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| My job was part of the maritime industry regulated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (the government entity which owns the World Trade Center), and that came with Port Authority perks. One of them was getting to show a visiting client from Brazil around Manhattan Island by way of a Port Authority helicopter. It's from that helicopter that I took this photo, featuring the Twin Towers and Lower Manhattan (and the Empire State Building in the distance) from above New York Bay. This was probably taken in 1993. Tower One, home to Windows on the World, was the building with the antenna. |
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| This photo was taken in one of the tower's elevator lobbies in December 1975 by Finnish friend Henry Karna. The orange-red banner to the right reads "Hauskaa Joulua", or "Merry Christmas" in Finnish, part of the World Trade Center's international theme. |
Does your workplace throw a holiday party?
My first real job as a teenager was with an upscale menswear retailer. Our corporate office hosted annual "holiday" breakfasts for us salespeople, usually on a Saturday morning in early November. They were held at various posh hotels or country clubs in Dallas, and weren't really parties as much as they were the official launch for that year's Christmas selling season.
After college, my first conventional office job was with a freight forwarding brokerage firm in New York City. And even though those previous retail breakfasts were rather fancy, with plenty of good food in a luxurious setting, I was now in Manhattan. The Big City. And approaching my first Christmas there, I expected a more cosmopolitan type of company holiday party than those working breakfasts.
I was living with my aunt, a lifelong Brooklynite, and a legal secretary for a Park Avenue law firm. Her employers regularly threw their holiday parties at Central Park's glamorous Tavern on the Green. So yeah, I kinda expected most Big Apple office parties to be grand affairs, even if my office was nowhere near Park Avenue, and my employers weren't prestigious lawyers.
Imagine my initial disappointment when I discovered that sure, my officemates kinda held a dinner for themselves to mark the occasion. But theirs was extremely low-key, at a faded restaurant along a dingy street between the shadows of a parking garage and the World Trade Center.
I'd seen the place while scurrying around our office's Lower Manhattan neighborhood, running errands for our employer. Our firm processed documentation for international freight, and in those pre-Internet days, while we had our own in-house messenger and contracts with other messenger services, sometimes it was just easier to hand-deliver urgent paperwork myself. And while I know one shouldn't judge a book by its cover (as the old saying goes), this particular restaurant's exterior offered no reason to expect its menu and interior to be Christmas-party-worthy.
Meanwhile, yes... just a couple of blocks further north, New York's incredible World Trade Center commanded the skies. I'm talking about the Trade Center's original version, before 9-11, when it was known for its iconic Twin Towers. And atop Tower One was the city's dazzling two-story destination restaurant called Windows on the World. I'm calling it "WOW" for short, because that's no understatement.
WOW sprawled across floors 106 and 107 of the North Tower, offering wrap-around, floor-to-ceiling views of the entire city, New Jersey, upstate New York, Long Island, and the Atlantic Ocean. Its main dining room offered tables situated on two different levels so every diner could enjoy the scenery. Special high-speed elevators whisked us up from the tower's main lobby in a matter of seconds, meaning we had to intentionally pop our ears during a very quick trip if we didn't want an earache to spoil our expensive meal.
Indeed, talk about a "wow-factor"! Dining way up high, sleek and serene, seemingly above everything. Shucks, back down on the ground, that Tavern on the Green may be a Victorian Gothic bauble, but it used to be Central Park's sheep barn.
Although I'd never before been to WOW, I'd heard a lot about it. Most New Yorkers had, including all of my co-workers. But here's the thing: We were paying for our Christmas party out of our own pockets. While our employers did give Christmas bonuses, they did not host an office Christmas party. I recall that their option to us consisted of a monetary bonus OR a party, but not both.
So ours was the obvious choice, right? We didn't work to party; we worked to get paid. And we understood we were not a fancy law firm or huge corporate conglomerate. There were only ten of us.
Still, to native New Yorkers, WOW seemed more like a tourist trap than anything else. I'll admit my idea didn't go over well at first with my co-workers: "WOW is too fancy, too pricey, too touristy! Yes, the views are probably epic, but they're part of the overpriced gimmick."
I was naive enough to counter all of those facts - and yes, they were mostly true - with, "so what? We're in New York City, and it's Christmas."
The more they thought about it, the faster my co-workers warmed up to the idea of WOW for our little party. So we booked a large table for several of us and any significant others that wanted to come along. Our employers let us leave the office a little early, so we could get home at a decent hour. Posh multi-course dinners always last a while, and in those days, Lower Manhattan after dark grew more unsafe the later one stayed.
I'm no foodie, and I don't remember anything about WOW's food. However, the fact that I don't remember their food likely means it was neither horrible nor spectacular. I've since learned that throughout its history, WOW never managed to rack up consistently high praise from the city's demanding food critics, many of whom admittedly rated the venue for its views as much as its menu.
Hey - those views were undeniably WOW's best feature.
So the food was at least edible. I'm sure the service was fine. Its decor was unfussy and muted in the best (if that's possible) 1970's aesthetic. Lots of chrome and grays and beige. But what I distinctly remember about WOW was its bathroom! Not because I got sick or anything, but fancy meals tend to drag on and on through salads and entrées and desserts and libations (caffeinated for me, otherwise for my co-workers!). Usually, I can get in and out of a conventional restaurant without ever having to visit their restroom, but WOW was no conventional restaurant. And eventually, water in my body was finding its own level, if you get my drift.
I found the men's room, went inside, and immediately, I noticed a faint sloshing sound.
And it wasn't what you're probably thinking.
The second thing I noticed was the tall, thin man in a uniform standing silently over in a corner, looking at me with a soft smile. Just standing there next to a counter as I entered the little foyer of the men's room.
Um... what was he doing there? He was in uniform, so he wasn't a janitor. Was he a waiter on break? Don't they have a break room for their staff? I don't think he said anything. He just stood there, with that soft smile. It unnerved me, which reminded me of my primary purpose for being in that room in the first place. So I turned to a bank of urinals and... was reminded of the sloshing sound. And I saw what it was.
The water in the base of each urinal was sloshing around within the urinals, ever so subtly! I turned to look into one of the toilet stalls behind me, and sure enough, the water was doing the same thing in them as well!
Talk about water finding its level! Because it dawned on me: I knew each of the Trade Center's towers had been designed to sway upwards of 1 foot in each direction at their tops, and here I was, at the top of Tower One. The building was undoubtedly moving in the night's breezes, which 106 floors up was probably more like a gale. And the bathroom's fixtures were moving with the building, of course. While all the while, the water they used was constantly seeking its level.
How cool is that?! When I realized what was happening, it made my entire evening! Not the food, or the service, or the luxury - the very fact we were so high up into the sky that the water in bathroom fixtures was sloshing about! So impressive.
Yes, I'm weird.
The water wasn't moving enough to spill out onto the floor or anything. After all, this was a luxury restaurant. We men were forced to wear jackets (the restaurant had a ready supply of them if some poor schlep showed up without one). Who would consent to being ordered to wear a jacket while the venue's bathrooms were a sloppy, slippery mess? Engineers obviously calculated how much the water could move in those fixtures without spilling. Even today, that's cool to me!
Eventually, I realized I was starting to gawk at those urinals like a Texas hillbilly on his first venture into town, so I went over to wash my hands. And the tall, uniformed gentleman quietly handed me a towel. Not a crisp paper thing, but a clean, fluffy fabric towel.
"Uh, thanks...?" I found the whole thing awkward. I was trying not to look at him or stare. Surely that guy wasn't passing his time in the men's room by handing out towels? Would it be rude of me to give it back to him? So I patted my hands briefly. I quickly placed the towel on the countertop, and hurriedly left. I got back to our table with wet hands, which I discreetly dried on my fabric dinner napkin.
Later that evening, I got back to my aunt's apartment in Brooklyn and boy, did she get a good laugh out of my recounting to her the weird story about that uniformed guy in the men's room.
"That's the men's room STEWARD!" I remember her practically screaming, she was laughing so hard. Shaking her head too, as I recall, marveling at my hickness. "That's a high-class restaurant! Its restrooms have stewards! He hands you a towel, you dry your hands, you hand it back to him. There's probably a woman who does the same thing in the ladies' room, too."
" oh. " I was genuinely embarrassed. I felt like I'd flunked Luxury 101.
"How much did you tip him?" my aunt asked.
"TIP?"
"You didn't tip him?" My aunt's bemusement turned to chagrin, realizing how unsophisticated her eldest nephew was. "Anything?"
The next year my co-workers and I again went to WOW for our Christmas dinner, and I made sure I had a small wad of dollar bills in my front pocket to hand out to anybody in a uniform. I didn't want to risk breaching any elitist protocols.
And the water was still sloshing about in those urinals. It probably hadn't stopped since my last visit.
Not that my New York City Christmases were all about urinal water, but WOW, that's one of my strongest memories of them.
Peace, y'all!
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