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G'day All again from Ottawa, Canada,

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I just got back from New York, and Tuesday night down there we were sitting in a fast food place near Times Square, in downtown Manhattan.  There was 3 of us; an Aussie 'Brad', a 24 yo nurse from Shepparton, 'Mark', a 22 Canadian rafting instructor from Ottawa, and myself.  I had met these blokes at a pub in Ottawa last week, one week later we were in this eatery in New York .....

The conversation at one stage went a little like this...



"...I think we've just been tagged".

"Hey?, what's that mean?"

"All that.... That was all on purpose.  We're going to be followed.  They know we're tourists"

"Fuck....  Well, what do we do"

"Dunno... (long pause) Lets just get out of here"




Mark, being from North America had much more of an idea about New York than we did.  I guess he had heard more stories, especially first hand ones from people who had experienced the place.  Anyway, he was worried, and so, at this time, the two Aussies quickly did too.

Anyway, it's Tuesday night, about 9 or so at night.  We're in New York for our second day, a city of 18.8 million angry, frustrated, (seemingly predominantly) black people.

At the eatery, all three of us were facing the road, doing our thing.  Mark, the Canadian happened to randomly catch an eye of some large black fella on the street.  The fella stops and stares.  Eventually, (as we're obviously ignoring him) he leaves.  He returns to the window less than a minute later and stares.  We know it, we don't look up.  Another large black fella enters the store from the other direction, walks straight up to us, and says hello - and we just say g'day and keep doing our thing.  We walks to the back of the eatery and stares at us.  Eventually he walks out, (apparently) joining the other fella.

So, apparently, we had just been 'tagged'...

And so, we leave the eatery, and head in a fast fashion back to Times Square.  We are surrounded by the lights and the skyscraper size TV screens, there are people, cars, police, taxis, and noise everywhere.  We move through the crowd reltively fast.  It was easy to tell that there were many other tourists in the crowd, so we feel much safer.  None of us really wanted to look behind us from the eatery.

Mark approached a NYPD officer.

"We've got our car parked on Broadway and 231st Street, do you think we should get it now or catch the subway back later...?"

The NYPD officer laughs.

The NYPD officer stops laughing when he realises we're serious.

We quickly realised that us nieve dickheads had just left our hire car in the MIDDLE of the 'Bronx'.  (Those who have watched gangster movies etc may have heard of it...).  Our only way of getting it is the subway, and its dark, and we (might) have just been 'tagged'.

Following the officers instructions, we leave right away to the subway, not wanting it to get any later.  Underground, we made many good decisions without actually saying anything.  We stood in a 'triangle' the whole time on the platform, and later on the train, each watching another's back.  We turned over, or hidden anything written on our hats/clothing that suggested we were from Canada or Australia (or not from New York).

When the train arrived, it was like a seeing scenes off the Tokyo subway systems.  There were people everywhere.  When the doors opened, we absolutely rammed ourselves into the carriage - ensuring that all 3 of us got on.

The train left downtown Manhattan and headed slowly towards the Bronx.  Every station, more and more white people would get off.  About half way, there was us, lots of poor looking hispanic people, and, naturally many black people.  We didn't say a word to each other the whole time - lots of eye contacts and nods - no words.

Eventually, with the numbers on the train wearing thin, we arrived at 231st street station.  As soon as the doors opened, we walked very very briskly to the place in which we had parked our car.  Again, in a nieve fashion, we had went to this small place earlier in the day and trustingly payed $10US for parking up front, and given some bloke our keys.  All we had was a business card to collect our car.  We knew that if there was a stuff up, and our crappy card didn't turn into a new Ford Taurus we were in all sorts of trouble.

And so, arriving after a short walk that seemed to go on forever, we walked into this place, found a fella who looked like he might work there, and handed him the card.  He wandered off for a while, and we were left there, just looking at each other.  Every couple of seconds you would hear yelling from the street, and sirens went past all the time.

The fella returned, mumbled something about a car, and brought out the keys to which we grabbed them out of his hands, went straight to our car, got in, turned it on, locked the doors, made sure the doors were locked, cracked a beer each and drove back to Manhattan.

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I can now say, to a certain extent, that I have seen the 'real' New York.  However, that was always our plan.  We left for New York at 4am Monday morning.  I, personally was drunk off my arse from Sunday's St. Patricks day celebrations, so when they came to pick me up from Res, I just jumped in the back seat and passed out.

It was the closest thing I have ever done to getting completely drunk and waking up in another country.

So, after three days there, what can I say about New York?  Expensive, Cold, Dirty (except in downtown Manhattan), but certainly well worth going.  In our time there we spent time at Broadway, Wall St., took a ferry to the Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, had a tour of the United Nations buildings, Ground Zero, Central Park - essentially everything there is to do in New York.

New York, in terms of 'physical size' is not a large city.  Melbourne would be significantly larger.  Seemingly everyone lives in (usually really run down and horrible) 'apartment' accomodation, we never saw a backyard our whole time.  New York is made up of 5 main areas: 'Queens', 'Brooklyn', 'Bronx', 'Manhattan', and 'Harlem'.  All of these areas seemed to be stricken with homelessness, poverty, hispanic, black and asian people, and a real sense of hopelessness - except for Manhattan.  Nothing could be further from the truth in this area.  There were some beggars there, and some poor street vendors, but that was it.  Manhattan was $$ all the way.  Every place anyone has heard of (i.e., Broadway, Twin Towers, E.S. building, everything), is in lower Manhattan.

It is amazing to see what massive amounts of wealth can create.  Manhattan is also crawling with police officers, possibly either intent on keeping Manhattan a nice place, (or maybe they're scared like the rest of us of the outlying areas....?)

As any New York trip should entail - we spent alot of time at 'Ground Zero'.  Obvously, two big bastards of towers were once there, but aren't anymore.  Being there was an eerie feeling.  There were memorials completely surrounding the site, from all over the world - including Australia.  There were many people there, but no one seemed to speak, everyone either read the memorials, or just stared at the carnage.

In fact, 5 towers actually fell on September 11th, taking up a large area of Manhattan.  The best time we visited ground zero was at night.  Massive floodlights everywhere made it seem like daytime, and two massive blue lights shine upwards from the site indicating exactly where the two main buildings were.

Our whole intent of the trip was indeed to see all the attractions, but to also do it on a student budget, i.e., nothing.  And so, on the first night we would hide two blokes in the car, and one of us would go to the nearest motels (way out of New York), and ask how much a room for 'one' was, (with the intent of all piling in).  We had to travel very far into the country before this became viable - and so we spent our first night in a dodgy motel, where they would 'only accept cash with correct change'.  Our second night was spent sleeping in our car in the carpark of an outlying 'Burger King', in New Jersey, the next state over.  Police cars were always in this carpark as it was a great hiding spot for them to catch speeding motorists on a nearby expressway, so we asked them of the legalities of sleeping in our car, they said they didn't care, and everyone was happy.

I think years of sleeping in the Panelvan back home made it easy for me to be be the first one to pass out after a couple of beers.  It was a freezing cold night however, so we had to start the car every couple of hours to warm the cabin up again...

The best joke we played during the night was (with the two Aussies sleeping in the front reclined seats, and the Canadian sleeping in the boot with the back seat down and his feet inbetween us) was to, at random times during the night, hit the boot release button.

There is nothing funnier.

And so, that was my adventure to New York.  As well as seeing all the sights, possibly the best part was hanging out with the blokes whom I went with; who ended up being brilliant travel partners, and seeing the 'real New York', (preferably from the safety of our moving, locked car).  One thing that apparently makes New York famous is thier 'New York attitude'.  Well, that was correct.  To make a 18 or so million person generalisation, they were a pack of angry, rude, frustrated, financially driven pricks, who had no real idea of the outside world.  It seemed you were either really bloody rich, or really poor.

But, they are only my observations.  3 days can only reveal so much.

That'll do.  Again, I'm sorry for this being so long, and indeed I could have wrote more, as the whole experience was certianly an amazing one, and well worth taking nearly a week off classes for.

There will not be any photos of New York go up on my travelling website as I brought my own (film) camera, but I might scan them in another day...

I really hope all is well back home in Australia (and everywhere else this is going).  I've only got ~ a month left here in Canada before I depart for Europe, so I'll trying to make the most of it...!



Cheers!,

Nath