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.