My Visit to Trump Tower
This past Labor Day weekend, I celebrated my 25th birthday in New York City with my sister and her boyfriend. While there, we went to some very famous landmarks, including – but not limited to – Tom’s Restaurant, the famed diner that is best-known for being featured in the 1990’s NBC sitcom Seinfeld (0ne of the waiters there told me about spotting Jerry Seinfeld and Jason Alexander there two years ago), and Smith & Wollensky, a high-end steakhouse that even the uber-liberal New York Times calls “a steakhouse to end all arguments”. However, what I believe was the pinnacle of our trip was our visit to Trump Tower on 5th Ave.
As you may know, Trump Tower serves as the main headquarters of The Trump Organization, a private real estate company owned by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump that owns buildings all over the city, not to mention many golf resorts and hotels around the world – including one now open in Washington, D.C. He also had a lot of casinos operating in Atlantic City, New Jersey. However, as a result of the decline of Atlantic City as a whole, many of those casinos have closed, with the Trump Taj Mahal set to close in October. The building is open to the public, and has plenty of restaurants and shops for tourists to visit. There’s a Nike store, a Starbucks, and there’s even a bar where people can just take a break from walking everywhere, drink and mingle. At the bar counter, you can actually see a Trump Pence sign being displayed where customers would watch a sports game. As the waiter gave the three of us our drinks, I decided to ask the waiter what he thought of a display I saw as we were entering the tower, a protester dressed in a Trump mask basically meant to bash him. He replied that it wasn’t a surprise. He also told me that since Trump started running in 2015, more visitors have been coming to the tower to shop and dine, and probably buy some Trump memorabilia.
On a side note, just because Donald Trump is from New York does not mean he may win his home state. Since 1988 – around the time George H.W. Bush (who before then was Ronald Reagan’s vice president) won the presidential election, the state of New York has been solidly blue, and nothing has changed ever since – despite the fact that Republican Rudy Giuliani was the mayor of New York City throughout the 1990s and 2000’s.
With that out of the way, let’s move on. On an Uber ride back to LaGuardia Airport, the driver told me how much of an impact Mr. Trump had on the city. He said that love him or hate him, he had a huge impact. His company helped develop a lot of real estate there, including a luxury hotel in Columbus Circle. The opening of his most recent hotel in Washington D.C., not far from the White House, is also gaining a lot of buzz. The building was originally the city’s main post office, and became a food court in the 1980’s. The historic building was sold to The Trump Organization in 2013 to become a luxury hotel. Let’s hope now that Trump has his hotel open in D.C., his office will be right next to that new property.
