockroaches crawling on my face, and sweat gushing from my body.

i get strangely nostalgic for the place, not on account of any desire to return to such misery but because of the people who lingered in that space at the same time as me. strangers passing through strange places and perhaps unfortunate times. where are they now? o lost! (hah)

some years ago, then, i heard that the lobby of the hotel had been gutted out, and converted to a fancy restaurant. the place is called ‘Cesca. i had heard that ‘Cesca was expensive, exclusive, and always booked months in advance. Yoko Ono was said to frequent the place.

i kept it at the back of my mind that i wanted to get dinner there some time, but i never made a project of it until this week. i only wanted to see the space, and to see what memories i might find huddling in the renovations. i believe that the spirits and echoes of the past linger in the present, showing themselves at suitable times to those with sense to see.

i was sort of surprised to find that reservations weren’t really even necessary, and that the place was largely empty.

nevertheless, i finally made it over, getting off my lazy duff and putting on my old boots, the boots i wore during the Parc Lincoln days, and during the previous college years. i liked those boots, but they don’t fit so well these days. they were certainly not up to the task of the long walk i took through Central Park to get from 5th Avenue to the Upper West Side. but i survived the trek, perhaps with minor bleeding, but it’s all good.

i found those old boots last week. they surfaced from inside a closet near my front door, rising unexpectedly because i thought i had put those suckers in storage.

i decided the serendipity of the moment must mean something, and that i should wear the Parc Lincoln boots to the Parc Lincoln restaurant once and for all. it’s not a big deal kind of journey by any estimate. i think the place is 3 or 4 miles away, and i could go there any time i really felt like it. it was just a matter of doing it. it’s not like this was some kind of homecoming, or a victory lap, or some morbid revisitation of hard times. i just wanted to see what the old lobby looked like, and to see what i could distinguish about the structure as i remembered it.

all i can really say is that the place where the front desk of the hotel used to be is now a bar, and the place where the phone booths used to be is now a wine closet.

and also, the food was really bleepin’ good. not too pricey but not cheap, either. i didn’t go all in with an appetizer and 2 courses, but if i had i guess it woulda cost about $125 all told. not bad for Manhattan.

i looked at the ceiling a lot. the hotel is still a shit hole. it does not appear to be called the Parc Lincoln any more, but the place is fundamentally still the same. i saw windows opened wide, curtains flailing in the fall breezes, bare bulbs on the ceilings and shirtless denizens hanging their torsos out the fenestral openings.
but i kept looking at the ceiling. sitting in the pleasurable environment of this swanky little universe i remembered living upstairs, in room 317, just 20 or 30 feet away, in near squalor. the roaches, the pigeons, the heat, the nearness of strangers in adjoining rooms, their bed springs squeaking for me to hear with every sleeping tic and nocturnal gyration. whose life was passing like this just above the ceiling under which i luxuriously supped tonight?

not i. not this year.