Day 6 Mamaroneck/Millwood/New York City, April 7 2005 So the big day had arrived. Ryan had confirmed with the movers that they were coming – allegedly sometime between 8am and 9am; they only arrived close to 10am, I think – and was constantly on the phone to Reggie, an enormously tall easy-going Jamaican who was co-coordinating things on the day and who was prone to getting repeatedly lost, hence the delay. Still, he was a character, and we did have fun watching him interact with his Taiwanese crew – a middle-aged, bemused-looking, non-English speaking guy, and an elderly driver, also not too fluent in English – and attempt to get everything from the 3rd floor flat down to the truck, parked illegally in a side street. At the same time, I used Ryan’s Blackberry to connect with Supershuttle to get me from Harlem to La Guardia bright and early; and also to secure accommodation in Denver, at the wrong hotel. More on that later. Handy things, those Blackberries, and well done to Ryan’s firm for insisting they all get one. Ryan kept saying, “look, it’s your last day. If you want to go, you must go.” And I kept saying, “hey, no worries – there’s still this afternoon, the interview was done yesterday, and I’m back here next weekend for 2 days or so before heading back out. Let’s not stress.” I think he still felt kinda bad that Day 1 was ruined by rain and so I ended up house-bound instead of running amok in Times Square. He’s a good guy. Anyway, eventually, we got everything loaded up. We had the last few little bits in the car – Sam’s RAV; she had made off with Ryan’s car that morning – and we were leading the way to the new place. That was when disaster struck – we were headed out on the I-95 or the 238 or whichever one it was when Ryan suddenly realised that the truck shouldn’t be there. Apparently trucks are not allowed on expressways, only on parkways or vice versa, I forget, and whichever one we were on was the one the truck was not supposed to be on. We racked our brains, hoping for no cops, trying to plot an alternative route. Each one Ryan came up with – me not knowing the lay of the land, of course – involved whichever type of road the truck was not allowed on. Anyway, we figured we’d be okay since we were about a quarter mile from the turnoff to the express/parkway (whichever the truck was allowed on) and were probably about 1 minute from safety. The turnoff approached. We were almost there. Then we saw a cop go past in the other direction. In the rearview, we saw him turn on his lights and siren and pull a u-turn to chase the truck down. We pulled to the shoulder of the road and could see what was happening behind us. I suggested to Ryan that we go talk to the cop, point out that we are foreign and don’t really know the route if not this one and hope for him to let us go lightly. He said we shouldn’t draw attention to ourselves, because we shouldn’t be stopped on the side of the road like that. Anyway, Reggie and his crew spoke to the cop for a long while; then the cop wrote them a ticket and pulled off. Before we could carry on, he came round the corner of the exit and nailed us stopped on the side of the road. “Everything alright, fellas?” “Yes, we’re fine, thank you. We just had to er… check the map. Got a little lost. But we’re fine now, thanks.” “Okay.” We didn’t let on that the truck was ours; he didn’t ask. We high-tailed it into Millwood and to the new place. Turns out he had just given Reggie’s driver a lecture and ticketed them for not wearing seat-belts, so Ryan wasn’t obliged to pay the fine, which suited him. “Look, I’m going to take you to the station right now. There’s a train due in 10 minutes. And we’ll come through for dinner, so I’ll bring your bags then, okay?” I tried to argue that I would like to assist with the unloading, but Ryan wouldn’t have any of it. I’ll admit I wasn’t too sad about heading back to the city – plans were afoot to see Times Square, finally, and maybe head up the Empire State as well, so I was quite pleased; and of course, with less than 24 hours to Denver, quite relieved. Bearing in mind that I was assisting with the big move and the awkward interview the preceding day and the rained-out first day, I had not spent nearly as much time in the city as I would have liked. I know the old showbiz adage is “always leave ‘em wanting more,” but the way things were going, - the DC interviews at this point were looking the most promising - I may not be back for a long while, so it was a case of now or practically never. Anyway, we had a mad, frantic dash to the nearest train station – not quite the 1 minute mosey as at the old place in Mamaroneck, that’s for sure – and got onto the platform as the train was arriving. 30 minutes later, I found myself back in Grand Central – I make that my 6th time there, I think – and I stopped in at a DVD store I saw the day before to nab 2 discs for my sister for her birthday. They were her all-time favourite movie (or at least, one of her top 5) Pretty in Pink, and U2’s seminal Rattle and Hum. Both were well received when I got home, so well done again, me. Then it was off to the shuttle to Times Square – a small subway train, only 3 cars, moving between Times Square and GCT every 5 minutes or so. I emerged into the sunlight and throngs of people at Times Square. For the first time since arriving, I finally saw the legendary crowds of people loading every available space which you see in the movies. Not sure whether this was because it was Spring Break, so there were more schoolkids and students than usual, or whether this is normal; either way, it was pretty busy. And the Naked Cowboy was there, doing his thing with a horde of screaming women all over him, so that was a little unexpected. Anyway, checked out Times Square, went into the enormous McDonald’s there for lunch, across from the theatre in which the Lion King is playing. Also advertised everywhere – annoyingly so – is the musical Spamelot, the Broadway version of the Python classic Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I say annoyingly so because they are handing out flyers for it and it is advertised on every second city bus and in the subway cars and there are posters up everywhere and the sodding thing was at that stage sold out until September. And that was back when I tried to get a ticket online and Ryan tried to call in some favours back in February already, so why the hell it needs additional publicity I don’t know. I really really really wanted to see it, so seeing all the ubiquitous advertising was pissing me off a tad. I snapped a whole busload of photographs, all monochrome, of the hustle and bustle and eventually went on my pilgrimage to 48th Street. The area known as Times Square stretches pretty much about 12 blocks, encompassing the entire Theatre District, technically, even after you get off the big Broadway-7th Avenue intersection, where all the enormous billboards are and where MTV have their studios and where Tom Cruise ran through in the opening of Vanilla Sky. It probably stretches as far as 6th Avenue/Avenue of the Americas and as far back as 8th Avenue and from 42nd Street up to about 50th Street, which you can follow back to Radio City Music Hall and even further to Saks. But as I said, 48th was my mission. I may have mentioned before at some stage that my oldest passion is music – photography being something which has festered into existence over the last 4 years or so and only really coming to the fore recently – and thus, a visit to New York’s home of music, 48th Street, was planned as soon as I had confirmed a place to stay with Ryan. I was going, finally, to Manny’s Music and to Sam Ash, legendary purveyors of fine equipment since about 1940 or so, I think. Pretty much everyone who is anyone has popped in at one of these 2 fine establishments at some stage. Although I had planned to some day walk in there to one of them and emerge with a wall of Marshall amps, that wasn’t going to happen on this trip, alas, but I was damned if I wasn’t going to go in there and buy something. Ironically, I didn’t. I went in, but I couldn’t find anything I really wanted and could actually get – a guitar or amp being out of the question, space-wise (and of course budget-wise) – and I, for some reason, didn’t think simple like a Sam Ash guitar plectrum or t-shirt, because I am a nit-wit sometimes, I suppose. I did try for a music book – I was thinking the folio for Vs by Pearl Jam, or perhaps Alice’s seminal Dirt, but they had neither – also, alas, not to be. I did snap pictures of both places, of course, in grainy red-filtered monochrome, and they came out beautifully, so that was good enough for me, I guess. Also snapped a weird archway somewhere near the Rockefeller Center – it’s a tunnel cut through a wall so you can walk through to the next block, but there is a fountain in the wall running the whole length across it, so it cascades all around you as you go through, but is diverted round the arch so you don’t get wet. Really cool and innovative. Anyway, Times Square accomplished, I set out for 34th St – the plan was Madison Square Garden, home of the New York Knicks, and then across a few blocks to the Empire State to go up and watch the sun go down. The 4 hour long queue, though, made me think otherwise; Andrew was quite glad for that since he was hoping to go up it on our way back home and had begged me not to go yet. So I spent the rest of the afternoon swanning about in the Village and SoHo and visiting the Flatiron Building and that before meeting Ryan and Sam at Bryant Park outside the public library, another beautiful building, for an aperitif before dinner. In Sam’s case, Chardonnay; in our case, Heineken. Sam went off to a work function and Ryan and I moseyed back through Times Square and went to the ToysRUs megastore and the Hershey’s megastore where I made off with an entire factoryload of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups – white ones and brown ones, large and small – to take to Denver and the conference. That stuff is mmmm-good – I think I should approach Hershey’s about securing an agency for them here in .za, because we do not get those here and I reckon they would fly. We did a TGI Friday’s for dinner, I think, and then we fetched Sam and I was delivered into the embrace of the Malibu in the pissing rain with my enormous suitcase, enormous carry-on (both stuffed to capacity now with newly-acquired snow gear, gifts and other Century21 shopping and additional extras from The Gap and A&F in DC) and my poster, in its pipe-bomb looking tube. Got a nasty scalding while taking a shower in there, though, when the cold water disappeared quite suddenly; and so went to bed with slightly blistered, burning hands. Apart from that, no problems. And 3 beds all to myself, with a view over Broadway. -d-