#44 Being a massive tourist.

...and back to New York, for the last time.

It is a fact I still find breathtaking: more people visit London each year than New York. Except that they don't, really, because over three quarters of New York's 45 millions annual visitors are domestic, and the commonly-cited figures consider only international tourists. So pipe down London.

The truly breathtaking number is this: New York, as isolated as it is from other countries (only East Coast Canadians are close), receives nearly ten million international visitors every year. The vast majority of those people fly for five hours or more to see Lady Liberty through their airplane windows. That's commitment.

It's testament to the reputation - part puff, part deserved - of the Big Apple. Only Paris could claim to be nearly as fixed in the popular imagination. And, as Doug Stanhope put it, "Fuck the French".

I had two weeks to spend in New York after finishing work. Since my departure was ahead of schedule, I'd neglected a lot of tourists 'musts', so I bent to it.

Less of a blog post, more of a love in.
If you wanted hard-hitting journalism, you've come to the wrong place. By which I mean Blogger generally, and specifically this blog, and specifically this post. Almost everything I did in my last few days was wonderful. Almost.

First, stop making excuses and go to Shake Shack. It's fucking spectacular. Cheesy fries, a cheeseburger of some kind and, of course, a milkshake, are a bare minimum. I went for the vibrating burger that tells you your order is ready; I stayed for the taste (and I really didn't expect to).

While we're on food, check out Sarabeth's West for the best Bloody Mary's this side of the Tudors.

The Met Cloisters feel like an odd visit as a European: why travel 4,000 miles to visit a museum of Mediaeval European art? Well, because it's spectacularly well-curated, laid out around a mocked-up monastery to put the art in proper context, and because the gallery tours are excellent.

Top of the Rock? Well, that was the 'almost'. It's okay, if you like that sort of thing, but pretty much exactly what you would expect. The short museum in the base is quite interesting...

I went back to the MoMA. It's still great. The current Abstract Expressionism exhibition is particularly amazing for the fact that it draws entirely on the MoMA's collections - which shows quite how important the institution is to modern art. Andy Warhol's films, though, are much more interesting in concept than in practice.

The American Museum of Natural History is as good as ever, though they let me down.

Finally, Ellis Island:

a) is much better if you aren't conned into getting the worst audio guide ever.
b) teaches you more about America than any other museum I've been to.
c) needs a queuing system that doesn't involve Stage I hypothermia.

The gaps were filled with a gooey assortment of regional and international foods, outdoor sites (the Brooklyn Bridge, Central Park), and topped off with spectacular pie from Four and Twenty Blackbirds (of Park Slope - look them up, and try the Salted Honey), and milk from Momofuku Milk Bar.

In summary, I'm a fat fucking pie, and I can't believe I'm no longer in the best city in the world. But I'll be back.

Check out my website for a new blog in the next few days.

Sx

#35 Nothing comes close to the Golden Coast.

Los Angeles is the most divisive of tourist destinations. It's attractions are as big as they come: Hollywood, Malibu Beach, Venice Beach, the Sierra Nevada, and a clutch of unique wild places: Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks, the Mojave desert, and (casting slightly further afield) the Grand Canyon. Yet most people I have ever talked to loathe it. Why?

It is often criticised for being a cultural wasteland. On the one hand this seems absurd - Hollywood movies aren't always (or even often) stellar, but Hollywood has still given us hundreds of spectacular films. Name another city with as rich a cultural output during the latter part of the 20th century.

On the other hand, I know what people mean. Film studios do not a cultural landmark make, however culturally significant their output may be. Artists' studios and writers' desks are seldom particularly interesting. It is best to worship Hollywood from afar, curled up with a bucket of overpriced candy and a frisky *CENSORED FOR A BETTER AMERICA*.

And culture in a city is about way more than the arts. It's the jostle and the street fairs and the ethnicaly-mixed neighbourhoods, the farmers' markets and the lines outside clubs. It is the very density of cities that give them their vivacity. LA misses that, totally.

It feels like a wasteland as you fly in from New York. It is a flat, drab gray that stretches to the horizon, an overwhelming expanse of gray, unbroken by the striking relief that makes Manhattan so thrilling. There is no heart, there aren't even any organs - just an homogenous mass of gray tissue, deeply veined with eight-lane highways. These veins are hopelessly clogged: millions of blood cells (by which I mean cars: still with me?) crawl along them.

There are stories about the influence of the big American car manufacturers in the urban planning of LA County, and I can believe them. In a city with no reference points, no centre, and a woefully inadequate public transportation system, everyone is forced to drive everywhere. There is no 'let's walk around and see what we see' - attractions are miles apart. You drive to a destination - a theatre, a restaurant, a shop - then you drive away. The only way you can string together entertainments is by going to a mall (which you drive to, of course).

As a city with any identity, it's a non-starter. But as a tourist attraction? I thought it was great.

A couple of disclaimers: I was there very, very briefly (essentially for two days), and I worked for most of that time. A good-sized closet could have kept me busy for the amount of free time I had. I was on expenses, so the considerable cost of everything didn't bother me as much as it otherwise would have. We got taxis everywhere, and I'm good at sleeping in cars, so the urban sprawl didn't bother me. The weather was perfect (though that's part of the attraction of Southern California - the weather is mostly perfect). Finally, I was staying at a nice-ish hotel - I had little chance to experience the shocking wealth disparity LA is known for.

I went for a cycle around Santa Monica and Venice Beach. Everyone was friendly and unpretentious. There was a nice amount of quirky. The Pacific, of course, lies to the west, and the sunset was as sublime as it was visible. Though I would guess sunrise is equally visible, since the tallest thing in LA county is Jane Lynch.

I had a walk around downtown - the pitiful little collection of hotels and municipal buildings that vaguely approximates a normal city centre. It's quiet. Bizarrely quiet. To begin with, it felt unpleasantly quiet, having come from New York. On reflection, the space was refreshing. No one jostled you. You could have driven over to Vegas, stolen a tiger from Caesar's Palace, brought it back with you and swung it around liberally without hitting a soul. Maybe I will next time.

The restaurants were really very good (maybe people expect more, when they're driven for an hour to get there). Again, everyone was notably friendly. The tap water tastes absolutely amazing - once more, in stark contrast to New York. Seriously, they should bottle this stuff and sell it in New York. Models would snap it up.

Beverly Hills is good for a laugh. Never before has a place so exactly matched up my expectations. Drive along any of the major boulevards, and you will see, in order: a palm tree, a luxury condo block, a restaurant, a palm tree, a bar, a palm tree, a plastic surgery clinic, a luxury condo block, a palm tree, and another palm tree, in a repeating pattern for the next eight thousand miles.

I get the wasteland thing now. If you are remotely interested in anything other than comfortable, modest pleasure stretching until you are 100 (and look only 90!), you shouldn't stay. It must be so boring to be there for an extended period. But I'm definitely going to go back. After all, I didn't meet Taylor Townsend from the OC, which was the primary objective.

#29 Fashion worth fighting for.

In the 1957 movie 'Funny Face', Audrey Hepburn plays a downtrodden but educated woman who works in a bookstore; plain and dowdy. Her life is transformed when Dick Avery, a hot fashion photographer, decides she is to be the new face of Quality magazine, and, suddenly, she becomes the bleeding edge of fashionable.


I can empathise. Hepburn's experience is not unlike that which any European will has upon arrival in America. Because America, as a nation, is sartorially retarded. It is a wasteland. I've been to better-dressed homeless shelters.

Now, I'm not an individual overly concerned with fashion: I normally wear t-shirts and jeans, I have silly-coloured socks. My shirts - pure cotton though they may be - are unimaginatively plain and pinstriped, in a lazy, preppy sort of way. I do possess - and I admit this with great reticence - t-shirts with beer company logos on them. That's t-shirts. Plural. All in all, I'm no Kate Moss.

But I look decent. I don't wear white sports socks with a black suit. I don't wear shorts to restaurants. I don't own a fanny pack. I don't wear running shoes to work. I believe fedora hats had their day in the early 20th century. In fact, even a day was pushing it. (Oh, and by the way, it is customary in civilised countries to remove your hat inside. Cunts.)

Furthermore, I believe bermuda shorts to be a beach clothing item. You've already heard my opinions on baseball caps. Don't even get me started on wedding attire ("Congratulations, you looked like a complete twat on the most important day of your life").

Clearly, New York has some very fashionable people (I've even spied some harem pants of late: mais oui!), but if you speak to any of them - which I often do, in my line of work - they tend to be European. The Americans try and copy, but just don't get it. The hipsters - fedora hats, canvas shoes, capri pants, stupid, lo-fidelity headphones and badly-tuned guitars - are the worst, because they're obviously trying really hard.


In truth, New York is tolerable. But dare to venture out into New England or Jersey, and God help you. New York is a sort of halfway house - a safe haven for any would-be European visitor to start with. Like the little coves you practice windsurfing in, it helps those a little wet behind the ears to adjust. From there, they can make little weekend trips into the open ocean of sartorial carnage, so that the tsunamis of middle America don't immediately get them. One denim jeans-denim jacket combo is one thing, but try being faced by a hundred of them at once.

The whole thing is exacerbated by the obscene, graphic obesity everywhere you look. If you think a t-shirt bearing the logo of a fake girder company and it's fake date of incorporation printed faintly so as to add an air of Retro Charm is unspeakably horrendous, wait 'til you've seen it stretched hopefully, vainly over three hundred pounds of prime Yanksteak.


None of this bothers me terribly - as cultural omissions go, well-tailored trousers I can deal with. It just adds an old-fashioned air to the whole place, taken with everything else. Prices are a little cheaper, the clothes are a little 90s, the music is mostly pre-teen. They are still arguing about gay marriage. It's Europe, five years ago. Except there aren't any jobs.

P.S. Thought I should drop in a link to America's sartorial Bible: People of WalMart.

#25 Run this town.

Central Park, May 2010

Michael R. Bloomberg, the esteemed Mayor of this city, has famously pledged that no New Yorker will live more than 10 blocks from a park by the end of his tenure. Well, the boy's done good. New York is bursting with green spaces. Admittedly, some of them are a little small. Hell, many of them make your average village green look like Yellowstone. But they are there, and they are public, and they're fab for a spot of lunch.

I live four blocks from Central Park, the grandaddy of New York's parks, and two blocks from the terrapin-infested Morningside Park. I'm Bloomberg's publicist's wet dream. Anyway, since I'm cheap and city parks are free, I tend to use them to their fullest.

It's a strange park, Central Park. Bizarrely large for an island so chronically short of space, you feel slightly guilty using it. Does New York really need it? I'm all for green spaces, but I bet real estate prices would be a bit lower if Central Park didn't exist. And getting across town would be easier. And there would be less tourists. And John Lennon memorials. And overpriced hot dogs. And surely it's not a very green green space? If Central Park were razed, less people would have to commute from Brooklyn to Manhattan, so there would be energy savings. I bet they use a sickening amount of water irrigating it.

Anyway, I'm quite a keen runner, if you didn't know. The four runs per week of my youth have ebbed to one or two, in truth, but I'm still out there pounding the pavement with reasonable frequency.

I generally run alone, in the countryside, passing maybe one or two people in an hour. I run like Paris Hilton after an oestrogen injection. Not slowly, you understand - for someone of my build, I'm pretty nippy - just in an hilarious, let's-get-a-photo-of-this-mincing-idiot style. Central Park is to running what the hajj to Mecca is to Islam. So colour me a little self-conscious.

The saving grace for my ego is that Americans run slowly. I don't know why. I overtake almost everybody; people skinnier than me, with better trainers, who never ever smoke and don't fiddle with their iPods continuously. It's like everyone has been hypnotised and/or sodomized by Richard Simmons. I ran the length of Park Drive the other day, passing maybe 500 people, and no one overtook me. It's bizarre and gratifying and ego-boosting and unnerving all at once. Is there a speed limit no one told me about? Maybe they're concerned about waking Yoko Ono, or the zoo animals? (I'm leaving the obvious joke unmade here.)

#24 American idol.

The word 'hero' is thrown around these days with reckless abandon. Jade Goody is a hero, for dying of cancer. Tony Blair is a hero, for killing thousands of people in the Middle East and destabilising the region indefinitely. Coca-cola are heroes, for abandoning New Coke and sticking to their delicious Old Coke roots. Soldiers are heroes, for pissing on and torturing prisoners. (Okay, the last one is going to upset someone, but since when did doing a job you chose to do and are handsomely renumerated for make you a hero?)

Anyway, with this proliferation of heroes, the question arises: who is really deserving of the title? Well, a huge buzz in New York last week surrounded two bona fide American heroes.

The last few weeks has seen the greatest sports tournament on earth take place in South Africa: the FIFA World Cup Finals. Football, a sport of such simplicity it is understood, played and watched on every continent by several billion people; the only sport whose championships really deserve the 'World' moniker; the beautiful game. This tournament of tournaments was played out in Africa, by far the largest sporting event ever held on that continent, and to many a symbol of Africa's redemption.

What event - what catastrophe, what apocalypse, what alien invasion - do you think it would take, then, to outdo the World Cup? How could the greatest show on earth surrender column inches to anything else?

As it turned out, in America, one man had the power. That man was LeBron James, the most dominant basketball player in the sport's history. Now, 'King James', as he is known, hasn't played a game in months; we are in the NBA's offseason. Nevertheless, James managed to grab a nation's consciousness by bringing to a head month's of speculation, and announcing which team he will play for next season. His contract with the Cleveland Cavaliers, James' hometown and home club since he entered the league, ended on 1st July, and last week the only issue of note in these United States was where he would go next. The whole debacle came to a head Thursday, when James announced, on a live ESPN special, that:

This fall I am taking my talents to South Beach and play with the Miami Heat. The major factor was the best opportunity for me to win, to win now and for the future also. Winning is the most important thing for me. I feel like this is going to be the best opportunity.

Thank God it's over. The last couple of months has been faintly ridiculous, from Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of New York, publicly trying to woo James, to the Knicks' head couch flying across the country with, I assume, suitcases full of paper and cocaine and strippers. Five teams tried to ensnare James, and the amount of money they spent doing so - as well as the amount that the Heat are going to be paying him - is faintly sickening.


A campaign T-shirt for attracting LeBron to the Knicks. Sadly, it wasn't to be.

I mentioned two heroes. The second was a woman who, for reasons unknown to the sane, goes by the stage name of Lady Gaga. Hailed as the 'new Madonna', Gaga has managed to reinvigorate pop with her brand of virulently infectious electropop. Rising out of the shadow of many another popstar - she worked as a songwriter for years before someone decided her plainness didn't much matter if they dressed her like David Bowie's poodle - Gaga has become monumentally successful, breaking all sorts of records and positioning herself as the champion of the freak in all of us; a sort of latter-day, family-friendly Marilyn Manson.


Mademoiselle Gaga.

Last Friday morning she played a free concert at Rockefeller Plaza, and I was amongst the rabble queuing through the godawful hours of the morning to see her. It was sort-of enjoyable, and I'm sort-of glad I did it, but she reserves her best theatrics for audiences who are paying, and for programming broadcast after the watershed.

So, given the slavish devotion I witnessed all week, have I identified two real heroes? 300 million Americans can't be wrong.

#23 Baked apple.

Coney Island, Fourth of July

Contrary to what you might expect, human beings don't burn. They melt, slowly, into syrupy nothingness. New York and everyone in it is gradually dissolving. The sky is a ball of haze, and the iced coffee is running out. The once-sharp outlines of the people of New York are now all wibbly, so that I'm not sure where one ends and another begins. Heed my warning, people: the apple has been baked. Please send iced coffee. Or maybe iced coffins.

#22 The magic of Macy's.

Independence Day is a holiday that has never meant a huge amount to me. Maybe it's the rampant patriotism, maybe it's how annoying I find Will Smith, or maybe it's my grudging feeling that it we shouldn't have let a couple of uppity Puritans boss us around. Anyway, it's all new as far as I'm concerned.

If you're in New York when July 4th swings around, there are a couple of Things You Must Do. One is attend the Nathan's Famous International Hot Dog Eating Championships - unless you're hung over and oversleep - and another is watch the Macy's Fourth of July firework show on the Hudson. Since 1976, Macy's has sponsored what is probably the large annual fireworks display in the world.

The throngs on the west side of Manhattan number in the millions. Including those on the New Jersey shore, three million people are thought to have turned out. The logistical operation is a massive one: the West Side Highway is closed of by a 50-block police cordon. You have to turn up hours in advance to get a spot.

That is, unless you know one of the heads of the FDNY, in which case you can turn up five minutes before the display starts, be taken in a fire truck through the police cordon, and sit on the waterfront in front of the millions of lesser attendees. OH SNAP.

The display was John's-trumpingly magnificent. What else is there to say? Fireworks just make me melt like a little boy.

Afterwards, we headed (again with FDNY escort) to Hogs and Heifers, which I was informed (and I assume this means something to somebody) is where 'Coyote Ugly' was filmed. There were lots of bras everywhere and the barmaid kept telling people they have small penises and it was all a bit overwhelming.

The other thing Macy's does for the Fourth of July, incidentally, is put on a great big sale. Which suited me, as I NOW HAVE BEDDING. (More on the trials and tribulations of moving to my new apartment to follow.)

#20 The national pastime.

On paper, it sounds like a terrible sport. There are generally around five 'scores' a game. A three-hour-plus game yields six minutes of play. A tiny handful of countries play it, so there are no real international championships. There is a very real danger of suffering serious injury as a spectator. It is unusually dominated by a small group of franchises (the New York Yankees have won the World Series 27 times - that's a quarter of all championships since their 1903 beginnings).

So, I stepped into Citifields, the home of the New York Mets (New York's slightly-less-successful-but-still-pretty-good franchise) today with some reservation. I expected boredom, poverty (as is de rigeur in professional sports spectation, refreshments are seen as an opportunity to lavishly rape fans with 1,000%-plus mark ups on soda, beer, etc.), and lots of obnoxious loudmouths.

I wasn't disappointed. There were lots of obnoxious loudmouths. Food and soda was exorbitantly-priced. There is, shall we say, a lot of downtime. Nevertheless, baseball has more to recommend it than you may at first imagine.

Firstly, just like cricket in England, it serves a crucial social role - a place where men can go and get royally plastered over several hours and excuse it as a cultural experience. Other sports - a soccer game, for instance, or rugby - are just too brief. There's too much going on. You are forced to chug beer demonically, or watch the game seriously, but never both. What do you say to the wife when you get home? 'Did you see the goal Barry?' 'No, I was having a downing competition with Eric'.

Baseball has so little going on that you could cook several courses of classic French table d'hôte and still keep up. A mishit ball whacked a girl a few rows in front of me in the head in the first innings, seemingly knocking her unconscious, and I think she still managed to keep track of what was happening.

Secondly, it is a cast-iron opportunity to feel sartorially superior to almost everybody. I went in a filthy beer T-shirt and some threadbare canvas shoes, and I felt a bit overdressed. I wasn't even wearing any trousers. I was really. I made that up. But still, everybody looks like knobs. Especially the players.

I sat there being grumpy, quiet and not-too-gently wilted (New York is currently breaking 90 degrees daily) for three hours, refusing to stand for national anthems and generally being a dick. They play the national anthem AND 'God Bless America' at every league game, incidentally. Isn't that hilarious? Everyone takes their hats off and stays silent, too. Like, for real. And they know the words.

The most irritating thing of all for curmudgeons like yours truly - even more irritating, if you can fathom it, than people who say 'yours truly' - is the Organised Fun. Now last time I was at a European sports event (rugby, if memory serves), chants, Mexican waves and other crowd revelries arose spontaneously. Not so at a baseball game. The event managers in charge have clearly determined that baseball fans are so monumentally cretinous as not to be trusted with the responsibility of having their own fun. Chants are initiated by a pre-recorded obnoxious loudmouth over the PA system.. The crowd are frequently called upon to be as loud as possible, encouraged by a clearly-faked decibel meter. Every little tiny bit of entertainment is sponsored by some company with no discernable link to baseball ('Lincoln, The Official Town Car of the New York Mets!' 'Bridgestone, The Official Tyre of the MLB!'), and features one of a cast of thousands of cretins smiling dumbly and clutching a McDonald's alarm clock.

© Howard Schatz

Really, I quite like the game. As cycnical as I am, they are amazing athletes. I throw like a girl with rickets, so I find their 100mph, 50-yard gunshots to be rather impressive. You can almost hear humeri shattering as hits are made. The wounded in the crowd (another plus, incidentally - I expected fear of litigation to have long taken any risk out of being in the left field bleachers, but apparently not) are testament to how fast the ball moves. And there is a familial, playful atmosphere which I grudgingly admit to being Quite Nice. The open, daggers-drawn hostility of the football (soccer) field was nowhere to be found. Maybe people were just too full of hotdogs and pretzels to move.

#19 Under the sea.

If you ever want to fall (back?) in love with humanity, go to a mardi gras. A parade. A carnival. Something camp and colourful and trashy.

This weekend Coney Island (the wonders of which I previously illuminated here) hosted the annual Mermaid Parade, a celebration of everything that is aquatic, oddball and technicolour. It was started in 1983 by Dick Zigun, whose life's work has been the preservation of American carnival and sideshow acts (and amen to that).

The place was heaving. Times Square on a sunny Saturday doesn't compare. I've not seen such a pulsating mass of humanity since India. They were thinner in India, though. And ate less hot dogs. Come to think of it, that's probably why they were thinner.


Against the backdrop of ferris wheels, rollercoasters and coconut shacks marched an unlikely cast of thousands - fetishists, drag racers, cosplayers, protestors, homosexuals, clowns, men, women and children. As the name suggests, a broad theme is the life aquatic - mermaids, jellyfish, and, topically, oil-covered environmentalists constituted the plurality. The crowd - at least four deep along the entire several-mile length of the Coney Island seafront - were the happiest group of people I ever did saw. We gawped, cheered, laughed, shared quips and beers with strangers, feasted our eyes and our stomachs.


All but the lone (as far as I saw) evangelical, holding a placard telling us to 'REPENT OF SIN'. Bless 'im.

So mark 18th June 2011 in your calendars, people, and no one will ever rain on your parade.

#18 The grass is always greener.

Fishing Pier, Lemon Creek Park, Staten Island, 2010

I've whinged about Staten Island on these (*ahem*) hallowed pages before. Let's recap: an apartheid-era wasteland of poor black communities abutting rich avenues of pristine, clapboarded, white middle America.

Well, there are nice bits, too. Take one of the tangle of bus routes from the ferry terminal (Staten Island's only, tenuous link with the rest of New York - it hangs precipitously below the city and is for all intents and purposes part of Jersey), and you are transported - at length - to some lovely beaches. BEACHES WITH HORSESHOE CRABS!

I freaking love horseshoe crabs. They are nature's survivors, having hung around for 500 million years to see the rise and fall of the dinosaurs, Rome and Adolf Hitler. They are generally physiologically fascinating (the 1967 Nobel Prize for Medicine was awarded for studies done on horseshoe crabs' peepers). But much more importantly, they have really, really, really silly names, in that they look absolutely nothing like horseshoes at all. My elbow looks a lot more like a horseshoe than a horseshoe crab. And they don't look anything like crabs, either, nor are they related to them. Only when my dog - ghost white in hue, and incapable of finding chicken in a KFC - received the name 'golden retriever' was the horseshoe crab outdone in the silly name stakes.

So Staten Island was off to a good start when I arrived on its - lets be honest - bleak, barren shores. It was the sort of moody, overcast morning that made me feel right at home. (Oh Lyme Regis, how I've missed you!) The crabs were dead, but intact, which is the ideal crab state for an enthusiastic but wimpish explorer like me. I took some snaps (to follow), then proceeded to go fishing.

I'm not big on fishing. I sort of don't agree with it both of welfare and environmental grounds. However, the park rangers assured me I was almost certain to catch nothing, and the acid yellow rubber bait backed them up. I waggled my rod around for a bit (oh shush), caught some seaweed and an empty clam shell, and headed home contented.

The Staten Island Ferry is also a lot more fun when you don't have to catch it daily. And it's a nice day. And you have company. And iced coffee.

That's all, folks. Some snaps are attached for your delectation.


Staten Island Ferry, 2010

#17 Love me chicken tender.

Popeye's Chicken and Biscuits, a major Louisiana-based fast food chain, serve up rafts of the fried chicken so beloved of Americans (and especially the African American community). As greasy disgustingness goes, it's far better than KFC, not least because I can chalk it up as a necessary cultural experience, whereas I can go to KFC in my hometown in Cheshire.

They serve their chicken with 'biscuits', in what has proven to be the most taxing of my linguistic hurdles so far. American biscuits are similar to what we would call savoury scones - doughy and buttery - and are traditonally served with other Southern fare, particularly chicken. They are lovely, but complete decadent madness as a filler - the potato dauphinoise of breads. I've become something of a Biscuit Monster (see what I did there?) since moving here.

Unrelatedly, Dave asked me to expand on the culinary delights of Chinatown. The place we went to together was lent an air of authenticity by us being the only white people there (out of maybe 100), and the presence of the following menu items:

- Jelly fish (cold)
- Jelly fish head (cold)
- Shark fin soup
- Fish maw (that's swim bladder to the rest of us; yeah, I'm totally going to eat something referred to as a 'bladder')
- Salt and pepper duck intestines
- Frog twin flavor

(Incidentally: no, I wouldn't have eaten there if I'd realised they served shark fin soup before we'd already ordered other stuff.)

We plumbed for the latter (well, Dave did; I bought something much more tedious/sensible), and were treated to...bones, mostly. The thimbleful of meat we had tasted a lot like chicken. Except when we ate it we turned into princes.


Popeye's biscuits.

#16 Welcome to the stock pot.

Brits find it easy to mock (or 'take the piss out of', if you feel like bemusing our Transatlantic cousins) American food. Almost as easy as the rest of the world finds it to mock ours. The jokes are all already written. Great - herein lies an easy blog post.

The first thing to note is that my dining experience in New York is unquestionably esoteric. I eat as much Chinese, Italian, etc - made by actual sons of those countries, of course - as I do 'American'. The second point, to contradict myself, is that this is American food. It might be cheating, but America can lay justifiable claim to all kinds of variations on foreign foods - pizza pie, New York bagels, Tex-Mex, New York-style cheesecake, California rolls, and so on. Apple pie is no more American than deep dish pizza. Both are as American as tikka masala is British. Welcome to the stock pot.

Fast food? You betcha. But since 'Super Size Me' things have changed. McDonald's advertises mostly at the morning coffee crowd these days - 99¢ lattes are the new Big Macs. Their competitors are Dunkin' Donuts' same-price offering, and Starbucks' premium product. In New York, Starbucks' weird fetish-seamonster girl feels like a much more oppressive presence than the Golden Arches.


Supermarkets are plain weird. On the one hand there is the unquestionable brilliance of Whole Foods - sort of like Waitrose, but earthier: expensive enough to keep out the riff-raff, locally-sourced enough to keep the greens happy. They still sell Chiquita bananas, for shame. Being British, I thought I'd tell you how bloody brilliant the queueing system is. The Manhattan locations are horrifically busy, so queues are subdivided into colour-coded streams that feed to many different tills - one from the red line, one from the blue line, one from the yellow line - balancing fairness with throughput. You also get told that 'you are now entering the green line' in a quietly thrilling Twilight Zone homage.

Next up is Trader Joe's, complete with irritating nautical/Victorian/farmgirl theming, cheaper prices and a Queuing Disaster. The queue snakes around the entire store, so you have to plan out all of the things you want from where the queue runs and remember to get them as you queue. Indecision is not an option.

Finally you have the Waitroses and Targets - carbon copies of the larger outlets of our Tescos and Asdas.

I touched upon the weirdest thing about American supermarkets in an earlier post. They don't sell wine. They don't sell rum. Hell, they don't even sell strong ciders: a store must possess a 'liquor licence' to sell beverages with an ABV topping around 8%. A supermarket cannot possess such a licence. So if you want a bottle of wine with supper you have to go elsewhere. It's tedious, backwards and irritating.

One more thing: everything has corn in it. Everything. The average American gets 10% of his daily calories from corn syrup. But we'll touch upon that some other day.

#15 Sodom by the Sea.

Here's a fact for you: Blackpool has more visitors every year than Greece. Our rapacity for relentless cheesy awful is astounding. Coney Island, at the far frontier of Brooklyn, is New York's attempt to fill this need. You can entertain yourself on the Coney Island Cyclone - one of the few historic wooden rollercoasters still in existence (it was built in 1927) - play slots, dodgems and arcade games, eat fried chicken and ice cream, and lark around on the beach.


The boardwalk at Coney Island.

Recently, like everywhere in Brooklyn, Coney Island has become something of a gentrified shadow of it's former gritty glory; in 1893, the New York times dubbed Coney Island 'Sodom by the Sea', and matters didn't improve for another century. The Island's present-day claims to fame include its Mardi Gras Mermaid Parade, and the World Hot Dog Eating Championships, which Nathan's Famous hosts every Independence Day, drawing some 30,000 live spectators and several million ESPN TV viewers. (I will of course be in attendance avec camera this year, so watch this space to see if last year's record of 68 dogs in 10 minutes tumbles.)

And that's all, really. I can confirm it is a grand day out.