(Above photo - New York City skyline - Canonbury Antiques )
I always feel like Crocodile Dundee the first day arriving in New York as I look up at the tall buildings and bump into people like some bumpkin. I have been to New York many times but I still find the scale of the buildings equally mesmerizing and enthralling on each visit. What does everyone do in behind those windows in those rooms up there? How does the sewage system cope with all these people? How does water get to the top of the really tall skyscrapers? It really is a striking metropolis with it’s own unique energy. It was an interesting time - post pandemic - to visit and as I walked around the streets I often thought of how it must have been during lockdown. New York is all about the people and if the streets were eerily empty then the city would really not be itself. It must have been a very strange time to be there - knowing that the millions of inhabitants were there somewhere, hidden behind closed doors whilst the normally thronging and vibrant streets remained empty. I’m sure it would have produced an apocalyptic anxiety in many people.
(Above photo - Start spreading the news... New York City skyline )
Thankfully it’s April 2022 and we hope - touch wood - the worst of the pandemic is behind us. As far as I could see it was business as normal in New York, although you still had to wear your masks on the Subway. At least you were supposed to, I did see quite a few people mask-less. The streets were busy with people, the drivers were honking their horns too much, steam rose out of the manhole covers and the neon lights in Times Square were flashing busily. Start spreading the news - it’s back to normal in Manhattan.
(Above photo - The Fuller Building - Art Deco New York )
I’ve been to New York many times over the years so I do have quite a few distinct memories dating back to the 1980s. One of the first trips was probably mid 1980s as I joined my dad on a business trip. I remember we stayed at the Gramercy Park hotel and we would visit our friend Bryan - an antique dealer - at his showroom around University Place. I remember it was a hot summer and the sun shone down through the skyscraper lined canyons and the heat got trapped in the concrete of the sidewalks to create a sweltering effect. I remember being very excited as I bought an RL Osbourne BMX - which at the time was very hard to come by in the UK - and had it shipped over in a container with antiques that had been purchased. Next to the antique store where we spent a lot of time there was a classic New York deli where the servers were impatient with you as you tried to order.
The next major trip I remember taking was as a teenager right after my A Levels around the summer of 1991. I had taken a Greyhound bus on my own up from Miami where I had finished a two week family holiday in Florida. I came to New York as my friend from home was working in the Gap and and had somehow wangled an apartment so I slept on the sofa for two weeks and explored the city. I got my ear pierced. I danced at the Limelight. I went to see a gig with Michael Franti in Greenwich Village when he was still part of the band Disposible Heroes of Hypocrisy who’s big hit at the time was ‘Television The Drug Of The Nation’. I bumped into a school friend randomly in the city and ended up going to the top of the Twin Towers with her. I drank a lot and tried to kiss girls. I went to a record shop and bought a release on Nu Groove records, a very important label in the history of New York house music. I was young and everything was exciting. I bounced around Manhattan as whim and fancy took me.
(Above photo - CBGB - Legendary New York punk and live music venue )
That’s always a factor with me when visiting New York - the music. A lot of music I like comes from New York - hip hop, garage music, Paradise Garage disco and funk, CBGBs punk and post punk, David Mancusco’s Loft party music, no wave, bits of jazz, Sleeping Bag Records, Strictly Rhythm, Masters at Work, disco and Salsoul. I walk the streets and feel the memories and associations of this musical history. When I see a subway car on an elevated track I want to see it covered in wild style graffiti like it was 1984. Perhaps with a posse breakdancing on a square of vinyl as I exit the station. On a recent trip as I was getting a taxi in from the airport I saw a turn off sign for the ‘Boulevard of Linden’. Instantly it took me back to the Tribe Called Quest song ‘Check The Rime’ which opens with the line ‘Back in the days on the Boulevard of Linden’. Overcome by excitement, I asked the cab driver to stop so I could take a photo. New York and hip hop - that’s a whole cosmos in itself. Listening to it relentlessly in the late 80s - Big Daddy Kane, Eric B and Rakim, Stetsasonic, Ultramagnetic MCs, Jungle Brothers, De La Soul, Gang Starr, KRS1, to name a few - many of the songs would name check places and the Boroughs. Queens, Staten Island, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Uptown, Downtown - I felt like I already new these mythological places before I had even came here.
(Above photo - Walking down 5th Avenue with Hudson Horns during Tartan Week )
On the same trip, I would get out Google maps and find interesting venues and places and walk to them. I stood outside where the Paradise Garage had been and felt the ghost of Larry Levan. I loitered outside the Studio 54 location, perhaps an authentic experience considering most people who went in the hey day probably just ended up waiting outside as it was notoriously difficult to get into. I walked to the Chelsea Hotel where Sid Vicious overdosed. Then onto Greenwich Village to feel the specter of Bob Dylan and the 60s folk scene. I took a subway to Harlem and walked to the Apollo - one of the epicenters for live music for black artists through the ages, James Brown’s ‘Live At The Apollo’ being a classic document of time and place. Each new stop was a chance to soak in the atmosphere and gave me a new reason to walk thought the city as I explored and joined the musical dots. Like London, New York is a musical nexus, particularly - for me at least - the period 1977 to 1990 when it seemed to be a font of creativity and new musical genres.
(Above photo - Tartan Week: Highland marching bands get ready for the parade down 5th Avenue )
For me New York is a walking city as I wonder like a flaneur soaking up the sights and atmospheres. Often the best journeys are random and whimsical, enjoying the architecture and people watching, following where my heart takes me. I found myself outside the Metropolitan Museum of art right on Central Park near the Upper East Side. I tried to remember if I had been here. As soon as I entered I remembered I had. The collection of marbles and art from Roman and Greek classical antiquity is immense. There’s probably more plundered loot here than in the British Museum. I marveled at the busts, relics, bas reliefs, statues, temple fragments and sarcophagus that allowed me to venture on my very own Grand Tour without having to go to Italy. I ventured upstairs and enjoyed the painting and furniture collections. I wish I had started upstairs first as the collection is so huge it’s overwhelming and once you’ve been here a few hours pieces start to merge into one and I started to glaze over - there’s just too much to take in.
(Above photo - Metropolitan Museum of Art - Roman sarcophagus with carved relief )
To walk to the Met I walked up Madison Avenue and enjoyed looking at the high end boutiques - Ralph Lauren, Prada, Hermes, Barbour etc. All the high end brands are here. I did notice how quiet it was with the stores mainly empty apart from the security guards and clerks standing around waiting for business. Or maybe they don’t need it as these are often flagship stores more used as a marquee address rather than a venue to achieve high sales volumes. It does make you think of where retail - in the traditional bricks and mortar version - is headed now that shopping online is so easy and prevalent. If I want a Prada handbag do I really need to go to New York to get it?
Everything’s changing. Like many cities in the world, money and corporations have flooded in and New York has homogenized, perhaps losing some of it’s seedier charm. Much like Soho in London, the eccentric characters and some of it’s flavor has evaporated as chain stores and Starbucks moved in. That said, it still has just enough charm to keep this rambler enticed.
(Above photo - Warwick Castle by Canaletto )
(Above photo - Louis XVI Interiors at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC )
(Above photo - Refined interiors and decorative arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art )
(Above photo - Bronze Burghers of Calais statue by Rodin at Metropolitan Museum of Art )
(Above photo -The collection of marble statues from classical antiquity at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is astounding )
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