Tourists

Lonesome George, a Pinta Island giant tortoise, spent the latter half of his hundred years munching on cacti and roaming around the Charles Darwin Research Station on the Galápagos island of Santa Cruz. He borrowed his name from the 1950s American comedian and actor George Gobel and one of the three B-52 Stratofortresses that completed the first non-stop jet circumnavigation of the world in 1957. But the name was ultimately more fitting for the tortoise who was the last of a million-year-old species. In 1959, fishermen introduced three goats to Lonesome George’s home of Pinta Island, one of the smallest islands of the Galápagos archipelago. Just ten years later, they had multiplied to around 40,000.

It’s a common lament each year — starting around October, people love to complain that the Christmas season continues to creep further and further into the fall. But for some, that creep is a welcome one. If that’s you, I know a place. At 3rd Avenue and 22nd Street in Manhattan, you can get your Christmas fill for around six months of the year — at least if you wander into the narrow German restaurant on the corner. You might almost miss it if you walk by during daylight hours. At night, it’s hard to miss. In this rather unsexy portion of Manhattan, Rolf’s has been a New York institution since 1968.