This empty spot kept bugging me, so here are, at long last, my impressions of New York. I really don't feel like revisiting my notes from that time though, so expect some random crazytalk.
Our hostel was located in Harlem. The only thing I knew about Harlem was that it's supposedly predominatly African-American. That pretty much checked out - during the four days we stayed there, I think I saw only one white dude on the streets. The hostel itself was a different matter - like a pocket universe, very united in its colors of benetton. The guy at the desk was Brazillian, one time I think I heard a Slavic lilt from the kitchen, and I vividly remember two Chinese girls with Louis Vuitton bags taking half an hour to get ready to leave.
On the first day we crossed the Central Park, north to south, by foot. I was on the downswing of my hormonal extravaganza, feeling a bit disconnected and joking on autopilot. It was a cool, bright morning, the park was pretty much empty, Ana and Bohdan were taking their pictures, and all around us loomed those ridiculous, gothic scyscrapers. Finally, we reached the statue of Bethesda, which I was keen to see, as I have pretty much memorized
Angels in America. The fountain wasn't flowing. They turned it off for the winter. Ice in the pipes. I remember recalling that line and feeling like I just might lose it. Bohdan picked that moment to take a picture of me. Unfortunately, it's ugly as shit - thereby disproving the myth that sad people make for great photography.
Then we left the park, and the bubble burst - suddenly I was in f-ing New York, there were people everywhere, and those ridiculous, gothic scyscrapers seemed like a really cool place to live once that Nigerian fellow wires me my money. For some reason we kept passing 30 Rock, and eventually even went to the top floor to take pictures of Manhattan at night - though in our defense, I think it was the only purely touristy thing we'd done during those four days.
We spent one evening at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, where I finally
got the point of an MC. Mahogany Brown completely blew my mind. She had such amazing grace and energy you just had to laugh, clap, and cheer at everything she said, and she was able to transfer some of that boon to the performers. The slam was followed by an open mic filled with terrible, terrible poetry, which I have successfully repressed since. Left are only the cool things, like a Fillipino girl with a really intriguing piece about how your heritage informs even the minute details of your everyday life - in her case, what she eats for breakfast, as some of the basic foodstuffs are remnants of Spanish, Japanese, and American presence. Or the rapping white girl and her beatboxing black friend - nervous as hell, but still giving off a definite Veronica Mars/Wallace Fennel vibe. Or two German siblings, very earnest in their ghetto style, who kind of reminded me of European capoeira enthusiasts finding themselves in Brazil for the first time.
We also saw some pretty amazing improv at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, but all my attempts at relaying any of the jokes have failed spectacularly, so I won't even try to do it here. I was really excited that we managed to get in (which was a miracle in itself - we went there kind of on a whim, and there was a huge line of people with reservations), as one of the performers was Kay Cannon, who wrote some of my favorite
30 Rock episodes. Unfortunatley, the improv people never introduced themselves, so I don't even know which one she was. The funniest of them was a girl in glasses with short, dark hair, who said it was her last performance, as she'd just gotten a TV show and was moving to LA. So now, when she becomes the next big thing, I'll be able to say I saw her doing improv back in the day. That is if I ever learn what her name is.
We had amazing (like, really) burgers in the East Village. We went to that huge bookstore... Strand, I think was its name. We went to the NBA store, where I got myself a longsleeve with an actual NBA team logo. Trust me, if you know me - that's funny. We also went to Ground Zero... I'm not really sure what to write about that. I guess the honest thing to say would be that it was totally anti-climactic, but I remember even then feeling kind of weird about treating that place as a tourist attraction. Anyway, it's a construction site like any other. Things are well on their way.
We got ripped off by a Pakistani taxi driver. We zig-zagged between cabs on Times Square. After two days we tapped into that New York pedestrian hive mentality that seems to be only marginally influenced by traffic lights. We saw James Franco on the subway. We went to a lot of trouble to eat pizza from some sort of illegal oven. I imploded on the Brooklyn Bridge. We had cheesecake.
It was a very intense experience. The last memory I have of our NYC adventure is sitting on the bus, heading back to Washington. It was already dark outside, and for a change we weren't stuck in traffic, but instead moving up this 4- or 5-lane river of light. I was rehashing tha last few days, trying to form some cohesive... memories, I guess - and failing, overwhelmed. Bohdan was asleep; Ana could as well have been, given how things were between us, so I was left with all that mental vomit just sloshing around in my skull. It was probably the loneliest I'd felt during the entire trip. But then
the song came on, and those lights certainly weren't going to cheaply romanticize themselves, so quickly it also became the most gloriously - and soothingly - self-indulgent. Loneliness is tough, but solitude I can work wonders with.
