Oh little girl, don't care no more

Ignore the signs; if you're a man, you can pee on a bus standing up. You'll bruise your knees, smack your head against a wall and your arms will flail about like a ragdoll, but it's better than emasculating yourself in private.

So Sam, Dicky Peach and I were off to New York, provided our bodies could outlast the bathroom visits. We had originally intended for more to come along, but it didn't work out for everyone. No matter, the three of us were off to see Two Door Cinema Club and Tokyo Police Club play at Webster Hall.

Banana Pond, frozen

Throughout the bus trip Sam was confusing the windblown snow from the bus for legitimate falling white stuff despite the glaring sun. The view when approaching Manhattan never gets old, and is only helped by the fact that as soon as you see it, you know you have to spend the next 45 minutes getting closer to the heart of American society.

Our hostel messed up the bed situation, and when the three beds together we were promised didn't fit into their available two in each room an inevitable fuckup ensued. No matter, we weren't there to do anything but count sheep.

Central Park

We walked from 96th to 56th street, and all the way along we smoked the victory cigars we had purchased in Amherst. We were victorious, passively at worst. Victorious that we were walking through Manhattan in the middle of winter. Victorious that we are fortunate enough to study in this country. And victorious that the three of us, from three different countries, all managed to converge at the right place and time and become sound friends. The victory cigars were only offset by our amateur approach to lighting and consuming them, but while our advent needed improvement, our intent was all there. 

The snow had destroyed Sam's shoes and Peach's circulation. We stopped by J Macs, a bar that thematically supported the troops, but was frequented by the opposite of soldier types. Sam took to stuffing his shoes with toilet paper to soak up the icy water, but such efforts were like the little Dutch by with his finger in the Dyke.

When we finally made it to the concert venue, Terminal 5, a massive line that snaked across both sides of the road greeted us. The cold seemed harsher than ever as we waited to get in, and when we finally did the place seemed relatively barren. We ascertained a decent viewing spot and cemented ourselves there for the night.

The opening band came and went off stage without rousing much of a response. Two Door were next, and were immediately infinity times greater. Their bass player was like a Kyle Lafferty/Peter Hook hybrid while their guitar player was a poor man's Johnny Marr (not an insult, Johnny is on a pedestal so high the world can only see the tips of his shoes). Even if they ditched the bass guitar for a synth in a few songs (a pet hate of mine), they still played a thoroughly excellent set. 

The majority American audience got over enthusiastic to the dance music that played over the P.A. between bands. The reaction usurped the opening band, and was an odd indicator on how live music is treated over here.

Tokyo Police Club headlined the night's show, and we also equally excellent. The beanpole singer/bassman dominated the band, and drew even more attention when his birthday was announced. The band are my age, but it's hard to determine that when you listen to them, but such things should be become less shocking the older I get. The night ended when both bands came out for an encore and a joint performance of Last Nite by The Strokes, the quintessential New York City band of this generation.

That was the end of my night too. While Sam and Dicky Peach headed to Brooklyn, I opted for a retreat to the Upper West Side for tally of those aforementioned sheep.

The next day Peach offered to stay around while Sam and I walked from one part of the park to the other. It was a measured change from our last jaunt through there in November, when all the grass was still visible. The large pond had frozen over, people had traded baseball bats for skis and countless fathers were out sledging with their kids. The moment hit Sam like an epiphany. His life had led him to the moment where he was strolling through a snow covered Central Park while his friends and family were all at home living their lives in their typical day-to-day manner. It's a moment of clarity I can empathise with. The cold doesn't matter. Nor does the weight of any backpack. You're there, living.

We stopped by the Dakota, where John Lennon's final moments shook the world. Across the road a lady was channelling Home Alone 2, but feeding sparrows instead of pigeons. We walked, and walked and walked some more before we stopped around 30th st. The pavement had taken its toll, and rather than getting typically lost, we took a train to Little Italy for dinner.

Dakota

Like a bunch of 15-year-olds given a bit of responsibility, we acted accordingly at dinner. Everytime the door opened the chill brushed across my arse-crack that I can not help prevent displaying in public. Sam and Peach were hoarding the table bread on their plates. Sam even turned the bacon from his carbonara into tiny bacon sandwiches to the disdain of Italy's millions of Nonnas.

The food was amazing and a lovely tribute to the late-night tourist hub. Given the night hours, we took cover from the cold by grabbing any train we could to Brooklyn and a quiet night in Williamsburg.

Well that was the intention anyway. The subway entertainment should have been a precursor for the excellent night that followed. While an elderly man belted out some excellent tunes, a well dressed middle age man relived his youth by dancing all over the station, oblivious to his growing audience. The train left just after he had done the splits, but the train's passengers kept their focus on him as the train headed under the East River.

A bar serving 32oz cups (massive, awesome, 946ml) of Bud for $4 became our temporary home. One man played Pantera and Corrosion of Conformity songs, reminding me of one of the first concerts I went to when I was 14.

A huge black guy and tiny Asian man were both dressed in impeccable white suits straight from the 70s and had left their sense of irony back then as well. I even managed to catch the tiny Asian man while he was in the middle of an ablution. The bathroom had a urinal, and a neighbouring toilet that did not have a door. Such privacy was a not a concern for him.

I injured my hand dancing with a girl from New Jersey who did not share the same enthusiasm for Bruce Springsteen that I had. Meanwhile, John St John's female body-double, Joan St Joan, was sporting one of the most fantastic displays of drunk-eye anyone had seen for a long time.

A random guy had bought me a shot while Sam had been cornered by the one girl in the bar who he didn't want to talk to. Not long after I tried to convince two girls from Melbourne that I am also from Australia, I just don't share their filthy bogan speak. I eventually won out, because it's true.

Sam and Dicky Peach continued to down the giant cups of beer, but I had already spilt one when my hat flung off and flipped it in some over-enthusiastic response to hearing Michael Jackson. The end result of drinking so many large beers mean you have to expel it, and while waiting for our ride back at Bedford station I began to hear what sounded like water being poured onto the tracks. Instead, it was Sam and Peach taking turns at covering one another while the other did their business. Thank god the third rail is on the other side of the track.

Finally, at 5:30AM, our quiet night of dinner and a drink had ended. I must have been hilariously gassy through the night, as when packing and leaving the next day the only other awake person in the room (a pretty Spanish girl) kept laughing at me whenever I pottered around the place.

Again, we walked through the park on our way to midtown. We eventually stopped in the lobby of a building for a reprieve from the cold and planted ourselves there for a few hours. Peach was sporting an excellent hangover, and the colour had left his face hours before.

Our return to Amherst was met with the coldest conditions I have ever dealt with. As soon as I stepped off the bus I felt the snot in my nose freeze. Today the condensation from breathing was forming on my moustache and turning to ice. -20, is officially too much for me.


***Song
David Bowie - Modern Love
90% of the Adventureland soundtrack would make an outstanding song. This song is phenomenal, and has since passed Life of Mars as my favourite Bowie tune, boom.

Long may you run

We didn't get an immediate chance to see Manhattan, as we immediately left the bus station on 42nd street for a converted warehouse in Williamsburg. The room was straight out of the film 'Big', but was occupied by 12 beds, and not skateboards. It was a fantastic example of what gentrification can do, and easily a place I'd love to live in (with skateboards replacing backpackers of course).

Morgan Ave Subway ad for William H Macy's hot bod.

Not wanting to bunker down into the comfort of the room, Dicky Peach and I wandered through the streets, past community housing and eventually into an area that was more Puerto Rico than suburban Brooklyn. When the safest bet for food was Subway and fried chicken, we both felt it was time to move into Manhattan for the night.

Like faux-hipsters, we consumed at Urban Outfitters and Starbucks on our way to getting lost around the triangle of the Lower East Side, Chinatown and Little Italy. Eventually, after an hour or two of bafflement we settled for Piano, a bar on Ludlow st. It turns out that Peach had tried to get into the same place on a drunken night out in November, but had to wait two months for entry.

John St John, Sam and Lil joined us as the cup of good times runneth over. We all tried different beers, avoided the gigs out the back and upstairs and eventually found ourselves taking shelter from a snow storm. What was a pleasant bite in the cold transformed into an inundation of falling white. More and more people filled the bar, in search of a reprieve from the weather as much as a drink.

The weather never relented, so Peach and I put our beer coats over the ones we were already wearing and ventured out like Shackleton on our journey back to Brooklyn. My snow angel on Ludlow failed, and my snow balls in mittens were pitiful, but the unfamiliarity of snow was still proving to be a frozen bucket of fun. When we did make it back to Brooklyn we found the streets to be worse than Manhattan, and that even with a snow plow, the best place to walk was down the middle of the road. Like our last visit to New York, Peach and I were taking advantage of jaywalking through the city's streets.

Naturally, we didn't start the day at a time in the A.M. but strategically, it gave the workers of New York City time to clean up some of the streets from the snow. Through icy paths that soaked through the canvas of Peach's shoes, we walked up Broadway on a course for the Williamsburg Bridge.

Crossing bridges in the city is amazing, and since urban exploring has made everything off limits, Manhattan's big three have enveloped climbing totem into their daily role. As much as I would like to climb to the top of the bridge, the amount of ice and one functioning hand turned me off were two of the many reason my feet stayed on the path. The view of midtown was hindered by a safety fence, but the skyline through red mesh is still something to behold.

climb me

Three years ago I visited the World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan and left feeling disappointed that
scaffold and a security fence were sites for souvenir peddlers and people trying to peak at rubble. I have been to the city twice since then, and despite the progress I had reservations about going back, such was my disdain for how the site was then. However, this time, knowing the rate of progress I felt I should go back.

While the site is still remarkably empty, the fence height has fallen. Rightfully so, the tallest structure in the construction site is the replacement building, Freedom Tower. Now that there is something to be proud of, the city is once again showing it off. This year will be the 10th anniversary since the two towers fell, and though the new skyscraper will not be finished by then, the building's skeleton is something akin to a beautiful woman getting ready to go out. It's taking time, but you can see it getting better looking by the moment, and by the end it is going to leave people in awe.

We walked past the site, seeing it from all sides and getting up close and personal to the beams that will support the memories of the people lost when the two towers fell. The feeling of the site was a marked improvement from years ago, and even when Peach and I walked to the Hudson River I still kept turning my head, watching the building grow before my very eyes.

It was some walk, and we had covered many miles in a few hours, but the cold from the water and the ice on the paths forced us back to Williamsburg. Not to worry, again John, Sam and Lil would join us, this time in Barcade.

The lady behind the bar was hardly friendly, and an example where the expected tipping service fails, but whatever, I was there to push quarters into old video game arcade machines. Donkey Kong is still my kryptonite, paper boy is impossible unless it's on a NES, but Rampage, that's where it is at.

Peach and I embodied giant gorillas and reptiles as we punched our way through pixelated apartment buildings. John had taken to tetris, and his architectural background handed him an unorthodox, but successful style.

We gamed, and drank and gamed some more, working up a hunger only an early morning (or late night) feed can satiate. A dine took our orders of late night eggs, and before we knew it, the food was eaten and it was time to call it a night.

Unlike previous occasions, it was actually time to say good-bye to John and we parted ways in a Williamsburg subway stop. We had spent an outstanding semester together, and together our jeans showed more asscrack than all of the plumbers in Massachusetts combined. With that goodbye, my first semester felt like it had finally passed, and the next day with my return to Amherst, my second would begin.

It doesn't blend in, but because it resembles a broken lego wall, this building is one of my favourites in Manhattan.

Before then I escorted Peach to his new hostel in the Upper West Side. Going to a place like New York City, it's nice to see more of another area, as they all change so much from suburb to suburb. We left two stereotypical Jewish old woman to complain about the area in their hilarious accents behind as we walked to Riverside Drive. It was cold and covered in so much snow that someone actually equipped themself with poles and skis and rode past us.

The street was cold, and we traded it for a glimpse of the diner from Seinfeld on our way to Harlem. I had also been there three years ago, and I was again impressed by the place. It's streets and surroundings are less congested than the rest of Manhattan, and the reputation the area had earned in rap songs seemed unfounded. Then again, we did see a man with paraphernalia supporting black nationalism, and had posters of Robert Mugabe.

I said bye to Peach on the subway before I went to the same pizza shop I have visited every time I go to New York City. From there it was a bus back to Amherst, via upper Manhattan and the new Yankee Stadium. The ride offered some perfect views of Manhattan at night, and though it always hurts to leave the place, I'll be back there next weekend to fall in love with it all over again.

Amherst was almost unrecognisable upon my return. Snow has been piled up everywhere, and where it hasn't been shovelled upon itself it sits about 50cm from the ground. After riding on buses, being scared for my life in Baltimore and sleeping anywhere I could, I was startled to discover that my taxi ride back to campus would be the most dangerous part of my adventure. The driver, always on his phone, was taking notes as the van weaved from one side of the road to the other. When he stopped at my door, he spoke well of my English accent (welcome back to Amherst) and spun his wheels on the icy roads as he drove off.

The campus is a ghost town, though blanketed in white this time. If I had my way I'd still be in New York City, but returned back early so I could have my cast removed. It had been seven weeks since I broke my wrist and though the cast was attached to me, I was not to it. The saw could miraculously cut through the fibre glass, but not my skin and revealed the gross new version of my left arm. It was crusty, furrier than usual and unlike my expectations, does not have a lot of mobility. I was heartened when the doctor said the bone looks better than he thought it would, though there is a permanent chip on the bone I didn't fracture.

So while I don't have the full mobility of my left hand I'm still enjoying the reprieve from living out of a bag and the relative freedom of not wearing a cast. This little trip was great fun, and I'm grateful for seeing much more of this country than I had anticipated, even if it meant missing another family xmas. The comfort and weather of home seemed distant when walking around icy streets, but for the sacrifice of one day in Wollongong (which I've already had too many), I will happily trade it for all the long bus trips and floors to sleep on that are offered if it means learning a bit more about myself and the world.


***Song
Bruce Springsteen - Long Walk Home
I wanted to visit Asbury Park, NJ on this trip as it's Bruce's home town. It was too cold in NYC, so I'll wait until March. Until then here is the Boss singing in some of his town's abandoned buildings in an appropriately titled track.