Tales from The Social Club: A Star Inside a City
- Shane Holmes
- Mar 26
- 4 min read
Meeting Date and Time: Tuesday, February 25, 2025 from 5 PM to 7 PM
Meeting Location: Morning Star Café, 949 2nd Ave., New York, NY 10022
Café Website: morningstaronsecond.com
An unseasonably warm February evening, and coincidentally my Mom's birthday, began inside a star. What, how could that be, you might ask. Well not a literal star but inside the Morning Star Café, which was such a good place, I will give them a 4.5 out of 5 star rating. Why not a perfect rating, you ask? Well, read on and I will reveal the reason at the end of this blog entry.
The café had outdoor seating, which typically would be a good reason to sit outside.
However, even though it was an unseasonably warm day, the high temperature in Central Park (the weather station closest to us) only registered at 57°F and that occurred at 1 PM. So the air temperature outside was still relatively cool. Additionally, some rain fell while we were in the café.
Fascinatingly to me as meteorology is my top passion, no rain fell in Central Park meaning the activity was very localized. When I left the restaurant, a local LinkNYC Kiosk read 49° under partly cloudy skies. I will now take a moment to criticize AccuWeather for not showing units for their temperature reading. Since this reading was recorded in the United States, the units were degrees Fahrenheit. They just were not displayed. With the exception of the Kiosk, all weather data is sourced from the National Weather Service.
Upon arriving at the Café, I politely asked the staff if I could sit by the windows in the quietest area of the café and they granted my request. We then got into conversation topics and, when I asked her, Caroline shared she visited her sister in Miniola (Long Island) 2 days prior to our meeting.
I shared that I was going to get a new cell phone and hate it when that happens. One reason being I have to get used to a new platform. Also, cell phone production uses precious natural resources so I only acquire a new phone if I have to. The reason I switched was because the touch sensitivity on my old phone was getting weaker by the day. For example, to text the letter z, I would have to touch z multiple times for it to appear. I switched from Samsung Galaxy A14 to Samsung Galaxy A16. I have a love hate relationship with my phone as sometimes it is my best friend and at other times my worst enemy. For example, the phone is great to use to listen to music and watch TV on the train. On the negative side, it causes considerable stress with phone calls coming in especially in the case of unknown numbers and spam calls.
We then proceeded to come up with questions for a friendly trivia game. A social club member asked how many vice presidents became presidents as a result of resignations, assassinations, or death of a president currently in office. The answer is nine (John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Chester A. Arthur, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry S. Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Gerald Ford).
During trivia, I asked "What is the name of the ski resort in Alabama?" Now you might be thinking: "What, Shane, there is a ski resort in Alabama?" Well, there is! Its name is Cloudmont Ski and Golf Resort, and there is a bit of a heartwarming story around it.
It closed during the COVID-19 pandemic. With the exception of a brief stint in the 2022-2023 ski season, the ski resort was closed from the 2020-2021 through 2023-2024 ski seasons. As a result of popular demand from the public, and the coordination of volunteers, former resort workers, and the owner's family, the resort reopened in January of this year.
The resort is located on Lookout Mountain which has 2 parallel running slopes with a 150 ft. vertical drop (the vertical distance from top of the hill to the bottom) and an elevation of 1800 ft. above sea level. Because it is in Alabama, it is often closed for significant portions of the year due to warm temperatures. So how do they open it you might say. When cold air comes through Alabama (28°F and colder), the slopes are blasted with person-made snow using snow guns and cannons, typically overnight. Surprisingly, northern Alabama can go through stretches where overnight temperatures consistently drop into the mid 20s °F in the winter. Because the slopes are small (see image below), there is not a whole lot of area to cover with snow so they can build up a significant base/depth of snow in a relatively short period of time (they only need 18 hours).
On another topic, I do not remember what I ordered just that the food was good. Remember, how earlier I said I gave this café 4.5 stars. Well, I took off half a star because they played the music to a little too loudly. For more about restaurants, sound, and ways to cope with noisy environments, see my prior blog entry. Suffice to say, what I did not mention in that blog entry was one of the ways to cope with noisy restaurant environments is to sit in the quietest place in the café but that only works if the café staff allow you to do that. In in this case, as I mentioned earlier, they did.
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