On the Town

---

My stay in New York was 12 days, a little too long for one blog entry, I did so much. After that much time, you really get to know a city and how to get around. I was jumping on the subway and switching between the express and the local trains and then filling in the gaps with the buses like a local. Day 6 is a Wednesday, the day after my first of three Broadway Shows I'd attend, it's another clear day, but the air has always been muggy and warm, but not too uncomfortable - it just takes two showers to bookend the day to feel clean and ready to go. It was a fine and clear day so I headed off to the Staten Island Ferry to photograph the Statue of Liberty. I wasn't really keen on standing in the long queues to see Lady Liberty, and tickets to go inside are almost impossible, so instead, I took the free ferry to Staten Island that sails right past. There were hundreds of people at the terminal, but fortunately the ferry is even bigger than this, there was plenty of space. While we sailed (motored) I walked to the stern and photographed the retreating island of Manhattan, and then Ellis Island and then Liberty Island as we passed. We got to Staten Island about 30 mimutes later. Staten Island works hard to attract tourists, and there is stuff to do, however, I waited only an hour in the ferry terminal and returned back to Manhatten Island. I returned to the hostel to do some laundry and have a restful afternoon. And that's the nice thing about having so much time in a city - I can take my time and not wear myself out sightseeing. The hostel hosts a few tours, and I signed up for the Wednesday evening Gospel singing in Harlem. The tour began at 6pm and there were five of us. Our guide took us to the Abyssinial Baptist Church way uptown at 135th Street near Malcolm X Boulevard. We were led in by smartly dressed ushers and we sat in pews, while the service was in progress. At that moment members of the congregation were speaking about how much they appreciate the church, and what is going on in their life. Then the singing began, loud and all about God. Most songs had a wailing lead singer, a back-up choir of about 5 men and 5 women, and the band: one organist, a drummer and a funky bass player. This was rhythm and blues meets religion. It was loud, it was mighty and it was hip. The congregation sang along when they could. Each song was fairly long, and quite repetitive, and after a while, the lead singer would raise his thumb into the air and the song would go up by one key. One song went up a total of five keys, much higher in pitch than it started. We heard about 4 songs in 20 minutes. Very interesting, but honestly not quite what I expected. It was much louder than I could really stand, it was completely amplified, and it wasn't quite as reverential as I expected.

It rained on Thursday, and the day started with a heavy rainstorm. I was unprepared for rain, no rain jacket or umbrella. I didn't need a jacket, because it's still too warm for that, but I did buy an umbrella. I set off to go to the Museum of Modern Art, but I gave up on that idea when I saw the line up stretched around the block. I guess everyone else had the same idea as I had, go inside on a rainy day. I wandered about midtown and Times Square, bought a few items as souveniers and then returned to the hostel. I returned to the craziness that is Midtown in the late afternoon, and first went to Grand Central Terminal, and then to Times Square where I bought another ticket for a Broadway Show: South Pacific, I love the old shows. And this was playing at Lincoln Center. I had another good seat, first row of the balcony. The show began promptly at 8pm; wonderful singing and dancing, "There ain't nothing like a dame" got a rousing applause, and there was plenty of spoken dialogue, several parts of the musical are not singing parts. The production did not hide the racism of the characters; "You have to learn to hate" is sung, from a scene cut from the 1950's movie. The show ended a few seconds before 11pm, and I was on the subway in no time, and back in the hostel a few minutes after that. Easy.

The air cleared on Friday, the rain from the previous day cleared away and the temperate had dropped, probably the best day of the 12 I had in New York, weatherwise. I took a walking tour of Central Park. The park is completely designed, nothing really natural is left from the original look of Manhattan. The park begain in the 1850's by two men, Vaux and Olmstead. This area of Manhattan was not really good farming land, it was never really in use because it is where the bedrock of schist is exposed at the surface. At lower Manhattan the bedrock is close to the surface, and it makes for good foundations for skyscrapers, but then the bedrock goes far below and re-emerges near midtown where there are more skyscapers, and the schist bedrock is completely exposed at Central Park. We visited the the sheep meadow that used to have sheep and where no one was allowed to tresspass; the sheep were removed in the 1920's. We walked through the mall of trees, the Bethesda Terrace, the Belvedere Castle that overlooks the green with algae turtle pond, the Rambles that are a heavily wooden section now full of bird watchers, and then back to civilization on Central Park West Avenue. Central Park has had a bad image over the past generation, but it has certainly been cleaned up - indeed all of New York has been cleaned up. When we visited in 1979, this would have been NYC's low point in terms of crime, dirt, image, budget woes, sex shops, and the smell of pee in the streets.

From Central Park I took a bus down Fifth Avenue and went to the Museum of Modern Art. I headed straight upstairs to the Matisse room, I had a timed ticket. Then I wandered to the room of impressionist paintings and imagine my surprise when I saw Van Gogh's Starry Night and Picasso's Mademoisello d'Avignon and Henri Rouseau's The Dream. I didn't know these paintings were here. There is a lot of great art in MoMA. After this late afternoon excursion, I went to the Rockerfeller Centre and bought a ticket to the Top of the Rock. A modest queue. The elevator quickly takes us up 76 floors. An escalator and stairs complete the journey to the 79th floor. If you remember, this day was a beautiful day, and now the sun is low creating fantastic light as it falls upon the city. I stayed up at the top for over an hour, until I got too hungry, it was time for dinner after all. And the best part of going to the top of the Rockerfeller Centre is that the line ups are less than the Empire State Building and you get a view of the Empire State Building.

Saturday morning turned into a bit of a run around and I got to see more of New York than I had originally planned. I was staying on the Number 1 line subway, and this is connected to the number two line. There was regular scheduled maintenance on the number two line on week-ends. I was supposed to take the subway to our meeting point for another walking tour, this time in Harlem. I had to take a replacement bus, and so I thought I did. Instead, I got on an express bus that went straight to the Bronx, north of Harlem. I was too far away and late for the rendezvous. I got on the next return replacement bus, this time a local bus, but I was late - but so were a few other people. We did eventually meet up with the guide a few blocks into the tour, but I could see the group of people on this trip was huge. There were more than 40 people; I didn't want to be a part of a group of 40 gawking white tourists as we wander through Harlem, so I left the group and walked off on my own. I walked along 135th Street, the street was closed to traffic for a street market. Then I took the bus to the Apollo Theatre, and walked along 125th Street for a while, I bought a couple of T shirts from a street vendor and had a nice chat with him. Very busy this Saturday, people coming and going doing their shopping, shopping at the numerous small shops: the baker, the tailor, the grocer, the ironmonger, the cell phone seller etc.

Later in the evening, I took the train and bus over to see the UN Building, and as a bonus got an almost unreal photograph of the Trump Tower as it reflected the white and puffy clouds and disappeared into the sky. No flags outside the UN Building, actually rather quiet over on the east side, perhaps nothing is in session. At the last minute, I bought another Broadway show ticket to see Phantom of the Opera. I wanted to see Billy Elliot but there were no good seats left. I bought the ticket only 45 minutes before the show, so I had to race to get dinner. I bought a cheap, fast and flavourless pizza nearby. The show was not much better than my dinner. While I am glad I got to see Phantom first hand and I get to see what all the hype is about, I just don't understand all the hype. To me, the show is all razzmatazz, flash, pyrotechnics, trap doors, mirrors, wires and volume but a couple of scenes were tedious, and the show left me generally flat. The audience were all tourists, unlike the first two shows I saw, La Cage Aux Folles and South Pacific. And Phantom has now surpased Cats to become the longest running show in Broadway history. I think it's time to retire the show.

Sunday was cloudy and muggy. I went to Brooklyn to visit the New York City transit museum, a hidden gem among museums, and I don't think I'm just saying this as a public transit nerd. The museum is in an old decomissioned subway station, but still active. Downstairs at the platform level there are dozens of old carriages dating back all the way to the turn of the last century. You can go inside each and see how things have changed over 100 years of transit history. Wooden seats, leather straps, straw seats, plastic seats, and each carriage still has the old advertising posters. New York subway stations are so hot for a few reasons; much hotter than say London or Paris. Underneath the New York subway lines run the steam pipes for heating buildings, and the subway lines are much closer to the surface and get daytime heating. Now all subway carriages are air conditioned, but they used to have only fans to move the air. I have entered a couple of carriages during my 12 days in which the air conditioning had broken; the carriage is empty because it is too unbearable - it could be 50 degrees Celsius in an unconditioned carriage, almost too difficult to breathe. I got to the museum just as a tour was to begin. He took us through the entire museum showing us old turnstiles and methods of payment, old carriages, and he showed us a video which describes the garbage and money train that runs through the subway. The money train used to collect the money from turnstiles and deposit it at the collecting station, millions of dollars would pass through the subway line each day - it's been mostly replaced now by a Brinks Truck. But the garbage train still passes through collecting garbage from subway stations.

Monday was my last full day in New York, and I was getting weary of sleeping in a crowded room with kids and slobs. One of my roommates had a huge pile of his dirty clothes in one corner of the room, and he usually made a lot of noise slamming the door when he left and returned, and he was known to turn off the air conditioning. I guess he forgot that he's living in shared space. There were a lot of kids in this hostel, kids on school trips. Doors slam late at night, paper left everywhere, juice bottles left out, toilets not flushed and water everywhere in the bathrooms. It hasn't been like this in other hostels, especially in Europe, where you might find more independent and older travellers. I just think that these kids behaved like this because they haven't figured out yet that they are living with other strangers, this isn't their personal space, but shared space. You lose your privacy in a hostel, that's the price you do pay, when you don't pay a lot of money. I paid $36 per night; the price I paid in total is two nights in a hotel in Manhattan, I paid at least 6 times less than a hotel.

My last morning on Monday, I went to Lower Manhattan to go on my last walking tour of the financial district. I had seen some of this myself a week earlier, but I always like to get the stories, and there are always some hidden gems you get on a tour - streets I would never have found on my own. This tour was the shortest of the four I took, and our guide showed us all the places in Lower Manhattan associated with the Revolutionary War. And what I didn't appreciate, was just how easy Manhattan became a British Colony from being originally Dutch. New York was originally called New Amsterdam. North of New Amsterdam in Connecticut and south in Virginia was all British territory, and so the British wanted to control the entire American seaboard. So they went to the people in control of New Amsterdam and explained the situation. They were more interested in making money through trade (Beaver pelts being the hot commodity) and the didn't really care who was in control. As long as they could continue making money, the territory became British in a bloodless take over. That all ended in 1776, of course when the American colonists wanted no part in taxation without representation. The statue of George III in Bowling Green Park was melted down and made into bullets and shells used to fight the British. And so it goes, lower Manhattan is now American but the centre of the world financial system.

Tuesday was my last day in New York. I had plenty of time before my flight from JFK airport, the flight was at 6:30pm. I set off to do the nearly impossible, instead of a quick subway ride I took the bus. Surface transport and one last gasp of Manhattan traffic and the crazy street scene of Brooklyn. I got on a limited bus route in the upper west side and got downtown fairly quickly, but the bus over the Manhattan Bridge was no long in service - I had to go under the East River by subway. I got off again in Brooklyn and took the bus. I got to see Brooklyn again, and it just sprawls and sprawls. The same busy streets mile after mile. So many of these small shops below Brownstone buildings. Cars coming and going, the bus driver had to make every bus stop, wait for traffic lights, and wait for cars to pull in and pull out. It took hours to cross Brooklyn, and it was quite a visual feast. It's not really on an organized and simple grid system, unlike most of North America. I got to my transfer point to pick up the other bus heading to JFK. I was in the heart of shanty town, USA. Middle aged men sitting around with little to do, except this group of men I saw had a meagre bicycle repair operation going on in the middle of the sidewalk. My last bus came and I was taken through a more spread out part of eastern Brooklyn with wide streets and faster speeds - I was soon at JFK. I took a flight on JetBlue, the same airline and airport in which that flight attendent last week had a breakdown and slide down the emergency shute with a beer. I wonder if I would do the same out of a bus if I had to live in New York?

---

Photos

Sailing in Central Park
Kids rent model radio controlled sailboats