The way to combat the lack of low seating in the watering holes of New York City is to find something else to do in the evening other than drink. As drastic as that may seem, it is the only sensible course of action.
With this in mind we visit the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on 46th Street on Thursday morning to see if we can get tickets for a show. We notice this theatre in particular because they are advertising their Motown musical in garish colours all over the outside of the building. I love all things Motown and have done from an early age. When we were kids Helen and I got into trouble for getting on the train to Liverpool without permission but it was worth the trip just for the fact that we came back with an album of 40 Michael Jackson songs from the Motown era. The Michael Jackson Mix, I think it was called. Old enough so that there was not a shamo in sight. I might not have spelled shamo correctly, to be fair. I never watched much of Bo Selecta. As someone wise once said, that lad hasn’t got enough material to make an advert. Ironic then that I’m quoting him in an attempt at humour in my own work.
Our luck is in this morning and we pay $59 apiece for the tickets. In the queue in front of us I hear a woman loudly telling her companion that she moved to New York from Philadelphia because Philadelphia is too violent. This strikes me as the very definition of moving between a rock and a hard place. Frying pans and fires spring readily to mind. I’m just glad that I hadn’t learned this little nugget of wisdom before our trip to Pennsylvania yesterday. It’s bad enough not knowing where you are going in an unfamiliar city without having to contemplate the possibility of getting shot to shit.
Breakfast had been an expensive and sickly affair at a place called The Blue Fin on Broadway opposite The Winter Gardens. We’ll be seeing the inside of that place tomorrow (Friday) when we see the much anticipated (and since unfathomably cancelled) Rocky musical. Emma had french toast that made her feel sick, and another hugely unreasonable bill was enough to turn anyone’s stomach. A long walk was planned for this morning and was now very definitely in order. We headed out down towards the Flatiron Building on 5th Avenue. Built in 1902 it is so named because its wedge shaping is similar to that of a clothes iron. It’s the centrepiece of the Flatiron District and is one of the most iconic and recognisable buildings in the city. We don’t go inside. The fascination is all in the curious looking exterior.
We want to find Little Italy. In two days time England will kick-off their World Cup campaign against Italy in the Amazonian city of Manaus, Brazil. I have this idea that watching it among a packed crowd of stressing, gesticulating Italians might be fun. A good atmosphere. Good atmospheres have been lost in the field of watching football at pubs in recent years. Remember Sol Campbell’s disallowed goal against Argentina at the 1998 World Cup? The Springy was packed, pints and tables flying all over the joint as Campbell illegally rose to nod England into the quarter-finals. Or so he thought. I’m not sure who was the slowest to realise that the referee had disallowed the goal. Campbell, or the hordes of people crammed into The Springy. What I do know is that we all got wet. Since then The Springy’s decline seems to have had a direct correlation with the increase in apathy among the general public towards the England team. Most of the time fans complain that England games get in the way of their preciously pulsating mid-table squabbles. Then every two years those same fans scream blue murder when another tepid England performance culminates in an early flight home.
We travel for about 45 minutes down 5th Avenue and stop for a drink and what tennis players call a comfort break at a Pret A Manger. That’s one of the pitfalls of moving fairly aimlessly down New York’s main avenues when you have mobility problems. It’s not easy to find places for comfort breaks so you end up going into places you wouldn’t normally bother with. Once, in Salou, I visited a hotel every evening solely for the purpose of spending a penny because the access in all the bars was so sub-standard. The pubs around New York with their high chairs aren’t open yet anyway. It’s another hour until our map starts to suggest that we might be getting within range of Little Italy. We pass through the varyingly beautiful surroundings of Union Square and Washington Square Park and are randomly spoken at by a local man bemoaning the cost of home owning in the area. The houses don’t look anything special but it’s pretty scenic in this neck of the woods. You can imagine it is not cheap to live here. Later in the week we would meet a bus tour guide who openly expresses his outrage that high taxation is driving rich people out of the area. If rich people left the area where I live because of high taxation I’d wave them goodbye. I don’t want to sound too much like one of Harry Enfield’s Self Righteous Brothers but if that Gary Barlow came around here….telling me Love Ain’t Here Anymore I’d…….
Enough. We turn left off 5th Avenue and find ourselves in the part of town where the streets have names , not numbers. It would be much easier to get lost here. Finally we turn down Mulberry Street and we’re where we want to be, in the heart of Little Italy. The idea is a scouting mission for suitable England-watching venues but it’s not long before we are coaxed off the streets and into a café bar by a pushy bar owner. Two hours pushing around in the heat has worked up a thirst so we order a couple of beers and enjoy the rest. We ask about the football and he points to an underwhelmingly small television set in the back of the dining area. This is not Sol Campbell in 1998 material, even though the bar owner assures us that they will be showing the match. The fact that our Englishness hasn’t provoked him into any Anglo-Italian banter ahead of the game at the weekend serves as further evidence that this is not the place to be for it.
We move along Mulberry Street and I spot another bar which looks a little more like the sort of thing I’m looking for. But again access looks dubious at best. I keep it in mind without exploring further at this stage. We’ve covered miles and we need to get back in plenty of time for our night at the Lunt-Fontanne. We go into the nearest accessible subway station and are again bemused by the numbers, letters, gates, booths and platforms therein. A train comes along which we think might take us back up towards Times Square but we’re a little uncertain. Eventually we decide to take it so Emma takes a step forward to board. I try to follow on behind but the step up from the platform is just that little bit too high. But Emma hasn’t noticed. She turns around from inside the train and gestures for me to get on and just as I’m about to explain that I might need a push the doors close.
The next thing I see is the train pull away with Emma on board. Amid the mild panic there are nothing but 'What The Fuck?' gestures as the train trundles away. On the night we are heading for a slice of Motown, it's a Ball Of Confusion.
Had it not been for the incredibly fortuitous fact that my phone has available text credit this situation would be right up there with the LA to San Diego petrol debacle of 2011. Then, we hung around on the freeway helplessly like two dead cert victims from an episode of Criminal Minds until with the last shred of battery from Emma’s phone I was able to call 911 to get assistance. Having available text credit is by no means a certainty for me these days. My phone is an infuriatingly inconsistent entity which, whether I top up by the required amount to trigger my free texts or not, could leave me without communications at any time. Often it claims that there is not enough storage space to receive texts and I have to spend minutes of my life that I will not get back deleting data from apps that I never use. So I’m lucky on this occasion. I text Emma to find that she is at the next stop and I tell her I will try to get on the next train. Even that isn’t straightforward, and I have to be helped on by a random girl who sees my frustrated attempts to haul myself on from the platform. These two trains are the only two that I have any trouble boarding the whole time we are in New York, accessible platforms permitting. I think they call that Sod's Law.
While Emma rests I watch the Brazil beat Croatia 3-1 in the opening game of the World Cup thanks largely to the most dubious refereeing decision since W G Grace refused to leave the field having been clean bowled. Grace told his conqueror that the crowd had come to see him bat, not the bowler bowl. Brazilian striker Fred would struggle to make the same argument if questioned about the scandalous penalty he is awarded which turns the game in the hosts' favour. When we get to the Lunt-Fontanne there is a queue outside but it is not long before we are ushered in. I notice a sign that says that table service is available for wheelchair users. However, none of the staff appear to have seen the sign. I ask the lady who shows us to our seats and she looks at me like I have asked her to perform sexual favours. We’ll be getting our own beer. If the prices in the restaurants so far have been steep, the price of a beer in the Lunt-Fontanne is terrifying. Thirteen dollars buys you a Bud Light, but you get to keep the container. Refreshingly, they do at least have a low service area for wheelchair users so there isn’t any queuing involved when I go back during the interval. And I do, despite the price.
The show itself is a bloody marvel. It’s basically Berry Gordy’s story. Inspired by a radio broadcast of Joe Louis winning the heavyweight championship of the world in the late 1930’s Gordy borrowed some dough from his sister and set out to prove that a black man could be a success in the music business in America. Aswell as Gordy all the other famous Motown players are here from Smokey Robinson to The Supremes, to Marvin Gaye and The Temptations. The young lad playing Michael Jackson turns in a quite astonishing performance, albeit a little too fleeting for my liking. But this is very much Gordy’s story and centres heavily on his relationship with Diana Ross and the eventual ship-jumping that went on as artists fought to take their careers in a different musical direction. The story of Mary Wells is particularly unfortunate. The 'My Guy' singer left the Motown label for a better offer financially and faded into obscurity before dying of cancer before her 50th birthday. Sad stories notwithstanding, musically the show is sublime. Helen would love it.
During the interval the man sitting in the next wheelchair bay comes over to speak to me. This happens a lot on holiday. In Portugal it was Brendan, the Irish gentleman on the beach who along with his wife Gill managed to bump into us on several occasions. We had alerted them to the fact that there were free loungers to be had in the area of the beach we were in. I suppose other wheelchair users feel a connection, particularly in a foreign country where we’re all fighting against the same absurd access issues. Tonight’s kindred spirit is from Germany and he waxes lyrical about his love for Motown and musicals in general. It will be our only meeting, however, as he is setting sail for Folkestone tomorrow. It will take eight days to get there before he then flies on home to Hamburg. Rather him than me. Say what you like about American Airlines (and I do) but at least they will get me home in a matter of hours once I’m on board. The risk of wetting myself is worth taking for a swifter end to my journey. Eight days on a ship does not really appeal too much.
Not if it is going to Folkestone.
Thursday, 31 July 2014
Saturday, 5 July 2014
Philadelphia
What's the best film ever set in Philadelphia?
The city itself is the title of one contender. I haven't sat through it myself but if Tom Hanks can win an Oscar in the lead role then Philadelphia must have some merit. I could make a strong case for Silver Linings Playbook which, were it not for the fact that its main protagonists played by Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence are stark staring bonkers, might otherwise be an ordinary rom-com. It is much more than that. It's a modern classic which I heartily recommend you watch if you haven't already.
But even that isn't the best. As we all know the best film ever to be set in the city of Philadelphia is Rocky. Not the fun but hysterically bloated sequels but the 1977 Best Picture winning original. Do you remember the scene where Rocky is on a training run around the city and all the children chase after him? It ends with him climbing the steps to City Hall (except it's not, more on which later) at which point there is much jumping up and down and air-punching. Right there is where I'm going today. We're going to Philadelphia.
We're risking life and limb again by taking yet another form of New York public transport. Following our travails with the subway we're going to dabble in the use of the regular rail system. Penn Station sits between 31st and 34th Street between 7th and 8th Avenue and, though the trains which leave from it are not subway trains, it is based solely underground. It sits underground because above the ground on that particular patch of land you will find Madison Square Garden. Madison Square Garden is not in Madison Square. It has been moved around New York several times but it seems that the owners just liked the name and wanted to keep it. Maybe they recognised its value as a brand but as noble as that would be it strikes me as very old fashioned to hang on to a name for that reason. Stadia don't have names like Petco Park, Met Life Stadium, The Etihad and The Emirates because they're recognisable and iconic. And that's not a cynical suggestion.
As is the way of things we have to carry on down to 31st Street to find the accessible entrance, and do so after initially getting into the wrong lift at 33rd Street. However, and brace yourself because I am about so say something positive about access in New York, the Amtrak rail company is several worlds better than those I have experienced in the UK. It takes a while to wade through the queue to buy the very expensive tickets ($98 or around £60 return per person) but once we have done that we find that there is a designated area for passengers who require assistance boarding the train. We are met by someone who leads us through several corridors via multiple lifts but within a few minutes we are right next to our train. I could board this by myself because the platform, unlike most in the UK, is at a sensible height in relation to the train. However, I decide it is more polite to wait for our assistant to get the 'bridge' for me. The bridge is basically a very small ramp which helps smooth out the path on to the train. Some wheelchair users might be glad of it but a lot would be able to do without. Either way it is a far cry from home, where you get left on the train and end up in Waterloo and they send you a £1 voucher by way of apology. You also get free Wifi on board an Amtrak train which allows me to annoy everyone by announcing my whereabouts and my destination on Facebook.
The journey to Market Street Station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania takes around 90 minutes. We arrive around 11.00am and are directed by an unusually polite customer service person towards the city centre. It's a long walk before we reach civilisation. Having skipped breakfast to make sure that we got to the station on time the first priority is to find somewhere to eat. For what seems like miles but in reality is probably about 20 blocks there is very little except 7-11s and pizza places. A man stops me in the street and tells me to never give up. I'm not sure if he is talking about my quest for food but I ask him for some advice on the matter anyway. He says something about great beef steaks or something somewhere or other but even as he is explaining where we might get them I know it isn't my thing. We're looking for a cafe or a pub.
Eventually we find one. In Panero Bread they call your name out when your order is ready. Over a microphone for everyone to hear. And they sell cookies and cakes for 99 cents. The only other thing it is possible to purchase for 99 cents on this trip is a generous slice of pizza. You take the bargains where you can find them. We head back out on to the street and almost by accident come across the main visitors centre. The first thing I notice is a small statue of Rocky, not like the one from the film which we will get to later, but more like how he is on that training run. With that gray jogging suit on that he says brings him luck and which Mickey says brings flies. Then I notice a man dressed in full Founding Fathers get up walking around the centre. He's trying to drum up business for a walking tour of the city. This is something we do in a lot of cities we visit and since we haven't really got a clue where we are going, only an idea that we want to see the Rocky statue, the steps and the Liberty Bell, we decide to join him.
His name is Clark De Leon. That alone makes him a suitable tour guide. We almost get a freebie as he starts telling us the first of a thousand tales of Benjamin Franklin. Unfortunately we're too honest for our own good and so Emma points out that we haven't actually paid yet. It's $19 each, about £11.50. From the moment that Clark discovers that we haven't paid to the moment we receive our tickets he doesn't say another word. Almost as if he is coin operated. No money, no information. Once we are on our way he takes us outside the building and points out the building where the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776. Philadelphia is often desribed as the birthplace of America. It was the original capital city before Washington was built and housed all of the important political buildings. Independence Hall is where the Declaration of Independence and the United States Consitution were debated, while just across the square you will find the former residence of George Washington, the first President Of The United States. Congress Hall was the seat of the United States Congress until 1800.
On top of City Hall which is the house of government in the city there is a statue of William Penn. Penn founded the state of Pennsylvania when King Charles II awarded him a huge plot of land west of what is now New Jersey. The statue made City Hall the tallest building in Philadelphia and, according to Clark, it was agreed that no building in the city should ever be taller. This agreement was forgotten about in 1985 with the start of the construction of One Liberty Place, a skyscraper containing offices and a shopping centre. It is said that Penn, who lest we forget had been dead for 267 years by this point, was neverthless so miffed at having his statue usurped that he placed a curse on the city so that none of its sports teams would ever win a national championship. Or a world championship as the more hysterical and insular Americans like to call it. For 23 years after 1985 Philadelphia's sports teams failed miserably to carry off a title until finally, the Phillies won the 2008 baseball World Series. It is said that the curse had been lifted when a group of men working on the 975ft Comcast Center in Philadelphia placed a small figurine of Penn on one of the beams.
All of which seems a likely story. As do several of the tales of Benjamin Franklin with which Clark regales us throughout the tour. One of the original Founding Fathers, Franklin was apparently an inventor and a scientist aswell as a politician and the founder of Philadelphia's fire service and university among many, many other things. Ironically the fire station is currently closed because it burned down a few months before our visit. That wouldn't have happened in Benjamin Franklin's day, you imagine if you listen to Clark for long enough. He just loves the bloke. I doubt today's politicians will enjoy that level of popularity over 200 years after their deaths. If they are not remembered for their infamy then they should be forgotten about altogether. Unless they invent something, maybe.
Now normally there is no place for the church in this column but I should point out that we did enter Christ Church during our walk. This is the place where Penn was baptised and which still, to this day, brainwashes otherwise intelligent adults with the foolhardy notion of creationism. There's a man there who seems to know Clark and he stops for a chat with us. He might be a religious man like a priest or a vicar or something I don't know. I'm too militantly atheist to care. He might just look after the place. Good on him for that if he does because, as much as I dislike religion, rather like the monarchy churches have historical value. Also, amid the God bothering there is one interesting artefact, one of the original bells which rang to signify independence from those pesky Brits. When he learns that we are from England the man is keen to let us know that he is a big Liverpool fan. Clark looks mystified by our brief conversation and even more so when the man turns to him and says that Liverpool has 'the best motto in sports';
"You'll Never Walk Alone" he says proudly.
I'm not sure it is a motto exactly but he's right about its unique significance. Also, I'm charmed by the fact that he can make a reference to walking without feeling the slightest bit guilty or embarrassed about it. And then he loses all credibility as a Liverpool fan by declaring that he loves Sir Alex Ferguson.
"You have to respect what he's done." I admit reluctantly, and he nods as if he agrees that 'respect' might be more appropriate than 'love'.
When we get back to the visitors centre we pass a large queue. Hordes of people are waiting to get a look at the Liberty Bell. After a quick drink in the centre café we join the queue. A woman is loudly and wrongly telling anyone who will listen that Ryan Giggs could have played football for England but chose Wales instead. It's nice to think that we might have been able to avoid all those years of Stewart Downing and Darren Anderton but it's just not true. The Liberty Bell used to hang from Independence Hall and it is widely and perhaps wrongly believed that it too was one of the bells which rang following independence. Perhaps the woman in the queue with the Ryan Giggs story started the rumours about the Liberty Bell too. What we do know is that it was taken down when it was cracked (exactly when and how it was damaged is unclear) and was subsequently adopted as a symbol of freedom by abolitionists in the fight to end slavery. Funny how things turn out. When we reach the front of the queue we are led through a small exhibition detailing the bell's history before reaching the bell itself. It is a small wonder that it has not fallen to pieces completely such is the size of the crack running through it. Yet somehow it survives and attracts millions of visitors worldwide. Most of them in that queue today.
For some reason we believed that the steps made famous in the Rocky films where outside City Hall. They are not, but had we not made this mistake we may not have got a close look at the place. With time running out until our train back to New York we decide to take a bus out to where the real steps are located, the Museum of Art. The museum is also home to the Rocky statue. You might remember its unveiling being rudely interrupted by Mr T, or if not you may recall Rocky throwing his motorcycle helmet at it in anger at some point further along, well after the whole thing had got a little too Thunderlips crazy for my tastes. But I still want to have my photograph taken with it. The bus ride is nervy, not just because of our track record with American public transport, but because I don't know how far it is to the museum and whether we will have enough time to get back for the train at 6.50pm. If we miss that train we will be looking for a hotel.
Fortunately we don't, and I get that photograph with the Rocky statue. Most people of a similar mind are adopting various boxing poses but I don't go in for all that. It's enough to just be in the photo with an iconic cinematic prop. And I look silly enough in photographs without giving it 'Rocky On Wheels'. It's a little less shiny than I remember it from the films. It's old now, I suppose. Across the park is the museum and those famous steps. The statue is on top of the steps in the film, but they have dispensed with that idea here. Presumably they don't want hordes of people standing outside the entrance to the museum posing for photographs with Rocky before buggering off home without learning a single thing about art. Disappointingly, not one person runs up the steps punching the air and pretending to have a stitch. While wearing a fly-infested gray tracksuit.
We still have an hour to get back to the train station so we skip the bus ride and get there by ourselves. We're not completely sure of the way but again the block system helps and we're back in good time. Again the Amtrak staff are absurdly helpful, heaping more shame on Northern Rail as the minutes go by. Knackered but enlightened we stop for a late meal at Pigalle next door to the hotel having ticked off another on the list of American states to visit.
"She turns and says are you alright, oh I must be fine cos my heart's still beating"
If anyone can work out the significance of that they get a free pint......
The city itself is the title of one contender. I haven't sat through it myself but if Tom Hanks can win an Oscar in the lead role then Philadelphia must have some merit. I could make a strong case for Silver Linings Playbook which, were it not for the fact that its main protagonists played by Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence are stark staring bonkers, might otherwise be an ordinary rom-com. It is much more than that. It's a modern classic which I heartily recommend you watch if you haven't already.
But even that isn't the best. As we all know the best film ever to be set in the city of Philadelphia is Rocky. Not the fun but hysterically bloated sequels but the 1977 Best Picture winning original. Do you remember the scene where Rocky is on a training run around the city and all the children chase after him? It ends with him climbing the steps to City Hall (except it's not, more on which later) at which point there is much jumping up and down and air-punching. Right there is where I'm going today. We're going to Philadelphia.
We're risking life and limb again by taking yet another form of New York public transport. Following our travails with the subway we're going to dabble in the use of the regular rail system. Penn Station sits between 31st and 34th Street between 7th and 8th Avenue and, though the trains which leave from it are not subway trains, it is based solely underground. It sits underground because above the ground on that particular patch of land you will find Madison Square Garden. Madison Square Garden is not in Madison Square. It has been moved around New York several times but it seems that the owners just liked the name and wanted to keep it. Maybe they recognised its value as a brand but as noble as that would be it strikes me as very old fashioned to hang on to a name for that reason. Stadia don't have names like Petco Park, Met Life Stadium, The Etihad and The Emirates because they're recognisable and iconic. And that's not a cynical suggestion.
As is the way of things we have to carry on down to 31st Street to find the accessible entrance, and do so after initially getting into the wrong lift at 33rd Street. However, and brace yourself because I am about so say something positive about access in New York, the Amtrak rail company is several worlds better than those I have experienced in the UK. It takes a while to wade through the queue to buy the very expensive tickets ($98 or around £60 return per person) but once we have done that we find that there is a designated area for passengers who require assistance boarding the train. We are met by someone who leads us through several corridors via multiple lifts but within a few minutes we are right next to our train. I could board this by myself because the platform, unlike most in the UK, is at a sensible height in relation to the train. However, I decide it is more polite to wait for our assistant to get the 'bridge' for me. The bridge is basically a very small ramp which helps smooth out the path on to the train. Some wheelchair users might be glad of it but a lot would be able to do without. Either way it is a far cry from home, where you get left on the train and end up in Waterloo and they send you a £1 voucher by way of apology. You also get free Wifi on board an Amtrak train which allows me to annoy everyone by announcing my whereabouts and my destination on Facebook.
The journey to Market Street Station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania takes around 90 minutes. We arrive around 11.00am and are directed by an unusually polite customer service person towards the city centre. It's a long walk before we reach civilisation. Having skipped breakfast to make sure that we got to the station on time the first priority is to find somewhere to eat. For what seems like miles but in reality is probably about 20 blocks there is very little except 7-11s and pizza places. A man stops me in the street and tells me to never give up. I'm not sure if he is talking about my quest for food but I ask him for some advice on the matter anyway. He says something about great beef steaks or something somewhere or other but even as he is explaining where we might get them I know it isn't my thing. We're looking for a cafe or a pub.
Eventually we find one. In Panero Bread they call your name out when your order is ready. Over a microphone for everyone to hear. And they sell cookies and cakes for 99 cents. The only other thing it is possible to purchase for 99 cents on this trip is a generous slice of pizza. You take the bargains where you can find them. We head back out on to the street and almost by accident come across the main visitors centre. The first thing I notice is a small statue of Rocky, not like the one from the film which we will get to later, but more like how he is on that training run. With that gray jogging suit on that he says brings him luck and which Mickey says brings flies. Then I notice a man dressed in full Founding Fathers get up walking around the centre. He's trying to drum up business for a walking tour of the city. This is something we do in a lot of cities we visit and since we haven't really got a clue where we are going, only an idea that we want to see the Rocky statue, the steps and the Liberty Bell, we decide to join him.
His name is Clark De Leon. That alone makes him a suitable tour guide. We almost get a freebie as he starts telling us the first of a thousand tales of Benjamin Franklin. Unfortunately we're too honest for our own good and so Emma points out that we haven't actually paid yet. It's $19 each, about £11.50. From the moment that Clark discovers that we haven't paid to the moment we receive our tickets he doesn't say another word. Almost as if he is coin operated. No money, no information. Once we are on our way he takes us outside the building and points out the building where the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776. Philadelphia is often desribed as the birthplace of America. It was the original capital city before Washington was built and housed all of the important political buildings. Independence Hall is where the Declaration of Independence and the United States Consitution were debated, while just across the square you will find the former residence of George Washington, the first President Of The United States. Congress Hall was the seat of the United States Congress until 1800.
On top of City Hall which is the house of government in the city there is a statue of William Penn. Penn founded the state of Pennsylvania when King Charles II awarded him a huge plot of land west of what is now New Jersey. The statue made City Hall the tallest building in Philadelphia and, according to Clark, it was agreed that no building in the city should ever be taller. This agreement was forgotten about in 1985 with the start of the construction of One Liberty Place, a skyscraper containing offices and a shopping centre. It is said that Penn, who lest we forget had been dead for 267 years by this point, was neverthless so miffed at having his statue usurped that he placed a curse on the city so that none of its sports teams would ever win a national championship. Or a world championship as the more hysterical and insular Americans like to call it. For 23 years after 1985 Philadelphia's sports teams failed miserably to carry off a title until finally, the Phillies won the 2008 baseball World Series. It is said that the curse had been lifted when a group of men working on the 975ft Comcast Center in Philadelphia placed a small figurine of Penn on one of the beams.
All of which seems a likely story. As do several of the tales of Benjamin Franklin with which Clark regales us throughout the tour. One of the original Founding Fathers, Franklin was apparently an inventor and a scientist aswell as a politician and the founder of Philadelphia's fire service and university among many, many other things. Ironically the fire station is currently closed because it burned down a few months before our visit. That wouldn't have happened in Benjamin Franklin's day, you imagine if you listen to Clark for long enough. He just loves the bloke. I doubt today's politicians will enjoy that level of popularity over 200 years after their deaths. If they are not remembered for their infamy then they should be forgotten about altogether. Unless they invent something, maybe.
Now normally there is no place for the church in this column but I should point out that we did enter Christ Church during our walk. This is the place where Penn was baptised and which still, to this day, brainwashes otherwise intelligent adults with the foolhardy notion of creationism. There's a man there who seems to know Clark and he stops for a chat with us. He might be a religious man like a priest or a vicar or something I don't know. I'm too militantly atheist to care. He might just look after the place. Good on him for that if he does because, as much as I dislike religion, rather like the monarchy churches have historical value. Also, amid the God bothering there is one interesting artefact, one of the original bells which rang to signify independence from those pesky Brits. When he learns that we are from England the man is keen to let us know that he is a big Liverpool fan. Clark looks mystified by our brief conversation and even more so when the man turns to him and says that Liverpool has 'the best motto in sports';
"You'll Never Walk Alone" he says proudly.
I'm not sure it is a motto exactly but he's right about its unique significance. Also, I'm charmed by the fact that he can make a reference to walking without feeling the slightest bit guilty or embarrassed about it. And then he loses all credibility as a Liverpool fan by declaring that he loves Sir Alex Ferguson.
"You have to respect what he's done." I admit reluctantly, and he nods as if he agrees that 'respect' might be more appropriate than 'love'.
When we get back to the visitors centre we pass a large queue. Hordes of people are waiting to get a look at the Liberty Bell. After a quick drink in the centre café we join the queue. A woman is loudly and wrongly telling anyone who will listen that Ryan Giggs could have played football for England but chose Wales instead. It's nice to think that we might have been able to avoid all those years of Stewart Downing and Darren Anderton but it's just not true. The Liberty Bell used to hang from Independence Hall and it is widely and perhaps wrongly believed that it too was one of the bells which rang following independence. Perhaps the woman in the queue with the Ryan Giggs story started the rumours about the Liberty Bell too. What we do know is that it was taken down when it was cracked (exactly when and how it was damaged is unclear) and was subsequently adopted as a symbol of freedom by abolitionists in the fight to end slavery. Funny how things turn out. When we reach the front of the queue we are led through a small exhibition detailing the bell's history before reaching the bell itself. It is a small wonder that it has not fallen to pieces completely such is the size of the crack running through it. Yet somehow it survives and attracts millions of visitors worldwide. Most of them in that queue today.
For some reason we believed that the steps made famous in the Rocky films where outside City Hall. They are not, but had we not made this mistake we may not have got a close look at the place. With time running out until our train back to New York we decide to take a bus out to where the real steps are located, the Museum of Art. The museum is also home to the Rocky statue. You might remember its unveiling being rudely interrupted by Mr T, or if not you may recall Rocky throwing his motorcycle helmet at it in anger at some point further along, well after the whole thing had got a little too Thunderlips crazy for my tastes. But I still want to have my photograph taken with it. The bus ride is nervy, not just because of our track record with American public transport, but because I don't know how far it is to the museum and whether we will have enough time to get back for the train at 6.50pm. If we miss that train we will be looking for a hotel.
Fortunately we don't, and I get that photograph with the Rocky statue. Most people of a similar mind are adopting various boxing poses but I don't go in for all that. It's enough to just be in the photo with an iconic cinematic prop. And I look silly enough in photographs without giving it 'Rocky On Wheels'. It's a little less shiny than I remember it from the films. It's old now, I suppose. Across the park is the museum and those famous steps. The statue is on top of the steps in the film, but they have dispensed with that idea here. Presumably they don't want hordes of people standing outside the entrance to the museum posing for photographs with Rocky before buggering off home without learning a single thing about art. Disappointingly, not one person runs up the steps punching the air and pretending to have a stitch. While wearing a fly-infested gray tracksuit.
We still have an hour to get back to the train station so we skip the bus ride and get there by ourselves. We're not completely sure of the way but again the block system helps and we're back in good time. Again the Amtrak staff are absurdly helpful, heaping more shame on Northern Rail as the minutes go by. Knackered but enlightened we stop for a late meal at Pigalle next door to the hotel having ticked off another on the list of American states to visit.
"She turns and says are you alright, oh I must be fine cos my heart's still beating"
If anyone can work out the significance of that they get a free pint......
Wednesday, 2 July 2014
New York - Tuesday Night Baseball
Each and every time Emma and I have been to the United States together we have been to see a baseball game. Sometimes two, as with this trip. It's become a traditional part of our transatlantic treks. We've been to the homes of the Tampa Bay Rays, the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Diego Padres and tonight we are travelling to Citifield, home of the New York Mets.
Which is at least in New York City. The Rays play in St.Petersburg while New York's two NFL teams share a stadium in New Jersey. A different state! The Dallas Cowboys play in Arlington while from next season the San Francisco 49ers will play in Santa Clara, some 45 miles away. This is the equivalent of Manchester United upping sticks to Leeds. In American sports teams are located wherever their already rich owners believe will make them the most money. It's not about the team, the fans or the city they represent but about the 'franchise'. Franchising is the single worst thing that has ever happened to sport in which there has been no loss of life. Forget about diving, spitting, biting, top eight playoff systems, Grand Finals, rugby union as a concept and even Eddie Hearn. The smug parasite. Placing sports teams in the hands of capitalist greed-hounds and allowing them to move those teams to wherever they like is utterly anti-sport and shows a complete lack of regard for the many rich traditions and histories that have been built throughout all sports. Progress, in other words.
Now that the politics is out of the way the important point to make is that this will be the first time we have ever taken the subway to a baseball game. Emma's dad drove to St.Petersburg, while Emma herself did the honours in LA. We took the tram to Petco Park in San Diego. It was all every easy. But getting to Citifield in Queens promises to be a little more problematic. As I have alluded to in earlier entries the subway station serving Citifield is not accessible to wheelchair users most of the time. Mets-Willets station only has one accessible platform. That is one platform which can be used to reach a lift or a ramp to get out on to the road across from the stadium. Feeling rightly guilty about this, MTA have decided that they will use that platform (and therefore make the station accessible) from 90 minutes before every Mets home game and for 45 minutes afterwards. That is the plan in any case. The reality, as regular readers currently sighing into their coffee at this moment will already know, is somewhat different.
You have to take the 7 train to Mets-Willets station from 42nd and Times Square. Except there are two 7 trains. You can't take the 7 express because it doesn't stop at the right platform at Mets-Willets. You have to take the 7 local. Figuring this out is easy enough if you do your research, but the problem with it is that, not being an express, it stops at what seems like 746 stations on the way. It takes well over 45 minutes to get to Mets-Willets this way, which may have been a little shorter if there had not been a delay of at least 10 minutes due to signalling problems. At least that is what I think it was. The announcements on board the train are quite muffled and hearing them is doubly tricky when you consider that they are delivered in a heavy New York accent.
Eventually we arrive at Mets-Willets station and the doors to the left of the train (if you are facing the front) open. We disembark, feeling a wave of relief at having reached our destination. It is short lived. This platform is not accessible. Unfathomably, the doors have only been opened for the inaccessible platform. We needed to have exited the train on the other side. We're stranded. The advertised access within the 90-minute time frame is exposed as a lie and the words to the letter of complaint are already forming. At this point we have a stroke of luck. Ordinarily the 7 local would leave Mets-Willets and carry on to Main Street in Flushing. But today it will not. Today Mets-Willets is the end of the line. After a brief and exasperated discussion with the platform staff about how the feck we could have been led out on to the wrong platform they agree to hold the train and open it up again. We will get back on board and be allowed to exit on the other side where we can get out towards the ramp leading to the road across from the stadium. It's a narrow escape and leaves us even more apprehensive about the journey back. We already know that we will have to get back on the 7 local travelling in the wrong direction before coming back on ourselves because of the access situation. Now we are having doubts about the feasibility of even that.
A very nice and helpful gentleman greets us at the ramp. He wearily listens to the wrong platform tale as if he has heard it all before, which if the level of access we have experienced is anything to go by he probably has. Then he reveals to us the secrets of the wheelchair user exits at New York subway stations. The swipe cards are for wheelchair users who live in and around the New York area and so therefore are regular users of the system. Tourists have no need for them. It turns out that either your companion can swipe through and then open the gate, or you can do it yourself if you know how to follow the incomprehensible instructions. You are instructed to roll your arm over, which sounds like something Shane Warne used to do. However, you are also told that if you open the gate an alarm will sound, so why wouldn't you think that there was some sort of swipe system in operation for everyone to make sure that fares have been paid? It's all very confusing. That roll of the arm they mention is more like a roll of the wrist as it turns out, and whether or not an alarm goes off seems to be pot luck.
Once across the road and on the stadium grounds we are directed to 'Hodges' which is the posh bit. The VIP area. We pass a dog dressed in a Mets cap and shirt with a fake pipe in its mouth. Really. Then we are checked over for explosives and ushered through to a large lift. Its operated by stadium staff and we are advised that we need the fifth floor. We get off and head straight for the food and drink. We pay $29 for two hot dogs and two Bud Lights. That's about £18. This is where wheelchair users attending alone might have a problem. From the kiosks on the fifth floor you then have to head down another long corridor which is heavily sloped. Difficult to do if you are carrying a hot dog and a Bud Light. I'm sure the staff would have been happy to help but that isn't really the point. It would have been nice to have a kiosk somewhere nearer to our seats.
The seats themselves are in a fantastic spot in terms of the view. Being up on the fifth floor we are way up on a platform (an accessible one with no sign of any trains) just in front of the broadcast booths. We can see the stadium announcer as he warms up the crowd and tells us all about who is in the line-ups for the two teams. Just along from him, possibly working for a radio station is Bob Uecker. Bob played Harry Doyle in Major League Emma tells me, but I don't remember him. I have seen Major League once or twice, but the only thing I can clearly remember about it is a character in the crowd shouting 'wild thing, you make my butt sting' at an off-form Charlie Sheen. The Mets are facing the Milwaukee Brewers which leaves us in the possibly unenviable position of away supporters. Emma has been a Brewers fan since she first saw them in Wisconsin many years ago. And why should we support the Mets anyway given their pitiful level of access? We would have gone to Yankee Stadium had the world's most hated sports 'franchise' been playing at home during our stay. Surprisingly we are not on our own as a large group of Brewers fans get louder and louder as a direct consequence of their alcohol intake. By the end they are rivalling the barmy army, but perhaps with a little less wit.
Being at baseball is fun. Those who carp on about how it lasts too long are missing the point. The reason I don't watch it on television at home is that it is currently covered by a broadcaster who's channel I don't subscribe to and who have to put it on too late because of the time difference. Also they play a jaw-dropping 162 games during the regular season, a fact that Greg Dyke's barm-pot commission might want to consider next time they are discussing burnout as a possible reason for the disappointing performances of the England football team. In the end we are a little disappointed ourselves as the Brewers go down 6-2 to the Mets, but we know better than to express any dismay. In the lift on the way out a woman explains how she was happy for an opposing player because he had hit his first home run of the season. I try to imagine myself feeling happy for any player who had just scored a game-winning try against Saints or a goal against Liverpool and I can't find it in me. Maybe like the movement involved in franchising, wishing an opponent well after a notable achievement is a part of American sports that I'm never going to fully get.
The journey back is mercifully uneventful. The 7 local takes us to Main Street in Flushing, where we have to wait for it a while before it begins its journey in the opposite direction back to 42nd and Time Square. We are back here on Sunday for the visit of the San Diego Padres, another team we have a slight affection for after our hugely enjoyable stay there in 2011.
Something tells me that journey won't be simple.
Several weeks later we received this fob off....er....response from MTA;
This is in response to your e-mail message to MTA New York City Transit regarding an incident you experienced at the Mets-Willets Point station.
We care about our ADA customers and make every attempt to ensure accessibility at our ADA-compliant stations. New York City Transit, in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), has a long-term plan that provides for making a total of 100 key subway stations accessible. In connection with federal guidelines and in cooperation with ADA advocacy organizations, the MTA identified 100 key stations and facilities where compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) would benefit the most people, analyzing such factors as high ridership, transfer points, and service to major areas of activity. These stations were given priority in our station-renovation program. This will create a network of stations which, when combined with our fully-accessible bus fleet, will make almost all of NYC Transit’s service area accessible to senior citizens and persons with disabilities.
The Mets-Willets Point station is not an ADA-compliant station. However, on game days, No. 7 trains open onto a “special events” platform on the south side of the station which ramps down to the overpass to Flushing Meadows Park. This creates a wheelchair accessible route to Citi Field. Under normal circumstances, we would not have scheduled a service change on a game day, but the sheer volume of work on the No. 7 line this summer required this change. Nevertheless, we have procedures in place should a customer in a wheelchair detrain at a station other than at an ADA accessible station, or at an ADA station where the elevator is inoperable. In this situation, you should have been advised to ride the train one more stop to the Flushing-Main Street station which is ADA-accessible and then ride the Q48 bus back to the Mets-Willets Point station. We apologize for any incorrect information you received from our employees.
In the future, we will post signs on our trains when the ramp is not accessible.
Please also note that the MTA Guide to Accessible Transit, which includes accessible station information, is readily available on our website at http://web.mta.info/accessibility/
We take the concerns of our customers seriously and thank you for bringing this matter to our attention.
Caroline Morgan
Customer Services
Which is at least in New York City. The Rays play in St.Petersburg while New York's two NFL teams share a stadium in New Jersey. A different state! The Dallas Cowboys play in Arlington while from next season the San Francisco 49ers will play in Santa Clara, some 45 miles away. This is the equivalent of Manchester United upping sticks to Leeds. In American sports teams are located wherever their already rich owners believe will make them the most money. It's not about the team, the fans or the city they represent but about the 'franchise'. Franchising is the single worst thing that has ever happened to sport in which there has been no loss of life. Forget about diving, spitting, biting, top eight playoff systems, Grand Finals, rugby union as a concept and even Eddie Hearn. The smug parasite. Placing sports teams in the hands of capitalist greed-hounds and allowing them to move those teams to wherever they like is utterly anti-sport and shows a complete lack of regard for the many rich traditions and histories that have been built throughout all sports. Progress, in other words.
Now that the politics is out of the way the important point to make is that this will be the first time we have ever taken the subway to a baseball game. Emma's dad drove to St.Petersburg, while Emma herself did the honours in LA. We took the tram to Petco Park in San Diego. It was all every easy. But getting to Citifield in Queens promises to be a little more problematic. As I have alluded to in earlier entries the subway station serving Citifield is not accessible to wheelchair users most of the time. Mets-Willets station only has one accessible platform. That is one platform which can be used to reach a lift or a ramp to get out on to the road across from the stadium. Feeling rightly guilty about this, MTA have decided that they will use that platform (and therefore make the station accessible) from 90 minutes before every Mets home game and for 45 minutes afterwards. That is the plan in any case. The reality, as regular readers currently sighing into their coffee at this moment will already know, is somewhat different.
You have to take the 7 train to Mets-Willets station from 42nd and Times Square. Except there are two 7 trains. You can't take the 7 express because it doesn't stop at the right platform at Mets-Willets. You have to take the 7 local. Figuring this out is easy enough if you do your research, but the problem with it is that, not being an express, it stops at what seems like 746 stations on the way. It takes well over 45 minutes to get to Mets-Willets this way, which may have been a little shorter if there had not been a delay of at least 10 minutes due to signalling problems. At least that is what I think it was. The announcements on board the train are quite muffled and hearing them is doubly tricky when you consider that they are delivered in a heavy New York accent.
Eventually we arrive at Mets-Willets station and the doors to the left of the train (if you are facing the front) open. We disembark, feeling a wave of relief at having reached our destination. It is short lived. This platform is not accessible. Unfathomably, the doors have only been opened for the inaccessible platform. We needed to have exited the train on the other side. We're stranded. The advertised access within the 90-minute time frame is exposed as a lie and the words to the letter of complaint are already forming. At this point we have a stroke of luck. Ordinarily the 7 local would leave Mets-Willets and carry on to Main Street in Flushing. But today it will not. Today Mets-Willets is the end of the line. After a brief and exasperated discussion with the platform staff about how the feck we could have been led out on to the wrong platform they agree to hold the train and open it up again. We will get back on board and be allowed to exit on the other side where we can get out towards the ramp leading to the road across from the stadium. It's a narrow escape and leaves us even more apprehensive about the journey back. We already know that we will have to get back on the 7 local travelling in the wrong direction before coming back on ourselves because of the access situation. Now we are having doubts about the feasibility of even that.
A very nice and helpful gentleman greets us at the ramp. He wearily listens to the wrong platform tale as if he has heard it all before, which if the level of access we have experienced is anything to go by he probably has. Then he reveals to us the secrets of the wheelchair user exits at New York subway stations. The swipe cards are for wheelchair users who live in and around the New York area and so therefore are regular users of the system. Tourists have no need for them. It turns out that either your companion can swipe through and then open the gate, or you can do it yourself if you know how to follow the incomprehensible instructions. You are instructed to roll your arm over, which sounds like something Shane Warne used to do. However, you are also told that if you open the gate an alarm will sound, so why wouldn't you think that there was some sort of swipe system in operation for everyone to make sure that fares have been paid? It's all very confusing. That roll of the arm they mention is more like a roll of the wrist as it turns out, and whether or not an alarm goes off seems to be pot luck.
Once across the road and on the stadium grounds we are directed to 'Hodges' which is the posh bit. The VIP area. We pass a dog dressed in a Mets cap and shirt with a fake pipe in its mouth. Really. Then we are checked over for explosives and ushered through to a large lift. Its operated by stadium staff and we are advised that we need the fifth floor. We get off and head straight for the food and drink. We pay $29 for two hot dogs and two Bud Lights. That's about £18. This is where wheelchair users attending alone might have a problem. From the kiosks on the fifth floor you then have to head down another long corridor which is heavily sloped. Difficult to do if you are carrying a hot dog and a Bud Light. I'm sure the staff would have been happy to help but that isn't really the point. It would have been nice to have a kiosk somewhere nearer to our seats.
The seats themselves are in a fantastic spot in terms of the view. Being up on the fifth floor we are way up on a platform (an accessible one with no sign of any trains) just in front of the broadcast booths. We can see the stadium announcer as he warms up the crowd and tells us all about who is in the line-ups for the two teams. Just along from him, possibly working for a radio station is Bob Uecker. Bob played Harry Doyle in Major League Emma tells me, but I don't remember him. I have seen Major League once or twice, but the only thing I can clearly remember about it is a character in the crowd shouting 'wild thing, you make my butt sting' at an off-form Charlie Sheen. The Mets are facing the Milwaukee Brewers which leaves us in the possibly unenviable position of away supporters. Emma has been a Brewers fan since she first saw them in Wisconsin many years ago. And why should we support the Mets anyway given their pitiful level of access? We would have gone to Yankee Stadium had the world's most hated sports 'franchise' been playing at home during our stay. Surprisingly we are not on our own as a large group of Brewers fans get louder and louder as a direct consequence of their alcohol intake. By the end they are rivalling the barmy army, but perhaps with a little less wit.
Being at baseball is fun. Those who carp on about how it lasts too long are missing the point. The reason I don't watch it on television at home is that it is currently covered by a broadcaster who's channel I don't subscribe to and who have to put it on too late because of the time difference. Also they play a jaw-dropping 162 games during the regular season, a fact that Greg Dyke's barm-pot commission might want to consider next time they are discussing burnout as a possible reason for the disappointing performances of the England football team. In the end we are a little disappointed ourselves as the Brewers go down 6-2 to the Mets, but we know better than to express any dismay. In the lift on the way out a woman explains how she was happy for an opposing player because he had hit his first home run of the season. I try to imagine myself feeling happy for any player who had just scored a game-winning try against Saints or a goal against Liverpool and I can't find it in me. Maybe like the movement involved in franchising, wishing an opponent well after a notable achievement is a part of American sports that I'm never going to fully get.
The journey back is mercifully uneventful. The 7 local takes us to Main Street in Flushing, where we have to wait for it a while before it begins its journey in the opposite direction back to 42nd and Time Square. We are back here on Sunday for the visit of the San Diego Padres, another team we have a slight affection for after our hugely enjoyable stay there in 2011.
Something tells me that journey won't be simple.
Several weeks later we received this fob off....er....response from MTA;
This is in response to your e-mail message to MTA New York City Transit regarding an incident you experienced at the Mets-Willets Point station.
We care about our ADA customers and make every attempt to ensure accessibility at our ADA-compliant stations. New York City Transit, in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), has a long-term plan that provides for making a total of 100 key subway stations accessible. In connection with federal guidelines and in cooperation with ADA advocacy organizations, the MTA identified 100 key stations and facilities where compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) would benefit the most people, analyzing such factors as high ridership, transfer points, and service to major areas of activity. These stations were given priority in our station-renovation program. This will create a network of stations which, when combined with our fully-accessible bus fleet, will make almost all of NYC Transit’s service area accessible to senior citizens and persons with disabilities.
The Mets-Willets Point station is not an ADA-compliant station. However, on game days, No. 7 trains open onto a “special events” platform on the south side of the station which ramps down to the overpass to Flushing Meadows Park. This creates a wheelchair accessible route to Citi Field. Under normal circumstances, we would not have scheduled a service change on a game day, but the sheer volume of work on the No. 7 line this summer required this change. Nevertheless, we have procedures in place should a customer in a wheelchair detrain at a station other than at an ADA accessible station, or at an ADA station where the elevator is inoperable. In this situation, you should have been advised to ride the train one more stop to the Flushing-Main Street station which is ADA-accessible and then ride the Q48 bus back to the Mets-Willets Point station. We apologize for any incorrect information you received from our employees.
In the future, we will post signs on our trains when the ramp is not accessible.
Please also note that the MTA Guide to Accessible Transit, which includes accessible station information, is readily available on our website at http://web.mta.info/accessibility/
We take the concerns of our customers seriously and thank you for bringing this matter to our attention.
Caroline Morgan
Customer Services
Friday, 27 June 2014
New York - Coney Island
There's something I forgot to mention about our first Monday in New York. I was idly trundling around reading something about shit-eating insects when Emma, who had no doubt been equally idly wandering around somewhere close by, returned and told me that Rik Mayall had died.
Rik Mayall was a comedy legend. He was undoubtedly my favourite comedy actor when I was growing up. Only Rowan Atkinson comes close. For a long time I knew virtually every word of every episode of The Young Ones in which Mayall played Rik, a quite ridiculous would-be anarchist student of sociology or some such. I could still recite a lot of those scenes now if called upon to do so but back then I couldn't get through a day without making some sort of Young Ones reference. I'm now trying to imagine a set of circumstances in which I would be called upon to recite scenes from classic early 80's alternative situation comedy. No, can't think of a single reason. After The Young Ones there was Mayall's lesser known but no less dizzyingly brilliant turn as Richie Rich, a failed actor and television personality in Filthy, Rich and Catflap. Then the gloriousy sleazy and obnoxious Tory MP Alan B'Stard in The New Statesman. Not forgetting his all too brief roles in the Blackadder series' as Lord/Captain Flashheart. If you liked things kept a little simpler he delivered that too with yet another incarnation of Richard Rich in Bottom, a slapstick farce that you had to love just because it had a character in it called Spudgun. At 56 Mayall has been taken far too early and the world will be a slightly less amusing place for his loss.
The weather is a little better on Tuesday, which is good news because we are off to Coney Island. It's about an hour south-east of Manhattan on the subway train. We have done our research (well, Emma has if truth be told) and we know that the subway is mostly accessible. Mostly. In the way that Luis Suarez is mostly well behaved. Yet much like the antics of the Uruguayan munch-meister, if and when it goes wrong the results could be ruinous. Certain stations are inaccessible completely, or are rendered inaccessible because the platforms in use do not allow you to gain access to a lift. I wouldn't go so far as to call travelling on the subway train a lottery, but arriving at your destination without major incident has to be regarded as a touch short of a certainty.
The subway station is on 42nd Street. As soon as we enter I'm confused. The signage is bewildering. At first arrows seem to point everywhere except to anything resembling wheelchair access or Coney Island. The trains are numbered and lettered. The B, C, D, the 4, the 5 and the 7. There's a booth manned by one person, but most people aren't buying tickets from her. They're using ticket machines. You buy a card from the booth which you can then top up at the machines or at the booth. But if you choose the booth then don't expect service with a smile. The people manning these things always look affronted when you approach, and downright insulted if you ask any questions. You get the feeling they hate tourists because we ask the most questions by far. We're reluctantly told that we need the D train. It's fortunate that there are lots of D trains and that they arrive at the platform pretty regularly because it takes a while to get your bearings in a New York subway station. Even more fortunately Coney Island is the last stop for the D train so its name is written on what platform signs there are. Things could have become more complicated if we had needed any stop in between 42nd and Coney Island.
The journey takes around an hour. There seem to be in infinite number of subway stations in New York which is good in one way because you are never too far from one if you need one, but not so good if you are already on the train and would just like to get to where you are going as quickly as possible. This being our first New York subway journey there's a slight nervousness which is exacerbated with each stop. You hear stories and, if you're like me, you watch too much television which teaches you that the New York underground is rife with gun-point robberies and terrorist atrocities. In reality it's more like the boneshaker that takes you from Thatto Heath to Lime Street. Only much, much longer. The front of this train may already be in Coney Island. We manage to disembark without incident, at least until we try to exit the station at Coney Island.
Since passengers buy cards and not tickets there is a swipe system in place to exit the station. Swipe through the turnsytle barriers and leave. You're ahead of me if you are wondering how you might get through a turnsytle using a wheelchair. You don't. There's a large gate to the side of the turnstyles which is the disabled exit. It also has a swipe system. Only the card we have will not swipe. We try it several times and nothing happens to the gate. It stays rigidly locked. Then we take a risk and leave the ticket inside the machine, thinking that it might spit it back out like a cash machine spits your cashcard back at you.
The machine swallows the card.
Now, not only do we have no way of getting through the gate but nor do we have a way of proving that we have paid for the return journey when we leave. We are advised by a staff member that we will have to go all the way around and back outside to get to where we got off the train, still the wrong side of the exit gate. When we do we approach another booth, again manned by another woman who doesn't want to be disturbed. Emma begins explaining what has happened to the card but before she can even finish the story the woman is just slowly, arrogantly shaking her head at her. The look on her face screams 'what do you want me to do about it, I only work here'. When she has had enough of the headshake she finally advises us that we will have to call 511, a different department which deals with refunds. But we're not asking for a refund. We're asking for a replacement ticket. Nothing, no response. There's a phone a few feet away just inside the station. Emma and I both try calling 511 but after endless automated instructions we are both cut off in the way that I cut off anyone who rings my house asking for Mr Kelly or Mrs Caddick. Mr Kelly has been dead more than a decade and Mrs Caddick remains Miss Caddick. If you don't know that then you don't know her and you're not speaking to her. It's ok to put the phone down on someone who has cold called you to try to sell you something. It's not good form to do it to tourists stranded in a Coney Island subway station when you work for MTA. That's the underground rail and bus company of whom we are currently at the mercy. Perhaps it stands for Manhattan Transport Agony.
Then something surprising happens. The rude headshaker emerges from the sanctuary of her booth and strolls over to us. She asks us what we need and we explain again about the swallowed ticket. We don't want a refund, we say again, just a way of getting through to the platform when we need to get back on the train later. She wants to let us through now but we have only just got here. We're not going back now. The penny drops and she asks what time we want to go back to Manhattan. It's around 11.00 now so we agree on something around 2.00 in the afternoon. Coney Island isn't that big and we have only come for a little stroll along the famous boardwalk and along the pier. Maybe an ice cream or two and a walk around the fairground. Three hours should be enough. She says she will still be here at the booth then and that if we get back then she will let us through. We won't need anything to get through on the other side once we have got on to the train, she says. It's a win of sorts but I still can't help feeling like we now have a curfew due to the user-unfriendly disabled exit gate.
There isn't time to contemplate the subway lady's transformation from rude, obstructive headshaker to customer service heroine and curfew maker. We head towards the fairground and the prom, enjoying a drink at one of the boardwalk cafes until tribes of children descend on us. There must be hundreds. It's predictable that we choose to take this trip on the same day as every school in the state of New York. They're noisy but after a while I've shut them out. We go for a walk along the prom and up the length of the pier. It's an overcast if dry day so the views are probably not at their best. Still, you can see quite a distance out to sea. At the end of the pier are the fishermen. I'm reminded of the shark-gutter we met at Venice Beach in Los Angeles in 2011 and as we approach we are subjected to a similarly harrowing incident. The men have already caught a few fish and they are not throwing them back. One lies presumably dead on the surface of the pier behind the fishermen, while another flaps around as it takes what will be its last breaths. I try to console myself with the notion that fish are too stupid to be afraid but this thing has death in its eyes. It looks like it is suffering, and it looks like it knows that the end is near.
We have that ice cream and a saunter around the fairground and it's blissful if uneventuful. Coney Island isn't the most exciting place you will ever visit but it has a unique charm. It's how Blackpool would be if you removed 90% of the people and banned stag and hen parties. It feels old. Almost as if everything should be in grainy black and white. At the fairground there are still armies of children, one of whom looks at me with deep suspicion when I roll past him. I must have disturbed him. While Emma is in the ladies a bearded man in a hat approaches me, great purpose in his walk as if he has something important to say to me;
'Shalom' he starts;
'Are you Jewish?' he asks me.
'No.'
I spare him the lecture about how all religion is intellectually and morally dubious. Fortunately, he's ok with my non-Jewishness. He's not a fanatic wanting to cure me of my wretched atheism.
'Have a good day' he says, and wanders off happily.
Before we leave there is time to pay a visit to the strangely located Brooklyn Nets shop. The Brooklyn Nets are an NBA basketball franchise based until recently in New Jersey. I have absolutely no affinithy with them whatsoever but holidays and Christmas are just about the only occasions that I am moved to acquire any sportswear. I buy a t-shirt at a reasonable-ish $26 but I pass on a hat once more. Neither the peak nor the price are quite right. I'm at a loss to understand why the Nets have a store here on Coney Island anyway. It's not quite Brooklyn and basketball doesn't fit in to the rest of the Coney Island theme. It's all fairgrounds, ice creams, blissful strolling and dying fish. It's not a place you want to be doing much slam-dunking.
True to her word the subway booth lady helps us get through the gates and back on to the platform to take the D train back to Manhattan. The journey back is again a nervous one but this time there are a couple of good reasons for that. At one stop a man with a cane gets on and spends his entire journey (around three stops or so) chanting about something or other. It's a bit like the time we ran into a rapping beggar in a park in Barcelona only the chanting feels more sinister. He's not begging, he's trying to convince us of something but it's not clear what. That he is stark, staring bonkers, perhaps. Another man is an inexhaustible bundle of energy. He can't keep still and he can't keep his mouth shut. He shouts something at the chanting man as he gets off and every time the door opens he leans out of it and looks around as if he is expecting someone. Maybe he is just looking for someone to shout at. Inside the train he fidgets constantly, adjusting his ruck sack, grabbing a pole, releasing a pole, moving to the other side of the train to perform what look like small stretching exercises. He gets off before his ruck sack detonates.
We get off the train at 42nd in Times Square and have another ludicrous wrestle with the disabled exit. At least this time we know not to put anything in the swipe slot. Not that we have anything to put in there at the moment. A staff member is passing with a trolley full of something and I ask him to open the gate, which he does without asking questions. We'll have another chance to work the gate out for ourselves in a few hours. We'll be back on the subway then to head for Queens, where the New York Mets take on the Milwaukee Brewers at Citifield.
"Hey pig! Do you really give a fig, pig? And what's your favourite sort of gig, pig? Barry Manilow....or the black and white minstrel show!"
Rik Mayall was a comedy legend. He was undoubtedly my favourite comedy actor when I was growing up. Only Rowan Atkinson comes close. For a long time I knew virtually every word of every episode of The Young Ones in which Mayall played Rik, a quite ridiculous would-be anarchist student of sociology or some such. I could still recite a lot of those scenes now if called upon to do so but back then I couldn't get through a day without making some sort of Young Ones reference. I'm now trying to imagine a set of circumstances in which I would be called upon to recite scenes from classic early 80's alternative situation comedy. No, can't think of a single reason. After The Young Ones there was Mayall's lesser known but no less dizzyingly brilliant turn as Richie Rich, a failed actor and television personality in Filthy, Rich and Catflap. Then the gloriousy sleazy and obnoxious Tory MP Alan B'Stard in The New Statesman. Not forgetting his all too brief roles in the Blackadder series' as Lord/Captain Flashheart. If you liked things kept a little simpler he delivered that too with yet another incarnation of Richard Rich in Bottom, a slapstick farce that you had to love just because it had a character in it called Spudgun. At 56 Mayall has been taken far too early and the world will be a slightly less amusing place for his loss.
The weather is a little better on Tuesday, which is good news because we are off to Coney Island. It's about an hour south-east of Manhattan on the subway train. We have done our research (well, Emma has if truth be told) and we know that the subway is mostly accessible. Mostly. In the way that Luis Suarez is mostly well behaved. Yet much like the antics of the Uruguayan munch-meister, if and when it goes wrong the results could be ruinous. Certain stations are inaccessible completely, or are rendered inaccessible because the platforms in use do not allow you to gain access to a lift. I wouldn't go so far as to call travelling on the subway train a lottery, but arriving at your destination without major incident has to be regarded as a touch short of a certainty.
The subway station is on 42nd Street. As soon as we enter I'm confused. The signage is bewildering. At first arrows seem to point everywhere except to anything resembling wheelchair access or Coney Island. The trains are numbered and lettered. The B, C, D, the 4, the 5 and the 7. There's a booth manned by one person, but most people aren't buying tickets from her. They're using ticket machines. You buy a card from the booth which you can then top up at the machines or at the booth. But if you choose the booth then don't expect service with a smile. The people manning these things always look affronted when you approach, and downright insulted if you ask any questions. You get the feeling they hate tourists because we ask the most questions by far. We're reluctantly told that we need the D train. It's fortunate that there are lots of D trains and that they arrive at the platform pretty regularly because it takes a while to get your bearings in a New York subway station. Even more fortunately Coney Island is the last stop for the D train so its name is written on what platform signs there are. Things could have become more complicated if we had needed any stop in between 42nd and Coney Island.
The journey takes around an hour. There seem to be in infinite number of subway stations in New York which is good in one way because you are never too far from one if you need one, but not so good if you are already on the train and would just like to get to where you are going as quickly as possible. This being our first New York subway journey there's a slight nervousness which is exacerbated with each stop. You hear stories and, if you're like me, you watch too much television which teaches you that the New York underground is rife with gun-point robberies and terrorist atrocities. In reality it's more like the boneshaker that takes you from Thatto Heath to Lime Street. Only much, much longer. The front of this train may already be in Coney Island. We manage to disembark without incident, at least until we try to exit the station at Coney Island.
Since passengers buy cards and not tickets there is a swipe system in place to exit the station. Swipe through the turnsytle barriers and leave. You're ahead of me if you are wondering how you might get through a turnsytle using a wheelchair. You don't. There's a large gate to the side of the turnstyles which is the disabled exit. It also has a swipe system. Only the card we have will not swipe. We try it several times and nothing happens to the gate. It stays rigidly locked. Then we take a risk and leave the ticket inside the machine, thinking that it might spit it back out like a cash machine spits your cashcard back at you.
The machine swallows the card.
Now, not only do we have no way of getting through the gate but nor do we have a way of proving that we have paid for the return journey when we leave. We are advised by a staff member that we will have to go all the way around and back outside to get to where we got off the train, still the wrong side of the exit gate. When we do we approach another booth, again manned by another woman who doesn't want to be disturbed. Emma begins explaining what has happened to the card but before she can even finish the story the woman is just slowly, arrogantly shaking her head at her. The look on her face screams 'what do you want me to do about it, I only work here'. When she has had enough of the headshake she finally advises us that we will have to call 511, a different department which deals with refunds. But we're not asking for a refund. We're asking for a replacement ticket. Nothing, no response. There's a phone a few feet away just inside the station. Emma and I both try calling 511 but after endless automated instructions we are both cut off in the way that I cut off anyone who rings my house asking for Mr Kelly or Mrs Caddick. Mr Kelly has been dead more than a decade and Mrs Caddick remains Miss Caddick. If you don't know that then you don't know her and you're not speaking to her. It's ok to put the phone down on someone who has cold called you to try to sell you something. It's not good form to do it to tourists stranded in a Coney Island subway station when you work for MTA. That's the underground rail and bus company of whom we are currently at the mercy. Perhaps it stands for Manhattan Transport Agony.
Then something surprising happens. The rude headshaker emerges from the sanctuary of her booth and strolls over to us. She asks us what we need and we explain again about the swallowed ticket. We don't want a refund, we say again, just a way of getting through to the platform when we need to get back on the train later. She wants to let us through now but we have only just got here. We're not going back now. The penny drops and she asks what time we want to go back to Manhattan. It's around 11.00 now so we agree on something around 2.00 in the afternoon. Coney Island isn't that big and we have only come for a little stroll along the famous boardwalk and along the pier. Maybe an ice cream or two and a walk around the fairground. Three hours should be enough. She says she will still be here at the booth then and that if we get back then she will let us through. We won't need anything to get through on the other side once we have got on to the train, she says. It's a win of sorts but I still can't help feeling like we now have a curfew due to the user-unfriendly disabled exit gate.
There isn't time to contemplate the subway lady's transformation from rude, obstructive headshaker to customer service heroine and curfew maker. We head towards the fairground and the prom, enjoying a drink at one of the boardwalk cafes until tribes of children descend on us. There must be hundreds. It's predictable that we choose to take this trip on the same day as every school in the state of New York. They're noisy but after a while I've shut them out. We go for a walk along the prom and up the length of the pier. It's an overcast if dry day so the views are probably not at their best. Still, you can see quite a distance out to sea. At the end of the pier are the fishermen. I'm reminded of the shark-gutter we met at Venice Beach in Los Angeles in 2011 and as we approach we are subjected to a similarly harrowing incident. The men have already caught a few fish and they are not throwing them back. One lies presumably dead on the surface of the pier behind the fishermen, while another flaps around as it takes what will be its last breaths. I try to console myself with the notion that fish are too stupid to be afraid but this thing has death in its eyes. It looks like it is suffering, and it looks like it knows that the end is near.
We have that ice cream and a saunter around the fairground and it's blissful if uneventuful. Coney Island isn't the most exciting place you will ever visit but it has a unique charm. It's how Blackpool would be if you removed 90% of the people and banned stag and hen parties. It feels old. Almost as if everything should be in grainy black and white. At the fairground there are still armies of children, one of whom looks at me with deep suspicion when I roll past him. I must have disturbed him. While Emma is in the ladies a bearded man in a hat approaches me, great purpose in his walk as if he has something important to say to me;
'Shalom' he starts;
'Are you Jewish?' he asks me.
'No.'
I spare him the lecture about how all religion is intellectually and morally dubious. Fortunately, he's ok with my non-Jewishness. He's not a fanatic wanting to cure me of my wretched atheism.
'Have a good day' he says, and wanders off happily.
Before we leave there is time to pay a visit to the strangely located Brooklyn Nets shop. The Brooklyn Nets are an NBA basketball franchise based until recently in New Jersey. I have absolutely no affinithy with them whatsoever but holidays and Christmas are just about the only occasions that I am moved to acquire any sportswear. I buy a t-shirt at a reasonable-ish $26 but I pass on a hat once more. Neither the peak nor the price are quite right. I'm at a loss to understand why the Nets have a store here on Coney Island anyway. It's not quite Brooklyn and basketball doesn't fit in to the rest of the Coney Island theme. It's all fairgrounds, ice creams, blissful strolling and dying fish. It's not a place you want to be doing much slam-dunking.
True to her word the subway booth lady helps us get through the gates and back on to the platform to take the D train back to Manhattan. The journey back is again a nervous one but this time there are a couple of good reasons for that. At one stop a man with a cane gets on and spends his entire journey (around three stops or so) chanting about something or other. It's a bit like the time we ran into a rapping beggar in a park in Barcelona only the chanting feels more sinister. He's not begging, he's trying to convince us of something but it's not clear what. That he is stark, staring bonkers, perhaps. Another man is an inexhaustible bundle of energy. He can't keep still and he can't keep his mouth shut. He shouts something at the chanting man as he gets off and every time the door opens he leans out of it and looks around as if he is expecting someone. Maybe he is just looking for someone to shout at. Inside the train he fidgets constantly, adjusting his ruck sack, grabbing a pole, releasing a pole, moving to the other side of the train to perform what look like small stretching exercises. He gets off before his ruck sack detonates.
We get off the train at 42nd in Times Square and have another ludicrous wrestle with the disabled exit. At least this time we know not to put anything in the swipe slot. Not that we have anything to put in there at the moment. A staff member is passing with a trolley full of something and I ask him to open the gate, which he does without asking questions. We'll have another chance to work the gate out for ourselves in a few hours. We'll be back on the subway then to head for Queens, where the New York Mets take on the Milwaukee Brewers at Citifield.
"Hey pig! Do you really give a fig, pig? And what's your favourite sort of gig, pig? Barry Manilow....or the black and white minstrel show!"
Wednesday, 25 June 2014
New York - Monday
Rain. And lots of it. It's absolutely bitching down in New York on Monday morning. Call me Steve Naive (actually, don't, we know my feelings on Steve) but I had not considered this possibility until now. As far as I was concerned I was off on my holidays and that automatically meant sunshine. The reality is that not all of America is sun-soaked all of the time.
It's reached biblical proportions by the time we head downstairs for breakfast. Did I mention we are on the 11th floor? It's not a problem as long as the lifts are working but I notice as we pass through the lobby on the ground floor that one of the three has been shut down for what they call 'important maintenance'. This probably means that it's broken but I don't want to think about that for now. There are still two more that are working but it wouldn't be the first time I have been left stranded in the upper reaches of a tall building with no way to get downstairs other than an undignified shuffling descent on my backside.
There's a restaurant attached to the hotel called Pigalle, so we head there. What we know now but didn't know then is that you can get to Pigalle without actually having to bother to go outdoors. There is a door just behind the concierge's desk which leads straight to the upper level. And it has low tables. Only if you're eating, naturally. Why else would you want a low table eh? Unaware of this secret passage we dash around stupidly in the bouncing rain. More soaked than you would imagine it is possible to be having been outside for all of 20 seconds we then have to queue to be seated. Of course Americans don't queue, they get in line. The word queue seems to be totally absent from their vocabularies like pavement, lift and cinema. The queue (line?) begins at the top of the steps to the upper level. Emma joins it and I wait on the lower level before blatantly pushing in alongside her when she reaches me. Considering the queue it doesn't take very long to be seated. It takes far longer to get any service. A man offers us tea and then disappears for at least 15 minutes. In the end we have to remind him and he's all gestures and apologies but it is still a few more minutes before the tea turns up. It arrives just before I reprise Stephen Fry's Duke of Wellington role in Blackadder The Third, slapping him about the head and shouting 'TEA!!!' repeatedly.
We plan to visit the American Museum Of Natural History but there is no way we are going to be able to do so under our own steam in this weather. The forecast for the next couple of days is pretty grim so there seems to be no mileage in putting it off until later. We need a cab. I was told last night that if I want to book an accessible cab then I need to give two hours notice. Two hours. It's barely credible when you consider what else you can do in two hours. You can drive from St.Helens to Nottingham in two hours. You can fly from Manchester to Paris in two hours. You can watch an entire football match and even sit through Alan Shearer's analysis at half-time and at the end. You can watch around two and three quarter episodes of Breaking Bad. You can get drunk enough to attempt to climb the stairs at Crystals nightclub. You can even write an entry in Memoirs Of A Fire Hazard from start to finish, provided you have some decent notes and you are not drunk enough to attempt to climb the stairs at Crystals nightclub or you haven't been plunged into a coma listening to Alan Shearer's half-time analysis.
Fortunately I am able to transfer from my wheelchair into a car seat. So I'll be able to get into a standard taxi cab. Anyone who has mobility problems severe enough to prevent them from transferring had better prepare themselves for a wait if they want to get anywhere in the rain in New York. It's unfathomable to me how it takes so long to arrange an accessible cab for those who need it. Do they have to build it from scratch before they can send it? It's more likely that they need that long to find a driver who is willing to assist a wheelchair user into the accessible cab. It is well documented on these pages the trouble I have had in the past with taxi drivers driving past me and, on occasion, doing me the courtesy of stopping only to shout "I don't do 'em" out of the window before driving on again. Once, on a night out in Leeds, I had to push back to where I was staying because the taxi drivers wouldn't even look at me. It rained that night too, as I recall.
The quickest way to get a taxi in New York is to hail one the old fashioned way. That is to stand around somewhere on the street waving your arms around desperately. Fortunately we don't have to do this for ourselves. The hotel's bellmen will do it for us. One of them stands gamely under his umbrella waving at every taxi driver he sees. He must be desperate, but he's good at not showing it. There's a bit of a queue developing but at least the hotel entrance is sheltered. Several drivers stop to talk to the bellman and then drive on, clearly unsatisfied with where the prospective customer wants to go. Wait till I get to the front of the queue. Till they get a load of me. A wheelchair, you say? Shit. In the end it's quite painless. A man driving a hatchback pulls over, has a quick word with the bellman who then ushers us over with a nod. A cool, calm, I'm-not-bothered-that-I'm-getting-soaked nod. The chair fits into the back of the car without having to remove the wheels which is handy. There's nothing more undignified than the sight of a taxi driver trying to work out how to use quick release wheels. Well, an aeroplane toilet, maybe.
New York taxi drivers appear not to have The Knowledge. Our man doesn't know where the accessible entrance to the museum is located and, being tourists, neither do we. We saw a sign yesterday suggesting that it was on 81st Street between Columbus Avenue and Central Park West. Having reached 81st we reckon we can find it for ourselves so we ask him to just drop us off anywhere he can. He obliges, and inevitably the next ten minutes are spent trying to find the accessible entrance. The front entrance is all steps and banners but eventually we get our bearings. Not before we change direction and go back on ourselves at least twice.
As we enter the museum we are told a lie. The lady pointing us to the ticket booth informs us that there is no admission fee, only a donation at your own discretion. They recommend that you 'donate' $22. Recommendation is rife in America. Every time you sit down for a meal you can expect to receive a recommendation for how much you should leave as a tip. Usually they recommend around 18%. Eighteen percent of bloody expensive is a lot, you know. Back at the museum we learn that their recommendation is based on you only walking around the museum and not partaking in any of the shows or presentations on offer. Today there are six shows or presentations running at the American Museum of Natural History and if we want a ticket that gets us into any or all of these then it will be $35. The woman at the desk advises us that the shows can be up to an hour each so we might not have time to do them all. It is currently around 11.15am and the museum closes at 5.45pm. What we can do is buy a ticket for two or three now and then just get it stamped upstairs by another member of staff if we decide to do any more. It won't cost any more for this 'upgrade' because even two or three is going to cost $35. We should book all six now but we trust her judgement, believing that it will be easy to upgrade and get into any extras. It isn't.
Our first show is at 12.30, about 75 minutes from now. You have to be booked into a specific time slot for the shows but this still gives us over an hour to potter around before the first one, an IMAX cinema film about something or other. Something natural or historical, no doubt. And American. Until then we wander around the exhibits which are closest to us which consist of a lot of stuffed animals as far as I can see. There's mooses, brown bears, black bears, wolves, several types of deer, and many other types of wild animal associated with cold, grim parts of the USA. There's oodles of information about each so you can't really fail to learn something. What you get out of it depends very much on how impressed you are at the sight of large stuffed animals and how much you want to know about what they get up to in their spare time. Personally I prefer them alive as they would be in a zoo but then again you wouldn't be able to get this close if any of this lot were alive. The bears look like they are having a particularly violent mood swing.
Next up it is the 3D IMAX presentation, a diverting if not mind-blowing film about stuff we don't see. Either because it is too fast or because it is too slow. Time lapse photography providing the viewer with the ability to watch a flower grow is, I'm sure, a wonderous technological achievement but it is nothing you haven't seen before on your television. In fact, if this were a nature programme on BBC2 you would probably turn it over for The One Show. But in 3D on an IMAX screen it gets your attention well enough. There's a couple of particularly nasty moments to look out for if you are the type to suffer from irrational fears. You might not enjoy the snake jumping out at you with his mouth open or the owl swooping down towards you with a look in his eyes that suggests he might just have mistaken you for a small rodent.
What we really want is dinosaurs. Dinosaurs and large sea creatures. I'm making this sound like some kind of jurassic zoo and sea life centre. It's a bloody museum. Our next show is at 2.30 but we have decided that we want to add another one to our ticket. The planetarium is showing 'Dark Universe', a film which promises an insight into recent discoveries made about the universe and the work going on to find out more about what's out there. Human endeavour is brilliant, which makes it even more puzzling that it apparently cannot equip an aeroplane with a wide enough toilet or arrange for an accessible cab in less than two hours. Human endeavour is rubbish. We find a staff member and explain what we were told at the ticket office about getting our tickets stamped. But the man in charge is currently dealing with everyone trying to get into the next screening at 1.30. When he gets a minute he acts like he doesn't know what his colleague is talking about, but advises us to come back when it is quieter and he will let us in. Which we do, and he doesn't let us in. In all it takes three or four attempts get the tickets upgraded, a feat we achieve just in time to see the 4.00 screening. Which is the last of the day. We like to cut things fine.
We're not helped by the situation with the lifts. Just like nobody walks anywhere in America, nobody takes the stairs either. Obviously not. How can you climb stairs if you don't walk? Unless you're drunk at Crystals. Every time we attempt to get into a lift we find ourselves at the back of a huge queue of people with varying degrees of need for the use of a lift. Although in fairness there are a lot of prams and a liberal smattering of screaming children. Some of these families would be a serious safety hazard if they attempted to get up the stairs.
Before the planetarium we take in the sights of the dinosaurs and the huge sea creatures. In many ways they defy description. In one room there is a massive model of a blue whale and not much space for anything else. Something is going on downstairs and it's closed to the public so we move around the upper deck, around the huge blue whale which is suspended from the ceiling but still utterly dominates the scene. It's majestic.
Not so impressive is the second of our special presentations. Expecting a film, video or guided presentation of some sort we are instead led into a room housing an exhibition about the pterosaurus, a flying dinosaur. A security man welcomes every single visitor with the same message, instructing them to leave the room at the exit at the back of the hall. I'm trying to inform myself on what the bloody hell pterosaurus might be and he's all I can hear, saying the same thing over and over again. If only the whopping great pterosaurus model that dominates the room blue whale-like would spring to life and fly off with him in his mouth. Pterosaurus was 16 metres tall and bad tempered, I learn. In another part of the exhibition there are children playing on a Pterosaurus flight simulator. It's like that round on the Krypton Factor when the contestants had to try and land the plane. Many Pterosauruses end up in the drink or crashing into a nearby mountain. And that's why children don't fly planes. They just build them for American Airlines. All of this is interesting enough but I'm a little peturbed that only those who have paid the extra admission are allowed in here. It's just another part of the museum and nothing very special.
Before we see Dark Universe we are treated to another wonderful slice of modern customer service. Around fifteen minutes before our show starts we are lead via a lift into a waiting area just outside the planetarium theatre. We are told it may be a little while before the doors open but to just wait here. A bespectacled, geeky looking boy emerges from the door and stares at us as if we are from another world. We hear him incredulously and disapprovingly ask one of his colleagues how we got into this area. When it is time another staff member shows us to our seats and we settle back for the start of the show. Only the bespectacled geeky looking boy isn't happy. He looks me straight in the eye and says;
"Sorry sir, the wheelchair can't sit there."
Thinking I didn't hear him right I ask him to repeat himself;
"The wheelchair can't sit there." he says again, this time with greater conviction.
At this point Emma tells him how offensive that is. Not that we are being asked to move from a space clearly designated for wheelchair users and which we have been guided to by his colleague, but that he has referred to me as 'the wheelchair'. And directly to my face. He doesn't get it. He just repeats again that the wheelchair will have to move. Somewhere in the argument I mention that I am not a wheelchair but he still can't get his head around his mistake. Before someone belts him around the head one of his superiors comes over to find out what is going on. He explains again that he was just telling us that the wheelchair can't sit there and will have to move. His colleague doesn't seem to get it either but she knows enough to know that we're offended and just tells us that it is fine to stay where we are. As the lights dim I can hear him explaining to her that he didn't know that we were able to sit there and thought we had to move. He actually comes over to apologise to us for asking us to move. Nobody has been convicted of the wrong offence this clearly since Al Capone was arrested for tax evation.
There's just about time for a quick walk around the rest of the dinosaur exhibits before we leave. Again it seems superfluous to try to describe it. You truly have to see it. There's all the old favourites, T-Rex, mammoths and so forth. All of which is fascinating and awe-inspiring, but doesn't provide a whole lot of material for a comedy travel piece with a disability slant.
By the time we leave the rain has abated, and we make the long journey back without the aid of the famous yellow cabs. The day is topped off with a meal at Daniela Trattoria, a nice Italian restaurant just down the road from the hotel. A nice, expensive, Italian restaurant just down the road from the hotel. Where they recommend an amount you should leave as a tip.
It's reached biblical proportions by the time we head downstairs for breakfast. Did I mention we are on the 11th floor? It's not a problem as long as the lifts are working but I notice as we pass through the lobby on the ground floor that one of the three has been shut down for what they call 'important maintenance'. This probably means that it's broken but I don't want to think about that for now. There are still two more that are working but it wouldn't be the first time I have been left stranded in the upper reaches of a tall building with no way to get downstairs other than an undignified shuffling descent on my backside.
There's a restaurant attached to the hotel called Pigalle, so we head there. What we know now but didn't know then is that you can get to Pigalle without actually having to bother to go outdoors. There is a door just behind the concierge's desk which leads straight to the upper level. And it has low tables. Only if you're eating, naturally. Why else would you want a low table eh? Unaware of this secret passage we dash around stupidly in the bouncing rain. More soaked than you would imagine it is possible to be having been outside for all of 20 seconds we then have to queue to be seated. Of course Americans don't queue, they get in line. The word queue seems to be totally absent from their vocabularies like pavement, lift and cinema. The queue (line?) begins at the top of the steps to the upper level. Emma joins it and I wait on the lower level before blatantly pushing in alongside her when she reaches me. Considering the queue it doesn't take very long to be seated. It takes far longer to get any service. A man offers us tea and then disappears for at least 15 minutes. In the end we have to remind him and he's all gestures and apologies but it is still a few more minutes before the tea turns up. It arrives just before I reprise Stephen Fry's Duke of Wellington role in Blackadder The Third, slapping him about the head and shouting 'TEA!!!' repeatedly.
We plan to visit the American Museum Of Natural History but there is no way we are going to be able to do so under our own steam in this weather. The forecast for the next couple of days is pretty grim so there seems to be no mileage in putting it off until later. We need a cab. I was told last night that if I want to book an accessible cab then I need to give two hours notice. Two hours. It's barely credible when you consider what else you can do in two hours. You can drive from St.Helens to Nottingham in two hours. You can fly from Manchester to Paris in two hours. You can watch an entire football match and even sit through Alan Shearer's analysis at half-time and at the end. You can watch around two and three quarter episodes of Breaking Bad. You can get drunk enough to attempt to climb the stairs at Crystals nightclub. You can even write an entry in Memoirs Of A Fire Hazard from start to finish, provided you have some decent notes and you are not drunk enough to attempt to climb the stairs at Crystals nightclub or you haven't been plunged into a coma listening to Alan Shearer's half-time analysis.
Fortunately I am able to transfer from my wheelchair into a car seat. So I'll be able to get into a standard taxi cab. Anyone who has mobility problems severe enough to prevent them from transferring had better prepare themselves for a wait if they want to get anywhere in the rain in New York. It's unfathomable to me how it takes so long to arrange an accessible cab for those who need it. Do they have to build it from scratch before they can send it? It's more likely that they need that long to find a driver who is willing to assist a wheelchair user into the accessible cab. It is well documented on these pages the trouble I have had in the past with taxi drivers driving past me and, on occasion, doing me the courtesy of stopping only to shout "I don't do 'em" out of the window before driving on again. Once, on a night out in Leeds, I had to push back to where I was staying because the taxi drivers wouldn't even look at me. It rained that night too, as I recall.
The quickest way to get a taxi in New York is to hail one the old fashioned way. That is to stand around somewhere on the street waving your arms around desperately. Fortunately we don't have to do this for ourselves. The hotel's bellmen will do it for us. One of them stands gamely under his umbrella waving at every taxi driver he sees. He must be desperate, but he's good at not showing it. There's a bit of a queue developing but at least the hotel entrance is sheltered. Several drivers stop to talk to the bellman and then drive on, clearly unsatisfied with where the prospective customer wants to go. Wait till I get to the front of the queue. Till they get a load of me. A wheelchair, you say? Shit. In the end it's quite painless. A man driving a hatchback pulls over, has a quick word with the bellman who then ushers us over with a nod. A cool, calm, I'm-not-bothered-that-I'm-getting-soaked nod. The chair fits into the back of the car without having to remove the wheels which is handy. There's nothing more undignified than the sight of a taxi driver trying to work out how to use quick release wheels. Well, an aeroplane toilet, maybe.
New York taxi drivers appear not to have The Knowledge. Our man doesn't know where the accessible entrance to the museum is located and, being tourists, neither do we. We saw a sign yesterday suggesting that it was on 81st Street between Columbus Avenue and Central Park West. Having reached 81st we reckon we can find it for ourselves so we ask him to just drop us off anywhere he can. He obliges, and inevitably the next ten minutes are spent trying to find the accessible entrance. The front entrance is all steps and banners but eventually we get our bearings. Not before we change direction and go back on ourselves at least twice.
As we enter the museum we are told a lie. The lady pointing us to the ticket booth informs us that there is no admission fee, only a donation at your own discretion. They recommend that you 'donate' $22. Recommendation is rife in America. Every time you sit down for a meal you can expect to receive a recommendation for how much you should leave as a tip. Usually they recommend around 18%. Eighteen percent of bloody expensive is a lot, you know. Back at the museum we learn that their recommendation is based on you only walking around the museum and not partaking in any of the shows or presentations on offer. Today there are six shows or presentations running at the American Museum of Natural History and if we want a ticket that gets us into any or all of these then it will be $35. The woman at the desk advises us that the shows can be up to an hour each so we might not have time to do them all. It is currently around 11.15am and the museum closes at 5.45pm. What we can do is buy a ticket for two or three now and then just get it stamped upstairs by another member of staff if we decide to do any more. It won't cost any more for this 'upgrade' because even two or three is going to cost $35. We should book all six now but we trust her judgement, believing that it will be easy to upgrade and get into any extras. It isn't.
Our first show is at 12.30, about 75 minutes from now. You have to be booked into a specific time slot for the shows but this still gives us over an hour to potter around before the first one, an IMAX cinema film about something or other. Something natural or historical, no doubt. And American. Until then we wander around the exhibits which are closest to us which consist of a lot of stuffed animals as far as I can see. There's mooses, brown bears, black bears, wolves, several types of deer, and many other types of wild animal associated with cold, grim parts of the USA. There's oodles of information about each so you can't really fail to learn something. What you get out of it depends very much on how impressed you are at the sight of large stuffed animals and how much you want to know about what they get up to in their spare time. Personally I prefer them alive as they would be in a zoo but then again you wouldn't be able to get this close if any of this lot were alive. The bears look like they are having a particularly violent mood swing.
Next up it is the 3D IMAX presentation, a diverting if not mind-blowing film about stuff we don't see. Either because it is too fast or because it is too slow. Time lapse photography providing the viewer with the ability to watch a flower grow is, I'm sure, a wonderous technological achievement but it is nothing you haven't seen before on your television. In fact, if this were a nature programme on BBC2 you would probably turn it over for The One Show. But in 3D on an IMAX screen it gets your attention well enough. There's a couple of particularly nasty moments to look out for if you are the type to suffer from irrational fears. You might not enjoy the snake jumping out at you with his mouth open or the owl swooping down towards you with a look in his eyes that suggests he might just have mistaken you for a small rodent.
What we really want is dinosaurs. Dinosaurs and large sea creatures. I'm making this sound like some kind of jurassic zoo and sea life centre. It's a bloody museum. Our next show is at 2.30 but we have decided that we want to add another one to our ticket. The planetarium is showing 'Dark Universe', a film which promises an insight into recent discoveries made about the universe and the work going on to find out more about what's out there. Human endeavour is brilliant, which makes it even more puzzling that it apparently cannot equip an aeroplane with a wide enough toilet or arrange for an accessible cab in less than two hours. Human endeavour is rubbish. We find a staff member and explain what we were told at the ticket office about getting our tickets stamped. But the man in charge is currently dealing with everyone trying to get into the next screening at 1.30. When he gets a minute he acts like he doesn't know what his colleague is talking about, but advises us to come back when it is quieter and he will let us in. Which we do, and he doesn't let us in. In all it takes three or four attempts get the tickets upgraded, a feat we achieve just in time to see the 4.00 screening. Which is the last of the day. We like to cut things fine.
We're not helped by the situation with the lifts. Just like nobody walks anywhere in America, nobody takes the stairs either. Obviously not. How can you climb stairs if you don't walk? Unless you're drunk at Crystals. Every time we attempt to get into a lift we find ourselves at the back of a huge queue of people with varying degrees of need for the use of a lift. Although in fairness there are a lot of prams and a liberal smattering of screaming children. Some of these families would be a serious safety hazard if they attempted to get up the stairs.
Before the planetarium we take in the sights of the dinosaurs and the huge sea creatures. In many ways they defy description. In one room there is a massive model of a blue whale and not much space for anything else. Something is going on downstairs and it's closed to the public so we move around the upper deck, around the huge blue whale which is suspended from the ceiling but still utterly dominates the scene. It's majestic.
Not so impressive is the second of our special presentations. Expecting a film, video or guided presentation of some sort we are instead led into a room housing an exhibition about the pterosaurus, a flying dinosaur. A security man welcomes every single visitor with the same message, instructing them to leave the room at the exit at the back of the hall. I'm trying to inform myself on what the bloody hell pterosaurus might be and he's all I can hear, saying the same thing over and over again. If only the whopping great pterosaurus model that dominates the room blue whale-like would spring to life and fly off with him in his mouth. Pterosaurus was 16 metres tall and bad tempered, I learn. In another part of the exhibition there are children playing on a Pterosaurus flight simulator. It's like that round on the Krypton Factor when the contestants had to try and land the plane. Many Pterosauruses end up in the drink or crashing into a nearby mountain. And that's why children don't fly planes. They just build them for American Airlines. All of this is interesting enough but I'm a little peturbed that only those who have paid the extra admission are allowed in here. It's just another part of the museum and nothing very special.
Before we see Dark Universe we are treated to another wonderful slice of modern customer service. Around fifteen minutes before our show starts we are lead via a lift into a waiting area just outside the planetarium theatre. We are told it may be a little while before the doors open but to just wait here. A bespectacled, geeky looking boy emerges from the door and stares at us as if we are from another world. We hear him incredulously and disapprovingly ask one of his colleagues how we got into this area. When it is time another staff member shows us to our seats and we settle back for the start of the show. Only the bespectacled geeky looking boy isn't happy. He looks me straight in the eye and says;
"Sorry sir, the wheelchair can't sit there."
Thinking I didn't hear him right I ask him to repeat himself;
"The wheelchair can't sit there." he says again, this time with greater conviction.
At this point Emma tells him how offensive that is. Not that we are being asked to move from a space clearly designated for wheelchair users and which we have been guided to by his colleague, but that he has referred to me as 'the wheelchair'. And directly to my face. He doesn't get it. He just repeats again that the wheelchair will have to move. Somewhere in the argument I mention that I am not a wheelchair but he still can't get his head around his mistake. Before someone belts him around the head one of his superiors comes over to find out what is going on. He explains again that he was just telling us that the wheelchair can't sit there and will have to move. His colleague doesn't seem to get it either but she knows enough to know that we're offended and just tells us that it is fine to stay where we are. As the lights dim I can hear him explaining to her that he didn't know that we were able to sit there and thought we had to move. He actually comes over to apologise to us for asking us to move. Nobody has been convicted of the wrong offence this clearly since Al Capone was arrested for tax evation.
There's just about time for a quick walk around the rest of the dinosaur exhibits before we leave. Again it seems superfluous to try to describe it. You truly have to see it. There's all the old favourites, T-Rex, mammoths and so forth. All of which is fascinating and awe-inspiring, but doesn't provide a whole lot of material for a comedy travel piece with a disability slant.
By the time we leave the rain has abated, and we make the long journey back without the aid of the famous yellow cabs. The day is topped off with a meal at Daniela Trattoria, a nice Italian restaurant just down the road from the hotel. A nice, expensive, Italian restaurant just down the road from the hotel. Where they recommend an amount you should leave as a tip.
Monday, 23 June 2014
New York - Sunday
Despite the confusion our bodies must feel following the five hour jump we are up early on Sunday morning. Never wanting to lose complete touch with the outside world while on holiday I put the television on as we get ready to go out for breakfast. There's a man on ESPN called Steve Coburn complaining bitterly about his horse losing a race, and therefore the coveted triple crown. So coveted is the triple crown that I had not heard of it until Steve mentions it. Ordinarily and unless I have had a bet I find horse racing to be about as interesting as lettuce or bath plugs. But something Steve says gets my attention. He's upset because his horse has lost to horses which did not enter the other two races in his precious triple crown. There's a barmy moment when he announces that it is not fair to the horses, and then he tops that with a gem of a comparison;
"It's like me playing basketball against a kid in a wheelchair." he moans.
I'm startled by the crass and offensive nature of this comment, but my first thought is actually that in my many years in wheelchair basketball I reckon I have seen loads of kids who would thrash Steve one on one. He doesn't look the most mobile and I'll bet he hasn't got much of a shooting action. Nobody in America seems offended by the analogy as the clip is played over and over again to general nods of agreement from the presenters. Jim White would be sacked on the spot if he didn't offer a sharp intake of breath and demand a swift apology. And tutt a lot.
The plan is to visit Central Park this morning. Not the one in Wigan that is now a branch of Tesco. I refer of course to the more famous and somewhat larger park which is located about 10 or 15 blocks uptown from where we are staying. I can use words like blocks and uptown in a blog about America. As long as I don't say that anyone was like anything I'll be ok. Besides, using uptown in particular glides me safely over the fact that I have no clue which way is north, south, east or west around here. Or anywhere else for that matter.
First we have breakfast at a place called Applebees which is around 50th Street-ish. The ground floor, which you would think would be the most accessible to me, suffers from a Hard Rock-esque high table problem. In fact, as we go through the front door we are met by a member of staff advising us that we might be better off to go through the side entrance and to take the elevator (her word, not mine) up to the second floor where handicapped restrooms (again her words) are located. The use of the word 'handicapped' is everywhere in New York which makes it seem stuck in the past somehow. That word has been bludgeoned out of existence by the UK's disability terminology police and good riddance to it. I don't consider myself handicapped. The favourite in the 2.45 at Chepstow is handicapped. It doesn't seem right to refer to a human being that way.
I have pancakes, which again I can do because I'm all American. I'm like all American. Like. I hate to go on about pricing and money but I have to report that you can't get anything resembling a decent meal for less than about $15 per person, excluding any drinks. Not just here either. It had been the same for an evening meal in McHales last night. Fifteen dollars is roughly about £9.00. To put that into context I think the cafe around the corner from where I work are still doing full English breakfasts for about £3.00. Don't come to New York unless you have plenty of money and you aren't afraid to fritter it away.
Before we go to the park we make a few stops for essential supplies. Water, mainly. And I'm looking for a hat to protect my hairless head. I once got sunburned on a cold day at Old Trafford so I don't really want to take any chances. But I'm not having much luck finding anything. Since we are passing we stop off at the M & M store. It's not exactly Willie Wonka's Chocolate Factory but it's not your standard sweet shop either. It's three floors high, two of which have walls which are literally lined with chocolate. Great tubes full of M & M's hang down along the walls of all kinds of weird and wonderful flavours. Yet at $13 a bag they are a little overpriced. If it's not sweets you are after there is pretty much everything else on sale here. M & M's have brached out into the world of merchandise in a manner that would make Manchester United blush. There's keyrings, mugs, fridge magnets, pens, pencils, soft toys, bottles and even board games featuring little coloured sweet characters. It's early in the week so we don't buy anything for now, but we'll be back I'm sure.
Central Park is a good 20-30 minutes push from the M & M store, all of it uphill. The blistering heat makes it even more difficult but it's worth the effort. It's a beautiful place on a day like this. We stop just inside the park for a rest and watch the horses trot by offering their carriage tours of the city. They all look knackered but happy enough. Those currently unemployed are tied up close to the entrance, and one has been positioned in such a way that he has to endure a face full of smoke from a nearby hot dog stand. He doesn't look too put out by it. Maybe he really likes the smell of hot dogs. Maybe he has just got used to it. Maybe he's just glad of a rest anywhere.
It's not that much easier to get around Central Park than it is to get to it from the middle of Manhattan if you use a wheelchair. There are lots of hills and slopes and the lack of signage means you can easily find yourself coming to an inaccessible dead end. My own chair hates the downhill slopes as much as my aching shoulders hate the uphill slopes. The right hand rear wheel is wobbling wildly on each descent but it feels fine uphill or on the flat. I don't remember it being buckled to buggery before we came to New York. My best guess is that it happened on the plane. It's not enough for American Airlines to try and humiliate me with a farcical toilet door episode, they want to damage my wheelchair aswell. At least they didn't lose it, I suppose. I'm waiting with mortified trepidation for that day and I'm sure that it is inevitably looming. I'll crawl before I get in an airport chair.
We spend a perfectly pleasant but uneventful few hours in Central Park without ever finding its mythical visitors centre. Is that a tourist information centre? Who knows? As I say, we never find out and instead exit the park around 81st street close to the American Museum Of Natural History. We toy with the idea of going in at that moment but decide to leave it for another day. I like to take my time with museums and by now it is already after 2.00 in the afternoon. And it's going to be a long journey back from here. We walk and push the 30-odd blocks back to Times Square, again often engulfed by the manic crowds. We head down 9th Avenue where our driver had told us to look for cheaper restaurants. Nothing stands out as somewhere we would be desperate to come back to. Maybe they are cheaper for a reason, and many of them look like wheelchair access is a concept they haven't yet considered.
After a brief collapse in the hotel room we are back out again early evening looking for some entertainment. Only we have a problem. A Hard Rock Cafe inspired problem. Every bar we go into seems to have high tables, which if you have ever tried to have a conversation with someone sat at a high table from your wheelchair you will know is bloody useless. The bar directly across the street from our hotel has high tables and a disabled toilet. Again they give and they take away when it comes to access in New York. Two more bars offer only high chairs for which one or two proprieters apologise with differing levels of sincerity. One asks us to wait 10 minutes until someone seated at their lower tables leaves. We decline. Not only am I outraged that they can't accommodate this hardly earth-shattering demand, but there is nowhere to wait. Except at the high tables and remind me again what the point of that would be? We move on.
To a place called Hurley's as it turns out. There is a girl standing outside the doorway trying to get people to call in. She asks how I am and since I am feeling a little stressed at our inability to find even a bar we can be comfortable in, I tell her I'm not doing that well and explain the situation. She consults her manager. Only high tables in here, except one booth which can be accessed from a door off to the side. The manager offers us what she probably thinks is a sensational, kind-hearted proposal. We can go into the booth and just have a drink, but we only have an hour because the area is booked up for a private function at that point. It's better than nothing and the only thing rivalling my disdain for these access problems is my thirst. At last we can have a pint in comfort. I'm not even going to moan about the price in the circumstances.
When our hour is up we go back out to look for low tables. It's becoming an almost comical, absurd quest. Our luck doesn't change but as it happens we are starting to get hungry. Access in bars and restaurants is excellent if you want to eat. Mostly. We spot a TGI Fridays and reason, quite understandably, that we will be able to go in there for food. Yet we are told that they 'don't have the elevator', seemingly implying that they had it and misplaced or damaged it in some way. Not to worry, they say, they will bring a smaller table to the ground floor. Like Applebees, TGI's ground floor needs a few adjustments to be considered truly accessible. Adjustments, it turns out, that they are unable to make. First of all they bring a low table out to us but the only space available on the ground floor is too small to comfortably sit at the table together. When we explain this to the somewhat dumbfounded staff (heck, what do we want?) they go on the look for an even smaller table. Which after several minutes of what can only be described as fannying around they fail to find. Even had they been successful it is difficult to see how a table small enough to fit into the space available would have been suitable for two people to eat at. Miffed and not a little exasperated we finish our drinks that I now feel duped into buying, and leave.
We find a place called Rosie O'Grady's and although there is a little wait for a table we decide we can handle one drink at different heights because we know they are going to get the seating arrangements right once we settle down to eat. It says something about my frustration that I'm impressed by a small shelf which flips out of the bar giving me a lower surface to lean on while we wait. We chat to the barman about the World Cup. He's Indian so is not supporting anybody in particular but says that he thinks England will do well. He doesn't define doing well. I tell him I don't think much of the USA's chances, an opinion which their coach, Jurgen Klinsmann has been widely crticised for expressing. But I can say it because I'm not the coach. And it's true, they won't win the World Cup. It's not like winning the soccer send-off series.
What else are you going to eat while you are in a New York restaurant pretending to be Irish but fish and chips? With that and a few more beers the night has not been a total washout, but much of the conversation is around how to go about solving the ongoing high seating problem that threatens to plague our holiday evenings. We decide we'll think of something, but we're not exactly sure what. What we do know is that we have a night at the baseball and one at the theatre already planned. Two nights sorted then, only another six to consider.
We get back to the hotel to find Steve Coburn still complaining about those nasty, cheating horses, still proclaiming his dominance on the basketball court over 'kids in wheelchairs' and still generally being a total arse. And still getting away with it.
It's an odd sort of place, this, in many ways.
"It's like me playing basketball against a kid in a wheelchair." he moans.
I'm startled by the crass and offensive nature of this comment, but my first thought is actually that in my many years in wheelchair basketball I reckon I have seen loads of kids who would thrash Steve one on one. He doesn't look the most mobile and I'll bet he hasn't got much of a shooting action. Nobody in America seems offended by the analogy as the clip is played over and over again to general nods of agreement from the presenters. Jim White would be sacked on the spot if he didn't offer a sharp intake of breath and demand a swift apology. And tutt a lot.
The plan is to visit Central Park this morning. Not the one in Wigan that is now a branch of Tesco. I refer of course to the more famous and somewhat larger park which is located about 10 or 15 blocks uptown from where we are staying. I can use words like blocks and uptown in a blog about America. As long as I don't say that anyone was like anything I'll be ok. Besides, using uptown in particular glides me safely over the fact that I have no clue which way is north, south, east or west around here. Or anywhere else for that matter.
First we have breakfast at a place called Applebees which is around 50th Street-ish. The ground floor, which you would think would be the most accessible to me, suffers from a Hard Rock-esque high table problem. In fact, as we go through the front door we are met by a member of staff advising us that we might be better off to go through the side entrance and to take the elevator (her word, not mine) up to the second floor where handicapped restrooms (again her words) are located. The use of the word 'handicapped' is everywhere in New York which makes it seem stuck in the past somehow. That word has been bludgeoned out of existence by the UK's disability terminology police and good riddance to it. I don't consider myself handicapped. The favourite in the 2.45 at Chepstow is handicapped. It doesn't seem right to refer to a human being that way.
I have pancakes, which again I can do because I'm all American. I'm like all American. Like. I hate to go on about pricing and money but I have to report that you can't get anything resembling a decent meal for less than about $15 per person, excluding any drinks. Not just here either. It had been the same for an evening meal in McHales last night. Fifteen dollars is roughly about £9.00. To put that into context I think the cafe around the corner from where I work are still doing full English breakfasts for about £3.00. Don't come to New York unless you have plenty of money and you aren't afraid to fritter it away.
Before we go to the park we make a few stops for essential supplies. Water, mainly. And I'm looking for a hat to protect my hairless head. I once got sunburned on a cold day at Old Trafford so I don't really want to take any chances. But I'm not having much luck finding anything. Since we are passing we stop off at the M & M store. It's not exactly Willie Wonka's Chocolate Factory but it's not your standard sweet shop either. It's three floors high, two of which have walls which are literally lined with chocolate. Great tubes full of M & M's hang down along the walls of all kinds of weird and wonderful flavours. Yet at $13 a bag they are a little overpriced. If it's not sweets you are after there is pretty much everything else on sale here. M & M's have brached out into the world of merchandise in a manner that would make Manchester United blush. There's keyrings, mugs, fridge magnets, pens, pencils, soft toys, bottles and even board games featuring little coloured sweet characters. It's early in the week so we don't buy anything for now, but we'll be back I'm sure.
Central Park is a good 20-30 minutes push from the M & M store, all of it uphill. The blistering heat makes it even more difficult but it's worth the effort. It's a beautiful place on a day like this. We stop just inside the park for a rest and watch the horses trot by offering their carriage tours of the city. They all look knackered but happy enough. Those currently unemployed are tied up close to the entrance, and one has been positioned in such a way that he has to endure a face full of smoke from a nearby hot dog stand. He doesn't look too put out by it. Maybe he really likes the smell of hot dogs. Maybe he has just got used to it. Maybe he's just glad of a rest anywhere.
It's not that much easier to get around Central Park than it is to get to it from the middle of Manhattan if you use a wheelchair. There are lots of hills and slopes and the lack of signage means you can easily find yourself coming to an inaccessible dead end. My own chair hates the downhill slopes as much as my aching shoulders hate the uphill slopes. The right hand rear wheel is wobbling wildly on each descent but it feels fine uphill or on the flat. I don't remember it being buckled to buggery before we came to New York. My best guess is that it happened on the plane. It's not enough for American Airlines to try and humiliate me with a farcical toilet door episode, they want to damage my wheelchair aswell. At least they didn't lose it, I suppose. I'm waiting with mortified trepidation for that day and I'm sure that it is inevitably looming. I'll crawl before I get in an airport chair.
We spend a perfectly pleasant but uneventful few hours in Central Park without ever finding its mythical visitors centre. Is that a tourist information centre? Who knows? As I say, we never find out and instead exit the park around 81st street close to the American Museum Of Natural History. We toy with the idea of going in at that moment but decide to leave it for another day. I like to take my time with museums and by now it is already after 2.00 in the afternoon. And it's going to be a long journey back from here. We walk and push the 30-odd blocks back to Times Square, again often engulfed by the manic crowds. We head down 9th Avenue where our driver had told us to look for cheaper restaurants. Nothing stands out as somewhere we would be desperate to come back to. Maybe they are cheaper for a reason, and many of them look like wheelchair access is a concept they haven't yet considered.
After a brief collapse in the hotel room we are back out again early evening looking for some entertainment. Only we have a problem. A Hard Rock Cafe inspired problem. Every bar we go into seems to have high tables, which if you have ever tried to have a conversation with someone sat at a high table from your wheelchair you will know is bloody useless. The bar directly across the street from our hotel has high tables and a disabled toilet. Again they give and they take away when it comes to access in New York. Two more bars offer only high chairs for which one or two proprieters apologise with differing levels of sincerity. One asks us to wait 10 minutes until someone seated at their lower tables leaves. We decline. Not only am I outraged that they can't accommodate this hardly earth-shattering demand, but there is nowhere to wait. Except at the high tables and remind me again what the point of that would be? We move on.
To a place called Hurley's as it turns out. There is a girl standing outside the doorway trying to get people to call in. She asks how I am and since I am feeling a little stressed at our inability to find even a bar we can be comfortable in, I tell her I'm not doing that well and explain the situation. She consults her manager. Only high tables in here, except one booth which can be accessed from a door off to the side. The manager offers us what she probably thinks is a sensational, kind-hearted proposal. We can go into the booth and just have a drink, but we only have an hour because the area is booked up for a private function at that point. It's better than nothing and the only thing rivalling my disdain for these access problems is my thirst. At last we can have a pint in comfort. I'm not even going to moan about the price in the circumstances.
When our hour is up we go back out to look for low tables. It's becoming an almost comical, absurd quest. Our luck doesn't change but as it happens we are starting to get hungry. Access in bars and restaurants is excellent if you want to eat. Mostly. We spot a TGI Fridays and reason, quite understandably, that we will be able to go in there for food. Yet we are told that they 'don't have the elevator', seemingly implying that they had it and misplaced or damaged it in some way. Not to worry, they say, they will bring a smaller table to the ground floor. Like Applebees, TGI's ground floor needs a few adjustments to be considered truly accessible. Adjustments, it turns out, that they are unable to make. First of all they bring a low table out to us but the only space available on the ground floor is too small to comfortably sit at the table together. When we explain this to the somewhat dumbfounded staff (heck, what do we want?) they go on the look for an even smaller table. Which after several minutes of what can only be described as fannying around they fail to find. Even had they been successful it is difficult to see how a table small enough to fit into the space available would have been suitable for two people to eat at. Miffed and not a little exasperated we finish our drinks that I now feel duped into buying, and leave.
We find a place called Rosie O'Grady's and although there is a little wait for a table we decide we can handle one drink at different heights because we know they are going to get the seating arrangements right once we settle down to eat. It says something about my frustration that I'm impressed by a small shelf which flips out of the bar giving me a lower surface to lean on while we wait. We chat to the barman about the World Cup. He's Indian so is not supporting anybody in particular but says that he thinks England will do well. He doesn't define doing well. I tell him I don't think much of the USA's chances, an opinion which their coach, Jurgen Klinsmann has been widely crticised for expressing. But I can say it because I'm not the coach. And it's true, they won't win the World Cup. It's not like winning the soccer send-off series.
What else are you going to eat while you are in a New York restaurant pretending to be Irish but fish and chips? With that and a few more beers the night has not been a total washout, but much of the conversation is around how to go about solving the ongoing high seating problem that threatens to plague our holiday evenings. We decide we'll think of something, but we're not exactly sure what. What we do know is that we have a night at the baseball and one at the theatre already planned. Two nights sorted then, only another six to consider.
We get back to the hotel to find Steve Coburn still complaining about those nasty, cheating horses, still proclaiming his dominance on the basketball court over 'kids in wheelchairs' and still generally being a total arse. And still getting away with it.
It's an odd sort of place, this, in many ways.
Sunday, 22 June 2014
New York - Saturday
I woke up in ridiculous amounts of pain yesterday. Without pouring it on too much it was seriously unpleasant. But it did at least serve as a reminder of the kind of agony I was in when I landed at JFK airport in New York City on June 7 2014, which is where we left the story last time. How very helpful of my mysteriously damaged back to assist my writing in this way.
I'm still writhing around stupidly when we go to the customer service desk to speak to the people responsible for getting us from the airport to the hotel. We can't book transfers in the usual fashion. I have done it before, but I now consider myself too old and battered to suffer the indignity of climbing aboard an inaccessible coach like everyone else. Sometimes we just jump into an inaccessible taxi, a feat I am still just about capable of in my decaying state. However, on this occasion the hotel is too far away for that. It would be far too expensive. So back in February Emma booked an accessible vehicle with a company called Go Air Link. That's February. The February that is four months ago. How is it then that when she phones them to let them know we have landed they act like they have never heard of us or our booking? Not only was this booked four months ago, but at their request we also emailed to confirm this earlier this week. Yet still they are not very sure of themselves. To top it all they question the need for us to have confirmed it in the week, despite that being their request. Eventually they acknowledge our existence and our booking and agree to send a vehicle. Ten to fifteen minutes they say, which is about ten to fifteen minutes more than I can stand in my current condition but at least things are moving along now.
I'm stretching out my back in a position which probably looks absurd. Were I able to feel any embarrassment at this stage I would likely feel like Alan Partridge stretching out his hamstrings in his hotel room. Eventually I find a position that seems to help. Or is it the tablets finally kicking in? Unlikely, considering that I violently wretched them up a few minutes ago in another visit to the toilet. What you need when you are suffering excruciating back pain after a seven hour flight on a flying 10A is another visit from your hiatus hernia. Regular readers (or anyone who has had the misfortune to go out drinking with me) will know that on occasion this causes a violent gag reflex which leads to long spells of wretching. There's no vomit involved. It's like being sick without being sick. It's among the least enjoyable of my accumulating ailments.
Around twenty to twenty-five minutes later the help arrives. It's a black van. Give it a red flash and it could belong to BA Baracus. Except that obviously he wouldn't be anywhere near an airport, you crazy fool. The last time I saw a van like this was the morning we went to pick up one of the kids on the school run only to find that he had passed away that morning. Which might seem inappropriate for what is still a happy and exciting occasion but I just want to get there now so I don't question it. My back is starting to ease because of the stretching and things are looking up. On route to the Hilton Garden Inn on 48th Street and 8th Avenue our Guatemalan driver shows us a few of New York's sights, not all of which would immediately spring to mind if you thought about the city's major landmarks. Flushing Meadow where the US Open tennis championship is played. The largest cemetery I have ever seen. Michael Jordan's restaurant. Radio City Music Hall. 42nd Street. He advises us to eat on 9th Avenue between 44th and 48th street where he says there are nothing but restaurants and that they are more reasonably priced. I can believe that. You wouldn't expect Michael Jordan to sell you anything cheaply. We will soon learn that nobody in New York sells you anything cheaply.
The time difference between the UK and the eastern side of the United States means that we are effectively living this afternoon twice. It's still only around 4.00 in the afternoon when we head out onto the streets. The first port of call on any holiday, in any place with which we are unfamiliar, is the tourist information centre. Of course the Americans don't call it the tourist information centre. This is a nation that is currently referring to World Cup warm-up matches as the 'soccer send-off series'. So naturally they call the tourist information centre simply the visitors centre. And a simple title seems apt given it's simple minimalist layout. It's a huge place but it would be difficult to find a more unnecessary amount of space. Wigan, perhaps. All that can be found of note is the reception desk and a touch-screen guide to New York. That's a clever idea but it is also rather basic. There's three or four suggested places to eat and drink and the rest is information that you would only need if you had recently landed from Jupiter. The Statue of Liberty is here, did you know? Yes. And the Empire State Building. Revelatory. One thing on the touch-screen catches my eye. A pub on 6th Avenue is hosting Shakespeare plays performed by drunken people. Apparently they down shots of whatever lethal concoction is popular and then attempt to recite Hamlet or something. They'd never put up with it in Stratford but 'Drunken Shakespeare' sounds like something I'd like to see. There are passes available for the more famous attractions but after a brief discussion with the staff and a look at the prices versus paying individually for them we decide not to go that way. It's $180 for a pass which gets you into any six attractions but you have to do them on consecutive days. Individually they cost around $22-$29 and you can visit at your own convenience.
The visitors centre is on 7th Avenue on Times Square which is busy to say the least. As is well known many American cities have a block system of streets and avenues to help you avoid getting lost. It works very well to that end, but in Times Square you don't get very far very quickly. Every few yards you have to stop to cross the road at the pedestrian crossing where the street meets the avenue. The crossings work in basically the same way as ours except that drivers turning into the street you are crossing are not held up by a red light, and are instead trusted to stop as they make the turn to allow you to cross. This works most of the time but there is also a fair smattering of horn-honking and swearing going on as frustration builds on both sides. Just like pedestrians, drivers on Times Square can expect to crawl around New York at a very slow pace, despite the apparent haste.
We'd been warned in the Manchester hotel about the naked cowboy, but I wasn't prepared for the naked cowgirl. Shuffling among the huge throngs of people I catch her out of the corner of my eye. She's stood on the corner talking to some people about something I can't quite catch. To her right are Iron Man, Spider Man and Woody from Toy Story. On this corner you would be forgiven for thinking you had landed in Disney Land. Except for the naked cowgirl maybe. And maybe the mostly-naked, body-painted girls who also hang around seemingly doing not much of anything. But despite their glamour they are overshadowed by the shocking sight of the naked cowgirl. She's mature, to put it politely. If certain parts of her body go any further south then they will be in Disney Land after all. I don't look for long and I'm certainly not looking to have a chat. Instead I get across the road as quickly as possible, through the potholes and the cracks in the road surface, narrowly missing the legs of people who randomly stop in front of me.
We need a drink. There aren't that many options on 7th but in this searing heat and after half an hour mingling among these crowds we decide that Hard Rock Café is good enough. It's not good enough. Not really. Just like the Hard Rock Cafes in Los Angeles and Barcelona we have experienced there is nothing but inaccessible, high seating in the bar area at Hard Rock Café. If you want a smaller table then you have to have something to eat. But we don't want to eat. We just want to get a drink, consult the information we have and plan what to do for the rest of the afternoon and evening. The girl at the bar advises us that we cannot have a small table in the dining area unless we are dining, but that we can take the drinks back out into what she calls the lobby and find a seat there. Wearily we agree to this but go back to the lobby to find that there are no seats available. There are only around eight seats in there consisting of two small sofas wedged into a corner. It's another blatant misuse of space. And anyway all the seats are currently occupied by shouty people reporting to each other that they were like, and then he was like, and then she was like, and then they were like. It's a bad episode of Friends. More commonly known as an episode of Friends.
We go back to the bar to speak to someone else about getting a seat at a sensible height. One woman sees sense and allows us through to the dining area with our drinks. Yet within seconds of sitting down we are questioned again. A man comes over and informs us that he will be our server for the evening and he'll now take our food order. There isn't a food order, we say. We just want to get a drink and we've been through all of this once before. He's not sure. The idea of someone using a wheelchair wanting an accessible table is clearly quite confusing to him and he wanders off to consult one of his seniors. Finally he accepts that there will be no food order and no further moving of chairs but ten or fifteen minutes later he's back to offer us more drinks. Another controversy looms. There are free refills on drinks in this area and we are advised that will apply to us even if we do not eat. I find it hard to believe and sure enough our server questions it. He has to speak to the manager when we ask if the next lot of drinks are free. We would maybe not have ordered them if we had known they would not be free, and because we have been told that we can have them the manager agrees not to charge us. The server looks suitably miffed. We've broken two house rules in the space of a few minutes and it has completely disorientated him. We don't see him again. Presumably he has gone for a lie down.
I'd forego a free drink for some decent access. Is it too much to ask in 2014 to have a bar area at one of the largest bar chains in the world that has some lower, accessible seating? It would seem so. They have accessible toilets and lifts but no lower seating. I always find it puzzling when a public place has an accessible toilet but no access in other ways. It smacks of lip service to the accessibility laws. And as we were to discover, this problem is not limited to Hard Rock Café.
Back out on the road we head for Drunken Shakespeare. It's housed in a pub called Queens. I don't know where the Arms or the Head is. It's just Queens. It's a small pub but I can see one low and therefore accessible table placed in front of the big screen showing England's soccer send-off series match with Honduras. Promising. Now comes the disappointment. We ask about Drunken Shakespeare and the lady there enthuses about it at length as if she is trying to sell it to us. But of course she hasn't thought it through. It's upstairs, she tells us when we enquire about accessibility. She offers to get the staff to help lift me up the stairs but I decline. Like climbing on to coaches I'm passed all of that now. I don't trust people I don't know to do that and besides where would I then go to the toilet? Another toilet drama on this holiday is not required thank you very much although who knows, there might well be a disabled toilet upstairs. You have to comply with the law after all.
By now fatigue is beginning to set in so we decide to head back towards the hotel for a rest. The plan is to come out again for a late meal. We set off again on the packed streets, stopping regularly for a game of frogger at the crossings;
"Hey yo cruise control!" shouts a man stepping out in front of me. Before I can say 'who the fuck are you calling cruise control and what does that even mean?' I find myself taking his outstretched hand. I feel somehow at the time that it would be rude not to. Now, on reflection, I think I should have told him to shove his hand up his arse. Not only has he just referred to me as cruise control (and apart from anything else I am not on cruise control I am pushing my tripes off on some quite steep slopes in stifling heat) but he compounds his error with the following nugget;
"He's on cruise control and he's still got a chick!"
Emma's my chick. I'm sure she's flattered. I should probably be grateful that he has worked out that we are partners and that she is not just some care in the community worker. Even if I am greatly offended that my domestic arrangements seem to surprise him. He explains that he is collecting money so he can go on tour to Toronto, Canada. Why do Americans always feel the need to tell you what country they mean when they name a city? Toronto, Canada. London, England. Wales, England. Or something. He shoves a CD into my lap. He's signed it as if he is some kind of well known artist. It looks like some kind of gangsta crap. It becomes apparent that he wants me to make a donation to his tour fund. I'm suspicious that he is not going to Toronto, Canada at all and that he is just going to the pub with its high seating. There's an awkward moment when I fail to reach for any change to give to him and he makes a remark about how he accepts notes also. Still I don't feel compelled to donate. He's no Geldof, this fella;
"Does this mean I have to give you your CD back?" I ask almost rhetorically and before I have even finished the question he has snatched his CD back and is telling me to have a good day. He thanks me, for what I am not sure.
We're about half way back when Emma stops suddenly. She has noticed that the ruck sack on the back of my chair has been opened. Nothing has been taken out of it because I keep everything valuable to others elsewhere, but it's still a little unnerving. We can't figure out when it could have happened but she says it was definitely not open earlier when she was walking along just behind me. You've probably watched too much television if you think New York is really some kind of crime capital but at the same time it goes to show that you have to be careful here. We can only conclude that it must have happened at one of the many crowded corners where you have to stop to cross the street. Maybe it was the naked cowgirl trying to be opportunistic on a slow day.
Our evening meal is at McHales, a pub just a couple of blocks away which has both a disabled toilet and a crap ramp. Two men sit animatedly discussing ice hockey as they watch the Stanley Cup Finals between the Los Angeles Kings and their New York Rangers. In truly American style one leaves before the end, and soon after we take our leave at the end of a long, exhausting but kind of fun first day in the big apple.
I'm still writhing around stupidly when we go to the customer service desk to speak to the people responsible for getting us from the airport to the hotel. We can't book transfers in the usual fashion. I have done it before, but I now consider myself too old and battered to suffer the indignity of climbing aboard an inaccessible coach like everyone else. Sometimes we just jump into an inaccessible taxi, a feat I am still just about capable of in my decaying state. However, on this occasion the hotel is too far away for that. It would be far too expensive. So back in February Emma booked an accessible vehicle with a company called Go Air Link. That's February. The February that is four months ago. How is it then that when she phones them to let them know we have landed they act like they have never heard of us or our booking? Not only was this booked four months ago, but at their request we also emailed to confirm this earlier this week. Yet still they are not very sure of themselves. To top it all they question the need for us to have confirmed it in the week, despite that being their request. Eventually they acknowledge our existence and our booking and agree to send a vehicle. Ten to fifteen minutes they say, which is about ten to fifteen minutes more than I can stand in my current condition but at least things are moving along now.
I'm stretching out my back in a position which probably looks absurd. Were I able to feel any embarrassment at this stage I would likely feel like Alan Partridge stretching out his hamstrings in his hotel room. Eventually I find a position that seems to help. Or is it the tablets finally kicking in? Unlikely, considering that I violently wretched them up a few minutes ago in another visit to the toilet. What you need when you are suffering excruciating back pain after a seven hour flight on a flying 10A is another visit from your hiatus hernia. Regular readers (or anyone who has had the misfortune to go out drinking with me) will know that on occasion this causes a violent gag reflex which leads to long spells of wretching. There's no vomit involved. It's like being sick without being sick. It's among the least enjoyable of my accumulating ailments.
Around twenty to twenty-five minutes later the help arrives. It's a black van. Give it a red flash and it could belong to BA Baracus. Except that obviously he wouldn't be anywhere near an airport, you crazy fool. The last time I saw a van like this was the morning we went to pick up one of the kids on the school run only to find that he had passed away that morning. Which might seem inappropriate for what is still a happy and exciting occasion but I just want to get there now so I don't question it. My back is starting to ease because of the stretching and things are looking up. On route to the Hilton Garden Inn on 48th Street and 8th Avenue our Guatemalan driver shows us a few of New York's sights, not all of which would immediately spring to mind if you thought about the city's major landmarks. Flushing Meadow where the US Open tennis championship is played. The largest cemetery I have ever seen. Michael Jordan's restaurant. Radio City Music Hall. 42nd Street. He advises us to eat on 9th Avenue between 44th and 48th street where he says there are nothing but restaurants and that they are more reasonably priced. I can believe that. You wouldn't expect Michael Jordan to sell you anything cheaply. We will soon learn that nobody in New York sells you anything cheaply.
The time difference between the UK and the eastern side of the United States means that we are effectively living this afternoon twice. It's still only around 4.00 in the afternoon when we head out onto the streets. The first port of call on any holiday, in any place with which we are unfamiliar, is the tourist information centre. Of course the Americans don't call it the tourist information centre. This is a nation that is currently referring to World Cup warm-up matches as the 'soccer send-off series'. So naturally they call the tourist information centre simply the visitors centre. And a simple title seems apt given it's simple minimalist layout. It's a huge place but it would be difficult to find a more unnecessary amount of space. Wigan, perhaps. All that can be found of note is the reception desk and a touch-screen guide to New York. That's a clever idea but it is also rather basic. There's three or four suggested places to eat and drink and the rest is information that you would only need if you had recently landed from Jupiter. The Statue of Liberty is here, did you know? Yes. And the Empire State Building. Revelatory. One thing on the touch-screen catches my eye. A pub on 6th Avenue is hosting Shakespeare plays performed by drunken people. Apparently they down shots of whatever lethal concoction is popular and then attempt to recite Hamlet or something. They'd never put up with it in Stratford but 'Drunken Shakespeare' sounds like something I'd like to see. There are passes available for the more famous attractions but after a brief discussion with the staff and a look at the prices versus paying individually for them we decide not to go that way. It's $180 for a pass which gets you into any six attractions but you have to do them on consecutive days. Individually they cost around $22-$29 and you can visit at your own convenience.
The visitors centre is on 7th Avenue on Times Square which is busy to say the least. As is well known many American cities have a block system of streets and avenues to help you avoid getting lost. It works very well to that end, but in Times Square you don't get very far very quickly. Every few yards you have to stop to cross the road at the pedestrian crossing where the street meets the avenue. The crossings work in basically the same way as ours except that drivers turning into the street you are crossing are not held up by a red light, and are instead trusted to stop as they make the turn to allow you to cross. This works most of the time but there is also a fair smattering of horn-honking and swearing going on as frustration builds on both sides. Just like pedestrians, drivers on Times Square can expect to crawl around New York at a very slow pace, despite the apparent haste.
We'd been warned in the Manchester hotel about the naked cowboy, but I wasn't prepared for the naked cowgirl. Shuffling among the huge throngs of people I catch her out of the corner of my eye. She's stood on the corner talking to some people about something I can't quite catch. To her right are Iron Man, Spider Man and Woody from Toy Story. On this corner you would be forgiven for thinking you had landed in Disney Land. Except for the naked cowgirl maybe. And maybe the mostly-naked, body-painted girls who also hang around seemingly doing not much of anything. But despite their glamour they are overshadowed by the shocking sight of the naked cowgirl. She's mature, to put it politely. If certain parts of her body go any further south then they will be in Disney Land after all. I don't look for long and I'm certainly not looking to have a chat. Instead I get across the road as quickly as possible, through the potholes and the cracks in the road surface, narrowly missing the legs of people who randomly stop in front of me.
We need a drink. There aren't that many options on 7th but in this searing heat and after half an hour mingling among these crowds we decide that Hard Rock Café is good enough. It's not good enough. Not really. Just like the Hard Rock Cafes in Los Angeles and Barcelona we have experienced there is nothing but inaccessible, high seating in the bar area at Hard Rock Café. If you want a smaller table then you have to have something to eat. But we don't want to eat. We just want to get a drink, consult the information we have and plan what to do for the rest of the afternoon and evening. The girl at the bar advises us that we cannot have a small table in the dining area unless we are dining, but that we can take the drinks back out into what she calls the lobby and find a seat there. Wearily we agree to this but go back to the lobby to find that there are no seats available. There are only around eight seats in there consisting of two small sofas wedged into a corner. It's another blatant misuse of space. And anyway all the seats are currently occupied by shouty people reporting to each other that they were like, and then he was like, and then she was like, and then they were like. It's a bad episode of Friends. More commonly known as an episode of Friends.
We go back to the bar to speak to someone else about getting a seat at a sensible height. One woman sees sense and allows us through to the dining area with our drinks. Yet within seconds of sitting down we are questioned again. A man comes over and informs us that he will be our server for the evening and he'll now take our food order. There isn't a food order, we say. We just want to get a drink and we've been through all of this once before. He's not sure. The idea of someone using a wheelchair wanting an accessible table is clearly quite confusing to him and he wanders off to consult one of his seniors. Finally he accepts that there will be no food order and no further moving of chairs but ten or fifteen minutes later he's back to offer us more drinks. Another controversy looms. There are free refills on drinks in this area and we are advised that will apply to us even if we do not eat. I find it hard to believe and sure enough our server questions it. He has to speak to the manager when we ask if the next lot of drinks are free. We would maybe not have ordered them if we had known they would not be free, and because we have been told that we can have them the manager agrees not to charge us. The server looks suitably miffed. We've broken two house rules in the space of a few minutes and it has completely disorientated him. We don't see him again. Presumably he has gone for a lie down.
I'd forego a free drink for some decent access. Is it too much to ask in 2014 to have a bar area at one of the largest bar chains in the world that has some lower, accessible seating? It would seem so. They have accessible toilets and lifts but no lower seating. I always find it puzzling when a public place has an accessible toilet but no access in other ways. It smacks of lip service to the accessibility laws. And as we were to discover, this problem is not limited to Hard Rock Café.
Back out on the road we head for Drunken Shakespeare. It's housed in a pub called Queens. I don't know where the Arms or the Head is. It's just Queens. It's a small pub but I can see one low and therefore accessible table placed in front of the big screen showing England's soccer send-off series match with Honduras. Promising. Now comes the disappointment. We ask about Drunken Shakespeare and the lady there enthuses about it at length as if she is trying to sell it to us. But of course she hasn't thought it through. It's upstairs, she tells us when we enquire about accessibility. She offers to get the staff to help lift me up the stairs but I decline. Like climbing on to coaches I'm passed all of that now. I don't trust people I don't know to do that and besides where would I then go to the toilet? Another toilet drama on this holiday is not required thank you very much although who knows, there might well be a disabled toilet upstairs. You have to comply with the law after all.
By now fatigue is beginning to set in so we decide to head back towards the hotel for a rest. The plan is to come out again for a late meal. We set off again on the packed streets, stopping regularly for a game of frogger at the crossings;
"Hey yo cruise control!" shouts a man stepping out in front of me. Before I can say 'who the fuck are you calling cruise control and what does that even mean?' I find myself taking his outstretched hand. I feel somehow at the time that it would be rude not to. Now, on reflection, I think I should have told him to shove his hand up his arse. Not only has he just referred to me as cruise control (and apart from anything else I am not on cruise control I am pushing my tripes off on some quite steep slopes in stifling heat) but he compounds his error with the following nugget;
"He's on cruise control and he's still got a chick!"
Emma's my chick. I'm sure she's flattered. I should probably be grateful that he has worked out that we are partners and that she is not just some care in the community worker. Even if I am greatly offended that my domestic arrangements seem to surprise him. He explains that he is collecting money so he can go on tour to Toronto, Canada. Why do Americans always feel the need to tell you what country they mean when they name a city? Toronto, Canada. London, England. Wales, England. Or something. He shoves a CD into my lap. He's signed it as if he is some kind of well known artist. It looks like some kind of gangsta crap. It becomes apparent that he wants me to make a donation to his tour fund. I'm suspicious that he is not going to Toronto, Canada at all and that he is just going to the pub with its high seating. There's an awkward moment when I fail to reach for any change to give to him and he makes a remark about how he accepts notes also. Still I don't feel compelled to donate. He's no Geldof, this fella;
"Does this mean I have to give you your CD back?" I ask almost rhetorically and before I have even finished the question he has snatched his CD back and is telling me to have a good day. He thanks me, for what I am not sure.
We're about half way back when Emma stops suddenly. She has noticed that the ruck sack on the back of my chair has been opened. Nothing has been taken out of it because I keep everything valuable to others elsewhere, but it's still a little unnerving. We can't figure out when it could have happened but she says it was definitely not open earlier when she was walking along just behind me. You've probably watched too much television if you think New York is really some kind of crime capital but at the same time it goes to show that you have to be careful here. We can only conclude that it must have happened at one of the many crowded corners where you have to stop to cross the street. Maybe it was the naked cowgirl trying to be opportunistic on a slow day.
Our evening meal is at McHales, a pub just a couple of blocks away which has both a disabled toilet and a crap ramp. Two men sit animatedly discussing ice hockey as they watch the Stanley Cup Finals between the Los Angeles Kings and their New York Rangers. In truly American style one leaves before the end, and soon after we take our leave at the end of a long, exhausting but kind of fun first day in the big apple.
Friday, 20 June 2014
New York: The Journey
They've let me out of the country again.
I've just come back from New York. That's New York, New York. So good they named it twice. Either that or just because actually, like most things American, it just likes to shout about itself to you repeatedly until you bloody well listen. In any case and as we all know, I can't go to the paper shop next to the chippy without some kind of incident, so send me 3,000 miles across the Atlantic and you are guaranteed a story. What follows is as faithful an account of that story, the trouble, stupidity and the joy and wonder of it all as I can remember. Though I do have notes, obviously.
Inspired by Emma's prolific ability to Get Things Done I am something of a frequent flyer by now. I travelled a lot when I played basketball but now I'm actually opening my eyes and seeing the world. Rather than hotels and sports halls. Also, I'm sharing it with someone I love and choose to be with, rather than with a group of athletic types who all think I'm a loser and laugh out loud when I speak at team meetings. Enough of that. Let me get off the psychiatrists couch and get back to the point of this paragraph which is that having travelled a lot I have come to realise that one of the few things I dislike about holidaying are the unreasonably early starts. You all know how it is I'm sure. Your flight is at 10.00am say, but you are advised to get there three hours before that. Since the nearest airport that offers access to anywhere further away than Luton is in Manchester you have to get up a couple of hours before that if you are travelling there on the morning of the flight. Our flight to New York is at 9.50am on Saturday June 7 2014 so we take the decision to stay in one of the hotels near to the airport on Friday night. It's expensive but you can't take it with you and besides, that extra hour or two in bed and the opportunity to have some breakfast might be helpful before a seven-hour flight. Particularly with my experience of airports and airlines. Again, they don't let me down. Well they do, but you know what I mean.
The Crown Plaza isn't the monstrous skyscraper I had anticipated but it serves its purpose. Except that there is no disabled parking available when we get there on Friday afternoon. There are a few spaces, around eight, but of course they have all been taken already by a mixture of fat people and dyslexics. Luckily I am now well versed in the art of getting out of my car and into my wheelchair in a space no bigger than an aeroplane toilet (much more on which later) without scratching the Rolls Royce made entirely out of gold parked next to me. Once settled in we naturally head straight to the bar and the rest of the day passes without incident. It's enjoyable even. Even I would struggle to fail to enjoy an afternoon in a bar in the knowledge that I have 10 days in the Big Apple to look forward to. Were it possible, I might even get excited.
On our way back to the room I am stopped by a man I am struggling to recognise.
"Fancy seeing you here." he says cheerfully.
Fancy. I don't remember this man. This happens a lot. I've explained before how using a wheelchair makes you instantly recognisable, and if it doesn't then it at the very least makes people think they recognise you. There are people out there who think I wrote A Brief History Of Time. I use a wheelchair so it must have been me.
"Where are you flying to?" the man asks, unfazed by my discomfort and my yes-I-absolutely-know-who-you-are act. It's impossibly rude and embarrassing to ask someone who they are so I fake it with all I have. It might be my fault anyway. There's every chance that I do know him but I just cannot bring him to mind. Even now, two weeks later as I write, I have no idea;
"New York." I answer.
He smiles at this and enthusiastically advises me that I must see the naked cowboy who hangs around Times Square. We're staying in Times Square so there is a fair chance that the naked cowboy and I will run into each other. I don't fancy it. I wish I had known about this earlier. , I could have prepared at least. Perhaps gouged my eyes out. Perhaps not. I need another disability like the BBC need another panel show. My unrecognised friend goes on to tell me how he is about to visit Venice, and I mumble something about how I went there once and it was full of steps which my dad had to carry me up despite the fact that I was 11 years old. Why does everything come down to access with me? Oh yes, because there isn't any. There was even less than none in 1987. I haven't been back to Venice.
Things start well on Saturday morning. We are awoken at a more civilised 6.00am and enjoy a proper breakfast. The plan is to get the free bus from the hotel to the airport terminal and, after being told on Friday night that we might have to get a taxi we learn that the bus is accessible after all. The driver tells me this with great pride, as if he's telling me that he's just found out how to eradicate disease across the world. He hasn't, of course. He's come up with two metal planks that pass for a ramp. Somehow they get me on to the back of the mini bus and we're on our way.
We'd had some trouble checking in online yesterday, a fact we explain to the American Airlines staff when we arrive. They're very helpful. They check us in quickly, bumping us past the growing queue of tired children and their disinterested parents. They're falling over each other to help, asking if there is anything else they can do for us. If I had known then what I know now I would have written them a list. Before we are allowed to advance to the departure lounge and the next bar they ask the obligatory stupid security questions. Are you carrying any sharp objects? Any fireworks? A large bomb perhaps? A nuclear device? Even more pointlessly they take our word for it when we tell them that we are not carrying anything dangerous on to the plane and I am left wondering what the point of all that was. Is anyone going to say that yes they are carrying a set of knives and a detonating ruck sack on board?
Boarding the plane carries with it the usual embarrassment attached to being dragged backwards on an aisle chair but thankfully there is no repeat of last year's Rio Ferdinand episode. They have let me board the plane first for once which seems like the sensible and therefore least likely thing they could have done. However, I am alarmed by the size of this plane. When we went to Orlando and Las Vegas the planes were three times the size of this one. Essentially what I am now sat on is a flying 10A. I would not be at all surprised if it stopped at Dovecot. I'm in the middle of a row of three seats with Emma to my left nearest the window. To my right is a young man who seems to know some of the airline staff. He's talking to them quite matter-of-factly, not in that forced, awkward way that people who don't know each other ordinarily communicate. He has an ipad and throughout the flight he uses it to play some kind of inane war game. Every time I glance over he is pushing buttons in an attempt to virtually invade Poland. I have absolutely no room to move and I'm going to pay for it at some point.
The in-flight movie is The Monuments Men, a would-be comedy set during the second world war about stolen paintings or some such. It stars Matt Damon and Bill Murray and I remember seeing them promoting it on the Graham Norton Show a few weeks ago. Sadly, there were more laughs in that 10-minute interview than there are in the whole of the film. Perhaps it is not supposed to be funny. It is set during the second world war after all. If that is the case though, why does it have Bill Murray in it? For a character that dull they would have been better off casting Roy Hodgson or Andy Murray. My war-loving neighbour is not impressed. He never once looks up from his war game, let alone go to the trouble of putting on the headset. He likes his war a little more realistic, obviously.
Going to the toilet would not make the cut in a holiday story for most people. But the disabled are not most people. When the film finishes I have to go through the rigmarole. This is a seven-hour flight and people who go the toilet by the clock cannot just jump around in their seat with their hand between their legs in the manner of a small child when they need a wee. I put my attention light on reluctantly, feeling like the kid in class sticking up his hand and asking Miss if he can go to the toilet. My discomfort is only going to get worse from here. The stewards bring the aisle chair and after the mandatory backwards drag down the aisle they place me outside the toilet. I wait for them to push me into the toilet but they never do. I realise that they're somehow expecting me to stand up at this point and walk in to the toilet. I have to explain that the chances of that happening in this life aren't good to which they respond by wearily setting about the task of pushing the aisle chair into the minute crevice that qualifies for a door way. This is when we all realise.
The aisle chair does not fit into the toilet.
At first they try and force it in there anyway but it's not happening. Whichever angle they turn the aisle chair, however hard they push it, however many times they sigh and ask me again if I can stand, it's not going in. I'm going to wet myself, so I decide that a slightly better option is to ask if they have anything that I can pee in. I've peed in a pint glass before now which you may not want to think about if you are going to the pub this evening and you spot a wheelchair user who does not have the luxury of an accessible toilet. It's ugly but it is the only way I can see this working. I'm about three feet away from the actual toilet bowl and guess what ladies, it doesn't stretch that far. I know, I was as surprised as you are. I need a bottle, a glass, a fucking empty coke can, anything to pee in except my pants. But they don't have anything. In fact they look at me as if that suggestion is a good deal worse than the prospect of peeing in my pants. They would. They're not wearing my pants.
They take the door off the toilet.
I'm not kidding. They have to unscrew it in several different places which takes a while, but eventually they just pull the bloody thing down. I am so relieved that I don't really think about the fact that I now have no privacy in this desperate, door-less dunny. There are two people waiting to use the toilet behind me, one of whom is of course female. But I ignore all of this and go about my business. It's become an emergency. Mid-pee it dawns on me that the stewards are standing behind me with a curtain to protect my modesty. My dignity has flown away so fast that it will be in New York before me. When it is all over the drag back to my seat seems tame by comparison. I thank the stewards for their ingenuity, hopefully without a trace of sarcasm, and hastily stick my head into my kindle.
An hour before we land my pain becomes physical. The tiny seat I have has played havoc with my posture and the right side of my back has stiffened up considerably. By the time we land I am just desperate for the war-game man to stand up and just get off the plane so I can at least stretch the muscle out. Inside the terminal at JFK airport I pay another bathroom visit, keeping the door where it is this time, and I have to sit on the floor for several minutes to alleviate the pain. We try to pass through immigration but are dragged back because American Airlines have not advised us that we needed to fill in one of the blue forms. The ones which ask whether you have brought any fruit into the country. The last thing the Americans want is to run the risk of foreigners bringing their exploding apples into the USA. There's further confusion about the flight number because there is one for BA who are running the show and one for American Airlines who have provided the flying 10A. A staff member insists that we use the American Airlines number and only then can we finally progress to pick up our luggage. By this time I have never felt pain like it in my back. I'm literally writhing around in my chair, chucking down painkillers like polos. I think a nerve is trapped and I'm not sure it will free itself in time for us to enjoy our first afternoon and evening in New York.
Which would be a real shame because it has been such fun so far.
I've just come back from New York. That's New York, New York. So good they named it twice. Either that or just because actually, like most things American, it just likes to shout about itself to you repeatedly until you bloody well listen. In any case and as we all know, I can't go to the paper shop next to the chippy without some kind of incident, so send me 3,000 miles across the Atlantic and you are guaranteed a story. What follows is as faithful an account of that story, the trouble, stupidity and the joy and wonder of it all as I can remember. Though I do have notes, obviously.
Inspired by Emma's prolific ability to Get Things Done I am something of a frequent flyer by now. I travelled a lot when I played basketball but now I'm actually opening my eyes and seeing the world. Rather than hotels and sports halls. Also, I'm sharing it with someone I love and choose to be with, rather than with a group of athletic types who all think I'm a loser and laugh out loud when I speak at team meetings. Enough of that. Let me get off the psychiatrists couch and get back to the point of this paragraph which is that having travelled a lot I have come to realise that one of the few things I dislike about holidaying are the unreasonably early starts. You all know how it is I'm sure. Your flight is at 10.00am say, but you are advised to get there three hours before that. Since the nearest airport that offers access to anywhere further away than Luton is in Manchester you have to get up a couple of hours before that if you are travelling there on the morning of the flight. Our flight to New York is at 9.50am on Saturday June 7 2014 so we take the decision to stay in one of the hotels near to the airport on Friday night. It's expensive but you can't take it with you and besides, that extra hour or two in bed and the opportunity to have some breakfast might be helpful before a seven-hour flight. Particularly with my experience of airports and airlines. Again, they don't let me down. Well they do, but you know what I mean.
The Crown Plaza isn't the monstrous skyscraper I had anticipated but it serves its purpose. Except that there is no disabled parking available when we get there on Friday afternoon. There are a few spaces, around eight, but of course they have all been taken already by a mixture of fat people and dyslexics. Luckily I am now well versed in the art of getting out of my car and into my wheelchair in a space no bigger than an aeroplane toilet (much more on which later) without scratching the Rolls Royce made entirely out of gold parked next to me. Once settled in we naturally head straight to the bar and the rest of the day passes without incident. It's enjoyable even. Even I would struggle to fail to enjoy an afternoon in a bar in the knowledge that I have 10 days in the Big Apple to look forward to. Were it possible, I might even get excited.
On our way back to the room I am stopped by a man I am struggling to recognise.
"Fancy seeing you here." he says cheerfully.
Fancy. I don't remember this man. This happens a lot. I've explained before how using a wheelchair makes you instantly recognisable, and if it doesn't then it at the very least makes people think they recognise you. There are people out there who think I wrote A Brief History Of Time. I use a wheelchair so it must have been me.
"Where are you flying to?" the man asks, unfazed by my discomfort and my yes-I-absolutely-know-who-you-are act. It's impossibly rude and embarrassing to ask someone who they are so I fake it with all I have. It might be my fault anyway. There's every chance that I do know him but I just cannot bring him to mind. Even now, two weeks later as I write, I have no idea;
"New York." I answer.
He smiles at this and enthusiastically advises me that I must see the naked cowboy who hangs around Times Square. We're staying in Times Square so there is a fair chance that the naked cowboy and I will run into each other. I don't fancy it. I wish I had known about this earlier. , I could have prepared at least. Perhaps gouged my eyes out. Perhaps not. I need another disability like the BBC need another panel show. My unrecognised friend goes on to tell me how he is about to visit Venice, and I mumble something about how I went there once and it was full of steps which my dad had to carry me up despite the fact that I was 11 years old. Why does everything come down to access with me? Oh yes, because there isn't any. There was even less than none in 1987. I haven't been back to Venice.
Things start well on Saturday morning. We are awoken at a more civilised 6.00am and enjoy a proper breakfast. The plan is to get the free bus from the hotel to the airport terminal and, after being told on Friday night that we might have to get a taxi we learn that the bus is accessible after all. The driver tells me this with great pride, as if he's telling me that he's just found out how to eradicate disease across the world. He hasn't, of course. He's come up with two metal planks that pass for a ramp. Somehow they get me on to the back of the mini bus and we're on our way.
We'd had some trouble checking in online yesterday, a fact we explain to the American Airlines staff when we arrive. They're very helpful. They check us in quickly, bumping us past the growing queue of tired children and their disinterested parents. They're falling over each other to help, asking if there is anything else they can do for us. If I had known then what I know now I would have written them a list. Before we are allowed to advance to the departure lounge and the next bar they ask the obligatory stupid security questions. Are you carrying any sharp objects? Any fireworks? A large bomb perhaps? A nuclear device? Even more pointlessly they take our word for it when we tell them that we are not carrying anything dangerous on to the plane and I am left wondering what the point of all that was. Is anyone going to say that yes they are carrying a set of knives and a detonating ruck sack on board?
Boarding the plane carries with it the usual embarrassment attached to being dragged backwards on an aisle chair but thankfully there is no repeat of last year's Rio Ferdinand episode. They have let me board the plane first for once which seems like the sensible and therefore least likely thing they could have done. However, I am alarmed by the size of this plane. When we went to Orlando and Las Vegas the planes were three times the size of this one. Essentially what I am now sat on is a flying 10A. I would not be at all surprised if it stopped at Dovecot. I'm in the middle of a row of three seats with Emma to my left nearest the window. To my right is a young man who seems to know some of the airline staff. He's talking to them quite matter-of-factly, not in that forced, awkward way that people who don't know each other ordinarily communicate. He has an ipad and throughout the flight he uses it to play some kind of inane war game. Every time I glance over he is pushing buttons in an attempt to virtually invade Poland. I have absolutely no room to move and I'm going to pay for it at some point.
The in-flight movie is The Monuments Men, a would-be comedy set during the second world war about stolen paintings or some such. It stars Matt Damon and Bill Murray and I remember seeing them promoting it on the Graham Norton Show a few weeks ago. Sadly, there were more laughs in that 10-minute interview than there are in the whole of the film. Perhaps it is not supposed to be funny. It is set during the second world war after all. If that is the case though, why does it have Bill Murray in it? For a character that dull they would have been better off casting Roy Hodgson or Andy Murray. My war-loving neighbour is not impressed. He never once looks up from his war game, let alone go to the trouble of putting on the headset. He likes his war a little more realistic, obviously.
Going to the toilet would not make the cut in a holiday story for most people. But the disabled are not most people. When the film finishes I have to go through the rigmarole. This is a seven-hour flight and people who go the toilet by the clock cannot just jump around in their seat with their hand between their legs in the manner of a small child when they need a wee. I put my attention light on reluctantly, feeling like the kid in class sticking up his hand and asking Miss if he can go to the toilet. My discomfort is only going to get worse from here. The stewards bring the aisle chair and after the mandatory backwards drag down the aisle they place me outside the toilet. I wait for them to push me into the toilet but they never do. I realise that they're somehow expecting me to stand up at this point and walk in to the toilet. I have to explain that the chances of that happening in this life aren't good to which they respond by wearily setting about the task of pushing the aisle chair into the minute crevice that qualifies for a door way. This is when we all realise.
The aisle chair does not fit into the toilet.
At first they try and force it in there anyway but it's not happening. Whichever angle they turn the aisle chair, however hard they push it, however many times they sigh and ask me again if I can stand, it's not going in. I'm going to wet myself, so I decide that a slightly better option is to ask if they have anything that I can pee in. I've peed in a pint glass before now which you may not want to think about if you are going to the pub this evening and you spot a wheelchair user who does not have the luxury of an accessible toilet. It's ugly but it is the only way I can see this working. I'm about three feet away from the actual toilet bowl and guess what ladies, it doesn't stretch that far. I know, I was as surprised as you are. I need a bottle, a glass, a fucking empty coke can, anything to pee in except my pants. But they don't have anything. In fact they look at me as if that suggestion is a good deal worse than the prospect of peeing in my pants. They would. They're not wearing my pants.
They take the door off the toilet.
I'm not kidding. They have to unscrew it in several different places which takes a while, but eventually they just pull the bloody thing down. I am so relieved that I don't really think about the fact that I now have no privacy in this desperate, door-less dunny. There are two people waiting to use the toilet behind me, one of whom is of course female. But I ignore all of this and go about my business. It's become an emergency. Mid-pee it dawns on me that the stewards are standing behind me with a curtain to protect my modesty. My dignity has flown away so fast that it will be in New York before me. When it is all over the drag back to my seat seems tame by comparison. I thank the stewards for their ingenuity, hopefully without a trace of sarcasm, and hastily stick my head into my kindle.
An hour before we land my pain becomes physical. The tiny seat I have has played havoc with my posture and the right side of my back has stiffened up considerably. By the time we land I am just desperate for the war-game man to stand up and just get off the plane so I can at least stretch the muscle out. Inside the terminal at JFK airport I pay another bathroom visit, keeping the door where it is this time, and I have to sit on the floor for several minutes to alleviate the pain. We try to pass through immigration but are dragged back because American Airlines have not advised us that we needed to fill in one of the blue forms. The ones which ask whether you have brought any fruit into the country. The last thing the Americans want is to run the risk of foreigners bringing their exploding apples into the USA. There's further confusion about the flight number because there is one for BA who are running the show and one for American Airlines who have provided the flying 10A. A staff member insists that we use the American Airlines number and only then can we finally progress to pick up our luggage. By this time I have never felt pain like it in my back. I'm literally writhing around in my chair, chucking down painkillers like polos. I think a nerve is trapped and I'm not sure it will free itself in time for us to enjoy our first afternoon and evening in New York.
Which would be a real shame because it has been such fun so far.
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