Gareth's Culture and Travel Blog

I have meant to send this last e.postcard for a couple of days, but events overtook me.
 
Anyway………..if the House of Blues was cool, The Hudson in NYC was positively freezing! Liz had taken me there for lunch last August and as her and Gordon had deserted NYC and deprived me of my second home, I decided to give it a try. It’s an Ian Schrager / Philip Stark hotel, so the design is amazing (Helen and I had stayed in his first venture – Paramount City – back in 1995). It was a fun place, though the food and drink prices were steep and in the evenings it got a bit ‘young’ – even for me! The rooms had everything you could possibly need, including sewing kit, corkscrew, and an ‘intimacy kit’!
 
After 80’s in California, 90’s in New Mexico, 100’s in Dodge City and 80’s in Chicago, I wasn’t expecting NYC to be so oppressive – it was only in the 80’s, but the humidity was 95-100%. I don’t know whether it was that, or maybe I was burning out by now, but I did less on this leg than the others. The first day, before Steve & Julie arrived, was particularly slack with little more than a visit to the Guggenheim, lunch and an afternoon nap! The highlight of Saturday was a foodie walking tour of Greenwich Village where you popped in and out of delicatessens, bakeries and restaurants sampling things – not my cup of tea at all, of course! We also went to the Lower East Side Tenement Museum where they have reconstructed apartments from various periods to illustrate the life of immigrants from Germany, Poland, Italy etc. I went there last year, but this time we did a tour centring on the garment industry, which was fascinating. A re-visit to the Met. Museum completed the sightseeing.
 
The cultural highlight was the Mel Brooks’ musical The Producers. The film is one of my favourites, but I thought the show improved upon it – even more hilarious. It’s about two people who work out that by staging a Broadway flop they can make much more money than with a hit. The show within a show –
Springtime for Hitler – has the most amazing routines with jack-booted ’tiller girls’ and dancers dressed as various Nazi symbols; it’s impossible not to fall about laughing. The revival of Gypsy was good, though I shared the critics disappointment with the leading lady. Urinetown was an off-the-wall show about a town with such a water shortage that people have to use public loos, which are in the hands of large corporations which exploit them. Fun, but not as good as the hype.
 
I have to say, after pristine Chicago I found NYC somewhat shabby this time. I gather the post 9/11 economy is struggling – and it shows.
 
I feel more out-of-touch after this trip than any of my more exotic trips. The only news has been the California recall and Schwarzenegger’s candidature, some baseball star’s alleged sexual assault and the latest from Iraq. Surely there has been something else happening in the world?
 
I shall end with a summary of what I like (and don’t like) about the US….
 
I LIKE……orderly queues, clean and well-stocked loos, high customer service standards (except Amtrak), rock concerts that start on time, galleries with few people in them, the ease and low price of car hire, the
accessibility of art, driving (outside cities), the fact you can do anything with a credit card and internet access, the lack of elitism in things like opera, it’s hard to get a bad meal, and people are positive and enthusiastic and always happy to strike up a conversation.
 
I DON’T LIKE…..the fact that everything costs 25-35% more when you’ve added the sales tax and tip

(c. 17%!), lots of TV channels and they’re all crap, too many rules, Amtrak customer service standards, noisy theatre audiences (even more than London!), it’s hard to get a great meal, and sometimes the enthusiasm and positivity gets on your nerves!…..and the stars and stripes have replaced the flags of the world at the Rockerfeller Plaza……..