“New Yorrrrrrrrrk, concrete jungle where dreams are made, Oh, there’s nothing you can’t do-ooo, now you’re in New York, New York, New Yorrrrk”. I didn’t write that just because that song was embossed on my mind for the last three days, though it absolutely was, I wrote it because of the leg swinging, head turned skywards walk that goes with that song. In London I usually watch the pavement (sidewalk), a remnant of the time when I read books while walking to school... In The Big Apple the endless staggering architectural megaliths draw the eye up, and up, and up!
Barry and I arrived off the bus a couple of blocks from Port Authority in the mid afternoon. Our ultimate destination, a cosy hotel on the upper west side, the Marrakech at 103rd and Broadway, was reached by way of the Greyhound terminal at Port Authority. The discovery passes that we picked up are worth every penny (or will be), 60 days unlimited Greyhound travel, so far the trip to Niagara Falls reads as a little expensive ($550) but it’ll pay for itself in two weeks.
Since more than a dozen Lee Martians had booked in the same hotel, we went out together on the first night. After a tasty fajita at Mama Mexico the group reached a consensus on where to go through a process of ‘Follow that taxi!’, alighting together outside the Hard Rock Cafe in Times Square. A couple of Irish bars (and a very bad Guinness and a fantastic Long Island Ice Tea) later we found a club that took us up to about half two. Though rather expensive, NY has some great bars, and the never dying night has an addictive quality.
After a healthy lie-in (getting up at 8:45, Camp Lee Mar style) NY Day 2 started with breakfast and a trip to the post office. Since I’d brought enough clothes to last two weeks, and realised that I could clean clothes in the room on the go etc., rather than lug the extra weight I prepared a Flat Rate box, packed what I didn’t need and mailed it to Petunia the next day. The local post-office was a small affair by American standards, but compared to the one I grew up with – a little old lady behind a sweet counter in a shop one could take a couple of steps to pass and miss completely – is was huge. Compared to the post office opposite Madison Square Gardens however (our first port of call after heading south from Port Authority) that local post office was again tiny. Of the same proportions at the Natural History Museum in London, the respect shown to the posting of letters and parcels was immense. Since I was there I bought some international stamps so I could send home postcards and things, and was a little disappointed that the Pixar film-inspired editions were only available as domestic stamps.
After the post office, we had fun trying to find the Empire State Building, wandering around using the map the hotel gave us, until we alighted right beneath it... the cost of the accent was $22, a bit much for a view, so we set off in search of the Rockefeller Building to see if it was cheaper. It wasn’t. We went to the Nintendo store next door instead and messed around with 3DSs for a while.
Since more than a dozen Lee Martians had booked in the same hotel, we went out together on the first night. After a tasty fajita at Mama Mexico the group reached a consensus on where to go through a process of ‘Follow that taxi!’, alighting together outside the Hard Rock Cafe in Times Square. A couple of Irish bars (and a very bad Guinness and a fantastic Long Island Ice Tea) later we found a club that took us up to about half two. Though rather expensive, NY has some great bars, and the never dying night has an addictive quality.
After a healthy lie-in (getting up at 8:45, Camp Lee Mar style) NY Day 2 started with breakfast and a trip to the post office. Since I’d brought enough clothes to last two weeks, and realised that I could clean clothes in the room on the go etc., rather than lug the extra weight I prepared a Flat Rate box, packed what I didn’t need and mailed it to Petunia the next day. The local post-office was a small affair by American standards, but compared to the one I grew up with – a little old lady behind a sweet counter in a shop one could take a couple of steps to pass and miss completely – is was huge. Compared to the post office opposite Madison Square Gardens however (our first port of call after heading south from Port Authority) that local post office was again tiny. Of the same proportions at the Natural History Museum in London, the respect shown to the posting of letters and parcels was immense. Since I was there I bought some international stamps so I could send home postcards and things, and was a little disappointed that the Pixar film-inspired editions were only available as domestic stamps.
After the post office, we had fun trying to find the Empire State Building, wandering around using the map the hotel gave us, until we alighted right beneath it... the cost of the accent was $22, a bit much for a view, so we set off in search of the Rockefeller Building to see if it was cheaper. It wasn’t. We went to the Nintendo store next door instead and messed around with 3DSs for a while.
Walking around Manhattan, NYC, is easy, the streets are parallel, laid out in a grid and numbered in ascending order west-to-east/south-to-north. What’s deceptive is the distance. 10 blocks is a fair distance, and the 60 odd blocks between the hotel and the Empire State Building is more than I’d be up for back home. The subway threw us off the first day as the mix-up between how express and local lines worked made us overshoot by a couple of dozen blocks. Local trains operate just like the London subway, except there’s a additional express service overlaid on the local service, going to only a few stations on the line.
After StarFox 3DS, we headed to Five Guys for a really good burger. Anyone passing through NJ, NY or VA should check out Five Guys: they use real meat, I mean they make the burgers themselves where you can see, the fries are cooked in peanut oil and taste great and the strawberry ice tea is de-lish. Speaking of ice tea, it’s a drink that the UK doesn’t have so much, I mean there’s Lipton’s variety that I’d drink if there weren’t any Oasis, here there are endless options and some of them are really good. If you need evidence look inside my camel-back... although it may look like a bag of concentrated urine it’s actually 2 litres of AriZona lemon ice tea! It was in fact ice tea that led to a bonding scenario with a fellow passenger on the bus to Niagara Falls:
Bound for Buffalo, I sat opposite a man who I will affectionately dub ‘Splitter’, a real gentlemen. Talking on a night bus is frowned upon, but after a talk about London, and about all the people who’ve died and the few who’ve survived going over the Niagara Falls, I was thinking he was rather cool and we chatted for most of the journey regardless. A primary school teacher with some wicked dreads and a good story to tell, he related to just about anyone in ear-shot – including the border patrol officer at Rochester who checked our passports – that he’d been to his brother’s fiftieth birthday. After an unpleasant exchange with a fellow guest of the party he opted to sneak out the back entrance, take a taxi to the Greyhound station, board the first bus home and by ways and means ended up looking at every single picture on my camera. I’m very grateful to him for at the first service stop, before going through the photos during which Barry took a nap, he returned from the station with a 99 cent can of AriZona ice tea to find me and Barry chowing down on our $12-dollars-a-day sandwiches (for the last day in NY we managed to dine together, for three meals, on the ingredients for sandwiches costing only 12 bucks*). Upon delivery of our hopeful tale, of two young men determined to see America on a minimal budget, he bought us a can each... and we made him a sandwich, hence the synthesis of our conversations. Thus it is proven that ice tea can bring strangers together :)
Bound for Buffalo, I sat opposite a man who I will affectionately dub ‘Splitter’, a real gentlemen. Talking on a night bus is frowned upon, but after a talk about London, and about all the people who’ve died and the few who’ve survived going over the Niagara Falls, I was thinking he was rather cool and we chatted for most of the journey regardless. A primary school teacher with some wicked dreads and a good story to tell, he related to just about anyone in ear-shot – including the border patrol officer at Rochester who checked our passports – that he’d been to his brother’s fiftieth birthday. After an unpleasant exchange with a fellow guest of the party he opted to sneak out the back entrance, take a taxi to the Greyhound station, board the first bus home and by ways and means ended up looking at every single picture on my camera. I’m very grateful to him for at the first service stop, before going through the photos during which Barry took a nap, he returned from the station with a 99 cent can of AriZona ice tea to find me and Barry chowing down on our $12-dollars-a-day sandwiches (for the last day in NY we managed to dine together, for three meals, on the ingredients for sandwiches costing only 12 bucks*). Upon delivery of our hopeful tale, of two young men determined to see America on a minimal budget, he bought us a can each... and we made him a sandwich, hence the synthesis of our conversations. Thus it is proven that ice tea can bring strangers together :)
* the ‘meat’ for the sandwich was the homogeneous Bologna of the sort that, were the original animal ever to be tracked down and accused it would deny ownership.
The highlight of the NY trip for me, beside seeing the city itself - feeling the ‘buzz’ - and seeing off more counsellors from camp, was seeing Chicago on Friday night (NY Day 2). I had forgotten to bring the card by which I’d booked the tickets out with me that morning so we returned an hour before the show to pick it up. Before getting on the subway there were signs of bad weather, clouds, what looked like heat lightning. These signs were as effective at communicating the impending deluge as a mouse squeaking “Oh, bugger” ahead of the coming of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Leaving the subway station, we saw a line up the steps, fearful of something above them. As we saw the truth, that if rain were radiation, the downpour would be a lethal dose, I removed everything but my clothes, left them with Barry and sprinted three blocks to the hotel. Steams were rivers, puddles where sinks, my trainers and everything else was soaked before I’d run three house-lengths.
In a frantic panic, this being less than 25 minutes before the start of the show, the theatre a good 54 blocks south from the hotel, I changed, grabbed coats and debit card from the room and hailed a taxi. NY taxi drivers know nothing more than the streets, not where the subway stops are, not where theatres are... and I didn’t either, not in terms of where X meets Broadway. Getting to the subway station after thinking for a while about where it was, I ditched that taxi in hopes of a more informed driver, grabbed Barry from the station and hailed a second cab. Alas, no luck in finding one who knew anything but intersections... I had to call Petunia, who’s internet have been connected only 20 minutes beforehand, and get the exact location. We got there about 5 minutes late. Nothing was ruined, we missed the introductory dance, but caught the first song – ‘All That Jazz’.
Chicago on Broadway is one of the best shows I have ever seen. The dancers’ and actors’ commitment and passion, and talent, was astonishing. Nicole Bridgewater’s performance as ‘Mama’ elevated ‘Be Good to Mama’ above all other songs in the show in my opinion. It’s well written, beautifully choreographed and it would be a mispresentation to admit that it’s not damn sexy as well.
Besides taking my breath away, the only casualty of the evening was my passport. I’d left it in my back pocket in that first sprint through the rain and the picture of my J1 visa is now a ghostly set of glasses below a shadowy mop of hair. It seems to not have been a problem since I was able to get into Canada and back while at Niagara Falls (a blog post for that is on its way).
One last thing in NY that was worth every penny for entry (alas, NY museums are not all free), was the American Museum of Natural History. The inevitable collections of historical artefacts, dinosaur bones etc. were offset marvellously by my personal favourite exhibition. The Rose Earth and Space Centre, I think I have the name right, is in a building overlooking the lawns. The natural light steaming through the floor-to-ceiling glass emblazons the planets, galaxies and moons, suspended from the ceiling in a celestial dance round about the Big Bang Theatre. Before I come to the theatre itself, it’s worth remembering the handrail around the outside... a number of panels dedicated to each, the handrail counted through all the orders of magnitude from the size of the atomic nucleus, all the way up to the expanse of galaxies and the dimensions of the known universe.
The Big Band Theatre itself is a sphere supported in space inside the Rose Centre by many pillars; inside is a section of the sphere that forms the projection screen for the show, a handrail borders the screen and the show is meant to be watched from above. Voiced by Liam Neeson, the presentation showed the scale of the universe in a way reminiscent of the opening to ‘Contact’, starting with Earth, expanding through lower magnifications, rings appearing to show the current scale: 1 light-year, 10 light-years, 100, 1000, 100,000 light-years, until the whole universe was contained within the theatre floor. Then the cosmic background radiation pattern appeared, with a time-line of the universe from the moment of the Big Bang until the present, Neeson’s voice intoning the stages of matter, star formation and finally the production of life. The exit of the theatre led onto a walk-way that spiralled down to the exhibition exit, sectioned into millions of years with more panels depicting the stages of the cosmos... I felt rather old by the end of it.
Having said a few final goodbyes at the hotel, myself and Barry went down to Port Authority to catch the night bus to Niagara Falls.
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