little tara

Saturday May 5th – I was up bright and early this morning for another walking tour; this time, it was ‘Jerry’s Grand Tour’ that I had signed up for, a 12-hour odyssey across pretty much the whole island of Manhattan and beyond, into Brooklyn. Not bad for $10! This tour is pretty much designed for people who only have a short time in New York and want to see all the main sights in a day; not really my scene, but there were a few things that I wanted to do with company, like walking the Brooklyn Bridge… it’s always nicer to have someone around to snap a picture of you if necessary!

So, before the tour started, I dragged my butt out of bed at a reasonable hour and ran downstairs to leave a note for Calvin on the noticeboard; his friend JiSoo was leaving today, so I thought he might be at a loose end in the evening and I had discovered a pretty wicked swing dance event that I thought he might like to join me on. After pinning a hastily-scribbled note up, I grabbed my complimentary (and rather good) breakfast of an onion bagel with cream cheese, a hot chocolate and a banana from the cafeteria area and joined Jerry’s Grand Tour in the lobby.

As it turned out, Jerry had a voice like nails on a chalkboard. To summarise the day before I start: Jerry eventually ended up annoying me so much that I left the tour in the early afternoon. He seemed intent on repeating himself very very slowly, over and over again, and had a bad habit of preaching, telling us how we should be living our lives and giving us tips on better living. I don’t think he was a bad man, by any means. I actually think he was quite a nice guy… he just rubbed me the wrong way, and I got impatient with such a large group (there were 30-odd of us, which on a walking tour is just agony), and all the repetition. Still, it started off alright…

The first thing we did was walk down the road, stopping briefly at the Holy Name of Jesus Church, which was large and pretty but otherwise a bit non-descript. There were people kneeling and sitting in the pews, and I noticed one man with his two sons weeping quietly, for what reason I do not know. They got up to leave not long after we entered, and I was ashamed of a number of our group when they just whipped out their cameras and snapped away anyway. One girl even leaned on the marble holy water stand, using it as a stabiliser for her camera so she could get a non-blurry shot. It took everything I had not to wrench her off it physically when the man and his sons came past and tried to dab themselves with holy water, having to lean around her to get to it because she wasn’t moving for anyone. You know, I don’t practice any particular religion but I at least attempt to respect the choice of others to do so, especially when I’m in their places of worship. Some people are just trash; I hope that girl gets her comeuppance in the next life.

Anyway, we hopped the subway all the way down and over to Brooklyn. The first thing I saw in the subway station as we exited was a sign for Joralemon Street. Now, this would be insignificant to your average tourist, but as it happens my mum lived in Brooklyn for a short while in the 70s. She can’t remember many of the details; I suspect she spent a fair bit of time at dodgy parties passive-smoking odd substances and drinking booze, though she’d never admit it to her daughter! One of the things she can remember, however, is that she lived on Joralemon Street. Or at least, she thought so: she also believed that it might just be a figment of her imagination! So it was a bit of a surprise – and a delight – to find that there was indeed a Joralemon Street in Brooklyn, and thus quite likely that she lived somewhere around the subway station we were just exiting!

We came out at Brooklyn Borough Hall, which was a large grey edifice, made even greyer by the grey day we were having. We made a stop at a nearby Garden of Eden Gourmet (yes, the same chain connected to my favourite place of food worship on 23rd Street) to grab a picnic lunch. By this time, I had started chatting to Karen, a British girl who seemed terribly negative about New York and everything in it. She had only arrived the day before and had jumped onto the subway going in the wrong direction; she had been so terrified by the event that she had spent the whole rest day at the hostel, too intimidated to leave. When she found out that I had been to New York before, that I’d been around for a while and knew my way around quite well, she exclaimed, “Great! You can be my tour guide! I’ve got a list of things that I want to do and you’ll have to tell me how best to do them all – you should come with me! That’ll really help!” I remember thinking that – although she seemed pleasant enough – I was not her mother and that I did not come all the way to New York to babysit, especially for someone who seemed as negative about the city as she did. I also very much doubted that the things on her list would be the same as the things I wanted to do. She then whipped out her list and started grilling me on subway routes, opening hours etc, planning our next few days together. Most of the information that she wanted could easily be found from a map and I said as much, but I guess she just really didn’t want to be alone in New York again. She was nice enough, but I found myself having to make gentle excuses about my plans over the next 2-3 days, being deliberately vague so that I had some breathing space. I wondered for a while if I was like that when I first started travelling – latching onto others for assistance – but I really don’t think I was. I think I actually quite liked getting lost and having stupid adventures on my own, but I guess not everyone’s like that. Still, as I said, I think Karen was genuinely a nice girl, just a bit out of her depth. We ended up seeing a little bit of each other over the following days, but not as much as she wanted, I think. She even had a bit of a tantrum over it, which I’ll tell you all about another time.

At this point, though, we chose each other as company, along with a friendly Texan in a giant hat and safari shorts who was also a lone traveller. As a group, we wandered through Brooklyn Heights, along a very European-looking shopping strip and then down along Montague Street and Remsen Street, which are filled with extremely beautiful, well-maintained brownstone buildings. The ‘Hollywood of Brooklyn’, I think Jerry called it – lots of movies are shot here, apparently, as it has the definitive look of the New York brownstone areas, complete with picturesque trees and clean sidewalks. The townhouses were, in fact, quite beautiful, and I felt more than a little jealous of the people who had the massive wads of cash it must take to live on a street like that!

After salivating over imaginary real estate acquisitions, we made our way onto Brooklyn Heights Promenade, which provides sweeping views of lower Manhattan and the east side of the island. The waterfront area is currently in the middle of being redeveloped into Brooklyn Bridge Park, so it looks a bit of a mess, but I’m sure it’ll be pretty as a picture (if not prettier) by the time they’re done. Yay, more public park space for New York! It can only be a good thing. On a clear day, one would have had a crystal-clear view of the Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan Bridge; as it was, with the grey mist and haze, we could just squint and see Lady Liberty holding her torch aloft in the gloom, and could just make out the outline of the Bridges. Still exciting though!

We stopped and ate our lunches on some benches that were right on the beautiful brick promenade. There were lots of tourists out and about, but also a handful of locals jogging, either by themselves or with baby strollers. My picnic lunch consisted of a bag of sea-salt Kettle chips with cilantro hummus and a handful of chocolate-covered grahams, all acquired from the Garden of Eden, despite the wondrous array of salads and sandwiches they had on offer. I wonder if Betty Ford offers rehab for people who are addicted to these three things? I suspect I might need help!

We were warned by Jerry to ’empty the tanks’ before we left, as it would be the last public toilet available for the next few hours – New York is famous for its total lack of public toilet facilities. So Karen and I and every other woman on the tour (about 15-20 of us) spent the majority of our allotted lunch time waiting in the queue for the one toilet. I would just like to say that usually I have a bladder of steel, and probably would have been fine without it, but after Jerry’s big spiel about having to cross the bridge on foot with no choice but to keep going, I got all paranoid about it! 😉

Our next stop after lunch was the Plymouth Church on Orange Street. This was the domain of Henry Ward Beecher, a preacher-slash-abolitionist, who made the church part of the underground railroad protecting slaves who had come from the south. A statue of him sits in a pretty little garden next to the church, and shows him on a pedestal while two weeping women reach for his help. He apparently helped many people, and made himself rather unpopular in some circles with his abolitionist sermons. Good on him!

Leaving the church, we passed Siggy’s cafe on Henry Street (where, according to a big sign, aliens eat for free) and made it to Cadman Plaza Park, where a number of people were playing football (one man was very obviously letting his kids beat him) and jogging. There was also a group Kendo class (at least, I think it was Kendo), right there on the green. Much better than being cooped up inside, I suppose, and at that point it wasn’t raining, so why not?

Crossing the Brooklyn Bridge,
New York, May 2012

I would have liked to stay and watch for a bit, but that’s one luxury you don’t get on large group walking tours, so we pushed on. Finally – after many years of visiting New York and always wanting to do it but somehow never getting round to it – I got to walk the Brooklyn Bridge! The beautiful old span, the iconic image of New York, was finally underfoot. I can’t remember how long it actually took – maybe 20 minutes, half an hour? But I enjoyed every minute of it. Yeah, the weather sucked, the sky was grey and Manhattan was shrouded in mist, but what did I care? I was walking the walk! If time allows and there’s a nicer day I might try to go back and do it again, but really I didn’t mind, and there’ll be lots of opportunities for me to see the NYC skyline from other places. I enjoyed watching the spaces between the wooden boards underneath me, and the traffic running below me to my right and my left. I enjoyed seeing the cyclists swoop past, screeching at dumb pedestrians who had strayed into the bike path. I enjoyed seeing the grand old arches looming out of the mist at me. Whoop whoop! I was almost sad to reach the other side, landing in Manhattan. Jerry started making silly comments about keeping fit and the value of blah blah blah (I tuned out), and took us past City Hall, another Ghostbusters location. Oh yeah, and… you know, the place where the mayor works the magic. Or whatever. 😉 We stopped in the little City Hall Park, which brought back a moment that I had, until that point, completely forgotten. On my first ever trip to New York, I somehow stumbled across this park and found myself face to face with a group of about 20 male New York Police officers. There was absolutely nobody else around; it was actually kind of wierd. Anyway, I don’t know how I had the balls to do it (I probably wouldn’t even think of doing it nowadays), but I asked this large group of big boys if I could take their picture, and they consented. So somewhere in my photo archives I have a picture of all these NYPD officers with their arms crossed, pulling what was essentially a Blue Steel…! I MUST find that picture again, wherever it is!

At this point, we left the park with its beautiful fountain and picturesque gas lamps and headed south. Jerry was making for the World Trade Centre Memorial site, which I had of course already visited. We were only a few hours into our 12-hour odyssey, and I have to admit that I was already being driven nuts. We stopped briefly in St Paul’s Chapel and I realised that I’d heard a lot about this place but never actually been inside before. Jerry took us inside and gave us a few words, but then of course, he was moving swiftly on. Well, I wanted to stick around, so I did; I told the group to continue without me (we’d already lost a few so it was no big deal). And you know what? I felt a lot happier after they’d gone! Karen was dithering about joining me but I encouraged her to go on, both for her sake (she would see a lot of stuff which she probably wouldn’t do on her own) and because I wanted some ‘me’ time. So off the rest of the group went, and I stayed at the church to look at their exhibits.

Tributes to the victims of the September 11th attacks at St Paul’s Chapel,
New York, May 2012

St Paul’s Chapel has survived over the centuries through a number of huge catastrophes, from fires and storms to September 11th. George Washington himself worshipped here, and it remains a significant New York religious establishment. While many buildings in close quarters to the World Trade Centre suffered structural damage in 2001, St Paul’s remained intact and (some would say miraculously) undamaged. It was right next door, right in the shadows of the towers, right across the street, but the people who had sought refuge inside the chapel on September 11th were spared the fate that those only metres away were facing. It was this chapel that I had seen on my first trip to New York, not long after September 11th, covered in t-shirts and candles and flowers and ‘missing’ posters (I mentioned it in a previous entry). I had always intended to have a closer look, so here I was. In the months following September 11th, the chapel offered a ministry to those involved in the recovery effort. The emergency workers who spent all day (or night) down in the pit came to the chapel for comfort, solace, food and sleep. As time went on, it became an organised effort, providing counselling, bunks, meals, toiletries, massage, health care, respite and, it seems, love to those who needed it. It became a haven for people of all denominations to meet and find a few moments of peace before re-entering the nightmare, and I think it meant a lot to many, many people. I hadn’t realised its full significance until I paid this visit. Inside there were a few carefully-curated displays of uniforms, photographs and videos, and a place where visitors could leave a note of their own.

The thing that really got me, though, was a seemingly insignificant bit of ‘trivia’. Yes, I’ve been moved before by 9/11 stories, and I’ve paid my respects, but this actually had me weeping in front of the church. And trust me, crying is really not my thing, if I can avoid it – and particularly in public. But this little tidbit horrified me and hammered something home deeper than I’d expected. As firefighters arrived at the scene, they changed from their civilian clothes into their firefighting gear; this change included their shoes. With nowhere else to leave them, the firefighters started hanging their boots on top of the metal fence spikes surrounding the church. At the end of the day, rows of boots remained unclaimed on the fence spikes, each pair representing a firefighter who did not make it through the day alive. For some reason, this image just really got to me. All of these shoes waiting for an owner who would never come back. Perhaps it comes from my own personal experience; I don’t know. I suppose that anyone who’s lost someone close to them could relate; that horrible moment when you have to figure out what to do with the clothes that are left behind by your loved one. Anyway, whatever it was, it had me in tears. These guys were just doing their job; some of them were off-duty, some were retired, but they all just ran in without even possibly being able to guess that they were running into.

Thankfully my moment was interrupted by a young boy and his mother. The kid can’t have been older than 8 or 9, so he wasn’t even born when September 11th happened. He asked, with genuine curiosity, “Mum, why did the terrorists do this?” I wish I had heard her response; they moved on too quickly. I wonder what people tell their kids, because there’s no simple answer.

I decided that I had had enough of being maudlin for the day, and went back to the hostel to spend some time on the computer. Calvin had left a note saying that he would meet me at the swing dance event, which was awesome news. I went to the common room and bumped into Lew, the Australian I had met at the jazz club, and he looked like he was at a loose end so I asked him if he’d like to come too. Then, when I went upstairs I bumped into Yuko and before I knew it there was a little posse of us headed out for a night of swing dancing.

Yuko and Lew and I bumped into Calvin at the subway station; Calvin nearly didn’t recognise me because I was actually in a skirt! We all went to the JCC (not entirely sure what it stands for… perhaps Jewish Community Centre?) on 76th Street and waited for the evening to start.

I’ve been swing dancing on and off for about 10 years now. I first got caught up in it when I was migrating from England to Australia in 2002; I stopped in Los Angeles and went down to Santa Monica for the day. I heard some of Louis Prima’s music being played, so I followed my nose towards the source. I’ve always loved Louis Prima, and I was only more pleased when I found out that he was actually the voice of King Louie in Disney’s version of The Jungle Book – “I Wanna Be Like You-Oo-Oo!” I found the source of the music alright – it was a bunch of people swing dancing right in the middle of the street, and I was in love. When I arrived in Australia, I went searching for classes and eventually found some. My involvement waxed and waned over the years, but when I was living in Montreal in 2006-2007, that’s when I really got back my passion for it. So to be able to come to New York, where it all started, and have a bit of a dance, is a pretty exciting thing for me!

Calvin, Tara and Yuko ready for a night of swing dancing,
New York, May 2012

I had found out about this event online – the Cab Calloway Orchestra, now run by his grandson Chris, was playing at the JCC with a beginner lesson followed by a social dance to live music and DJs. How could I say no?!? The Cab Calloway Orchestra!!! (If you don’t know who Cab Calloway is, do a Youtube search for ‘Minnie the Moocher’ – you’ll almost definitely know it!) Of course, I don’t really need the beginner lesson, but I often find it’s a nice way to warm up for the evening and get to know some of the dancers. The venue itself was huge, with a sprung wooden dance floor – paradise for dancing feet! Calvin, Lew, Yuko and I went upstairs and launched into the lesson; I was very proud of my companions and the enthusiasm they showed for giving it a go! Calvin eventually had to leave as he had stand-by tickets for Saturday Night Live that night (sadly, he didn’t get in, but it was worth a try), but Lew and Yuko hung in there for a couple of hours, even managing a bit of social dancing! As for me, I stayed until very late, only leaving when I realised that I was still sharing a room and should really try not to rock up at 3am and wake everyone. As it happened, it was still around midnight/1am when I started to head off. I had a wicked night of dancing, and the band was great. Chris Calloway bears more than a passing resemblance to his grandfather, and came complete with a white zoot suit and a matching white hat with a giant feather sticking out of it at a jaunty angle! The dancers seemed pretty friendly, and vaguely curious about this girl with an odd accent who seemed to have turned up out of nowhere, though they didn’t press me for information! It was amazing to see so many dancers in this one gigantic space – it was at least the size of 6 basketball courts!

I reluctantly left when things were still in full swing (pardon the pun), braving the subways and finding no trouble at all. I got back to the hostel to find my room filled with snorers. Ugh. But who cares? I had a great night!

Thanks for stopping by,

Tara.

Tags: brooklyn bridge, cab calloway, food, new york, september 11, swing dance, travel