And it’s always once upon a time in New York City
It’s a big ol’, bad ‘ol, tough ol’ town it’s true
But beginnings are contagious there
They’re always settin’ stages here
They’re always turnin’ pages there for you
Where do you even start? I mean, there are so many possible openings for this that I can’t figure out which to choose.
So, let me just do it this way:
Oh my lord I made it to New York.
There are moments when you look at your life and realize just how amazing it really is. Standing on the freezing cold open deck this morning, wrapped in layers to protect us from the biting wind sweeping in across the harbor, watching the glow of Lady Liberty’s torch against the pitch darkness of pre-sunrise, was one of those.
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free
Indeed.
Okay, the truth is, I have always been terrified of New York. There’s a reason behind that (isn’t there always) involving an instance with a friend of mine who went to New York and came back broken – or at least that’s what it seemed at the time – and I was just the right age for that to make an impact.
Don’t ever go to New York, Shaughnessy, New York? A big bad city like that will take a nice little girl like you, chew you up and spit you out. Promise me you’ll never go to New York.
The chances that Sallie – who fully recovered and actually returned to New York and is now living and thriving there very happily last I heard – even remembers this exchange are virtually nil; but it always stayed with me. It’s one of the reasons I chose to study in London instead of the Big Apple. I had no desire to come here, it did not call me.
I was wrong.
With only one day in NYC, KitKat and I bought tickets for the hop on/off bus that takes two separate loops around the city.
And when we turned into Times Square, despite the fact that I claim never to have wanted to come here, I was too stunned to even shed a tear.
You see it in movies, you see it in posters: the marquees of Times Square have been plastered over popular culture for decades. But nothing does them justice, not really. Even on an open top double decker bus they tower over you. Everything here is larger than life. And the shows. If only we were here on an overnight. No, not really, if we were just here for an overnight I’d have to choose…and which one would I go for? I mean really? Almost every Tony nominee is playing here, from Matilda, to Chicago, to Les Mis and the list goes on and on…the new production of Aladdin opened here and I didn’t even know about it! I really wanted to stand there and stare and stare and stare…and then blink, and stare some more.
And then of course, there was the cross-street, which the guide casually pointed out:
By the way, up that way you can see the Radio City Music Hall housed at Rockefeller Center…largest theatre in New York and home to the Rockettes.
Apparently I desperately wanted to be a Rockette as a child. I have no memory of this whatsoever, apparently I was so devastated when I learned they had a major height requirement which I would never reach that I cried for days….and then proceeded to block out the memory of wanting it at all. But I do remember seeing the Radio City sign a lot growing up, because I was obsessed with an old VHS recording of a production of Disney’s Snow White that played there in the 80s (everyone thinks the first live Disney Broadway show was Beauty and the Beast…it wasn’t).
There is so much in this city that you don’t even know where to look, let alone where to look first. We had intended to hop off the bus at the Empire State Building and see the city from above, but the guide – for whatever reason – didn’t call the stop so we didn’t get the chance, which turned out to be a good thing as we later found out there was nearly a two hour line to get up to the observation deck, which would have robbed us of most of our day. Instead, we stayed on board and got as much history of the city as you can get in just one day – I wish I could remember all of it, I wish I’d taken my notebook with me, but since I wasn’t sure how much I was going to be walking around I didn’t want to carry it around. So I have to do my best by memory.
But there’s just so much.
There’s the New Yorker Hotel where the likes of Tommy Dorsey and heaven knows how many other big band greats used to play, there’s the first and originally largest apartment building in America, there’s the Woolworth tower (the top isn’t actually copper anymore btw), there Madison Square Gardens, there’s the famous New York post office (“Neither cold, nor heat nor dark of night shall keep these couriers from their duty”), Grand Central Terminal. THE COPACABANA! THE REAL ONE! As in “the hottest spot north of Havanna”!
That building over there that’s still under construction? That’s going to be the tallest building in the western hemisphere – apartments there? Start at $80 MILLION…oh, and they’ll throw in a room for your maid!
Y’know, because of course at those prices you’ll have one!
Oh and by the way, the pylons over there? The ones that are barely even noticeable sticking out of the water? Yeah, that’s the remnants of the pier where the Titanic would have docked had she made it over!
Excuse me while my brain shorts out just even attempting to take this all in…
There was only one place in town that I honestly had no desire to visit. Since we were on a downtown loop, it is only natural that one of the landmarks is the shadow of where there were once two towers touching the sky. Now, in the shadow of 1 World Trade (more often called the Freedom Tower), there are fountains and black marble memorials, and a lot of tears. This is never going to be a place that is forgotten, never a place that becomes a park. The beating heart of a nation was pierced here, and it bled, and though it has scared over, the damage is still done. Apparently all the trees at the site are new except one, which was salvaged from the wreckage and nursed back to health and now stands somewhere on the site with a fence carefully around it. The bus didn’t stop there, and no one asked to get off, when someone nearer to the front asked the guide if he had ever visited, he suddenly got very serious
I live here…New Yorkers don’t come here…it’s a sad place. Bad…bad memories.
And suddenly the bus just gets terribly quiet, going from light-hearted to serious in just a second…until we’re past the site and the heaviness dissipates.
Once we debarked the tour bus back in Times Square we still had time to kill (“and time of course because very offended and stopped altogether!” – sorry, I have Alice in Wonderland in my head for some reason) – and we were hungry.
Hard Rock?
Definitely.
Everything in New York is larger than life, which certainly includes the resteraunts. This was by far the biggest Hard Rock Café I’ve seen yet; though it was decorated a bit more subtly then say the one I went to in LA which featured a convertible suspended behind the bar! However, it did have one very impressive feature: there is a wall made out of guitars. And not just any guitars.
Er…KitKat, come take a look at this…
Yeah?
Those…aren’t just guitars…
Meaning?
Those are gibsons.
Now, neither Kitkat or I are instrumentalists, but we’ve both either grown up with or been around musicians long enough that we know a few things…one of those being that Gibson guitars are…different.
You’ve got to be kidding me,.
Nope. Look at the plaque.
And there it is engraved on a silver plate on the wall;
Hard Rock Café New York’s ‘Guitar Wall’: this wall is handcrafted from 300 guitars donated by Gibson Guitar company.
300!!! 300 Gibson Guitars! MADE INTO A WALL!
I swear, only in New York.
As we made our way back through Times Square towards the shuttle bus it became obvious that the half price “TKTS” booth had opened (the shows open up at 7, which means the ticket booth opens at 2, it’s much the same system as the one that operates in London’s West End) – if you want to get cheap tickets, you have to queue. The line for the musicals stretched what looked like a good two or so hour wait, and it was dotted every few steps with representatives in costumes from each show handing out brochures.
Next time…next time…
As we all stood windswept and somewhat shivering on the aft deck for the sail away, watching Ellis Island fade into the sunset-brushed distance…the Cruise Director and I struck up a brief conversation,
So, what did you do today sir?
Me? this is my hometown, I went to school here, found my heart here, found myself here…so I just went out and got reacquainted. You?
Oh…we did the bus tour. But you know, I was always scared of this place.
Why?
I just was…I was…told once I wouldn’t do well here ,that it would break me. I’ve just, always believed that.
Nah, I don’t think so…I think you’d do just fine here. I’ve only known you for a little while…but I can see you here.
Yeah…I think I understand it a bit better now.
I finally got what so many books, movies, television shows and just general social murmurs have always told me:
New York takes a piece of you, it will affect you, in some way, whether you want it to or not. You won’t affect it, not in the slightest, New York cares about no one and nothing, it just is…but there is no way, no way whatsoever, that it can’t affect you…
Like the song says: it’s a helluva town.