Day 1, New York - Rainy walk down Broadway
I stepped out of the hotel and the first thing I hear is BANG! BANG! BANG! I thought I was dead! Some work going on right outside my hotel with a jackhammer is the culprit. With my camera clutched so tightly in my hadn that my it's becoming slightly clammy, I strutted down Broadway looking at the sights. I see buildings 50m taller than anything in Brisbane, left, right, in front and behind. My original excitement of seeing huge tall, glass, steel and stone buildings becomes fulfilled as I realised I am utterly engulfed by them. Soon though, my fascination with the huge behemoths is just as intense as before, but I've begun to notice the classic Art Deco and Gothic buildings everywhere around me. Green copper roofs and decorations of building which were once as brown as a penny are now green from oxidisation to the elements. These buildings with their intricate designs, gargoyles and moments in time captured within the architecture begin to fascinate me uncontrollably, my first memory card is nearly full.
It's raining in New York and car headlights and taillights form a magical array of colours that bounce off the road and spread their reflection to almost make the street look like the night. The rain is pounding down and there's no place to hide, I've got to get something to eat, I'm sooo hungry. I think I'm walking downtown, but no Im walking uptown and there it is! The first place of many that I wanted to find in New York, it's Zabar's. Zabar's is a delicatesan supermarket, if you can imagine a place with ilse's for things like olives, cheeses, hams, smoke salmon, this place specialises in a huge variety of deli food and lots of it to go around. Meg Ryan's character in "You've got Mail", Kathleen Kelly runs into Tom Hank's character, Joe Fox in this very store. She enters the ca$h only line and realises that she only has a Visa card, the checkout lady gets snappy and Joe Fox comes over to save the day with his unmistakable wit and charm (which she can't stand) but it inveitably plays a part in sewing her heart that little bit more into eventually falling for him, balh blah blah...how hollywood...anyway! So I'm standing in the store recognising parts of the store used in the movie and generally getting a bit of a kick out of it and I notice the store next door, "Zabar's to Go!" which is like a hardcore Deli version of Subway, complete with crushed mango fruit drinks, lichi drinks, pure apple drinks, whatever you want really, but no iced coffee! So as I grab my Pastrami, Swiss cheese, olive, sundried tomato on a turkish bread roll and find there's no where to sit cos everyone's sheltering from the rain, I head out the door. Now as I do this I see this sneaky black guy ride past on his bicycle, he spots me insde and jumps off his bike and opens the door for me with no intention to come inside. Now a lot of naive people would think "What a nice man!", but this is New York, things have improved since Guiliani's reign and 9/11, but the attitude of everything comes for a dollar, nothing for free is still the same, let's face it, it's part of the charm of the place! So his intentions are "Hey muthafucka, how bout some change cos I dropped everything to open this door for you", but he just smiles and bows, I nodd and smile back and hot foot it outta there and I can feel his eyes burning into me. My thoughts were, "Hey buddy, it's raining and I don't wanna flash my wads of ca$h on the street to give you $2 for a door I could've opened myself".
So, as I'm walking down broadway, I'm the only one to actually wait at a pedestrian stop light cos I'm still figuring how to judge the traffic when it's driving on the wrong side of the road. Holy shit! That cab just went through a red light and nearly hit me as I crossed the road and missed that lady by 6 inches I could've sworn. This is were I learnt the lesson to look both ways as you get taught as a kid, because New York cabs are crazy and stop for nothing, that included red lights as I found out. The rain keeps coming down hard and this crazy guy is walking towards me and snarling at people around him and he gives me a real good eyeballing, he's ready for it, but I ain't cos I know he's possibly packing heat and I'm wet, hungry and have no place to eat this sandwhich. this is about the time that I realise that New York isn't abundant with placing sidewalk seats everywhere like Brisbane. I eventually found an overhang outside a building and stood next to the ATM outside the place. At that point with the occasional person wondering why I was standing there, I think they figured out I was new and just wanted somewhere dry to eat my lunch. So there I stood nibbling away like a squirrel and god it was good, I could feel it's warmth heat up my hands. Nearly 40 odd hours of straight travelling from Brisbane to my NY hotel room and being in the same clothes all that time, eating my lunch outside an ATM in one of the only dry spots in the New York rain was utter bliss. I watched the cabs go by one after the other, it never stopped, and I found it so surreal to realise I was actually there and living it. This was the kick of travelling others had hinted at but never told me about, right then and there is when I realised why I was doing this. Because I was alone in another country, no help, no friends, no nothing, it was just me in the place that I'd always wanted to visit and now I had to get myself around, I was seriously getting off on this really daunting almost scaring and perhaps masochistic feeling of being so free to explore this place. All I needed in the world right then and there, was to walk, it didn't matter where, I'd found out where I was soon enough, every new place that I stopped at was potentially the next place of a great new story.
posted at 8:13 pm
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