I’m back at an airport, San Francisco this time. I really like flying, I think it’s one of the coolest things you can do that’s usually massively taken for granted. But I’m not a massive fan of the wait around for a connecting flight, particularly when it’s because you chose a stupid route to save money. Actually right now I’m beginning to seriously doubt whether the money I saved was really worth the super annoying f*#k around I’ve experienced over the past five days. But enough about that.
Last time I checked in I was headed for New York City. I’d been to New York once before but I would have been as tall as my waist last time so it doesn’t really count. Andrew had hooked up so that I could stay with a friend of his in Brooklyn, which was awesome because I had seriously started to run out of money (or further run out of money). Unfortunately my already late arriving flight got delayed and so I got into JFK at about 1230am on Sunday. This is where it got interesting. I turned my phone back on to get a voicemail from Andrew’s mate saying he wasn’t going to be able to meet me at his place and to give him a call to sort everything out. No worries. So I called, no answer. Called again, no answer. I realised right then that if I couldn’t contact this guy I was in a situation where I was in one of the biggest cities in the world for the first time, without anywhere to stay and no real way to find anywhere at 1230 in the morning. So I thought I’d call John because he might be near a computer and he could find me a hostel. Turns out John and Greg were out having beers and a generally good time. Really helpful. I fretted a little bit (not too much) and finally got in touch with Andrew’s friend and sorted out to pick up the keys from the lady above him. This is where I’m just bad at life in general. You see I’d known the address of this place before leaving LA and yet for whatever reason didn’t think to work out how to get there. It only occurred to me I had no idea where I was going when I was on the train heading towards the city. I tried to call my host again but no answer. I do this sort of thing pretty much everyday. Welcome to my world. I’m starting to ramble so I’ll ramp up the pace. I called my brother back in Australia, and after laughing at me he google mapped the address and gave me a rough idea of how to get there. I got off at the right subway station, got lost, hailed a cab who drove me literally around the corner (a $3.40 cab fare when the starting fare is $2.50) which was kind of embarrassing, called the poor lady upstairs at 230am and finally got to bed. And that was that. I never actually met Andrew’s mate despite staying there for 4 nights and if he reads this I promise I didn’t steal anything or something like that. And thanks as well.
I guess the reason for me going to New York was to fly the Montpelier flag and generally try and convince people in the big city that our band was awesome. I’m not really sure how well I went on that mission but I met a few really cool people so that was cool. Here are some highlights from my time in the Big Apple.
- Walking through Times Square and randomly running into someone from back home who I didn’t even know was overseas. But, it just happened to be the same girl who I’d randomly walked into in the middle of Prague four years ago when I didn’t know she was overseas then either!! I don’t know what the chances are of that happening but I’d hazard a guess at not high.
- Walking over the Brooklyn Bridge and down along the Promenade. I saw a video clip based on the Promenade and seeing it in real life was really quite great.
- Grand Central Station. I’m a sucker for train stations. There’s something about them that I find really quite wonderful. And this one was awesome!
- Getting lost in Central Park. To me, having a park as big as Central Park right in the middle of Manhattan is quite simply an astronomical feat. They really got something right there.
- The Morrison Hotel Photo Gallery on Bowery. This was a great little gallery of music photographs. It had some spectacular ones. In particular there was a photo of The Police’s first ever gig in the USA which was at a little club in New York.
- Wandering around the West Village. There are some really nice buildings and streets in the West Village. I’m not quite sure how to describe them but it would be really nice to live on one of the streets.
- Bagels. I think I pretty much only ate bagels and New York pizza while I was in NYC (not quite but you know what I mean). There was this little bagel shop just down the road from where I was staying which I frequented. It was a massive shame they weren’t open at 430am when I was heading to the airport. I really could have gone a bagel then.
All in all New York was fantastic and hopefully we’ll manage to get back there very soon.
