At Chelsea square in daylight to sample the major pancakes to provide rocket fuel that will keep you going the whole day. Situated on the corner of ninth and twentyfirst with the daily stampede of school buses, garbage trucks, yellow cabs and police cars, it is so easy to sit and watch the world go by rather quickly whilst drinking and endless cup of coffee (coifee). That’s something the Americans have got right!
The temperature rises and it’s a cab ride southwards through the perpetual traffic flows towards the distant grey twin towers standing in the haze, alongside the waterfront of the west side, dereliction, dust, potholes, traffic snarl-ups. The road surface improves, garbage bags disappear, and we are entering the financial district. From the observation deck of the World Trade Centre, Manhattan stretches out to the north as far as the eye can see, and it is a landscape of buildings. Wall street below, looks like a wedding cake convention with ornate decorations atop office blocks as different corporations have showed off their financial prowess at different times.
Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ springs to mind with ‘the air heavy with the drone of passing helicopters’, below following their own highway far above the bustle on the ground, where yellow cabs like an army of ants service the city. Air conditioning systems and huge ventilation fans labour away to keep the inhabitants cool. Water tanks sitting ever ready to serve whoever needs it next. All around, buildings, buildings, a tall pinnacle here, a plume of smoke there, a spectacular suspension bridge holding one vital part of the metropolis to another. To the south the largest of them all the Verrazano Narrows Bridge majestically spans the mouth of New York Harbour. From this vantage Liberty is a mere distant figure on a tiny island in the middle of a vast stretch of water.
From the World Trade Centre plaza, at 89 degrees (Farenheit not tilt), it is a walk back uptown joining the constant stampede of natives through the melee past the Woolworth building, the Cathedral of Commerce, or is it Monty Python’s ‘Crimson Life Assurance?’ Opposite, another one of those not square squares, a great place for demonstrations! Immigrant workers at this time, and not a ‘Ghostbuster’ in site. Dragged northwards by the rush moving along Fifth Avenue to the Soho Guggenhiem Museum, not to be confused with Frank Lloyd Wright’s version, is hosting an exhibition of Chinese art. The compactness of Soho spreads out to give way to parking lots, adverts are painted directly onto the walls of buildings, to cover the entire wall, such streetscape! Another cab ride, cruising through the traffic with Will Smith playing on the radio…this is most definitely New York! The ‘real’ Guggenhiem museum, the one by Frank Lloyd Wright that is in the architecture books, remarkably reminiscent of Lubetkin’s animal enclosures at Dudley Zoo, and on the surface not in much better condition. The concrete has fared better internally and the spiral ramp does look impressive, more chinese art but the building itself just maybe not living up to its legend.
Central Park is a strange place, if you don’t have wheels on your feet you are a second class citizen, roller-bladers have priority here, along with the cyclists. You take you life in your hands as you cross in front of them. The marathon man perimeter fence around the lake must be to stop joggers getting their feet wet if they forget to follow the one-way system. Ice skaters however were getting their feet wet as the 105 degrees air temperature was proving too much to keep the ice rink from melting. Strawberry Fields is extremely busy, ‘Imagine’ the John Lennon memorial, apparently has had fresh flowers placed on it every day since the singer’s death. By contrast the scene of the crime outside the Dakota Building stands anonymously among the apartment blocks.
Hard Rock café, gold discs and guitars on the wall, a Chinese chicken salad that must have had half of central park on a bowl and the inevitable bill splitting ceremony made all the more entertaining by trying to pay using travellers’ cheques. Walking south, traffic, traffic, traffic, and the Friday night stampede to get off of Manhattan. A jazz club in lower East Village, songs about heads turning up in garbage cans, in tales about life in New York. Female guitarists and a really entertaining evening.
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