east coast, fuck you. (pt. 2)

The time spent in New York City mostly descended into a massive bender. Three nights out on the trot, all of which didn’t end till around 5am. It was fantastic to go to a club night that didn’t shut down at 2, as they all do in Canada, but having been doing that for last 6 or 7 months I am distinctly out of practice and the marathon typically got the best of me. This was exacerbated by the fact that the last night spent in Philly was a sleepless one. Regardless, all the nights were good fun. Although, sadly we didn’t get to go to Morrissey on the first night, a party (as they like to refer to them in NY) that only plays music by The Smiths or his solo venture. I’m not sure how this would have paned out over the course of many hours with some songs being played 3 or 4 times, but it’s got to be better than terrible dance music. It’ll have to remain a mystery as Rich’s otherwise perfect passport forgery was undermined by a secret ‘89’ in the gibberish that runs along the bottom. A swift return to Photoshop to metamorphose the ‘9’ into an ‘8’ and we’re good to go on the subsequent nights. This missing out on the Morrissey party was made up for with one of the coolest clubs I’ve experienced – a former ‘erotic’ massage parlor called Happy Ending (awesome name) that had the relics of its previous function in the form of sauna rooms, shower heads and tiling as part of the club. This meant the place had an unusually sleazy vibe, and not in an Oceana wet t-shirt competition kind of way. Plus we did get to sing Supergrass in exceptionally loud and obnoxious British accents, which is always fun.

The nighttime antics in NY meant that the daytimes were almost completely written off until around 2 or 3 in the afternoon. As such, I didn’t catch a whole lot of the city. We had an explore around Williamsburg in Brooklyn, which is a pretty sweet place. Lots of quaint book shops and clothing shops as well as pretty cool ‘hipster’ eateries. One in particular was called Boneshakers, which was a pretty cheap vegetarian, biking themed café which treated us to sweet food, attractive staff and a soundtrack that consisted of the likes of Rumbleseat and Desmond Dekker. The Knuckle Sandwich menu even had a vegan BLT sandwich called The Kevin Bacon. What more could you want? We also went to Kelis’ milkshake bar (the one that brings all the boys to the yard). It’s a surprisingly unimposing place that didn’t even have a name. The shake itself (vanilla, obviously) was pretty nice, but expensive. But if it’s good enough for Kelis, then I guess it better be good enough for me. My main gripe with the place was that this beeping sound kept going off that sounded exactly like my alarm from secondary school. Every time I hear a beep at the pitch of my alarm it gives me a big quiver and makes my vision go slightly blurry for a split second. When that is occurring every couple of minutes it only serves to grind one’s gears.

Rich and I spent a few hours walking around southern Manhattan on the day that we left for Boston, going to the Empire State Building, Macy’s, Brooklyn Bridge, Ground Zero, Grand Central Station, among other places. Sadly, it was a miserable, overcast and cold day which meant that going up the Empire State Building would have been futile exercise. Macy’s was a horrible place, a huge maze of over-priced flashy clothes, a glorified version of John Lewis. Shopping in department stores is never a pleasant experience. Grand Central certainly shits on London Victoria, too. For some reason, they like to make train stations really impressive in North America. The Union station in Toronto is of similar grandeur.

New York City, in general, is such an enormous place, and I didn’t even see a fraction of it. Not only does the size make for an alienating experience, but it’s a pain having to get the subway constantly and makes for it to be quite unfriendly and intimidating. Especially at the point when I first arrived. I think I’d definitely like to spend a few months or a year there if I could, if only to take it all in and see everything that New York has to offer. There’s certainly an exciting aura surrounding the place and I look forward to going back there en-route to Philadelphia.

east coast, fuck you. (pt. 1)

Over the course of reading week I spent 33 hours on coaches, 10 hours in cars, drank my weight in Pabst Blue Ribbon, ate more veggie burgers and slices of pizza than I care to remember whilst completely losing any sense of a regular sleeping pattern. Nonetheless, my sleep deprived, abused self has had somewhat of a stellar time. What struck me most was the sheer level of hospitality and friendliness of the people that I encountered during the week. It was a recurrent theme. From the initial free 9-hour lift from Hamilton, ON to Lewisburg, PA all the way to the 9 band house show that was thrown in my honour on the last night of my travels. Everyone I came across gave me, without hesitating, a warm, if not smolderingly hot, reception.

The first leg of my journey covered the 300 plus mile trip to the aforementioned Lewisburg, PA courtesy of Jordan’s housemate and his car. What ensued was an hour and a half trip to the border in Buffalo, NY only for the car to spontaneously break, requiring us to take a 3 hour detour back to Cambridge, ON to pick up another car before getting back to the border to continue the journey. This would have been all well and fine if the second car had heating, but no, that would be too easy. The heating would cough and splutter for a couple of minutes at a time, barely reaching the sub-zero backseats before deciding that it would rather blast cold air in our despondent faces. There was no way of escaping the arctic conditions. There wasn’t enough bedding to do much good, and the penguin formation just wasn’t a realistic possibility. This photo of the icy insides of the car window might put the situation into some perspective. Regardless, we battled on through with discussions of our favourite dystopias and which bodily fluid we’d least like to have in our mouths, keeping our minds off the temperature (for the record, Jordan would prefer menstrual blood to wet hair).

All the same, the trip was a talking point and we all felt like we had accomplished something by the time we rolled into Lewisburg at a very bright 7am. Mark, the driver, had managed it all in one sitting with only gloves (yes, you read right) on his feet to keep them warm and Mike, in the passenger seat, had sat aside him for the whole journey without sleeping a wink. The exciting feeling of being on a road-trip, on a journey to a place I’d never been before kept morale high. A whole week was ahead of me where I didn’t really know what was going to happen.

Whether you’re pissing in the snow somewhere in upper state New York in the dead of night or meandering the mountain ranges of Pennsylvania as the sun comes up. There’s something quite magical about being on the road. So much so that even after 9 hours of my body’s blood circulation slowing to a snail’s pace, when it came to the last 15 minutes of the trip I kind of didn’t really want it to end.

The stay in Lewisburg, itself, was fleeting, to say the least. Five or so hours sleep on a sofa, a few rounds of Nazi zombies on Call of Duty and a fine dose of Christian hospitality later and I’m on a bus to Philadelphia. Little did I know that this bus was going to go through every example of small town America between Lewisburg and Philadelphia. What was a three hour, 160 mile trip became an eight hour marathon. Luckily enough, daylight granted me the privilege of the beautiful views of the Pennsylvanian mountains as the bus route mostly followed a picturesque valley, stopping at each of the towns it went through. These towns appeared depressing places, so small and isolated without having the quaint appeal of small British villages. The kind of places where everyone knows everyone else and the only sign of employment is the rusty remnants of a mill or quarry on the edge of the town, long disused. Those that remain are the elderly and the young, or those that can face the daily commute from their dead-end towns.

Arriving in Philadelphia was a welcome change and an exciting prospect. My good friend Luke had hooked me up with the people he had met in Philadelphia when he was there a few years earlier. One of which, I had met before when she was in England but, otherwise, it was a fresh bunch of people who were willing to put me up and show me a good time in dear Philly. And show me a good time, they did. So much so that I’m doing another 12 or 13 hours of coach rides to go back as soon as I can. Mostly the time consisted of drinking and partying. But when this wasn’t happening I got a guided tour of Philly, courtesy of Wyatt. I guess I was pretty surprised by how pleasant the city seemed. There was little evidence of ‘Killadelphia’ and the place actually has some valid history, being one of the oldest in the US, which means some pretty architecture. My usual way to gauge cities is if I could see myself living there and that was certainly the case in Philly. Plus, you get the added benefit of spotting places that appear in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I’d love to see the city in the Summer though. My arrival happened to be in the aftermath of the most snow that the city had seen, for the 126 years that records have been kept. Whilst this meant that I could slide down the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (otherwise known as the Rocky Steps) on a makeshift sledge, it most probably doesn’t paint a typical picture of the city.

After trading hats with Caitlin and receiving my gifts of an England flag and sewn octopus I boarded the ludicrously cheap Chinatown bus to New York, New York; the city that never sleeps, or something. Arriving in the colossal city at around 9pm on the Sunday night I came to realise I had no idea where to get off, little idea where I was heading, no phone credit to contact anyone, no money in my wallet, no money in my Canadian bank account and a British card that I didn’t know the PIN for. What transpired was one of the most unnerving couple of hours of my life. I sought help from a man on the coach to point me in the direction of Williamsburg, the part of town I knew I was staying in. He happened to be going the same way and told me to follow him. I thought it would be a good idea to use what shrapnel I had remaining to call Rich to find out where he lives. The call fails. The man lets me borrow his phone to text Rich. Five or so minutes later and I realise my wallet is missing, I’d left it at the payphone. I sprint for my life back to the payphone in sheer panic as all the worst case scenarios are running through my head involving me alone in New York without a place to stay or my wallet with a bag of over £500 worth of stuff on my back. Thank fuck my wallet is still there. The man leading the way was waiting for me as I was shitting several tones of brick and luckily enough Rich has texted back. I have the address but it turns out there is no easy way to get there by subway and he recommends me a taxi, the lack of access to any money puts a hasty halt on that. I nervously board a subway for a 45 minute journey way out to east Brooklyn so that I can change at Broadway Junction and get on the line to Graham Avenue where I could then walk to find where I was headed. My slightly over-the-top panicking has got me a dose of the willies and I sit on the subway, grasping my bag, convinced that any of the few people on the mostly vacant train are going to mug me. To cut a long story short, I get to the flat in Williamsburg in one piece and wonder why I did quite piss my flaps so much. Either way, I’m eternally grateful to Kevin, the stranger who took a fairly large chunk of his Sunday evening out to help me, and then try to sell me weed. Top lad.