Each year on December 8th, the world remembers John Lennon for his gift of music. It’s a gift that forever resonates and floats eternally across the universe. But what made this December 8th most special was the fact that I got to spend it in the city that John Lennon loved and called home– New York City. My father, a friend, and myself spent about 7 hours strolling through the city. We walked almost 8 miles when all was said and done. I would have walked ten.

We started the day by visiting the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Annex, located on Mercer Street in SoHo. The Annex featured some very nice exhibits, including personal items from Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, Jim Morrison, Simon & Garfunkel, The Beatles, The Who, Jimmy Page, and many of the great artists of the 20th century. Sadly, photography was not allowed.

As great as seeing all those Rock relics were, the featured attraction was the John Lennon exhibit, which mainly focused on his “New York City years.” Many of the items in the exhibit were instantly recognizable, such as his “New York City” sleeveless t-shirt, “Hair Peace” sign from his 1969 “Bed-In” for peace, and the Army shirt he wore for his ’72 Madison Square Garden concert (which also can be seen in the Nobody Told Me video). Other notable items were an upright Steinway piano he kept in his bedroom and hand-written production notes for the Double Fantasy album.

It was fascinating and eerie being so close to Lennon’s personal items. One piece in particular, the paper bag with John’s possessions that Yoko Ono received from Roosevelt Hospital after his death, put the day in perspective. Sadly, the Annex will be closing its doors for good January 3, 2010, so I just managed to see it before it’s gone.

After leaving the Annex, we ventured up to Greenwich Village to see Washington Square Park. The park had a nice, wide-open space, and it looked as if they were landscaping on the east side, maybe adding some new features. The famous monument was there in all its glory. There were plenty of people walking around, with many children playing in the center circle.

From there we walked north and found Electric Lady Studios; a dream fulfilled by Jimi Hendrix in building his own recording studio. Taking note of some other landmarks along the way, we made our way east to St. Mark’s Place. There we saw the building where Lenny Bruce had an apartment. The building facade looked like it was chiseled from a single piece of stone, with the windowsills and other elements being hand chiseled (or so they appeared). Making our way farther east, we walked by the building used as the cover of Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti album. The building has these cool looking faces over each window and door opening of the first and second floors. There was only one more point of interest for us in Greenwich Village– fitting it was last.

We ended up in Tompkins Square Park. The phrase “ended up” is used here in the pejorative. Now, I don’t know what the park looks like in the summer, but I sure know what it looks like in December, and that was enough to scare me. Don’t take my word for it, read some reviews.

If you like creepy looking black squirrels running up and down some even creepier looking trees, and are fine with the even much more creepier characters trolling along the pathways of the park, you should find this park to your liking. As for me, I found myself looking over my shoulder more than a couple times, just to make sure the scent I smelled coming towards me was actually going in a different direction. Yes, the odor. As I walked towards the center of the park, off on a winding path, I noticed some “less fortunate” fellows sitting on a bench and found a strong smell of what I can only describe as human feces. I quickly turned around.

To paraphrase one reviewer on Yelp (see reviews link above), the park was very shady, and it wasn’t just because of all the trees. I definitely wouldn’t walk through this park at night alone, and probably not with a two or three others. Compared to Washington Square, this was like a scene out of a Tim Burton movie– dark and cold. Thankfully, a taxi whisked us up to Times Square.

Now you’re talking… Times Square; the “Crossroads of the World.” Times Square is right where Seventh Avenue and Broadway meet, and goes from 42nd Street all the way up to 47th Street. The actual street area only takes up about six acres of land, but there is so much to do and see in those six acres. The pizza at Sbarro is amazing!

From Times Square, we headed up Broadway. Our first destination was the Brill Building. Some of the biggest hits of the late 1950s and into the 1960s were written by song writers who called the Brill Building home. A real-life “hit factory,” its prominence quickly faded as the 1960s matured with more and more artists writing their own material, making the need for such song writers less necessary. The British Invasion, most notably The Beatles, had much to do with the demise of the Brill Building “business model.”

Some guy working the elevators in the Brill Building exclaimed “no taking pictures of the lobby,” and off we went.

From there, we continued up Broadway and made our way to the Ed Sullivan Theatre. Now home to the David Letterman show, this is the theatre that was used for the televised Ed Sullivan Show. Anyone who was anyone played the Ed Sullivan Show back in the day. Often, Sullivan could make or break you.

After a couple photos, we headed onward to Columbus Circle and continued on Broadway until we hit the Upper West Side Apple Store. It’s one of Apple’s most elaborate designs, featuring a glass roof as well as a glass spiral staircase that brings you to a subterranean heaven with more Macs than you would ever need. I bought my Magic Mouse there.

From there we headed over to Central Park West via 67th Street and walked up to 1 West 72nd Street, or as it’s more commonly known, The Dakota. The Dakota is an amazing building, taking up one full street block and a quarter of an Avenue block. Although the architecture is beautiful, it’s because of who lived there that we were standing in front of the building, along with about a dozen others. It was the building John Lennon called home from 1973 until his death in 1980, having been murdered outside the main entrance gate along 72nd Street. Aside from Lennon, a long list of other notable and famous people have called The Dakota home, such as Judy Garland, Leonard Bernstein, and Boris Karloff.

Just across the street is the Strawberry Fields Memorial. You could hear a crowd of people singing songs and see the brisk activity along the main entrance to Central Park on 72nd Street. Standing in front of The Dakota, I met some guy whose name I can’t remember, nor where he came from. We spoke of John Lennon, The Beatles, and then ventured far off on a tangent, ending up talking about the Kennedy assassination, the Warren Commission, as well as other topics for which my memory fails me. Maybe I’ll see you next year!

From The Dakota, we headed across the street to Strawberry Fields in Central Park. There were probably 75 to 100 people standing all around the Imagine Mosaic, with a couple guys with guitars and a karaoke machine, belting out Beatles tunes. The crowd joined in as well as the dozens of other people on the periphery. The weather couldn’t have been nicer as the 8th was the warmest day of the week. It definitely was something to experience. Twenty-nine years on, John Lennon is as much a part of New York as he was in 1980.

After hanging around Strawberry Fields for about a half hour, we headed up north into Central Park, then made our way back down Central Park West, admiring the architecture of the buildings, then cutting through the park near the Tavern On The Green restaurant. From there we got to Sixth Avenue and headed back to Times Square, cutting over to 47th Street. After another pizza break at Sbarro, we walked down Seventh Avenue to Penn Station and our trip to New York was over.

Prior to 2009, the last time I was in New York City was the early 1990s, spending a handful of hours there walking around. I was only like 13 or 14 years old and really didn’t see much of the city. When I was much younger than that, I guess we drove to New York, once serving as a taxi and another time I don’t know why. But I could count on two hands the amount of time I was in New York.

Within a two-week period in late 2009, I was in New York City for 6 days. I easily walked 14 miles during that time and in between trips my left foot was so sore I could barely put any pressure on it. I injured my foot because of two reasons; running across the streets when I didn’t need to (later learning the proper way to cross by watching the locals), planting my foot on the hard curbs, and walking too fast for too long, about 5 miles the day I initially started feeling the pain.

To say there is a lot to see in New York City is an understatement as large as the city itself. In 6 days, I saw many things, but still never managed to get East enough to get to Grand Central Terminal and The Chrysler Building– my favorite building. Do people have favorite buildings? Well, I do, and that’s it.

I’ll probably have another article on all the other places I visited in New York City, but that’s for another day. If you ever get the chance to visit the city, take it. There are only a precious few cities of such magnitude in the entire world. Once thing is for certain, you’ll never look at your native city/town the same way again. Most likely, it will never compare with New York City.

Click the image below to view the photo galleries. More of New York City to come.