Further New York burblings

Two posts in a day? Amazing scenes. Here follows another thousand words or so on me doing comparatively little in New York. Probably best to ignore it...

Bowery’s Whitehouse Hotel – 3:30pm ET (ish)

I pay and am handed the keys to room 243: “Upstairs. Door on your right.” I heave my belongings up the stairs and locate 243. After initially turning the key the wrong way (apparently American locks work backwards), I unlock the door and push it open to reveal… a wall. And no ceiling. Ok, not quite, but the room is the length of the bed, which is indeed a shelf, with about three feet of space on the near side to stand in. A rudimentary wardrobe is built into the wall at the head end of the bed, but it’s not blessed with a hanging rail so is next to useless anyway. It strikes me that this is the sort of floor space that would have sold in Kensington for about £200,000 last year, and is now worth about 10% of that. I also note that by the condition of the sheets, the Whitehouse’s laundry system isn’t too efficient either. Still, I can’t say I wasn’t forewarned I suppose.

My room at the Whitehouse, taken from as far into the opposite corner as I could get. Apologies for the feet, they're for perspective purposes.

I should address the issue of a hotel room without a ceiling. Basically, each room on the corridor is made of concrete walls which create each room (cell? hutch?). The problem is that for some reason these walls stop a foot from the ceiling, and a wooden lattice is placed across the top of each one. I’d love to know the reason for this. Perhaps it’s a new fangled architectural principle, in which not joining the walls to the ceiling improves the core strength of the building. Maybe they just ran out of bricks and mortar with a foot to go. Whatever the answer, it makes the Whitehouse a marvellous place to stay if you are a) a very heavy sleeper or b) unnaturally interested in the sleeping habits, personal hygiene and bowel movements of your fellow guests. That’s right, not even the toilets have ceilings. As I’m neither of these things, it seems as if I’ll be spending the money I saved on my $36 per night room on drink to attempt to anaesthetise myself sufficiently to get some shut-eye. OK, objection sustained, I would have done this anyway but it still seems like a bit of a false economy.

Having arrived, as I always do, with no plans whatsoever, I scan the guidebook for something to do. I check the attractions in the locality and hit upon the Housing Works Used Book Shop & Café, 2 blocks down and two west of the hotel. A nice little acclimatiser for a green New York explorer. I’ve been looking for a cheap copy of War and Peace to accompany me on my trip, something tells me English reading material won’t be too commonplace in Guatemala, so a weighty tome like that should see me right for a while and a used book store’s bound to have a copy, right? I find the café without any problem at all, and head in. It truly is an amazing place. Anyone of a vaguely literary persuasion would surely dream of running a place like this. The walls stacked with books on every subject all around the room, while trendy people drink fair-trade coffee, type on Macbooks and discuss poetry. There’s no Tolstoy though, which is disappointing. Why does no one ever give away their copy of War and Peace? Is it just that great, or do you all just leave it on your bookshelves because it looks impressive?

OK, at this point please forgive me a quick departure into indie frippery. Those of you not fond of over-earnest, scholarly guitar combos may want to just skip this paragraph. Fair warning I think, for those of you still with me, here goes: I think in the HWUBS&C I may have discovered the beating-heart of trendy New York. Think of every Wes Anderson movie ever made, it’s all here. In browsing the titles in the fiction section I twice spot book titles which have been appropriated by two of my favourite bands for their lyrics (That’s The National and Okkervil River, fact fans). Eventually I grab a copy of Saul Bellow’s Herzog and buy a lemonade from the pretty girl with the nose piercing in the café. I sit down, sharing a table with a girl in a purple scarf and big glasses, who thumbs photography books with her oriental-looking boyfriend. Another girl sits down next to me and hums along when “Your Ex-Lover is Dead” by Stars drifts over the speakers. Hmm, I think, My Life Is Not a Mumblecore Movie or Maybe… actually not though, because just at that moment a woman asks us to vacate the table as it’s been reserved for a reading later on. I buy the Saul Bellow, reasoning that reading the ramblings of a deranged Jew might just make my own writings seem a little less odd.

I take a walk up Broadway as far as Union Square, pausing to take what I thought was quite a nice photo of Grace Church. There’s a free Palestine demonstration going on there, and lots of police. I figure that it’s better not to get caught up in it, married to the fact I know far too little about Middle Eastern politics to form a proper opinion, and so I turn back south and decide that it’s high time that I had my first beer in New York. St. Mark’s Ale House, just off 4th Ave. looks like a nice spot, so I head in. I order an Anchor Steam that turns out to be a strong flavoured, dark lager. It’s not bad actually, I sit down at a table in front of a screen showing archive Premiership footage and start writing this journal (ooh, reflexive!). I’m heartened to hear Ben Folds singing Song for the Dumped over the speakers. New York really does have the market in playing good music when you least expect it cornered, right to the end of my stay I’m treated to some great music, including the entire Vampire Weekend album at LaGuardia airport. There’s not much going on in the bar though, so I head back out into the snow and return to the Whitehouse.

My Grace Church photo.

New York, New York Pt. 1

This is the first installment of my New York adventures, a hugely bloated and not very entertaining account of my one and a half days in New York. I'll post this as I type it up from my journal. I'm also hoping this weekend I'll find time to write a bit more about Guatemala City. As it is, I'm still safe, still well, still having fun...

JFK Airport: 14:00 NY Time

I take the subway to my hotel instead of a taxi, despite lugging two enormous bags with me. I have a bit of a phobia about being on public transport with bags, especially systems that are completely alien to me. This comes of having used the London tube on a regular basis. I have given withering looks to German tourists getting on at Bank, in the rush hour, with three suitcases each and have received the same withering looks coming back from festivals muddied and smelly with huge backpack on and tent in hand. As a luggee in these kinds of situations, my normal response is to panic, sweat profusely and pray to painlessly cease to exist. It's too expensive to get a taxi from the airport though, so on to the subway go me and my possessions.

The subway, to my surprise, is a joy to use. The trains are well-worn with uncomfortable plastic seats but this seems to have the effect of keeping most of New York from using it. It's airy and spacious enough for me and my stuff, and at $2 a ride, very reasonable too. I do have one complaint though. Mr. Bloomberg, I am personally inviting you to come to England so you can observe how we get in and out of most of (Covent Garden excepted) our underground stations. Then we'll give you the designs and you can build escalators at all of your subway stations. I wonder if this is some sort of initiative to combat America's obesity problem. What I'm sure of is it's bloody hard work carrying suitcases up stairs, and so I at least get the sweats, if not the panic to accompany them.

The sweat immediately begins to freeze as I emerge into the New York snow. Thanks to some excellent street signage (almost making up for the escalators) I quickly work out the way to my hotel and set off. Before too long I come to my first ever intersection, and look up expecting to see “walk/don’t walk’ signs. Instead, I’m greeted with an orange hand pointing its palm at me. Who removed the don’t walk signs I wonder, and when? I certainly didn’t get the memo. Anyway, I’d been warned about the driving in New York so when the hand said stop, I did. A bunch of locals walk around me and my suitcase and tut – did they not see the orange hand? Turns out I clearly have a lot to learn about crossing the street in NY. It seems to me that it’s every man woman and child for themselves here, and pedestrians have all the power. The populace is colour blind to the orange hand: if the roads clear, we’re going; if the cars are coming slowly, they’ll probably stop. Only if someone’s coming really fast will people stay on the safety of the pavement. Even when the green man is lit, taxis can still turn into the street you’re crossing, and don’t always cede the right of way. Basically, it’s a mixed up crazy road-crossing system*.

Bowery’s Whitehouse Hotel was described to me as being “scruffy and a bit noisy and your bed is a shelf and there are mournful semi-homeless men in reception, but if you can deal with that it's perfect.” I push the door and encounter two down-at-heel Rastafarians playing guitar and discussing the role of the artist, check one. I shuffle to the counter; the latino girl sat behind it glances up at me, then proceeds to studiously ignore me for the next five minutes while she talks in Spanish on the phone. Eventually she puts it down and wearily comes to the counter. “I have a reservation here for two nights,” I announce. She rolls her eyes, “Passport. Credit card.” I hand over the requested articles so she can make an “imprint”. As she does so I notice a sign on the counter bearing the legend: “Price may change according to customer attitude.” Hmph.

* I’m typing this up in Guatemala City, and suddenly the roads in New York seem a doddle. The “calle” the school is on is a roaring, belching dragon comprised of three lanes, the middle of which either lane can use. There are no traffic lights or crossings for several miles either side. If I don’t get shot here, I fully expect to be run over instead.

More next time...