After the briefest of overnight stays in Calgary - which actually from a brief wander was considerably less dull and ugly than I'd expected, and I could probably have made a whole day of - it was an early-morning flight from there to New York City.
My first glimpse of the city, and of Manhattan, was from the air, flying into La Guardia Airport. It's impossible not to be awed by the sight of Manhattan from the air - I thought it looked like some sort of monster Lego creation, with its tightly packed rectangular skyscrapers - and of Liberty Island which houses the Statue of Liberty.
For the completely uninitiated, Manhattan is an island, and only one of NYC's five boroughs, but it's often almost synonymous with the city itself, containing all the major sights, and it's perfectly possible to have an extended stay in the city without setting foot in other boroughs. I did briefly visit Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island (missing The Bronx), all of which have a completely different feel, with barely a skyscraper in sight.
I do think there's a bit of a problem with Manhattan as a sightseeing destination: for the most part you either have to get high into the air, or off the island, to be able to properly appreciate the skyline or the landmark buildings. Because there are just tightly packed skyscrapers on virtually every street in the whole lower part of the island, and because of the rectangular grid of roads, it's difficult or impossible to get a proper line of sight from a decent distance (or any further than across the street) of even the tallest buildings. Compare the fantastic views you can readily obtain in London of St Paul's Cathedral (thanks to planning regulations down the ages in that case), the Gherkin, Canary Wharf, Big Ben and so on - there isn't a lot of comparison. So amazing pieces of architecture as the Empire State Buidling, the Chrysler Building, the Municipal Building and so on undoubtedly are, it's difficult to appreciate them fully. My American ex-work colleague Sara, now settled in NYC who I was able to catch up with, tells me that estate agents have cottoned on to this issue, by plugging the best views of Manhattan as being from property in, er, Brooklyn and Queens, not from Manhattan itself.
For this reason, the view from the 86th floor observation deck at the Empire State Building is all the more valuable and special. Although take physical stamina and a sense of humour with you, since it's very overcrowded (even though I went in the fairly late evening) and takes a long time to get in and out, and forget any thoughts of quiet contemplation at the top! The 360-degree panorama helps get you oriented, makes you realise how narrow Manhattan actually is, and thus quite how remarkable it is that 1.5 million people, as well as many thousands of businesses, call this home. There are other ways of seeing the city from on high, and it's worth doing both by night and by day to get two different experiences of the city. I was fortunate enough to get a daytime view from a 33rd floor rooftop near Columbus Circle courtesy of Couchsurfer Christian - again as with the original flypast, it almost seems fantastical, unreal, so utterly unique and incredible is the sheer quantity, density and scale of the monster skyscrapers. Another feature which allows you to see something of Manhattan is Brooklyn Bridge, which is also remarkable in its own right as an elegant and monumental piece of architecture, and which somehow looks to me more like a London landmark than a typical North American one.
You also see from the top of the Empire State Building just how dominant a physical feature Central Park is. Really, it is remarkable that such a huge swathe of park, right in the centre of Manhattan (the name couldn't be more apt), was ever created, and even more so that it survives. And it's wonderful. It's a genuine peaceful oasis, although lively in places, varied and well maintained. You could wander around exploring almost endlessly. It's seemingly the place in Manhattan to go jogging, with wide segregated paths, lots of shade, some gentle slopes and plenty of public water fountains; it's a habit I got into daily and thoroughly enjoyed. Although it's by no means the only park in Manhattan; other notable parks include Bryant Park (right on 42nd Street, the heart of everything), Madison Square Park and Union Square Park, all of which are also delightful. Without these the city could be overwhelming indeed so it all makes an enormous difference.
If anywhere in the city is quintessentially New York, it's probably Times Square. The comparison with Piccadilly Circus in London is obvious - massive neon screens (with Coca-Cola inevitably featuring prominently in the advertising), the 'centre of everything' feel and accompanying buzz. Conveniently, there are public tables and chairs put out in pedestrianised lanes of the road, and it's a fantastic place to linger a while, just people-watching. It's something I could have done a lot more of numerous times. While sitting people-watching, I realised that the famous BBC journalist Andrew Marr was standing about 10 feet away from me with a camera crew, ludicrously over-dressed in the 33C heat in a dark suit but remarkably cheerful, doing vox pops with American passers-by about the Queen's visit to the city at that time. What opinions NYC residents were expected to have about the Queen, I'm not entirely sure, but it was a delightfully random sight. I passed through Times Square again after dark one evening, and it was remarkably bright still from the buildings and the traffic but most of all the neon - they say it always feels like daylight there and that's a very apt observation.
A compulsory stop I figure in Manhattan is Ground Zero. It goes without saying that there isn't actually much to see - it's just a massive building site. You would have thought that over eight and a half years might have been long enough to complete something new on the site, but apparently any rebirth was stalled for yonks by political wrangling. But anyway, the key word there was "massive" - the size of the hole, the scar in the middle of the most built-up metropolis on the planet, gives you just the merest hint of the enormity of what happened there. Perhaps a large bomb could have wreaked destruction over a wider area, but to have reduced to literally nothing such a huge plot of land, in what we all know was such a uniquely appalling, targeted and visually mesmerising way, without the use of explosives, still makes its uniquely awful statement. There's also a very considerable police presence on the site, unsurprisingly enough.
The Statue of Liberty is a bit of an odd landmark in my view, what with it being on an uninhabited island some distance from the Manhattan shoreline. While you can make it out clearly enough from Battery Park on said shoreline, it looks pretty small and distant from there. To actually get to Liberty Island you have to take a less-than-cheap tourist ferry. Tickets to climb inside the statue up to its 'crown' are extremely limited and were entirely booked up about two and a half months in advance when I checked online. Rather than pay just to be dumped onto the island, I decided to take the free option of riding the Staten Island Ferry. This gives a pretty decent view of the statue as well as of the Manhattan skyline, but I do place it in the "things you have to see but then quietly reflect are a bit overrated" category. I suppose if I was an immigrant to the USA from somewhere where liberty is in shorter supply, as many thousands (millions?) undoubtedly have been, I might have been more moved by its symbolism however.
While you don't have any of the trappings of national government in New York, with the capital city being Washington DC (and in fact New York City is not even the capital of New York State), what you do have there is the headquarters of the United Nations. This is not US territory, with the complex having its own UN post office, police and fire service. Tours are available; there's not absolutely as much to see as you might expect, but there's substantial narration and photo displays illustrating the nature of the UN's developmental and peacekeeping work, and the highlights are seeing the General Assembly chamber and the Security Council chamber (the latter being in a temporary location due to renovation, but an exact copy of the real thing). Fitting in with the very explicit UN objective of preventing World War III and possible further use of nuclear weapons, also on display is a statue from a Catholic church in Nagasaki close to the epicentre of the atomic strike there, which improbably survived (albeit with scorch marks on the back) when everything else around was totally destroyed.
I was in NYC for Independence Day, when a massive fireworks display takes place every year over the Hudson River. I went along, but I baulked at getting there four hours beforehand to secure the best view - therefore from where I was I couldn't actually see the river, but the display was still incredible. I've never been to a major setpiece fireworks display in London - the difference is that it was a beautfully warm summer's evening in NYC, whereas either Bonfire Night or (particularly) New Year's Eve in London are guaranteed to be freezing cold. So I can't draw comparisions, but surely by anyone's standards it was an incredible display. It went on a long time (possibly in truth just a little too long, with some drifting away before the end), on a scale large enough to cover the very large designated viewing area, and the technology involved in some of the elaborate arrangements and phasings must have been immense. The predominant colours of the display were, unsurprisingly, red, white and blue. It was a slightly odd thing for a Brit to be in the middle of, but I've been assured that Americans are waaaaay over any anti-British sentiment on their Independence Day!
Perhaps the best gallery I went to however was the PS1 Contemporary Art Center, an offshoot in Queens of the Museum of Modern Art. With cheap entry, this is a huge, rambling ex-student hall of residence festooned with all sorts of distinctly contemporary art installations, many of them multimedia, by emerging artists. Much of it was excellent and it's a different experience to anywhere I'm aware of in London.
My first glimpse of the city, and of Manhattan, was from the air, flying into La Guardia Airport. It's impossible not to be awed by the sight of Manhattan from the air - I thought it looked like some sort of monster Lego creation, with its tightly packed rectangular skyscrapers - and of Liberty Island which houses the Statue of Liberty.
For the completely uninitiated, Manhattan is an island, and only one of NYC's five boroughs, but it's often almost synonymous with the city itself, containing all the major sights, and it's perfectly possible to have an extended stay in the city without setting foot in other boroughs. I did briefly visit Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island (missing The Bronx), all of which have a completely different feel, with barely a skyscraper in sight.
I do think there's a bit of a problem with Manhattan as a sightseeing destination: for the most part you either have to get high into the air, or off the island, to be able to properly appreciate the skyline or the landmark buildings. Because there are just tightly packed skyscrapers on virtually every street in the whole lower part of the island, and because of the rectangular grid of roads, it's difficult or impossible to get a proper line of sight from a decent distance (or any further than across the street) of even the tallest buildings. Compare the fantastic views you can readily obtain in London of St Paul's Cathedral (thanks to planning regulations down the ages in that case), the Gherkin, Canary Wharf, Big Ben and so on - there isn't a lot of comparison. So amazing pieces of architecture as the Empire State Buidling, the Chrysler Building, the Municipal Building and so on undoubtedly are, it's difficult to appreciate them fully. My American ex-work colleague Sara, now settled in NYC who I was able to catch up with, tells me that estate agents have cottoned on to this issue, by plugging the best views of Manhattan as being from property in, er, Brooklyn and Queens, not from Manhattan itself.
The Chrysler Building (up very very close!)
For this reason, the view from the 86th floor observation deck at the Empire State Building is all the more valuable and special. Although take physical stamina and a sense of humour with you, since it's very overcrowded (even though I went in the fairly late evening) and takes a long time to get in and out, and forget any thoughts of quiet contemplation at the top! The 360-degree panorama helps get you oriented, makes you realise how narrow Manhattan actually is, and thus quite how remarkable it is that 1.5 million people, as well as many thousands of businesses, call this home. There are other ways of seeing the city from on high, and it's worth doing both by night and by day to get two different experiences of the city. I was fortunate enough to get a daytime view from a 33rd floor rooftop near Columbus Circle courtesy of Couchsurfer Christian - again as with the original flypast, it almost seems fantastical, unreal, so utterly unique and incredible is the sheer quantity, density and scale of the monster skyscrapers. Another feature which allows you to see something of Manhattan is Brooklyn Bridge, which is also remarkable in its own right as an elegant and monumental piece of architecture, and which somehow looks to me more like a London landmark than a typical North American one.
Brooklyn Bridge
You also see from the top of the Empire State Building just how dominant a physical feature Central Park is. Really, it is remarkable that such a huge swathe of park, right in the centre of Manhattan (the name couldn't be more apt), was ever created, and even more so that it survives. And it's wonderful. It's a genuine peaceful oasis, although lively in places, varied and well maintained. You could wander around exploring almost endlessly. It's seemingly the place in Manhattan to go jogging, with wide segregated paths, lots of shade, some gentle slopes and plenty of public water fountains; it's a habit I got into daily and thoroughly enjoyed. Although it's by no means the only park in Manhattan; other notable parks include Bryant Park (right on 42nd Street, the heart of everything), Madison Square Park and Union Square Park, all of which are also delightful. Without these the city could be overwhelming indeed so it all makes an enormous difference.
If anywhere in the city is quintessentially New York, it's probably Times Square. The comparison with Piccadilly Circus in London is obvious - massive neon screens (with Coca-Cola inevitably featuring prominently in the advertising), the 'centre of everything' feel and accompanying buzz. Conveniently, there are public tables and chairs put out in pedestrianised lanes of the road, and it's a fantastic place to linger a while, just people-watching. It's something I could have done a lot more of numerous times. While sitting people-watching, I realised that the famous BBC journalist Andrew Marr was standing about 10 feet away from me with a camera crew, ludicrously over-dressed in the 33C heat in a dark suit but remarkably cheerful, doing vox pops with American passers-by about the Queen's visit to the city at that time. What opinions NYC residents were expected to have about the Queen, I'm not entirely sure, but it was a delightfully random sight. I passed through Times Square again after dark one evening, and it was remarkably bright still from the buildings and the traffic but most of all the neon - they say it always feels like daylight there and that's a very apt observation.
Times Square
A compulsory stop I figure in Manhattan is Ground Zero. It goes without saying that there isn't actually much to see - it's just a massive building site. You would have thought that over eight and a half years might have been long enough to complete something new on the site, but apparently any rebirth was stalled for yonks by political wrangling. But anyway, the key word there was "massive" - the size of the hole, the scar in the middle of the most built-up metropolis on the planet, gives you just the merest hint of the enormity of what happened there. Perhaps a large bomb could have wreaked destruction over a wider area, but to have reduced to literally nothing such a huge plot of land, in what we all know was such a uniquely appalling, targeted and visually mesmerising way, without the use of explosives, still makes its uniquely awful statement. There's also a very considerable police presence on the site, unsurprisingly enough.
The Statue of Liberty is a bit of an odd landmark in my view, what with it being on an uninhabited island some distance from the Manhattan shoreline. While you can make it out clearly enough from Battery Park on said shoreline, it looks pretty small and distant from there. To actually get to Liberty Island you have to take a less-than-cheap tourist ferry. Tickets to climb inside the statue up to its 'crown' are extremely limited and were entirely booked up about two and a half months in advance when I checked online. Rather than pay just to be dumped onto the island, I decided to take the free option of riding the Staten Island Ferry. This gives a pretty decent view of the statue as well as of the Manhattan skyline, but I do place it in the "things you have to see but then quietly reflect are a bit overrated" category. I suppose if I was an immigrant to the USA from somewhere where liberty is in shorter supply, as many thousands (millions?) undoubtedly have been, I might have been more moved by its symbolism however.
While you don't have any of the trappings of national government in New York, with the capital city being Washington DC (and in fact New York City is not even the capital of New York State), what you do have there is the headquarters of the United Nations. This is not US territory, with the complex having its own UN post office, police and fire service. Tours are available; there's not absolutely as much to see as you might expect, but there's substantial narration and photo displays illustrating the nature of the UN's developmental and peacekeeping work, and the highlights are seeing the General Assembly chamber and the Security Council chamber (the latter being in a temporary location due to renovation, but an exact copy of the real thing). Fitting in with the very explicit UN objective of preventing World War III and possible further use of nuclear weapons, also on display is a statue from a Catholic church in Nagasaki close to the epicentre of the atomic strike there, which improbably survived (albeit with scorch marks on the back) when everything else around was totally destroyed.
Inside the UN
I was in NYC for Independence Day, when a massive fireworks display takes place every year over the Hudson River. I went along, but I baulked at getting there four hours beforehand to secure the best view - therefore from where I was I couldn't actually see the river, but the display was still incredible. I've never been to a major setpiece fireworks display in London - the difference is that it was a beautfully warm summer's evening in NYC, whereas either Bonfire Night or (particularly) New Year's Eve in London are guaranteed to be freezing cold. So I can't draw comparisions, but surely by anyone's standards it was an incredible display. It went on a long time (possibly in truth just a little too long, with some drifting away before the end), on a scale large enough to cover the very large designated viewing area, and the technology involved in some of the elaborate arrangements and phasings must have been immense. The predominant colours of the display were, unsurprisingly, red, white and blue. It was a slightly odd thing for a Brit to be in the middle of, but I've been assured that Americans are waaaaay over any anti-British sentiment on their Independence Day!
Unsurprisingly NYC has a world-class arts scene; one of the major modern art galleries, the Guggenheim Museum, is famous as much for its remarkable art deco building as for the art inside. The International Center of Photography had an excellent exhibition on the history of the civil rights struggle in the US, showing through posters, newspapers and video as well as photos how in less enlightened times of segregation, black Americans were regularly either shockingly stereotyped or completely invisible in mainstream media - something which civil rights organisations latched onto the importance of tackling. This changed only slowly with 1950s depictions tending to be 'safe' and unchallenging, and the activities of the civil rights movement were often misrepresented by the media. The shocking catalogue of racist violence (some of it by the police in places such as Birmingham, Alabama) and murders however played a huge role in waking up the white population to the evils of prejudice. By the 1970s, media attitudes towards black people had substantially transformed, not entirely unconnected to the realisation that they were consumers with disposable income too.
Perhaps the best gallery I went to however was the PS1 Contemporary Art Center, an offshoot in Queens of the Museum of Modern Art. With cheap entry, this is a huge, rambling ex-student hall of residence festooned with all sorts of distinctly contemporary art installations, many of them multimedia, by emerging artists. Much of it was excellent and it's a different experience to anywhere I'm aware of in London.
If you are coming to NYC in summer, make sure you book accommodation well in advance. Having tried quite hard but completely failed to find a Couchsurfing host (apparently a notoriously hard thing to do in NYC due to the popularity of the city combined with a small proportion of residents who actually enough space to contemplate putting anyone up), I left it late to try to book a cheap hostel bed and found very little left. I therefore had to book three nights in what turned out to be a seriously dodgy place, just a series of one-bedroom apartments converted into 'dorms' by sticking bunk beds in them, equipped only with uncomfortable and noisy air mattresses, with one farcically small Manhattan apartment kitchen and lounge designated as a 'common area' - in a rough, distant location too. With no signage anywhere, I'd bet money that it was unauthorised by either the building owner or city authorities (or both) - something that two locals told me separately is common for dodgy NYC places. It was a stressful, unsettling and time-consuming (because of the distance) start to my stay in NYC - and with the intensity and craziness of Manhattan being more than a little overwhelming for a first-timer anyway initially, that was a big deal. Fortunately the relatively well located Hostelling International (an organisation of which I'm rapidly becoming a big fan) I was able to get myself into after that felt like a home away from home.
The famous New York City Subway is a mixed bag indeed. It has some major selling points compared to other subway systems - it runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week; a number of lines are four-tracked with both local and express services; and trains (although not stations) are well air conditioned. However, I found it hard to warm to for a number of reasons. It is incredibly confusing to use (and I consider myself pretty capable in such matters), with a horribly cluttered and complicated map, which isn't even readily available in pocket form, and information at stations is often appallingly sparse. Dot matrix display boards on platforms telling you which train is coming and in how long are rare (Sara tells me they're only starting to be introduced now - I remember London having them extensively when I was little in the 1980s). Train seating is uncomfortable bare plastic, and without arm rests dividing seats, locals commonly spread across two seats denying you a seat next to them. Stations are often difficult to navigate (e.g. there can be one entrance on one side of the street for one direction only, and a separate entrance on the opposite side of the street for the opposite direction only), and connections between lines seem a bit hit-and-miss (e.g. if you want to get from one side of Central Park to the other, don't even think about taking the Subway - get a bus instead). Oh, and it's dingy and dirty, with many stations in a shocking state of decay and disrepair. Allegedly it's better than it used to be, and there was evidence of the odd station being "rehabilitated" (seemingly the strange American term for "renovated"), but really it's often an unpleasant experience. But it usually does get you from A to B which I suppose is the main thing.
People are much brusquer here than in California - New Yorkers appear to be famous in the rest of the US for their rudeness. However, I've sensed an upbeat, optimistic demeanour amongst many Americans on both coasts which is rather endearing - particularly amongst African Americans. The famous American way of parting "have a nice day" tends to have more sincerity and warmth about it than you might expect. I suppose if you're being cynical, you might link this to the fact that very substantial tipping (15%-20%) is essential everywhere, even in bars for each drink poured - this has developed as a result of service staff being atrociously paid below the legal minimum wage, which tips have to redress. Rather amusingly by the way, many North Americans are completely unable to distinguish between a British accent and an Australian one. At the NYC Couchsurfing social I went to I must have been asked at least three times whether I was Australian...
American gay clubs have been an, er, different and interesting experience. The music is different obviously, and so is the way that boys dance, which tends to involve the pelvis and the knees more (which sort of goes with the much more rhythm- and beat-orientated American pop and R&B). In San Francisco a guy I got talking to had said he didn't need to ask where I was from because I "dance like a European"! Go-go boys pole-dancing topless are also common, as at Splash in NYC which many consider the best gay club in the city. Overall, I've not felt completely at home and have found myself looking forward (even more) to schlager clubbing in Stockholm. Pre-clubbing in NYC I did make a point of going to the Stonewall Inn, widely considered the birthplace of the gay liberation movement, as it was where gay people resisted police oppression for the first time during raids in 1967. Happily the venue is still going strong, with displays commemorating the venue's place in history, and it's quite decent for one or two drinks too.
So what did I make of New York? Well, there's lots to love - there is an incredible buzz and energy almost anywhere you go, massive diversity in neighbourhoods and the population, great buildings, lovely parks, and generally more going on pretty well 24/7 than you can shake a particularly large stick at. For me, just being in such a huge city brings its own enjoyment, satisfaction, even thrill. But. I don't think I really felt my heart go pitter-patter, much as I wanted to love it. As I've discussed before, it's hard to put concrete reasons on emotional reactions (or lack thereof) to places. However I'll try. I would say that the primary issue is that I just didn't find the streets in the heart of Manhattan loveable - while the endless, almost unbroken tall skyscrapers, mostly laid out in a neat grid system, doubtless appeal greatly to many, they ultimately don't do it for me. My considerable dislike of the Subway was also a substantial downer I think. Add to this that I feel a limited connection overall with American people - somehow just talking to many of them seems harder work, with a greater psychological distance to bridge, than any of the other English-speaking countries I've been in. I have tried, and hope I managed to leave any preconceptions at the door.
I do strongly suspect that in principle I could find this a much better city to live in than to visit as an unconnected tourist - if I could base myself in one villagey area of Manhattan (disregarding the financial challenges of that) or maybe Brooklyn, learn how to get around optimally, find some local haunts and over time seek out like-minded people. I tried quite hard to find a Couchsurfing host and was disappointed not to manage to. But as with a number of other places I've visited, above all it was incredibly worthwhile just to see and experience a little of New York - and I'd have little hesitation in recommending a first visit to anyone else who thinks they want to see it for themselves.
Photo links:
New York City - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2388651&id=61207375&l=03e937f798 
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