New York, Part two

Now I’m not usually one for Bagels. Sure, I’ve eaten them before, but its not like they’re a staple of the Sutherland diet. So imagine my surprise to find Pax. The average American will be reading this like I’m a starry eyed idiot, but man, we loved this place. Pax is a chain store specialising in essentially breakfast food. Every morning we’d stumble in, and ask for two bagels with cream cheese and bacon, toasted. Add a large coffee and there you have the breakfast of Champions. And it was like this that every day in New York started.

We had plans for New York. We’d get any gift shopping done on one day, central park the next, then chinatown etc. We’d take in some sights, go to some clubs, bars etc. Uh, no. It did not happen that way, and given the brief length of our stay, it never could have. Instead, we crammed in everything we could, every day, until it came to such time as deciding if we were going to a club or not. “You want to?” “Uh, aye, cool” “really but?” “I’m a bit shattered man”….and so it went. Our first full day of course didnt go as planned. Instead of leaving the gift shopping till the end, we did it then. Apple Store, Borders etc. We had a look in Bloomingdales but my bank manager called when I crossed the doors. No way.

Ironically, the only things I bought that day could have easily been bought at home – ipod, comic book (watchmen, finally) and a green jumper that I am wearing now. Halfway around the world and I still bumped into the familiar, everywhere. Even had a nice conversation with the girl who served me in Borders. She warned me of the difficulty of reading Watchmen, but I assured her i’d be ok. We talked comics for a bit before I left.

We set our sighs on Greenwich Village. Hipster central! We followed the directions the best we could, and there it was….Chinatown. A wrong turn or two maybe, but this would do just fine.

Chinatown, as if you couldnt tell...

This is where I had to feel sorry for Craig. Poor son of a bitch had to contend with my searching high and low for shops selling, well “cool” stuff. Being an anime and manga fan, and fascinated by the east in general, I was buzzing. Eventually I had to resign myself to the realisation that 95% of the shops in Chinatown sell produce or fish. And lamps. I did, however, manage to secure Nana 2 and a Deathnote spin off movie. It wasnt the “stuff” that mattered though, it was the being there. This strange little corner of Chinese culture in the middle of New York. Of course, it sat right beside a strange little corner of Italy, and slowly but surely you see that New York is probably the American ideal in its purest form. Its where everyone went, where they arrived looking to set up a life for themselves. This was the metling pot on full heat.

So we left China and made for Italy. A different place entirely. Not so much produce and fish as much as bags and pasta.

Little Italy

The best thing we did in Little Italy was Eat. After a few beers in a bar that reminded me of Cheers (no one knew my name, gutted) we found a little pizza place, and were very impressed. Who knew Italians could make good Pizza? To be honest, my main memories of Little Italy are the welcoming cold of the beer and the awesome Pizza. And a guy from a resteraunt trying to heckle some chinese kids into eating there by shouting Japanese greetings at them.

The next few events, I cant say I’ll ever forget. We walked for a while, a long while. The streets were lined with people selling bags and jewellery and wallets, hot dogs and pretty much anything you wanted. There was a man collecting for the homeless on the street. A big man, black, in his 50s at least, long hair and beard. Bombastic. He saw me in a Superman tee shirt, and yelled immediately: “SUPERMAN!! He ALWAYS helps people! give to the homeless man!” Ok, so i was suckered in with the Superman reference, but we spoke to him a while. He asked how we were, and we said we were good. We returned the question. “I’m ALIVE baby! Its all good!”. To this day, I think that is the best attitude I have ever heard from anyone.

Its an attitude that was apt for the next part. We walked down, and down, south, and a little west. We walked down the Avenue of Heroes, and towards cranes and boards and fences. Tall buildings surrounded us, until we reached the most obvious gap in the sky, the World Trade Centre. Not quite sure what to do there, we sat down. Do we take pictures? Could be a bit crass. How do we see inside the fences? As we sat, a man came up to us, selling a book showing everything that happened on 9/11. The pictures in the book (which we didnt buy) reinforced the scale of everything. The buildings in front of me that I thought were huge were shown beside what used to be there, dwarfed. In the end I decided that one picture could be taken there. Alot of people died there because of nothing they had done wrong. The crash of the towers falling was ultimately felt across the world, and is still being felt now. But they were doing the best thing people do in times like that. They rebuild.

Rebuild.

New York. Part one.

I was going to do this big blog on interconnectedness. How without even realising it, we’re always linking in the things we do to one another, things we’ve already said or written or done It was going to be huge, so huge in fact that I’m a bit scared of it, so lets leave it for now.

Instead, I’m going to talk about my trip to New York, (the reson why you’ve gone without a blog in so long…).

New York, is big. Its very big actually. New York is so big, that you cant see even half of it in, say, four and a bit days. And thats just Manhattan. We definatley tried though. Arriving at about 10:30pm, after our flight had been delayed by five hours, we were tired more than anything, but excited. We decided to hell with it, we were going site-seeing. Just a few blocks down and a few blocks across was the tallest building in New York, the Empire State Building. It was lit up perfectly, cinematically, and reminded us exactly why we’d just spent 14 hours travelling suspended 36000 feet in the air in a metal tube. There are two observation decks in the building – the 82nd floor, and the 102nd, and we didnt come all that way for second best. After about four elevators and one metal detector, we run into some english accents, and a security guard who tells us that the Empire State Building is a Glasgow Rangers building. Seems home follows us everywhere.

The view was…vast. I didnt just want eyes on the back of my head, I wanted them all around (at least to, say, my ears, the building itself stoped a 360 degree view) You could see everything if you looked for it. Statue of Liberty, Chrysler building, and the weird gap in the skyline where the tallest buildings used to be. We were up there for about an hour or an hour and a half, just looking. Us an about 70 other people of course, even at midnight the observation deck is crammed. Looking over one side, we saw directly on to a trendy bar where stood taking pictures of us, and being snapped in return.

102nd view

The way down was full of movie memorabilia – a clipboard from Breakfast at Tiffany’s, a poster from King Kong, and row after row of plastic and glass model Statues of Liberty.

We werent 100% sure where we actually were. Two guys running on a mountain dew and a slice of pizza, “somewhere near the empire state building” at 12:30am. We just walked, and sooner or later hit 5th avenue. This bode well as our hotel was on 3rd avenue, it shouldnt be too far away, should it? Walking home gave us a few sights too. St Patrick’s cathedral, which looks amazingly creepy at night. Then my personal favourite, the statue of Atlas. I think i’d been watching the news too much, but I cant help but think of Atlas as the American people. Well meaning, almost all of them, doing their best, but for whatever reason they’re bent double trying to support the weight on their shoulders, one they didnt ask for specifically but wont let go of either. America and Americans are pretty villified over here, sometimes they do it to themselves. I cant help but think though that the average American is just like the average anyone else – trying to do their best, hoping they’re doing right. Not the people’s fault that their politicians arent as altruistic as they are. People get sick of America leading charges, but the next time a charge needs led, they’ll expect America to be up front. With great power comes great responsibility. (Amazing fantasy #15) and no one has more of both than the USA.

We eventually found our way “home”. The Pod Hotel. But I’ll blog on that next time. My first few hours there are quite enough for now.

With great power...(I love spiderman)