New York, New York, It's a H*** of a Town (October 3)

I have fallen in love with American names,
The sharp names that never get fat,
The snakeskin-titles of mining-claims,
The plumed war-bonnet of Medicine Hat,
Tucson and Deadwood and Lost Mule Flat.

                                                                                 
                                                                               Stephen Vincent Benèt - American Names (1927)

 

...Because, as all South Africans know, the friends in the USA don't like it when we say h***. Other profanities are perfectly acceptable, but you can't say d*** either. Blasphemy is ok. This was on my mind on the long flight from Johannesburg to New York, not because I am the loose-tongued sort who's every other word is an expletive, but more out of fascination with a cultural detail that I don't understand. Why are two words that are so permissible in South Africa and the rest of the English-speaking world so stigmatized here, but others that we consider so much worse are not? I imagine parents scrambling to clamp their hands around their children's ears when I accidentally let slip the d-word while explaining to Sini what a levee is after she's been listening to 'When The Levee Breaks' by Led Zeppelin (on our playlist for this trip). Also, if it's so bad, how come they say those words on family television so often?

Of course television and reality differ, and before you say 'no really, you think?', I'll qualify that statement by saying that my impression of America up to this point is based almost entirely on the American television shows and movies that I've watched since I was a kid. And because of that, I tended to put off visiting the US because I felt like I knew it already.  No mystery, no culture shock, nothing to explore or be surprised by, none of the reasons why we like to travel.  In fact, were it not for the fact that my sister and brother-in-law now live in NYC permanently, we might not have done this trip at all in favour of China or India again.     

But that little detail has rapidly advanced the USA up the list and now, after years of saving, months of planning, weeks of getting really excited as the reality sinks in that we are actually going, and at least 6 days in packing, unpacking, and repacking (not because we had to but because it's fun!), we finally touch down at JFK airport on a warm late-Friday afternoon. We are met by Su-lin and Paul, which is a good thing because, contrary to the impression just about every New York based television show gives you, New York taxis are really, really expensive. We fight our way through the legendary traffic, all the while scanning our surroundings for some sign that this is the USA. I doubt that this is what Paul Simon was thinking of when he and Art Garfunkel sang about looking for America, but we don't see it yet. At ground level, all cities look the same - grey concrete, neon lights, endless streams of cars. An hour and a half of this, and Paul drops us at the reception of the Towers in Brooklyn, where we offload and carry our luggage to Paul and Su-lin's apartment. My head is starting to swim as the jet lag kicks in, but we only pause briefly to catch a breath before Su-lin whisks us to the roof level in time for the sunset...and a view that takes away the breath we just caught.

Oh...There it is.

On seeing the Manhattan Skyline, Sini and I feel like we can go home now. Of course it's just that we're exhausted and feeling more than a little high, so we decide to get some food and take time to land. Our first meal: an 18-inch New York pepperoni pizza. This one tastes better than it does on TV.
_____________

It's tough to write about a city that so many have written about before without repeating what’s already been said. You can find better descriptions of the sites we saw in the days we spent in NY elsewhere. These included the mandatory - A walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, a picnic in Central Park, Ground Zero and the 9/11 memorial, a tour of the Metropolitan museum, Times Square, Phantom of the Opera on Broadway, the Empire State building, the Statue of Liberty. To be clear, we didn’t actually go inside either of the last two. The Empire State building placed itself outside of our modest budget and ideas of practicality (which are admittedly based on our modest budget) - from inside the building you can't see the building. You can see the rest of New York, true, but you can also see the rest of New York from other places that won't charge you $40 a pop. And those photos will have the Empire State building in them.

The Statue of Liberty was closed. While it can be argued that the tough immigration laws have rendered it symbolically closed for decades, this time it was literally closed to visitors. This was due to the Government Shutdown that took place when the US government couldn't agree on how to finance itself. None of the locals seemed to care much about this, and many seemed to be completely unaware that such a thing was even happening or why. The reason we knew about it was because it threatened to derail much of our trip, since all federal government-run parks and attractions were closed. Ultimately, it didn’t affect us at all since we had no plans to actually go inside the Statue of Liberty - we settled for sailing past it on the Staten Island ferry on a rainy, foggy afternoon - but it did provide a sharp reminder of the brittleness of the feet of iron and clay.  

It's oddly nostalgic walking about the streets of New York. 'Oddly' because although I've never been here before, so many of the street and area names ring bells. A lot of songs I know refer to these streets, just as indigenous folk music usually describes its’ surroundings.

 

'Uptown got it's hustlers, the Bowery got it's bums, 42nd street got Big Jim Walker, he a bull-shootin son-of-gun'

                                       - Jim Croce, You Don't Mess Around With Jim

 

'...Countin the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike…'

                                       - Simon & Garfunkel, America

 

Getting around those streets is easy. The busses go everywhere the subways don't, and the subways go everywhere. It's reliable and affordable. Why is this such a problem back home? Even so, we walk a lot. Unlike Europe, no one seems to mind if we cross the street in violation of a pedestrian stop light. Doing this even provides me with an opportunity to do the Dustin Hoffman line from Midnight Cowboy when a taxi almost takes me out. I get to do this more than once. I never get tired of it!