New York City is big and it is evil and you will get lost there. It will eat you up and spit you out. You will get mugged or murdered or raped. The people are sinful and will steer you to paths of unrighteousness.
It’s thoughts such as these that entered my mind as I made my way to NYC the other week. Along with the concern that getting up to go pee three times the previous night meant I had lost all control of my bladder and would start wetting the bed and need adult diapers, I wondered, who had taught me this; these negative notions of the Big Apple? I reckoned it was some leftover feelings from my days growing up in suburban Indiana. No doubt someone (probably my parents or pastor or some other adult figure I looked up to) had warned me of the dangers the five boroughs possessed, based most likely on their own phobias of tall buildings or foreigners or perhaps just some story they heard. “I know a guy who knows a guy who got mugged in NYC once. Took his shoes and everything.” Poor guy. And while it has been bad in the past NYC is not the same place it was even in the early 90s. As I’ve been there numerous times, so allow me to recollect my experiences in the Big Apple.
1985 – I was six years old when we went as a family this first time. I was in first grade and remember we went out for Thanksgiving and the Macy’s Day Parade. I was pulled out of first grade a few days early to go on the trip which I recall made me feel triumphant against the tyranny that was learning numbers and letters and their proper usage. Fuck you letter A and number 7! I’m going to see a giant inflatable version of Garfield and freeze on the sidewalks with a bunch of people whose heads I can’t see over! However, much of this trip – like many portions of my youth – remains abstracted in my head or else I get parts of it confused with my next trip to NYC.
1989 – I was ten years old for this trip and do believe it was also for Thanksgiving and once again we went to the Macy’s Day Parade. I recall it was cold and I complained a lot. I was a real pain in the ass for my parents and seem to think I did a lot of complaining as a child. Perhaps some beginning to my delightful anxieties and neuroses? It’s hard to say but I know that the trip also had some pretty rewarding experiences such as going to see Les Miserables on Broadway. We were staying with my aunt’s sister (extended family) at her posh condo on the west side of Central Park along with my cousins. My parents had a really nice condo on 5th Avenue my aunt’s sister had set them up with. I have no idea what this woman did for her work but she was pretty well off and I wasn’t one to complain when it came to getting us 8th row seats to Les Miserables or a table at Tavern on the Green. I don’t think I entirely understood or appreciated the importance of such experiences; all I knew is I had to dress up nice but at that time in my life I also had to dress up to go to Olive Garden. I have since learned that in the scope of high society events, Broadway show > Olive Garden.
I also got to play with my cousins and we spent a lot of time fraternizing with my aunt’s sister’s mink stole. Looking back it seems kind of creepy and gross, but at the time we all thought it was pretty funny to imagine it as this inanimate pet that talked to us. It didn’t help that the jaw of the animal acted as a clasp but also meant we could make it talk. And the stories it could tell! It was the kind of ridiculousness that could only come out of the mouths and minds of pre-teens. In other words, I can’t remember any of it.
1999 – This was a really big trip to NYC for me. I went with a group of people from my (Christian) college and a couple other (Christian) colleges. I was somehow allowed to drive a 15 passenger van filled with luggage and other college students – we made it through the night driving through Northern Pennsylvania which is one of the greatest stretches of interstate if you’re a big fan of pine trees. Oh Conifers! Your beauty is redundant along Interstate 80! We were spending our Spring break on a missions trip to the city, learning how missions work was different in a big city as compared to a developing nation, which is usually what most people think of when they hear about missions and missionaries. The trip was also an excuse to sightsee the city and I got to see many things there that I probably wouldn’t have necessarily seen otherwise. Not to mention we got the hook-up with a good hotel in mid-town Manhattan and since it was a “missions” trip people gave money to us to help fund it. Christians are suckers like that. Good cause my ass! I got my picture taken in front of that den of debauchery known as CBGBs but I suppose I atoned for that act by visiting the American Bible Society (which is interesting if you’re into that sort of thing – lots of Bibles from all ages and parts of the world).
Punker than you. Spring Break ’99!
Other things that spring to mind from this trip include the following: getting to take a look at the floor of the NY Stock Exchange where capitalism reigns; going to the top of the Empire State Building; seeing the statue of the giant bull down by Wall Street (and yes, I did touch his enormous balls); playing with a dog and baby at the same time; volunteering at a soup kitchen where they gave us old Michael Jackson shirts (for a tour that never happened) as a thank you; and seeing the police take care of a murder scene in the sand at Brighton Beach. About that last one: in order to better understand the breadth of cultures in NYC, we went out to Brighton Beach, a Russian Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn. The guide for our trip asked us to pair off with people and go look around and see what we noticed that made Brighton Beach unique. My friend Sara and I started walking down the actual beach and noticed an ambulance back on the road. We then noticed a park ranger’s vehicle and a bunch of cops and what I assumed to be plainclothes cops standing around something by the water. Amazingly we were allowed to get fairly close – less than 50 feet – and then we saw the black body bag and the shovels spiked into the mound of sand that had accumulated next to the hole on the beach. Needless to say we had an interesting story to tell when we met back up with our group. In my mind I’ve just assumed it was a hit by the Russian mob, if only because it makes my story even more badass.
Me, a baby and a dog. Just like I said.
In preparation for this trip, I remember inducing myself into numerous panic attacks (which was my habit at the time as well as making myself so sick I would throw up) but looking back it was a remarkable trip with lots of special experiences. Meeting a bunch of guys with HIV and AIDS who lived together in a group home and yet were able to keep positive attitudes about life was pretty amazing. So was getting to see the Stonewall Inn, where the modern gay rights movement started in the late 1960s, although I really only understood and appreciated its importance many years later.
Our whole crew along with some new friends from the group home.
2001 – Yes, I, along with millions of Americans have made the mistake of taking Amtrak, our nation’s intercity passenger rail service. In my mind it constantly stands as the crippled brother to Europe’s far superior train system. Travel the rails around America! Live the bohemian lifestyle and meet interesting people. It sounds nice in theory but as long as it has to pull over on its shitty rail system to make way for commercial trains carrying coal and automobiles, it ain’t gonna get nowhere fast. And the people can occasionally be intriguing but they are also the “single-serving friends” as Tyler Durden calls them in “Fight Club”.
The path to NYC is also quite ridiculous – it does a roundabout route when you’re coming from Northern Indiana wherein it goes through upstate New York and then down the Hudson River. All in all, this trip is akin to being stuck in some sort of purgatory where you can’t sleep unless you have a sleeping car, which just adds to the astronomical price that Amtrak already costs. The sleep you are able to gather in a normal passenger train car is done in a slightly inclined state in 30-60 minute increments whereupon you wake up, look out the window and don’t recognize anything and drift off into a state of sleep that makes sleeping on an airplane seem like a comfy night’s rest in a king-sized bed.
Digging into an old journal I find that the Amtrak also served to inspire my writing skills to new heights, including such memorable passages as this: “I’m not tired enough to go to sleep, but I don’t know what else to do. Ugh. It’s days like this that kill me, but I think the fat, bloated body next to me shows that death mistakenly nailed the wrong guy.” Good work, 22-year-old Kurt. You’re on your way to being the next Jack Kerouac.
But I digress. The purpose of this trip was to see my roommate from my senior semester (I say that because in an effort to get the hell out of college I graduated after the fall semester) who lived just north of NYC. I also wanted to meet up with a girl from my college with whom I had taken a liking and who had an internship at CMJ. We all met up and there was lots of awkward Christian sexual tension and I think on the whole the trip was a success although honestly I can’t remember a ton about it. My old roommate and I went to see Burning Airlines and Ex-Models at the Knitting Factory and just generally hung out. It was a long weekend trip over the 4th of July and the girl I was crushing on is now married and a librarian in Pennsylvania and has a kid. I win again.
Burning Airlines
2002 – This trip was highlighted with a battery of behavior best suited for a psychologist with the latest version of the DSM. In other words, it was GOOD TIMES! According to the journal I kept at the time, highlights included (with my present day comments in parenthesis and italics after each):
–Little cafes all over the place (I was living in Indiana – this was a novelty, as were taxi cabs and black people)
–Victory At Sea @ The Knitting Factory (I still love this band. It was really powerful stuff. I also remember The New Year [ex-Bedhead] played and they had like four guitarists playing at one point, to which I recall thinking – “that’s just an unnecessary amount of guitars”)
–Diane Cluck @ Pete’s Candy Store (I still love Diane Cluck. She’s amazing!)
–Visiting Tag Team Media & Soft Skull Press (I was still doing an online zine at the time and this was me schmoozing.)
–NYC Subway rides (Another novelty. I was like some sort of caveman or something.)
–Meeting lots of lesbians and Jews (Novelty meter off the charts!)
Lowlights:
–Fighting off anxiety attacks the whole time (I went to see “The Ring” while having an anxiety attack. This definitely wasn’t an antidote to the problem.)
–Coming home to this pathetic excuse of a life (Self-deprecation will get you everywhere in life, Kurt.)
–Driving alone (at least it went quick) (Interstate 80, I love yooouuuuu!)
–People asking me why I don’t a) live in the city b) go to school c) move out from my parents house (Oh anxiety and depression, you were like the one-stop shop for answers to everything that was wrong with my life at this time.)
2005 – I was on tour with Brazil (Indiana) as a roadie. We were touring with 3 (New York) and The Reason (Ontario) in June of 2005 and we stopped over in Brooklyn to play a show at North Six. North Six is a club on North Sixth Street in Brooklyn, hence its name. It’s also one of the hottest, most humid venues I’ve ever been in. Barely anyone showed up and I was only too interested in getting the hell out of there and cooling off. We went back to the drummer’s parents’ house in New Jersey where a fifteen year old tried to sell us pot and I pondered what I would have been like if I had grown up in Northern New Jersey. (Aaron, one of the guitarists for Brazil, suggested, “you’d probably be an asshole.” A sentiment with which I heartily agreed.)
2009 – I went to Queens for the first time in October of 2009 for a pop culture conference. I presented to about four people (including two other presenters) on my thesis topic of 1970s Christian scare films in the basement of a community college that was clearly a relic of some 1970s building project (and hadn’t been updated whatsoever since). It was depressing and I was only too happy to get out of there and back to Boston.
2010 – I have never walked at graduation at any of the educational institutions I’ve attended. I didn’t at high school, college or the first time I was in graduate school. This previous graduation was no different. It’s not that I’m not proud of my accomplishments – I suppose I am to some degree although I’ve never found school real challenging – I just never saw the point in sitting in the hot May/June weather listening to a speaker try and encourage me with my future endeavors. Big crowds, annoying groups, pomp and circumstances – I’d rather be anywhere else. So I figured I’d keep the tradition alive and skip this latest graduation (masters degree number two) and do something fun. Seeing as to how I hadn’t spent any substantial time in NYC in many years, I decided a long weekend trip was in order.
Alas, the vast majority of my friends I knew that used to live in NYC have long since vacated. So I lined up a hostel for one night and then would stay with a girl, Julie, I met through the couchsurfing website for two nights. The first night I was there I met up with Carlene Bauer, whose book, Not That Kind of Girl, I had read. It’s a memoir of her time growing up as an evangelical although she no longer considers herself part of that movement. It struck a chord with me and she had referred to the film A Thief In The Night that I had written about for my thesis. We met up in the city, had dinner and some really good conversation. And she paid for it, too, which was sweet of her.
Central Park, June 2010
The next day I did what I do best in big cities: wandered around. Eventually I made my way up to the free Friday night entry to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). It started at 4pm and it was 3:30 by this time so I thought I’d get up there a few minutes early and get a good place in line. However, it appeared many people had that idea about a few hours before I did because the line stretched for two blocks.
Amazingly, MoMA had their shit together and once the doors opened things moved without a hitch. However, I do wish to report that the people working at MoMA had a look in their eyes that said, “We hate you” but which also might have been interpreted as “Human beings are an infestation that must be stopped.” Still, for any lover of art, making your way to MoMA is a requirement, free night or not (go on the free night – it’s free!) To be able to see classic Picasso, Monet and Van Gogh right there before you is nothing short of amazing. Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” is located at the MoMA and it was the star of a fairly star-studded cast (see what I did there? exactly – I overused the word star). Here is the portrait that adorns a plethora of postcards and posters and it’s there right in front of you. It’s like seeing Jesus in person, except historically verifiable.
The rest of the weekend consisted of hanging out with Julie, eating out, going to see “Breathless” in the theater, going to PS1 (MoMA’s contemporary art museum in Queens), staying out late at night and closing down bars and just generally holding on to my Al Burian acquired mantra that the weekend consist of me joining the “non stop party wagon.” And I didn’t even end up drunk. But there was that sweet bartender who called me babe but I thought she was calling me Dave. And there was the obnoxious dude at the hipster bar who assured the girls he was talking to that they wouldn’t know what club he was talking about where he liked to go dancing. In regards to that dancing, he told them, “When I go in (to dance), I go all the way in.” This was made even more humorous by the fact that he was wearing a polo shirt, wire-rim glasses and had a Jew-fro. He was about the most non-party guy you might expect to hear talking about partying and dancing. Needless to say, I didn’t let him join our non-stop party wagon. Saturday night Julie and her friend Kate and I went to a couple bars and I urinated in public.
In the end, however, I realized something great about New York City. It’s not perfect. Yes, it has that special spark to it that makes it beautiful, magical and amazing but it’s also a city of fuck ups and misfits. It has people who wouldn’t fit in many other places. The amount of people suffering from some degree of anxiety or depression is pretty staggering (based on my informal polls and conversations). Instead, the crowds stay put, their mental illnesses keeping them in a place that drives them crazier and crazier. Climbing up the walls. It’s been happening for decades there. Joey Ramone tried to get it across on his tunes. The Ramones’ poppy wall of sound akin to being a house band for “Happy Days” belies the harsh tales of wanting to be sedated or needing shock treatment to straighten out Joey’s brain. It wasn’t just him. The New York punk scene of the 1970s was filled with crazies. And today the city is still full of them. They crowd the sidewalks. And I’m not just talking about the guy who wears the footy pajamas during the day with aluminum foil on his head or the people asking for spare change. No, even the functioning people have a few screws loose. The greed of the broker on Wall Street so that he can buy that second or third house in the Hamptons is just as insane as the man yelling about an invisible Martian sitting on a trashcan that stole his soul.
The secret that’s not entirely known is that after a while, if you can survive in the city; if you can scrounge up the money to pay your rent and bills and food; if you don’t let the crowds tear you down; or the crush of the weight of millions of people to beat down your soul then you’ll realize as Carlene told me that in the end, if you live in New York long enough it’s all just “HBO and burritos.” To which I replied, “you can afford HBO?!”
