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 93rd
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 87th
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 30th
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.
