First Day in New York

My body clock is skewiff. I wake at 4am. As I lay in bed on my first morning in New York, I resolved not to spend my first day sleeping. I rose at 7am and ate breakfast in the hotel dining room. Out of the window I looked down over Broadway. Two large screens competed for my attention. On one a singing cowboy wearing only wire fronts and on the other a group of four rappers. The images were soundlessly demanding. I resented their continuous presence.

It was minus one degrees celcius outside. I wrapped myself in my sheep skin coat, alpacca felt beret and rabbit fur gloves and stepped out into the street. Walking briskly I warmed up slowly. I was heading towards Union Square following advice from the hotel concierge that the shopping was great at DSW (a designer outlet bargain store).

It was a half hour walk. Joni Mitchell’s song was never far from my mind. There are hundreds and hundreds of yellow taxis here! I passed a shop front in an art deco building that said ‘Fresh Food Market’. It drew my attention. The promise of fresh fish of every variety, fruit and vegetables had to be seen to be believed. The shop front looked like any other I had passed. I entered and the Fresh Food Market opened up after I passed through a narrow barricade. I felt as though I had discovered a secret.

I wandered past the fresh food to where you could buy ready made salads from a large salad bar. I was tempted to purchase a selection for my lunch but I couldn’t work out the rules. Where were the containers, and how many salads could you put into one serving and how high was it acceptable to pile it. While I was grappling with these questions, I noticed brown rice sushi rolls made with large pieces of tuna and salmon and avodado. I took a prepackaged box of this instead. Beyond the salad bar were rows of supermarket produce on wooden shelves with small selections of quality produce. I found a natural museli, some fresh plain yogurt and a long life container of soy milk in one aisle. Amongst an exceptionally large tea selection at the end of the store I found some red and green rooibos tea.

There was a three way queue to pay. I watched other customers and worked out that the protocol was to attend to the order at which people made it to the front of their respective rows. It was this order that was naturally followed when the number of a check out was called out electronically. The check out chick was a young black woman. I greeted her but she just started scanning. I paid in cash and said thankyou to her but she did not respond in any way, almost as though she was automated. As I left the store I laughed to myself. Her obliviousness to me was truly a New York experience and I was glad to have had one.

With my recycled paper grocery bag in my hand I continued down to Union Square, counting down the streets as I went. Finally at fourteenth I found DSW and their shoe outlet on the fourth floor. I left the store ninety minutes later with four pairs of shoes and a hot pink Donna Karan coat.

I did not have time to stop to eat my sushi in Union Square as I had planned to do. I had booked a ticket to see the matinee of Chicago and was suddenly pressed for time. The streets had become more crowded and my shopping bags were heavy. I made it back to my hotel room with only ten minutes to spare. Luckily the theatre was next door to my hotel. I scoffed the sushi and made it in time to take my seat in row K.

During the second act, I felt the pull of sleep from my confused body but I did not have time to lie down afterwards. I was due to meet four colleagues at 5pm. I waited in the lobby of their hotel but they were late, so I went searching for a hot chocolate. The hot chocolate quest I will save for another post (it was a complicated process of rule following, and spillage).

With my colleagues we caught a taxi to The Gotham Bar and Grill on East 12th Street. In this ambient and austere restaurant we had the dining experience of a life time. Not only was the food exquisite but the service was the most friendly and attentive we had ever experienced.

We partied on to Bleaker Street, singing Paul Simon songs as we walked there. We found The Bitter End and watched a young local soul band playing original music. At twelve o’clock midnight when my head hit the pillow, I went out like a light. (And I woke again at 4am).