Summer In NYC; 2010

The summer of 2010 I was halfway through my BTEC national diploma in Performing Arts and my French A Level when I moved transatlantic to stay in New York for a month and a half. I was in heaven.
I’d just come back from performing at a festival in Oostende in Belgium but nothing could have prepared me for the sticky summer city heat that I felt when I got off my plane at JFK – I’ve never known a city so humid. London is never that bad in the summer.

Thinking I’d be spending my summer in a normal city I had only packed jeans, t-shirts and the occasional summer dress. I should have known, NYC is not a normal city. The city that doesn’t sleep; the big apple.

I’m a city girl at heart and living in London for most of my life I’ve noticed – these cities have their personalities. London is the promiscuous Miss that’ll go straight out after work, dance and drink until the walls can’t hold her up, find someone to go home with and then appear back at work the next day in yesterday’s eyeliner and a dress that also looks vaguely similar. Manhattan is the socialite butterfly flitting from Fifth Avenue, to Central Park, to a bar to a house party in the village before rushing back up town as the sun rises to squeeze in breakfast with her family.

As well as the cities, the inhabitants certainly have some interesting character traits about them. John T Cahill for example, wore an expensive suit and handmade shoes. He was so uber friendly I had begun to wonder if I’d walked into a movie. He was a business man, and he asked if I as new to the city (clearly I had a sign on my back reading New York Virgin, or it could be the constant look on my face of amazement). I met him on one of my first days in Manhattan whilst I was walking around the 1.58 mile jogging track which surrounds the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir, otherwise just known as the Central Park Reservoir. We only spoke for about ten minutes but before going on his own way, he gave me his card and said if I ever needed a tour of the city, he’d be delighted.  A part of me always thought he thought I was a little older than I was; me stood there, wide-eyed and reasonably innocent, having only just turned seventeen.  When I look back on it now there had to have been something a little unsavory about his character.

Crumbs Bakery on 93^rd street played host to my next meet cute with a New York random. His name now escapes me but he looked vaguely like Jeremy Renner (Hawkeye, Avenger’s Assembled.) He was wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with TEXAS across his chest. Having grown accustomed to the perfect homemade lemonade, the idyllic mix of sweet and sour, that the Crumbs Bakery provided, Crumbs had become a regular pit stop for me in the sweaty heat.
So, killing some time chatting to Texas and his highly intellectual young son Achilles Alexander was fine by me. (I don’t remember Texas’ name, but Achilles Alexander is a name you tend not to forget ) We chatted about Manhattan, the topic of everyone’s conversation no matter if New York virgin like me or New York born and bred like Texas. Then  Achilles had finished his cookies and it was time for them to skateboard home.

I was staying in an apartment on 87^th and Lexington, on the fifth floor of an amazing building with a doorman. Having a doorman was an incredibly new experience for me. Someone to hold the door open for you, tell you about the weather, take in your take aways, hail you a cab, say hi to you every day and this particular doorman always made baby small talk with city dog; Brody. Brody was a small, hairy yet cuddly dog of undefined breed, who inhabited the apartment with me. Part of the deal of my staying there was that I walk Brody morning and night. Admittedly it was more midday and midnight, but either way, the dog got walked.

Along with Brody, the apartment was everything I needed and more. Two lounge areas separated by a partitioned wall, a single room, a perfectly adequate sized kitchen and a double master bedroom with an ensuite bathroom which was off limits to me. But not apparently to my cousin who occasionally frequented the apartment (his parents owned it). I thought he was Manhattan’s golden boy attending Hunter College and looking at prospective Universities this summer, but it turns out he actually likes to invite his friends over and sit in the ensuite bathtub with them, smoking weed with his stuck up, Upper East Side friends.
For an example of their uppity behaviour, my cousin Zachary and his friend Ian were paying, parting with actual dollars, to learn how to do a back flip; because it’s something so necessary to know in the Manhattan life style.  A professional back flip teacher was instructing them – for God’s sake. Come on, find an open space and teach yourself if your heart is so set on it.  They have the vast open space that is Central Park on their doorstep and yet they choose to trek all the way to Brooklyn to flip into a pile of foam blocks.

(NB; Smoking weed in a public place is an offence, it is not however in your own property or on The Great Lawn in Central Park. From what I’ve heard, the Great Lawn is similar to Speaker’s Corner – you can pretty much get away with anything.)

Zachary was only a year older than me so when it came time for him to leave the city for a weekend to visit Universities in Washington DC, I tagged along for the ride out of curiosity.  We stayed in a delightful middle of the range hotel called The Georgetown Suites (1111 30^th Street, NW) -  the hotel is located right in the centre of Georgetown which meant the rows of idyllic shops, on M Street, were not far away. I particularly enjoyed the whole store dedicated to Ben and Jerry’s (something I have never seen in the UK.) Staying in DC, however was the only time I’ve ever had anything stolen from me, the night we happened to visit Ben and Jerry’s after dinner at a local restaurant I realised my sunglasses had been stolen. So to all you New York safety sceptics, I felt safer in the heart of NYC than I did in DC.

We had bookings to visit George Washington University as well as American University and The University of Georgetown. I went to the Georgetown viewing but quickly realised, as beautifully architecturally  built historic G-Town was, I could find other things I was more interested in seeing than the inside of a classroom I’m never going to study in. Or should that be, seeing the inside of a classroom I could never afford to study in? $20,000 per year is not something I happened to have sat at home.

In one short afternoon in the sweltering DC summer, way hotter than Manhattan by the way, I walked to the Lincoln Memorial, all the way along the mall, up the pool of reflection to the WWII memorial, down to the obelisk and finally back up to the White House. I must have walked miles that day. I distinctly remember sitting on the lawn in front of the White House and thinking that this would be the closest I was ever going to be to Obama; I’m actually okay with that.

After Zachary was done in DC, we headed back to Manhattan. I was glad for the excursion, but I still felt I was missing out on things happening in the city. Before I went to DC, I’d been in New York for almost two weeks, in that time I’d managed to do most of the touristic sight-seeing that everyone expects you to do. In one afternoon, I did Wall Street, Staten Island, The Statue Of Liberty and I’d wandered around Grand Central a lot too.
My visit was ten years after the 9/11 attacks, and I did feel compelled to visit the memorial site at Ground Zero. A massive void marks the place where the towers once stood now surrounded by rows upon rows of memorials. FDNY- Never Forget. PDNY – Never Forget.  A bronze plaque runs along a building next to the site and it reads “Dedicated to those who fell, and those who carry on.” That saying and my time spent at Ground Zero stayed with me for the rest of my trip even though I was only eight  in 2001 when the news billowed with smoke and sirens and even after ‘d come back from DC to start living in NYC, instead of holidaying.

In one of my remaining weeks in NYC, I visited The East Village taking in the student meets bohemian feel.  I remember particularly enjoying lunch at The Life Cafe, reading The Village Voice. The Life Cafe is where Jonathan Larson chose to set his rock opera version of Puccini’s La Boheme; Rent. I had performed  in my theatre company’s version of Rent the October previous to my trip, so this lunch felt slightly like a pilgrimage to the place where bohemian life was all anyone ever needed.

Rounding off my trip, there was only one more NY tradition to indulge in; Broadway. I managed to convince a friend to come with me to see Burt Bacharach’s “Promises Promises” starring Kristin Chenoweth (Wicked, Pushing Daisies, Glee) and Sean Hayes (Jack in Will & Grace). With dancers with legs like the Rockettes and singers that sent shivers down my spine, it was a thoroughly engaging performance. My friend enjoyed it equally as much, because a few weeks after my arrival back in London, I received an email about how he’d taken his whole family back again.

When I look back on my time in New York now, three years down the line, I remember it all like it was last summer. Looking through the thousands of photos stirs the feelings of a battle between innocence and independence that I was riddled with at the time. I filled my spare time with visits to Barnes & Noble, I spent far too much money on Pinkberry, and I fell in love with the Starbucks’ drink only available in America, and so perfect on a humid day in the city; Passion Tea Lemonade.

If I could take certain people back with me, I would go tomorrow. The city changes just as fast as I do and I know I won’t be able to stay away from the bright lights of Manhattan forever. I miss sitting on the steps of the MET just watching the world go by, finally finding  Strawberry Fields in Central Park right next to The Dakota Building that John Lennon was shot at, finding the cutest little stationary shop in Grand Central, lunch in Union Square reading Teen Vogue and Seventeen magazines. Oh, and who could forget my little moments in Crumb’s Bakery on 93rd street?

One warning to anyone planning a day in Brooklyn, I would get the metro. Walking bridge is an initially a great idea but when you’re just as far in as you’ll ever be off the other side and you’ve been walking across for twenty minutes, you’ll regret that decision. I speak from experience.