Day 1, New York - Arriving at JFK Airport
I stepped off the plane and into the airport, straight away I thought of the Seignfeld episodes that involve George, Elaine of Kramer picking up Jerry from the airport. It didn't really ring any bells visually, but as I walked through the airport I cjued up for my bags to come down the chute to be collected as the whizzed around the luggage carousel. So I'm waiting, then waiting, then waitin some more and I realise that my bags ain't comin, so off to the lost baggage office I go and I re-encountered the irate British Traveller once again, this time he was yelling at the counter staff with things like "This is completely unacceptable", "I'm never travelling with you ever again" and of course "How are you going to compensate me?" how cleche! We're told that our bags will be on the next flight which arrives at 6am. It was 5:30am and I had a while to wait, so I opted to wait out in the lounge until my bags arrived.
As we walked out to the foyer of the airport from the gates, it's like I saw in LA and the movies, with limosouine and cab drivers waiting and holding signs bearing peoples last names, "Johnson", "Patricke" and "Hollary" were some of the names dotted throughout the crowd, funny though...where was mine? I must've been on it's way. I'm sitting in the lounge and there is this large black man, sitting at the table next to me minding his own business and sipping his cawfee (as he would say). An attractive young balck woman comes and joins him, she's smiling and he's glad to see her. After some small talk about the weekend, he saw his kids and she was out of town, they get down to business and her job is to go out and make good PR with a Chinese customer of the airport who's son was recently inconvenienced by a delay through the airports shuttle service. He's telling his to kiss this guys butt, "Do what it takes" and "This guys father is a powerful man who has contacts and could make business a bit rough for us down the line if we don't fix the situation now". She splits and he's left to reading the paper and still sipping his tall coffee as before she appeared.
So I'm waiting for my bags and I start talking to this girl from Brooklyn, who must've been about 22, but she had a job nannying on the upper West side of Manhattan for a well to do family, Summer was her name I remember. She had a tatoo of a crab on her upper right shoulder, I'm guessing she was a Cancer as well, either that or she really liked crabs. So I'm standing there and she's asking me the usual questions about my accent and how she likes it and I'm waiting for my bags and it's 6am already. She keeps getting these calls from a private cab company, hers is waiting outside and she keeps telling him to wait 20 more minutes because her bags are just about to come down the chute. So it's now somewhere near 7am and our bags finally arrive and she's told the cab company to keep waiting for the fourth time. The amount of cash this woman must've spent on having the meter running by this time must've been considerable.
It was time for me to find the shuttle bus and get to Manhattan and check into my hotel, it was raining outisde. New York is somewhere that you'd think would be buildings upon buildings everywhere you look, but out at the airport (one of three) there is open air and the occasional highrise, as with along the highways, and also worth mentioning is New york has a suprising amount of plant life around. Beside a lot of the expressways is a lot of foliage and trees. On the radio the announcers were discussing how the rat population of New York City has jumped 40% and other perculiar things that have happened around the city as of late. A woman was rollerblading and fell over to land on a superheated man hole cover which in turn branded her in the lower back with part of words of what was written on the man hole cover, I'd say it was Manhattan or something. Also, a man who was walking along the street happened to walk onto a live electrified subway grill cover, became electrocuted and dropped dead in the street. The shuttle bus must've taken 2 hours easily in the rain and in that time person after person got out and I was the last to leave the shuttle bus. The whole time I could see droplets landing on the bit of seat next to me as we drove along, the rain was coming in through the air conditioning of the van. As we cruised into Manhattan over the Brookly bridge I saw two obvious structures, the Empire State building and the Chrysler building, it was an awe inspiring moment for me. The rest of New Yorks skyline followed and before I knew it my neck was hurting from trying to look up at all the buildings as they rose either side of me. "Was that the Empire State building?" I thought, but no it was 4 Times Square which is almost as tall, has a similiar ariel and easily fools you. As we drove through Times Square, even in the rain everything was glittering just like on TV but even more so, there was a huge MacDonald's M, there's The Late Show theatre, there's Broadway running down the middle over there, it was all too much to take in.
Finally I was dropped off at 75th and Broadway, which was the address of the Hotel Beacon, where I was staying. The driver got out and got my bags as I negotiated the deep puddles of the gritty part of Broadway. It came to $19 for the entire trip, I gave the guy a #20 and said he could keep the change. For those who don't know, tips are how New York and a large part of America works. New York was founded on capitalism and that's how people get by. It's all about who can make a buck. So if you don't tip anyone, you're gonna end up with a lot of bad service, missing bags, and things will go very slowly for you. If you genuinely think you had bad service to begin with, then don't tip them, but if they were courteous to you, and got you were you needed to go, if it was a taxi for example, $2 was a sufficient tip, and $5 is generous.
posted at 7:30 pm
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