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Published: September 30th 2007
I had for a long time harboured the grandiose self-delusion that I cause a storm everywhere I go. While a cool, sober reflection of my entrance into other cities and towns thus far in my travels may suggest otherwise, the events of my first night in New York provided me with the sort of egoistic reinforcement I had been craving. At first it seemed little different to any other summer thunderstorm, but as it raged on and on its intensity became impossible to dismiss or ignore. It was therefore with little surprise that I heard the following day just how severe it had been. For the first time in over a hundred years a tornado had ripped through Brooklyn, and almost half of the subway network was closed due to flooding. You can therefore imagine how flattered I felt.
Moving on from my self-indulgent ramblings, New York City is, well, it's New York City. So many before me have described this mind-blowing place from every slant and angle. In that sense, it is a formidable task to put a fresh spin on it, so I'll just try to recount some of the best weeks of my life as best I
High intensity slapsies
Northey and Blakey engaged in horseplay with the security guard at the local supermarketcan. My host for these three crazy weeks was Northey, a man who is so at home in the Wall Street cut and thrust that I'm sure I heard him use words such as "kwawfee" (coffee), "dawgs" (dogs) and "bawr" (bar) on a few occasions. The moment I set foot in his digs on the Upper West side, I could tell that he is carving out a very nice little niche for himself in the big city and, admirably, without the "greed is good" attitude made famous by the infamous Gordon Gecko. Like everyone I have stayed with thus far, he proved to be a most gracious and generous host.
I usually slept through his painfully early starts for work each morning (a standard departure was 8:50AM - outrageous!), and then headed out to just pound the pavements and see as much as possible of the city. I discovered very early on that for a city of its size, New York is very cheap and easy to get around. The grid formation makes it an absolute dream for a map-loving orienteer like myself, and I really only needed a good hour or so of intense study to gain a
Physical Graffiti
Led Zep album cover scene in St. Marks Place pretty good sense of where I was anywhere on Manhattan. By the end of my stay, I was challenging anyone and everyone to throw a Manhattan location at me so I could show off just how well I knew my way around town by providing an address, subway line, and approximate travel time from current location. Brett "the Big Easy" Smiley was a particularly keen participant in this game and I could tell that I impressed him with my swiftly acquired local knowledge.
For one island, Manhattan sure packs a diverse arsenal of punches. While New York is possibly most famous of all for its status as a global financial capital, the Wall Street financial district didn't have a great deal to interest the shoestring backpacker - I strongly doubt my dwindling ING account balance would have allowed me to cause any discernable ripples in world capital markets with a keenly timed buy, strip and sell transaction. Furthermore, the former World Trade Centre site no longer transmits the sort of haunting reminders of that fateful day in September 2001. Aside from a board listing the names of those who died in the tragedy, there is little else to encapsulate
Cooling off
Lads taking a dip in Washington Square Park the 'America on her knees' images that we all saw on our TV screens 6 years ago. "Ground Zero" is now a gigantic construction zone where the foundations of the new Freedom Tower are being laid, now communicating the new image of 'America is back on her feet - it'll take a lot more than a couple of collapsed towers to bring us down Osama'.
While September 11 was obviously 'the big one' when it comes to historical New York moments, almost every part of the city throws reminders of its prominent place in contemporary culture, sport, politics, business, everything. One of my favourite neighbourhoods was the East Village which, thanks to Rudy Guiliani's zero tolerance policing (or Roe vs Wade if you believe the Freakonomics theory), has thrown aside its seedy, dingy, druggy reputation over the past 10 years, while still managing to retain the gritty charms which inspired Jonathan Larson to set "Rent" there. Even the small things excited me. While 76-78 St Marks Place looks just like almost any other crumbling tenement, it provided the front cover of possibly my favourite album by definitely my favourite band of all time, Led Zeppelin's "Physical Graffiti".
Eager
to delve more deeply into New York's cultural milieu, I arranged tickets for Northey and I to go on a man date to see the Broadway show of Rent. I saw it twice when it came to Melbourne back in 1999, and it has been from that moment forth my favourite musical. While it was great to see Christine Anu light up the stage as Mimi 8 years ago, it was far, far better to see the show where it all began in the mid 90's, in the city in which it was set in the mid 80's. Without intending to besmirch the quality of Melbourne theatre, it was instantly clear to me why Broadway enjoys the stature it does, as the show was just a cut above anything I'd seen before in terms of prefessionalism and polish.
Having ticked the Broadway show of the list, our next outing to a professional event was to a Yankees v Detroit Tigers game at Yankees Stadium. It was my only foray into the Bronx during my time in New York and the 20 minutes I spent waiting at the train station for Blake to arrive was plenty of time for me
to observe the character of the place. Even with the baseball crowd milling around it was clear that this was, as reputed, a rough part of town. While Manhattan has been swept clean over the last 10 years and is now really quite safe, I can imagine the Bronx being positively forbidding in the darkness of a cold winter's night. When Blake arrived we found a scalper (or should I say he found us) who sold us a couple of tickets at a reasonable price. The only problem was one was for the top deck of the stands, and the other was for the bleachers. Lucky for me, I had the ticket for the stands and was able to meet up with Northey (who was already inside) and enjoy seeing the hated (by me) Yankees getting rolled at home by the Tigers, even though the result didn't help my team (the Indians) at all given that the Tigers are divisional rivals.
With Blakey in town and Northey, Frase (a good mate of both the lads) and myself just generally excited, the weekend that followed was destined to be fun, yet brutal. The destiny was fulfilled. Though they started out
What country are we in again?
A few reminders at the New York Stock Exchange very differently, both nights wound up in a club where they belted out track after track of the 80's finest. The duet shared by Northey and myself, belting out A-Ha's "Take on Me" in the early hours of Friday morning, was just breathtaking. We convened on Saturday night in a somewhat more dignified setting, eating dinner around the rooftop pool of the super exclusive (so I'm told) Soho House in the Meatpacking district. I am always sceptical of the "exclusive" status of a place when they let riff raff like me in, but I must admit that this place was pretty special. The meal cost me about 3 weeks of travel budget (even accounting for the oysters that Blakey generously shouted me) but it was worth it, if only to be able to say that I'd dined at a place that had refused entry to the main chick off Sex and the City (once again, so I'm told). After dinner Frase (clearly a man who opens doors in this town) took us to a place where we walked straight in past a lengthy queue. The royal treatment was terrific - I half expected a paparazzo to jump out in front
You can't beat City Hall
...and you can't get that close to it either of me and stick a camera in my face.
While that weekend was one to savour, the one that followed was even better, or at very least its equal. Through the power of facebook, I caught up with Jess, Paris and Hannah (three girls I went to school with but haven't seen in probably 8 years) on the Friday night in the East Village. It was a good old fashioned random catch up with fun times all round. With a colossal crew in tow on Saturday night, thanks to the additions of George and Matt, Steph Powell, Jo Birlo, and (Chris) Brookesy, we headed to a place right on the East River in Queens. It is difficult to describe how good this place was. It was basically an artificial beach with fluffy white sand right next to the river, across which the incredible skyline of midtown Manhattan was on show for all to see. With great company and an incredible setting, it was the sort of night where dreams come true. I'm sure Northey would agree with me on this count...
The final event to report on was the excursion Matt and myself took out to (Dun)Shea Stadium
Party time
Alex and HJT at Brooklyn party to watch the Mets take on the San Diego Padres. Having spent years discussing American sport with fellow enthusiast Andrew Tam, it was fantastic to finally get the opportunity to take some in together. As was the case in the other two baseball games I had been to during this visit to the States, the more fancied home team was rolled. This wasn't such a bad state of affairs cos Americans have the distasteful habit of leaving a game early, even when they are still in with a sniff of victory, thus allowing us to move to primo seats almost right behind home plate. While a crusty old man came and told us off the first time we tried this, our second, stealthier, attempt was successful. If only Jose Reyes could have come to the party with a walk off grand slam it would have been the perfect evening.
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Northy
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Brilliant Thompson....great times mate.