One Week in New York
Photos from our little jolly can be found here.
Monday
After a flight that won points for having tellies in the headrests, then lost them for having nothing worth watching on them, we arrived at Newark and bundled into a cab of semi-legal status. New Jersey is a run down industrial place it seems from a taxi's view. The big poster hoardings with "Stop The Killing" on them didn't reassure us either. Still, we arrived at our hostel in one piece and after dumping bags we headed out to Katz' Deli for dinner. Meat sandwiches the size of houses, a clue of what was yet to come. We then walked over to Arlene's Grocery for their infamous Rock ' Roll Karaoke and not only saw some truly horrendous singing (coming to Youtube soon!) but also some quite good turns. Moby stepped up unexpectedly and played "Whole Lotta Love" for a girl with a great voice. So strange to see him there with the assembled 200 odd people. Yes, I have a video of that as well. Jet lag was catching up with some of us so it was to bed at 2am New York time, 7am GMT...
Tuesday
A day of wandering the streets buying cheap sweets and even cheaper electronics. I landed myself a speaker system for my iPod that has real grunt for the princely sum of £8! Food came in large portions and threatened to give us all heart attacks but we soldiered on. In the evening it was off to Madison Square Gardens to watch the basketball. We didn't realise "Liberty" were the city's womans team but it was easily as good as the mens' version. The thing about American sport though is just how in your face it is. At the end of every quarter, or even during the 2 minute time outs something would happen on the court. A dance troop here, an under 14s singing competition there, even a dance off with the camrea broadcasting the best/worse dancers in the audience on its huge screens. US sport has to be seen to be believed. Aside from the weird diversions whenever Liberty had the ball fanfares would sound and little graphic sequences would shoot across the video screens. Nuts. Liberty still lost though.
Following that we found ourselves at an eclectic indie/dance night called "Disco Down" (I shit you not) in the depths of the Lower East Side. We drank terrible cheap beer called PBR and Tom showed off his skinny Spiderman t-shirt he'd bought that day to anyone who cared to comment. There was a bizarre photoshoot room people went to get their picture done and by the end of the night too many people were having sex in the evil little toilets. On our way out we bumped into the 1990s, who couldn't get in because they'd forgotten their ID! John immediately recognised Mel so we all had a chat and got some photos. Those are going to the NME.
Wednesday
After a brief stop at ground zero (very little to see, obviously) we set off to Coney Island, one of the furthest out parts of New York on the subway. A delapidated 50s style seaside resort it had a world famous hotdog stand called Nathans and the most rickety old funfair rides I'd ever been on. The 80 year old rollercoaster gave you whiplash and the ferris wheel with its sliding carriages felt like it was going to topple over. This really was part of the charm though. On the boardwalk we witnessed "Shoot The Freak", which involved a teenager padded to the waist and holding a large shield defending himself from paintball firing tourists down an alley! Truly strange. Further along the front we found a Russian hot dog cafe with communist insignia on everything. Traditionally that end (Brighton Beach) has been home to all the Russian immigrants in the city and like the other communities they did tend to stick to their own. Finally back at base, burnt and thirsty, we found some food and went to a small bar in the Lower East Side that was presenting some random bands. Very Bull&Gate but with no charge and an original Ms Pacman arcade machine. We started to get a taste for PBR at this point, which was always cheap and rarely got us drunk.
Thursday
Whilst Stew and Tom were off doing the Statue of Liberty thing Mel and I were at the Tenement Museum looking at how people lived at the turn of the last century. We then moved on to the museum of film and television. Little more than an excuse to watch ancient programs like Mr Ed and some 1980s Spitting Image it gave my legs a break at least. Moving on to Times Square to buy t-shirts we then met up with the other two at Hooters (Tom's choice) - which was a highly amusing experience, even if the food was truly awful. I doubt we'll ever see anything like it over here, though I'm sure it would be very successful! The evening was served by Club NME with the 1990s headlining. We stayed on for the club (unlike 90% of the crowd) and danced about with 30 other people to, amongst other things, Eurodisco by bis! The guitarist from We Are Scientists then took control of the decks and played horrendous cheese including Right Said Fred. The upside of this was that afterwards we went to late night bar with everyone else and Stewart got his photo taken with him.
Friday
Mainly a day of shopping and general random wandering we headed to Brooklyn in the evening to see CSS play for free at a venue called Studio B. It was really busy and the bands were great. The crowd were off their tits on whatever they could find and by the end of the night we were the last people in the building still standing. Moving to the smoking tables outside Stewart introduced us to some girls from Denmark. After much lost wandering we all jumped in cabs and drank on a stoop (the staircase leading up to an apartment) near where they lived until 6am. At which point it was home time. En route we chatted to a guy in a band called Leftover Crack, who are signed to Fat Wreck Chords. He tipped us off about a punk show in a park on Sunday...we got our photo taken with him as well.
Saturday
We didn't get up for a long time and then wandered around in a daze until the evening when we went to infamous scenester clubnight Misshapes. It wasn't that busy and was a bit of a let down as I'd been led to believe it was the American equivalent of Trash, or at the very least, Stay Beautiful. Still we danced a lot, drank a lot of PBR and stumbled home in the early morning.
Sunday
After a trip to Patricia Field we found ourselves in Washington Square Park for the punk all dayer. Some of the bands were terrible, some were bearable. It was really cool though to hear people speaking out about New York issues and distributing radical newspapers and fanzines. I have many now, including one that improbably guides you into a life of being a bum dropout living out of rubbish bins and hopping the train! Afterwards we saw some street basketball and did a bit more shopping. Not ready to crash quite yet, whilst Stew and Mel went off in search of cheesecake Tom and I went back to Times Square to experience it at night and ended up in a comedy club followed by some truly awful karaoke. Beware of a song called "Buy You A Drank", it'll be over here before you know it....
Monday
With most of the day at our disposal we took a train over to Williamsburg and walked to its famous Diner. The food, as always, was enormous and we bloatedly plodded across the Williamsburg Bridge afterwards. Some more wandering later it was back to the hostel and off to the airport. I arrived home this morning about 11.30 and am now operating at something approaching a normal level on just 2 hours sleep. Rock!
Monday
After a flight that won points for having tellies in the headrests, then lost them for having nothing worth watching on them, we arrived at Newark and bundled into a cab of semi-legal status. New Jersey is a run down industrial place it seems from a taxi's view. The big poster hoardings with "Stop The Killing" on them didn't reassure us either. Still, we arrived at our hostel in one piece and after dumping bags we headed out to Katz' Deli for dinner. Meat sandwiches the size of houses, a clue of what was yet to come. We then walked over to Arlene's Grocery for their infamous Rock ' Roll Karaoke and not only saw some truly horrendous singing (coming to Youtube soon!) but also some quite good turns. Moby stepped up unexpectedly and played "Whole Lotta Love" for a girl with a great voice. So strange to see him there with the assembled 200 odd people. Yes, I have a video of that as well. Jet lag was catching up with some of us so it was to bed at 2am New York time, 7am GMT...
Tuesday
A day of wandering the streets buying cheap sweets and even cheaper electronics. I landed myself a speaker system for my iPod that has real grunt for the princely sum of £8! Food came in large portions and threatened to give us all heart attacks but we soldiered on. In the evening it was off to Madison Square Gardens to watch the basketball. We didn't realise "Liberty" were the city's womans team but it was easily as good as the mens' version. The thing about American sport though is just how in your face it is. At the end of every quarter, or even during the 2 minute time outs something would happen on the court. A dance troop here, an under 14s singing competition there, even a dance off with the camrea broadcasting the best/worse dancers in the audience on its huge screens. US sport has to be seen to be believed. Aside from the weird diversions whenever Liberty had the ball fanfares would sound and little graphic sequences would shoot across the video screens. Nuts. Liberty still lost though.
Following that we found ourselves at an eclectic indie/dance night called "Disco Down" (I shit you not) in the depths of the Lower East Side. We drank terrible cheap beer called PBR and Tom showed off his skinny Spiderman t-shirt he'd bought that day to anyone who cared to comment. There was a bizarre photoshoot room people went to get their picture done and by the end of the night too many people were having sex in the evil little toilets. On our way out we bumped into the 1990s, who couldn't get in because they'd forgotten their ID! John immediately recognised Mel so we all had a chat and got some photos. Those are going to the NME.
Wednesday
After a brief stop at ground zero (very little to see, obviously) we set off to Coney Island, one of the furthest out parts of New York on the subway. A delapidated 50s style seaside resort it had a world famous hotdog stand called Nathans and the most rickety old funfair rides I'd ever been on. The 80 year old rollercoaster gave you whiplash and the ferris wheel with its sliding carriages felt like it was going to topple over. This really was part of the charm though. On the boardwalk we witnessed "Shoot The Freak", which involved a teenager padded to the waist and holding a large shield defending himself from paintball firing tourists down an alley! Truly strange. Further along the front we found a Russian hot dog cafe with communist insignia on everything. Traditionally that end (Brighton Beach) has been home to all the Russian immigrants in the city and like the other communities they did tend to stick to their own. Finally back at base, burnt and thirsty, we found some food and went to a small bar in the Lower East Side that was presenting some random bands. Very Bull&Gate but with no charge and an original Ms Pacman arcade machine. We started to get a taste for PBR at this point, which was always cheap and rarely got us drunk.
Thursday
Whilst Stew and Tom were off doing the Statue of Liberty thing Mel and I were at the Tenement Museum looking at how people lived at the turn of the last century. We then moved on to the museum of film and television. Little more than an excuse to watch ancient programs like Mr Ed and some 1980s Spitting Image it gave my legs a break at least. Moving on to Times Square to buy t-shirts we then met up with the other two at Hooters (Tom's choice) - which was a highly amusing experience, even if the food was truly awful. I doubt we'll ever see anything like it over here, though I'm sure it would be very successful! The evening was served by Club NME with the 1990s headlining. We stayed on for the club (unlike 90% of the crowd) and danced about with 30 other people to, amongst other things, Eurodisco by bis! The guitarist from We Are Scientists then took control of the decks and played horrendous cheese including Right Said Fred. The upside of this was that afterwards we went to late night bar with everyone else and Stewart got his photo taken with him.
Friday
Mainly a day of shopping and general random wandering we headed to Brooklyn in the evening to see CSS play for free at a venue called Studio B. It was really busy and the bands were great. The crowd were off their tits on whatever they could find and by the end of the night we were the last people in the building still standing. Moving to the smoking tables outside Stewart introduced us to some girls from Denmark. After much lost wandering we all jumped in cabs and drank on a stoop (the staircase leading up to an apartment) near where they lived until 6am. At which point it was home time. En route we chatted to a guy in a band called Leftover Crack, who are signed to Fat Wreck Chords. He tipped us off about a punk show in a park on Sunday...we got our photo taken with him as well.
Saturday
We didn't get up for a long time and then wandered around in a daze until the evening when we went to infamous scenester clubnight Misshapes. It wasn't that busy and was a bit of a let down as I'd been led to believe it was the American equivalent of Trash, or at the very least, Stay Beautiful. Still we danced a lot, drank a lot of PBR and stumbled home in the early morning.
Sunday
After a trip to Patricia Field we found ourselves in Washington Square Park for the punk all dayer. Some of the bands were terrible, some were bearable. It was really cool though to hear people speaking out about New York issues and distributing radical newspapers and fanzines. I have many now, including one that improbably guides you into a life of being a bum dropout living out of rubbish bins and hopping the train! Afterwards we saw some street basketball and did a bit more shopping. Not ready to crash quite yet, whilst Stew and Mel went off in search of cheesecake Tom and I went back to Times Square to experience it at night and ended up in a comedy club followed by some truly awful karaoke. Beware of a song called "Buy You A Drank", it'll be over here before you know it....
Monday
With most of the day at our disposal we took a train over to Williamsburg and walked to its famous Diner. The food, as always, was enormous and we bloatedly plodded across the Williamsburg Bridge afterwards. Some more wandering later it was back to the hostel and off to the airport. I arrived home this morning about 11.30 and am now operating at something approaching a normal level on just 2 hours sleep. Rock!