Wow, what a city! It’s completely mad. I thought I’ve seen it all by now but you ain’t seen nothing until you’ve seen New York. I landed this afternoon at JFK airport and after a slightly scary taxi ride (the taxi wasn’t a yellow cab (mind you, after watching The Bone Collector, I’m not sure I trust yellow cabs either) - I’d foolishly reacted under pressure and ended up in an un-marked “taxi” who kept ignoring the directions given by the GPS and who periodically spoke on the phone to someone in a low voice in Spanish while going through some decidedly dodgey looking areas), I checked in at the very space-aged Yotel near Times Square.
The Yotel is ultra-modern with self-serve electronic check-in, beds that at the push of a button turn into sofas, and all comforts you could want packed into a teeny-tiny space. Rooms are not rooms but “cabins”, staff are “flight crew” and reception is “mission control”. It’s a hoot! And very well designed to boot.
Once I’d dropped off my bag and explored my cabin, I decided to set off to explore the neighbourhood before it got dark and I lost my nerve. It’s an extraordinary city - the scale is quite astounding and it’s almost surreal to walk down streets that we know so well from television. It’s also quite different to all the cities I’ve seen so far in America. New York has taller buildings, some distinct (and thus-far unseen by me) cultural groups (for example, lots of Jewish gentlemen with side-curls and black hats), is laid out in a very tidy grid pattern and is full of mad traffic of both pedestrian and vehicular types.
Firstly the vehicles - well, gosh. All I can say is I’m glad I’m not driving in New York. I’ve driven around LA and San Fran and Dallas and Portland and many smaller towns in between, so I’m no longer a novice at this ‘wrong side of the road’ business. But New York is something else entirely. Barge and honk seem to be the only two rules. Everyone barges into lanes, through intersections and past each other without much attention to an exit strategy. Which would explain the horrendous traffic jams. As well as traffic lights, there is a policeman at most intersections. As the policeman seems to serve no other purpose other than to confirm the same signals the traffic lights are already giving, one can only assume that New York drivers have a tendency to ignore the lights and therefore police are necessary to enforce them. Wouldn't a flurry of fines by way of red-light cameras might serve just as well? Perhaps it is just that since the crime rates went down there is a huge surplus of police officers and now they are just killing time until retirement by directing traffic. Ugh, what a morbid thought.
Now about the people. I was warned that New Yorkers walk fast. Well then I must walk very fast because when it comes to raw speed, I was out-walking everyone. However, when it came to points of congestion, I was slowed while the locals somehow managed to cut a swathe through the crowds. Therefore, I think it is not speed so much as barge-arsedness that sets New Yorkers apart.
Other than that, I can also report that Times Square is full of neon lights and shiny objects, the bit of 5th Avenue I saw is quite swanky and there is a road between them full of jewelry stores and aforementioned Jewish gentlemen in hats as well as a large number of hawkers wanting to buy your gold and diamond jewelry while standing under signs saying “shoppers - beware of hawkers that offer to buy your gold and diamond jewelry”. No kidding.
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