Snow Angels on 34th street part 4

“Yeah its snowing, but it will never stick” I sigh and continue like I am explaining to a six year old “look the ground is too wet and there is too much cloud cover for it to freeze”. They say that hindsight is twenty twenty. We are walking back from the best hamburger I have ever tasted, through Times Square which is every bit as bright and impressive as the films make it out to be. I have to admit that, although uncomfortable, the snow is making the already impressive sight, breathtaking. Its night and the neon confusion of colours are lighting the snow from all angles, it’s like being in the static of a rainbow T.V picture.

We’re cold and tired because before dinner, the eight of us had managed to find the ice skating ring in Central Park, I had been pretty cocky about my ice skating skills, the last time had gone I remember being a very competent skater, of course this was during a time I was roller bleeding everywhere, the fact that had slipped my mind was that the last time I had even seen my blades must be a couple of years ago. I flailed and swung like a mime doing a “baby giraffe’s first steps” routine to some stupid people far away. But even my incompetence on the ice couldn’t take away from the experience, its dark, snowing, and every bit as magical as it sounds. The beauty of the situation actually took my breath away, that and the exercise. After half an hour everyone is asked to leave because the snow apparently is getting too bad, so we go to dinner, which turned out to be that best burger I have ever tasted.

We finally get a taxi from Time Square and by the time we reach the hotel, I am beginning to change my mind about it not sticking, in ten minutes the snow only increased in volume; it was, literally, shitting down with snow. After finishing the beers we brought for the hotel rooms fridge with Nice Guy Dave and Mark (also a nice guy but nowhere near as nice as Nice Guy Dave). We settle down to bed.

The phone rings, I try and remember since when did I have a phone in my room and slowly the world filters itself back into my head “turn on the television” laughs a voice, its one of the girls in the other rooms.
“Why? Its early” I manage to growl back, morning and me never really get along, unless I never went to sleep the night before.
“Because were in Blizzard ’06, have you not seen outside?”
“I’ll phone you back” I step over Nice Guy Dave’s prone form to the window and sneak a look out the window, Remember when you where very very young and it had been snowing outside? What seemed like the world would be covered in snow and instantly you would know that school would be off and magic was real. Well it was like that. A foot of snow had fallen, cars were buried and not a soul was out on the streets.

Like any normal person of the twenty first century my first reaction was to turn on the television and every channel is news, but it’s not the news we’re used to in England with a sombre but comforting middle aged person calmly explaining what’s going on, this was slick attractive people screaming “BLIZZARD 06” for behind a desk and mind bending graphics, yes we hadn’t even been awake for five and already they had a name for it. This is on the day of our flight home, so naturally all flights are cancelled and I get slightly concerned, the uber blond on television is now looking directly at the camera and is urging everyone not to panic, and although the advice is slightly hysterical (what was she expecting? Looting?) I decide to take it and carry on watching the news. Every so often the news goons would cut to a man wrapped up in inadequate but expensive Gore-tex, who’s only job was to stand in the snow, point to it and say “snow” the news goon would say something like “our man in the field is Stroke Firmly, what’s it like out there Stroke?” cut to Stroke standing in white.
“well Brad its snowing pretty bad out here in Nowheresville, this is what snow looks like for anyone that’s never seen it and is to stupid to open a window or look at a picture with snow in it, back to the studio”.

I get back on the phone and plan the day ahead, we end up going to breakfast and then to the MOMA, the streets are empty when we first leave the lobby, I feel like I’m five years old as I’m picking my feet in and out of the drifts, seeing New York empty of traffic and people is eerie and I am beginning to see why the newscasters may have overreacted, it feels like the end of the world or at least like I am on another one, all the landmarks and advertising billboards’ have disappeared. On our way to breakfast I stop on 34th street and make a snow angel, How many people can say the have made a snow angel on a Manhattan sidewalk?

Skip forward to a terminal at Newark airport, there are about 10 of us sprawled out over each other all in one corner in various states of wakefulness, reading or just staring. We are tired but happy and the five hours delay seems like five minutes because of each others company, so seeing New York in snow was totally worth the five hour delay and I would go as far as to say worth five more.

Snow angels on 34th street part 3

I have consumed nothing today but Coke, sugar and bad quick food so I’m sitting here, at my computer, wired and weird because the only other alternative is to pace the house like a irritable chubby panther or watching the ludicrous “Prison Break” on channel Five- a programme so removed from reality even the laws of physics are treated more as a guideline that shouldn’t get in the way of increasingly bizarre plot- so to occupy my buzzing self I’m going to carry on with my recounting of the New York trip.

Skip forward too the second night and we are roaming Beeker street a bar full of bars, when I say we I mean seven of us, five of who are under age. T o begin with we’re eager to take in the atmosphere every other building is a bar and most have a Barker, that’s the man on the door who’s job it is to attract people into them by shouting (or barking if you will) things like “live music” “no cover” “good food no drink minimum” of course through the filter of my dark and silly brain these shouts are turned into “drugs and food” “see steam powered robot razor fight a monkey” “live girls, see a woman suck off a horse, and then fight it”.

The first bouncer knocks us all back, maybe its because I’m giggling like a lunatic or perhaps it’s the fact that Phil looks like a seven year old, but I know we may be in trouble because that place was real skeezy looking and if we’re to be carded there we may be carded everywhere . The next place isn’t so choosy so we settle down to drinks and food.

While there I watched the opening of the Winter Olympics, has anyone ever sat down and actually watched one of these things? I tried not to but the TV was pointed at my face and it probley would have been twice as much effort not to watch it but I’m glad I did. I have to say it was easiest the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen (and I’ve seen some wacky things, *sigh* if these eyes could talk) that’s not just lazy hyperbole. It was just plain Monty Python silly, like it was beamed directly from the brain of a very mentally disturbed man.

Me and Phil reasoned that the only way they could come up with such a thing is by gathering the gayest choreographer, the most extravagant costume designer and a deranged special effects specialist, locking them in a room with six bottles of absinthe laced with DMT and a kilo of cocaine and not letting them sleep or even out the room until they had come up with a five hour loon-fest.

The way we figure it three days later some poor work experience boy had to go into this room, which by now would probley look like a werewolves nest, and sift through the blood, scribblings and shit daubed on the walls to try and make some sort of sense, looking around and stifling a sob he sees “man-gimp bats” on a napkin and staples it a cigarette packet with “on wires”, looking around he makes a note of “man hammering on a giant anvil” scrawled on the walls and then “with fire” which is written underneath it in what very much looks like blood. Sitting down he sees someone has carved “man on skates” into the desk, to which someone has added with the same red gooey stuff that is on the walls “with head on fire”. He slowly reaches over to a small Dictaphone, hits play and hears what sounds like a womans voice airily talking about ballroom dancers dressed like Dalmatians gliding over ice with plaster replicas of assorted cows, very much like she was describing a dream as it happened. Then finally comprehending the enormity of his given task, he would no longer be able to contain the tears.

After the mind fuck, and we had finished our food, we were entertained by a local DJ, and by entertained I me we laughed openly at him and his utterly incompetent “mixing skillz” this guy dropped more bricks than a drunk builder. But we laughed, drank and generally had what turned out to be an amazing night in a New York bar.

Photo; not sure (thanks bobs anyway)

Snow Angels on 34th street part 2

America is exactly as you imagine it and, at the same time, completely different to what you thought it would be like. It’s bigger for a start, from the ground you are dwarfed and even though every instinct is telling you otherwise you still can’t help but walk round staring upwards.

But the real scale of New York was shown to me this trip when I visited the Empire State building. Those of you that know me will know how I overuse the word “awesome” I blame Bill and Ted, so when I say the view from the 86th observatory was awesome, please know that I don’t mean cup of tea awesome or didn’t miss the bus awesome I mean awesome in the original sense of the word, knee trembling, lack of words Awesome with a capital fucking A. I genuinely wish that I was a better writer to convey how affected I was by the sight.

The only thing to mar the experience was how on the way up we was guided through what must have been 3 different gift shops, hocking expensive but tacky baubles and other assorted shit, I get the feeling that if the Empire State building had been somewhere else (and lets face it, it would have never been built somewhere else) you would probley have to ask the cleaners nicely to unlock a door and walk up1,860 steps to have a look round. And because of the recent Kong movie someone had gone to the trouble to glue badly made monkeys to everything and add an extra twenty bucks.

Interesting fact: the original budget for the building was $50 million and it actually came in under budget by $9 million, which goes to show what a complete shower of prats the people that built the millennium dome are.

part 3 soon

photo; veiw from the Empire State Building (thanks bobs)

Snow Angels on 34th street part 1

I’m in the calm and safety of my softly lit room, finally the memories from the last week have settled in my brain into something resembling order and I feel confident that when recounting them here they won’t sound too much like the jabberings of a Benzedrine fuelled lunatic. It all started at the airport.

We arrived at Heathrow airport after a two hour coach journey but if I’m honest the journey seemed shorter because of the excitement and general hubbub of the forty or so other art students I was travelling with, all in different states non- sleep.

I was trying to impress with a fake travel weary rock star attitude at the airport check-in procedure, so I step too the counter and am greeted by the faux cheery Smiling Bint. After one look into her eyes I give up my weary act, knowing that to pull it off my soul would have to be as dead as hers, steeling myself for the inevitable joke, or worse, suppressed giggle, that my passport picture inevitably brings, I try to be charming, cross my fingers and pray to the fickle Airport god for the most holy of holys, an upgrade. “There’s been a problem” her smile doesn’t even fucking flinch while she says this “your seats been cancelled”. I think at this point I sigh and achieve exactly what I was trying to fake a minute ago. Bint then promptly disappears for to talk to a supervisor and/or have a cup of tea.

At this point everyone else has checked in, even my friend Phil who, while not particularly looking like a terrorist or a smuggler, defiantly looks guilty of something , and my course tutor is looking at me like I have got a holdall full of grenades and a kilo of Moroccan smack up my arse. I tell him to carry on and get in the queue for security, playing the role of grown up with everything under control.

When Bint gets back she explains that my seat was cancelled because a overzealous co-worker of hers, when checking in a different person with my name, saw there was two Smiths on the flight and cancelled the second one thinking that there couldn’t possibly be more than one person with the same name in the world, lets hope the addled little darling never loses her job and ends up working for Muslim Air or CheapChineseFlights.com (“what do you mean you cancelled all 80 Wongs?!”). Bint goes on then to say that her supervisor is going to see if they can fit me on the flight (which they eventually do, even though I’m sitting nowhere near any of my friends), and then sits there trying to engage me in small talk as if there doing me a favour.

Hindsight is twenty twenty and now I realise to reflect on the plane that my hassles were over with a degree of smugness was just too tempting for the Airport god to let slide.

Anyone that been on a long haul flight will be acquainted with the dry skin, bum sores and the unshakable feeling of discomfort that you get when your finally allowed off the plane, this accompanied with the lack of sleep, eight cans of Stella, and the disorientation of flying over several time zones makes the immigration process seem daunting when actually its not, its just a long queue with a stern man at the end. In fact me a Phil are just musing that Purgatory must be a lot like the American immigration hall, not too hot, not too cold, your not hungry or thirsty, there’s art on the walls but its not that interesting to look at. You’re just blandly waiting for your time to leave.

When it does come to my turn, he scans my fingers, nukes my eyes, swipes my passport and then tells me to “come this way”. Shit. On my way to the dreaded “back room” I manage to catch my course tutors’ eye he is now looking at me like it’s a holdall full of Uranium and four kilos of angels dust I have up my arse, god alone knows why I bothered catching his eye, like American immigration would give a monkeys dick about what a course tutor from a limey art university has to say.

The back room is an impossibly high cops front desk with three rows of incredibly uncomfortable plastic chairs, I note that there screwed into the ground, possibly to stop you flipping out and attacking them in frustration, but I made it a life rule to never assault a armed cop with crappy furniture, and its worked up until now. I’m instructed to sit down, which after seven hours of sitting down I don’t really fancy but I do it anyway and spend the next half an hour being ignored while I’m trying to:
1. Work out the name of the Kafka story that my life seems to have become and more importantly remember how it ends.
2. Look innocent.
3. Try not to imagine what having two latexed fingers slowly worked up my back passage by a bored looking male nurse would feel like.

After this time I remember that, while not being the nicest guy in the world, I haven’t actually done anything and simultaneously manage to forget I’m English enough to approach the desk and enquire what’s going on.

It turns out that someone with exactly the same name AND birth date is actually a wanted criminal in America, and after politely pointing out that handing your passport with this information on to an armed police officer is not the action of a desperate criminal on the run, they let me go. Without apologising.

I slip on my shades and walk out too forty or so people looking at me with a mixture of open contempt, pity and hushed awe, I got to be the world weary rock star after all.

Part2 soon

photo; me and phil in central park (thanks bobs)