Ferrell at Big Wong King

I meet Bill Ferrell, 75, at a luncheon hosted by the Carter Burden Center for the Aging on the Upper East Side. I’m looking for an old man, ideally one who’s years removed from his last night on the town. “That would be me,” Bill says, when I give him my pitch: He’ll live like a twentysomething by following me around for a night, and then I’ll make like an old dude by tagging along with him the next day. Originally, I was thinking madcap antics would ensue, but Bill’s like many elderly New Yorkers—he’s complex, he’s not easy to reduce to a stereotype, and he has led an instructive life. George Burns in 18 Again! he’s not.

We start the experiment at 6pm, Friday, Memorial Day weekend.

6:00pm Uniqlo

Our first stop is Uniqlo’s shiny flagship store. Bill, a retired interior designer and Air Force veteran, stops to admire the Minimalist architecture.  But a search for white summer pants proves hopeless. He perks up while inspecting a white ribbed jacket on a mannequin, but is told that only a blue pin-striped version is in stock. He then asks about seersucker pants.

“What’s seersucker?” the clerk asks.

“Oh, you’re so young,” Bill says. “Are you old enough to work here? Do you have a permit?”

Finally, we find a pink-striped oxford button-down. He’s into it, but it’s the paint-splattered paperboy cap bought from a street vendor outside the store that remains on Bill’s head throughout the evening and the next day.

546 Broadway between Prince and Spring Sts (917-237-8800)

7:15pm S’MAC

Dinner comes at the East Village mac-and-cheese house, S’MAC, where the state of salad dressing perplexes Bill. Isn’t there just a plain oil and vinegar?

He settles on a house salad with vinaigrette and the cheeseburger macaroni. As we eat, Bill talks about what brought him to New York from Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1979. “I had always wanted to live here, but my wife didn’t,” he says.

“We honeymooned here and came here many, many times. Well, we got divorced after 19 years, and within an hour I was on my way to New York. I felt like I had learned everything I could ever learn in Charlotte, so I packed my ashtrays and candlesticks into a U-Haul and paid the boy who cut my grass [to drive it]. It took us 22 hours to get here, because we were stoned.”

Bill laughs.

“I was a real rebel then.”

345 E 12th St between First and Second Aves (212-358-7912)

8:30pm Kyotofu

At the sake and dessert bar Kyotofu, we both order rice pudding, and Bill has an aged sake. Meanwhile, he talks about his mother’s death. He, his ex-wife and a hospice worker were at her bedside when lung cancer took her in 1991. The loss inspired Bill to become a volunteer. For six years he comforted terminally ill neighbors, before the emotional toll became too much for him. The experience, he confesses, is what first made him think about his own mortality.“The older I get, the more I contemplate it,” he says. “A few friends, I know, would miss me—but just a few.”

Between drinks, we step outside for a smoke. When Bill pulls a half-burned, hand-rolled butt from his matchbox, it takes a moment for me to realize that he’s not smoking what I’m smoking. We’re standing on Ninth Avenue, five feet from a police van. I shake my head with a “no thanks,” knowing I’ve just been one-upped in the balls department by a man three times my age.

705 Ninth Ave between 48th and 49th Sts (212-974-6012)

10:10pm Therapy

I give Bill two options for a nightcap: Beauty Bar on 14th Street, which I describe as “kitschy,” and Therapy on 52nd Street, which I describe as “a gay club.” Bill wants to go clubbing.

After ordering a brandy, Bill, by far the oldest guy in the room, raves about the place but says he wishes there were a dance floor. As a “veteran” of Studio 54, he once met one of the owners, Steve Rubell. “He bought me a drink,” Bill says. “He had a pocket full of cocaine—and he was very generous.”

Shortly after midnight, we’re both ready to leave, but my exhaustion seems more acute than Bill’s. As he chats up a guy around my age, I ask myself, When did I start getting groggy before 3am? I put him in a cab a few minutes later and he smiles, drunk.

“Go straight home,” he shouts. I do just that.

348 W 52nd St between Eighth and Ninth Aves (212-397-1700)

SATURDAY

10:00am 67th Street Farmers’ Market

 I meet Bill the next day at his favorite Saturday spot: the 67th Street Farmers’ Market, a cozy operation in the school yard of St. Catherine of Siena Church. (If the previous night took any toll on him, it’s not showing.) His two huskies, Lucky and Micky, accompany us. Vendors and regulars greet the dogs by name, but not everyone is happy to see them.

“Dogs aren’t allowed in the school yard,” one woman volunteers. “Children play here.”

“Why thank you,” Bill says sweetly. He turns to me, and we walk toward a vendor selling Gala apples and lillies of the valley.

“And fuck you too, bitch,” he adds.

411 E 68th St at First Ave (no phone)

The Annex Antique Fair and Flea Market

11:30am Annex Antique Fair and Flea Market

Bill is an admitted junk junkie and a semiregular visitor to the Annex Antique Fair and Flea Market. He can tell by sight the decade in which a set of chairs was made (the 1930s), and explains the significance of a carving of a naked woman (a medicine doll, used by Chinese patients to show doctors where on their body they felt pain). After years spent buying odds and ends, Bill is now content to just browse. Retirement, he says, killed his drive to keep a perfectly ordered house, and his collections have taken over his place. Still, he can’t resist the urge to haggle a vendor down from $10 to $8 for a small carved wooden fish.

“I wish we’d asked for $7,” he says, contemplating his buy.112 E 25th St at Sixth Ave (212-243-5343)

1:30pm Big Wong King

By now I realize that Bill doesn’t spend all day playing bingo and going to funerals. Actually, Bill makes more of his Saturdays than I do. We end up at his favorite Chinese restaurant, Big Wong King.

Over roasted duck, roasted pork, deep-fried shrimp, Chinese broccoli and Budweiser tall boys (which we smuggled in—Bill’s idea), sober conversational ground is covered. He and his ex-wife never had children. It wasn’t for lack of trying.

“She had three miscarriages,” Bill says. “We talked about adopting. My best man and his wife had adopted, but we just never got around to pursuing it. We got a dog, Gigi.”

Two days later, over the phone, I ask Bill again about his complicated relationship with his ex-wife. The duo married and then divorced, only to remarry and divorce again. Five years before their first divorce, he tells me, he admitted he was gay. The strain would ultimately end their marriage.

“I wasn’t strong enough to live a lie,” Bill says. “There was no one else involved, no other man. But I fled from my old life for what I thought would be happiness.” He pauses. “And I guess it has been happiness.”

Also in this issue:

• New York age quiz: Discern whether your inner clock is set to whippersnapper or if you've ripened before your time.
• New York age quiz: Methodology: Our process for devising this test. We consulted a math whiz and everything.
• New York age quiz: Your feedback: Does your age reflect how you're living? Let us know.
• New York age quiz: Personality matching answers: Who were those people we asked you to identify?
• New York age quiz: Picture recognition answers: What were those things we asked you to identify?
• Don't mind the gap: Now you know your New York age. (Right?) So find out what activities will make you younger or older.
• Wonder years: Match each person to their age and their perfect saturday night—who does what?
• Guess their age: Can you peg real New Yorkers to their real ages?
• Old schooled: Our young writer sets out to teach a geezer how to have fun—but a few drinks, one joint and a gay bar later, guess who’s left standing.