Mamaroneck/New York City, 5 April, morning. Sunlight streamed through the windows of the lounge and into the loft above, my erstwhile home-away-from-home in Mamaroneck, NY, current chateau of me old mucker Ryan and his current bird, Sam. It was about 8am when I was roused from my mild slumber, having already awoken some time earlier. At this point, I was into the light dozing stage of sleep. Anyway, it was Ryan, bringing coffee. Also better than Starbucks coffee, I will add. And he was bringing me a security key-card thingy so I could get into and out of the complex, and a copy of the front-door key. And also a train timetable. In short, everything I would need to get into Noo Yawk City to swan about and do touristy things. I also had, in my trusty Canon camera bag, the Lonely Planet guide to New York City, complete with current bus-routes and subway maps and all sorts of cool stuff. Yeah, I was going to look like a tourist, but I had practiced Crazy-eyes for a good few months now, and I reckon I could have taken on anyone. Today’s plan, I informed Ryan, was the financial district – Wall Street, the gigantic bull, Staten Island and Battery Park. First up, though, a shave, shower and shampoo. Cut to: Mamaroneck Station, 10am. A lone figure waits on the platform, wallet $13 lighter, watching the approaching train pull in. I took the opportunity to nab some scenic photographs of the station, particularly, for later location factors, the Mamaroneck board, right next to an advert for some cool new series starting 13 April in Yankland. I think it was called Revelations (or something equally apocalyptic) and the poster is in hell-tones with circling birds against a blood sky, bearing the tagline Omnium finis imminet, I think, in Latin and across the station, a similar poster reading The End is Here. So I snapped both of those and leaped aboard the train, undoubtedly thinking things like “Skimbleshanks” and stuff like that as I watched the world race past my window. It was a beautiful day; fairly warm, sun shining, birds singing; entirely unlike the New York City I flew into 72 hours prior. We crossed a bridge and went into the subway system. I recognized a few of the names from the Lonely Planet guide – they had the route maps up alongside the doors of the train as well – and within about 20 minutes of leaving Mamaroneck, were pulling into the main area of Grand Central station. You know, with that stumpy-huge golden clock tower thingy. I was able to locate the necessary subway – the green #6 – to City Hall. Unsure as to how the Metrocard system there works – in DC, you buy single fares or a day pass; NY has different options – I was assisted by some native with long hair and a cowboy hat (but a deep NY drawl) to purchase a 7-day all in one pass. Basically, unlimited rides through the MTA system – bus, subway, the lot – for a week. The alternative was $2 a pop every time I intended to move a few dozen blocks at once. In the end, I think I won out with the week-long pass, because man, I rode those buses and trains like there was no tomorrow. Nevertheless, camera in hand, Metrocard in pocket, I boarded the #6 and struck out South, past Midtown and Downtown and hopped out at City Hall/Brooklyn Bridge, last stop on the 6 line. Let me tell you something about the New York Metro – it is vast, compared to DC; about 20 subway lines running every which way, compared to 5 in DC. It is also a hole in the ground, compared to DC, which has pristine escalators and ramps and gigantic airy caverns for its trains; as opposed to the cracked bathroom-tiled claustrophobic urban piss-smelling shove that is the NYC Subway system. DC also seems to have no punters, buskers, magicians and other artistes; NYC has on average 1.5 per train, it seems. More on that later. Nevertheless, the NYC subway has been heavily romanticized in popular culture through film and television and at least one Coke advert, and I’ll admit it is a fantastic resource; even when I lost my camera on it at the back end of the tour. Stupid subway renovation plan. More on that later, too. So I found myself exiting the tunnels and popping up into bright sunshine, somewhere on the intersection of Broadway (which runs for about 15 thousand miles in either direction) and Madison Avenue, I think, right outside City Hall with Pace University within pissing distance across the street, and, to the left-hand side, the almighty Brooklyn Bridge. Have I mentioned that it was a beautiful day? It was a beautiful day, hardly any wind, gentle warmth easing through the late winter/early spring chill, and with no cloud cover to spoil what would be a superb Kodak moment (or in my case, Canon moment), undoubtedly one of many, on the walk over said bridge from Lower Manhattan to Brooklyn. So off I went, snapping anything that moved, and even things which didn’t) with the sun shining and the birds singing and the cars hooting and all that stuff. And then, right in the middle of the bridge, straddling the East River as it runs into the sea, my mom phoned. She does that a lot – it’s kinda cool, I guess. She really sounded excited when I told her where I was. She’d sounded excited every time she’d phoned so far – that’s once in NY already, and on both days in DC – but this time, I guess my own excitement carried and, I shit you not, I could hear her smiling. It sounds naff to say it, I know, but it’s true. Anyway, we shot the shit for a few minutes and then I proceeded into Brooklyn. Basically hit the ground on that side and then turned and went straight back to Manhattan. That might have been a mistake – I should have had a mosey around there, but with Saturday’s man-about-town bit put off due to severely inclement weather, time was tight. I was going to be Colorado-bound in about 69 hours, at that point, and I was not lodging anywhere reasonably close to town. That, and I was assisting Ryan and Sam with the big move, so there were plans afoot to move a few more things that evening then head out to dinner, so I couldn’t exactly swan about until like 11pm in the city which never sleeps, which would have been my plan. Suffice to say, looking around in Brooklyn was back-burnered. I did stop right in the middle of the bridge and attempted to send a text-message to everyone cool in my mobile's phonebook saying "On the Brooklyn Bridge. Wish you were here." but they all bounced because the numbers are in local (082/3/4 or 072/3) format, not in international format (+27 82/3/4 or +27 72/3 etc). So that was annoying. As I hit the ground back in Manhattan – got some spectacular shots of the bay, and the bridge structure, it must be said – my phone rang again. This time, it was Andrew calling from sunny eternal-summery SoCal – Vista, just outside San Diego. We were meeting up exactly 8 days later, with me flying in from Colorado to visit the Scripps Research Institute. Seems he got to SD in one piece and had been carted about in a particularly impressive Porsche 911 for the last 2 days, owned by the guy he was staying with over there, who is his .za boss’s little brother. He was just phoning to find out what he might need to go snowboarding up at Big Bear for two days – hard at work, he was, you can tell. After all that, I moseyed out into the financial district proper, looking at Wall Street and the gigantic bull and the World Trade Center and all that. My WTC experience was cut shallowly short, unfortunately, by the discovery of Century21, literally across the road from the WTC site. For those not in the know, Century21 is sale central – all designer gear, all dirt cheap. I’d been advised to find it, and voila, there it was. So the WTC site barely got more than a cursory glance and a peer through the fence before I joined the madding crowd across the street. And they put the mad in madding – it’s a stuffing stampede in there; everyone hell bent for leather on finding a bargain. Newsflash, people: It’s all bargains! Bought my sister a gift there – the original Poison, by Christian Dior, which was one of the things on my mission manifesto. It costs more than double down here in .za; and even so, it set me back a good $65. But, and this is the beauty of Century21, they threw in a gift certificate/voucher thingy for $25, so I was obliged to make off with a DKNY t-shirt and a pair of extremely funky jet-black cK boxers. And I got change as well – “a DKNY t-shirt and cK boxers for less than $25?” I hear you say in disbelief. Believe. We love Century21. Except for the crush of screaming people, that is – worse than the Woolworths Annual Sale here in .za, where geriatric old ladies have been known to tear one another’s pale blue hair out to get near the sale tables. Proceeded onwards, using the Lonely Planet guide as my marker, following one of their suggested Walking Tours, which include all the cool things like Wall St, the gigantic bronze bull (all 7000 pounds worth of it), the Trinity Church etc etc and then found myself in Battery Park, where a young kid convinced me to buy 2 packs of M&Ms off him so his basketball club could raise funds for a tour to somewhere. I ate one of the packs – a yellow pack – for lunch on a bench at Battery Park; the other – brown pack; peanut? – came in handy on the 2 hour trip from Denver International to the conference venue a 5 days later. Also had my first encounter with a genuine Noo Yawk hot-dog vendor, selling genuine Italian hot-dogs, right there on Wall Street. His wife, a loud, genial woman was all “what can I get ya, sweetheart?” in a very Brooklyn drawl, and let me tell you, the hot-dog was good. I forewent the MickeyD’s and the Subways and the Burger Kings and all that for it, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I went to the Smithsonian Museum of the Native American in Battery Park, at the suggestion of the PhD guy from the Georgetown lab. “It’s only got one exhibit in there; the George Gatlin museum. He knew the Indians were being wiped out so he went off on his horse, and he painted their portraits. Hundreds of them, all over the place, Braves and Chiefs and everything, all made up in battle dress, and it was the most beautiful thing I ever saw,” was what he had told us in Tombs, the GU pub, not 18 hours earlier. Well, I was there, so in I went. He’s right – it really is something. Other artists may point to Gatlin’s lack of technique and other such artsy things; I was really moved by it. Next stop: the Staten Island ferry. I had been advised to avoid the Ellis Island ferry, which runs to the Statue of Liberty, at a nominal fee of about $20, and rather take the Staten Island ferry, for free, which gets almost as close. Apparently you can’t go up the statue anymore anyway, so unless you really want to get up close to it, the Staten Island ferry will do the trick just as well. Boarded the gigantic orange boat and enjoyed superb view of the various piers and all that with a good few hundred like-minded tourists as we cruised to Staten Island and then back again. Yeah, time-wise, didn’t really stop to see too much of Staten Island. Ryan says I’m not missing much; I guess, though, that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but time was against me, so I took the return ferry straight back out. It’s quite impressive watching the ferry dock, by the way, an intricate orchestration of man, machine(s) and the current in the bay; more so if you are on the ferry at the time with a handy vantage point. I recommend it. Next stop – a camera shop. For Black and white film, which I have never used before, but which is always uber-arty and lends itself beautifully to stark cityscapes (and nudes. Alas, to date, no willing models). According to the BW film guide supplement of the monthly British Journal of Photography, which I have a but single issue of at home, fortunately, the BW issue, the best of the batch is Kodak 400TX film, which, fortunately, the camera I shop I moseyed into had 1 roll of. Loaded it up, remembered to slap on my red filter, a virgin, bought expressly for the time I decided to shoot in BW, and off I went, snapping like crazy. Found myself on Fulton Street at the former fish market at Pier 7, now a trendy touristy spot with trendy bars and restaurants and the required Gap and A&F and likewise trendy stores, belting obnoxious techno shit music across the bay. Stopped in at one of the stores there to buy some water (soooooooo pretentious - should have stuck to the Coke) and then proceeded to take multiple shots of the bay and the bridges. At this point, I was about a quarter-mile away from the Brooklyn Bridge, and I took my joint-favourite shot of the lot right there and then. I will hopefully scan and post it at some stage, and then you can check it out, if you would like to. At the moment, it is called Trio of Bridges, but that’s not exactly a cool name. Perhaps something in French would be better – like Les Pontes Trois, or something suchlike; which my rudimentary knowledge of French has me believing that that might mean The 3 Bridges. Same shit name, but tres cool in French, right? Oui. Anyway, it was getting lateish and so I headed back to the City Hall-Brooklyn Bridge subway station, making sure I snapped a few arty monochrome shots of late afternoon shadow contrasting with bright sunlight on the taller buildings. Made my way back to Grand Central and on the next train back to Mamaroneck. And, once there, making my way back to the flat, a mere 100 yards or so away, took my other favourite shot, which is the very quaint antique looking train station building, nestled amongst the trees. It came out beautifully, I must say. I am hoping to pull finger and get that uploaded as well at some stage. That night, we headed out to the Cheesecake Factory – we had a fairly annoying, snooty waiter; but hot damn the food was good. I recommend the Grande Burrito and the white chocolate and nut cheesecake. Probably not incredibly healthy; but wow! -d-