Tall ships and whatnot arrived in New York last weekend for OpSail2000, or as we called it, Op"You Can't See Any Ships"2000. July 4th, the ships came into town and we went up to the wife's office with the great view of the Hudson right at the George Washington Bridge. You see, the official listing of events had over a hundred ocean-going sailing ships (27 larger than 170', around 30 in the 100'-170' range, and about 90 smaller ships) coming into the city, sailing up the Hudson to the Geo. Washington, then turning around to their week-long berths.

So, what went wrong?

First off, the haze. It was horrible. We were up at West 168th Street (aside: street numbers on Manhattan go to about 210 -- 1st street is about a fifth of the way up the island, so there's really somewhere around 270 blocks from Battery Park up to Washington Heights). Anyway. We were up at West 168th Street and couldn't see past 120th. Tall ships came out of the fog. (It was haze, but fog sounds cooler.)

Because they were running late, only the first seven ships made it up to where we were. We started seeing the ships turn back downstream just south of W.147th.

After seeing several ships start their turns just at where the haze thinned, we all realized that that is as far north as they'll be heading. So began our chase down the West Side.

We're at the park at 147th street! No ships. Nowhere. The haze had lifted and there's not a single ship in sight.

Blast.

So the wife and I head down to the Port Authority (Bus Terminal) and head back to our homestead in New Jersey with plans: If the traffic is light, we'll drive to Hoboken, park, and watch the fireworks.

Oddly, traffic in the Metro New York area has never been lighter. If you want to go zooming around really narrow highways in a ghost town, I would recommend coming to New York City next year for Independence Day.

We later found out that all the cars were in a one-block radius around Hoboken's three (full) parking garages.

Scratch that idea.

(oh, on the ride back to NJ, we take the Lincoln Tunnel approach with a great view of the Hudson from about 42nd street down to where the streets have names. There were absolutely zero ships in sight. None. Nada. Zip. Zilch.)

Hey, what about that roadside fair of death that's parked at the Meadowlands, methinks. It beats sitting around and playing bootlegged Sega Dreamcast games. (Not really, but it gets us out of the house.) So we go.

Things I learned about roadside carnivals:

1. I am still afraid of heights. I was gripping my wife's hand so hard on the ferris wheel, I'm surprised she was able to get blood flowing to her fingers. The big sign in each car that read "WARNING! 165' VERTICAL DROP!" really didn't calm me down much.

2. I'm a sucker for darts. You know the dart game -- throw two dull-pointed cheap bent-plastic-flight darts at a wall of balloons. Here's the prize structure: pop two and you get some plastic trinket, pop two more and you get another trinket. Trade in two trinkets and get a small stuffed bear. You keep doing this to move up in bear sizes from small to medium to large to extra large to grand prize to won't fit in my car size. Mathematically, that's two to the sixth power times two dollars to get the really big ones if you don't miss a single dart. Ten bucks later, I had a tiny stuffed bear, but it was wearing a really cool leather jacket.

3. The wife likes little stuffed bears dressed in biker gear. Who knew?

4. Although not called "freak shows", there were about five "displays of human oddities" hither and yon.

5. And about the same number of haunted houses. Although half of the haunted houses had different color schemes and were called "fun houses".

6. Although all rides "take two or more tickets" according to the ticket booth, all rides cost five tickets. There is nothing you can do with two tickets. Nothing.

Well, by the time we were ready to leave the fair, it was almost fireworks time in New York.

In tomorrow's installment: Fireworks, cops, and even more futile attempts at seeing OpSail2000.

-Faux "didn't pass out on the ferris wheel, but turned rather pale" Pas