New York

New York is awesome, and seven nights was not enough to do it justice unfortunately – we would've stayed for another week if we could. There was so much going on, the people were lovely, and the city as a whole was enamoured by Sam's jacket; we couldn't go a block without a compliment on it. If you're in NYC and want an easy way to meet people, wear a studded leather jacket, seems it's a conversation piece.

We arrived at Penn Station on the Monday night after an 11 hour train trip from Montreal, which I swear felt like only 2 because it was so comfortable I managed to sleep for most of it. Another victory for the train, best mode of transport ever... I didn't want to tell Mum this till now because she'd worry, but our original NYC accommodation fell through, and I was frantically trying to organise a new place to stay right up until the day before we left Montreal. Luckily we managed to hook up an apartment that was within budget and possibly better than the previous one anyway. It was in Astoria, Queens, right across the river from Midtown Manhattan, and was spacious, air conditioned and owned by a model who was away travelling. Glamorous.

Our first day in NYC involved successfully catching the subway (for some reason I really took to the subway, and was the one planning the routes and transfers and for the most part getting them right, whereas in every other city my sense of direction has been terrible) to the Guggenheim. Although in hindsight it wasn't a patch on any of the New York museums we were to visit subsequently, we were suitably impressed by the Guggenheim as our first official NYC attraction, and I appreciated their Kandinsky room especially. After we were Guggenheimed out, we wandered over to Central Park and walked towards downtown, admiring the famous Alice in Wonderland sculpture on the way (I had to fight my way through small children to get a photo on it), the Central Park Zoo, and a bunch more squirrels, which we still don't seem to have tired of. From there, it was on to the corner of 52^nd and Broadway for the obligatory Rancid 'Olympia, WA' related photo, and then to Times Square. A pointless place if ever I saw one. People - lost tourists mainly, I hope - just mill round, or sit on seats and gaze aimlessly at the advertising screens. Iconic, but pretty freaky, so we quickly moved on to an Irish Bar called the Perfect Pint for a few decent beers, some insanely huge bar snacks that were quickly upgraded to dinner status once we saw the size of them and some not too bad rock music on the jukebox.

Sam in Times Square - not too sure what he was attempting with the hands...

Day two in NYC started off with photos at another hallowed spot, 53^rd and 3^rd (it's a Ramones song, if you haven't heard it, deduct ten punk points then go look it up). The NYC Museum of Modern Art or MOMA was also conveniently situated on 3^rd ave, so we headed there for what was to be a long afternoon. Good, but long, So much amazing art, but aesthetic overload set in after about two hours. In the space of a few rooms, you see van Gogh's 'Starry, Starry Night,' Picasso's 'Les Demoiselles d'Avignon,' Dali's 'Persistence of Memory' (the melting clocks one) and about a million other works I studied, all of which were surrounded by a gaggle of sightseers there for the sole purpose of taking photos. I couldn't believe that photos were allowed for a start, but what really got to me was waiting in a line to see the Dali work, and everyone ahead of me would get to it, snap a photo, then leave without even a glance at the work. I got to look at it closely for about 30 seconds before the line became impatient and I felt I had to move on. Really not the ideal situation for viewing art. Granted, Sam did take a few photos of works that were particularly special to us (I had to get a photo with the Joseph Cornell shadowboxes!), but there were seriously people there who actually just walked from painting to painting taking photos, not reading the wall labels and not even looking at the work unless it was from the other side of a lens. Disgraceful. For me, the whole interest was in seeing the texture and application of paint in these works, after years of looking solely at flat reproductions in books that could never really capture this. Aside from the works already mentioned, other highlights were the Francis Bacon triptych, the Magritte work, the Boccioni triptych and the Warhol Elvis screenprint. I was never a fan of Jackson Pollock, but admit that his painting was far more impressive in the flesh, and there was also a Willem de Kooning retrospective on that gave me a new appreciation for his work.

Joseph Cornell shadowboxes! This was definitely worth a photo

In the interests of having an authentic NYC tourist experience, we had decided we'd go see some stand-up comedy, in a club that was on the Upper West Side, which would also allow us to do the John Lennon tribute thing on the way. We wandered through Central Park with more purpose this time, and found Strawberry Fields and the Imagine mosaic tribute to John Lennon, where we had a sit down and sombre moment, and then the same again at the Dakota Hotel across the road where he was shot. Dad, I even got some photos for you.

The John Lennon Imagine mosaic in Central Park

After this we perhaps weren't in the mood for stand-up comedy and didn't really know what to expect anyway, but it turned out to be really cool and we had a great night. There were about ten comedians, from seasoned professionals (two of whom were appearing on Letterman later in the week), to amateurs making their debut. With the exception of one who was godawful and cringeworthy, the others were excellent, our two favourites being a tough looking black guy who professed to be afraid of all animals, and did a most realistic squirrel impression, and another guy whose routine centred round the general hassles of air travel, which we could certainly relate to. There was a draw done at the end of the show for free shots, and in true Andy and Sam form, we won it – I think the MC was taken back by our cries of 'Noooooooo!' when it was announced. We dutifully downed our shots (and they were double-sized, ugh), then caught the subway to the Empire State Building. As in San Francisco, we bought a Citypass for NYC, which meant we'd get discounted entry into a bunch of things we wanted to do, but then also feel obliged to do things we were so-so on to get our money's worth. For me the Empire State Building fitted into the latter category, and I just wanted to get it out of the way, but ended up feeling quite bad for insisting we go up it that night when there was pretty much zero visibility due to fog. At least we didn't have to wait in huge lines, and the swirling fog at the top was creepy and made me think of Ghostbusters (probably the shots helped too), although our photos are less than stellar. As it turned out, we ran out of time to fit in everything we wanted to do anyway, so I think I was forgiven for the Empire State incident...

The next day proved to be our most expensive yet – we found the East Village, and a succession of cool shops selling all manner of punk paraphernalia, clothing, records, etc. 'Trash and Vaudeville' and 'Search and Destroy' in particular were awesome, and we also got chatting to the sales assistants, who told us about some gigs coming up that weekend. After some dirty nachos (they made the two four ones look positively healthy) and a PBR, we went and took some more obligatory photos, at Joey Ramone Place and outside the old CBGBs venue. I had read about an art gallery that showed lowbrow and pop surrealist work called Last Rites Gallery that I really wanted to check out, so we caught the subway uptown a bit to catch it before it closed. Unfortunately when we went in they we de-installing the last show and preparing for the next one and weren't actually open, but luckily the curator was really nice, and gave us invites to the opening on the Saturday night, which just happened to be for a Laurie Lipton exhibition, a really incredible artist whose work I had come across in a Juxtapoz Illustration book a few months ago. We now had a punk gig and an exhibition opening lined up for our previously free Saturday night, so on that note we bought some beer and headed back to the apartment to keep it casjh and have a quiet one in preparation. Ooh, and I finally accomplished one of my lifetime goals, spending the evening sitting on an actual New York fire escape and rereading one of my all-time favourite books, 'The Good Fairies of New York' by Martin Millar. Book nerd trip highlight for sure...

Eerie Empire State Building in the fog picture taken by Sam

What's left of CBGBs

On the Friday our intention had been to start off with a visit to the Statue of Liberty, but we took one look at the line (what looked to be thousands of people, a two hour wait and most of it in the hot sun) and decided it wasn't really worth it. We went to Wall Street instead (no protests were happening at the time unfortunately, so it was very quiet and there wasn't much to see), and then to the site where they're constructing the new World Trade Center. Our tourist activity quota filled, we then decided to go back to the East Village, via the Lower East Side. A slight delay ensued when we came across the punk dive bar the Double Down Saloon - with their excellent two for one deal on PBRs, we could hardly pass it by, despite not having eaten all day, and so we spent a merry hour or so indulging. Mildly tipsy, we proceeded to the Joe Strummer tribute mural, where a nice young man took our photo, and then to Tompkins Square Park for some serious squirrel watching. We counted 16 in one small enclosed space, saw our first black squirrels, and then very quickly our first black vs. grey squirrel fights (apparently squirrels of differing colours can't seem to live next to each other in harmony either). Somewhere on our travels we found C-squat and took some pictures, went back to Trash and Vaudeville for more unnecessary purchases, and then to Angelica Kitchen for dinner (BEST restaurant ever, it's entirely vegan and organic, and my seitan and veggie wrap with – wait for it – chocolate peanut sauce and lime-jalapeno tofu sour cream was the most amazing thing I've ever eaten. This place needs to open up a Dunedin branch). With full bellies, and a bit later than planned, we headed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for their late night Friday. It quickly became apparent that we definitely should have allowed for more than one hour at the Met, and I'm really sorry that we had to rush through it so quickly. There was a Lucian Freud show that was stunning, the armour room was really cool, and I was impressed to see the studiolo of Federico da Montefeltro that I'd studied back in first year art history. An utterly amazing museum, and one that I hope I get to visit again one day with more time up my sleeve.

Tompkins Square Park - photo worthy for more Rancid lyric references, and awesome squirrels

On Saturday we caught the subway all the way out to Coney Island, and experienced our first beach of the trip. This really just involved standing on the sand and getting a photo with a fake palm tree, but it made us feel summery at least. Sam managed to convince me to go on the Wonder Wheel and a haunted house ride, but I put my foot down and refused to go on any rollercoasters. We did get slighlty hustled by a streetwise carny type though, who implored Sam to pay him more money in order to win me a giant teddy bear, despite my loud assertions that I did not want a giant teddy bear. We escaped relatively unscathed, and only about $5.00 down. After a long subway ride back into Manhattan, we stumbled upon FAO Schwarz, the huge toystore with the giant piano from the movie 'Big,' and spent a bit of time looking round, but I couldn't be bothered fighting my way through the teeming masses of children to have a go on the piano itself. Once again, time slipped away on us, and by the time we made it to the Laurie Lipton exhibition opening, we were running about two hours late. No matter, in NYC apparently that's fashionable, and the opening was still packed. We were most pleased to have our picture snapped while there, and it appears on the gallery's facebook page with the caption 'sartorial fans' – I blame Sam's jacket again. The show itself was very impressive, and if I had a spare twenty grand (and if most of the works hadn't been sold already anyway), I would have loved to have bought one. Google image search 'Laurie Lipton' and prepare to be amazed. I did buy a book however (for the more reasonable price of $40.00), and Laurie signed it for me too.

At the top of the Wonder Wheel on Coney Island (just to prove I did actually do it)

The utterly brilliant pencil and charcoal drawings of Laurie Lipton

Sam was starting to get ants in his pants by this stage that we were going to miss the gig in Brooklyn, so we hightailed it to the subway, and then got a taxi once we were off, only to find that like gigs in Dunedin, gigs in New York apparently run behind schedule, and we were in fact on time. The bar, St Vitus, was pretty cool, although I have to admit that the band wasn't exactly my thing (esoteric noise doom music played through a cloak of smoke machine haze so thick that you could not actually see the band. Kind of like being back on top of the Empire State Building in the fog again). Sam had fun though, and stocked up on merch at the end (including an interesting beer holder device known as a 'coozie'), and was happy to discover a vegetarian food stall at the side of the bar which provided us with some good post-gig snacks.

By rights, Sunday should have been a day of rest, but we still had a few things to fit in, so we dragged ourselves out of bed and headed off to the American Natural History Museum to get our science on. Many cool exhibits, but the best by far was the special exhibition that just happened to coincide with our visit.....on miniature frogs! Yussss! We saw the most poisonous animal in the world (a golden frog if I remember correctly), whose venom could kill ten humans and 20,000 mice, as well as a bunch of less dangerous but equally cute mini frogs, and then a bigger guy who I'm sure was the model for hypno-toad from Futurama.

The last thing left to do on our Citypass also turned out to be one of the most enjoyable – a two hour NYC Harbour Lights cruise. In a typical Sunday state, and during a huge rainstorm, we were dubious that this would be any fun, but stoically decided to give it a go. Fortunately the weather cleared up about five minutes into the cruise, and it was really smooth and pleasant the whole way. The tour guide was fantastic, a real character of a New Yorker who had been doing the commentary for eighteen years, and filled it with plenty of random facts and personal anecdotes (such as meeting his wife on the boat; how both September 11 and the day the plane landed in the Hudson River happened on his days off; and the worst day he ever had at work was being abused by three pregnant belligerent drunk women who had to be removed by security, and then being rushed to hospital with appendicitis). The cruise started off in daylight, and as night fell, buildings were lit up and it was really magical. As it happened, the boat also did a couple of loops around the Statue of Liberty, so it turned out we didn't end up missing it after all. We stopped in at another Irish bar on the way home for a casual Drambuie and some beers, and all in all it was a most satisfactory end to our time in NYC. 

We saw her in the end, if somewhat blurrily

Ha, and while waiting for the subway, we managed to fit in yet another authentic NYC experience – being accused of terrorism by a particularly vigilant and overzealous policewoman! Sam was taking some photos of the subway tracks while we waited for our train (with the intention of using them in artworks when we got home, and also there were some interesting rats running round down there that we wanted to see), and once he'd finished, we hear this really intense, robotic voice telling us 'Sir, I'm glad you put that camera away' over and over again. We were kind of confused, then she started repeating 'when I see you taking a photo that doesn't have a person in it, I get suspicious, it looks like terrorism.' Fair enough to be on guard considering what New York has been through, but she was like this weird automaton stuck in a loop who couldn't be reasoned with. We were like 'Oh sorry, we didn't realise, we're artists and have been taking lots of city shots to paint from,' but she just kept on with her terrorism line. Finally, after she ascertained that we probably didn't have any Al-Qaeda links and were just some confused tourists, she left us with the line 'Well you know the subway is going to be the next hit. Enjoy your stay in New York.' Yeah, totally enjoyable last subway ride after hearing that....

Exhibit A - one of the offending subway photos... 

Next up - probably to be written in various airports on our way home since I've been having too much fun to catch up with the blog - Minneapolis and Chicago...