All the way from JFK

It took three trains to get me to the airport. Not all at once; I bought a few things, but not that much. I started from my old friend, the station at 34th and Herald Square. Never done the F line from there, so I followed the signs directing me to take the lif…sorry, elevator down to the uptown platform.

Naturally I’m standing in this tiny rattling old thing, staring at a security camera with a zoom lens strong enough to scan the DNA of the bodily fluids staining the walls while my brain cranks through some nightmare scenarios (elevator stuck, phone dead, no mobi…sorry, cell reception, missed flight, arrested and sent to Guantanamo for overstaying my visa, waterboarded for writing Facebook posts critical of Australia’s conservative gov…aaand there’s the door. Thank you brain, please go back to flashing up reminders of my ex in sequined hot pants for no good reason). Found the platform, watched the wrong train roll past, waited ten minutes, then noticed the sign telling me on weekends I had to catch a D train to 7^th Avenue to get the E. Something like that; I dunno, it was still pretty damn early, and breakfast was a midnight hot dog. It seemed a better plan than staring at dirty train tracks until my flight left, so I went with it. Sure enough, platform opposite, big sign with a little airplane. Those subway sign guys are good (seriously, there’s probably a sign down here telling where my keys are).

I can almost hear the sign guys appending "OBviously" to the end of this

New Yorkers paid little heed as I began the second longest journey of my life. The old homeless guy keeping warm (it’s toasty down there) scrunched a bit deeper into his garbage bag luggage, the schoolkid sports team variously challenged, confirmed or sullenly accepted their teenage pecking order, a marshmallowy young couple wearing Fun Run numbers did a few warm-up stretches. Maybe they though it would be a tiring subway trip, dunno. I saw a rat darting around the 625 Volt third rail, so I spent the last few minutes before my train arrived taking photos of subway garbage with a rat behind it.

"Now where did that rat THERE IT GOES oh wait that's another chihuahua."

Hello Seventh Avenue station. Up top it’s Times Square, great little supermarkets, Carnegie’s deli (annoyed I missed that one) and the usual jousting taxis; down here it’s tiles and dust and these great old wooden benches stained near-black by decades of butt sweat. But for the clientele, this station looks just like the Fifth Avenue station at Bloomingdales and Tiffany’s, which looks just like the Chinatown train station near the stinky fish place with the guy selling styrofoam mugs of something wriggly that could be food, could be bait, could be house pets for all I knew. Sorry, no trite ‘the subway is a great equaliser’ metaphor here. Just saying you need to be on your toes ‘cos it’s easy to end up in Harlem when you were shooting for Queens.

E train to the airport. Luggage and check-in anxiety marks the folks in for the JFK long haul. The off-to-work commuters don’t smirk and stretch their legs at us as we struggle with our luggage (weird; I totally would), but then they don’t get to eat Emirates pizza over Marseilles and St Tropez. Winning.

Just like that, Jamaica station. Another elevator ride (hatch, phillips head screws, could probably jimmy that with a pen, got water, might have to eat the other passengers if it takes too…theeere’s the door) and out to the Skytrain. Catching that thing’s so much easier second time round. I blow through the Metrocard turnstiles while the noobs are still trying to stuff their British pounds or Canadian maples or whatever into the ticket machines and jump on board.

Hm, this train doesn’t seem to have a driver. Nor are there the usual uniformed people standing and looking. Seems like a missed opportunity to get someone into work (THANKS Obama).

Terminal 4 I have not missed you.

Dubai is consumer indulgence taken to a crass extreme. I can’t help thinking they've slipped JFK (the airport, not the guy. He’s…okay, no. Probably still too soon) a few maples to provide the opposite experience. It’s well-signposted; I know exactly which bleak and featureless concourse to head down to reach the soulless echoing barn of the check-in hall. There are boards directing me to exactly the right uncertain clump of directionless passengers waiting for guidance; I head there to wait and watch as the wiser heads of the online check-in set breeze through.

JFK terminal 4. A monument to the joy of life, pulsing with barely-restrained excitement. Ecstasy rendered in steel and concrete.

Things picked up once the queue got moving. The staff were pretty cool and got us shaken out into ragged uncomplaining lines, with only the odd crazy old Jewish guy who wants to know why the Emirates signs aren’t in Hebrew like in the El Al signs (this happened). I was stuck behind a Vietnamese woman with four duct-taped ‘Contents: 30 dozen eggs’ boxes, a trolley case and a Hello Kitty backpack (I was tempted to exchange it for something; I missed a gift purchase yesterday when I discovered the ‘Three floors of candy!’ place on Madison). Miss Saigon was behind a Tanzanian chap (he announced it to anyone who spoke to him, made eye contact or passed within twelve feet), whose trolley had four suitcases, a baby shower (like, a pink shower rose and a little pink bathtub in a box, not six women with tepid glasses of chardonnay and gift-wrapped safety pins) and…I dunno, some other baby-washing device. Man clearly had a dirty baby in his future. I’m there with a duffel and a backpack, wondering how the hell the plane is going to take off with all that pink plumbing and one thousand four hundred and forty potential chickens in the hold. Yeah, took me a second to calculate it too.

"Passengers from New York, please collect your baggage from carousel 2."

I confess I twitched slightly when a beige suit elbow-clutched me and asked “Are you travelling alone sir?” I’m wondering which queue is check-in for Gitmo when he ushers me to a free attendant, inaccessible to the trolley-burdened. Sometimes it pays to leave the eggs behind.

A quick plug. Whatever you say of Emirates, they've nailed the check-in and transfer process. I gave her my passport, threw the duffel on the scale and readied for the typing and the questions and the one day I’m going to leap the counter and see what you do back there. But she swipes the passport (I got mine exactly a week after the swipeable ones came out), says “Final destination Perth? One bag?”, then hands me two boarding passes. I watch my bag leave me for the next 20,000 kilometres, unshoulder my backpack and say, “You need to weigh my…”

She does the wrinkled-nose headshake univerally understood to mean ‘No such nonsense!’, writes out a luggage tag and says, “Put this on your carry-on.” I ask if I need to recover my duffel at Dubai and check it onto the next flight, and am immediately rewarded with another wrinkle-shake. I do the slow head bob that means ‘I am both surprised and impressed,’ and follow through with, “Damn, you guys are good.”

“I know, right?”

Mmm, I’ve been itching to hear a New York chick say that (thanks Leisha). I give her a jaunty salute with my boarding passes, manage to not say ‘keep up the good work’ and flee while I’m ahead.

Bored guards at the entry to security. Both have Glock 20s and M4 carbines. Both have index fingers in the approved near-but-not-on the trigger that would give a miscreant an extra .014 seconds to react before they interrupted his plans. I hustle past, annoyed that I will never, ever be able to calculate whether I am more or less safe for their presence and armament.

TSA time. Awesome, x-ray porn and creepy pat-downs! I begin the strip, hoping there isn't an idiot in line with a suspiciously handle-shaped blender blade in his luggage that his mum gave him on a trip to Adelaide that he reeeally should have thought about before holding up all the nice people.

Belt, shoes, jacket. My socks match, but I have a brief moment of subconscious panic over whether I’m wearing undies (seriously brain, why? Get back to elevator scenarios, I’m busy here). There’s shrieking ahead when a TSA guy points to a Moldovan woman’s pocket (I’m guessing her nationality here; you can be similarly speculative if you write a blog. Send me a link) and tells her she has to empty it. “Pessport!” she wails in the key of the song of her people.  “Pessport!” TSA shakes his head, points to the x-ray thingy, assumes the pose and holds up his clipboard one-handed. Clearly Moldovans are good at charades as she gets it straight away.

I’m ready for my carcinogenic close-up when there’s a brief sputter of red light from a monitor. TSA shakes his head, mutters something and opens a little gate on a boring old magnetic step-through. We’re ushered through, grab our kit and…

…wait, where’s my patdown? Where’s my x-ray porn? Come on, I've been working out! What, don’t you love me? Tell me what it is TSA, I can change!

Dammit, what's HE got that I haven't got?

Departure gate. Here’s where Dubai is right to not let JFK join in any reindeer games. In Dubai I’m pretty sure I could buy absinthe, Cubans (cigars I mean, not people from Cuba. Although I didn’t look at every shop) and probably that Mercedes if I had the extra luggage allowance. At JFK it took me a lap to find a place that did fruit and yoghurt. McDonald’s, Dunkin’ donuts (fricken Americans and their apostrophed f’ranchise names), two identical limited-option cafes, a duty free that looked like a Joe’s liquor with slightly cleaner carpet and that’s your lot. Hardly mattered; I ate my hippie breakfast, bought a cup of ‘coffee’ (there’s a whole ‘nother blog on what these guys do to that beverage) and ended up dumping half of it by the time we were called.

On board. Back right window. Awesome, little TVs; I get to find out whether Sheldon and Amy finally kiss! It's a full plane. Demanding Chinese guy in front, asking for red wine every half an hour. Smiling African guy watching…okay, he’s watching Die Hard The Latest over and over again. Next door is a young mid-east guy; he likes action flicks and chewing pizza with his mouth open. Meh, he’s small and quiet and doesn’t hog the armrest, and I can always turn up the volume on Penny’s cleavage.

<sigh> "Alright. ONE more episode."

Had a great bathroom routine on the last flight: whenever the couple next to me bolted for the toilets (which was often; they were old and thirsty), I’d slip out at the same time. They’d await my return and everyone would be happy. I was hoping to do the same thing here, but Africa and Arabia are disporting some serious bladder capacity. I've been sipping steadily to avoid the headache and I could hold out longer, but we’re eight hours down, four to go and if I’m not careful I’ll run into the post-breakfast pre-landing toilet crunch. It’s time. Cover me, I’m going in…

Hooboy. Pro tip: don’t use airplane toilets barefoot. I mean, it’s just my feet, and it was probably just water (probably), but deprived of elevators to panic about, brain got busy ascribing all sorts of unpleasant properties to whatever my feet were telling it about. Stand still and you don’t get the clammy feeling so much, that’s all I can offer. Or, yeah, maybe keep your shoes on.

Back, safe. I feel for airplane carpet. Ooh, Marx Brothers fillum on the menu! I've always wanted to see one of those. ‘Day at the Races’ apparently. Here we go…

Well, that was implicitly racist. Yeah, those guys are funny, but that whole song and dance thing with the upturned jazz hands and the panicked ‘de sheaiff!’ bit at the end…I can see why they don’t get so many reruns on TCM. And the tacked-on musical number was just painful. Having said that, check out the ballet dancer. It was out of place in a lighthearted comic flick, but WOW, Vivien Fay could spin (3:42 for the how-does-she-do-that bit).

Landed. Hello Dubai my recent acquaintance. My, aren’t we popular in daylight hours? Last time was…2230 to 0430, and I had a screeching headache. This time I can see straight. And…yup, big ugly mall desert. I know, I know, some folks like it, and more power to you; you’ll get more out of these stopovers than I ever will. But I just can’t get into a ‘shop for 22 karat bracelets’ mood when I've been on the go in the same clothes for fourteen hours with the same yet to come. Yet there are people getting around here with trolleys. TROLLEYS. What are they buying? Who comes to an airport to shop? Are these people at home and suddenly declare, “Honey, we’re out of jewelry, perfume and iPhones. I’m just going to fly to Frankfurt and pick some up on the stopover.” Meh, I’m sure their partners love the bling. Maybe that’s it; maybe I need to tell women I’m <a bunch of awesome stuff> and I regularly spend three bored hours in Dubai International.

I’d like to get back on a plane now please.

Thank you that’s better. First time this trip I've had an aisle seat. Middle-aged couple toilet-trapped between me and the window. He has tattoos, long blonde hair surrounding a bald patch and…ah. A taste for Heinekens. Here’s hoping his prostate’s in good shape or I’m not going to get through much Big Bang this trip.

I withdraw that. The boy can hold his German beer. His wife however has a bladder the size of a thimble, and likes the idea of pressing a button to make uniformed women bring her vodka and orange. She’s up and down more than…(keep it topical Mick, keep it relevant…), an Empire State building elevator at sunset (Yes! Nailed it!)

Hm. No closure on the Sheldon-kissing-Amy thing (Amy? I dunno, the archetypal nerd girl character.) The series ended on some lame note about the kid from Roseanne leaving his archetypal waitress-blonde girlfriend character behind for some science thing. Ah well; the nerd-guy-hooks-hot-girl schtick is starting to grate anyway.

Reality according to Big Bang.

Reality according to reality. Sorry fellas.

Wow, where has this flight gone? I thought ten hours of Indian Ocean darkness would drag, but I haven’t even resorted to reading the graphic novel I stuffed in my bag. Partly because I was smart enough to board early and get locker space for my bag, without realising it would be buried beneath three layers of what the HELL do these people PUT in those trolley-cases??

There’s something akin to anticipation as we near Australia. I've flown into Perth more times than I care to guess (bugger it, I’m guessing 300), but seeing the nose of the comically oversized jet icon touch the coast on the little display offers a mild thrill. Maybe like unwrapping your favourite Chuppa chup (coffee here; remember those? Mmm). The buzz of activity lifts as we approach, the hosties stowing their carts, doing the little hot towels (a lovely touch, especially when you sit next to someone who isn’t sure what they’re for NO THEY’RE NOT FOR THAT STOP oh dear here let me get you something cold), gathering tra…sorry, rubbish, handing out customs cards and telling that little Pakistani guy for the nth time to get the hell out of the crew seats in the back row NOW please sir.

The lights of Perth. We’ve had the ‘electronic devices and anything else that might distract you from the terror of descent’ speech, so I’m writing in the notepad now. There are a lot of folks I care about down there amongst those lights (I hope we don’t crash into any of them GODDAMMIT SHUT UP SUBCONSCIOUS BRAIN!), a lot of tales I want to tell, and even more I want to hear.

Paperwork and passport on hand, just got to fight through the irrational fear that someone’s slipped a pound of evil into my luggage somewhere between “I know, right?” girl at JFK and “Step into this small windowless room please sir” guy at Perth International.

Wheels down. My pen has done three laps of the cabin, filled out a platoon’s worth of customs decs and come back to me. Couple across the aisle have their iPhones out and their fingers poised ready for the instant they get permission (Emirates announce it in Arabic first; these kids would probably learn the phrase ‘switch on your phones if they’re within reach’ to gain the extra minute). I've got my bag packed; gunna try the up’n’dash to gain a few rows the moment the seatbelt sign goes out. No hurry; just always wanted to try it.

Runway on the forward camera view. I reckon I could land the plane from here. That’d show everyone who said I ‘wasted my life’ playing ‘X-Wing combat flight sim’. Almost there...

"Ten degrees of flaps...landing gear down...lock S-foils in attack position..."

Touchdown. It’s an exhaled breath, a release. Buggered if I know why; I’ve got a cold house and stale apples waiting for me, but that’s probably one for the other blog some time. There’s the mobile phone announcement; it actually plays to a chorus of bleeps and bloops from the folks who know the routine better than their national anthem. I don’t bother; my data service has been turned off for the last week since I got a Telstra text saying “Haha, you thought you were using hotel wireless, when you were using cellular data the whole time! Here’s your bill, sucker!” I may be paraphrasing.

Yeah, the "up 'n' dash" totally worked. Gained exactly ten rows before I hit a pudding in a red blouse wrestling her rococo trolley case onto the head of the passenger beneath. I smiled politely and helped her get the thing off him before his spine collapsed.

Customs. See, America!? A desk with pens on little chains! How hard would that be? Might have saved me chasing some German girl across a heavily-armed picket line while brandishing a pen.

The nice lady smiles as she calls me up. She also says hi when I do, doesn't fingerprint me and says ‘seeya!’ when she sends me on my way to baggage pickup. Bag is already on the carousel when I get there; only have to fight my way through the usual closer-is-better crush to grab it and head for the next threshold guardian. This one’s a largish lass with a frustrated expression and very little semi-automatic firepower. She takes my customs card and waves me towards a door, where…

…I’m out? That’s it? No bag check, no suspicious questions, no ‘anything to declare’? Seriously, what’s a bloke got to do to get some love from customs? I’m sure it had nothing to do with a flight arriving simultaneously from Bali, bringing with it the Hawk’s (no really, the apostrophe was on their shirts) football team’s end of season trip. Maybe I’m being harsh, but…yeah, a footy team going to Bali post-season. I guess customs were busy frisking them for any trace of imagination or creativity.

Familiar streets, familiar sights. Including the taxi driver; I’m sure the same guy nearly ran me down on Broadway last Tuesday. Unfamiliar weather though; what the hell, Perth? I left sunshine and 78 deg…sorry, 25 degrees to come back to this? You’re going to have to work on that if you want my business.

Home.

I’m not going to close on a reflective note. There’s another entry to come, and I’ll probably get all ‘I saw New York, but I learned about myself’ in that one. Instead I’d like to close by saying that, having been through twelve or more hours of it, having had the time to quietly experience, absorb and reflect on its nuances at length, I can confirm that Big Bang Theory is awful. Blonde chicks in LBDs and occasional clever dialogue are nice, but they just aren't enough to make up for plot lines that were on the nose when Fred Flintstone was yabba dabba dooing about the hot blonde chick across the hall at the quarry.

"<taptaptap> Penny <taptaptap> Penny <taptaptap> Penny."

But yes. It’s still a better love story than Twilight.

Eating Manhattan

There’s a lot to eat in New York.

Well, there’s a lot to eat in just about any city (maybe not Darwin; that’s basically KFC, McDonalds and a crocodile burger place that smells suspiciously of chicken). But I’ve never been anywhere that food is so readily available. The hotel doesn’t have its own restaurant, café, diner or anything else that makes food, but every exit has a side door that leads into a restaurant. Or a café. Or a diner. Emerging onto the sidewalk and crash-tackling your way past the tour spruikers (“Getcha touaz, getcha hellycopta ridez, rightere!”) exposes you to the, ah, nutwagon: a hotplate-on-wheels attached to an inscrutable old Japanese guy busily scraping candied cashews around a bowl so old the sides have worn through. Past him there’s a hot dog wagon next to a halal cart (seriously, that’s what they’re called; it’s a thing here).  Cross the street to the pizza place with the dining room backing onto the subway (like, trains, not foot-longs), or go past that to the OTHER pizza place, where the pizza’s more expensive, but your drink doesn’t spill every time the Q trains hammers past on the way uptown. Keep walking, McDonald’s.  Then Wendy’s, TGI Fridays (awful name, worse atmosphere) and a Dunkin’ Donuts to top you up on sugar before you hit the M&Ms shop (it’s Pick ‘n’ Mix heaven in there. Provided you only want M&Ms. Stop short of the plastic toy ones or there’ll be tears). And on to Times Square, where the gigawatt jumbotron screens keep your styrofoam (seriously) tray of ‘fish on rice’ warm while they sear Nike logos into your retinas.

I didn’t try them all. But I tried a lot…

HOT DOG

Bread so light and fibre-free it gives pigeons the squits. A hot dog so overprocessed it was once in a pipe. Sauce and mustard barely distinguishable from congealed red and (ew) yellow cordial.

Even the napkin is artificially coloured

 DELICIOUS!

I don’t know why. But it was great. Sure, I was straight off 29 hours of alternately flying and sitting around a airlocked transit terminal, but this thing was GREAT. Cost me two bucks, threw it down in less time than it took to buy it and thought about going back for another one. I was walking past FAO Schwarz as I finished it though, and the lure of giant pianos and life sized stuffed tigers and bears and Rush Limbaughs was too much.

CHILLI DOG

An extension of the above. Take a hot dog. Add grated mystery cheese. Slop in a dash of so-so chilli and exchange for three well-worn dollar bills: 

Huh, wonder what I did with that top...

EVEN MORE DELICIOUS!

I couldn’t blame jet lag for this one. I was fresh from a walk through Central Park, and hungry thanks to spending the entire day meandering around The Most Amazing Art Gallery Ever. Whatever the reason, it tasted damn fine. Sure, there was sugar enough to keep a six year-old bouncing off the ceiling until high school, and the chilli was so rich it had a share portfolio, but whatever, shut up. Damn good. Pro tip: grab extra napkins. Or eat it naked and plan on a shower.

PRETZEL

Another New York staple. I grabbed one of these near the Brooklyn Bridge, one of my must-see sites for this trip. Subway down to Wall Street, quick stroll through the-where-the-hell-am-I district, pop out on the approach to the bridge. A wagon on the ramp blocked my path, so I figured on nailing a culinary mission as well as a geography one.

“Hey bud (‘bud’?), how much for a pretzel?”

“THREE!”

They way he said it gave me the feeling he wanted to behead me with a fishstick. I nodded and made the universal ‘I accept your price and wish to purchase said goods’ gesture. He did something out of sight and moments later a head-sized pretzel was thrust menacingly towards me. I took it, paid without breaking eye contact and backed away before hurrying onto the bridge.

Now, these things are around in Australia. In fact an old friend ran the first Wetzel’s franchise in the country. I had them several times: they were warm and stretchy and salty and as good as buttered bread straight out of an oven.

This. Was. Not.

The pretzel was sticky. Not like melted-butter sticky, more sort of tacky rubber cement-sticky. The weirdly opaque salt crystals looked like the fur that grows around old chemical drums. And when I took a bite, the texture was somewhere between stale candy floss and building plaster.

I managed three bites. Then I hurled the remains into a bin, scattering the pigeons looking for a snack. On their return, they stood on the pretzel while they pecked at styrofoam.

"Trials of the new road-surfacing material were going well, the pretzels showing no signs of wear."

KNISH

If you’ve been keeping up, you’ll k’now I planned to order one of these just for the pleasure of using the word. Say it with me now, k’nissssh. You can chicken out and pronounce it kerNISH, but if you’re Aussie, if you take the nasal twang seriously, if you’ve ever said the words Fnord or f’tang, you’re right there beside me, brandishing your three bucks outside Central Park and declaring “I’ll have a k<exhalethroughnose>NISH thanks!”

Bam, three seconds. Hot and foil-wrapped and steamy and what the hell did I just buy?

Experimental nibble at what appears to be a deep-fried pastry case. Rumour confirmed: lobbed in the fryer about two hours earlier based on the texture. A little chewy-stale but clean and hot and retaining at least a memory of crispness. Press on deeper: squishy off-white interior. Smooth, creamy…potatoey? Ahh, and stringy-cheesy! Oops, bit of foil there: wait for teeth to stop singing, peel back and lunge at its steaming heart.

Good, good, good.

Look, it’s basically mashed potato, wrapped in dough and deep fried. But…yeah, hot and squishy and easy to eat and just what I wanted after a day of staring at mammoths and giant Egyptian statues and endless broken pots covered in naked orange Greek guys. I strolled along the path watching joggers puff by and trainers bark at their victims to do ‘One more! Come on, push it!’ and a bunch of people play what looked like American football with a bean bag, and enjoyed every bite of my deep-fried carbohydrates. And dammit, I would do so again. Maybe once my arteries unclog.

CHICKEN GYRO

There’s some linguistic shenanigans around this name. In Adelaide we call it a Yiros (pronounced YEE-ross). Perth they’re kebabs (pronounced “Uhhr f#$k I’m drunk. Let’s geddakerbab.”). Darwin I think they were chiros (chEYErows). Probably a common ancestor there. Except for kebab, but…yeah, Perth. We’re a long way from everything out there, and we kinda lose touch. (Anyone know any other names for them?)

Anyway, I went one of these after the Guggenheim letdown (see, there’s a great name for a greasy snack. Or an absinthe hangover cure). There was an Indian chap running a cart who looked less militant than Pretzel Guy, so I thought I’d chance it. There was a process: chicken was chopped, bread was warmed and salad was fetched from the bowels of the cart. Moving away from that challenging metaphor, I accepted his calm offer of ‘Hot sauce?’ and took the proffered meal, along with the phone-book ream of serviettes included.

A bad photo of a good meal

Of all the food cart challenges, this one was the closest I had to a genuine meal. Fresh, hot pita, smooth not-too-sweet garlic sauce, well-cooked chicken and salad with enough crunch to announce its presence over the other ingredients. The hot-chilli cohort amongst my friends would scoff at the ‘hot’ sauce (warm at most), but it added just enough tang for my liking. I orbited the Jacqueline Kennedy-Onassis reservoir in the prescribed anti…sorry, counter-clockwise direction as I worked my way through it, pausing only to take scenery photos, capture errant warm sauce globules and fish out the last morsels of tasty from the bottom of the expertly-folded wrapper. All things considered, it was the finest work of art I experienced that day. Sorry Frank.

THREE-EGG TURKEY OMELET

That’s how it’s advertised on the menu. This was my first New York breakfast, so it gets a guernsey. I joined the rest of the hotel patrons in the Lindy café, the bar-cum-diner in one of the retail nooks on the building’s Seventh Avenue frontage. Of immediate interest were the staff: rather than the disinterested twenty-something girls an Australian equivalent would hire, every waiter was an old guy. Two were black, one was Hispanic, one was constructed entirely of wrinkles and bonhomie.

“Café?”

I looked around, wondering if wrinkle guy was asking me to confirm our location, but the proffered pot answered my unasked question. I got through two and a half refills by the time my omelet arrived (it was actually quick, but I was thirsty and damn he was handy with that pot).

Meh. Fruit with it though.

It was…adequate?

The ‘turkey’ was some sort of sausage, sliced and fried to a dark brown that masked any clues about its identity or origin. The omelet was a little overcooked for my liking, and perhaps could have used some cheese or something else to lift the flavour. But the toast was hot and fresh and it came with some sort of creamy butter stuff that added something more than just cholesterol to the experience. I didn’t eat anything else until about  four pm that afternoon, so clearly it did the trick. But for fifteen bucks I could have done better. And so could the cook at Lindy’s.

Pro tip: the closer to the hotel, the more likely they’ll take advantage of your price-and-quality ignorance. Stretch your legs, folks. Earn your breakfast.

TOASTED BAGEL

It’s a bread roll. Moving on...

"Dear Jewish community: what exactly is all the fuss about??"

PIZZA

You hear a lot about the ‘New York Slice’. It’s an institution or something, just like everything else in this city. There’s takeaway pizza in Australia but, much like zombie plague, you either get the whole thing, or none at all. New York is different (the pizza, not zombie plague; that works the same). Here’s how to get some:

Go to the pizza counter. A sweaty bloke who’s rolled around in flour a bit will gesture with a canoe paddle and say something. It may sound like ‘You killed my father. Prepare to die’, but remain calm. Inspect the array of pizzas on display and select one or two you like. Varieties will always include cheese, two cheese, three cheese, spinach (seriously, six pizza places and they all did spinach. Popeye would be bench-pressing cement trucks after lunch here), pepperoni, some mysterious thing that looks like lily pads on a white pond ( I have a terrifying suspicion it was Four Cheese plus spinach) and an assortment of vegetarian abominations. Point if you’re not sure, or tell him what you want. He will reply with his postal address in Naples, use the canoe paddle to pick up a slice from each of your selections and fling them into a furnace. Wait nearby while he loudly declares blood feud on other customers. Then watch his move: open furnace, extract slices with paddle, fling deftly onto paper plates hopelessly unprepared for a) heat, 2) grease and d) the weight of the mozzarella. Nod and smile as he shouts his children’s recent school grades at you, then head for the counter to pay.

"I'll have a slice of cheese, pepperoni and subway station thanks."

If you stay to eat, do not use a knife and fork. Taxi drivers with ‘Sopranos’ accents will appear from nowhere and devour you. The appropriate technique is to grasp by the crust, fold in half lengthways and consume it from the thus-formed spear tip, ensuring it is held low to ensure maximum cholesterol oozes onto each bite. Give it a few seconds to cool; the furnace is a pitiless taskmaster. If you eat on the go, follow the same approach, but do the ‘pizza navigation face’. Grasp, fold, raise to mouth. While crossing the street, tilt head back, eyes still forward, stick out tongue and engage the pizza tip with the tongue, then shuttle-dock it with your mouth. Your eyes will be horror-movie wide as you attempt to negotiate sidewalk traffic with two pounds of molten cheese attached to your alimentary canal, but do not be afraid. Others will allow you extra fighting room. Unless you bought vegetarian, in which case they deliberately  steer you into storm drains.

Oh yea, the pizza is pretty good. And ranges from wtf cheap ($1.50 for a pretty good pepperoni slice) to wait-what expensive ($6 for pepperoni and mushroom. The mushrooms were good, but they weren’t $4.50 good).

PASTRAMI ON RYE AT KATZ’S DELICATESSEN

This place is an institution. Again. The walls have photos of the cast of pretty much every gritty 1970s NY police drama, every whimsical 1980s rom-com, and a bunch of other shows, plus minor celebs like that Clinton guy from the show about the White House before Bush turned it into a war movie. I was under instruction to order a pastrami sandwich, so I lobbed just before lunch to try it out.

Madness. From the bloke at the door shoving a ticket in my hand, through the next bloke at the door warning they would trap my soul for eternity if I lost my ticket, through to the aproned mountain foghorning instructions from behind the counter. The place was wall-to-wall. And its location on Houston Street (SoHo by the way means ‘South of HOuston street’) means they had space: there are a hundred tables in there. I reached the front (i.e. the crowd forced me against the counter), where I shouted ‘Pastrami on rye with mustard please. To…’ quick look round, observe people piled three-deep on chairs, ‘…to go.’

A calm nod. He began slicing something in a curiously rhythmic manner. While still slicing, a small plate appeared on the counter, on which he deposited two slices of steaming flesh, black-crusted and glistening. Another nod. ‘To try.’

I tried.

Wow.

Pastrami, for the unfamiliar, is beef, brined, spiced, smoked then steamed for hours. It’s slightly purple with a black crust of spice. As presented by Katz's deli, it is the best meat I have ever tried. Tender to the point of flakiness, rich and faintly gelatin-sticky, just spicy and salty enough, there’s a textural joy and a confusion of flavours there that set it apart from the best steak. And I had a pound of it coming my way.

The black slabs are spice-crusted pastrami. That's a steamer full behind.

The ‘sandwich’ was in a bag with the (apparently) customary handful of pickles in minutes. I tipped, gave him my ticket to mark and made my escape, paying the door troll to gain my freedom.

One down side of Houston street, I discovered, is very few parks nearby. I found one next to a kids’ playground that looked straight out of the Sesame street credits and settled in next to three old Spanish guys, including the ubiquitous Angry Shouting One. The sandwich and pickles took up my impromptu backpack tablecloth nicely.

Cut in half, it’s still a two-handed job. Still plenty warm, the bread wash fresher than I was, the mustard was typical American-mild and the pastrami, which by some miracle of modern engineering, remained in the sandwich (I can see where New Yorkers develop the skills to make such big buildings)…where was I…oh, the pastrami. Yeah, hot and greasy and perfect.

I ate half, along with half of the pickles (there were six of them, each the size of a..hm, maybe not that comparison…the size of a pickle that is six inches long. Yeah). The other half went in my bag for later, and was devoured the next evening straight out of the fridge. As good as when I first bought it.

How good was it? On my last day I went back for another. Here it is:

Not a flavour out of place. This is good, good food.

It was  nice to soak up some of the vibe of the deli without most of the Village competing for the same air. The staff barely seemed to notice customers, working and shouting at each other as if we weren’t there. Most were old, all but one were men. And everyone seemed gruffly pleased to be working in the place that served me the best thing I ate the whole time I was here.

Katz's delicatessen, minus insane crowd. Look familiar? Imagine Meg Ryan, banging the table and screaming "YES! YES! YES!" at Billy Crystal.

Come here, try this. You will leave happy.

EVERYTHING ELSE

Not all the options are junk, signature food or outrageous carnivorous indulgences. There are enough people here that the retail market can cater for just about any taste. If only one in a thousand Manhattan residents was a gluten-intolerant vegan Muslim, there’d still be around thirty of them in every square kilometre. That’s enough for someone to decide it’s worth offering a halal tofu salad or whatever on the breakfast menu. Ratchet that back to slightly more probable food proclivities and you’re seeing a lot of vegetarian, kosher, wheat-free, nut-free, lactose-free and anything else-free choices. And if what you want is as simple as a fruit salad for breakfast, you don’t have to go far.

No turkeys were harmed in the making of this breakfast. Several melons did have a pretty bad day.

 I squeezed in my Central Park jog on Friday morning. Afterwards, while stumbling around looking for a subway to take me back, I decided to sort breakfast on the way. The first open door I tried had fruit salad, watermelon, mango, cereal cups and fruit-yoghurt-muesli cocktails for something like three dollars. I’d done enough mostly-melon-anyway fruit salads by then, and I felt like I’d earned a minor indulgence; I went the latter. So at 8.30 am I’m in shorts and Mossimo T-shirt and ten-year-old Nikes, herd-surfing down Broadway as I tuck in to my watermelon and granola and full-cream yoghurt, sweat still dark on my collar, heart still ticking up just a little from the track and feeling like everything I’d done so far that day was as natural as breathing taxi fumes in this place.

New York might make it easy to stray to the deep-fried side, but it makes it just as easy to go the other way. And by the look of the text-walkers and coffee-sippers and I-hope-he’s-on-the-phone street shouters I saw on my yoghurt stroll, they’re right with me on the salad thing. The food here is everything from appalling to amazing, and as healthy as you want it to be. I just wish I could figure out who’s eating all those pretzels.

I'm sorry Frank

The Guggenheim was a disappointment.

I expected this:

A sixty year old art gallery; more 'modern' than anything since.

...and this...

Note the paintings: a popular feature in most art galleries.

...and this.

This SHOULD greet you as you enter, and accompany you on the journey up. It's what i sought: a space designed so that one skylight illuminated every rounded corner of the public space.

 Instead I got this:

Pretty!

 

...and this...

Um...also pretty!

 ...and this

"Spock, meet me on Deck C, corridor 5. Someone has stolen the Rembrandts!"

What you're seeing on the colourful ones is screens across the open spaces of the spiral. The blank wall on the right in the bottom shot is the back of one of them. Pretty from the lobby, but hideous from the, you know, gallery bit. And yes, there are meant to be paintings and sculptures in the spaces around the edge.

I have James Turrell to thank apparently. A ‘light installation’ artist. Seems like a nice guy; takes some lovely pictures, but all I see is this wonderful building, turned from an architectural temple into a giant pastel screen saver for people to fall asleep under. And I’m sorry, staring up at plain colours projected onto screens while lying on the floor of a world-famous museum might seem quite zen, but to me it was like nodding contemplatively while Rolf Harris slapped a doodle onto the back of the Mona Lisa.

"Hm, yes, hm. Fascinating the way the artist has juxtaposed red and, uh, more red on the background red. To me it's a statement about man's inhumanity to...wait, what was I talking about?"

The paintings were still there. The side galleries displayed them in an adequate space, and having Steve The Guy Who Knows About Paintings And Stuff with me was great. Still hot and cold on Picasso I’m afraid; there’s some of his work I just don’t get. But I went there to see a building, inside and out. And some bloke had thrown a sheet over it and pointed mood lights at the walls.

I bought Guggenheim coffee mugs in the gift shop on the top floor. I don’t need mugs, but it felt like an appropriate reminder of an inspiring opportunity missed.

A piping hot cup of disappointment

 Next trip for sure. Provided mister Turrell has packed up his cellophane and glow-sticks and moved on.

New York: preconceptions, misconceptions, observations

Being the set for more movies, TV shows, novels and radio plays than any other city on Earth gives New York a public image well beyond first-hand experience. Some of what people believe about this place is true; a lot of it is not. Some of it was, but has changed since Sex and the City/Seinfeld/Cosby went off the air. And big chunks are just plain wrong. Here’s a selection:

Steam comes out of the road

It’s true, it really does. It’s a warm early autumn here and sights like this are common.

I intend to use this as the basis for telling my nieces the subway trains are pulled by dragons, but the truth is slightly less awesome. Only slightly though - the city actually makes steam and pipes it around to heat and cool buildings. There’s no constraint on its use for these purposes; some buildings also use if for cleaning and disinfection. In essence, it’s possible to add steam to the ‘water, power and gas’ connected to a building and do whatever the heck you like with it. Technically you could use it to power your very own Steampunk battle armour, but there's probably something in the fine print about that..
They’ve been doing it since the New York Steam Company started in 1882, although the big power company ConEdison now running the big kettles or whatever that keeps the steam coming.  It’s not meant to come out of the roads, but where water hits the hot pipes, or the pipes themselves leak, you get sights like the one above. I guess theoretically you could lay a shirt across one of these vents and really nail those creases, but I can’t imagine New York traffic looking too kindly on it.

New York is just like in ‘Friends’!

First disappointment: Friends was filmed in LA. Second: apartments that size in Greenwich Village are nooot affordable for waitresses, struggling actors, palaeontologists, second-string chefs or masseuses/taxi drivers/buskers/whatever the heck the ditzy blonde did. Maybe the other guy could afford it, not sure. Regardless, New York is expensive. A clique of dreamy-eyed twenty-somethings couldn't live there and still have time for zany hijinks and sitting around drinking coffee while they reflect endlessly on their relationships. Although you do see people just sort of sitting around in coffee shops a lot. That may be their jobs: see below (standing around).

"Monica, look! Ugly naked guy is outside, taking photos of our suspiciously affordable apartment!"

 Friends was goofy fun. But I suspect it was about as New York in character as Gilligan’s island was Caribbean. There was the odd scene-setting shot, but it was just a backdrop for some funny, clever dialogue and the usual hook-up, break-up, make-up formula that is every sitcom since I Love Lucy.

Manhattan traffic is bad

This is terrifyingly true. If there’s a square met…sorry, square foot of road, it’s being used for something. Street vendors park their carts close enough to clip the mirrors of tourist coaches. Pedestrians creep out to the tyre…sorry, tire marks before the lights change, then saunter across just before a yellow taxi missile runs the light. Giant buses span whole intersections for two changes of lights (I witnessed this tonight: the correct New York response is to hammer on the windows and shout "Move the f%$#ing bus, a$$hole," then walk around it anyway). Cars constantly stop in the middle of crossings, pedestrians flowing indifferently around them until either the lights change again or the car in front moves on three more feet and they can edge out of the way.

Manhattan streets: largely indistinguishable from car parks.

And people use their horns. All. The. Time. Someone a bit slow? Honk. Passing? Honk. Bike in your lane? Double honk. Like the song on the radio? That’s a honk. Just because? You better believe that’s a honk. There are signs around the place that say ‘Don’t honk.’ I’m fairly sure it’s perceived as a challenge to their civil rights; if anything it’s louder where I saw those signs.
Weirdly, entire stretches of bitumen madness occasionally empty for no apparent reason, at which point thousands of people seem to erupt from nowhere and wander across slowly in some sort of ‘take back the road’ gesture or something.

The subway is scary.

Nope. It’s awesome. Fast, clean, CHEAP and so far completely safe. Peak hour or mid-morning, I’ve always found a seat (though I’ve given it up to others several times), and I’ve never seen anything that would make me think twice about using it. I saw graffiti once in a station; a magic marker declaration that ‘Duane loves Chelsea’ (unclear whether he meant the district, the soccer team or a young lady), but it was gone the next day. Duane is clearly a fickle fellow. Grand Central Station frightened me a bit, though mainly because it took me three attempts to find an exit that didn’t take me to other train lines, ticket vending machines or high-end retail outlets. I envisioned spending the next decade there, surviving on gourmet cheese, meats and seafood cooked over a shopping trolley grill.

The '4' train uptown. No, that's not the Dalai Lama. He's a bus guy.

New Yorkers are rude, arrogant, uncaring etc etc.

Sure, most of the folks I’ve dealt with have been selling me something. But I’ve seen everyday interactions every…well, day, and having seen both New Yorkers and the good people of Perth’s outer southern suburbs go about their lives, it’s the latter that leave me despondent about human nature. I’ve heard three conversations that suggest relationships were in trouble (they seem to be VERY frank about their feelings here), but people smile and thank you when you hold a door or give up your seat, they’re all excuse-me and by-your-leave when you interact casually in queues (I’ve queued a lot this past week) and the folks I’ve asked for directions have done everything short of offer to carry me there. I’ve steered away from the guys in one shoe bellowing at signposts and the wild-eyed street vendors fighting over the best corner to sell their leatherette designer socks, but everyone else has been fine.

Americans are all fat.

Completely untrue. The thing that first struck me when I arrived was how fat they aren’t. Sure, there was the odd time I expected them to demand I bring them Solo and the wookie, but most of then are indistinguishable from the average Australian. The blokes? Often fit, commonly tall and…yeah, jut blokes. The women? GORGEOUS. It’s probably part of the being-single effect, but I see attractive women everywhere on the street. Maybe it’s different elsewhere in the US, maybe the fat people don’t get dressed and leave their apartments across from Monica and Rachel much, but from the evidence of my own eyes, Americans are no more or les fat than Australians.

There are some odd exceptions here. The housekeeping staff in the hotel are, with one male hispanic exception, enormous black women. It’s like it’s a job requirement. Maybe they got a discount run of uniforms and had to hire people to fit them; whatever the reason, they’re all of a type. Conversely, the guys who run the millions of halal food carts are skinny as hell. It’s pretty odd, given the air they’re breathing probably has more calories than a Katz pastrami on rye, but to a man (and they’re all men), they look like they spend the day hawking chilli dogs and lard shakes, then go home to carrot sticks and tap water.

Times Square is crazy.

Times Square IS crazy. But having been through there between the hours of 11am and about 10pm, Im yet to figure out why. There are enormous screens with ads for…I dunno, stuff on them, there are crowds milling about in every square foot of open space, there are cartoon characters writ large and posing for photos with anyone who strays within selfie range. But as for any attraction beyond that? I dunno, I just couldn’t see what people were sticking around for. There’s a big sort of stand thing with room for a few hundred people to sit and stare at the big billboards, but besides that there wasn’t a great deal on offer.

Posing with one of the hideous costumed freaks in Times Square.

I have a suspicion that most of Times Square’s appeal is its reputation. Tell someone it’s kind of a big deal and they go there to see what the big deal is. The crowds draw street vendors, performers and spruikers, the latter draw even more crowds, and suddenly you’re fighting your way past the Hulk, Iron Man, five Spidermans (Spidermen?) a VERY popular spandex-clad Batgirl and three or four horribly out of place Elmos and Cookie Monsters to see what’s at the eye of this human hurricane. As it turns out, it’s not much. But you’re there, you’ve come halfway round the world to see it, so you hand your camera to the person who looks least likely to bolt with it and add your own jumbotron-lit pixel to Times Square’s timeless image. Don’t stay too long though; the rest of the world is waiting its turn to find out what the fuss is.

Everyone is in a hurry

This was a little odd. Most folks ARE in a hurry, but there are a lot of people whose job appears to be standing still. They're usually serving some purpose by standing there, but I’ve never seen quite so many people whose job is pretty much that: standing. There was a woman standing at the counter in Macy’s, directing shoppers to the next cashier. Maybe in case they don’t know that ‘approach an available cashier’ is the step between 'select your goods' and ‘pay for them.’ There are people standing just inside JC Penny, smiling serenely when shoppers approach, then resuming a dull-witted thousand-yard stare the moment they think we’re not looking. I thought they would ask to see inside my bag, but they just smiled and looked slightly stoned when I made eye contact. A slumped old guy stands by the lifts in the hotel; a nearby sign instructs guests to show their room key as they pass him, but nobody I saw had the inclination to distract him from his Nokia 5210. The Metropolitan Museum was FULL of standing people. I thought their function might be to savour the art, but this is true only if one defines 'art' as ‘every well-shaped female backside that wanders by’. Actually, that’s…never mind. They did occasionally tell people not to get too close to the paintings (which I totally understand - there were unprotected Picassos and Rembrandts completely accessible to sticky-fingered children right there on the walls), but that was the exception. Aside from one particularly fierce tigress who snarled ‘Not too close; you sir, not too close!’ every time I peered at the giant dolerite statue that posed a far greater threat to my well-being than vice-versa, most of them just perved on the international smorgasbord of denim-clad bums meandering slowly by.

"Oh great, look what your careless breathing did to Hatsephut's nose!"

Here I feel compelled to point out I am ONLY returning to the MMA to further explore its fine collection of medieval textiles.

It’s just a big, dirty city.

Two out of three, sort of. It’s big, and it’s a city. And you could say it’s dirty I guess; bins often overflow, there are garbage bag piled up on street corners, cigarette butts and wrappers blowing around the streets and a patina of decay across a lot of the buildings. But every night the garbage bags vanish, in plenty of time for the next load to appear. The streets are swept (magically as far as I can tell; I haven’t seen an actual street sweeper yet), and the bins are emptied (manually by guys with wheeled carts; no trucks with hydraulic arms here).

Sure, it's garbage. But it's NEW YORK garbage.

It’s a big, dirty city maybe, but it’ a mistake to say it’s ‘just’ that. There’s every kind of life here, from the slouched troupes of trolley-pushing street people collecting cans and bottles, through the average ‘Noo Yawkers’ making their way to thousand-dollar apartments in million-dollar locations, right up to the mysterious back-seat occupants of the stretch limos and giant black SUVs that full-stop the long yellow sentences of midtown traffic. You can buy a fifty thousand dollar watch, then step out of the store and buy a three-dollar knish, you can pay two-fifty and catch the ‘4’ train to Wall Street, where forty billion dollars change hands every day. New York life stretches from the guy on the F train giving an impassioned begging speech (he earned my loose change), to the couple sharing a lift with me to the 86^th floor of the Empire State, debating whether to ask about holding their wedding reception up there, or just go with the garden party in the Hamptons. It’s the full spread of the social, economic and cultural bell-curves; and while there are good, bad and terrible neighbourhoods, while there are ‘our’ areas and ‘their’ areas, everyone comes together in the streets, the subways and the stores, and there’s room for everyone and everything.

Cities might not be to your taste. But if you think you understand them, if you think you’re jaded by city life, or you’ve never experienced it at all, come here, try this, discover the truth about Friends and everything else for yourself. It may send you back to your suburb, small town or sustainable straw-bale house in the marri forest as fast as Emirates can carry you, but it will open your eyes to what people can build, and what they can achieve.

And what I plan to achieve next is a steak dinner. More on that next post.