New York, New York. (17th Aug)

We got up and went round to the 28th Street Diner/Deli for breakfast; the one recommended by the hotel, it was truly amazing. There was every type of hot or cold food to eat in or go, there was a grocery section and upstairs there were PC’s available to log onto the internet. Everything was efficiently organized and in the centre of the establishment there was a large brick oven where between cooking breakfast orders there was a guy baking flat bread loaves about a yard long. These were split down the middle and used to make hot sandwiches at lunch time; we noted that for future information. This morning I had pancakes while Julia had a selection of fruit, everything was reasonably priced and the bonus was that the hot water on tap was in fact boiling so we were able to make good tea using it!
We stayed in contact with the rest of the world via email before setting off towards Times Square, where we planned to take the Uptown Loop using our 48 hour bus pass.
We queued with a family from Texas who wanted to embrace me as one of their own because I was habitually wearing my Texas Longhorns cap, which my daughter had brought me back from one of her trips. We admitted our origins but we still found it a pleasant experience talking to them, they had two kids who obviously found sight-seeing less enthralling than their parents but the behaved well throughout. Once on the bus we set off to see Harlem, Central Park, Dakota Building, Lincoln Centre and the Museum Mile. This time our tour guide was much more understated and became Julia’s favourite. He explained the way that tenement buildings had slowly changed to apartment blocks as the more affluent families decided to live in the city rather than outside of it. He was so interesting that I find I have far too many similar pictures of buildings where he must have explained differences that I can neither see nor remember now.
Before arriving at Central park we passed the Dakota Buildings where John Lennon had lived and indeed where he was murdered, his widow Yoko Ono still lives in the building. After we passed central park we were soon in Harlem, Julia and I wanted to see the public parks which have the reputation of being home to the best street basketball in the world but it was during the day and we didn’t even see baskets on street corners. The strange thing about Harlem was that its reputation for poverty seemed at odds with some of the wide avenues and large town-houses. There were many interesting points on the journey and we saw the site of several movie moments on the trip.
We returned from Harlem down the over side of Central park and we decided that the following day we would tackle the Museum of Natural History, having been told that one of the early curators had been the inspiration for Indiana Jones, and Central Park.
It was this guide who told us that the flat aspect of Manhattan was man-made, the hills had been flattened and the material removed had been used to fill in the valleys, he also remarked that the sky-scrapers were in Manhattan rather than other boroughs of New York because in Manhattan the soil layer was very thin before you encountered bedrock, which could be used to provide firm foundations.
At the end of the tour we were dropped off back in central Manhattan and bought ourselves a beer at Planet Hollywood, where we could not come up with a definitive list of the film stars who had created the chain of restaurants and bars. Ironically the beers were cheaper than many of the other places we had visited for that purpose. We were once again photographed on entry to the establishment, not as a security measure as you might think, but in the hope we would buy a picture of us in front of a choice of film backdrops.
We went from there to the Rockefeller Building. We had been advised to go up the Rockefeller rather than the Empire State because 1) the queues would be shorter and 2) our pictures would have the Empire State Building on them.
It was almost instant from getting our ticket to be going up 67 storeys in a lift. It was the fastest vertical journey you can get short of standing on a land mine. Before the lift we had been photographed as if sitting on a beam high above the New York buildings in the same style as the high-steel men eating their lunch. It was then that I mentioned to Julia that many of the early high-steel men were Native Americans; we were from then on looking out for any confirmation of this “fact”. It never came so I began to think it was an urban myth or something I had remembered from the episodes of Auf Wiedersehen Pet which had taken the cast to North America to transplant the Transporter Bridge from Middlesbrough to Arizona, which in turn they had made up. Research has since vindicated me but cannot explain the absence of any mention of the Mohawks of Manhattan.
The final two levels for viewing were achieved by stairs but they had the advantage of not looking through plate glass. From the highest viewing platform it was possible to see great distances and to pick out several of the previous Tallest Buildings in the World. It provided an amazing contrast to the Grand Canyon where anything man-made paled into insignificance against here where man had completely dominated nature. I looked in vein to spot the tennis courts and swimming pools that one of the guides had told us were on roofs but we did see lots of cultivated roof gardens.
We returned to ground level about 5.30pm and turned down the photo of us and the beam, by now I was convinced that when we caught our trans Atlantic flight home there would be copies of the pictures taken of us by immigration on our arrival with a background of our choice – it didn’t happen but I may have just inspired some enterprising official.
Breakfast had been satisfying but we had not eaten anything since so we decided on getting some tea before riding the bus again this time for the night tour. We stopped off in a restaurant/bar and ordered from their menu a ham sandwich for me while Julia chose tuna. When it arrived there were two very basic slices of bread held apart by easily three inches of filling, they were stabbed through with a cocktail stick which was barely long enough. We separated our sandwiches and made them manageable by removing over half of the filling, even then we were unable to consume the sandwich formed in full. When we asked for the bill our waiter returned with it and a box, which he used to pack up our wounded sandwiches. We paid and left with the box unsure if we would ever face eating the remainder of our meal.
Walking towards where the Night Tour had set off from the previous night we were accosted by touts selling Comedy Club tickets for later that night. We bought two tickets for $10 each and were given directions to the club for use later that night. While I took a walk Julia placed herself where the crowds were gathering for the night buses. In my absence a large black man set up camp at the pavement with a card table and a large collecting jar. He was collecting for the homeless and his voice boomed round the area to little affect, he did however get approached by several homeless people who asked for a hand out from him, he produced food from a bag below the table and gave it to the people, he also gave them a card directing them to his shelter. Having observed this and been impressed, Julia remembered the remains of our tea. She approached him and asked if he gave out food, he looked at her, decided that she clearly did not qualify for his help, and told her that he had none left! She corrected his misunderstanding and successfully got rid of our sandwiches; needless to say she also gave a cash donation.
The Night Loop left at 7.00pm and the light was just going so it made for some interesting photos. The tour guide was an out of work actor and we enjoyed his patter, we saw the Empire State building again, but the best bit was when we crossed the Manhattan Bridge into Brooklyn where we had not gone before. Julia and I saw a park where, using the street lights for illumination, there was a series of pick-up basketball games going strong. We also checked out the DUMBO district, it stands for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, which is where people could move to when they couldn’t afford Manhattan but as its popularity increased so did the prices. We missed a major photo opportunity when as we crossed the Manhattan Bridge, I was slow on the draw and didn’t manage to photograph the graffiti which covers the roofs and chimneys of the houses overlooked by the bridge, the mind-bending aspect was how it had been done; much of it had demanded serious climbing skills.
Anyway for us as well as you all these tours are becoming a bit similar so I’ll move on. We disembarked at Times Square again and found the Ha Comedy Club. Overall this was not one of our better ideas, but it was not as bad as it first appeared! We entered and found ourselves heading down, reception was dark and dingy, as was the guy working there, and it would be hard to imagine someone less impressed with the VIP passes we presented to him. Our passes were swapped for tickets and we sat in an even dirtier corridor, for mood there was the distinct, while faint, smell of urine. I felt less that we were waiting for a comedy show than for the next mugger to become available to deal with us.
Having thought we were waiting for the 9.00pm show we rechecked the ticket and found it was not until 9.30. Eventually we were joined by several other people, mainly, if not all, tourists. There were two other English parties, one a couple and the other a couple with their son. In due course we were ushered into a shabby area with a small, 6’ by 6’, platform and tables round it. We were front and centre, nearer to the mike than the acts at times.
We were now able to buy a drink, or perhaps we bought the building and got a free drink. The ticket bore the warning that there was a minimum of two drinks per person to be purchased.
The compare appeared and was by far the most polished performer we were going to see that night. He quickly picked out the young boy in the audience, and checked out his age. He was 14 but the right-on parents had no objection to being ridiculed for bringing him. I wondered about the sanity of their decision but…
The first act up was a young man who claimed to be a graduate of an Ivy League University, if true; he has the means to earn a living without comedy. He was nervous and lacked any impact; he had a slightly unconvincing beer bottle in his hand but never took a drink from it, so it came as little surprise to me when he offered to make it disappear. We watched him place it in a paper bag, turn the bag upside down, and announce unconvincingly that it had gone. We played our part by being skeptical, so he showed us again still without uproarious applause so petulantly he crumpled up the empty bag and indeed the bottle had disappeared. It was his high spot. He attempted to pick on the child and his English accent, “Oh that’s alright.” replied the right-on mother. Then he attempted another magic trick to finish. He took out a large envelope, and asked a random member of the audience, to name a celebrity, by chance it was the same random member of the audience that he had spoken to before the performance, I had noticed this while I was still expecting to be mugged. She, the RMOTA, named Cameron Diaz; she missed the greater comic potential of saying Mike Tyson and seeing him sort that out, which I hope I would have done in her position. He triumphantly revealed a baby picture and claimed it to be of Cameron Diaz. He was ready for the lack of enthusiasm in the audience but made us wait before he revealed the name of Cameron Diaz written on the back of the picture! He resented my lack of enthusiasm, and told me so but I deflected it by saying that I was stunned by his prodigious talent. I hope he doesn’t believe me because if he chases this particular dream the world is being robbed of an accountant or similar.
The next up was a woman who was worse than the starter but had more aggression about it; clearly it was entirely our fault that she was not funny. She tried some English accent comedy but right-on mother did it better and, I think, got more laughs. By the way dad was a lawyer and mum a house-wife, 14 year old was a school boy, and I still don’t know what they were doing there except giving permission to be mocked.
In the half-time break the waitress came round and demanded that we bought another drink as per contract, so we purchased the building again.
The next guy was older and more established, he still claimed to have a real job as a car salesman, but he did get laughs. The whole evening finished with the best comedian but he again seemed to bear a grudge towards the audience and he wasted too much energy trying to make us feel bad for not being in casualty having our sides sewn back together.
The whole experience was much inferior to Las Vegas but we survived. We caught a cab back to the hotel and never really noticed that we had missed an evening meal.