New York cares

What can I say about New York that hasn't already been said?  How can I follow up a sentence like that?  Talk about making a noose for yourself.

I'll try again.  The main thing about New York is, we know it all already.  We know Times Square, the Statue of Liberty, Central Park, the Lower East Side, the Upper West Side (although I was yet to put together the fact that this referred to the western side of upper Manhattan) etc.  Everywhere we went was something somehow familiar.  Walking around provided constant reminders of how this city is represented in and influences popular culture.  This is where the terms "uptown" and "downtown" are literal (in a 2D way).  Is there anyone who doesn't know the words to a song about New York? 

Our accommodation was in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, although a local we met at the Sao Paulo airport said "more like Bedford-Stuyvesant" (a much less desirable suburb) when we showed him on a map where it was.  Williamsburg is touted as a very cool neighborhood with an increasing population of youthful "hipsters", and as has occurred previously on our trip this stereotype proved to be fairly accurate, as long as a hipsters looks like this:

Male: pale complexion, probably a few tatts, a haircut that no money can have been exchanged for, a t-shirt with some clever pop-culture reference, shabby jeans or cut off shorts that could be torn a bit or, much better, paint splattered (paint splattered is really in).

Female: tight jeans or short denim shorts worn over black tights, street shoes (Converse preferred, never new looking), numerous unusual piercings, thick glasses, and a short, angular haircut.

The hipsters seemed perfectly friendly, but one night when lost we were approached by a fashionable trench coat-wearing magazine employee (pointing at her business card "You know this magazine?  It's pretty big in New York.  I used to work at Vogue") named Rebecca Babcock Bradley, and when she said "hipster" it was with sharp disdain and fingers up for inverted commas.  Let's assume this attitude was fashion-related.

We travelled into Manhatan every day for the endless sights.  We took pictures of wind-buffeted pigeons on the Empire State Building.  We looked up admiringly at the lights and signs of Times Square, surprised that we liked it so much when we should have been disgusted by it for various anti-consumerist and pro-environmental reasons (I will be keeping my detailed analysis of these internal conflicts to myself).  We shopped endlessly (my view) but not enough (Mel's).  We went to a Yankees game at their new stadium, marvelling at the impossible multitude of statistics (e.g. if desired, one can easily access a batter's figures solely against left-handed pitchers when runners are in scoring positions after the sixth inning) but scoffing at the price of beer and the lame automated chant prompts and scoreboard animations designed to artificially fire up the crowd.    We stared at Van Gogh's "Starry Night" at the Museum of Modern Art (ignoring the loud statements of the obvious coming from the crowd circled around it) and established that the Metropolitan Museum of Art owns a lot of boring Picassos but has a lot of other stuff to recommend it.  We saw the Lion King on Broadway and Avenue Q (featuring explicit sex scenes with puppets) off Broadway.  We were about four blocks and a clumsy bomb-builder away from getting a terribly close look at a terrorist attack, and afterwards found that New York (hysterical media aside) just takes this kind of thing in it's stride.  It didn't effect our time there at all.  

One night we headed down to the East Village to the Village Vanguard to take in some jazz.  This club is so famous that Jamie Cullum name drops it in the British Airways in-flight magazine, but it was fairly easy for us to get our names on the door to see the Heath brothers, famous as back ups to the big names.  Jimmy Heath at one point said "this song was made famous by Miles Davis, and when I used to play with him we used to play it a lot.  But then Miles left us".  Just prior to the show we had spotted the actor James Spader entering, our first celebrity spotting!  Again, I was surprised by my excitement at this because I'm pretty sure he's not on the A-list (although I'm not willing to speculate on his exact list position).  We were so distracted by Mr Spader that when Jimmy Heath pointed out Tony Bennett about two metres away from us it was quite a shock.  I'm no expert but the the music was wonderful and we returned to the street with a delicious New York buzz through us.     

Late in our stay we attended the world famous (self-acclaimed) Apollo Theatre in Harlem, where Wednesday night is amateur night.  The audience is encouraged to cheer the performers if they are good and to heartily boo them if they are not.  Overwhelming boos bring on a lively fellow dressed as a policeman who will chase the contestant offstage.  Only one performer suffered this fate the night we were there, a woman who bravely attempted a performance of spoken word.  She seemed alright to we spoken word non-initiates.  The most common style of performance was a young woman belting out some soulful ballad in the style of Beyonce or Whitney Houston.  This got tiresome and as a result the winner was a beautiful girl who played a cello and sang an unusual bluesy number while third place went to a lad with significant attitude who could seemingly dislocate his own shoulders in the service of dance.  Second was the best of the crooners.  

The was definitely a lot of amateur talent on display and the host (the modestly named Talent) made a big deal of pumping up the number of legends that have been made on the Apollo stage.  Michael Jackson and his brothers first came to prominence at the Apollo amateur night apparently.  The best moment of the night played off this history.  Talent was interrupted from introducing the next amateur by a message from the side of the stage.  He looked right; his eyes went wide.  He wrote something on a piece of paper and gave it to the band leader, whose eyes went wide.  Talent said "Folks, a brother is in the house and he's going to come on now, a genuine Apollo legend, with too many credits to mention here, you gonna get your money's worth, please give it up for Mr Stevie WONDER!!!!!!!".  And then, holy shit, Stevie Wonder was led on to the stage to a keyboard where he sat down and played "Signed, Sealed, Delivered".  We could not believe it but wanted so much to believe it that we went quite bananas (Tony Bennett who?!), along with most of the rest of the audience.  This was definitely the wildest moment of the night.  He played for just a short time and was led off stage again.  The last three hapless amateurs had to follow that up!  

The highlight for me was the Statue of Liberty.  As well as the admirable anti-slavery and pro-immigration history, she is just a beautiful thing to look at.  We took the ferry from Manhattan to Liberty Island and toured around with the aid of an audio guide, whose commentary by a tiny margin remained just on the acceptable side of the appropriately proud/US-specialty excessive nationalism divide.  I was surprised by how into it I was, and started to say things to people like "Maybe the US will be okay, as long as this is here".  As nation-guiding symbols go, it is hard to think of anything that tops her.  We saw her again from a boat on a night cruise we took that looped around the southern half of the island.  At night with her torch lit she was even more arresting.  The US can be an easy target for derision, but It is much harder to poke fun at while looking at the Statue of Liberty.

And the Americans?  Many fall over themselves to help you.  Tipping troubled me, except when genuinely good service was provided, when it was a pleasure.  Mostly we received excellent service, although perhaps tipping breeds a tendency for waiters to invent tasks for themselves (I ordered poached chicken in a restaurant and the waiter said "That is poached in buttermilk so it's going to have a very silky texture".  Long pause.  Was this supposed to discourage me from ordering it or encourage me or neither?  "Okay", I said, successfully terminating the exchange.  It was indeed very silky).  Perhaps it is a symptom of another oft-observed tendency, that of providing much more information than is necessary.  Overheard in a wine shop: "...and I used to drink a lot of Australian wine but the prices went up so high and sometimes I like South African whites and I think I would like to spend about $50 because it's a special occasion but I don't want to spend $50 just for the sake of it I mean I want it to be a nice bottle that is well worth the $50 because I don't usually spend that much and as I think I said it's for a special occasion and so I want it to impress so do you have anything around that price range or at least a bottle that you think meets up to the expectations that someone might have when drinking a bottle that cost $50 for a special occasion...".  This reproduction may not be perfectly accurate because during the eavesdropping I developed a sharp pain in my temple and required medical attention.

We left for London tired and a little overwhelmed but knowing that we hadn't really scratched the surface.  Vague ideas of the city and the USA had been drawn together, but this new solidity of knowledge really only heightened my awareness of what I didn't and couldn't know, the enigmatic nature of a country with such a rich history of immigration and a reputation for being inward-looking, a country where Sarah Palin and Lady Liberty can co-exist.  I left behind the new world for the old continuing my tiresome game of simultaneously chastising myself for my ignorance and patting myself on the back for being so worldly.  

   

PS     It wasn't really Stevie Wonder.  After he went off doubts formed.  The keyboard was already set up there wasn't it?  And his trademark head movements and claps seemed a little exaggerated to me.  And when he stopped playing he clumsily reached for the microphone and missed by a mile, despite singing into it perfectly accurately for the previous two minutes.  As the crowd calmed down Talent brought him back on and revealed that it was not Stevie Wonder at all but the same bouncy guy that kicks the poor performers off the stage.  Some of the audience were genuinely pissed off; others nonchalantly affected a pose suggesting they were never fooled; your correspondent tried for something in between and looked ridiculous.  The show went on without bloodshed, although it was a near thing.  The minute and a half or so that we thought it was him were worth it!