THE tourists, bless their hardy souls and open wallets, were out in force along Broadway yesterday, risking sunstroke to line up for the Gray Line bus tours.
As a group, out-of-towners are often unloved in this city. The locals like to make fun of them. But New Yorkers could do worse than to hop on a bus themselves.
Theirs would not be the standard itinerary, though: nothing like a drive past the
For them, there would be Phantom New York, the city that never got built.
That New York is as real as the city you see. What we choose not to construct, after all, determines what ultimately exists. Is further proof required beyond the collapse this week of plans to build a West Side stadium? For better or worse, the city is now a different place from what might have been.
The proposed tour would run along roads not taken and brush by dreams long deferred - from Westway to the Second Avenue subway, from a direct rail link to the airports to a new headquarters for the United Nations.
It could be called, if you will, the Moynihan Memorial Tour, in honor of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who lamented what he considered a collective lack of will to get things done on a grand scale.
Joyce Gold and Lee Gelber, both urban historians, saw the possibilities.
"The places that don't exist involve a great deal of history themselves," Mr. Gelber said. He runs a tour company called Here Is New York, a name that echoes E. B. White's classic 1949 essay. Only this time, the reality would be Here Isn't New York.
Ms. Gold, who conducts history tours of New York, put it more elegantly: the city that never was. "To build some things, you have to not build other things," she said. "So you could see the city that never was."
Where to begin such a tour? Why not where many visitors board Gray Line buses, on Broadway north of 47th Street?
First, people could be led across the street to TKTS, the discount theater ticket operation. Plans to knock down the TKTS booth and put up a grander version have gone unfulfilled for at least six years.
A ride through Times Square would reinforce the difficulty of making anything happen. Although reshaped in recent years, the place was allowed to remain a creepy wreck for decades while New Yorkers did little more than cluck their tongues and say, how awful.
The tour could turn east, to First Avenue and 42nd Street, the proposed site for sorely needed new offices for the United Nations. That plan has been stymied by Albany lawmakers who don't much like the diplomats of Turtle Bay.
Alternatively, the bus could turn west. There, riders could marvel at the West Side railyards, unmarred by a stadium. They could drive along the Hudson River and imagine Westway. Or stop by the main post office and contemplate how many more years will pass before it becomes a soaring train station bearing Mr. Moynihan's name.
There are so many phantom attractions. Just a short boat ride away is Governors Island, where one can see all the redevelopment that has not taken place nine years since President Bill Clinton first offered to hand the place to New York for the grand sum of $1. Governors Island might not be a bad spot for also contemplating a rail-freight tunnel under New York Harbor, an idea that has been around since the 1920's.
You could go to Second Avenue to see the desperately needed subway line that doesn't exist, though talked about for decades, just like direct rail links from Manhattan to Kennedy and La Guardia airports.
The tour could pass construction that is just beginning at Van Cortlandt Park for a water filtration plant in the Bronx first discussed 30 years ago. It could visit the third water tunnel, not yet finished 35 years after work began. How about the nonexistent new Shea Stadium? A model for it was rolled out in 1998. A new Bronx Terminal Market is similarly elusive, though talked about for 15 years or more.
David Chien, a Gray Line spokesman, said the company was not planning a Phantom New York tour. But he ruled nothing out. "We will definitely look into all submissions," he said. "It's not such an offbeat idea."
Nobody asked, but we thought that the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine might be a splendid place to finish such a tour. It is already a stop on many itineraries. But it has special meaning in Phantom New York. After 113 years, it is still unfinished.
In this city, that's considered perfect.