New York Solo

3rd of June:

I arrived at Madison Square Garden, got off the bus, grabbed my bag and got lost. On my trip I have been many places, Buenos Aires has 13 million people and is insane; but nothing is as confusing as New York, their subway was set up to harass first time tourists, I wrestled my way around it and found the right place, bought a ticket (2 USD whether you go 1 stop or spend 12 hours just going around) and set off for 96th street. My hostel wasn’t hard to locate, I had just forgotten how damn heavy my rucksack was to walk lengths with.

After I had checked in I got sent to my room… On the sixth floor…
I toughened up and dragged myself all the way, got familiar with the place, my room had a private terrace with a view, but on the other side was a much bigger one, the common room was outdoors, with a fair view.

I took the metro (subway, but henceforth referred to as the metro) back into town, 34th street, found some food and found myself on Times Square, the image that is the very essence of Times Square. In reality it is tourists stumbling over each other, and people yelling out their services, musicals, city tours, comedy shows etc.
Especially the comedy show I would like to mention, they kept asking me if I liked to laugh, so I finally stopped and talked with one of the guys. I only asked one question “where is the stand-up comedian from?” and got “The United States” back. It is (for me) a commonly known fact that American stand-up comedians (except for Robin Williams) are utterly useless, and nowhere near funny.

So in the evening when people were coming back from town, and a few had been to the show, and this is their general feedback: “We had to pay 20 USD to get in, and once inside we were told that we had to buy at least two drinks, adding another minimum 20 USD on top. And then the comedian was rubbish, he didn’t even make us giggle”.

For dinner I ate at one of NY’s many famous pizza restaurants, where everyone from Nicolas Cage to Bill Cosby had been, which was fairly good (have had better) and went back to sleep.

4th of June:

On the 4th of June 2008, Bell X1 would play the last concert in their worldtour following their latest album release, and having known this since late April, I had long since purchased my ticket, I went to pick it up from Will Call, but after going a long way out of my way, and waiting around for them to open at 12, I was told that I couldn’t buy it before the doors opened at 20. So I went back and took the train to Brooklyn Heights, and walked around for hours, absolutely worshipping the place, Brooklyn Heights is by my standards one of the most livable places in the world, it is quiet, gorgeous but still near somewhere where everything (EVERYTHING) can be gotten. And to the west end of it is the Brooklyn Heights Promenade offering a breathtaking view over Manhattan and in the distance, the statue of Liberty.

I walked to a place nearby called DUMBO (Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass) a small sliver of land between the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan Bridge. There I found the best ice cream since Jauja in Argentina (El Bolson and Bariloche), and a huge tube… The tube functioned as a webcam to Tower Bridge in London. You looked down the tube, and looked out in London. And the same effect went the other way, so that you could see the people on the other side, with just a few seconds delay. And being nothing but a giant baby, I immediately started dancing in the worst Travolta disco moves (as well as some suggestive moves), and it was immediately returned from London, with dance moves just as horrible, and before long about 5 people on each side were dancing horribly with a delay of 4-5 seconds… It had been a long time since I had last laughed that hard (in fact, it wasn’t longer ago than when I left Jimmy).

After quite a while, I walked on and explored more of Brooklyn and found some wonderful parks, before I decided to walk back to Manhattan across the Brooklyn Bridge and saw the headquarters of Jehovah’s Witnesses in the process. The bridge is meant to be walked and bicycled across as well as driven across, and the views over the East River are fantastic just like the view over the Manhattan skyline, Brooklyn and the wonderful bridge itself, it is one of those rare moments where you almost take more pictures then you thought possible, there is always something new, new colours, new angles, everything.

I landed on Manhattan and walked to Ground Zero, much unlike what I had imagined. The entire thing is boarded up, except for a small fence you can see through (from a distance), and although I knew they were planning a new tower to build there, I had no idea that they had already begun, it is still a whole in the ground (they have 7 towers to build, and only the first (and lowest) is complete, and it won’t be till 2012). There is an overpass to the other side of the road, with a glass window, but that has an even bigger safety distance.

I continued to Wall Street, saw the Stock Exchange (which is now closed to tourists due to security concerns) and the general area, where up to $44.000.000.000 changes hands every day. It was by this time getting late, so I headed back to my hostel to recharge, and then went out to attend my Bell X1 show.

I took the train, had some good dinner, and then went to stand in line, picked up my tickets and entered the floor. It took quite a long time to fill up the room, so I signed an environmental petition, bought a Bell X1 tshirt, and talked for a long time with an Oxfam volunteer named Bob. Eventually the first warm-up band went on (two in total), 3 women. The first played piano, the second played cello and the third kept going between an electrical guitar, acoustic guitar, tambourine and one of those shaky things you rub a stick against. After that came a long break followed by the second warm-up band, a woman with a wonderful voice accompanied by her guitar and a man on a piano. Eventually Bell X1 came on, and played quite a lot of songs, all of them amazing, this band is fantastic, and the lead singer is like a child up on the stage. Running and jumping all around, pouring all his emotions into what he is doing (like singing), and he would also sometimes grab an extra set of drumsticks from the drummer, and start playing on a set of drums. In the end they all got very emotional, and started thanking everyone who had been touring with them (their last concert) and announced that they were going out to get wasted (they’re Irish).

I met a guy called Peter Jensen (Danish parents, but he was born and raised on Long Island) and his son Tony (I think). We started talking due to the girl in front of me. If I at any given time looked behind me, I would see 20 people trying not to laugh, and I had looked at myself in a mirror, I would see myself trying not to laugh. During the two warm-up groups, nobody was dancing, just standing still. And during Bell X1 some people were moving a bit, but nothing special. This girl was all over the floor, while the rest of us were fairly cramped, she had two or three square metres of space, as none wanted to go near her. She was jumped, running and moving all over her space, shouting, whooing, flailing her arms lake a madman, when she wasn’t clapping out of tact with the music (to say that she was moving with the music, would be an outright lie). At one point she kept jumping into me, and smashing her hair in my face when she decided to do horizontal headbanging (no, really). So I asked her to behave, and try not to ram into other people, she of course was gravely offended (as anyone with an IQ between a doorknob and a morning slipper usually is) and said that it was perfectly alright to dance. I told her that as long as she wasn’t a nuisance to other people it was alright. Somehow that managed her to shut up, and exchange places with one of her friends, and then she continued flailing.

There isn’t much else to say, the concert ended after midnight, so I simply went to the metro to catch my ride back to the hostel for some peaceful sleep.

5th of June:

I had met some really nice people in my hostel, especially Tony from Australia. He was a very nice fellow who had been staying in the States for 3,5 months and was now headed back on this day. I packed up my rucksack as well, but unlike him I didn’t go to the airport, I went to Harlem. Harlem is today a very nice place, the former mayor of New York (Guilliani or something) started a massive project to clean up Harlem some 10 years ago and it has really paid off. I stayed on 146th street and Bradhurst, a very nice place with a Swedish speaking receptionist.

After having checked in I went out for a huge walking tour of Harlem. Harlem isn’t pretty, but it is full of history, from Malcolm X to Martin Luther King, everything in between and a lot of things away to either side, such as the famous Apollo Theatre. Harlem is also a very believing area, with many churches, and my first ever encounter with one of those Christian sects that live by old ways, the men and women dressed as American settlers were several hundred years ago.

When I came back to my hostel I bought two Cuban sandwiches (without pickles before you ask) and boarded a train with the intention of going to JFK airport.