At a place called Annie Moore’s on East 41st Street near the main branch of the NYPL. Had a burger earlier at Cock and Bull on West 45th (I think) Street. The burger was edible. That’s about all I can grant it. Crazy cool bartender but the burger just ate like dirt. Not going out and about for any particular reason except restlessness, an unlimited MetroCard, and a thought that places will be empty on this holiday weekend. I’m certainly not going out on account of some financial windfall, though such a thing should be coming eventually in the form of a bloated tax refund.

I like this part of New York. Always did. It feels like a part of town that is old enough to know better.

…

That was yesterday. Today is today. Sunday. Rain is coming.

TIL something interesting. In 1983 Richard Nixon apparently considered moving in to the Trump Tower. If a story from a California newspaper is to be believed then the former president and his daughter spent three hours touring condo units at the building. His wife Pat had just had a minor stroke and I guess he wanted to downsize his living arrangement to be better able to take care of her. If the Nixons ever did move in I find no record of it, and the story itself sounds a bit like politically-motivated apocrypha.

There also used to be a pianist in the lobby of the Trump Tower. He played Cole Porter tunes. Today the six floors of public space which had been called the Trump Tower Mall is mostly empty of retail tenants. There had been several shops and boutiques whose owners paid as much as $450/square foot per month to be there. There are still some outdoor-facing shops on the ground floor of the Tower but the only indoor retailers today seem to be Trump’s eponymously named Grill, Bar, and Gift Shop; and an Ivanka Trump boutique shop which looks to me like something from another planet. Oh and there is a small food court type of thing downstairs.

I am starting to see how real the fear of a Trump presidency is among informed observers. Some of the fear might be overblown but not by much. I actually think the last trick he has is to pull a Ross Perot and just say fuck this, I don’t need this much fucking scrutiny. That way he could manage to escape from the house of cards he seems to have built around himself.

He does not seem like someone who would adjust well to Secret Service detail following his every move.

…

Wandering midtown today looking for one of those free blood pressure machines made by HIGI. My inability to find one at any Duane Reade had me thinking that my next web content innovation will be to develop a blood pressure machine locator. Who couldn’t use one of those? Alas, such a thing exists on the HIGI web site, and it turns out my inability to find one of their machines is because they seem to be almost exclusive to RiteAid.

I got to one of those machines back in Astoria, where I got the lowest reading I’ve had from one of those machines in a long time. 127/86, I think. The stupid machine still tells me I am “AT RISK” since their ideal BP seems to be 120/70, while the traditional ideal has been 130/80 since forever.

Going home/ At a depressing, almost empty bar.