Intense City

So the three stooges clamber out of the taxi at the hotel. We are a little, only a little disappointed in the hotel. Guy changes room though, so he has a view along the Queensboro Bridge, quite dramatic. It is interesting how important a view is to people, (even to people who don't actually appreciate the view for what it is). A large element of the price of a house can be what you can see when you peer out of it. I like city views, we decant from the hotel and head to Columbus Circus where we enter a tall building to emerge in the lobby of the Mandarin Continental Hotel on the twenty somethingth floor. There is a bar here and a spectacular vista from my seat looking along the seem between the south edges of Central Park and the concrete encrustation.
A view makes you dream and I was dreaming of how it would be to live over the other side of the park in one of those handsome apartment buildings on Fifth Avenue, looking back here.

By the time we left Jane, our energetic waitress at the Hudson Hotel, our next venue, the view was a little wobblier. On her advice we were going for a burger somewhere in Greenwich Village. The taxi ride was a little surreal, the neon of Times Square was starting to take advantage of the sun's decline, my window was down and the nice breeze was necessary to maintain my focus.
















I can hear my TV trying to sell me the idea of staying in my room and ordering a film instead of venturing out into the city, over and over. After what seems like a long time, I decide I can cope with it no more, I jolt myself into consciousness and notice that I am face down on my bed still fully clothed. The alarm clock tells me it is three am. Although I have tunred off the tv, I struggle to sleep much more as my own clock tells me it is eight.

Eventually I go down to the lobby. Julian is there but no Guy. I go to his room but cannot rouse him. I persuade the hotel staff to open his door only after I suggest that he could be dead in there. He is niether dead nor alive. He eventually catches up with us in a diner, I don't quite believe his story about where he has been. Most of today is about different, smaller but still powerful views; mainly the Metropolitan Museum. There is much too much to see in one go in there. For me those two Rothko's were very conspicuous; biding there time is what they seem to do, hanging out with that other contemporary and much less scary work waiting for the day when who knows what. Julian is very much on duty and spends the longest there, I come in second but get tired eventually. Guy was soon off; to meet someone.

Dinner that evening was at a fairly posh steakhouse (Guy needed it after the previous night's down and dirty burger experience. He immediately hits it off with our waiter; "Who's in tonight?" "That guy over there with the much younger guy is Neil Sedaka".

After I got back from Baltimore the next day I had a quick look at the Momo which was bonkers busy and therefore no use to me. Dinner and a couple of bars and I withdrew leaving the other two to get on with it. At five the next day I would be heading for JFK and a flight to Vancouver.














Spot the man with political aspirations