Before I begin in earnest (I’m sorry Earnest, but it has to be done), I would like to make two small points:
1. Many people have been to New York. I know this because on the weekend I was there, there were loads of people, more than I could count, and that was just one weekend, so imagine how many people go there in two, three or more (for example seven) weekends. Essentially, for some of you, this will not be news at all, but please humour my naivety.
2. My sojourn in NYC occurred many moons ago and so my retelling may be less than accurate. This does however, grant me extra leeway for artistic license.
I made my trip down to the Big Apple on the last weekend of September. The weather was close, and the train was filled with hoards of Yankee fans heading down to one of their side’s 162 games (I know, fully mentile amount of games) of the regular season. I passed the hour and a half journey reading ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’ (still not finished) and trying my hardest to keep eyes front while the neighbouring couple flirted with the edge of convention in their game of ‘hand on thigh’.
On arriving at Grand Central Station I marveled briefly at the famous Vanderbilt Hall and then attempted to contact my close friend and compatriot, Katie Churchill (who is always on hand for alliterative purposes). Katie was in the States on the Cambridge Footlights tour of North America, and I had managed to catch her on the last day of the trip. I say catch, I walked the streets of the city for approximately 7.4 miles attempting to reach her and her companions:
‘Did you have a group of English people in here earlier?’
‘Yep, they left about three hours ago’
‘Thank you kind barista fellow’
It was after many hours of this unremarkable detective work that I eventually found Katie and chums in Greenwich Village, sometimes lazily referred to as simply ‘the village’ (something I feel would anger residents of small agglomerations across our sceptered isle). There we supped diet cokes, ate French fries and tittered beguilingly at the near constant witty back and forth*. We split up, Katie and I with plans to head to the Museum of Natural History and the others with plans that I cannot recall but did not feature myself in any form other than absence.
As expected, the museum was full of bones, stuffed animals and other reminders of a time when the rest of the world was perceived as more of a curiosity shop by the wealthy and adventurous. While I struggled with temperature regulation in the inconsistently air-conditioned halls, Katie busied herself reading labels and deciding which her favourite prehistoric beast was. Often her vocalized thoughts would slice through the hubbub, keen blades of insight:
‘Dinosaurs are so big’
‘This one looks like its wearing a hat’
‘Brain the size of a walnut, well I never, the size of a walnut’
Having not seen ‘Night at the Museum’ and thus being unsure of Ben Stiller’s eventual fate, we chose to obey the closing time announcements and headed out into the balmy evening. We wiled an hour away outside a bar, discussing the sheer density of the city. I don’t think I’ve ever seen urbanized intent on similar scale anywhere else in the world. With the waters of the Hudson River and the Long Island Sound firmly determining the boundaries of Manhattan, man’s endeavour to inhabit this 13 mile island is clearly demonstrated by the towering structures that surround you on every street. The experience of exploring these man-made canyons is something quite unfamiliar to me.
Another thing that remains entirely alien to my foreign sensibilities is the US service industry. I managed to cause something more than hoo-hah but less than a kerfuffle when I ordered my drinks from the bar where we last left Paddy and Katie. The fixed grin, struggling to hold back the torrent of hatred, worn by the waitress who, having been cheated out of my tip, pointedly told me that my trip was unnecessary, is something I have witnessed more than once before (shit me, clearly not a fan of simple sentence structure [ed]).
Katie and I rejoined the footlights team for a dinner of Thai food and high brow conversation** before saying our fond farewells.
And thus the second half of my weekend began. First I met up with Nate (flatmate, colleague and loser of hair) before we headed to an apartment in the Upper West Side in which we found:
James Brunswick: Resident of aforementioned apartment, friend of Nate’s from university, enjoys baseball, spending time on the roof and snuggling with Nate.
Kevin Yamazaki: Resident of Los Angeles (Spanish – ‘The Angels’) California, friend of Nate’s from university, has chosen not to fulfill any stereotypes by owning a car from Fast and the Furious and being extremely acrobatic.
James’ Mother: Mother of James (see above)
We supped beers from the roof of James apartment marveling at the vista before us (Nate being particularly enamored by the phenomena of reflections, to an almost Neanderthal extent). What followed was a night of debauchery and revelry that does not bear repeating in text (we went to a bar, stole a ping pong ball, met a nice African American lady called Asia and were disappointed that Kevin was not around to be introduced as our friend ‘Africa’, ate omlettes at 04:00 in the morning, discovered Jame’s fish had died and went to bed).
On the morrow, we held a brief service for Wally (aforementioned fish), ate Indian pancakes, went to the cinema (Moneyball, good film) and generally faffed around waiting for Nate’s Dad to pick us up and drive us back up the coast. This he did with great aplomb.
* Here is an excellent example of the aforementioned artistic license. In reality, I spent most of my time giggling like a school girl, reminding myself that I am not in fact a school girl but rather an idiot, and thus, grinning like an idiot.
** See above.
