Brave New World

Ah New York, New York, how I pine for thee. It’s been 9 months since I came back from the Big Apple, but I still miss it. I just don’t know what it is about that city, I know the saying is I left my heart in San Francisco, but I think if anything, that should be reserved for New York too.

So many people I have spoken to have said there is just something about New York. A friend said to me before I left, “make sure you don’t leave your heart in New York City,” to which I firmly promised that I would not, and which I promptly did. Like so many people it’s something I can’t quite put my finger on. It has such a multiplicity about it; it’s not just one New York. It’s so many New Yorks: from the stately buildings of the Upper East Side, to the greyish ones of Harlem, and that’s just the borough of Manhattan, there’s another three more after that! There are so many different cities which make up that famous Manhattan skyline and beyond; some parts more Law and Order than Sex and the City, yet all still so very enticing. The Big Apple is the shifting constant city that you see on TV, right down to the fire escapes and the sound of honking taxi horns (it’s not just the Europeans who like to blow their horns).

The majority of New  York’s tourist sites can be done in a few days, such as Ellis Island, the Empire State Building, Top of the Rock (which F.Y.I, gives much better views of Manhattan than the Empire State Building), but to really see New York you need more than a week, you need years.  

I developed a bit of an obsession for not seeming like a tourist, a concept which led me to some of my favourite times in the city. Once you’ve gotten Times Square and the Statue of Liberty (which unimpressively small) out of your system, New York opens its doors to you. They often say that the majority of people living in New York weren’t born there, which lets you easily slide into life in the city. The bars are so involving, I think the best experience I had as a non-tourist was on the final night, when we ended up at a college bar called the Underground in the Upper West Side, where there was a karaoke night going on. It wasn’t British style karaoke with middle aged women singing I Will Always Love You; it was real musicians, jamming together, impromptu. In fact we got so involved we made friends with the barmaid and the musicians and got some free drinks. To be honest I think the accent helped, so not entirely blending in.

New York does have its flaws, which are sometimes glossed over on TV, such as poverty, such as on the subway where there are people actively canvassing the trains to beg for money. Although harmless it is quite distressing, because British poverty is just not that vocalised.

New York like with any city is about knowing where to go. For example, don’t get an expressway to Harlem at nine ‘o’clock at night, don’t then get lost in Harlem, and whatever you don’t bother haling a cab unless it pulls up next you. I was there a week; I still don’t know how to hail a cab. I understand that maybe there is a knack to it that the locals seem to have down, but I don’t even think they get it. You see in films people just flicking their arm and a cab magically pulls up next to them out of nowhere, maybe they’ll even shout “taxi” if its tad further away. But the reality of it is nothing like that, and it’s even less fun discovering that all New York taxi drivers hate you in the pouring rain. The films lie.

Watch out for my post-Sandy return trip review of New York, also including reviews of the surrounding states and Canada.