New York, New York

According to various members of my family, my previous blog post on New York was not sufficiently detailed.  I confess I didn't think a blog post detailing our trip would be of interest to anyone; after all, New York has been described in countless movies, TV shows and songs.  Musicians as diverse as Alica Keys, Frank Sinatra and Ryan Adams have written odes to the city.  And years of American TV shows like Sex and the City being syndicated around the world have resulted in images of the city forming part of most Westerners' cultural iconography. 

I blog about London, but then I think London is so badly represented in movies, songs and TV shows that there's still plenty to say.  When you try and think of a song dedicated to London, you end up with the Clash's London Calling, with its chorus:

The ice age is coming, the sun's zooming in

Engines stop running, the wheat is growing thin
A nuclear error, but I have no fear
Cause London is drowning and I, I live by the river

Hardly descriptive of London.

The movies seem to show London either as a breeding ground for zombies (think 28 Days Later or Shaun of the Dead) or a place of bumbling, posh but oh-so-charming men (think Notting Hill or any movie from the nauseating corpus of  Richard Curtis' work).  Alternatively, you get the grimy, mockney gangster movies.  In short: Londoners pretend to hate London (and make it out to be a city of flesh-eating zombies) or exploit the stereotypes of it to sell movies abroad.  And the stereotypes are far from the reality:  posh public school-educated men are no more charming than their working class counterparts.  And most gangs in London consist of council estate teenagers carrying knives, rather than being full of lovable rouges with amusing accents and their own strict moral code.  The positive side of this representation of London is that I doubt visitors to the city expect London to be romantic or wonderful.  Londoners will rarely admit it to be either of those things, as it's far more in keeping with the British psyche to moan about the city.  But often London can be wonderful.  I don't know that anyone can walk through Regent's park on a sunny day or have a drink in an ancient, dingy London pub without being seduced by the city's charms.

In contrast, we know a lot about New York.  New Yorkers don't seem able to stop enthusing about the city.  All that talk and praise is pretty tough to live up to and I confess that, for me, New York didn't get there.

Perhaps I've become too English over the time I've been here, but I found that in New York, people just talk. They talk a lot.  Even when they're on their own, walking the streets, they talk.  They all seem to have a blue tooth headset perched in an ear and to be either having a shouty conversation through it or anxiously waiting to have a shouty conversation.  There are a lot of people in London who talk when on their own, but they are usually talking to themselves and are the sort of people one crosses the street to avoid. 

New York also has a reputation for being friendly.  In part that seemed correct, but people varied from being incredibly friendly to incredibly rude.  The former tended to be people working for commission (shop assistants) or tips (waiters) and the latter anyone who knew there was no hope of them getting a tip (eg, anyone on the other end of a telephone).  At least in London you know people will be rude or, at best, indifferent.  I find that just a bit more predictable and easy to deal with.  To be frank, I don't want to converse with the gym staff about my horoscope.  Nor do I want to discuss in detail my holiday with waiters or plans for the upcoming weekend.  But maybe I'm just becoming too English and/or grumpy.

The things I did love about New York were the restaurants (we ate at far too many), slick bars and coffee shops.  New Yorkers know how to mix a cocktail (English bartenders frequently do not).  And G and I greatly enjoyed the culture of the brunch: the day that starts with an enormous meal, a bloody mary or mimosa and strong coffee (with endless free refills).  I loved the diversity of the neighbourhoods; from the neighbourhoods of orthodox Jews through to the trendy gay Chelsea and the ultra hip Williamsburg.  I'll also admit that sometimes I liked the fact you could talk to strangers about things other than the weather.  Aspects of the city were also really beautiful, such as the view from Brooklyn Bridge and the city lights at night.  The Statue of Liberty is impressive and the Chrysler building stunning.  And New York was, I admit, very, very cool.  There were more hipsters than you could poke a stick at.  All this made for an absolutely fantastic holiday.

In Sex and the City, Carrie once commented that she was dating New York.  I think that if New York was a person, it would be the cool, slick bad boy of a teen soapy (think Dylan from 90210, the original).  That might be fun for a little while, but I think I would rather date his older, scruffier but ultimately more lovable friend.