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The real New York Story … (though my eyes)

I have visited New York eight times. They've written about it, filmed it, photographed it and painted it, and even sung about it, New York, New York.

New York must be the most mythologised city in the world - and some of the myths are true. But which? What is the lie (and the truth) of the land? Let's accept one myth: Manhattan is New York. With apologies to the other four boroughs,the chances are you will be spending your time in Manhattan.

"Living in New York is expensive."
This is no myth. It's often said that to live even on a basic level in a decent area of New York you need a minimum income of about $A100,000 a year. That's if you rent an apartment you could fit inside the lounge room of your standard Australian home. Don't think about buying until your movie makes $100 million or your album sells a million.

Being a visitor doesn't come cheap either. You want to stay cheap but slightly above closet?
"If you're staying while, consider renting an apartment (fully furnished, as lived in by real New Yorkers)". At least that’s what I was told in the winter of ’94. I did. It was dreadful, with an elevator that couldn’t take me and the luggage at the same time. The bedroom had a beautiful view of the brickwork of the adjacent apartment building, and as for security, my entry pin just never seemed to work.

If it is to be a hotel (and with more than 60,000 rooms in the city, that's the most likely), consider this: a basic hotel room was just under $A200 a day in TriBeCa - towards the southern tip of the city, near both Greenwich Village and SoHo. That meant one week in New York was going to cost me $1,000 before I ate, drank, moved or shopped, let alone partied. Ouch!

But, hey, if you are feeling a bit flash, a bit rash, head uptown to the Upper East Side, famous for its white bread wealth. A night at a swish joint such as The Regency Hotel (where the suits come to power-breakfast and boast about their closeness to Mayor Giuliani) or the ultra-chic The Mark (where Johnny Depp was arrested after trashing a room, but no-one mentions it) starts at $400 and stretches to four figures.

Don't expect change from $70 if you buy a round of cocktails, forget about change from $200 if you go to the theatre, forget about change at all if you tip. Sure, you can live cheaply in New York - you can stay away from everything and everyone.

"New York is the city that never sleeps."
Partly true. It was 3am and the bars were closed. Yes, you read that right, Wednesday night and in the Village the bars had shut down. But are two Australians and a New Yorker going to let a little thing like that stand in their way?

We staggered out into the night, a local in tow, our attention not so much on anyone who lurked around us, but on maintaining our footing. We found a local travel agent coming out of an about-to-close bar and he not only directed us to another establishment but joined us (cf. rude New Yorkers) at the pool tables until that bar closed, too. Sure, they told us we could come back in two hours when they reopened at 6am, but what did they take us for, lushes?

But some things in New York never sleep. Even at 4am it took us only a few minutes to find a cab.

"The eating is good in New York."
True. Having stopped moaning with barely controlled ecstasy about the cream cheese bagels, I can verify that if you live in or about SoHo, The Village or TriBeCa you need never cook again and you could eat your way around the world without leaving downtown. Walk out of your apartment and your choices are many and relatively inexpensive.

But to really live in New York, book ahead at Le Cirq. Some gourmands rate it among the top two or three restaurants in the city, and one of the top 10 in the world. While The Four Seasons is more famous, and almost essential for the cliched New York dining experience, the food at Le Cirq actually lives up to the hype (simply the best duck I have ever had and a dessert called The Stove which is borderline stupid - a chocolate stove, with little chocolate pots filled with coulis, which is lifted up to reveal a triple layer of chocolate cake – but in a very camp way it was sooooo entertaining). Le Cirq also has fewer tourists, being frequented by the nobs and the power end of the city. The maitre'd wears a crisp cream jacket, has immaculate hair smoothed to a glistening point at the back and has the look of Robert De Niro in Casino.

At lunch the room is heavy with suits and women whose occupation appears to be visiting restaurants - not eating at them, for that would be so déclasse - and whose greatest skill is looking around the room without moving their heads. Even if there weren't any famous names to see, the room itself is enough. Le Cirq recently moved from its old world original home to the New York Palace hotel (455 Madison Avenue), where walls decorated with 19th-century-style paintings of gambolling nymphs and the chandeliers and marble columns now share space with modernist angular lamps and high-backed chairs in bright purple, orange and red. My decorator says "it shouldn't work", but it does.

"New York is very unsafe."
Untrue. It always was very much a myth, fuelled by out-of-towners happily demonising the city and locals going all hairy-chested with tales of how brave/tough/blasé they were for living on the edge in such a high-crime area. Even when New York was at its worst, cities such as Baltimore, Washington and New Orleans matched or topped it for violent crime. Mind you, on my first trip to New York 16 years ago, I watched from across midtown Fifth Avenue as two thieves grabbed a bag and jumped into their car to escape - this in broad daylight, midweek, with the sidewalks crowded.

In a week in New York this time around I didn't see any crime and, more important, hardly ever thought of it or felt in any danger. Admittedly I didn't use the subway after 10pm and had no reason to visit Alphabet City on the lower East side (although I do recall a visit to the Pyramid bar/club in the 80s, reputedly the home of drug dealing and ugly drag queens). Even at 1am on Delancey and Bowery, just south of the old punk temple CBGBs (once home of Blondie, Talking Heads and The Ramones) and in an area you were always warned about, the main problem was waving down a cab before the party of rowdy post-teens two shops down.

Even Broadway, the theatre district that seemed so romantic from afar, and downright sleazy, dirty and dangerous up close, has been transformed. With Disney moving in and the city spending millions, the area is seeing its theatres open more often, its buildings cleaned and crime moved on.

"New York is easy to get around."
True. I have four words for you if you want to drive in New York: "Are you ******* ?"
Don't do it. There is nowhere to park; between 34th and 57th streets you can grow a beard waiting for traffic to clear; it can cost a small nation's economy to use a parking lot regularly; and one of those mad taxi drivers will kill you - probably without even noticing that you are there. The most compelling reason not to drive, however, is that you don't need to. If you don't want public transport, the cabs are not expensive (as long as you don't get stuck in a gridlock) and below 110th Street and west of 1st Avenue, easy enough to find. You will find that a few days of cabs starts eating into your wallet almost as fast as those pickpockets hanging around 42nd Street.

Choose instead to walk. Unlike Los Angeles, New Yorkers use their legs for something other than rollerblading. Begin by orienting yourself: the streets run east/west, the avenues north/south. Keep in mind that the fascinating areas of the south end of Manhattan - Greenwich Village, TriBeCa and NoHo/SoHo, south of 14th Street basically - are not in a grid and the streets, lanes and avenues can be confusing unless you have a map.

The buses are not as famous as the subway, but surprisingly easy to use once you get the hang of the routes. They are cheap and you can use a free transfer between the bus and subway. The bus is particularly useful for cross-town journeys, with more routes and more precise connections than the subway, which is primarily a north/south service.

If you use the subway, buy a Metro Card - valid for a fixed number of journeys and now completely replacing tokens - and get a subway map. Study it, learn to love it, put it in your pocket near your wallet and your heart. Yes, the subway is always busy and horrendously packed at peak hours. Yes, it is not always the best option late at night. Yes, if you are travelling in a group and only going a short distance, a cab could well be cheaper, but ... you can move around this city so easily, so efficiently, that you will start thinking you can do everything you had planned when studying the guidebooks at home in Sydney.

"New Yorkers are the rudest people on earth."
Untrue. "This is New York and I am going to be as rude as I want to be," said the Australian. It was his first trip to New York, his mind filled with horror stories, and he was primed with the old football cliche of retaliating first. The hotel staff remained unflustered (as had the driver and shop assistants earlier), even as we watched agog.

New Yorkers are no ruder than Sydneysiders, no ruder than Londoners, no ruder than Berliners.
See a pattern here? If you serve people all day, there are too many people involved to have to worry about checking on their state of health or discussing your opinion of Clinton. Likewise, if you are seeking service, you don't have time to waste. The key to a simple life in New York is get in, be politely direct, and get out.

"New York is cultural overload."
True. You could die trying to follow all the cultural strands of New York - but what a way to go!
One day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (if you have only one day you must plan with a map in hand and your prejudices and favourites in mind, for the Met can easily keep you occupied for a week), followed by a day at the Museum of Modern Art. There you have Western art from the 16th century to the present in one neat city package. Maybe not as exhilarating as Spain's Prado, or as awe-inspiring as the Hermitage, or as famous as the Louvre, but it fills the soul.

But wait, there's more, so much more. There's the Frick Collection (a grand collection in a grand old home); the Guggenheim (a Frank Lloyd-Wright building worth the visit even if you never look at the art); the Metropolitan Opera House (apparently you can hear music inside this amazing building, too); and, in SoHo and TriBeCa, enough small galleries with attitude to fill another month.

Broadway is a good place for great theatre but most people only go there for the musicals.
However, the real action is off-Broadway, down in Greenwich Village. And while New York has barely registered as a centre for pop since Studio 54, anyone worth seeing will come through at some stage.
Grab a copy of The Village Voice and you’ll know exactly who is where.

"New York is not like the rest of the USA."
True. We were in a two-bit town on the edge of Jersey and my driver was watching a local who was waiting patiently to enter the traffic flow from a parking spot. Waiting patiently? "He wouldn't last two minutes in the city," my driver sneered. He was right. New York is simply bigger, faster, noisier, more crowded, more diverse, less inhibited than any other city.

"New York's nightlife is incredible."
True. The first floor dancefloor of Webster Hall is an intimate space. Not because this is a small room - far from it, this room stretches long and wide and is one of five floors in this former mansion on 11th Street. But the press of bodies means little elbow room: his sweat is your sweat is her sweat. As the greatest hits of the '80s blare forth, the men don't bother with introductions; they just adopt the simple technique of grabbing the girl's waist, inserting one thigh between hers and going the wiggle. Upstairs the music is hard techno, the crowd markedly less hetero and the girl in the black leather bikini is doing a mix of gymnastics and gyrations. And doing it rather well, to judge by the $10 and $20 bills stuffed into the waistband. It's 2am on a Sunday, flowing on from Saturday night, the pool tables upstairs are loaded, the bar is 10-deep, the security guards are checking for small firearms and smaller ampoules, and no-one is going home.

"New York is the hippest place in the world."
True. Maybe it's the "f--- you" attitude of yore, maybe it's the presence of a genuine garment district, maybe it's because without cars and big houses people put their boasting energy into clothes and style. Whatever it is, dressing well is the best revenge in New York, but so is dressing down, dressing up, dressing how you damn-well-please.

It's not the clothes; it's the attitood. If you think you are cool, if you are giving off the don't-touch-me-I'm-like-ice vibes, that’s good enough. Squeezed into a booth at the Beauty Bar - once a beauty parlour, now a Village bar with upright hairdryers, reclining barber chairs and manicures with the Manhattans at the weekend - you begin to realise that no-one here is wearing label gear, no-one here is dripping cash, no-one here is even giving a tinker's cuss about you and yours. They don't need to impress; they already know how cool they are.

CASE NOTES
Destination: New York City, New York, United States.

When to go: Best months for mild weather and more acceptable tourist numbers are March-June and September-November.

Getting there: Qantas flies several times a day from Sydney – Los Angeles, connecting with American Airlines.

Where to stay: The Plaza … yes, the legendary New York hotel (now operated by Westin), 5th Avenue at 59th. The Mark, Madison Avenue at E77th, Regency Hotel, 540 Park Avenue at 61st. Cosmopolitan Hotel, 95 West Broadway (at Chambers).

What to read/see: Village Voice online at www.villagevoice.com

More information: New York Convention and Visitors Bureau, (0011 1 212) 397 8200; New York State Travel and Tourism Web site.

Trevor Sinclair
May 1999

Oh Savannah

Trevor Sinclair
June 2003

By Trevor Sinclair

My oh so patient partner and I arrived in Savannah after an extremely tedious drive from Atlanta. Trucks, eighteen-wheelers, trucks, trucks and more trucks. If I’d known more I would have flown. With ticket prices under $50 it’s gotta be worth it. The drive along the Interstate is very lush green and somewhat pretty, but it’s not as though there’s anywhere to stop, apart from finding the most wonderful fresh fruit in the small town of Dudley…somewhere off the freeway past Macon.

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