A brave new world

Landing at JFK following our short time in rural Cornwall was quite a shock. And, after some days here, the city and its people continue to surprise us. It's almost a different planet.

The flight from Heathrow was a long and winding road...oops, a long and tedious journey - made so much worse by the two-plus sweltering hours we waited in line before reaching the immigration counter. That's what happens when more than 500 people are disgorged from just one airliner at one of the world's busiest airports. In the middle of summer. It was not pleasant.

Then the trek to our Brooklyn apartment began.  Not for us the sanitized, movie set Big Apple experience. Oh, no. No mid-town hotels with door-opening flunkies either. We are staying out east in a part of Brooklyn that must be close to gentrification. Not quite yet, though! We have the street level floor of a brownstone in a row of brownstones that stretches unbroken the length of the street. Small windows at front and rear, brick walls either side ...cosy.

Home - Macon St, Brooklyn

But it's home for the week. And with our $29 seven-day Metrocards, it's only a 20 minute A Train ride to Manhattan. This was a serendipitous discovery. This subway line was the inspiration for the classic jazz number 'Take the A Train', one we know and love from Simon's early piano playing years. (Hear it here: A Train)

Staying in the 'burbs is an education as well as good exercise. (Though to call Brooklyn a suburb is doing it a great injustice: 2.7 million people inhabit this corner of New York City.) The nearest subway station is about 15 minutes' walk through an urban landscape that's indeed light years away from Cambridge, NZ. 

In this summer heat, people are living outdoors, often perched on their front steps or heading to the grocery/deli stores, broom cupboard sized shops found on each corner. Rubbish piles up on street corners. Rubbish pickers work their recycling magic.  And there are churches on each block. 

I found this (right) to be a sobering message. There is hope, though. This year's homicide rate is down to under one murder a day, the lowest since crime stats were released in the 1960s.

There were 515 murders in the city last year. 

This is clearly not the New York of Woody Allen and Carrie Bradshaw...

 

The Richards' sightseeing checklist is progressing nicely:

• Empire State Building - check.
• Statue of Liberty - check
• Times Square - check
• Broadway show - check (it was 'Porgy and Bess' - fabulous!) but we ain't finished yet
• Wall St - check
• Coney Island - check
• Central Park - check

...but more of this next blog.  

I came across these words of wisdom today. The presentation is a little rough around the edges but the sentiment is pure "Sex and the City", don't you think?