Paperjam

Being in New York: Part One

Travel // Jim // 28th March 2008

Friday Night

The train that pulls into Jamaica station seems to have more carriages than every train I have ever travelled on added together. It is going past us for a good two minutes before it stops and I can’t see the back end of it due to the curve of the earth. We jump on and settle in for the journey to Manhattan. I have stopped sweating and, I am told, started looking wide-eyed and happy.

After an encounter with a conductor who has an extravagant ticket clipping action we get off at Penn Station and stroll through the crowds of homeward bound New Yorkers. Passing shops and stalls that seem to be selling lots of deep fried, batter encrusted, meat based snacks – I feel a slight watering of the mouth and hardening of the arteries. Dragging our suitcases up the steps we emerge into what appears to be the set of a big exciting movie.

Standing in an epic concrete and neon canyon on a scale I have never experienced, the visceral impact causes me to gawp open mouthed at midtown Manhattan like an over-eager actor pretending to see dinosaurs for the first time on a Jurassic Park audition tape.

My companions are far more seasoned travellers and herd me towards a cab, jumping in for the rapid ride to our hotel I quickly ascertain the following about the New York taxi experience:
Firstly: The drivers don’t actually know where anything is
Secondly: There are two speeds, fifty mph and stop.
Thirdly: The horn seems to be used entirely at random.

We barrel around a few streets while my dodgy leather coat squeaks and creaks almost loudly enough to drown out the mantra-like drone of “thisisamazingitslikebeinginafilmfuckingehlllookatthatthisisamazing…” pouring out of my mouth.

Nick has arranged accommodation at the Desmond Tutu Center Hotel and Conference Centre (yes, really he has and yes it is that Desmond Tutu), so I am half expecting to have to go through some kind of peace and reconciliation tribunal at the check-in: “I admit, I did let his tyres down, but it’s not like I put one round his neck and set fire to it, is it?”

As we arrive it transpires that Desmond has got the builders in, our hotel is sitting amongst a scattering of hoardings, generators and cement mixers. Once we find our way inside the place is most alluring, The double act of ladies on the front desk sort us out with our rooms and take pity on me and give me a mint, presumably because I am acting like a ten year old on his first trip anywhere. The fact that I don’t have a credit card confuses everyone.

My room is probably the sort of place that I could spend the rest of my life. It is almost certainly the size of my entire flat in Leamington and, I notice when I put my bags down, isn’t on a slope. There is a huge bed, a big TV, a desk, a huge bay window with a sofa thing built into it, couple of sets of drawers, more chairs/tables/wardrobes and a bathroom that I am sure is going to be the nicest place that I will ever park my lunch.

Quick wash, vague scrub up and we are off for much needed food; Nervous energy and maintaining a drum n bass level heart rate for the last twelve hours or so have left me with a stomach that isn’t so much growling as roaring it’s immense disapproval at the lack of attention I have been giving it.

We don’t want to go too far as we all need to eat and it is freezing outside, luckily there are a few places right nearby and we settle on a welcoming and warm looking place called Morans, where we get sat at the bar while a table is being set up. Nick is straight onto the Martini, Chrissie goes for a Stella. I get two big bottles of Pellegrino to sort out the massive dehydration issues I seem to be having and ask for a wifebeater as well. Then I apologise to everyone concerned and explain that I want a Stella too.

The waiter is so polite and attentive that it actually freaks me out a bit – the newly abbreviated N&C tell me that I will get used to it. We kick off with some chops in a kind of barbecue sauce – very nice and the ice cold Stella is going down very nicely indeed. Chrissie skips the starter, telling us that we have been naïve regarding the portion sizes stateside. She isn’t wrong – the seafood pasta dish deposited on her plate by a team of waiters looks like it would break several EU fishing quotas all on its own. I’ve gone for a burger - which is about three inches thick and appears to still be mooing in the middle – accompanied by twelve million garlic fries and a small lake of coleslaw. Nick’s steak is probably huge, but looks tiny in this sort of company, a bit like one of those scientific diagrams that show the size of the planets relative to the sun.

My meal is very good indeed, even if the raw meat and garlic action does remind me of a grisly vampire flick. We down more drinks while I relate tales of my fearless composure on the flight over to Nick and then attempt to impose some sort of ban on any mention of air travel for the next four days.

Time is marching on and my body clock thinks it must be about three am by now. Nick says the key is to stay up and keep drinking as long as possible so that I sleep until a reasonable time tomorrow, I yawnily agree that this sounds sensible. Chrissie is having none of it and heads back to the hotel, although to be fair she has just had a decent crack at eating half of the eastern seaboard.

We find ourselves in the bar next door, which is named Cookshop for some reason and Nick introduces me to the alcoholic wonder that is the Tanqueray Martini. Oh yes, I am going to sleep well tonight. Twice I decide against another one before succumbing to Nick’s persuasively scientific jet-lag beating reasoning.

Stumble back into the hotel, grin at the receptionist and steal some more mints. Get to my room, manage to get my jeans almost all the way off before falling face first onto the bed, let out a fart that lasts at least twenty seconds and changes note twice, laugh myself to sleep.

Saturday

Wake up abruptly at exactly five AM. I’m still wearing most of my clothes and don’t seem to have made any attempt to actually get into the bed. I get up to take a leak and fall over the jeans that are hanging off my right leg, as I fall to the plushly carpeted floor of the room I let out the sort of sweary exclamation that probably doesn’t ring around the Desmond Tutu hotel all that much at five in the morning.

Leak complete, I belatedly get my kit off and dive into the marvellously cosy bed to doze for a few hours. Eventually decide to get up for a shower, which is exactly as hot and steamy as I need it to be.

The people across the street are probably even more surprised than me at the realisation that I didn’t close the blinds in my room last night, a widescreen view of my bare arse is just what everyone really needs in order to get their weekend off to a cracking start.

Send a few messages to tell various people that they were right and that I haven’t died in a big plane crash – who’d have thought it? My phone blares out the beginning of Anarchy in The UK and it is N&C who are enquiring as to my readiness for a spot of brunch. They pop round to my room as I am deciding how many layers to wear, how much cartoon US money I am going to need and exactly what the fuck is going on with the safe in my room; “I don’t get it, the combination is written on the side. That’s not a safe - it’s essentially just a very small cupboard with a clever door”.

We walk through the dry, crisp and chilly streets of Chelsea, heading for the metro, the area around the hotel has a bit of a red-brick Royal Tenenbaums vibe to it. As we get to one of the avenues I look north and see the scale of the city in the clear daylight for the first time, again I am struck by a surreal cinematic feeling of complete familiarity, coupled with the completely alien nature of being the furthest I have ever been from home in a place built on such a fantastic scale.
Spot various tall landmarks before finding a subway station.

The New York Metro is a mix of the totally logical and bizarrely frustrating. On the positive side: The city is effectively a grid and the lines are based on a simple numbered scheme, you can get a day ticket for the trains and buses for $7 and the signs in the stations are a bit more useful than those on say, the Paris Metro. Throwing a spanner into the works are the ticket machines (which seem to have been designed as an experiment into human frustration), the fact that not all of the trains stop at all of the stations on a given line and that there are no maps on the trains to tell you where you are going.

Apart from me nearly going postal and taking a brick to a ticket machine it is a quick and easy journey to Soho, where we are planning on having a posh brunch at trendy Balthazar. A restaurant breathlessly recommended by the over-excitable Time-Out guide, which makes mention of “rail-thin lookers”.

Balthazar is pretty busy and a few people are waiting, however Chrissie deploys the old English accent and we are shown straight to a table next to a huge artistically weathered mirror. There’s a buzz about the place and the menu seems pretty fucking great, there is all manner of stuff on offer including a $99 seafood platter which looks like something Captain Ahab could well have spent his entire life hunting down in a determined, symbolist manner.

Opting for Eggs Benedict we are given bread and water by one of the seemingly endless number of white-apron wearing waiters. As soon as I take even the smallest sip from my glass one of them appears, like the shopkeeper in Mr Benn, to top it up. Efficient, but spooky.

The food is great, although the addition of a layer of fried potato and onion makes it quite a daunting prospect and I can’t finish it. Nick calls me a ponce and finishes off Chrissie’s waffles. A few tables down a very well to do middle aged lady and a much younger man are sharing some kind ice cream sundae and a portion of fries. There’s definitely the basis of a short story there.

We take a comedy cab ride (“I eees sure dat guggenheeem place used to be someplace eelse”) up to the edge of Central Park to visit the Frank Lloyd Wright spiral masterpiece Guggenheim museum. Hmm, there seems to be an awful lot of scaffolding outside and as we stroll in it looks like the whole place is having a bit of a makeover. Turns out that most of it is closed for installation work but the permanent collection is open.

We scoot up in the elevator, I say hello to the little old lady who is running it, she doesn’t understand me, it all gets confusing. Even walking briefly out onto the section of the spiral walkway that is open makes me understand why the Guggenheim was described to me by my dear old grey haired Mum as “that museum that made me feel like I was going to puke”. The slant of the walkway and contrasting angles of the architecture do make you feel a bit woozy, particularly when you look over the parapet into the main foyer.

Across the building we can see loads of life-size slavering wolves being suspended from the ceiling as though they are charging along in mid-air. It will no doubt look amazing once it is finished although the explanatory blurb nearby about how it represents the Berlin Wall is totally extraneous. What's wrong with a bit of ambiguity and mystery eh?

The collections at the Guggenheim are a tribute to the immense wealth of a handful of industrialists and as such contain works from some of the most well known avant-garde artists of the 20th Century. Picasso and Kandinsky feature heavily throughout the two floors, there are a couple of pieces by Josef Albers and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy hidden in a corner that don’t seem to quite fit in but are ace none the less.

Chrissie gets the prize for spotting the best thing in the whole place - a barking Picasso painting of a bird which seems to have been the total artistic inspiration for the cartoon Rhubarb and Custard.

We stroll out of the Guggenheim and down Fifth Avenue and into Central Park, time for my sad movie geekdom to rear its inevitable and ugly head as we stroll up to the reservoir and what looks like the building where Dustin Hoffman fed Olivier the diamonds. Not for the first time in my life, I wish I was a lot fitter - then I could run round the perimeter track with all the New York joggers. We stroll through some of the extravagantly named bits of the park, which seems to be inhabited by a large number of incredibly well fed squirrels and absolutely no other wildlife at all. Hmmmm.

Grab a quick hot chocolate to fight off the biting cold and head for the Whitney museum to look at all the Edward Hopper pictures, Nighthawks being my favourite painting ever. Shite - the Whitney must have heard we were coming and the permanent collection is apparently shut for a month. I start to suspect that there is some sort of mega ironic plot underway to shut segments of New York down as I visit each of them. I tell N&C to look out for shady characters with walkie-talkies – and then realise out that no-one uses walkie-talkies any more, probably not even imaginary goons in one of my half-baked paranoid fantasies.

Thinking fast, we head towards the nearby Frick collection, which I know absolutely nothing about, except that it has a load of renaissance art in which to be honest don’t really float my boat.

From the moment we walk in - and Chrissie explains how this whole place was the home and plaything of one of the early industrial leaders (read robber baron) of the New York area, Henry Clay Frick - the whole place takes on a fascinating, intriguing and faintly disturbing air.

The centrepiece of the building (which covers an entire block) is a large atrium with an indoor fountain and stone benches, a series of what you would have to describe as fairly opulent rooms surround the atrium housing an amazing collection of paintings and sculptures by a bunch of the old masters, Titian, Goya, Rembrandt – those sort of chaps. There are quite a few portraits (including one that even I recognise of Thomas Moore) that I really like, especially the ones where the subject has chosen to be pictured holding a big bag of cash or wearing a scary cape.

Walking into one of the rooms, big enough to play cricket in, with glass panels in the ceiling, a carpet you could lose a child in and a bunch of Turner’s and Vermeer’s adorning the walls I let out an involuntary “fuckin’ elllll” under my breath and upset a very posh looking group of ladies nearby.

I’m finding the whole thing amazing but deeply troubling, when you consider the exploitation and labour abuses that must have funded the whole place. Chrissie tells me that I’m just not in touch with my inner-plutocrat like she is and I need to work on it.

As we leave the Frick collection there is a bust of the man himself hewn out of what looks like marble. He really looks like he didn’t take any shit, I wouldn’t have liked to have to go and ask him for an afternoon off because my whole family had died of TB.

After a quick stop in a drug store to get some film and the worlds chintziest lighter, next up is the Roosevelt Island Tramway. This is the cable car that you might remember from Leon, or one of the Spiderman films it runs along the Queensboro bridge and was built because it took ages to sort out the subway links.

We get on and hang about as it seems that the driver has nipped off for a hard earned break from pressing the on/off button. In the meantime a chap turns up to ask us all if we would like to be volunteer police officers like him. He gives me a leaflet and asks if I could spare any time for the force, I say I might have a few hours free on Sunday, he writes his phone number on the leaflet. “Do you get a gun?” I enquire, “No sir,” replies pretend-a-cop, “but the uniform allowance is pretty damn reasonable”.

The driver is back and after some exhaustive pre-flight checks that involve him scratching his arse, we are off. The tramway isn’t quite the cinematic wonder I hoped for, it is full of fairly bored looking commuters - but the view down the avenues on the East side of Manhattan Island is tremendous, I am firing off snaps like mad on my dodgy Russian camera, even after I realise that it probably isn’t working.

Roosevelt Island looks like a total dump, so we jump straight back on the cable car and get back into town where I have already somehow persuaded Chrissie that we should try somewhere from the “Dives” section of the Time Out guide.

The Subway Bar isn’t really all that bad, but it ain’t exactly exciting either. So after a couple of beers we head off in search of something with a bit more life.

First though, a note on train stations. In the recent past I had cause to be stuck at Stockport train station for an hour or two. There’s a bloke called Geoff who works at Stockport train station. I’ve not met Geoff, seen what he looks like or heard him speak. Yet I know one piece of indisputable truth about Geoff: he doesn’t understand the word “cleanliness”. Otherwise, I’m not sure how in good conscience he could have signed the bit of paper on the wall of the gents toilets to confirm that he had both checked and was happy with the level of cleanliness of the facilities.

Perhaps it was all looking good when he left but then in the intervening twenty minutes before I ventured in some team of blind, epileptic coprophiliacs had blundered in for a cavalcade of dirty protest action painting. Maybe that’s what happened. Either way the place looked like what Jackson Pollock might have produced after a week on the beer and a dodgy prawn biryani.

I stepped outside to go and find a cash point, it appeared Geoff might be responsible for more than just the toilets, in fact he could have been the station manager and the mayor of Stockport by the look of things.

Anyway I almost wish Geoff was with me now as we saunter into the jaw-dropping main concourse of Grand Central Station – home to more marble than a thousand footballers bathrooms. I manage to control my Fisher King ballroom dancing impulses and study the constellations etched onto the roof. The huge stars and stripes suspended from the roof seems both hugely iconic and yet also highly incongruous. The signs painted above the exits say totally mental things like “This way to Lines 100 to 130”. I can’t begin to imagine how many trains must get missed here everyday.

Out into the chilly evening air and we head for Rockefeller Plaza, which is harder than it seems like it should be - even armed with two guide books, an iPhone and Nicks unerringly accurate gift for navigation (based on his sense of smell I believe).

We locate the troublesome skyscraper and join the queue to go up to the Rainbow Room Bar and Grill perched, in what sounds like a very precarious fashion to me, right up the top. The queue shifts fairly quickly, under the supervision of a very, very assertive lady replendant in a security/black tie ensemble and owner of the biggest arse that I have ever seen in my life. It looks like she is towing it like some sort of bum caravan.We jump in the lift, the doors close, it judders slightly, whirrs a bit and then the doors open again. I assume it is broken, but actually it has zoomed us up to the 65th floor so quickly that my ears haven’t had time to pop. We hand in our coats and stroll towards the bar.

Of all the gawping that I have done in the last 24 hours (and there has been a fair bit of it) none can compare with my slack jawed, stoner-esque “Whoa” as the view from the top of the Rockefeller fills my vision.

Straight a head is the Empire State Building, which seems isolated and somewhat serene amongst the chaotic and dense concrete jungle of Manhattan island. Nick points out a tiny spec in the distance jutting up off another island “Statue Of Liberty” he notes, informatively before turning away to survey the possible martini action at the extremely plush looking bar. I gawp more and take some photos with my ropey phone that I know just aren’t going to do justice to the view. Night is starting to fall and I stand and gaze in an awe-struck manner as the city gradually illuminates.

Nick has got the drinks in I get some kind of martini, which is effectively a glass full of gin that has been shown a second-generation photocopied picture of some Vermouth. I take a glug and notice that my elbows have gone numb – Nick shows me the tab and the rest of me goes numb as well.

A couple of English ladies are having a few problems with their camera which I am only too happy to help them out with. The English ladies are actually from Guernsey and chat to us about the huge amount of shopping that they are doing – it sounds unbelievably fucking dull to me, but whatever punches your ticket, I suppose.

Chrissie is halfway through a gin and tonic (that could probably have floored an all-star thespian drinking team made up of Oliver Reed, Richard Harris and WC Fields) when I start to notice something different about her, something I have never seen before. Something mysterious and subtle. After she nearly falls off her chair for the third time, I realise what it is. Chrissie is utterly trolleyed. She giggles and slaps me on the arm saying “don’t be nashty to my new friendsh” after I make some jocular remark to the Guernsey shop-bores. I hope she doesn’t start singing Danny-Boy soon, but wouldn’t dream of trying to stop her.

Nick and I are drunk enough to think that another round is a good idea – I skip the martini pretence and get a G&T. Do the Guernsey birds want a drink? One does, what about the other one? A diet coke? Really? Are you ill? Are you a recovering alcoholic? Why is everyone glaring at me? Have I said something wrong? Why are you hitting me again, Chrissie?

Karmic punishment arrives in the form of the bar tab, I seem to have bought a round and put down a deposit on a nearby loft apartment – its about $30 a drink, but to be fair we are all probably at least $60 pissed.

My god, I’m hungry – and I don’t think that I am the only one. Chrissie is going through the bar snacks like they are chocolate-covered crack and Nick looks like a man who might start eating the furniture if there was a suitable dip available.

A plan is hatched to get back to the hotel and head to a flash oriental eatery. The only problem is that between the three of us we can’t seem to operate the elevator. Nick boldly steps out to try and get it going via the external buttons, then gets shut in the closing door trying to get back in. Then he does the same thing again, about four or five times, I’m not sure exactly because I am laughing too much – Chrissie is almost in tears. Finally we get the lift to move down 2 floors to a strange twilight zone where groups of Hispanic women push around rails of empty coat hangers – it is very strange indeed.

N&C have got the giggles so it is left to me to explain to one of them that we are a bit stuck. She is suspicious, even more so when I slur, “Have you seen any spare coat hangers around here?” as hundreds of them jangle around me. She pushes the right buttons for us and the doors close, my rudimentary Spanish picks up a few muttered words of what I am sure is romantic admiration as our rescuer disappears from view.

It is a well known fact that despite possessing (a) the sort of self esteem and confidence that is usually associated with idiot savant mathematicians who haven’t left their room for 10 years, and (b) a success rate that would probably be compared unfavourably with an attempt by three particularly slow badgers to colonise Mars; If any sort of lady is behind any sort of counter, I will attempt to chat her up.

You could put Rose West behind a trestle table and I would probably ask her if she has been to any good gigs lately. So with me being “in the zone” from an alcoholic point of view, the lovely ladies of the Desmond Tutu centre are really copping a load of it as we get back to the hotel to freshen up – they give me more boiled sweets to shut me up. I’m telling them that they should really come up to my room to check out the “strange vibrations I experienced last night” when I am dragged forcefully away.

Clean T-shirted and deodorised we are walking down 9th Avenue when we happen upon the place we were heading to almost by accident. Buddakan looks like a very trendy restaurant indeed and we can’t get a table – but we can sit at the bar, which essentially means sitting at a table, just not in the main room, about which the Time Out guide screams “Shock and Awe!”.

As I explained to a cynical Chrissie earlier, I don’t know what it is about the bit on the edge of my left shoulder but waitresses love it – my upper arm is squeezed, stroked and slapped by a series of impossibly attractive Buddakan servers who totally fail to get us a drink or even a menu despite saying that they will be right back. Eventually one called Arlene appears, gives us menus and pretends to laugh at my terrible jokes. We order beers, Nick fancies some Sake and asks for a carafe, I say I might try some too – Nick decides “Fuck it we’ll get a bottle”. Arlene asks if she should cancel the beers, we collectively look at her like she has just asked if she could take a shit on the table. “OhhhKaaay”, she whispers, releases her grip on my shoulder and dashes off to get the liquid refreshment.

You should never order food when you are really hungry, but we are going to anyway, by the time the drinks arrive we have decided to go for half the stuff on the menu. Somehow Arlene memorises the entire order while giving me a bit more intensive shiatsu. It all arrives while I am engaging in some sophisticated chat with the other sophisticated patrons at our table – I’m fairly sure that they haven’t noticed how drunk we are. I am using the words “Epic”, “Vertiginous” and “Cool” in strict rotation when asked about any subject at all. Quick, Arlene – more booze.

This food is completely amazing - we’ve got a mixture of meat dishes along with some crab fried rice which I am convinced is the tastiest thing I have ever eaten in my life, the chicken cooked in tea is running it a close second, or it would be if it hadn’t been cooked, sliced up and served on a bed of shallots and ginger.

The food is finished and the sake drunk, Chrissie talks me out of asking Arlene if she will marry me (“Whadd’you mean I’m probably not her type?”) and we settle up at the imposing check out by the door. It takes me several attempts to get either of my arms into my coat. A kind passer-by helps me out, people in New York have been universally pleasant all day – I wasn’t expecting that at all.

Slanted and enchanted, we stagger up the road and spot a hotel consisting of a large grid of circular windows, it has the appearance of a giant connect 4 board. Nick and I theorise about how the game could be played by getting all the guests to turn their lights on and off in a controlled and co-ordinated manner. We could film it for artistic purposes. Chrissie suggests that this plan would be better discussed in the warmth of the bar under the hotel, which turns out to be called The Maritime.

We get whiskies from a barmaid who looks like she would kick your face off if you tried to give her any chat. I reflexively dodge her lethal roundhouse and settle back on a barstool to enjoy the DJ playing a load of English indie music. “You should play more Specials, mate”, I advise as we leave some time later “Yes,” he beams “I should!” and starts searching through his CDs in an enthusiastic manner.

Oh, I seem to have had a bit of a blank there, but I now find myself back in Moran’s sipping a Stella and experiencing a sudden desperate urge to go to bed. I tell Nick that I have had the best day I can ever remember but I have to sleep – he calls me a fucking lightweight, but in what I am choosing to believe is a very caring and affectionate way.

“Must remember to take my jeans off tonight…” I think as I fall grinning, face-first onto the bed for the second time in 24 hours.