Midtown Holidays

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The Rube is always slightly disappointed by the Rockefeller Center tree as he expects it to provide the Ultimate Christmas Tree Experience, and to do so it would probably have to be as tall as the GE building behind it, for starters ... And in every picture he takes of it, he is also disappointed in how the lights come out.

But most people, as here, happily commemorate the conclusion of their pilgrimage.

Fig. 1 shows the crowds of people around the skating ring, on this occasion witnessing the annual tuba concert -- all the tuba players who can fit on the rink do so -- which the Rube recorded from the perspective of Fig. 2 (he arrived too late to get a place around the rink). Once again he was disappointed, as can be heard in the sound clip -- he expected it to be much louder ... it is always, instead, the unexpected moments that surprise and delight him about NYC ... such as here.