New York

(Written while we were in Vegas, but we refused to pay $24.99 a day in our hotel for internet, so uploaded now that we're in LA)

After our last visit to New York City, I'm fairly sure I told anyone who would listen that I want to live there. Let me now change that to 'could not live there more than nine months of the year': I hate you New York summer. We arrived bang smack in the middle of a heatwave, and it was between 36 and 38 degrees every day, and not much better at night. Even the New Yorkers were complaining about it, and it made our whole experience sweaty, stifling and exhausting (not to mention unpleasantly odoured, with wafting smells of trash piled on the streets). You know it's ridiculously hot when you arrive in Vegas a week later and find the desert heat a relief from the sticky humidity of the city. My hair somehow managed to be constantly lank and frizzy at the same time, and my makeup kept melting off my face. Yuck. At least the place we were staying in had air conditioning, and we often wouldn't end up leaving the house until late afternoon just so we could avoid the worst of the heat. Oh well, at least that gave us an excuse to stay up late and then sleep in I guess. Also, while we triumphed over the NYC subway system on our last visit, we failed dismally this time round. I blame a combination of heatwave brain and my new so-called 'smart' phone; although helpful some of the time, I've now learnt that it shouldn't be relied on too much. On one memorable occasion, it directed us into an AA meeting instead of the subway station we were trying to find. Maybe it has a built-in app which senses you've been drinking too much? Despite such tribulations, NYC was still amazing, and our six nights there flew by.

We arrived at JFK airport about 9pm on Monday 15^th July, and successfully caught the air train to the Jamaica Center, transferred to the J train and made it to where we were staying in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (we would not be so successful on our way back to the airport, but that's another story). I had booked us a colorful little apartment through Airbnb, and as I mentioned earlier, it belonged to a burlesque performer, the lovely Amber Ray. I think Amber rivalled me in terms of clothing/accessory accumulation, and all her glittery outfits, shoes, jewellery and burlesque bits and pieces were on display for us to nosy at, along with tons of interesting books and DVDs. For what we paid, the big bonuses of Amber's place were the air conditioning, free wifi and location right next to a subway station. There was also a sad and somewhat bedraggled looking cat that hung out on the stairs, so I got my kitty fix after much missing of the Lulu. The slight downsides were that the building didn't have an elevator and we were on the fifth floor (yes, I could do with the exercise, but it was a pain in the ass carrying a suitcase up and down the stairs), and because it was in Brooklyn, the subway journey into Manhattan was a bit longer than last time and often there weren't many trains going back late at night. We arrived pretty hungry on our first night, and Amber recommended a restaurant and bar across the road called Moto, which was just what we were after. There was a folksy kind of female singer/guitarist performing in the tiny space, which was lit by candles and decorated with various science-y looking artefacts in bell jars. I had my first healthy and reasonably portioned meal of the trip (an asparagus concoction that I've been craving ever since, while punishing my body with pizza, veggie dogs and nachos instead), and our lovely server gave us their signature toffee date dessert on the house. Mmm, free stuff...

The apartment building we stayed in in Brooklyn

The burlesque bedroom

The view from our apartment fire escape

Stairway cat! Poor lil buddy...

On Tuesday we embarked on a much-needed outing to the laundromat for the first time, which was an adventure in itself. I guess they're pretty self-explanatory for the New Yorkers who use them every day, but the ways of the laundromat were a bit mystifying for us (do we bring our own detergent or do they supply it there? Where does the detergent go in the machine? Are we meant to wait in the laundromat the whole time our clothes are being washed or do we go away and come back? Do we tip the person who works there?) We bumbled our way through it (and yes, I did tip the lady to be on the safe side), and finally had clean clothes again. 

Waiting outside the laundromat, attempting to look like we know what we're doing...

Running well ahead of schedule for once, we stopped by the Bowery Ballroom where we were seeing the band Wire play that night, only to find that the gig was going to start about two hours later than we had thought. We wandered round the East Village for a while, and had dinner at a Louisiana-themed restaurant on St Mark's Place called the Saint. Their music playlist was firmly 90s (the bad along with the good: hooray, Nirvana, followed by ugh, Aqua) and Sam and I drank beers, played 'guess the 90s tune' and attempted to get my just-purchased American SIM card up and running on my phone. It was decreed that we should make it to the Bowery Ballroom in time to catch the opening band, which unfortunately neither of us ended up liking (Bear in Heaven, I believe they were called, and yes, there were hipster moustaches and the inevitable terrible sounds to accompany them). Sam wanted to be on the ground floor to watch Wire, but I couldn't see anything, so found a spot by myself up top on the mezzanine where I had a decent view. Despite not knowing any Wire beforehand (this gig was all Sam's doing, the one that we detoured to NYC for), I had a really good time, particularly when they started playing their more raucous material a few songs into the set. After the show, we hung round with the intention of having a few more beers, and Sam ranted and raved about how awesome the show had been. It was then agreed that we had nothing to lose by sneaking out back and trying to meet the band (you can already see a theme emerging on our trip...). Sam talked nicely to one of the roadies, who told us to hang round but stay out of the way while they were loading up the gear, and then he'd see what he could do. As it turns out, we got to meet Graham Lewis the bass player, who was a very personable old British dude, and we stood outside chatting with him while he had a smoke. Because I didn't know Wire, I wasn't in the least bit starstruck, and was quite able to formulate sentences and make witty conversation (I'm fairly sure Tim Armstrong and Mark Arm must have thought I was a mute; an idiotically smiling mute). 

Meeting Graham Lewis, the bass player from Wire

As we were leaving, Graham then called us back to introduce us to his New York friend Larry, who would supposedly give us some tips on cool places to go. Larry looked like a straight-haired version of Sideshow Bob, and was a real character who had been living in the Lower East side since the 80s. Most of Larry's recommendations were more lamentations on how good things used to be, and involved helpful hints like 'you wanna check out such and such a place; it was great, but it closed down a few years back.' We ended up going to Max Fish (according to Larry, the last good bar left standing in the neighbourhood; but yes, it's due to close down soon) for a drink, and it was pretty cool. Given that we were seeing the Specials the next day and I didn't want to ruin it by partying all night beforehand, we limited ourselves to the one drink, and then got the train home by about 2am.

On Wednesday we went for a walk in search of Cotton Candy Machine - a little art gallery about ten blocks from where we were staying - along the way encountering people coping with the heatwave by turning on fire hydrants and basking in the spray (so it wasn't just something that used to happen on Sesame Street). I fell in love with a couple of prints at Cotton Candy Machine (a Tara McPherson and a Glenn Barr), but since we were going straight to the Specials gig from the gallery, it wasn't practical to buy them and lug them around, so we got some stickers instead and promised to come back. Unfortunately we didn't get around to this, although now I'm woefully down on my money anyway, so perhaps it's a good thing... A quick dinner was had at AOA, a generic pizza place and bar on Avenue of the Americas, and I was randomly befriended by two middle-aged and possibly quite drunk French women in the bathrooms, who informed me in heavily accented English that I was a 'nice-looking, all-American girl,' at which I laughed out loud. In hindsight, maybe they had been wanting to try cocaine and misguidedly thought I was their best bet? We do seem to get approached by people wanting to sell us drugs all the time... From there, it was a short stroll to Pier 86 where the Specials were playing an outdoor show, and it was an impressive setting, with the stage right at the end of the pier and the Hudson River beyond, and downtown New York skyscrapers rising up all around.

Very excited, pre-Specials show on the pier. Apparently this is the look of of a 'nice, All-American girl' according to my new French buddies. Maybe Tom Petty will write a song about me...

The stage at the Specials gig, with New Jersey skyline in background

I've seen the Specials twice before, but this was by far the coolest venue, and it wasn't horribly oversold so there was plenty of room to dance. Excellent for people-watching too; we were there about an hour before they started and it was still light out, so we passed the time by checking out the vast array of tattoos on show (I'd say 8/10 people there had at least one visible tattoo). Actually, a side note: tattoos here are far more prevalent than in New Zealand, and it's not uncommon to see people with full sleeves, neck tattoos, etc working in jobs where that totally wouldn't be allowed back home (waitresses in restaurants, post office workers, staff in hotels). Awesome. In saying that though, because there are more tattoos in general, that also means there are a greater number of rubbish tattoos; I've probably liked less than a third of those I've seen. Right, back to the Specials... They opened with 'Do the Dog,' followed by 'Dawning of a New Era,' and played every song I wanted to hear apart from 'Too Hot.' Not necessarily one of my favourites, but come on, the most appropriate song to play during a New York heatwave. The George Zimmerman verdict came out while we were in Seattle, and discussion about it has dominated what little of the news we've seen here (George Zimmerman is the cop who was acquitted of shooting black teenager Trayvon Martin; just in case this hasn't managed to penetrate the rugby-laden New Zealand news), and it was most appreciated by the crowd that the Specials dedicated 'A Message to You Rudy' to George Zimmerman, and 'It Doesn't Make It Alright' to Trayvon. Always a band who both exemplified and were vocal in advocating racial harmony, it was great to dance along to Specials songs with such a diverse crowd; in terms of age too, as there were little mohawked kids there along with their wrinkly punker parents. After a thoroughly enjoyable show ('Enjoy Yourself,' why yes I did thank you Specials), I got talking to a girl while we were both waiting outside the portaloos for our boys. I was most surprised to happen upon an American who had not only heard of New Zealand (Her: “Are you from the North or South Island?”), but who had actually been there and knew more about it than I do (Me: “Oh you went to the Waitomo Caves, yeah I've never been there, I hear they're nice; wait, remind me which island they're on again?”). For shame, Andy. My next holiday will be spent investigating more of my own country. It will also have the added bonus of being less expensive than this one is proving to be. American girl Gen and her Aussie boy Chris and Sam and I all ended up going out to a bar together (can't remember the name, but it was in Tribeca somewhere), and it had a sweet photo booth where we got some boozy pics. There were jalapeno poppers at another bar at some point, and another arduous journey home which involved too much waiting in subway stations and transfers between trains.

Thursday was dedicated to shopping in the East Village, but I discovered quickly that I have no patience or enthusiasm for shopping in such heat, and managed to buy one record all day (Descendents' 'Milo Goes to College.' Although following a later mishap, it is yet to transpire whether the record will end up accompanying me back to NZ or not). I feel bad for the Bettie Page store, the only clothing shop I tried anything on at, proceeding to transfer all my sweat to a very pretty blouse, which I then realised didn't actually fit, and had to put back. Apologies also to the people of New York, who were subjected to my pasty legs in all their mini-skirted glory, as I no longer gave a damn and just wanted rid of my signature black tights in order to experience some breeze. I think this particular day was probably the hottest of the lot, and even the squirrels in Tompkins Square park - a highlight of the last trip - failed to do much for me. Happily, we actually had a friend to meet up with later that night though, former Dunedin gal Koren who has been living in NYC for about the last six months. We joined Koren and her very welcoming friends Kurt and Francisco on the rooftop patio of a bar in Williamsburg called Night of Joy, replete with lanterns and fancy designer cocktails (after trying one to say we had, Sam and I quickly returned to beer,). We learnt from Koren and co that NYC is almost unlivably expensive; the public transport can suck (there was a particularly impassioned rant about the incompetence of the G train); that it's incredibly hard to find work here; and if you think the heatwave is bad, wait till you experience the cold in winter; despite all this, everyone agreed that it was entirely worth it, and that NYC is the place to be. I liked that as the conversation progressed further, it became apparent that everything Koren and I both knew about NYC while growing up had been gleaned from Babysitters' Club books. Francisco left at some point, and the remaining four of us ended the night at the amazing Kellogg's diner (well, probably just a standard American diner, but in my book, if it's open 24 hours a day for sit-down meals of jalapeno poppers, dirty nachos and beer, it's amazing), and then went our separate ways on various trains.

The mighty diner

On Friday we wanted to make up for our previous Empire State building visit (conducted at 11.30 at night in thick fog) and actually get some kind of daytime bird's eye view of the city, so we did the Top of the Rock visit. I think I'd recommend this one more anyway; it's better to be on another building (the Rockefeller Center) so you can look at the Empire State Building, and because this one wasn't quite as tall, you're on a similar level with some of the other skyscrapers rather than peering down at them all, so it's more immersive. I knew the city was huge, but it was quite staggering seeing it in its entirety; regrettably, the heat was no less intense 70 stories above ground.

Sam and the view from the Top of the Rock. Bet he can make this into some kind of awesome phallic artwork...

Following on from our 'correcting wrongs made on the last trip' theme, we then visted the Met and were able to spend more than an hour there. I had been looking forward to the 'Punk: From Chaos to Couture' exhibition that was on, but to be honest it was a bit of a fizzer; really just an excuse to show some outfits by big name designers that didn't seem to me to be particularly relevant to the punk movement at all; a few Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren pieces, but mostly just wearble art type outfits created in more recent years that used punk as inspiration. And why on earth would you bother creating a life-sized replica of the men's bathrooms at CBGBs to display in a New York museum when no-one thought it was worth saving the actual bar from closing down a few years ago? Granted, some of the Alexander McQueen outfits were cool (Mel, I wanted to take some photos of them for you, but the exhibition was strictly no photography, and then they didn't even have postcards of them available to buy in the gift shop, where I was quite ready to squander some dollars. I did get some sweet duct tape printed with safety pins though), and certain parts of the exhibition design were quite inspired (the walls in one section were modelled on classical architecture, with columns and recesses housing mannequins that appeared from far away as if carved from marble, but on closer inspection, were actually made from polystyrene, and you could inscribe your own graffiti into them). On the whole though, more couture than chaos, and we only spent about twenty minutes there, dedicating the rest of our time to the sections of the museum we had missed last time. Predictably, I enjoyed the 20^th century art rooms most, and we looked around as much as we could right up until closing time, but even given a week I don't think you could cover everything there with the attention it deserves. Finally, it was time for one of those few and far between early nights, and we went back to the apartment where I was most pleased to be able to catch up on new season Dexter (I'm three episodes in, and it's soooo good!)

Jasper Johns removed the red and blue from the American flag, and I inadvertently add it back in with my outfit

Our last day in NYC started earlier than most, with a visit to the shops in Williamsburg, about one train stop away from our apartment. The vintage stores I'd read up on were a bit disappointing (way overpriced and too hipster-curated), but the vibe of the area was good and thankfully the weather had calmed down a little bit and was starting to border on almost pleasant. We wandered by McCarran Park, and went back to the excellent Kellogg's Diner for a late lunch, then once again it was back to the East Village to revisit Generation Records, which we'd nearly forgotten from our last trip. As we were walking there, from out of nowhere - and about two seconds after I'd mentioned that I was starting to enjoy the weather way more - it began to rain. Heavy, pelting, bucketing-down rain of the variety that made everyone on the street stop what they were doing and go and take shelter under something. After about ten minutes of this, we had no choice but to go back out into the street and keep walking, as we were due to see the Slackers play soon, and the party boat would wait for no man, departing from the pier at 8pm sharp. Thus, we were entirely drenched by the time we arrived, but at least we made it with about five minutes to spare. And here I will copy and paste my post-gig Facebook status update as a too-lazy-to-write-a-proper-review review:

“Awesome things about seeing the Slackers on a party boat in NYC:

1. Seeing the Slackers on a party boat in NYC. Duh.
2. Marshalling a large bunch of the crowd around me into requesting 'Old Dog' - “So you like the song 'Old Dog' right, it's pretty good eh? I came all the way from Nooo Zeeeland and I really wanna hear that one, so how bout when they take requests at the end, you yell for 'Old Dog' with me?”
3. The Slackers being forced to play 'Old Dog' through extreme crowd support.
4. Vic Ruggiero from the Slackers being a complete babe.
5. Meeting Vic Ruggiero.
6. Vic Ruggiero acknowledging upon meeting me that never before had a crowd demanded Old Dog' with such enthusiasm.
7. A random dude coming up to me on the way home from the show and recognising me as the 'Old Dog' instigator and showing me a photo of his recently passed away dog and being stoked on the song being played.
8. Generally being more of a cat person anyway.”

To take it up another few notches:

9. The rain I mentioned before later evolved into a thunderstorm, and it was pretty epic sailing past the Statue of Liberty with the Slackers playing and lightning flashes cutting across the sky.
10. Vic Ruggiero was wearing a sailor's oufit.
11. I'm now the proud owner of Slackers undies.

I need to take lessons from Vic in how to pose for photos on a party boat; he achieves 'boozy captain,' while I do 'stunned mullet'

After the party boat docked at the all too early hour of 11pm, we went to a bar in Midtown Manhattan so I could use the bathroom and inevitably ended up staying for some more drinks. To get to the airport the next day for our flight at 8.15am, we would have to be up at the ungodly hour of 5am; I went to bed at 3, and Sam gave up on bed in favour of staying up drinking and sleeping on the plane. It's therefore a surprise that the rather unfortunate missing of the flight was not actually our fault, as we did indeed make it to the subway at the designated hour, bags packed and feeling chuffed with ourselves, if somewhat sleep-deprived. What we didn't realise was that a lot of maintenance/building work was being conducted on certain subway routes, and the scheduled time for this (that would supposedly cause the least disruption to public transport – ha!) was Sunday mornings. The J train that was meant to take an hour to JFK stopped at a random station about halfway along the route and remained stopped. We waited... and waited... and waited... We were the only ones in our carriage apart from a passed out drunk guy, so weren't quite sure what was happening. Sam tried to get off the train, only to be told to get back on, so we figured it was going to start moving soon. It did, after about 25 minutes, but in the wrong direction! We attempted to get off at the next station, but the train driver explained it was being rerouted and would go back about 5 stops, then we could get off, get on a different train to connect to another train, which would then take us to the airport. This may have worked out okay, if there weren't additional 15 minute waits in between each train, which then went at about half the speed they usually did. Our hour long train trip took two and a half hours, and we got to the airport at exactly 8.15am as our flight departed. Guh. I was envisioning what the cost would be of getting us on the next flight, and was close to tears, as it either seemed like I would have to forgo the rest of my spending money in order to achieve this, or miss seeing Rancid in Las Vegas. Thankfully, whether it was due to our charming NZ demeanour, my obvious close-to-tears-ness, or the fact that the lovely lady at the Delta desk was well aware of the havoc the subway work was causing for unsuspecting tourists, we were able to get put on the next flight, and she waived the additional charges, “since you're obviously having a bad day.” At this point I felt like we were on the Amazing Race. Once we got on the plane, we even found we had been upgraded to premium economy, so had comfier seats with more legroom. I had used up so much stress by this point that I didn't have any left to worry about flying, so it was actually a relaxing five hour flight for once. Until we got to Vegas, where Sam realised that he had left the bag he was carrying (which contained all the records we'd bought) back at JFK airport... Sigh... We're still trying to get them back now, but after much time spent on hold, being directed to other phone numbers and filling out online claim forms, it seems that they may end up being a casualty of our bad day. And Sam is usually so protective of records too...

Vegas up next for the blog treatment, no big wins yet (a minor small one though – I put in $20, won $180), but still two nights left, so fingers crossed....