Uptown Girls

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As I stepped off the plane at JFK airport, I was literally humming the famous tune… ‘Start spreading the news, I’m leaving today. I want to be a part of it, New York, New York!’ My spirits refused to be dampened by the turbulent flight I’d had across the Atlantic, nor the lengthy immigration queues that greeted me once I’d finally touched down and the subsequent grilling and fingerprinting routine all passengers were subject to on arrival in the ‘land of the free’. When the subject of travelling to NYC was first raised by a friend back home, my response was a resounding yes without even a moment’s hesitation. This city is somewhere I always knew I’d visit, and the chance to do it with a close girlfriend was too good to be true (Adam had responded with a resounding no to the invitation to come too-the thought of travelling with two girls through the department stores of this city was probably the stuff of nightmares for him!) It was one of those great moments coming through the arrivals gate and seeing my lovely friend Janet, holding up a welcome sign with ‘Randy’ in huge letters. It was a great reunion and set the tone for the 8 days to come as we explored the Big Apple together.

Like anyone New York bound, I had some fairly established preconceptions about what to expect of my Big Apple experience given my healthy dose of Hollywood over the years, not to mention the numerous sitcoms that call this city home. Some of my all time favourites-Friends, Sex and the City and Seinfeld-had introduced many famous Big Apple sites into my vocabulary and provided much background geographical orientation to this enormous city. Janet too had been stocking up on city information from Hollywood films (especially the movie ‘Elf’) with Hollywood serving her well as she correctly identified several landmarks on the transfer in to our Upper West Side Hotel. Yes, I confess, we were ‘uptown girls’ throughout our stay here, though rest assured, our accommodation was far from glamorous. In planning this trip, stories and reviews of accommodation in NYC was pretty hair-raising. Not only is this a really costly city to stay in, many hotels and hostels are reputed to offer far more for your money than many travellers bargain for with little ‘friends’ ranging from hard-core city roaches to hungry bed bugs being part and parcel of the big city experience. So on checking in to our hotel, the fact that one had to carry your own toilet paper all the way down the corridor to the shared bathroom and that hot water was a commodity to be highly valued when on offer, we were nonetheless relieved that our room was ours alone. No little friends sharing our hotel room on West 71st Street thanks very much!

It’s really hard to explain what a buzz I felt simply being in NYC. It is one of those cities that contain so many iconic landmarks. Every block is dotted with familiar sites, things you’ve seen for the very first time only a moment ago yet you’ve seen a million times before in your favourite films and TV shows. The sight of people hailing those famous yellow taxi cabs that are absolutely everywhere throughout the city, the street signs for Broadway, Fifth Avenue, Wall Street…even the NYPD vehicles. Such ordinary things in any other place yet so iconic having been immortalised by film and the Hollywood stars that have ridden in them, walked by them and probably gazed upon them with the same sense of wonder I felt on that very first evening.

Though I can hardly believe it, I am forced to say straight up that we didn’t spot a single celebrity while in America. What we did do though, was work out exactly where we’d need to go (and got some sense of how much cash we might need to have) in order to hang out in the neighbourhoods where celebrities wine, dine and party, as well as own their lavish city apartments. This knowledge was gleamed from the two tours we did whilst in the city. The first was a general Film and TV tour that took in the sights from films such as Ghostbusters, Crocodile Dundee, Suddenly Thirty, The Devil Wears Prada, and of course Elf, to name a few, as well as TV shows such as Law and Order, Seinfeld, 30 Rock, The Cosby Show and the all time favourite-Friends! The highlight for both Janet and I was visiting Grove Street and seeing the building where Monica, Rachel, Joey and Chandler lived, as well as Ross’ apartment block across the street. To say this was a highlight though doesn’t really do justice to Janet’s pure ecstasy at every Friend’s related landmark on the tour. Hands-down to her-if there were a prize for the most enthusiastic fan on the bus-she would have been clear winner no question! The other tour we did was the Sex and the City tour where watching the programme clips on the bus, and immediately seeing the spot where Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda and Samantha’s antics were filmed was fantastic. We had a pit-stop at the Magnolia Bakery, where Miranda and Carrie ate cupcakes, and believe me, they were the best cupcakes I’ve ever eaten. The icing was at least an inch thick of those babies-delicious! We also had a Cosmopolitan at the bar Steve and Aiden opened together and visited the Pleasure Chest, a shop full of…well pleasure inducing things! Both of these tours were lots of fun and gave us a good opportunity to take in a lot of the city without walking for miles and miles.

In a city as large as New York, the fact our two tours were via bus was a welcome relief, as the rest of the days involved heaps and heaps of walking as we endeavoured to see as much as we possibly could. Its amazing how incredibly small one can feel walking those city blocks. The buildings tower above-especially the likes of the Empire State and Trump Towers-and it can be very disorientating when you come out of the subway trying to find your way to your desired locality with nothing but skyscrapers looming in every direction you turn. Recognising this, we headed up to the top of the Empire State Building very early in our stay in an attempt to improve our orientation. The viewing platform on the 105th level was closed however the view from the 86th floor was more than adequate! We were lucky to visit on a perfectly clear day and could see for miles across New York’s four boroughs. Choosing to go up late in the afternoon was also a stroke of genius as we watched sunset over the Hudson River and the city start to light up as darkness fell. Still revelling in the excitement of actually being in NYC, seeing the city night lights come on was a real thrill.

Strolling though Central Park was one of my favourite New York experiences. Visiting in Autumn, I believe we saw the park at its absolute best. It was so beautiful that I can’t imagine it ever looking better at any other time of year. The autumnal leaves on the trees, as well as those falling to the ground, created the most wonderful array of colour. Green, yellow, orange, ochre, red, brown…every shade of the Autumn palette was in sight. It was really breathtaking. The cold air left people walking through the park rosy-cheeked and it was cold enough for ice-skaters to be circling the man-made rinks. Yet as sunlight draped through the trees, there was still some opportunity to soak up some warmth from the light and nomatter what time we spent lying in the park, it could never have been enough to me. I could have stayed right there for days and days and just breathed it in. Given the vastness of this park we could never have explored it all-though I would like to have given it a red hot go had we more time. Initially we wondered if 8 days in New York would be too much. Having fallen in love with the city after only a day or two, we quickly realised it wouldn’t be enough.

As one might expect, shopping was high on the agenda of two girls let loose in NYC. A significant part of our first full day here was spent in the largest department store in the world-Macys. This store took up an entire city block and had at least 9 floors-possibly more. To anyone who knows me well, my idea of ‘shopping up a storm’ would probably be quite mediocre by any typical girl’s standards. So while I did do a lot of looking and a bit of buying here and there, the prize for truly living up to that most favoured and coveted of female pastimes certainly went to Janet. With not only herself, but also a big family and numerous friends to buy for, Macys and the other major department stores in the city-Bloomingdales and Saks-certainly got some good value out of us! I have to say, American department stores go all out in the name of festive spirit. Our time in the city spanned two major festive themes-the first of which being Halloween and so we were greeted by sales assistants with ‘Happy Halloween!’ and the offer of candy. We witnessed store displays of everything gross and ghoulish but it was in the neighbourhood streets and houses themselves where the most fantastic displays were on offer. Halloween evening, having been warned off attending the major parade attracting over 2 million people in East Village by locals, we stumbled across a major block party 2 streets away from our hotel. There was an enormous amount of adults and children gathered on this site where Michael Jackson was pumping through the speaker system and lit up pumpkins were the main source of light. Children were sporting an amazing array of costumes (many of which had probably been bought last minute as we passed many frantic parents late in the shopping day leafing through costume racks and digging through bins in search of fangs and horns and wands and princess shoes!) Many adults had gotten into the spirit and were dressed up too. There were fog machines and eerie lights and how parents managed to keep track of their costume clad, suger-amped-up children darting from person to person, doorstep to doorstep, seeking candy is a true miracle. Yet this was a party where tears were few and everyone was gathered to join in the spookiness and have a lot of fun.

Once the Halloween decorations were discarded, stores moved right onto the next major holiday…Christmas. While we heard locals protesting Christmas displays in the stores as early as November 1st, for us it was a real treat to see stores decked out with lights and trees and tinsel and all manner of sparkly things. The Christmas department in Macys was one of the most amazing displays one could imagine while in Saks 5th Avenue, the entire bottom floor had been decked out to give the impression one was entering some form of magic Christmas forest. There were white tree branches and tiny lights in every direction you looked and it really felt magical in there. The other magic on offer in Saks was their range of designer clothes, most especially their dresses. While I’ve never been one to covet designer brands, seeing some of the couture on display was enough to make any good woman salivate. There was dress after dress in that store that could only be described as ‘to die for’. And as any sensible girl would, we took the opportunity to imagine the kind of life the people buying these kinds of clothes must lead by trying on a few ourselves! We avoided the hugely expensive couture designer clothes-mostly through fear of damaging them and blowing goodness knows how much cash on buying our way out of trouble-and instead settled on some of the party dresses for the season. That’s about as close as we came to true American stardom and we managed to leave the store with our bank balance intact-how’s that for willpower!

Halfway through our holiday, we changed from our Upper West Side Hotel to an Upper East Side Hostel on East 105th Street. While the room we stayed in was so tiny we couldn’t even walk past each other comfortably, and the neighbourhood itself bordered Harlem and was therefore not the safest place for two girls alone at night, this was an extremely fortuitous move given the other major landmark event occurring in our time here-the American Presidential Election. The night of the election, we didn’t need any TV broadcast to make the result known to us. A few blocks away from where we were staying was the hugest block party NYC had seen in a very long time as Harlem erupted in celebration. Residents could be heard partying in the streets with people cheering and car horns cutting through the night. On this night, New York was truly the ‘city that never sleeps’ as people watched history happen and celebrated Obama’s landslide victory. The day after, I couldn’t find a copy of a newspaper to buy. There were none to be seen. But leafing through the paper in a café that became our ‘grind’ during our time on the East Side, it was clearly evident it wasn’t just Harlem that partied into the wee small hours. All over New York and indeed throughout America, a new era had begun and it was a dawning that was welcomed by people from all walks of life. The election centre that had been set up at the Rockefeller Centre cleared displayed a map of the USA showing how many states had been won by the Democratic candidate. We were surrounded in our neighbourhood, on every block of New York, outside major tourist sites and museums, on the Subway, everywhere…by people sporting Obama badges and flags, whether they themselves were dressed in business suits costing 4 figures or clothes that had been rummaged from a charity store. It was exciting to be present in America at such a time of change, witnessing such a momentous time in history.

By mid-morning, Obama’s victory had even been turned into art. At the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), a front page of the day’s newspaper had been mounted onto a board and displayed as part of an exhibition focusing on photography as art and media. There it was, his presidential victory, transcending politics and becoming art, before his presidency had even begun! Such was the excitement of the American People as ‘the change we need’ happened before their very eyes.

The MOMA museum was probably my most favourite of the four museums we visited in New York though each had so much to offer. I am an enormous fan of the work of Monet, Chagall, Degas, Klimt, Van Gogh. Picasso and Giacometti. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, MOMA and The Guggenheim all had an enormous collection featuring famous works by all of my favourites, as well as many other works that left me feeling breathless. I was absolutely awestruck seeing ‘Starry Night’ at MOMA. My time travelling in Europe has reawakened the love of art I’d always held but had shelved since my high school years. A huge desire in my New York experience was to see some of the artworks I love with my very own eyes. To this end, my trip here was hugely successful and very awe-inspiring. The other major museum we visited was the Museum of Natural History, home to many wonderful things but the best thing of all-dinosaurs! It was as I stood beside skeletons of a T-Rex, Brachiosaurus, Stegosaurus, and Triceratops that I vowed to return to NYC again simply because Adam absolutely must see these! (Not to mention all the other great New York experiences he would love).
We didn’t have the chance to see a Broadway show while we were in New York. In an attempt to make up for this, as well as fulfil the ideal of having at least one celebrity citing, we did make an attempt to stalk Katie Holmes after a performance of the production ‘All My Sons’ in which she is starring (secretly hoping Tom and Suri might also be around to greet her at the stage door!) The night we tried it was pouring rain and it took us awhile to locate the correct theatre as we didn’t know the name of the site and only had a vague recollection of its locality from our first night transfer into the city. Points for enthusiasm though-we scanned the streets and finally ran around a block and located the correct theatre. We arrived wet and soggy without a pen nor anything probably suitable on which to get an autograph only to discover the show hadn’t even played that night!!! We did get somewhat of a Broadway experience though when we visited Ellen’s Stardust Diner on West 51st and Broadway. Again, we’d had to hunt down the diner from vague recollections we had but upon getting seated, we discovered it was worth the search. The diner was modelled on the 1950s all American experience with mostly burgers, fries, milkshakes and sundaes on the menu. But the highlight was that the 1950s clad wait staff were singing and dancing on the tables. It was a fantastic night out-the perfect ‘all American’ experience. The only thing that topped it was the time we spent in Times Square, the heart of Broadway and probably New York itself. This neon clad area was a bustling hive of activity nomatter the time of day or night. One couldn’t help but smile as you simply tried to take it all in, knowing that it was impossible to capture just how alive and overwhelming a single place could be. Again, it was one of those places where you couldn’t spend enough time. I was drunk on the energy of the block. It was just sensational.

We left a visit to the Statue of Liberty and Ground Zero until late in our trip because I really wanted to have some insight into New York and its people before visiting two places to which much of the New York, and indeed American identity, is linked. Again, before coming to New York, I had many preconceptions about what people would be like there and the kind of social world I would witness. Without elaborating too much on what I quickly learned were false judgements, all I can say is how incredibly glad I was to have been proved so wrong on this account. The people we met in New York City were warm and generous and eager to lend a hand. We were stopped with offers for directions and help on many, many occasions by passers-by or people on the subway who could see we were tourists and would benefit from a little local expertise! At every turn, my overriding impression was that New Yorkers truly love their city and simply want others to love it too. On day one of our visit, we were approached by a reasonably old guy on the street. He was pretty shabbily dressed and was after a light for his cigarette. As neither of us smoke, we could be of no help and were probably a little nervous then when this man seemed to want to make conversation with us after we’d said we had no light. But this man was quick to let us know he’d been a local in this part of the city for many years, offered us advice and directions, was genuinely curious as to where we were from and wished us a really pleasant stay. From this moment on, I let go of my preconceived ideas and was pleasantly surprised at every turn as we were met with lovely, genuine people. The service we received was for the most part, exceptional and I truly felt that people were sincere in every word and action. In context, everything American seemed just right and very endearing.

It was great to have had such a great taste of the American culture and I was truly excited then to visit Lady Liberty. Security was tight at the sight as it was at other iconic locations such as Wall Street where one can no longer enter the trading floor to watch the stock exchange in action. Such restrictions serve as a reminder to everyone of what New York has been through since 9/11, which was indeed fitting as immediately upon arrival to catch the ferry across to see the Statue of Liberty, one was confronted with one of the saddest monuments I’ve ever seen. Outside the World Trade Center once stood a statue of a golden globe, a work done by an artist in the 1960s and given to the site as a symbol of peace and prosperity. The statue survived the attack but is now charred and crumpled and altered from its original form following the collapse of the site. Now, this monument has been erected in its altered form as a temporary monument to 9/11 with an eternal flame burning at its base. Having not yet visited Ground Zero, it was the first thing I’d seen that made this tragedy real to me. Somehow, it made visiting the Statue of Liberty all the more significant as one could imagine what it must have meant to immigrants as they arrived in ships at Ellis Island and underwent processing. I was surprised at how small the statue appeared until we got closer and closer. Suddenly there she was, Lady Liberty, in all her splendour. What a symbol it must have been as immigrants flooded American shores-freedom, hope, entry to the land of opportunity. How many people must have made it so close only to be denied entry and sent back on ships to their homeland? How many people must have smiled upon this famous icon as they wrote to loved ones they’d left behind in the hope of a new life?

Visiting the World Trade Center site was very difficult as one expects. The site is now undergoing development but even with all the cranes and building equipment on site, it is unnerving to see such a huge vast expanse of nothingness amidst a myriad of skyscrapers. The hole in the skyline is particularly evident when viewed from afar. Both from the Empire State Building and the ferry from Ellis Island, there is a clear space which even non-native New Yorkers can recognise as the scene of the tragedy. The family members who lost loved ones on 9/11 have created a small tribute museum opposite the site where there is a focus on person-to-person history sharing. The small centre has photographs from the site and the people who were lost that day, as well as radio and video footage of the events of the day and the aftermath. It was incredibly, incredibly sad-too sad to put into words. But also it really reaffirmed how courageous and selfless humans can be-the stories from and about ordinary people, as well as the rescue workers, many of whom also lost their lives trying to help others, were just amazing. How wonderful and how terrible we humans can be.

Before going, I thought New York would be about eating classic American food, drinking cocktails, keeping a celebrity-radar on and visiting the tourist hot-spots, shopping and gossiping with a girlfriend. And it certainly was all of those things. But what surprised me was that it was about more than just these things. I actually learnt a few lessons from New Yorkers-that it costs nothing to smile and be polite and to be ready to offer assistance to a stranger. That a brief conversation with a stranger in a foreign land can be a reminder of our own shared humanity. There’s a quote my best friend once gave me that comes back to me when I reflect upon this experience-We are all walking in eachothers’ footsteps, standing on eachothers’ shoulders, sharing eachothers’ joys and learning from eachothers’ grief. It is both sobering and comforting to know we are a part of a single human family.

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Comments

[Jade]

Happy Birthday!
Happy 28th Birthday Beautiful One! All my love and the very best of my wishes, jADE xo