One thing I didn’t associate with New York in my imagination is sore feet. I always saw this city as a place of traffic mayhem and honking cab rides. While that is a true picture, there is more to it. The most common form of transportation is feet. And New York city has 30% of the USA’s public transport usership on the subway system. So, when in Rome.....
Most of the time I have been walking. On day 2, I walked from my hotel to the Empire State Building then to the edge of Central Park and then back to my hotel before walking back to the subway at Times Square to catch the train out to Harlem for a show at the Apollo Theatre. On day 3, I walked from my hotel to pier 83 for a harbour cruise, then walked to 5th Avenue and then back to my hotel. On day 4, I caught a cab to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, then walked to south Central Park where I went on a horse and carriage ride in the park, then I walked to MoMA, down to Lexington and back to Grand Central Station to catch a train to Harlem to see a play at the National Black Theatre before heading back to my hotel and then being evacuated in the middle of the night because of a fire on my floor. On day 5, I walked down to Lexington for breakfast, caught the subway to Bowling Green, walked up to and along Wall Street, walked to the site of the twin towers, walked to the African Burial Ground and walked through Chinatown and Little Italy before catching the subway to Macy’s and walking back to my hotel. This means I’ve walked well over 20 miles in the last five days, which means I’m conservatively averaging over 7kms a day. That of course doesn’t include the kilometers clocked up within museums, shops and occasional wrong turns. You might be terrified to learn that 7kms does not hit the 10,000 step-mark recommended daily for a healthy life. While I’m probably easily exceeding the 10,000, I can tell you, it’s hard work! And it takes all day. Luckily, I'm seeing interesting stuff along the way. Let me tell you all about it.
New York is a dazzling city. I think the main danger in the city arises from the fact that to see it properly you really have to be walking around looking up the whole time. This not only means you get a crick in the neck but it also significantly increases your chances of injury from collision. The architecture is amazing and so worth the risk. Juxtapositions of old and new are everywhere. From Colonial to Art Deco to modern to a whole heap I can’t name, there is a huge range of architectural styles. There are so many stunning buildings that I could expend gigabytes of interweb space uploading photos. There are so many, I might well crash the interweb entirely. There are stacks and stacks of fantastic urban planning ideas - beautiful and useable public spaces, public art galore, apartment skyscrapers with inbuilt garages and lifts that take your car up to your floor, old elevated railway lines turned into linear parks, precincts that build up cultural identities, pedestrian friendly walkways, efficient and effective public transport.....am I gushing? So I should. There is much to be amazed about.
Not the least amazing things are the museums and art galleries. I think someone bandied about a statistic that claimed New York has the most museums of any American city. I don’t know if that’s verifiably true but I wouldn’t be surprised. So far, I have done only 2 art museums and already I feel somewhat museumed out. They say everything is bigger in America. Well, so are the museums. The Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met) is so frickin’ huge, it puts the Louvre to shame. And I thought the Louvre was big. Well, it is, but that just makes the Met epic. There are rooms and rooms of just Monets and Van Goughs. There are rooms and rooms of many other artists. There are entire wings devoted to certain periods of art or from certain locations. In one wing, there was a room with some 30+ floor to ceiling double-sided, 20 metre long cases of just furniture. In one wing there were entire rooms constructed demonstrating different architectural periods. Then there is the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) which has more Picassos than you can poke a stick at and a good few Monets (including a huge water lilies tryptic) and Van Goughs of their own. Throw in a few Pollocks and Kandinskys for good measure at MoMA and before you even manage to get down to the design shop or the photography exhibition, your head is exploding.
And there’s your head gone before you even manage to see the city itself. Wait until you get to the top of the Empire State Building and see Manhattan and the other boroughs laid out before you. In case you still have a brain cell not quite pushed into blathering awe, take a cruise and see lady Liberty up close and observe the city from the water. I defy you to not end up jibbering.
Let’s not forget that all of this is just the mainstream tourist stuff. We haven’t even explored the “real” New York (whatever the heck that is). Twice, Hannah and I went out to Harlem to see theatre. It is interesting to be in an English speaking nation and be in a place where you are part of a cultural minority and which is so different to that which you are used to, yet so familiar through TV. One night, we went to see Amateur Night at the Apollo Theatre - an institution within an institution. The Apollo first opened in 1914 and Amateur Night began in the early 1930s. A 15 year old Ella Fitzgerald was one of the first Amateur Night winners and the theatre has hosted more greats over the years than you could believe. The night we went didn’t yield any likely future Ellas but it was a rollicking good time anyway. Yesterday, we returned to Harlem to see a play called “Seed”. Set in Harlem, the play is about a social worker who decides to leave the field on a high note with a book detailing her career but when a gifted young boy from the projects collides into her life, she is forced to confront his circumstances and the shadows of her past. To see such a powerful play in the location in which it is based was an extraordinary privilege - watching the audience react was almost as interesting as the play itself. The actors were brilliant, the play was beautifully written and the production was excellent. If it ever comes to your home town, pull out all the stops to see it. Afterwards we met the director (Niegel Smith) and the playwrite (Radha Blank) so we were able to get some more fascinating insights.
As I already mentioned, today Hannah and I toured lower Manhattan, around the financial district. As you may know, there is some dissatisfaction around the place here about the state of the economy. Nowhere is that more evident than around Wall Street. The New York Stock Exchange Building is now well and truly cordoned off from the public and there is a round the clock, significant police presence. Further up Broadway, the protestors stand with their placards and slogan t-shirts, making their dis-satisfaction with the banks, the government, Wall Street and the financial system clear. (There was a also a guy protesting Monsanto but maybe he just didn’t get the memo that the anti-GM protest was moved to next weekend?) In any case, good on ‘em. I think they have a point. But I wish they’d look less motley and maybe, as a dear friend of mine colourfully described, less like “leftist, latte sipping hairy arm-pitted soft cock pixies from the bottom of the garden”. It hurts the cause when you don’t look like a sensible person who can make a rational or at least cogent argument. It may be superficial but the fact is we humans make visual judgements. However many times our teachers tried to tell us we should not judge a book by its cover, there is a reason why publishers spend billions on marketing and book-cover design.
We were also fortunate enough to see over 1,000 skaters participate in the Broadway Bomb - an 8+ mile skate-board race from one end of Broadway to the other. It was a quite a sight to see a large band of mostly grown men hurtling down the street and in between traffic like kids, and there was a nice sense of brotherhood between the skaters and the protestors with everyone cheering each other on. There was a lot of love on Broadway today.
Two final things need a mention. Firstly, the site of the former twin towers, which has some poignant reminders of the many lives lost. Having been rescued last night by the NY Fire Department after some idiot set the carpet on fire outside my bedroom, I began to appreciate in a very small way the enormity and danger of the job the fire-ies perform in this city. That they lost so many in 9/11 is sad indeed. Sad without even considering the office workers, passers-by, police and many others. As much as America’s reaction at the time may have been questionable in hindsight, when you see the place and the photos of those lost, it is easy to see why this event is still such a tragic scar on the nation.
Speaking of tragic scars, we come to the second thing that needs mentioning. This afternoon, Hannah and I visited the African Burial Ground. The ABG is a spot in lower Manhattan were, during excavation work for a new federal office building in the 1970s, workers discovered the skeletal remains of the first of more than 400 men, women and children. Further investigation revealed that during the 17th and 18th centuries, free and enslaved Africans were buried in a 6.6 acre burial ground. Over the decades, the unmarked cemetery was covered over by development and landfill. Today the site is a National Monument featuring a distinctive memorial that commemorates and communicates the story of the African Burial Ground. This particular Saturday, there was a Native American Indian dance and music performance. It seems that Indigenous people in every nation are still shabbily treated and inadequately recognised and that is as true in the USA as it is in Australia, Brazil and many other places. It is a shame that we can’t seem to resolve these issues but instead leave them festering like a scar on our history. Rather nicely, this group of Indians spoke of the intertwined history of African Americans and American Indians and pointed out that without the two of them, America would not be the nation it is today. The memorial at the Ground is a lovely, peaceful and harmonious setting. The singing and dancing was earthy and grounded and created a sense of belonging and togetherness. A large bunch of visibly ethnically diverse people sat around and enjoyed the performance, no doubt each taking away something different from the experience. See, we can be different and get along anyway. It's perhaps not surprising that this is so visible in New York - a historic and continuous melting pot of immigrants and their cultures. Perhaps that is one of the reasons this city has grown into such an amazing place.
It's hard to believe anything else I see from here on in will match what I've seen already and yet I suspect that NYC will not disappoint. Stay tuned....
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