New York Cares

New York Cares is a volunteering campaign by the city which features black & white photos of famous New Yorkers (Whoopi Goldberg, Jimmy Smits) encouraging citizens to give up some of their time. It's also a lyric by Interpol. Everywhere you go in NYC you find things you vaguely recognise but never understood, until now. This is a "short" summary of what we have done, realised and discovered since Andy's report on Saturday.

Saturday
First up for the evening we went to Katz's diner on Houston for an authentic NY Reuben sandwich. Yes it cost US$15, but it had about half a cow worth of pastrami and it tasted amazing. After that we popped along to the performance in the urban park by the artist John who had cycled from San Francisco. Needless to say, it was unusual. It involved planned improvisations with various gathered/garden objects, a lot of water and risk of electrocution. It also involved the rest of the audience probably thinking we're missionaries: saying you're from Christ Church seems to have that effect on people so now we just say Wellington.


After the performance we went down Houston St to Mercury Lounge. That's where the Strokes and Beirut cut their chops and made a name for themselves, so we felt sufficiently infused with history. Best $10 we had spent in NYC. We arrived to the start of the set by a band up from Pennsylvania called The Shackletons (cool name huh?). They got both Andy and I moving (nobody else dances in NYC, its not cool enough) and pretty quickly won us over with a very indie, very NYC-tinged, very rocking sound. After their set we talked to the lead singer for ages and pulled out the line "we don't have XYZ like you guys back home" for the first of many times. It worked, we got their album, signed, for next to nothing, and instantly attained number one fan status. We think that bands in the US are so good at what they do because there actually is a chance they could make it one day, and The Shackletons were a great example. Remember that name and this tip... Click here for their MySpace page if you're interested in the music. Rest of the lineup was trash, Shackletons killed!


Sunday
Sunday we spent out at Shea Stadium in Queens partaking in a time-honoured NY tradition: watching the New York Mets lose (quite badly, to the Florida Marlins). Nevertheless, the tickets were cheap(ish) and it was an outstandingly American experience, what with planes taking off from La Guardia right overhead, and the 7th-innings stretch (break) where they bust out God Bless America. After that we had good chinese food on Lexington Avenue and arranged our adventures for the next day...


Monday
We got up early and left the Y with the intention of catching a train to Bethel, Connecticut, to have a farewell lunch with a friend of Andy's from "the res"(ervation) in South Dakota. Sadly, after much to-ing and fro-ing in organisation the previous night (including battling with four separate payphones) we got to the station a half-hour the morning train left. So no Connecticut, back to an internet cafe to book some more accommodation for the rest of our stay, which SOMEHOW worked out just fine. Went to the Museum of Modern Art in the afternoon, which is a great building with a great collection. Some of it I really really liked, and I could easily have spent $10,000 in the gallery store afterwards...


Went back to our hostel and "invented" Extreme Table Tennis in the basement bar, where anything goes. Then it was music experience #3, again on the Lower East Side. Every local we'd talked to had been telling us "you gotta go to Pianos and Cake Shop", so we tried Pianos. At $8 for entrance to the music area we thought what the hell? and it was hell. The next day Andy described the NYC bands we saw as "the two worst bands in the world" - I don't think they would get on a stage back in NZ. We were starting to think that perhaps the shine was wearing off NYC...until


Tuesday
I can't recall what we did during the day, but in the evening we headed out to the Alligator (I think) bar in Brooklyn for free pizza with your pitcher of beer. Needless to say it was very good. Then we wandered round Brooklyn for a bit before heading over to the Lower East Side (LES), this time avoiding Pianos like the plague and heading to Cake Shop instead. By day its a Cake Shop, by night the basement opens for your entertainment. And how entertaining it was! 5 musicians, all very good at what they did. Fruit Machine are from Jacksonville, Florida are a punk band with some serious chops. They duelled (song for song) with a friend of theirs who raps along to her laptop, the lyrics cannot be repeated in this setting but were hilarious. Powerful Power is a Japanese-American solo guitar dude who is probably the best guitar player Andy and I have seen up that close, and his songs were great too.

Then it was Ghosty from Kansas City, Missouri, who I'd heard of courtesy of RDU. They played a great set of catchy SIP (Sunshine Indie Pop) that got the New York crowd going (as much as they do move, which is not really at all). After that was Bears from Cleveland who were so great that I bought the CD. We were dancing hard for this last band and they noticed. Because a ring of exclusion formed around us that no New Yorker dared enter... After the gig, yes, "we don't have bands like you guys back home, you should totally come to NZ some time" and again, instant super-fan status just by talking to the bands. We were sooo buzzing after that experience on the subway back about 2-3am, it was our highest high since The Shackletons.

Wednesday
Laundry day - glamourous times round the corner from our hostel in Chelsea. At one point Andy, walking back from buying us some water, almost walked into a store of questionable taste...but didn't. Then it was off to meet Sam, a contact of one of Shaun's former bosses, who has worked on political campaigns and is now in PR for a New York. We had a great chat about NZ and US politics. Sam took us to a FANTASTIC burger place underneath a hotel lobby near 6th Ave, called Burger Joint. After being constantly overwhelmed by the America of Choice (what sort of bread do you want, what sauce, you want a pickle, blah blah blah) their menu of "Hamburger, Cheeseburger, tomato, onions, lettuce, if it's not on here we don't sell it" was a god-send and it deserves its reputation for the best non-gourmet burgers in Manhattan. Plus the chocolate milkshake tasted like the old McD's chocolate thickshake, only it was made in front of me from milk and icecream only. Hmmm.

Finally cooked our first meal that evening, and then did something else you can only do in NYC - go to the Village Vanguard. That's the venue where Bill Evans recorded one of his most famous albums live, with Scott La Faro on bass just before he died too young. On that stage has stood everybody who is anybody in the world of jazz. Unfortunately that act that night wasn't as jazzy as we were hoping, was more jazz-infused singer-songwriter stuff, but was nevertheless very very well done. Went to the Green Room afterwards and said "we don't have..." you get the picture.

Thursday
Which brings us to yesterday and last night. During the day we took the Long Island Railroad out to Stony Brook University to meet Joel, a good friend of Rob's from their student days. His dissertation was in a pretty closely related area to what I'm interested in right now and he had some wise words of encouragement for my first year. Definitely worth the two hours trip each way (I think LIRR is some of the slowest railroad in the world).

Another shocking music experience last night, this time over in Brooklyn, where its apparently all at these days. The place was called The Trash Bar and we should have taken the hint, but the headline act's music sounded OK through the hostel computer's rubbish speaker so we decided to take the punt. First up was Very Early 90s Riff Rock with Anti-Establishment Lyrics - so bad they cleared the room after one song. Disillusioned, we went and got an outstanding cream cheese bagel for $1 down the road. Returned to the crime scene just in time to see the headliners, who Andy described as a band doing an ironic style-over-substance thing, but without any style as well. Left after one "song"...wow. So the score so far is:
- great bands playing in NYC but from elsewhere 5+
- native NYC bands that suck 5+

Friday (today)
Earlier today we went to the Bronx to see Yankee Stadium, possibly so that we could say we've been to all four of New York's major boroughs. Saw some really top skateboarding in front of the courthouse, indy kickflips over flights of stairs and everything. Then wandered round Harlem again and tried to go to a famous diner which was closed, so split and came back to the hostel for dinner.

Tonight we head back to Mercury Lounge hoping for some more magic. And after that I'll have only two nights left in New York!