New York missive no 24 - Gay pride

Last Sunday the tighter, brighter and more minimal the attire the better for Gay Pride. A day when heterosexuals are a minority. I didn’t see the parade itself but caught its before and aftermath. The previous night, slender male bikinied bodies erected white screens on the brick wall at the corner of Weehawken Street where they projected florescent visuals. The next morning, expectant mixed-age crowds lined the length of Christopher Street, penned in to an extent by police barriers. Old women perched on deckchairs, selling rainbow flags for waving. Then on the way back later that night the street heaved with a headiness enhanced by the torrential storm that had drenched the procession at around 5 in the afternoon. Coming down through Chelsea I passed a many-kiloed man whose T-shirt, stretched over his rolls, said “fat and sexy”. It was true. It’s a day when everything and everyone is sexy. A pair of black transvestites in skimpy floaty things swung up the drunken street making everyone else’s get-ups look tame. A group of friends sitting on a West Village stoop – usually the territory of the occasional pampered pooch or heeled and handbagged Jessica Parker aspirant – dialled a friend on a cellphone then shouted down it in unison “Happy priiiiiiide”. When I reached my doorstep, standing on it was a giant of a man wearing nothing but a red G-string.

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“Where’s the pattrain?” the young Indian guy asked me as I turned into Christopher Street from 7th on my way back from the gym one evening. I didn’t catch what he said.

“The train, the subway station? It’s just here,” I took a guess.

“No, the pattrain. The pat.”

I thought a moment. “Oh, the Paaaath train.” His eyes widened with a mix of relief and surprise and I suddenly felt very conscious of my long a’d English accent just as I’d been conscious of not understanding his. Here were two people in New York but definitely not yet New Yorkers finding a way to communicate with each other.

I told him it’s a few blocks down on the right. We walked along the road next to each other, half-talking half-staying separate like strangers as we weaved in and out of the huddles that are always on the pavements outside the bars. I imagined him having just emerged in New York off a plane from India, heading through New York to New Jersey to be met by relatives, experiencing that giddying sensation of arriving in a city you’ve built such clear pictures of and which on arrival presents bits of those pictures but tricks you with how utterly different it is to them, so much closer. “You just arrived in New York?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Where from?”

“Chicago.”

I went into a corner shop to buy a banana and pointed him to the Path stop that was just half a block further down. When I came out of the shop, he was waiting outside looking agitated. “I can’t find it.”

I was beginning to wonder if in fact the Path stop had suddenly disappeared overnight. But no, there it was, the old stone doorway and stairwell leading down to the trains. Off he went.

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Sailing last Saturday. This time with Dutchman Mic rather than with B, who was having the day off to play softball – and with J and D from the previous week. In the morning there was a steady wind and bright sunshine. (I got burnt, lobster style. Attempted to tone down the red traffic light effect with some makeup that evening when I went to M’s leaving do in Hell’s Kitchen – she’s been re-located back to Seattle. I decided, however, just to rely on the darkness of the bar to disguise the large bruises on both my knees from bumping around in boats).

By the afternoon the strong tidal currents had picked up and the wind had died. Not a good combination. We drifted steadily Northwards and found ourselves having to paddle some of the way back, dragging ourselves up the Western edge of the river. Then lots of boat-towing and manoeuvring as NYCSA is shifting the Solings over to some moorings round the corner from the marina because it’s cheaper. There’s something melancholic about the fact that that the Solings – that people actually sail – are being shunted out to make way for yet more fibreglass monsters of motorboats that never move because their owners, having splashed out on a boat, don’t take it anywhere either because they can’t afford the astronomical fuel costs or they’re too afraid of damaging it. Then, when we were in the bay tying up the Solings, a torrential thunderstorm. The kind that soaks you to the skin in seconds. Exhilarating. To top it, a perfect rainbow arched its way over the whole of Manhattan. The illusory pots of gold were at the Northern and Southern tips of the island.

New York missive no 23 - Two rivers and Soho House

Three scenes: Brooklyn Bridge Park in Dumbo, Soho House and sailing on the Hudson.

A few weeks ago I went with a bunch of kids from Daniel Hale Williams School in DUMBO and other volunteers to dig up weeds and plant seedlings in Brooklyn Bridge Park. The new park’s much loved but attracts latte-sipping white parents and their kids from the swish new riverside apartments more than it does the predominantly black kids from local projects. The idea was to say hey, this park is your park too, and hopefully inspire the children to bring their parents back to see the fruits of their labour.

First, we listened to an introduction by one of the park wardens. She explained how the East River is part salt, part fresh water, as the sea gets sucked upstream on the incoming tide. A while ago some conservationists drew nets out over the river bed and pulled them up to the park to see what lives down there. They found a seahorse, among other things. “Does anyone know what a seahorse is?” she asked. On cue, one of the girls said, “Yes, I have one!”, and plucked a purple plastic seahorse from her pocket. No further explanation needed.

Then, the weeding. We were shown which plants to dig up, which ones to leave, and got to work with our trowels: much delight as the first weeds were unearthed, pulling up roots as long as the plant itself. I relished as much as the kids did that feeling of mucky hands, tugging at leaves and earth stuck beneath nails. Enthusiasm waned a bit by the time we got to planting and the kids' attention switched to new things like the pizza they’d been promised for afterwards, at Front Street Pizza round the corner: one was really restless and said she’d like to jump the park fence.

Post-pizza they had a new burst of energy. A reminder that a day for a young person (these kids were 7-9) is like a hundred days, changing and renewed by the hour. They chattered their way back to the school. One recounted how she’d once had a finger bitten – by a polar bear – on a trip to the arctic – and that Santa had given her a new one.

Soho House on a Tuesday night, an altogether different scene where mud beneath nails would definitely be frowned upon. It’s a member’s club and hotel for New York’s Notting Hill set, monied and media/artsy rather than banking/financial, confident on its corner overlooking the meatpacking district with its rooftop terrace swimming pool surrounded by loungers and dining tables. Much disgruntlement though that the Standard’s new hotel under construction to the West of it will steal much of the evening sun. I was much less blonde, much less skinny than the majority of the women there but happy as an observer. And laughed when I remembered the Sex in the City Scene in which Samantha sneaks in by pretending to be an Englishwoman called Annabel: I didn’t need to pretend to be either.

And yesterday, sailing in a Soling on the Hudson. Give me a boat with sails, some sun and wind and I’m happy. Three of us were having a “basic keelboat” lesson (thought I’d start at the beginning to get used to the boats) with the guy who runs the club, BR. He's a non-fiction literary agent who intersperses his teaching on points of sail and how to tie a bowline with historical and geographical anecdotes. How the Hudson used to be called North River, how old schooners couldn’t sail close to the wind, how Los Roques islands off Venezuela have been adopted by Italians and how the Chesapeake’s oysters have all been fished. For thirteen years he’s run the New York Community Sailing Association to provide affordable access to sailing: buying a bunch of 10 sailing sessions as I’ve done for after the course works out at $15 per session unlike other places where it’s more like $150. It’s an ongoing battle though to keep it going. No-one in NYC has a lot of time on their hands to help out maintaining the boats; people who start there go on to buy their own boats (yes, despite providing affordable sailing it’s hardly attracting underprivileged teenagers from the Bronx); the hard-core winter match racers go off cruising in exotic places during the Summer months. If I had a few extra days kicking around each week I’d love to help build it up: help secure the re-location to the Manhattan side of the river (the boats were moved to New Jersey post 9-11), approach foundations for funding for more boats, increase the membership etc. But that’s not the case. So for now I’ll enjoy the sailing and muck in as much as I can.

New York missive no 4 - Hudson hangover cure

Just discovered an effective hangover cure - walking out onto the pier in the Hudson river park on a bright winter's day and letting the biting wind whisk the fuzziness away. The fuzziness is a result of too much wine during a night in Nolita, with a mainly English crowd. A connection there, I think, between the "too much wine" and the "English crowd". What is it that makes us incapable of drinking in moderation? Not to nourish national stereotypes or anything... The evening started civilised; met S's friend Al for a meal at Nolita House. At one end of the restaurant was a rowdy office party, but in the main area we could, just about, hear ourselves talk over the hubub. Gorgeous chicken empanadas and an asparagus thing, followed by not so exciting salads. Then to Tom & Jerry's to meet R and others, on to a random party saying farewell to a guy who works for an advertising agency and who's moving back to Australia, who none of us knew, and then a lower east side club for dancing till started falling asleep.

Weds and Thurs were Upper East side evenings. On Weds, the launch of Michael Conroy's Branded! at Carnegie Council, which I only caught the tail end of after learning that getting a taxi during rush hour doesn't mean getting round Manhattan quicker, then catching up with J over sushi. On Thurs, a delicious meal at Park Avenue Cafe (currently called Park Avenue Winter, guess it's a seasonal thing) with cousin K, V and two foreign office friends currently posted at the UN. The restaurant was white, spacious and sophisticated, somehow managing to be cosy within the whiteness.

This is turning into a bit of a restaurant guide.

Got very angry with Verizon on Thursday, trying to sort out a phone line and internet connection for the new office, which you wouldn't have thought was that unusual a request. But my anger was abated on realizing that it's shared - everyone else who's ever had to deal with them is also angry. It was one of those experiences of spending about three hours getting passed on the phone from one unhelpful sales assistant to another, to another, only to arrive back where you started (or even further back). Tried going in to the shop thinking that face-to-face contact would help, but the guy there had to phone the company up too, and went through exactly the same process. About three times. It was so extreme it was almost surreal [might add some thoughts expanding on that when I've got more time]. But hey, unhealthy to get frazzled by that kind of thing. Remembered P's advice, from when we shared notes about the unexpected pot-holes, bumps and dead-ends you come up against in relocating to NY; they're inevitable and you just have to ride them.

Had better stop writing or I'll miss my plane from JFK back to London for next week's trustee meeting. Am already relishing the thought of 7 hours watching movies on a Virgin plane...should sleep, but know I won't.