Tales from The Social Club: Enjoying Spring in the Fall?

Nov 13, 20244 min read

Meeting Date and Time: Tuesday, October 1, 2024 from 5 PM to 7 PM

Meeting Location: Brookfield Place, 230 Vesey Street, New York, NY 10281

How is it possible to enjoy Spring in the Fall? Read on if your interested in finding out. Our meeting at Brookfield Place took place across the street from One World Trade Center (also known as the Freedom Tower). On my trip to Brookfield Place, I passed the 9/11 memorial pools which were dry at the time.

The reason as to why the pool was dry was a mystery. One group member suggested that maybe it was empty for maintenance. My initial idea that it was dry due to ice forming during the winter probably was not the case as October would be too early for the pool to be shutdown for that reason. Freezing temperatures do not typically impact NYC until December.

The location that we met was an indoor food court/shopping center with multiple choices on where to get food as well as a variety of different shopping options. One quirk about the place was the real palm trees.

We proceeded to get food where different members got food from different places. I got my chicken broth from Springbone Kitchen. Remember how in the first sentence of this blog I stated "How is it possible to enjoy Spring in the Fall?". Well this was how. I enjoyed some chicken and rice soup from Springbone Kitchen in the Fall season.

Springbone Kitchen

Some of The Social Club members got their food from Mighty Quinn's Barbecue.

Other members got their food from places that I did not witness them going to. After getting our food, we sat down to eat and play a couple of games, One Night Ultimate Werewolf and Uno. Some members chose to play while others chose to watch, and yet others did a combination of both over time.

One of our members brought in One Night Ultimate Werewolf, a card game that I had never played before. While I do not remember the game and rules exactly, what I do remember is someone reading off the instructions and following them. Players were assigned secret roles based on cards that were dealt. After that a vote was conducted, and the goal was to guess and eliminate the Werewolf. The full rules can be read by clicking here.

After completing several rounds of One Night Ultimate Werewolf, we then played Uno, a game I played many times in college. UNO has a standard set of rules. You can read them by clicking here. That being said, there are many different ways to play UNO with variations in the rules depending on what the players agree on. Because we were low on time, we played a shorter variation with 3 lightning rounds.

The way to win UNO is to get down to zero cards. Once a player gets down to one card, they have to say UNO before anyone else or the penalty for that player is they have to draw two cards from the deck. While I did not win any of the 3 games we played, I was good at keeping other players from winning by saying UNO before they did.

Upon our conclusion of the UNO game, our group meeting ended. Afterwards, I took a couple of picture of Brookfield Place at night.

At the center circle at the top of the steps is a dedication to Paul Reichmann.

Paul Reichmann was a property developer who co-founded the privately held company Olympia & York (a commercial real estate business) with two of his brothers, Ralph and Albert, in the year 1958. Coming from modest beginnings, they invested in construction of First Canadian Place in Toronto which was built from 1973 to 1975. Olympia & York also won the right to build the World Financial Center in NYC in 1980. Additionally, Mr. Reichmann committed Olympia & York to build the Canary Wharf in London starting in 1988. Although Olympia & York went bankrupt in 1992 due to a high vacancy rate at Canary Wharf, Mr. Reichman regained control over the Canary Wharf project only 3 years later. The multi building complex finally achieved near full occupancy in 2000 because of a strong real estate market in London.

After leaving Brookfield place, I took a breathtakingly spectacular photo of One World Trade Center at night.

To wrap up my blog entry, I will leave you with the last pictures I took before I headed home. These are pictures of Broadway, specifically the section in called the Canyon of Heroes. This area is where NYC sport teams have parades after they win championships. This was relevant at the time because both NYC baseball teams (the Mets and the Yankees) were in the playoffs. However, both got eliminated. On a more positive note, one NYC sports team did win a title this year, the New York Liberty (women's basketball), and yes, they did get a parade down the Canyon of Heroes (see final picture of this blog entry). It was fitting for a team who finally won their first WNBA title in their history (which dates back to 1997).