Upper East Side wind-down...

Hi all, Dusty here, with a dispatch from the Upper East Side (Red's funky studio to be precise).

This is likely to be the last blog post before we head home. We're in that last-minute mop-up phase of our holiday and not sure when we'll get five minutes to provide another update. Unless Muddy is feeling inspired, this may have to do until you see us again.

The last few days have been chock-full of kulcha vulture stuff. The Metropolitan Museum of Art on Monday (HUUUUUGE, just as I remember - Muddy once more, overwhelmed, but he got his cowboys and Indians 'fix' via the "American West in Bronze" exhibition - yee hah!), The Society of Illustrators on Tuesday and the Whitney Museum of American Art today (Wednesday).

We had a posh dinner and cocktails on Park Avenue last night (Nordic fusion), but will be staying in for home-cooked Moroccan meatball sliders on the couch in PJs tonight. Frankly, I have gained so much weight, it actually hurts to wear anything with an actual waistband.

Silky K, be warned - we're hitting the gym upon my return!

Stay in School

Muddy Karpitz here again, people, with a reminder that today’s installment is brought to you by the letter “E” for education. On our last day in West Village, Dusty and I set about cleaning up the tiny-but-cute 2-bedroom apartment we’d been staying in, making sure it was in tip-top shape for our temporary landlord, who was due back later that afternoon. Being models of Prussian efficiency, we’d finished our shared housework chores, and had an hour to kill before we had to check out. So, we decided to decamp to the nearby Hudson Street Diner for a late breakfast.

Like so much of what we’ve seen and heard in New York City, this diner was just like the ones you see in the movies. Booths with vinyl bench seats. Glass-covered table tops to soak up all the spilled coffee. And when you ask for coffee, they plonk down a big ceramic mug, fill it to the brim with hot black coffee, leaving you to add “cream” using these tiny disposable plastic containers of milk supplied by the waiter/bus boy. And the breakfasts were large, cheap and plentiful. Dusty had French Toast with eggs-over-easy and ham, while I settled for scrambled eggs, sausage and French Toast as well.

But the real highlight for us was just listening to the conversations between the head waitress and her regular clientele. She sounded just like the actress who played Carla on the TV sitcom Cheers. “Hey, Barbara, you want coffee? Haven’t seen you for a while.” Sitting to our right was a professorial gent, tapping away on a laptop, who was soon joined by what appeared to be one of his young male students. They were settling down for a no doubt earnest conversation, when the waitress stopped by with her ubiquitous coffee pot, and said (without drawing breath), “Hey, professor, how are you? Is he studying hard? Make sure he studies hard, and stays in school, get an education, ”, before she swept off to attend her next table.

An absolutely classic Noo-Yawk moment. We’ve only been here just over a week, but we’ve fallen for this town in a big way.  Because it really is just like how we’ve seen it in movies, on TV, or read about in books. 

Steam from the subway belches out of manhole covers. Dirty, slushy piles of snow are heaped along the sidewalks. School buses are yellow. Fire escapes scale the length of old brownstone buildings like creeping vines. Sirens of all description can be heard throughout the day and night. Uniformed doormen lurk discreetly at the entrances of Park Avenue apartment buildings. 

Thin, expensively dressed women saunter along streets with tiny dogs straining at their leashes. Evangelical preachers ply their trade on crowded subway trains, proclaiming that even “atheist scientists” acknowledge that the world will end, just like the Bible says it will. Supermarket-sized drugstores share prime retail real estate alongside with Midtown psychics and tarot card readers. It’s just like a giant movie set, with one key difference – it’s real. It’s New York City.

Love this town.

   

In New York City, the Word on the Streets is “Asshole”

Actually, make that “f***ing asshole”.  One night when Dusty and I were walking along Eighth Avenue in West Village last week, when we heard the screech of tyres, a sickening thud and…well, Dusty was ready to speed dial 911 on her (US) mobile, thinking an ambulance would be required. A Yellow Cab had struck a young woman at a pedestrian crossing, but her injuries were far from fatal, as the following verbatim account will demonstrate:

‘You hurt my arm! What the f**k you mean “you’re sorry?” You hurt my f***ing arm, you asshole! F**k you!”

It seems this near-fatal collision clearly hadn’t impaired the young woman’s vocal chords, nor did it affect her command of colourful invective. The Yellow Cab wisely drove off, leaving this woman to finish crossing the road, and recount the whole episode to the gathering crowd of bystanders. We considered pointing out that she was, in fact, walking against the pedestrian signal, but she looked like a really, really angry version of Fran (The Nanny) Drescher, so we thought the better of it.

So, that’s it, end of story. What the f**k are you still looking at anyhow? Show’s over, asshole! What more do you f***ing want? Go f**k yourself!

Let’s Face It: Things Get Weird at 37,000 Feet - Muddy K's guest appearance

Greetings, armchair travellers. This is Muddy Karpitz, making a long overdue guest appearance on Dusty Venetian’s blog. I know more than a few members of our extended circle have, after following my cranky dispatches during my previous trip to Abba-land, been awaiting similarly rage-infused observations from me during our current trip to the Big Apple, but I may have to disappoint you all, because I’m having too good a time with Dusty in this amazing city to invoke my “angry-dickhead-abroad” persona. But that’s not to say that this trip hasn’t already produced more than it’s share of intriguing, funny and flat-out strange moments, some of which I’ll try to convey here at Dusty’s digital domain, now that we’ve pitched tent at Red’s Upper East Side pad, and I have an opportunity to marshal my thoughts and sharpen my (digital) quill.

Where do I begin? Let’s start with the epic 20-hour flight from the Land of Oz to the Home of the Brave. As many of you know, long-distance flights fill me with as much joy as, say, sticking push-pins into my forehead, or mucking out the chimpanzee cages in animal testing laboratories. Which is kind of ironic, given that I am a card-carrying plane-spotter (i.e. aircraft nerd) who could – and, indeed, did – correctly identify the line-up of aircraft assembled on the top-deck of the USS Intrepid for Dusty’s benefit (For which I’m sure she was super grateful. I mean, I think it’s important that people know that the Israeli-made Kifr jet fighter was copied from the French Dassault Mirage fighter – Isn’t that right, Dusty? Dusty? Why are you walking away from me? Dusty?)

Sorry, where was I? Oh yes, flying. Look, I do appreciate what a marvel of the modern age long-distance jet travel is, allowing people like me and Dusty to traverse the globe in less than a day. But that doesn’t mean things don’t get weird at 37,000 feet. Nor does it mean that I felt any less like a POW being subjected to sensory deprivation torture at high altitudes.  We flew (Dis)United, and were warned by all and sundry to expect the worst. While I’m willing to wager that Soviet-era Aeroflot airline travel would be considerably worse, (Dis)United came perilously close to fulfilling our friends’ warnings.

One of the cabin crew welcomed us aboard by thanking us for choosing them as their Valentine (We departed Oz on Friday February 14). Hey, sister, we only choose this flight because it was going dirt-cheap on WebJet, so don’t think this means we’re going on a date anytime soon, okay. As it was, the female flight attendants looked like they were previously employed as guards at a women’s detention centre (“He used to give me roses…”). Got a problem with your in-flight vegan meal? Keep it to yourself, people, unless you want to get smacked down by one of these perfumed steamrollers.

Someone told us that there was no in-flight entertainment aboard (Dis)United flights at all. Like, no video screens or audio/radio channels at all. Good Lord, what were expected to do to occupy ourselves for 23 hours? Read a book? Talk to one another? Oh, the humanity! As it turns out, (Dis)United’s fleet of older aircraft did have shared (communal) video screens that dropped from the ceiling above our seats, which we could watch if we chose to – but they weren’t the seatback video screens that we’ve now become accustomed to. Which makes this a “First World” problem – on a par with choosing to eat (dead) organically fed, free-range chickens over (equally dead) battery farm hens – than a source of genuine distress (Like having electrodes pinned to your genitals by corrupt police officials, which qualifies as a uniquely “Third World” problem).

But that doesn’t diminish the horror of having to watch Thor: The Dark World which, even for a former Marvel Comics-geek like myself (who avidly read The Mighty Thor comic book as a kid) from wanting to puncture my eardrum with a fork to stop listening to this drivel (As it was, I just chose to watch it without sound, which made it marginally less awful). Oh, and because (Dis)United screens films and TV shows on communal screens (which darling kiddies might see during the flight), all the rude bits are edited out, or otherwise modified. Which meant that Kate Moss’s tits were clumsily airbrushed out of a photograph seen in the background of the other in-flight movie, About Time. That doesn’t even qualify as soft-core porn, you people! Porno denied! Thanks for nothing, (Dis)United!

Because (Dis)United is an American carrier, passengers are subject to US federal aviation laws and regulations, such as congregating around the on-board toilets, which is forbidden – no doubt on the grounds that would-be Jihadists leave it to the last minute to plot mid-air mayhem hanging around an airliner’s toilet cubicle while their erstwhile leader is trying to punch out a turd. That all sounds fine in theory, but it all goes to hell in a hand-basket once several passengers are simultaneously afflicted with broiling bowel syndrome, and would willingly trample to death any small children who stood between them and the on-board dunny. Which is where I often found myself throughout the course of our 20-hour flight, exchanging wild-eyed glances with fellow inmates – sorry, I meant to say “passengers” – as we waited desperately for the cubicle sign to change from “Occupied” to “Vacant”. But I can assure all those good folk at the Department of Homeland Security that no plotting took place in these circumstances. We were more concerned with our near-exploding bowels than with explosive devices.   

Now, I’m about to get scatological here, so those with delicate sensibilities and/or little kiddies should stop reading this now. (Okay, have all those sooks left the room? Good – let us resume) Perhaps it was the airline-standard food that did it. Or that our internal organs are being slowly rearranged in new & interesting ways in the pressurized cabin. But going to the toilet at 37,000 feet is a strange and terrifying experience. Not only do you have to fold your limbs like a sheet of origami paper just to sit on the bowl in such confined quarters, but what comes out the other end is…well, it just doesn’t look like it does back on terra firma. Nor do the wafer thin pocket squares they jokingly refer to as toilet paper on these flights comes anywhere close to carrying out their intended task (Ahem). But the flushing mechanism is what scares me the most. Push the button and whatever deposits you’ve made (Again – ahem) are sucked out into the stratosphere with the force and speed of a Polaris missile. I can’t help but think that our airborne waste is swiftly turned into an icy projectile as it hurtles towards Earth in sub-zero temperatures. These now shard-like “Number 2s” could potentially blind an innocent islander who happens to be looking up at the night sky from their Pacific Ocean atoll as our flight passes overhead.   So, to the people of greater Micronesia, I apologise for my airborne “gifts” and any atmospheric havoc they may cause. (I mean, it’s bad enough they have to contend with global warming and rising ocean levels – they don’t need me dumping sh*t on them, either)

It wasn’t all bad, though. During the LA-NYC leg of the flight, we sat next to a lovely woman named Liz, who was a sales representative for a US company, which frequently sent her across the States and abroad. Turns out she was a native New Yorker, because when we told her we were flying to the Big Apple, her eyes lit up and she said:

New York is the dirtiest, smelliest, noisiest and ugliest city in the world. And I know there are far prettier places on Earth – but there’s no other city in the world quite like it.

And as Dusty and I were about to discover  - she was right.

Columbia University to Brooklyn - just another Saturday in NY

An unseasonably warm and sunny Saturday took us on a North-bound subway ride/walk to Morningside Heights, home of Columbia University. A gorgeous campus, that lends itself to strolling, Columbia is dominated by impressive 19th century architecture and gardens (even if they were snow-covered). Think University of Melbourne on crack!

A diner brekky on Broadway, followed by a quick pitstop at our apartment to change, and then we were off to Williamsburg, Brooklyn for an afternoon with my posse from Pennsylvania - Sol Trayne and William J Axminster - who'd driven 200 miles to spend the weekend with me, Muddy and Red. We spent the afternoon gassing, drinking craft beers and playing arcade games in a cavernous joint called Barcade (yes, that's right - oh, those witty hipsters), before we were joined by Taylor Paatch, a friend of William's from New Jersey. The evening ended with burgers and a nightcap at a divey gay bar, then home for me and Muddy - old farts - happy to leave the evening's debaucheries to a younger crowd.

Today (Sunday), we bade the PA posse farewell, then caught the subway to Astoria, Queens - an outer borough that is best described as an ethnic soup mixing Oakleigh, Springvale, Coburg and Abbotsford - to visit the Museum of the Moving Image, an astonishing film and television museum, housed in what was once America's East Coast Hollywood. Awesome.

The snow has mostly melted and the weather is milder than we could have hoped for.

We are now comfortably ensconced in Red K's studio on the Upper East Side, winding down after a full and rich week and a full and rich afternoon coffee at Dean and Deluca's and a full and rich dinner care of the Halal Guys. Sleep should come easily...Good night.

You’ll just have to put up with my dry recounts until Muddy gets his travel-writing mojo back…

Sun shining, blue skies and bright, clear conditions? No wind, rain or snow? Do we dare dream of a trip to Top of the Rock Observation Deck for the full 360 degrees view of NYC? Yes, we do. And it is BREATHTAKING. I’d done it before, but this was new for Muddy and boy, was he thrilled. Being an early morning Thursday, the queues were mercifully short. We took some great photos and soaked up the incredible vista for a little over an hour. There’s nothing like looking at a city unfold before you so starkly and clearly from approximately 70 stories off the ground.

Coffee and carbs pit-stop at Dean and Deluca, then a trip to the New York Public Library corner 5^th Avenue and 42^nd St to crash a free public tour. The tour lasted an hour and was led by a bubbly Frenchwoman who was both incredibly informative and a real library enthusiast. The Library is amazing. I know the State Library of Victoria is lovely and the domed reading room exquisite, but this place could fit five SLVs and the SLV walls are not adorned with Greek marble, okay? Two eye-catching (free) exhibitions – one, a history of AIDS activism, the other, a pictorial history of children’s literature – and a Gutenberg Bible (cos, you know, they happened to have one lying around) later, had me and Muddy wishing Australia boasted more robber-baron cultural philanthropists…

Lunch was a street-side affair – the Halal Guys food cart on 53^rd Street. Oh my. Lamb and chicken gyro, shredded over rice and slathered in yoghurt never tasted so good. $6 well spent. Queues justified.

We ducked into the Paley Centre for Media, which is a TV library /archive where you can call up old shows / TV clips, news docos etc and watch them in situ on nice big computer screens. I managed to watch the Jackie Kennedy tour of the White House (CBS – 1962) referenced in Season Four of Mad Men. Cool. Muddy nerded it up with some news clips and an obscure comic book / pulp novel TV adaptation…

We capped off the evening with a 10 minute helicopter ride over the East River and Hudson, awestruck by the twinkling lights of Manhattan, Brooklyn and Jersey City. The flight was smooth and the pilot cruisy and calm. The complete tour included a South Harbour water-taxi ride and comp cup of sparkling wine, narrated by the charming, good-looking Brooklyn-born-and-bred “DC” (yes, that is his name) who was a wellspring of information about New York’s history and geography.

Highlight: the Statute of Liberty, glowing in the dark, while Ray Charles’ version of “America the Beautiful” wafted over the water taxi’s PA system. A lump formed in my throat. Why? Because, you just had to be there, that’s why.

It's Friday afternoon now, and I'm perched on the end of the bed in Apartment No 2 on the Upper West Side. It's nice and clean, and a completely different part of NY, but we miss our cosy West Village apartment already. 

Stay frosty. I know we will... 

“Get in, get out of the rain… We’re gonna move on up to the waterfront.” Day 5.

Today, we switch from Sinatra to Simple Minds, it’s been that kind of a day.

A subway ride through downtown Manhattan on the 1-2-3 line(s) got us to Brooklyn Heights for some rain-splattered promenading Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass (DUMBO) and along the Brooklyn Bridge Snow-fields – sorry – Brooklyn Bridge Park. If it didn’t look like a park, that might have been because of the two feet of snow blanketing everything.

Cold. White. Monochrome. Snow.

Bloody atmospheric, but.

With just enough visibility to see Manhattan’s exquisite skyline from across the river, we were able to take some great photos, even if Muddy and I haven’t mastered the art of the panoramic iPhoto…

Just as it started to rain, we scarpered through the lovely streets of DUMBO, scooting back up to Brooklyn Heights for lunch in a cosy little café called Siggy’s Good Food. Delicious.

We weren’t game enough to walk back to Manhattan via Brooklyn Bridge in the pouring rain, so a subway ride took us to the Financial District, and into the Century 21 discounted shopping zoo / department store. Lots of bargains, and lots of people to be crushed against… Anyhoo, we got to see the Woolworths Building – another stunning bit of NY architecture before heading back to the Village.

Dinner is a picnic on the couch with provisions from Murray’s World of Cheese on Bleecker Street, a bottle of something white and Italian and home–made hot chocolate.