Saturday May 12th – Today’s the day! The day I had been waiting for! For years and years, I had dreamed of having my own little apartment in New York City; enjoying the luxury of a bedroom, a bathroom and – most importantly – a kitchen of my own. The chance to go to a supermarket and buy whatever I wanted because I had a fridge and the tools to cook with; the chance to order in take-out food and have it arrive at my door; a chance to really settle in, get into a rhythm and really get a feel for life in my neighbourhood and in NYC. After years of dreaming and planning, I had managed to finally do it. Using the brilliant AirBnB holiday rental service, I had found a tiny apartment on my favourite street in Chelsea that was within my budget. I had to spend the previous two weeks in the hostel to balance out the budget, granted, but it was worth it. For the next 6 weeks, I would be staying in my own little studio apartment on 20th Street (between 7th and 8th Avenue), free as a bird to do as I pleased, and I could play at calling New York “home”. I was so excited! Now of course, I understand that to REALLY experience life as a New Yorker, I would have to work a bazillion hours a week just to pay my rent, and I wasn’t going to be doing ANY work while I was here, but… you know… I guess it as as close to the true experience as I wanted to get, ha ha ha!!! I saved for nearly two years, and now here I was, living the dream.
And so it was, on my last morning in the hostel, that I got up, washed up, packed up and dragged all my luggage downstairs to check out before enjoying my last free bagel breakfast at the cafeteria. I sat around and played on the laptop – very uneventful – before I finally hoisted half of my worldly goods onto my shoulders and dragged the other half along behind me, and made my way out to the subway station where (once again) some lovely stranger helped me down the stairs with my bags. I made my way to West 20th Street, to the address I had been given, and rang the bell. There was no answer but I waited patiently until a portly lady, who I recognised as my host Annie, came trundling up the street carrying some large bags. We got on like a house on fire, and we chatted as she cleaned up the apartment from the last guests. She showed me how everything in the apartment worked, arranged to get in touch before my departure so we could hand over the keys etc, and before I knew it, I was alone in my new abode. My own place! I was as happy as a clam! It’s hard to explain the sense of relaxation and excitement that came over me.
The apartment was small but functional, and in order to settle in and feel at home as soon as possible, I spent the next hour or two unpacking my stuff and finding just the right place for everything. I stood and enjoyed the view for a little while first; there was a traditional metal fire escape out the window, and the window overlooked the goings-on in 20th Street. I played with the TV (never a clear picture to be found on any channel, but not a problem as I was not intending to really ever watch it), the iPod dock and the radio, and I cleaned the toilet (yes, obsessive compulsive, but I wanted to know it had been cleaned properly!), and then made a list of things I would need. Then I took the list and wandered just around the corner to my favourite hub of gastronomy, the Garden of Eden Gourmet, and went wild. I bought chips and dips; I bought challah bread and cream cheese spread with chives; I bought a tub of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and a packet of something called Boardwalk Crunch (buttered popcorn, marshmallows, nuts and salty pretzels all covered in milk chocolate… a new addiction to add to my ever-growing list)… I had a blast, like a kid in a candy store, only I was wheeling my trolley around the aisles of my dreams! I also bought functional stuff like cereal, milk, handwash and tissues, the doing of which filled me with an inexplicable glee. I suppose that my aim to ‘get a feel’ for life in New York meant not only doing all the touristy things I’d ever wanted to do, but also doing the more banal, everyday activities that are part of life, like having to buy toilet paper and walk the dog, or whatever, just for the experience of doing that in a city that’s not normally home. I ran through possible ideas for my first night in my new place – what did I want to do? And I realised that, after 2 months of being on the road already, all I really wanted to do was have a quiet night and go to see a movie. Just sit in the dark, relax and watch a good film, then come home to a good night’s sleep in a room that I didn’t have to share with a bunch of strangers who snored. Bliss.
I finished my grocery shopping splurge and went to the cashier. Note to the manager of the Garden of Eden Gourmet: if you’re really going to call yourself a ‘gourmet’ food place, and play classical music and strive to be hoity toity upper class, then you really need to train your cashiers with some manners. Not your food counter staff , who I’ve always found to be helpful, but your cashiers. The kind of moneyed customers you normally get (scrubby backpackers like me notwithstanding) probably don’t enjoy getting treated like shit when they’re paying top dollar for their groceries. Perhaps the women at the cashier treated me like shit because they could see I was out of the norm, I don’t know, but either way they were rude as hell and perhaps a few choice polite phrases in English might have improved their service skills. First of all, refusing to break their conversation in Hindi (or perhaps Urdu? Tamil?) to acknowledge a customer approaching – not good. After unloading my little trolley onto the counter and politely waiting a reasonable amount of time for them to finish what they were saying, still no acknowledgement. I got out my wallet, and kind of waggled myself around expectantly… still no go. Finally, I had to interrupt with a ‘hello’. Two of them rolled their eyes, and the third, right in front of me, stared daggers. If looks could kill, I’d be toast. “What?” she demanded. I gestured to the groceries and tried not to stab her with a banana. Sighing loudly, she passed my goodies over the scanner one by one, piling them on the other side of her. When I dared to ask for a bag she actually tutted. When she’d finished scanning, she just held out her hand, palm up. No word, no total given, just hand out. I was so appalled that I did nothing but stare for a few seconds. “Give me it,” she says. There was no way I was handing this harpy my cash card, so I shuffled round and inserted the card into the machine myself. Of course, I had to sign because my card is an overseas card, which caused her all manner of huffing and puffing. The machine spat out the receipt and she dangled it before dropping it on the counter, where it rolled and slipped onto the floor. By the time I had bent to pick it up and righted myself again, she was right back to chatting with her coven. And so, to the manager of the Eden Gourmet in Chelsea, I say this: invest in some business English lessons and customer service training for your people. I mean, these poor women are, after all, minimum wage slaves who come from a place where, perhaps, customer service is not quite as prized as it is elsewhere. Don’t fire them. They need their jobs. But spend a little time training them so they are worth something to you, and so they have skills they can use elsewhere.
Apart from the fact that she was a badly-behaved raging bitch and probably deserved my hatred, just a few polite words or phrases from her could have soothed the savage beast and made a much more pleasant experience for everyone involved. Maybe it’s my stuffy obsessive English-teaching self coming out. Does everybody get as frustrated as I do in a situation like that one? For me, I see it as a lack of desire to actually learn the true meaning of the words. Sometimes students just don’t understand the culture of language. “Could I please have the ____?” is so much less offensive than “Give me the ____,” even though they mean the same thing. Some students want to learn this difference, and others don’t give a stuff, and then wonder why everyone they speak to is rude to them… when in fact the native speakers are just reacting to the student’s rudeness in the first place. For my own satisfaction (and for the reference of any non-native English speakers who are reading this and looking for a job in customer service), this is how that conversation SHOULD have gone (please feel fee to skip this next bit if you’re not a mind-addled English language extremist):
Harpy: Hello.
Me: Hello!
Harpy: (scanning items) WIll you be needing a bag?
Me: Oh yes, please, that’d be lovely.
Harpy: (smiles while scanning)
Me: (smiles while packing)
Harpy: That’ll be $50, please.
Me: (hands over card) Here you go.
Harpy: Thank you. Debit or credit?
Me: Credit, thanks.
Harpy: (swipes, waits) Please sign here.
Me: Okey dokey.
Harpy: Here’s your receipt. Take care, bye.
Me: Thanks, bye!
And everybody walks away feeling happy, with a total lack of murderous desire to smush hummus in a certain cashier’s face.
Rant over. I was tempted to say that I would never go back to the store, but I would have been lying if I’d said that. I knew I couldn’t stay away… but in that moment, I did decide to go there a bit less often, and maybe try out a few other delis in the area to see what they had to offer instead. And as it turns out, I DID find a better place, complete with smiley faces… but that is a tale for another time.
I was making the short walk home (“home,” hee hee hee!) along 7th Avenue, hands full of shopping bags, when a stupidly handsome man coming in the opposite direction gave me a good long look up and down, and threw me the Joey Tribbiani classic: “How YOU doin’?” I was so flustered I didn’t know what to do but keep walking, but he gave me a cheeky wink and a winning smile before making his departure. Not used to that AT ALL. Wibble! I passed all the trendy bistros on 7th Avenue south of 23rd Street – my favourite one to watch was ‘Il Bastardo’, where the menu looked pretty standard but the patrons were fascinatingly shallow-looking… and of course, the name is a total winner. I got home, unpacked all my loot, and worked on my cinema idea.
Somewhere in all my planning, I had heard of a place in the Village called the IFC Centre. It’s a fabulous arthouse cinema, where they play all manner of independent films and documentaries, and I knew that sometime during my trip they would be playing a handful of documentaries I was interested in seeing. So, using the WiFi at the apartment, I checked their schedule and found that tonight, they were playing one I was particularly interested in – ‘Under African Skies’, a retrospective documentary on the making of Paul Simon’s ‘Graceland’ album. And who doesn’t LOVE the Graceland album?!?
I was back out the door in a flash. Stepping out of the subway in the Village, I stopped for a while to watch the basketball players in the caged courts at 6th Avenue and West 4th Street – apparently some of the most competitive players in Manhattan. Just watching them was making me tired; there was some serious ass-kicking going on. I just love the idea – an open space, meant for sport, on a busy, busy street corner. It’s so quintessentially New York, I love it.
I crossed the road, fascinated by the hot dog stands and bawdy adult shops next to the cinema, bought my movie ticket, and went into the lobby where the smell of popcorn was too tempting to resist. I asked for a small packet and then… and THEN… the guy behind the counter poured melted butter all over it! ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!? As if my day couldn’t get any better!!!! YUM!!!!! I love visiting cinemas in different parts of the world; no country has the same cinema culture. I love seeing all these little differences that make each cinema experience unique. The food, the people; they’re all different. In Australia the audiences are pretty silent; they come to really watch the movie. In England, there’s always the shitty little chavs up the front chucking popcorn and getting shushed by everyone. In Singapore, it’s like a medieval feast, where they’re all shouting at the screen and yakking to their friends and talking on their mobiles. In Hong Kong, they revel in a zillion different colours and flavours of popcorn, from butterscotch to cherry to chocolate. In Vegas, you can have nachos and hot dogs with your popcorn. In Australia, pizza is a snacky possibility. In Thailand, after the trailers and just before the movie starts, everyone has to stand while a song plays in honour of the king. I LOVE it. It’s always a surprise. Lots of tourists don’t want to go to movies while they’re travelling because they think it’s a waste of time, and something that they can just do at home. I get that, especially if they’ve only got a short time in a given place, but for me it’s just a great way of looking at the country you’re in and a different way of seeing the people who populate it. The cinema is their space (unlike a lot of tourist attractions, which belong to the tourists and not to the locals). As the guy behind the counter handed over my bagful of buttery goodness – something you wouldn’t get in Australia – I was thrilled by this reminder of our subtle differences.
The IFC Centre is an old place, filled with odd little turns and staircases covered in ratty old carpet. Still, for me this is always a sign of an interesting cinema…! I went up the stairs (studiously ignoring the sensation of my shoes getting stuck on old crushed popcorn and gum) and was promptly lost; I couldn’t see any signage for the screen I wanted. Luckily, a young man with a prodigious beard emerged from an unmarked grey door and pointed me in the right direction. I was surprised to find that the cinema was pretty much full, and I managed to squeeze into the last single seat at the end of a row.
Before the movie started, there was a very short film on bike theft in NYC. The filmmakers held experiments to see how many people would ignore a thief nicking a bike right in front of them. They used a white guy, a black guy, wire cutters, a crow bar and even a power tool to mix it up a bit, but the lack of reaction from the general public was almost laughable. If you’re interested in seeing it (it’s only 3-4 minutes long), I found it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/opinion/bike-thief.html?_r=0
The main feature that I’d gone to see, “Under African Skies”, was simply amazing, captivating. I’ve always loved Paul Simon and I grew up with the Graceland album as a common soundtrack at home. For those of you unfamiliar with it, it came out in 1986 and was a huge hit (by the way, if you really don’t know it, go out and buy a copy. NOW. And listen on repeat!). Simon’s work with South African musicians created an album that sounded at once both alien and familiar, and the sheer joy and catchiness of all the songs was a delight for the ear. It’s funny, though, that for all my love of the album, I had never known about any of the controversy that surrounded its creation. It is this subject that is the basis for the documentary; a restrospective on how the album was made, following Paul Simon’s return to South Africa 25 years later, but also a focus on the problems it caused for the musicians, the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa and for Paul Simon himself. After Simon’s previous album had been a flop, he basically had a bit of room for artistic freedom, as nobody was expecting much from him. After hearing a random recording from a South African band (who he actually ended up working with), he went to South Africa to meet them. Simple, right? No.
South Africa was, at the time, under the brutal regime of apartheid, where citizens with black skin were treated as little more than animals by a white government. A cultural boycott was in place, meaning that artists, musicians and so on were requested not to travel to South Africa for tours or whatever, in order to put pressure on the government to end apartheid. By going to South Africa at that time, Paul Simon was going against the boycott. I found the documentary interesting because it gave both sides of the argument clearly and fairly; Simon’s argument was, “I’m an artist. Why should politics have control over art?” And, as it turned out, many of the musicians did well internationally, which would not even have been a possibility before they collaborated with Simon. The album also brought more attention to South Africa, and focused an international eye firmly on the government there. The other side of the argument, though, is that Paul Simon collaborated with musicians, going against the UN boycott and the wishes of anti-apartheid activists in South Africa who were struggling hard for their cause. The musicians he worked with were labelled pariahs and criticised for their lack of solidarity, and activists sincerely felt that Simon was weakening their cause by ignoring the measures that had been taken to help them. I don’t think Simon really expected the media storm and criticism to hit him quite as quickly or as hard as it did. The documentary raised these and other issues without really taking a side; if any of the music, people or politics involved interests you even in the slightest, I highly recommend giving it a watch. In the end, though, the music was what stood out the most, and the message was one of joy and triumph over adversity. When the end credits rolled and Simon’s music started to play, the audience applauded, loudly and long. I left feeling uplifted and energised (and quietly giggling over the applause, which is not common in cinemas in Australia).
I stepped outside the cinema and looked around. It was a Saturday night, around 10pm, and in this part of the Village there were people everywhere, on the move. I really wasn’t ready to go home yet; it was far too lovely an evening, so I thought I’d walk home rather than catch the subway. I started heading north, first following a group of young hipsters, and then coming across the groups of lesbians that I had noticed were missing from Chelsea, a supposedly gay-friendly area where I’d only seen gay men, but no women. So THIS is where they all were – in the Village! Mystery solved. I kept walking. The night was crisp and still, despite the human traffic, and I made my walk under the watchful eye of the Empire State Building. Thrill, thrill, thrill; here I was, walking along 6th Avenue, heading home after a movie, with one of the most recognisable landmarks in the world keeping me company along the way. I spotted good-looking delicatessens and markets that I wanted to try, and a slew of Duane Reades that I didn’t need to try, because of course they’re all the same.
I walked at a comfortable pace, stopping only to peer at menus at little spots like the Waverly Restaurant (a cosy-looking diner with an old-school neon sign) or to take a closer look at a fenced garden or mural here or there. I crossed the road at an odd little triangle at Greenwich Avenue, where the criss-cross of the skew-whiff streets of the Village bump up against the straight-as-an-arrow 6th Avenue and the rest of the Manhattan street grid. Somewhere around 18th Street, I saw a large old building that looked like it had been converted into a shopping centre, and was filled with suburban chain stores… so much for that large controversy at the Time Warner Centre. This one had snuck in without even a sniff of trouble. I passed churches and boutiques and banks, and by the time I reached 20th Street, I was enjoying the walk so much that I didn’t want to turn off 6th Avenue to go home. So… I didn’t. I just kept on going. The neighbourhood became less hipster, more yuppie. More Starbucks, more tourist tat, and then I passed Macy’s and Herald Square, and then Bryant Park. At this point I realised that I’d walked another 20-odd blocks without really thinking about it, and – finally – my feet were starting to feel it. So I turned westwards on 42nd Street and walked across to Times Square, where I allowed myself to be dazzled by all the lights from the sports stores and billboards for a while. It was surprisingly quiet for a Saturday night; I must have come in that lull between the Broadway shows starting and ending, when everyone’s still indoors. Or perhaps all the tourists had already gone home for the night, I don’t know. Anyway, I drank my fill of false daylight, walked across to 8th Avenue, and then got the subway back down to 23rd Street.
I made my way to 20th Street, and passed a man walking his dog (I ended up seeing the same man and dog many a time, both of us always up late at night for whatever reason). I spotted a police officer standing in the doorway of the cop shop opposite and stopped to say hello, which amused him no end. He even waved and laughed to himself before indicating that I should go through my front door; “I’ll watch to make sure you get in alright,” his gesture seemed to say.
I let myself in and walked up to the third floor; my apartment was dark and empty of people… perfect. I flicked on the light, dropped my bag and went about the standard business of getting ready for bed. I had a whole heap of fun leaving the bathroom door open while having a shower and getting changed, and experienced unadulterated glee just from walking around in my underwear (things that I hadn’t been able to do in a loooooong time, thanks to the fact that I was always sharing bedrooms and/or bathrooms!) Ah, the simple pleasures!
I grabbed my Kindle for a quick read, and tucked myself into bed. Lyrics from an old Blur song come to mind when I think of that moment, snuggled under the sheets: “I feed the pigeons, I sometimes feed the sparrows too, it gives me an enormous sense of well-being.” Well, at that moment, I felt like the guy from Parklife; I felt an enormous sense of well-being. I was in New York, and the next part of my adventure had just begun. And what an adventure! The city was my oyster, and I had six more weeks to enjoy it. Tomorrow would be another exciting day. Yay me!
Thanks for stopping by,
Tara.
Born in Hong Kong and raised all over the world, I've been tootling around for 33 years now. A Spanish friend of mine once said that "the smallest pot has the finest marmalade"... I have to agree with her! I'm small but I can still make 6-foot Brazilian bodybuilders cry if the need arises. And I never need to whinge about legroom on a plane!
little tara 