Soft sweet scented sheets of the hotel Blossom Dearie: yards of sumptuous unused bedding, virgin territory. Mysteries of the substances they give you for the shower. Mysteries of the shower, for that matter. In the 14 down elevator always different characters: odd European business associates this time, encountering each other here during descent, the group forming around me as though by accident. The elevator seems a running joke, the one qualm anyone has about the place, save also the coldness of the breakfast buffet at which rogue English voices sigh. Downtown on the corner the Strand�s dollar shelves hold what seem interesting volumes that gradually replicate themselves on one shelf after another. Graffiti and fire escapes, failed bagel venture on 1st Avenue, 50c for a cold bagel off a stall as I head too far North up Lexington, little India and all, for noon�s latest rendez-toi. In the lobby Tokyo Rosemary in pinks from the shocking to the merely surprising admires the swish surroundings. It�s like Hal David could walk out any minute. 34th street, a new Korean in a new town. On Park Avenue we seek a bus, in the cold wind that snips between the skyscrapers that frame the Empire State against the snappy blue. I try to find out about Manhattan�s place in the history of aesthetics. The bus never comes, the subway does, up to the edge of Spanish Harlem, into reach of the rattling drums. East of the park, over the cliffs mew the wildcat charms: Barrio land, deadbeat side streets, up to a point. The Museum of the City of New York somehow asks that its whole name be recited: not the New York Museum, no, the Museum of the City of New York. Grand old marble halls tricked out to neat modernity, best of two east side worlds. It�s a $5 bargain, kids: don�t miss Radicals in the Bronx, socialists, communists and cooperative housing, factional badges, red diaper fables, FDR�s Democratic Party an exotically conservative option by these flashing lights. In the Glamour halls I wonder at the frisson of being a yard from the yards that gave Nicole Kidman a frisson. Cyan and red upstairs the Puerto Rican walls; the mysteries of the US commonwealth. Guidebooks are sold as Not For Tourists. I object: we are all tourists in someone�s life. Anyway, why trust the word and feeling of a local? They (and we are all locals in someone�s town) are less apt than the despised cashspilling migrants to look up and see the light. The Park waits to the west with its lifelines traced in the orange of Christo�s Gates. Oddly mundane repetition of the pattern, orange cloth hung on orange poles, like some Kurosawan feudal structure perhaps but uniform all across the green miles when so much might have been gained by variation, the chances once so good for diversity. In two minutes you could toss together a notion that would improve it: on this path every gate bearing a handwritten quotation from a New York novel; on this every orange cloth emblazoned with a bird of America. Nothing doing. The Gates seem always excused by circumstance, some condition that�s absent: - They�d look better in the wind; - O, they�d look good in the snow. Nature beats them like it casually trumps much artifice: the setting sun behind the Reservoir Jackie Onassis peels more than one shade of orange across the silhouette-strewn sky. In the hotel David Crosby I crack a new gold drink, Brooklyn Pilsner: the variations keep coming. For storing that in the fridge some Krusty will add $5.44 to the bill. She has written the address in a cute hand on petit paper. Into early evening once again, with my hat on and my dollars dry, and the coated doorman hauling glass aside. - Would that be the *real* Tracer Hand, sir? - Oh, I wouldn�t go that far. These hot dog stands are useful it turns out, not just some retro decoration. Past the Empire State�s blessed eternal landmarking, Herald Square � why do you only ever hear of Herald Square once you're in Manhattan? mystery of its obscurity abroad � and the Broadway woozy tootsies: the subway to 103rd street, reading all the way about the land above none of us down here can see. Quietness of the norwest reaches; Manhattan Avenue sounds a name from a Massachusetts past. The Ding Dong Lounge flips suddenly into view: through the door the lugubrious sound is a sudden bath of absinthe and petrol, �Epitaph For My Heart�. I would like to report cocktail shakers and parasol tremblers, maraschino waitresses and tinkling ice-buckets, but it�s dark and downhome, great spatial rifts of echoing rock between one table and another. At the bar the bearded tender serves me a pint of naturally Brooklyn; he probably wanted a tip also. The bogs are splattered with old punk posters, samizdats and slashed photocopies, vague early-Reagan satire, loose shocks, unknown support acts who peopled the glacial history of the electric guitar. At a table at the front I open the Rough Guide and wait. A fellow from the bar follows me like an agent in a Deep Throat drama, asks for whom I�m waiting. O.Nate, his name punctuated as mysteriously as a modern rock band�s: an international businessman and a grindcore fan from Hoboken. To a mere foreigner his voice sounds way out West, possessed of one of those mysteriously other American textures. In fact I think he�s Californian: West, OK, but not quite what I had in mind. We name a few names: the Rocking Vicar and YMOF, Lara Byrne and Bertie Ahern, that class of thing. Distant grey Atlantic drops, it is only 2:30 in the afternoon in Dublin. New arrivals now come thick and fast: Eater looks younger than his 31, is unsure whether to consider that a compliment. Ally Zay Garance Dallas really exists after all these years. So does the pinefox for that matter. Their meeting�s like a summit, though not Joyce and Proust: perhaps Myles na gC and Mary McC. She remembers having to talk about Adam Ant in the shower. East in the dark the unfinished Cathedral waits unvisited. Tracer H arriving late, elegant and lean: a confidence man, drawling in that outstate voice and disarmingly setting off unexploded bombs of charisma. The Mod is framed by vast headphones, a Mod scientist at his desk of sonic inventions and wax equations: his mere gaze is packed with a spraining overload of intelligence, ferocious numeracy. How, I ask, do you know so much about computers? � I didn�t date in high school. That sounds a good answer, but hold on� nor did I. In fact � I didn�t go to high school. From his box of magic he pulls me a track by the Boredoms: refreshingly, for all the space-age math talk, it�s a load of silly banging. Dollars on the counter. Nabisco shows last, having least distance to travel. Eager thought in his smiles, motion in his conjecturing voice, the fast train of intellection speeding through chuckles and hypotheses. The gang of smokers forms and fumes on the street: A, B, C, A, C, B, A, coming and going in and out. The shop across the road provides bad crisps: crisps to rank with the ones I bought at the Hotel Lev Yashin seven years ago, don�t remind me. Perhaps not that bad. The bartender orders tacos: I have never seen the GHS order chips. The subway seems a labyrinthine trip. In the late lobby of the Hotel Alan Sugar we find the right personae for the place. - So, things seem to be moving forward. I�ll call you about the deal � - I still need to check some things with my people. - Of course; but I think things are looking good for us now. Green 6 line downtown from 28th and Park Avenue, past Union Square with Bleecker Street still to come; follow the song one more time and get off at Astor Place. East into the mysteries of the Village, harsh geometries of Alphabet City, gungy low-rise land out of keeping with the island, scrawled walls and stacks of iron stairs, free papers and Jews performing themselves on street corners. Tompkins Square, gritty, dry: I walk into a closed public library and the camp librarian thinks I want to hand over my Rough Guide. The Life Caf� is clean and glossy enough, but also �vegan-friendly�, Mexican and all that: uh-oh, I only came here for a Yankee breakfast. � Sit yourself anywhere: as I deliberate the blackhaired waitress Rebecca says, - you want the perfect spot, don�t you, I know how that feels. She brings fine coffee, refills it 5 or 6 times: it takes all of 5 refills to jade the tongue out of wanting more. Strawberry pancakes, syrup, eggs easy over she explains, hm, I thought it was over easy; wish I could have the bacon � why not? order that too, holiday indulgences, playing with the casino�s potatoes. Sumptuous it comes, a decent feast at last. I read the rough guide to Staten Island and Queens, politely pose her questions: she tells of a neighbour here who lives in Queens, the chances still so good for diversity; she�s from Brooklyn, recommends nothing in it; I ought to go to the Met, or the Natural History Museum. Big numbers. She stops to seat and serve, comes back, carries on. For once a $4 tip seems the least that�s needed. North, taking snaps down the eastern streets till a clodhopper leaps from a caf� and shouts mockingly, Buddy, take a picture of me, too� yeah, not so interesting now, is it? Tosser. Back to Tompkins Square through the wire fences, wary guards, dusty yards, seeking the memorial to the 1904 Slocum disaster. I walk right past it, double take and turn in my tracks, find the faded stone, melted by decades of air. Mr Bloom might have sought it too. Check the paper. Great battle Tokio. Lovemaking in Irish �200 damages. Gordon Bennett. Emigration swindle. Letter from His Grace William +. Ascot Throwaway recalls Derby of �92 when Captain Marshall�s dark horse, Sir Hugo, captured the blue riband at long odds. New York disaster, thousand lives lost. Foot and Mouth. Funeral of the later Mr Patrick Dignam. Five words drowned amid the millions. Down the Western street I happen on The Source where the postcards seize my random eye. The longhaired midaged vendor hands them back in the shop�s own bag, newsletter enclosed: tie-dye colours, psychedelic community messages. I�m later struck by how central this spit of a shop seems to think itself, or be. St Mark�s Books is clean and tidy, doesn�t claim to be cheap. Yank editions of everything from Lethem and Didion to Terry and Joyce. (Why have I never seen this John Bishop 1999 FW before?) A dumb droning conversation drones dumbly at the counter. Odd stupidity of the wouldbe intellectual. I stop and scribble notes to myself, pick up DeLillo and Fred Jameson for the bulk of $30, walk out knocked out laden. Time to drop this load, to scurry uptown encore to the Hotel Siri Hustvedt. Across the vague traffic dangers at Astor Place, in and out of the 4 or 5, thinking of Richard Dalloway crossing town with flowers, is it?, in his hands. In the morning mezzanine I�d awaited again the slow lift coming: turn to the besuited hairless assiduous attendant and mention breezily that they say the Staten Island Ferry is worth doing, and it�s free and all. � Oh, I�m not sure that it�s *free*, he warns, I think it *used* to be. I�ll look into that for you, sir, and have someone find out for you. Plunging into the next hours and no second thought to that exchange, but suddenly now the telephone rings: a dude from who knows where calling to tell me that the ferry is free and it runs every half hour. � Oh, thank you very much � well, you know, I think I�d like to experience it� and how long does it take? � It takes a half hour. � Oh � yes. I can�t let that promo cat down now: I catch the trains to Bowling Green. At the island�s tip skyscrapers without famous names. Imposing Ferry terminal, new, glass and steel, the ferry announced in giant letters. The brave new dock is but a great vast waiting room: white and black, white and blue collar, cops and kids stand and shuffle. Anxiously I ask where you board the ferry. The query must sound silly: right there � you can�t miss it. Industrial strength of boarding a ship: the seriousness of water, the heaviness of bolted steel. The orange southbound boat toots its horn like a picture-book character and sets its backwash flurrying across the Sound. Scant space outside, and wind and rain force me out of it, set me watching weather through stained glass. Liberty vanishes into the heavy vapour. Mundane insides: functional benches, opportune snack bar, inaudible tannoy. To most their books and talk must hold more fascination than the trip itself: commuters from the real world to home. A class of Geordie boys seem to have joined me. Oddness of the English voices � dull, unimpressive, silly, even though on my shores those Shearer sounds would hold more romance than mere Estuary. I retreat to the back of the ship, listen to a guide tell others of Staten Island. � Is it true, I ask, like the guidebook says, that they want to secede from New York. - *Oh*, no, he laughs the suggestion out of the water. Out of the water the rain is pelting down. I head straight through, seeking the momentum to carry me into another Borough. In the dripping immediate bus station I board a bus, the wrong one, kind of, swipe the MetroCard wrong at least twice till the silent disdainful driver swipes it for me, ponder the route, disembark, board another, the right one, sort of, swipe the MetroCard wrong at least twice till the silent disdainful driver swipes it for me, ride as one of the wet huddled masses West down the island�s edge, just a suburban run, black folks, laughing cops, no tourist mile. Suburban America, the rest of America, that�s how it feels when they let me off and I�m on the edge of a road tracking the shore, and asking a chick the way to Snug Harbour Cultural Centre, as though I�ve any reason to attend it. Stop signs, school buses, like Massachusetts in 1979, 1988; another green world. Sloping roads from the shore past spaced houses; America, the stretched land of the rainy day movies. The Cultural Centre is many old houses; it�s odd to arrive, alone in the rain like I have a purpose, when I don�t; like Gradus coming for Kinbote or someone seeking a known job, not an aimless visitor making up sketchy relevance. In one building I see some local art; on walls Dreiser or Melville are quoted about Snug Harbour, a haven for sailors. I turn around and get out of dodge: walk all the way back East as buses Not In Service pass one after another. On the side roads to the sea the gold and black school buses queue patient as cows. Past the stadium, up to the pointless top of the bus terminal, back down to pick up a $1.60 coffee and donut with a cop waiting behind. (Cops! All these cops!) In the hall I await the ferry for 20 minutes or more, reading the guide on the Village; a business type asks me the ferry is how often? On the way back to Manhattan too, some Indian type wants info from me, about subway lines and the like. The weather has cleared: Liberty�s visible to our left, Manhattan an epic of downtown highrise against a stunning sky, the air cleared and painted like October. February. Off amid the eager hungry hurrying crowd into the city: the pointlessness of my come-and-go, there-and-back trip to nowhere stays a safe secret from the purposeful citizens. Quit the subway at Union Square, out of its little pagoda, head West and get as far as 5th or 6th Ave, with an old tune in my head, the building visible North (I wrote it on 5th), the thought of new lyrics that could salvage its glory� till I realize I�ve overshot for the Strand, which turns out to be directly south of Union Square. Hand over the bag and take docket #42. Many things round here take me a while to understand: in maybe three visits to the place I try to exit by the entrance. Lethem�s Men & Cartoons looks an uncertain bargain at $15, Levin�s James Joyce first edition for $7 (hm), Fast-Talking Dames at $5. I am unsure of this place, amid the afterwork shoppers at what must be six, later; miles of books to go but it�s time to stop, to go. On the Union Square platform I watch the Express go by. Local trains. In the Hotel Roger Williams a jazz band is playing again. Naturally I like it for its tipped hat to the first night I arrived. I dare the telephone�s complexities and talk to the Hand. Tennessee is not the state we�re in. With a guide�s expertise he says they stopped charging for the ferry cos they realized it was uneconomical; with a tutor�s reassurance he says sodden Staten Island may have felt a lost hour to me, but many New Yorkers haven�t done it. With vast and sincere charm he says he would have loved (that is, *loooved*) to be the one to show me Chumley�s. I might go anyway. � Well, do, do, he says (that is, *doo�. just dooo*!) I am leaving a message on Nabisco�s rolling tape or invisible space when the telephone blasts off again; always it seems to ring from the corner of the room, though the central set�s the one I put down and grab back. How does the song go? - Who is on the other end talking / Am I even home? South down 3rd Avenue, to the narrow fa�ade of the shebeen. In the cosy indoor twilight the Stones play all night. They�re Dartford�s answer to the Pogues. I take a table like I know how, the midaged waitress may be Irish, calls me darlin� time and again. I order a pint of Murphy�s, gulp it down while penning a Chrysler card. Molly�s Classic Burger, a pint of red, a pint of black, the stripey paper of the Hotel Bridget Riley. American diners come and go. If memory serves Greil Marcus said that �Gimme Shelter� was the best rock record ever: a few blocks from here Simon Reynolds agreed and said that in a post-rock universe the intro would go on for 15 minutes. I kind of wish it did, now. The check (yes, the � the check) is alarming: $28.65 pre-tip. It�s only alarming in American: in translation it�ll look fair enough. I wait thankfully in vain for their eyelids to bat when I hand over my card. It�s now destroyed I am surely. I leave a five dollar bill like I know what I�m doing, walk home like another New York drunk. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! 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