New York Whirlwind
Five nights and sorta six days in New York adds up to a lot of stuff, and it’s gonna be pretty hard to summarize it all, so instead this will largely be about the daily blow-by-blow. However, a few overall observations:
• Manhattan isn’t very wide, but it sure is tall
• Fixed gears are an exotic species crowded out by the humble pizza delivery cruiser
• Nobody in New York smokes pot, or at least are much more discreet about it than Friscans
• Aside from the outrageous sums people pay for a place to sleep every night, it’s really not more expensive than San Francisco
Thursday
We arrived in the dark and the rain, our plane touching down at JFK around 4.30. I had a town car reserved to pick us up, and we were at the hotel by six. After a room service meal we picked up umbrellas and headed out and North to explore through Chelsea, making it as far as Macy’s and 34th Street before we felt too soaked to continue. We stopped off in a bar, The Rawhide, on our way back and were pleased that even a dumpy hole-in-the-wall gay bar had better music, even if strangely mixed, than we would find in San Francisco. This, however, would not turn out to be a consistent thing.
Friday
Black Friday dawned warm and clear, and we spent most of the day wandering around SoHo and Greenwich Village, where Jeremy bought a pair of oh-so-sexy black engineer boots. These would prove to be his undoing later, when we confronted the gibbering monstrosity in its Great White Way guise, but they definitely lent him a rock star quality. We didn’t make it to Times Square until after dark, but the full force of the American capitalistic Christmas orgy was on display, and we even bought some CDs from a coupla rapper dudes who were selling them outside the subway. We gazed upon ice skaters at Rockefeller Center, smelled the dead pine aroma of the RC Christmas tree, and then made our way back to the hotel, with a stop for moleskin at the drug store, and a couple drinks at the Hell’s Kitchen bar Therapy, before venturing out for a night of crazy, crazy techno at the Sub-Tonic lounge in the East Village. Oh, how we danced, how we drank, how we exchanged greetings with the local natives. We met a fellow from Berlin who was in NY for the first time and I assaulted him with some mangled, drunken German, another fellow on the dance floor asked us in a very friendly way if we were fags (cuz his brother, who would be there later, was a big ol’ fag), and of course we had to sing the DJ’s praises to him once he was off the decks, complete with promises to hook him up here in the city with the Kontrol crew. The music, it was deep, and groovy, it was techno like I haven’t heard since I lived in Berlin, and when we left at 3AM we felt like it had come as a revelation. Upon our return to the hotel we were amazed that there were still people lined up to get into the rooftop bar and pay $14 for a drink with an hour to go until closing, but we did enjoy being able to walk past them and the doormen with a simple statement of “we’re residents of the hotel.”
Saturday
Sometime after the complimentary breakfast was well over we managed to haul ourselves out of bed and drag our bodies into the street for a hangover breakfast at what appeared to be a dingy neighborhood greasy spoon diner. Then we noticed that there were pictures of celebrities all over the wall, most of them taken within the diner. At a table by the front window three older men were joined by a fourth in a black leather trenchcoat, which lead to some kind of argument in which he proclaimed “No, no, really, I apologize, I’m the asshole!” Just when we thought somebody was going to get whacked he sat down, and from there the discussion veered off into plot developments for what was either a play or television show (“fuck that, that’s as interesting as watching paint dry”). Then it was off to the Met, the only museum in which I’ve every gotten lost. On Friday we saw all those places that we’d only seen previously in movies, and at the Met we saw all those great works of modern art that we’d previously only seen in books. We finally found the Glitter and Doom exhibition of Weimar portraits by Georg Grosz (appropriately rhymes with gross), Max Beckmann and Otto Dix, and spent a good hour being simultaneously amazed and revolted. Then it was off to the café, followed by a tour through Robert Polidori’s photos of post-Katrina New Orleans (mold is such a beautiful aesthetic element in all its blue-green variety), and then once more back to the hotel for naps and refreshment before our night of gay clubbing. Whew.
It was at this point that I sincerely wished I had found a magical source of some disco dust, because I needed a bit more fabulous energy. I know why New York is the city that never sleeps, and it’s not because of caffeine. We arrived at Mr. Black’s in SoHo around 11 and stayed for two drinks before we decided that, musically and socially, it was roughly the equivalent of The Café on Market Street. There wasn’t a pop diva that DJ Tekshur didn’t love, all the way down to Christian Aguillera, and the boys who looked like they were having the most fun were the skinny, almost naked go-gos who kept disappearing into the bathroom together, or off into the curtained-off back area. Determined to find the vibe we set off toward Chelsea, stopping off at XES, where the DJ was playing THE EXACT SAME MUSIC, then Barracuda, which was way too crowded. The clock ticking toward 3AM, my knees starting to ache, we called it a night on gay New York.
Sunday
We rolled out of bed to a phone call from one of my former UVa students who, along with his fiancé, was meeting us for brunch. We chowed on French toast and bloody marys at the Paris Commune while they told us war stories of living rent-free in apartments that rental agencies had forgotten about, sleeping on sofas, driving vans for movie production companies, and other tales of the young and under-employed struggling to take their bite out of the Big Apple. I tried to convince my student, Stuart, that all this was better than law school, but he seems as determined, and as lost, as me in trying to make “something” of himself.
After brunch it was time for more culture at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, where Jeremy wanted to see a show by sculptor Ron Buehl, who makes photorealistic sculptures of people (mostly naked) at either Titan or below-life sized. They were among the most eerie things I’ve seen in a while. Back across to the island we were woefully mistimed in arriving at The Eagle, where we expected to find a beer bust in full swing but instead the bar was just opening. We went around the corner for fabulous Italian in a very un-fabulous and project-blighted neighborhood, then returned as the action was getting underway. On the rooftop deck we talked with some young fellows who graciously provided me with a roach when we asked whether anyone in New York smoked pot, but by 10PM, our food, sleep, and party rhythms completely out of whack, we went back to the area of the hotel for dessert, Cartoon Network, and restless, restless sleep.
Monday
Monday was the day of the epic trek, the long march of lower Manhatten, from SoHo up to the Battery down, then back around up the Bowery and through SoHo again. We saw the WTC site, which is no more remarkable at this point than any other construction site, wandered through a crew filming Sex in the City, and admired the Stature of Liberty from a distance. Jeremy tried on some great coats at G-Star that were far more suited to winter in New York than San Francisco, then it was back to the hotel for a swim (for Jeremy) and a drink (for me) in the fabled Hotel Gansevoort rooftop bar and pool with its lovely view of Hoboken. We met our friend Olga for dinner up by the Empire State building and talked about the state of the world (she being a Master’s candidate in International Affairs at CUNY) and I got to feel very smart. Then it was back down to the Lower East Side for drinks at Eastern Bloc, where Sam, the quite cute bartender with curly blond surferboy locks, introduced us to an older man who he said “could tell you all about down here.” That is, if he had been sober enough to hold a conversation. He did, however, have the most versatile use of the word “fuck” I have encountered in while. Needing to escape from this Burroughs-like character we had a walk around Tompkins Square Park and found two boys smoking outside the bar who promised to give us cover while we made our way back in. Drinks flowed, we contemplated our ability to be in a city like New York, what our futures were, and then, one last time, it was back to the hotel.
Tuesday
With the car scheduled to pick us up at 12.30 there wasn’t time for much when we finally finished packing aside from a stroll to find coffee and take in the sights, sounds, and smells one last time. We left knowing we would be back, and that our ambitions had been set one notch higher, but all I could think was that coming into work on Thursday would be a hard adjustment from the too-brief experience of New York’s myriad possibilities. At least I would have Wednesday off to sleep and let my knees heal.
• Manhattan isn’t very wide, but it sure is tall
• Fixed gears are an exotic species crowded out by the humble pizza delivery cruiser
• Nobody in New York smokes pot, or at least are much more discreet about it than Friscans
• Aside from the outrageous sums people pay for a place to sleep every night, it’s really not more expensive than San Francisco
Thursday
We arrived in the dark and the rain, our plane touching down at JFK around 4.30. I had a town car reserved to pick us up, and we were at the hotel by six. After a room service meal we picked up umbrellas and headed out and North to explore through Chelsea, making it as far as Macy’s and 34th Street before we felt too soaked to continue. We stopped off in a bar, The Rawhide, on our way back and were pleased that even a dumpy hole-in-the-wall gay bar had better music, even if strangely mixed, than we would find in San Francisco. This, however, would not turn out to be a consistent thing.
Friday
Black Friday dawned warm and clear, and we spent most of the day wandering around SoHo and Greenwich Village, where Jeremy bought a pair of oh-so-sexy black engineer boots. These would prove to be his undoing later, when we confronted the gibbering monstrosity in its Great White Way guise, but they definitely lent him a rock star quality. We didn’t make it to Times Square until after dark, but the full force of the American capitalistic Christmas orgy was on display, and we even bought some CDs from a coupla rapper dudes who were selling them outside the subway. We gazed upon ice skaters at Rockefeller Center, smelled the dead pine aroma of the RC Christmas tree, and then made our way back to the hotel, with a stop for moleskin at the drug store, and a couple drinks at the Hell’s Kitchen bar Therapy, before venturing out for a night of crazy, crazy techno at the Sub-Tonic lounge in the East Village. Oh, how we danced, how we drank, how we exchanged greetings with the local natives. We met a fellow from Berlin who was in NY for the first time and I assaulted him with some mangled, drunken German, another fellow on the dance floor asked us in a very friendly way if we were fags (cuz his brother, who would be there later, was a big ol’ fag), and of course we had to sing the DJ’s praises to him once he was off the decks, complete with promises to hook him up here in the city with the Kontrol crew. The music, it was deep, and groovy, it was techno like I haven’t heard since I lived in Berlin, and when we left at 3AM we felt like it had come as a revelation. Upon our return to the hotel we were amazed that there were still people lined up to get into the rooftop bar and pay $14 for a drink with an hour to go until closing, but we did enjoy being able to walk past them and the doormen with a simple statement of “we’re residents of the hotel.”
Saturday
Sometime after the complimentary breakfast was well over we managed to haul ourselves out of bed and drag our bodies into the street for a hangover breakfast at what appeared to be a dingy neighborhood greasy spoon diner. Then we noticed that there were pictures of celebrities all over the wall, most of them taken within the diner. At a table by the front window three older men were joined by a fourth in a black leather trenchcoat, which lead to some kind of argument in which he proclaimed “No, no, really, I apologize, I’m the asshole!” Just when we thought somebody was going to get whacked he sat down, and from there the discussion veered off into plot developments for what was either a play or television show (“fuck that, that’s as interesting as watching paint dry”). Then it was off to the Met, the only museum in which I’ve every gotten lost. On Friday we saw all those places that we’d only seen previously in movies, and at the Met we saw all those great works of modern art that we’d previously only seen in books. We finally found the Glitter and Doom exhibition of Weimar portraits by Georg Grosz (appropriately rhymes with gross), Max Beckmann and Otto Dix, and spent a good hour being simultaneously amazed and revolted. Then it was off to the café, followed by a tour through Robert Polidori’s photos of post-Katrina New Orleans (mold is such a beautiful aesthetic element in all its blue-green variety), and then once more back to the hotel for naps and refreshment before our night of gay clubbing. Whew.
It was at this point that I sincerely wished I had found a magical source of some disco dust, because I needed a bit more fabulous energy. I know why New York is the city that never sleeps, and it’s not because of caffeine. We arrived at Mr. Black’s in SoHo around 11 and stayed for two drinks before we decided that, musically and socially, it was roughly the equivalent of The Café on Market Street. There wasn’t a pop diva that DJ Tekshur didn’t love, all the way down to Christian Aguillera, and the boys who looked like they were having the most fun were the skinny, almost naked go-gos who kept disappearing into the bathroom together, or off into the curtained-off back area. Determined to find the vibe we set off toward Chelsea, stopping off at XES, where the DJ was playing THE EXACT SAME MUSIC, then Barracuda, which was way too crowded. The clock ticking toward 3AM, my knees starting to ache, we called it a night on gay New York.
Sunday
We rolled out of bed to a phone call from one of my former UVa students who, along with his fiancé, was meeting us for brunch. We chowed on French toast and bloody marys at the Paris Commune while they told us war stories of living rent-free in apartments that rental agencies had forgotten about, sleeping on sofas, driving vans for movie production companies, and other tales of the young and under-employed struggling to take their bite out of the Big Apple. I tried to convince my student, Stuart, that all this was better than law school, but he seems as determined, and as lost, as me in trying to make “something” of himself.
After brunch it was time for more culture at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, where Jeremy wanted to see a show by sculptor Ron Buehl, who makes photorealistic sculptures of people (mostly naked) at either Titan or below-life sized. They were among the most eerie things I’ve seen in a while. Back across to the island we were woefully mistimed in arriving at The Eagle, where we expected to find a beer bust in full swing but instead the bar was just opening. We went around the corner for fabulous Italian in a very un-fabulous and project-blighted neighborhood, then returned as the action was getting underway. On the rooftop deck we talked with some young fellows who graciously provided me with a roach when we asked whether anyone in New York smoked pot, but by 10PM, our food, sleep, and party rhythms completely out of whack, we went back to the area of the hotel for dessert, Cartoon Network, and restless, restless sleep.
Monday
Monday was the day of the epic trek, the long march of lower Manhatten, from SoHo up to the Battery down, then back around up the Bowery and through SoHo again. We saw the WTC site, which is no more remarkable at this point than any other construction site, wandered through a crew filming Sex in the City, and admired the Stature of Liberty from a distance. Jeremy tried on some great coats at G-Star that were far more suited to winter in New York than San Francisco, then it was back to the hotel for a swim (for Jeremy) and a drink (for me) in the fabled Hotel Gansevoort rooftop bar and pool with its lovely view of Hoboken. We met our friend Olga for dinner up by the Empire State building and talked about the state of the world (she being a Master’s candidate in International Affairs at CUNY) and I got to feel very smart. Then it was back down to the Lower East Side for drinks at Eastern Bloc, where Sam, the quite cute bartender with curly blond surferboy locks, introduced us to an older man who he said “could tell you all about down here.” That is, if he had been sober enough to hold a conversation. He did, however, have the most versatile use of the word “fuck” I have encountered in while. Needing to escape from this Burroughs-like character we had a walk around Tompkins Square Park and found two boys smoking outside the bar who promised to give us cover while we made our way back in. Drinks flowed, we contemplated our ability to be in a city like New York, what our futures were, and then, one last time, it was back to the hotel.
Tuesday
With the car scheduled to pick us up at 12.30 there wasn’t time for much when we finally finished packing aside from a stroll to find coffee and take in the sights, sounds, and smells one last time. We left knowing we would be back, and that our ambitions had been set one notch higher, but all I could think was that coming into work on Thursday would be a hard adjustment from the too-brief experience of New York’s myriad possibilities. At least I would have Wednesday off to sleep and let my knees heal.