Queens Day

A beautiful sleepy sunny morning, a calm gracious side of New York awoke me today.
Jumping directly on the 7 at Grand Central and making my way to Willets Point deep inside Queens was an incredibly smooth procedure.
I headed towards Flushing Meadows and Corona Park.
A big stretch of parkland that separates Flushing Bay and Union Turnpike.
It was originally developed for the 1939 New York City World's Fair, which it hosted again in 1964.
Converting F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'valley of ashes' (from the Great Gatsby) into Gilmore D. Clarke's 'mans achievements on a shrinking globe in an expanding universe' (the tag line for the '64 fair by the Unisphere architect).
The park is also home to the Queens Museum of Modern Art.
A strange redundant hybrid art space.
One part stuck in nostalgic homage the other reaching for contemporary relevance.
Subsequently achieving neither.
For a period it was the temporary hang out for the homeless United Nations.
Refurbished and dressed up a little it became the New York City Pavillion in '64.
The only original building from the '39 fair to stand in the park now.
An amalgamation of potentialities and burnt dreams.
Flushing/Corona is a beautiful relaxing park.
Full of big old trees and birds.
Populated with young hispanic families bombing around underneath the unisphere on bmxs and teenagers on skateboards.
'World's Fair' is a typically Victorian concept, initiated with a view to showcase industrial advancements on a national scale.
As time went by they metamorphosized to showcase the thematic topic reflected in the climate of the times.
Industrialisation, cultural exchange, technological progression and from the mid nineties to now branding.
Large scale barren monumental elephants.
Architecture constructed with an eye to the spectacular and not the functional.
Monuments and buildings that are to be witnessed but not used.
To list a few ex-fair sites so you understand how Flushing/Corona felt:
Crystal Palace in London, Grand Palais in Paris, the Space Needle in Seattle, the Biosphere in Montreal and the Atomium in Brussels, to name but a few.
There is a stark contrast of present day useability and utopian monumental desires for an iconic spectacle of national glory in these sites.
The second part of my day was spent listening to a little gig in Brooklyn by a band called Project.
They were very good.
Day six - spectacles of light and dark.

Different Possibilities For Blue

Finding myself in downtown Manhattan I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to walk along the hudson harbor picking up my ferry in the meatpacking district.
The West Side Highway and West Street are a cross fusion of productivity and leisure zones.
Sauntering between thick clouds of sewage smell, industrial cleaning facilities, purpose built rock gardens, thickets of 'wild areas' and large recreational parkland, I made my way up the city to the pickup point.
Big city bums have found a relatively (in summer) comfortable hang-out in the rock gardens.
The space comes fully equipped with sun trap, shelter, soft cushy grass beds, public bathroom facilities and fresh water on tap for all.
If they feel like a spot of tennis there is always the Chelsea Pier one block down.
Large gangs of suburban kids drift from coaches to the indoor baseball piers along the hudson.
I get lost and confused trying to work out how far along I have walked.
42nd, 35th, 44th street ? Do I need to jump on the L, N, R or C ?
I still haven't acclimatized myself to numbers and letters.
I know it should be logical, but for me it makes no sense.
I'm a colours and symbols kinda girl.
Give me the London Underground map any day.
After what seemed like a small eternity and crossing the globe on foot (heels as well) I arrived at Pier 81 and it started to rain.
Before jumping on the circle line boat tour (a 3 hour boat tour around the whole island of Manhattan) they take a very strange picture of me standing behind a novelty nautical fake life ring.
This is compulsory. It also seems compulsory to smile as the photographer keeps demanding.
One of the most compelling aspects of this procedure is that it serves a dual purpose.
1. For security purposes, if any of us try and blow up the sightseeing boat they have a file on us.
2. So they can sell you the picture after you come off the boat for $25, a unique way to remember your trip, on land, pre-sightseeing and standing behind a fake life ring.
Anything that has the verb 'life' should never simultaneously have the adjective 'fake' in the same breath.
The boat proceeded with a tired weathered and slightly crooner esque tour guide.
He paced the boat with his microphone in hand reeling off inconsequential facts about the great new york skyline.
Apparently that is where Madonna and Steven Spielberg live and don't forget the circle line company have made a special memorial book for the world trade center tragedy, remember the world trade center tragedy.
Just in case you forgot.
I have never been on a such a long stretch of water and heard the term tragedy used so often.
But then there was the Lady Libertas to cheer us all up.
As we drifted slowly up the east river past Queens, Harlem and the Bronx our Captain Crooner had very little to say apart from "this was once a rough neighborhood but now its getting better" and "look right you'll see the Yankee Stadium".
So we all took a break from our cameras and ate hot dogs while the boat floated under countless bridges in the Bronx.
Is it just me or are tourist's cameras are getting bigger and better by the minute.
Gone are the days of rubbish disposable snappy little numbers, everyone and their dog is a pro nowadays.
On Saturday I stood on a rooftop in Brooklyn getting a last glimpse of the fireworks.
After forgetting my camera batteries I ask someone if they could take a picture for me.
They responded by saying "just type New York Skyline into google".
Day five - lets go with the colour blue, we all know what that means.

We Do All Types of Haircuts

Hells Kitchen, west side ny was once a bad bad place, so bad it was hot.
The police refused to go there, proclaiming it was like being caught in the fiery kitchen of hell.
Slap bang in the middle of the inferno is a highly experimental non-profit called The Kitchen.
It was here I met Matthew Lyon today, one of the Kitchen curators.
This has a nice ring to it, a kitchen curator, "tonight only... Crazy Lion and The Kitchen Curators..."
Today was a tight schedule, no ambling, places to see people to be.
Along my journey I bumped into Bryant Park where some old Al Pacino film was screening.
It seemed silly to watch a mediated new york whilst I sat in the center of it.
Making my way through a distinctly 70's public library I parked myself (late, of course) inside a lecture on the history of the Lower East Side.
Dr. Brown spoke incredibly slowly, maybe this was due to the collective age range of the audience being over 70.
He presented a somewhat stilted slide show of churches, synagogues and temples dating back to the 1820's.
It went a little like this:
1st the English protestants came, all aristo and with big empirical ideas, they built all the houses and churches.
2nd came the German reformed Jews, so all the English aristos moved uptown.
3rd came the Irish Catholics, so all the German reformed Jews moved uptown.
4th came the Eastern European orthodox Jews, all speaking Yiddish and without their Rabbis.
5th came the Catholic Hispanics.
6th came the Chinese.
In the end the orthodox and reformed Jews didn't mix, the Irish ended up all fighting in the civil war (they were offered $100 directly when they came of the boat, no matter if they fought for the confederates or the union). The Hispanics were generally relocated to the Bronx and Harlem and the Chinese stayed.
Then a bunch of old new yorker jews stood up and corrected Dr. Brown on his facts because they were there and they remembered 1867.
I gave all my change to a homeless man on 5th Ave. because I still don't understand the monetary system here.
I told him to take it all because I just can't work it out.
They do all types of haircuts here in New York and everyone has small dogs.
Day 4.

A bit of a Mess and Tiredness Takes Over

I think its very difficult to be sharp after the celebration of a birth of a country.
No matter which country it is and no matter who you are.
It is comforting to know I am a part of the 234th time.
Missing the last ferry to Governor Island took me to Times Square.
I think these two activities are in direct opposition to one another.
However I was not in the right frame of mind for the visual explosion that is Times Sq.
Dreamily ambling down Madison Avenue I came across a woman.
She was dressed in navy blue linen fabric blowing gracefully in the wind.
Her back to the street, propping herself against a derelict shop window.
Her black bin liner bags lined her feet and her hair was so knotted that she resembled Mrs Twit. from Roald Dahl's The Twits.
I felt like she looked and the city was just too much for me.
After much indirect derive I made my way home for curry and bed.
Day three.

The State of Independence

Camera batteries are broken, a day without images.
I am walking through a living breathing cinemascape.
Bushwick, Williamsbrug, Montrose, Bedford.
The signing of the declaration in a state of Brooklyn.
I've decided to turn Brooklyn into a verb.
Today we are all Brooklyned.
Bar b q's, batons, flags and honor.
Nostalgic beat it and smooth criminal dancing.
The rooftops are beautiful, visions of a skylined with fire.
The birth of capitalism, an iconic concrete quest for the stars.
I'm British the good old 4th of July doesn't mean much to me.
But it does for the Brooklyned.
It means celebrating the struggle for autonomy.
Giving forth the confidence to say I can do it on my own.
And in a world where liberty is constrained.
Then I jump on the rooftops of Brooklyn cheering for more freedom.
Day two - the 4th of July.

Angry Noisy Beast

A gorgeous battered changeable tidal wave of a city.
New York has grabbed me by the throat and forced me to listen.
Wake up Miss Warman and learn to walk, get out of your wheelchair and use those legs.
There's no resting here, no moment to catch your breath, no place to take solitude, peace and tranquility.
The city is a noisy angry beast, forcing its members to adapt to it.
You are no longer human you are only one part of its vast concrete membrane.
The blisters on my feet are screaming for rest.
Day one.