New York City Boy: Where 157th Ave Meets Broadway

I went all the way around Lake Ontario. Lia was in Canada after living and working in Abu Dhabi and before moving to Amsterdam with her man. So I left St. Catharines for Toronto on Thursday night so I could spend all of Friday with her. We explored the Beach before heading to the Annex for dinner on a patio followed by a ridiculous number of pints. It was upsetting to say goodbye yet again.



My train to Kingston was at 7am the next day. 7am hurt a lot the next day. Soon after I arrived in Kingston, Chris, Matt and I loaded up the Accentrice and we were on our way. We crossed the border somewhere east of Kingston. The conversation with the border guard went as follows:

Guard: “What do you do for a living?”
Chris: “I’m an urban planner.”
Matt: “I’m a festival director.”
Doug: “I make sparkly pillows!”



Ok, I’m kidding about that last part. But why on earth did a sparkly pillow make it on the road trip in a tiny, tiny automobile?!

After we made a scene with our photo shoot in McDonald’s, and sped past a paranormal investigator just before getting very lost in rural New York, we decided it was time to buy a road map. Google maps was very disappointing. Actually, it may have been ok if Chris has printed out the visual instructions, not just the text. Apparently, there are situations when it’s worth the ink and paper.



The purpose of going all around the lake was to see Lake Placid, site of the Olympics in 1932 and 1980. There were some stores dedicated to Olympic paraphernalia, other gift stores, the hockey arena, a ski jump way in the distance and Starbucks. Oh, thank goodness.




How can Curious George POSSIBLY be live?!?!


It was cold and rainy at the lake, so we continued south. Matt used a cartoon, not-to-scale map drawn by an Autistic child to find Mallory’s Bush. It had a covered bridge and a house that looked like Goldie Hawn’s faux house in ‘Swept Away’. Then Matt used his cartoon, not-to-scale map drawn by an Autistic child to insist that the empty driveway 20 metres to the east was the interstate. Shan’t.




As dusk fell near Albany, we were tired and hungry and cranky for deciding to be spontaneous and not booking a hotel in advance. We couldn’t find a hotel and we were on a toll highway with about 4 exits in a 2000km stretch of road. We got off at a rest stop and Matt asked for a hotel. The girl gave him directions and asked where we were going. When he said ‘New York’, we thought she was going to say, ‘You mean over there?’ and gesture out the window toward the Manhattan skyline. We were only about 100km away by this point, but it was time for food and sleep and booze [not in that order].

You know what I love about the US? There are stores with names like ‘Liquor Warehouse’… AND they sell ONE LITRE bottles of Smirnoff PINEAPPLE Vodka for $17. God Bless America.

--------------------- Sleep.

As we got closer to the city on Sunday morning, I found myself baffled by American planning. We were driving down a highway around 100km/hour, and there were stores along the side of the highway. No ramps, no service roads, just direct driveway access from the highway into the store parking lots. And I don’t just mean gas stations but clothing stores and big box stores. The thought of having to merge into heavy, high-speed traffic from 0km/h terrifies me.

We played ‘Empire State of Mind’ as we crossed the George Washington Bridge among hoards of high-end automobiles. Damn tourists. Somehow, we crossed too far on the bridge and got lost in the Bronx. Matt wanted to stop and ask some thuggy looking gentlemen, one of which had his hand down his pants, for directions. Chris and I suggested it wasn’t the type of neighbourhood where you want to be identified as tourists. Matt finally won and we stopped and he asked directions. We soon arrived at our new home on Riverside Drive. It was pretty ballin’ – 1000 square feet, 2 bedrooms, new kitchen and bathroom, and there were more closets than residents.

The hood was interesting. Our street was very residential composed of mid-rise condos. The commercial uses were concentrated a block away on Broadway. Broadway was very ethnic and our pasty white skin stuck out like a well-designed house on Rykert Street [pale is in for 2010]. We had restaurants, grocery stores liquor stores and convenience stores. Everything was pretty cheap, which was a bonus as we’re a frugal bunch… some more than others. I later learned from Erin that we were staying PAST the area that everyone’s afraid to go to.

We found a canvas shopping bag for a grocery store and set out to look for it to buy supplies. We couldn’t find it so we went to a different store that had ‘security guards’ in every aisle. When we returned to the condo, we asked the doorman where that particular grocery storey was located. He told us it was a very nice store and it was located at 125th street, a few subway stops away. We started to suspect that white people leave the neighbourhood to meet their daily needs.

I must say, I loved having a doorman. He jumps up to open the door when you enter / exit the building. It feels pretty posh. I should always have a doorman.

We soon headed to the Port Authority to meet Ma and Pa… I mean Anna and Jeff… who had just spent 10 hours on the Mega Bus from Toronto. Their border guard was super cranky and asked them for pay stubs. For real, real? Who brings pay stubs across the border?




We left early on Monday to go shopping at Century 21. It was near the former World Trade Centre site, which is now under construction. We wandered into a nearby church. It had free bathrooms. Suckers. We looked around the church. There were memorials to people who had died in the WTC everywhere. There were hundreds and hundreds of photos – and mostly young people in their 20s and 30s. After we felt thoroughly depressed, we went shopping.
Century 21 is epic. It’s in an old bank building and spans several floors. There were names like Ringspun, Diesel, Alexander McQueen, Modern Amusement and many more. The only problem, and it’s a huge problem that needs to be fixed Century 21, is that there were 5 change rooms for men that you can ONLY use if you’re trying on suits, not the regular clothes. The regular men’s clothes consumed the floor area of the Empire State Building. But men are expected to buy them, try them on at home and return items they don’t want. Srsly? The gentleman at the change room who explained this to me…. well he was a dick. I would have had no problem changing in the middle of the store, but I didn’t want to get kicked out, so I tried on shirts. A nicer employee told us that there are THIRTY-SEVEN change rooms for women, but none-ish for men. I ended up buying one Ringspun t-shirt and one pair of Modern Amusement shorts – regular price would have been $250. I paid $90.

Dear Century 21: I would have spent much, much more money in your clothing store, if I had been permitted to try on the clothes. In fact, you left me $800 below budget. How many fitting rooms does that buy? Jerks. Love, Doug.

Also, if you spend less than $110, there’s no sales tax [and tax is only 8% anyway]. It was amazing for me as a foreign shopper. But it also explains a lot of America’s social ills.

We split up. Chris and Matt went off and Anna, Jeff and I walked around Greenwich and found one of those pre-fab diners with cheap food where we could barely fit in the seats. Delicious.



I re-wired the ATM / At the Food Emporium / To provide an honourarium to anyone with the code / The code, well, A-N-G-E-L / Yet robin hooding isn't the solution / The powers that be must be undermined where they dwell / In a small, exclusive gourmet institution / Where we over-charge the wealthy clientele.

My friend Bryan lives in Hell’s kitchen. I met him in ’04 on the dance flo’ when he was a UofT engineering student and I was a York grad student. He’s a big shot NYC lawyer now. He invited me to my first opera – Armeda. It was about a woman who tricks a warrior into loving her and then takes him down to her pleasure palace. His mates come looking for him and steal him back and then girl is PISSED. Bryan explained that it wasn’t the best opera for a first-timer. I guess that’s because it was 4 hours long. Yep, I’m a champ. The building was stunning though.