New York

I hadn't been to New York before.

My friends that have been have raved about it.  I arrived just before midnight in JFK. I had printed out the travel details to get to my billet in Chelsea Hostel in Chelsea. All I had to do was get onto the E train from Jamaica station by the airport. The city was already winning brownie points for having the underground run all night. It did lose some for me having to talk to a crazy¹ guy for ten minutes while waiting for the train. He shared his experiences during the flooding - the hotel he stayed in and was no longer welcome in, his sugar momma, how his faith was going to save him from the forthcoming rapture and his calls of abuse at an overweight man on the platform.

When I came out of the station, I found myself walking around poorly-lit empty streets, covered in a light fog. It was like being in Vampire in Brooklyn starring Eddie Murphy. I tried to find the street and avenue where my hostel was at, but the street names/numbers didn't make any sense. I gave in and got a cab. Sitting in the back of the taxi - a real NYC taxi cab, guys! - and watched the map on the screen in front of me... Not knowing the train stop sequence, I ended up stepping off early in Queens at Court Sq./23rd st. According to my directions, I had to wait until 23rd in Manhattan island before stepping off.

The whole trip, I was surprised at how accurately so much of America and Americana is portrayed in TV and film. It was very much contrary to how poorly they usually emulate everywhere else. I mention this now, because the Chelsea Hostel, was the platonic ideal of low-rent building; exposed hot water pipes, uneven stairs, aged linoleum flooring and a bare bedroom with a tiny metal-frame squeaky bed. After being spoiled with all you one can eat pancakes, oatmeal and fruit, the choice of a bagel (brown or white), a single fruit (apple or orange) and a bowel Corn Flakes, didn't leave me particularly satisfied. It didn't help that it was 10-15°C colder than in California.(lower temperatures lead to less trustful judgements - I'll take liberties and extend it liking a place)

I made my way off to the Broadway district. walking up 7th avenue. It took 30 minutes, but the time passed by easily; New York is a much denser place than Los Angeles. Outside of Hollywood blvd, the walk between points of note had little to offer. Now, New York cit-ay on the other hand… the streets were full of people. Everyone walking around, going to work, making an audition, coming from yoga, the gym, running or on their way to/from shopping. such an eclectic mix of people to gawp at! One evening two teenagers walked past me, rappin' at each other, one would bust out a rhymes and the other would fire one back at him. Wrapped up in their own little world. I thought it was a pretty cool moment.

When I was walking through Central Park, I got to see an street performing group that I'd give two thumbs up for showmanship and entrepreneurial spirit. These guys were tight.² Near the end of their set, and had gathered up a crowd of 30-50 people. They'd just picked three people from the crowd - two lovely ladies and a hapless man. They flirted with the women, teased the guy. Before the last big trick, they started their money collection.   They called out people that didn't offer much or had just walked away at the mention of a contribution. They celebrated or acted something in harmony whenever someone gave in ten dollars or more. They'd ask them where they were from and in every case, they had a group-piece for the US state or country - either all of them saying something at the same time, or a rapid-fire back and forth between them, or in the case of Brazil, some of them sung and some of them gyrated something that might have been Samba. Then they would call around to the people from NY to represent, or if some big tipper had been already singled out [a guy from Boston in this case], they'd ask him if he was going to take that? I think they toed the line between persistence and entertainment darn near perfectly. If I had any more than the few dollars I had already given, I would have happily have given it over. There wasn't any passive aggression or guilting in how they wheedled the money out, it was all very entertaining. So, to cap it off, their most athletic member jumped over the three volunteers. I still grin thinking about it.

Other than strolling around the streets I did a couple of other things.

I visited the 9/11 memorial centre, which was pretty intense. It's a beautiful place, the foundations of the towers are water fixtures with chest-high walls holding the names of the civilians, fireman, paramedics and police officers that lost their lives.

I decided that I had time for a Broadway show, and went with Wicked!, thanks to the first season of Glee, which had one or two songs from it as well as Kristin Chenoweth, I had a passing familiarity with it.³ It was a great production, the dialogue was funny and there are some nice dance sequences and acrobatics dispersed through-out.

But the highlight of my NYC trip was my physical activities!

I went to Chelsea Piers for three days and followed beginners gymnastics class, parkour class (Parkour!) and breakdancing class. The teachers were all very good, encouraging and praising without coming off as condescending and they gave me a lot of ideas for my training, which has changed my hand balancing work quite a bit in the last 6 months. But, my goodness!, was my body in bits after it.. lying down, getting up, standing up, reaching up, bending over… my back and ass hated it all! Here's the link for it:
http://www.chelseapiers.com/new/fh/drop-in/adult-gymnastics-classes.cfm

The gymnastics and whatnot was a real high-note for me, and if anyone is interested in doing something physical for a day or even a couple of days, while in NYC, I'd highly recommend it, because the classes are drop-in, no appointment necessary and in the beginners class, they cater for the level of who ever turns up. By the end of the session, I was up to doing unspotted forward somersaults (tweaked my ankle on the landing of one :/ ) and spotted backward somersaults.

To literally cap off my trip to NYC, I got up at 05:30 and ran the Central Park circuit. I jogged up from Chelsea in a hoody and tracksuit bottom. Once I got up, switched out to my shorts and t-shirt. I got a few odd looks from runners as I went along, since most of them were carefully wrapped up. After about 30 minutes I started feeling the chill and after about 45 mins it had gotten cold in enough to hurt. Running back towards Broadway, I saw a big data screen with the temperature on it: 23°F or -5°C. So, naturally, for the home stretch, I covered myself up, hoping to rekindle some sensation. It took a few minutes to pull up the zip of my hoody, since my fingers were numb. But I eventually got it done! The run was a big deal since I am a fan of USA's Suits and the main character, Harvey Specter, apparently does the same circuit.

In terms of food, the highlights were: the Glasshouse, which is a popular pre-broadway show restaurant; and the Shakeshack, which does really nice burgers - the shakes aren't too bad either though.


1. Crazy is a bit harsh, but he neither endeared like an eccentric nor amused like a quirk.
2. Am I using that right, guys?… Guys?
3.  I now remember that I read the book it is based on… I should have led with that and not mentioned watching Glee. My street creed is toast now, yo.

Doc [in] Hollywood

The highlights of L.A. and Hollywood were:

1.     The service, breakfast and tours organised by the hostel

2.     The Warner Bros Studio Tour

3.     Salsa dancing in Santa Monica

4.     Craig Ferguson Show living taping

Breakfast in the hostel was all you can eat pancakes (make them yourself), fruit and oatmeal. I thought the pancakes were a wonderful touch, it was the first time that I went to a hostel where there was complimentary hot food for breakfast. The oatmeal (even the “original” flavor) wasn't great; I am used to high-grade, un-cut O, with no additives.

The hostel organised a guided tour of Beverly Hills. The guy that gave us the tour was a local, and a skinny-jeans-flannel-jacket-and-horn-rimmed-glasses-wearing-vegan-bagel-eatin’ dyed in the wool hipster.  True to his kind’s disdain for “mainstreaming”, we went by public bus. On our way to the stop, he pointed out a huge Great Dane sitting in an open-top pink Cadillac. He freaked out, about it as much as a hipster is permitted and "Instagrammed that sh*t". I think his under-expressed enthusiasm about this slice of Americana was representative of why I got a kick out of him; it was like he had taken the 0-11 measure of intense emotional expression and scaled it down to something feasible in the limited range of motion afforded by skinny jeans and knitted caps. He had timed it so that we had a moment to get a coffee before the bus arrived. He came out of the place with a bacon and egg bagel, but a vegan version, which he ate without irony. The tour stops weren't memorable, but I had a great time listening to the guide go on.

Later that day a group of us booked a spot on the Warner Bros Studio tour. The customer service through-out the tour, including buying the tickets was exemplary. When we got there, we ended up paying individually, there were 9 of us and three paid with credit cards. The clerk remained friendly for the 10-15 minutes it took for our payments and worked around problems with two of the credit card, all while the last-minute queue for the tour was snaking out behind us. In Belgium, one would have been told to get the hell out of the shop, since no money was worth hassle. The tour guide, Brad, was fantastic as well, passionate and knowledgeable about TV and film. I saw the sets for the Mentalist, which was a big highlight for me, particularly seeing the couch where Jane sleeps.¹

The dancing highlight of the entire America trip was a salsa party in Santa Monica. The teacher, Cristian Oviedo, is the current world bachata and salsa champion, and an absolute gentleman. The live music, the standard of dancing and the people were wonderful. I was sorry it didn’t go on longer.

I heard about the party via Internations, which I highly recommend becoming a member of, because it has communities in most major cities and the people are generally very social and open to newcomers even if it is just for a short time.

Before I went to the Salsa party, I did some training on the beach near Santa Monica Pier. It was warm and cloudless, but a bit windy. There were lots of people working out in the outdoor gym that was there – some even doing youtube worthy stuff. I trained as the sun set, which took forever. But it felt pretty cool to practice kung fu with an uninterrupted view of the sun setting..² It was also possible to take Trapeze lessons on the pier, which I would have done, if they were cheaper or I had time to do a couple of days of them.

The one thing that I did arrange before getting to the States was a ticket for a live taping of the Craig Ferguson Show. He’s easily my favourite talk-show host. He’s easy going and irreverent, there doesn’t appear to be any rehearsals at all, and the back and forth between him and his assistant Jeffery Peterson the Robot Skeleton has a very natural rhythm to it that sets it apart from the fake, a-bit-too planned feel I get from the other late night talk show hosts. Watching him is like sitting in the pub and havin’ a chat.

His guests were Billy Connolly and the girl playing the ghost in the SyFy version of Being Human. As far as I can recall, we were sat down in the studio about 30-45 minutes before the recording would begin. And we were introduced to Craig’s warm-up act, Chunky Steve – Ostensibly the best warm-up act in the business. As far as I can gather, the warm-up act is there to whip us into hysterics, so that we will laugh at anything. He spent the duration lowering our threshold for what was an acceptable joke. He picked on a couple of audience members, a blonde and a teenage boy in particularly, since they are such easy targets. Any time we didn’t laugh, he would chastise us and saying ”When I bust out the LOLs (the index and thumb of each hand making “L”s), you gotta laugh like what you heard was hilarious. Remember, mediocre comedian here.” He was like that friendly uncle with the dirty sense of humour that was strangely charming. It easily became the habit to laugh loudly at any joke. An example of mass hysteria, if ever I’d heard of it. A phrase he kept coming back to was “being part of TV magic.” The tone and reverence he gave the phrase was downright religious, much like when my Beverly Hills guide had something to say about the obscene wealth, scale, weirdness, or grandeur of celebrities and their lives. Anyway, as I said, we, the audience, dived right into the zealotry. Our laughter was what we left on the altar.³ You can see me below... I think.

Finally, Craig came out it was I expected. The chatting between himself and Billy was warm and familiar, with jokes thrown in all over the place. We laughed when we were supposed to, as hard as we could. I don’t know about the rest, but I was happy to oversell how funny a joke was, because I like Craig Ferguson and his show.

After Hollywood, I made my way by public transport to New Port Beach. Virtually no one uses public transport in California, car travel is so cheap that it is almost exclusively very poor people that use buses. To the point that my contact in Internations for the salsa party didn’t even know if night buses from Santa Monica back to Hollywood existed and my friend in New Port Beach didn’t know even it was possible to get there from LA just with trains and buses. I stayed pretty relaxed on the trains, but the buses made me nervous, since stops are rarely clearly indicated and bus drivers can forget that you’ve asked them for a particular stop. But Google Maps saw me through.  :)

Hanging out with my pal in New Port Beach was excellent. It was our first time seeing each other in 7 years. As it turned out, both of us were a bit worried that it would be an awkward mess. We ate out at a Crow burger (Gourmet burger “joint”), a Mexican restaurant where I ate Quinoa for the first time and had delicious guacamole. During the day, when she was at work, I did some planning for the New York and Boston legs of my trip, very fruitful kung fu training, and went to Road Runner to get fitted for some runners (trainers in American). On the last Friday, we went clubbing, most of the music sucked, but I did hear Thrift Shop by Mackelmore for the first time, which I came back to Belgium declaring the song to watch out for.

That Saturday we drove to San Diego Zoo, which was great fun. We did just one tour – the Animal Man tour, led by an improve comedian who’s done shows on HBO. We got to see pandas and a baby Giraffe (already over 1.8m tall… baby my ass).

1. No, that doesn’t sound weird at all. No sir-eee.
2. I’ve seen a couple of uninterrupted sunsets in Ireland, but either because this was in Santa Monica in California and it would be my only chance to see one this far West for the foreseeable future, or because the sunset is qualitatively better closer to the equator, this one is a special one.
3. I’m trying to sound like the guys from Top Gear, when they say something profound about a class of car being discontinued.