Shake it up white boy!

Look at the state of that. This is my combined last.fm and Spotify listening. Could there be any more anaemic limp-wristed white boys in there? Thank God for Ella Fitzgerald. I'm thoroughly ashamed. Course this isn't ALL I listen to, on my CD player and youtube it's nothing but Larry Levan, Stevie Wonder, Kate Bush and Ladysmith Black Mambazo. I'm a disgrace.

V V Brown - 'Shark In The Water'

V V Brown - Shark In The Water

I love it. It's a proper chart single isn't it? The video's surprisingly meh though. What does she want with that H&M whiteboy mannequin anyway?

Day Two in New York: "My Dad didn’t pay two hundred thousand dollars for me to be a bartender" (Student, Central Park)

Awoken by a cacophony of birdsong, right here in lower Manhattan, who’da thunk it? I don’t hear so much as a pigeon back home. The promised heatwave has begun. Today is Friday and it's already scorching. Saturday and Sunday are going to get hotter. Overheard conversations are frequently about soaring temperatures to come, the hottest April for fifty years, the city is braced. It’s exciting. I think about '77 and the Summer of Sam. I hope there are blackouts and dancing in the streets and looting.

Breakfast at the Gramercy Diner, staffed by polite Mexicans with impenetrable accents. Broccoli and gruyere omelette with home fries and sufficient coffee to stimulate a mastodon back to life. Our neighbourhood borders the East Village, Gramercy and Flatiron district. We are going to ‘do’ Midtown today, including braving the shops, so we walk uptown and soon the Chrysler Building cranes a beautiful silver neck into the skyline (“You can’t leave New York! You’re the Chrysler Building, the Chrysler Building would be all wrong in a vineyard”). It was the tallest building in the city for one whole year back in 1930 and is many a New Yorker’s favourite. In glorious sunshine you see exactly why (“You'll stay up till this dump shines like the top of the Chrysler Building!")



The Flatiron wends its impossible way into the sky at 23rd Street, the sheer unlikeness of its famously narrow corner making it seem even higher than it actually is. The park opposite is beautiful, fountained, scattered with blossom and people taking respite from the heat. But not us, we plough onwards to the Empire State Building, once again the tallest building in New York, reclaiming its title with a touch of sadness of course. It is the building where Allen Ginsberg worked on trite advertising campaigns (including the Ipana toothpaste campaign, the one they sing in Grease at the sleepover) before his poetry brought him to the life of the Beats downtown, that William Burroughs likened to a giant syringe, whose shadow at sunset stretches all the way to Queens. I write postcards for my grandparents at the foot of it where you can no longer even see the top.

Macy’s is the biggest store in the world, one entire block, of which we cover about 3 per cent. I buy some nice aftershave called Nautica and procure a Macy’s bag which I flaunt like a tourist all day. Times Square is a fat seductive slice of capitalist flash, even in the midday sun, and is rammed. We stop at a mercifully air-conditioned Irish bar on 7th Avenue and are served by a lovely Irish girl who came to New York for a shopping trip six months ago and is still there. I’m so jealous I can hardly breathe.

On Fifth Avenue we have the most hilarious shopping experience of our lives at Abercrombie & Fitch. The doorway houses a gaggle of wide-eyed girls standing in line to have their photograph taken with an impossibly chiselled shirtless model who’s all of nineteen. Inside the store it’s pitch black with the loudest music I've heard outside of a club. All the assistants, boys and girls, are dressed identically. They stand at the top of each staircase dancing. They don’t know where anything is or how much anything costs, they couldn’t care less, they just dance the whole time. We’re delirious. Everyone is beautiful. There is still a feeling in New York that the prettiest boys and girls from across America make their way here to tend bar and sell jeans while they’re waiting for their dreams to happen. They’re all working at A&F.



Central Park is the only place to be in this weather so we head there and find a nice spot by the carousel which plays, amongst other things, ‘Georgy Girl’, one of my favourite songs of all time, which I take, like many things over the week, to be a sign. We eat more sickly but addictive deep fried cashews plus Oreo ice lollies which are divine. I earwig people, watch ripped joggers, horses and carts, a young couple having wedding pictures taken. It’s soon time to head home and change for the theatre. We swing by Barney’s en route, pick up a hat that costs $125, leave.

The Shubert Theatre is a lovely old-time playhouse near Times Square. The play is Noel Coward’s endearingly naff Blithe Spirit in which Angela Lansbury is a spritely old canary in the role of eccentric psychic Madame Acarti. Rupert Everett fluffs half a dozen lines, hams the comedy and plays to the cheap seats while the cheap seats strain to spot his fabled facelift. His second wife Ruth (Jayne Atkinson) carries it for me. A pair of rich English sisters in the seats beside me kvetch at the audience laughing in the ‘wrong places’ but from what I can gather half the audience can only make out less than half the clipped cut-glass English and speedily-delivered dialogue anyway. Good fun though.

To the Ava Lounge at the Dream Hotel. Unbelievably I recognise someone from a cruise we went on last year while we’re crossing Broadway though I’m too stunned to say anything to him. He very obviously recognised me too. His twin brother tried to seduce me and then my sister on consecutive nights on the ship so not really sure what my conversation starter would have been, but how small the world.

In the bar I have an apple Martini and Joff a (very) spicy Mojito. We’re here for the view which is a ball-shrinking vista of Times Square, now in full fluorescent flow. ‘Oh my God I’m in New York,’ I keep thinking. I get the first compliment of the week on my accent. “You’re all kinds of fabulous!” says a girl I give a cigarette to. Instantly drunk we decide to take our glad rags down to Greenwich Village. Our journey takes us by Grand Central Station and Radio City Music Hall. I love Old New York and these are my sights.


The historic Stonewall bar has apparently been refurbished to properly honour its part in the gay lib movement and to bring it up to date for a younger generation. As far as I can tell this amounts to a buff guy dancing on stage with his massive whanger barely covered by a crocheted cock pouch while men and women alike stuff dollar bills down there. Gay pride! Over the road at The Monster we have a nice chat to the doorman, who lives on 14th Street the lucky blighter. Another massively eye-watering whang episode in the basement plus typical handbaggy tunes. Slight yawn. Disappointing totty too. I am hit on by a goggle-eyed Cuban from New Jersey and it’s time for home. The pair of us fall asleep in the cab, the driver mishears ‘East 17th’ for ‘East 70th’ and we wake up at 42nd Street. Oops. I’m drunk enough to dispute the fare. I’m getting into my stride.

Day One in New York: “Jesus Christ, this guy's a fucking idiot!” (Cab driver)

Up at the crack of dawn for a 9 am flight to Newark. I’m pretty much over my fear of flying these days but I still hate take-offs. I can’t just disappear into my book/music because I think that if I don’t concentrate fully on our ascent the plane won’t take off at all and we’ll crash right there on the tarmac.

A surprisingly good choice of movies and music to be had on the plane once we are flying. I watch All About Eve, one of my all-time favourites, howling at endlessly good one-liners:

“Write me a play about a nice normal woman who just shoots her husband”

“She looks like she might burn down a plantation”

“You’re maudlin and full of self-pity. You’re magnificent”

“A mass of music and fire, that’s me. An old kazoo and some sparklers”

Followed this with Singin’ In The Rain which always warms my heart even though it’s utter fromage, but classic fromage you'll agree. Relax then to a soundtrack of Billie Holliday, John Coltrane and Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions. I get goosebumps during ‘Living for the City’:

“New York. Just like I pictured it. Skyscrapers and every-thang …”

Almost there now …

Extortionate cab ride from the airport to Manhattan which soon hoves into view from New Jersey like a great battleship in the window. The cab driver says “Welcome to New York” the second we hit the island then effs and blinds his way through the streets and warns us that a heatwave is on the way. As soon as we pull up outside Hotel 17 on East 17th I recognise the street from Manhattan Murder Mystery, the building next door has a distinctive row of colourful statues of jockeys along the front. The excitement stuns Joff and I into partial silence for a while, which is unheard of.



After we book in we hit the streets and do a long walk all the way downtown. It’s a gorgeous sunny day as we make our way on foot through the East Village, Chinatown, Lower East Side and down onto Wall Street. Skyscrapers fill the sky here and I get that lovely feeling I recall from my last visit where there’s nowhere else in the world you could be. It’s a work day on Wall Street but the stars-and-stripes-draped Stock Exchange building seems eerily silent given the turmoil they must currently be experiencing inside.

The nicer building is 23 Wall Street over the way, the old JP Morgan building. Filthy capitalists have such nice architecture. SATC geeks like myself will spot that the subway outside is where Carrie appears from when she rings the Stock Exchange opening bell. Apart from the whole money thing George Washington was inaugurated right on this corner at the Federal Hall, the first inauguration in US history, when New York was the capital city. There’s a statue to commemorate it.

We begin a week-long junk food odyssey with a bag of intensely sweet deep-fried nuts. Beer is required so we drop into a TGI, hopefully to cruise lunchtime suits, but are refused Budweisers because we have no ID. Thereafter we have the anxiety of bringing our passports out with us day and night.

Ground Zero proves quite literally to be “the horror of nothing to see”. This Freud/Irigaray phrase pops into my head as we’re looking into the construction site with its devastating lack of progress. The eerily burned building fronts I saw there in 2003 are gone and it’s harder than ever to imagine all the bloody horrors that befell this district. A sort of unlovely brass frieze commemorates the poor firefighters who died that day but the letters, photos, flowers and candles placed by ordinary people are extremely touching. A card left for a milestone birthday missed brings a lump to my throat.

We catch the free Staten Island Ferry there and back for the amazing views it affords of the return to Manhattan and the downtown skyline. I brave very strong winds off the river to stand out on deck all the way back. With the sun bouncing off glassy towers and the Statue of Liberty keeping her dignified watch and all the thoughts of immigrants and hope and so forth, I find it all really moving. I wish I was amongst it all, all of the time. I wish that the boat was bringing me home.



The Bridge Café is supposedly the oldest bar in the whole of Manhattan, now a posh little restaurant. It’s seated right in the shadow of the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge. We eat gorgeous food there, even wine served without ID. We stay till it’s dark and, nicely soused and drowsy, walk over the bridge itself to the halfway point between Manhattan and Brooklyn. This is the first major wow, even the nondescript office buildings and apartment blocks of Battery Park City are palaces of light at night. New York is such a night time city, I haven’t seen anything so beautiful. The sky teems with so many helicopters and planes you can’t imagine how there is room for them all. Cyclists and skaters whizz by and seem immune to the splendour but even they must occasionally stop and revel in it all. Here is the only place on Earth where you can travel in a plane that's over a helicopter that's over a pedestrian that's over a car that's over a boat. This is New York.

We limp to the nearest subway for a quick journey home. I cannot wait to wake up here …

Don’t Stop Believin'

… Bollox. Wonderful wonderful Bollox. Perhaps the best one ever for me. Wore make-up and a completely GAY outfit. I’m 31, I’m allowed …


… Unintentionally boozy Sunday following an intense tete-a-tete about The Novel. Sailor Jerry and ginger beer at home followed by Guinness with the lovely Emma and Guy (clang) at Briton’s Protection shivering under a feeble heat lamp in my Jimmy Dean jacket. Finished up listening to Ella Fitzgerald at Guy’s well past bedtime before I threw up from too much pear cider into his loo. Epic fail. But funny too. Had a quick scout around for the Brit award on the dash to the bathroom, didn‘t see it. I know, I know, I have serious problems …


… Took Helen for her leaving dinner at Wagamama. Sob. Then on for cocktails at Socio Rehab and some Tiki bar next door I can never remember the name of. We had a BALL. Had a ginger Manhattan and something with a burning sugar cube floating in it. You can’t really go back to pints after that can you? On to Nik’s flat party where people raided his wardrobe and got dressed up as him and I stole paperbacks for reasons unknown to even me …


… Kneehigh Theatre Company’s excellent production of Brief Encounter at The Lowry. Proper good funny musical tear-jerking inventive theatre with a fantastic cast and sublime mix of cinema screens, music hall, romance and stiff upper lippage. I cried! I never cry! …

… Cocktail party for Katie’s birthday. Clang Joe clang Stretch clang came clang. Great fun but things got out of hand and I have consequently been reported to the building management. Oops. Feel like a halls of residence crim now. I wish the neighbour had come to me instead of going straight to the Headmaster, as it were, seems a bit much. Perhaps the slight, single, bespectacled homosexual at number 43 is a threatening presence after all (that’s me by the way). Seriously though, I feel a beast about the whole thing so am being an absolute model neighbour from now on, cushions tied to my feet, listening only to Eno’s ambient works on Volume 1 with the headphones on and my head inside a sleeping bag …


… Facebook hiatus for me for the time being, at the very least until after New York. Facebook, designed as we all know for ‘sharing’, has been facilitating some kind of mental episode with me. I think I shared too much and now everyone hates me. Ah well, win some lose some, innit? All the mistakes, drunken, emotional, personal and otherwise are essentially sitting there in hideous summary each morning waiting for me and I just can’t bear it. Plus I’m an emotional cutter, I have to investigate the absolute worst of any given scenario and Facebook is a charm for doing such things. In short, I have gone a bit mad. As I type this I 'm actually listening to Marillion. (I blame Nighty Night). Oddly enough this is sort of the territory Joe’s new novel covers (Facebook, not Marillion) so perhaps the whole thing is timely and will do me some good. (I was beginning to think in status updates, I’m not kidding) …


… Passed Jarvis Cocker (clang) on Oxford Road, looking like a cross between a Vileda Supermop and a geography teacher, in other words amazing …


… Goodbye Manchester, hello Manhattan …



Soundtrack: Self-made punky playlist that sounds like this.

More Than A Feeling

… Slaughtered with Celebs Part 2: this time the charming Guy Garvey and lovely Marc Riley at Deaf Institute with various marvellous people talking about novels and Morrissey and shit and Everything Everything who were also in partial attendance (minor clang?). Great night which somehow ended with fearsome attack of the miseries on my part. Blub. At midnight it was my birthday and for some reason it bit like a bugger. Something to do with me being an habitual underachiever. I forget now …

… Leading to lovely but emotional birthday lunch next day with Dee at Golden Rice Bowl (Manchester’s oldest Chinese restaurant by the way). I looked terrible. One has been trying to work out whether one is happy of late but I suppose it’s a bit like being in love isn’t it? If you have to ask … Anyway, lovely food and good old chat with Dee which always helps and got a fantastic DAB radio for my birthday which has been my faithful bedroom companion ever since. Have promised self and dozen friends I WILL start listening to Radio 4 this year. Sigh …

… Excellent beery sesh for some reason or other with cracking company at student cum cycle courier hangout Sandbar. It seems I’m drinking/smoking again. Pah …

… Disappointing Club Brenda at Deaf Institute (not working, sorry) leading to best night in Poptastic EVER, no joke, Soul Wax remixes in the indie room (!!!) and massively cool overspill from simultaneously failed night up at Islington Mill. Brilliant times …

… Driven to the sticks (in fact all the way to Lancashire!) for lovely Evan’s 1st birthday party. Where has that year gone? Great fun pretending to be Katie’s husband / young Eddie’s Dad. Soon rumbled though. I think I must have said ‘fabulous’. Damn it. Brilliant fun, best party for ages. I ate too much veggie lasagne and cake and got hyperactive and cross and had to be taken home early without so much as a balloon …

… Joined new gym but to date have spent almost all my time in pool/sauna/jacuzzi. Looking great on it though if I do say so. The men are WAY too ripped and beautiful, I'll have to go in the dead of night when they're all at Essential …

… Dinner at Cocotoo with lovely company but less said about the food and MUSIC the better (Elton John hits played on a Moog, no joke) …

… Little Boots plays Night & Day. I love a couple of her tracks but I wish she was writing them for Kylie or The Aloud. Teeny tiny lady with not bad stage presence but massive comedown for me after the superb Everything Everything tear the place apart. Well, tear me and Katie apart anyway. Said it before, best band in Britain, so fuck you. Read my ancient but ground-breaking review here! …



… Rejection letters begin to roll in for The Novel. One in particular gives a spark of hope though with good suggestions for a restructuring to give the book more cohesion. Similar advice comes from the ever-wise Katie and the possibly even wiser, and terribly kind, Nicholas Royle (clang) so a restructure is under way as we speak. I was hoping to have it DONE before New York but I can’t stop trying on New York outfits and dancing around to the Pet Shop Boys long enough to knuckle down to it. Fail …

… Party to defy the recession and celebrate Pam Ayers’ birthday (not). Marvellous fun, got dressed up and everything. David Hoyle (clang) rolled in at some point, I do love him …



… Disappointing Howling Bells gig. Absolutely blown away by The Joy Formidable though who are ACE …



… Scrummy dinner at Tampopo followed by Macbeth at the Royal Exchange which I liked but some people really didn’t. They foregrounded a whole war-torn military vibe at the expense of the more supernatural pull of the play, which I agree is partly what makes it great. Still, wonderfully violent and sexual with a disturbing portrayal of the weird sisters by three very young girls, children actually, as possibly dead and in one case certainly raped displaced war children. Great performances by those three, the weakest player in fact was Macbeth himself. Lady M couldn’t stop ACTING in the first half but pulled it out of the bag magnificently for her mad scene which took place attached to a drip and behind glass. Great stuff. The scene where the little boy is drowned to a soundtrack of his mother’s screaming and a thunderously loud ‘That’s Not My Name’ by The Ting Tings was brilliant I thought. Macbeth got his cock out too. It’s art baby …