Wandering in the Midwest

“All of life is a foreign country.”

- J. Kerouac

I ride at the speed of life on a highway somewhere in middle America. As if on fire,
corridors of trees flitter coloured leaves of every imaginable flavour. Silos, corn-fields and haystacks abound as Dylan swells, yearns and testifies, his poignant youthful croak breaks in a collusion of stimuli that emotes our collective perception. Mary and Sarah revel like Queens in the front seats, smoking Camel lights with blonde locks flowing in the breeze and the twinkle of elated latitude in their eyes. We three souls constitute one tiny unit of life ambling north underneath a magic blue American sky - a vista that circles tilted about the endless scope of black infinity at the frontiers of our imagination where the sky limits nothing.

The air in the Midwest is so damn breathable I swear you could can it and sell it to New Yorkers for the same price of Vitamin Water. You don’t realise how congested and maddening the big city is, how it subtly hypnotises and coerces your spirit, until you get on back to the wide open spaces and the sweet inhalations of a full lung. In this car, I’m in my element and I shine a smile that gives the warmth of the countryside a run for its’ money. An elevated, unworried mind wanders and wonders, recounting the lighting chains of events and the endless potential of its’ future all the while doing its’ utmost to ground itself in the here and the now. Suddenly I’m awash in my own head; Imagination set on fire like the trees. Head pulses with a bloodrush. I absorb. I Let go. Aware of everything going on right now. Henry Miller was right. To live this life is to be aware – joyously, divinely, serenely, drunkenly aware! In exhalation I smirk, privately agasp at the remarkable places I seem to keep finding myself. Sarah turns half face at me with a smile and a wink as Bobby’s harmonica yowls steely treble through the tweeters. I offer my glance out to the countryside and again forfeit my imagination to the fields and corridors of flittering fire.

Duluth came across initially like an overcast fall town in a John Grisham screen adaptation. Trees lining the streets had been half stripped of their shimmer by the equinox, as marvellous Lake Superior sat silent and imposing down at the banks. The smooth brick clad main drag pulsed us through the faded glory of the old lakeside matron, the town’s Vaudeville grandeur but an old ghost lurking behind tawdry patches of neon makeover. Still, the town’s cosiness, warmth and comforting charm appeared a seemingly unshakeable rock. Duluth is famed for being hometown of one Robert Zimmerman, a young lad who set off from the lake to New York in his late teens in order to transform himself into an influential cat named Bob Dylan. The mystique of Dylan is still rife in the air here, no thanks to the local council, who’d renamed the lake esplanade ‘Bob Dylan Way’ in a flagrant move to capitalise on the great man’s legacy. Still, I ensured I got a photo near the sign.

After meeting Mary’s old college buddies Teresa and Juliet in their wooden penthouse apartment overlooking a sensational view of Superior, we graced Sir Ben’s - a British style brick pub on Dylan Way that served green olives in its happy hour pints of Sam Adams, and provided cosy respite from the sheen of chill hushing on the town up from the ripples of the windswept Lake. Mary, Sarah and I gasbagged on brew and warmed ourselves, due reward after conquering a mighty stretch of open road. After a home cooked meal at Sarah’s Aunt Lori’s, we heated up on neat Jameson and stout at The Brewhouse, in the presence of a youthful blues cat wailing and fingerpicking tunes on his steel hollow body. We hung out with Jed, Mary’s college pal, a red bearded gentle lumberjack, a vagabond in crime, travelling around country with his car and ukelele. We smashed piss until the hours became wee and eventually crashed in the wooden penthouse with an old radiator that made noise like the Antichrist.

If you told me six months ago I’d one day be roaming around Minnesota with a bevy of gorgeous American women, invited to a couple of hometown weddings and welcome to a dose of the American Dream, I guess I would have said anything’s possible. Fluidity is everything. The freedom in choosing to move with the flow of things at a given point in time affords that gambler an unparalleled sensation of liberation, destination regardless.

I flew from JFK to Minneapolis-St Paul the week before the Duluth stint, reuniting again with Foxy, again taken under her wing and ferried back to her parent’s leafy hood in the little town of Chaska. In my first taste of warm, Midwest hospitality, senior Foxes Barry and Jane welcomed me into their home with open arms. Baz, a quirky trumpet-wielding former school band leader and Jane, a sassy sax playin’ folk singer, whose turkey sandwich was one to write home about. We gnawed on a big steak meal later that night and mused on US-OZ cultural peculiarities. Jane was an avid a fan of ‘Waltzing Matilda’ and insisted on a mid-meal rendition; regrettably my recognition of the six middle verses were not what they used to be and I struggled to keep up between mouthfuls of steak. Later in the trip Barry would knock off a few stubbies of Killian and pull out his faux-bogan-cockney take on ‘Botany Bay’, a song that he loved but made his kids at school want to punch themselves in the head repeatedly rather than playing the tune with their instruments.

Singing too-ra-li oo-ra-li ad-dy,
Singing too-ra-li oo-ra-li ay

I couldn’t help but marvel at how much I’d been looked after on this trip. I was truly blessed with hospitality and the company of amazing, beautiful and genuine folk. Must have clocked up a decent share of karmic brownie points dealing with so many needy bastards when I worked all those hours back at the hostel. I was being guided through the whole way by some benevolent force.

Sarah flew in later that first Friday night and we heralded in a big weekend. Annie’s wedding never went ahead in the end - a tale of thwarted marriage probably best left untold - but we partied on regardless, celebrating the non-wedding with rounds of olive-beaten dirty Martinis and shots of whiskey in a red-pleather-booth dive bar named Liquor Lyells. We crashed at our friend Katie’s place, ripping the tear where the night turns into morning and elongating the hours without promise or excuse. Katie owns a magenta blue cat named Zeus who strutted around like a ham on four toothpicks and pretty much owned the joint.

As well as the Foxes, I was fortunate enough to also meet Sarah’s parents throughout the course of the week. Barb came off a strong, amicable women with a temporary steeliness that made way for warm connection once she got to know you. Over tall lattes, the three of us were reduced to tears after an artillery of head-shakingly hilarious stories involving Sarah’s old man, Craig - a bloke with a hunger for life - all nine of them - and a magnetic capacity for enduring near-death blunders. Craig was an enigma, a man who got as close to death as possible if only just so he could laugh in its’ face and implore it to go fuck itself. I met him in person with the girls a day later, sharing a burger lunch at a classic Midwest beer den called ‘Lions’ Tap’. It was the type of wood panelled, neon beer sign roadside dive where your burger might be in danger of being hocked in by a flannelette hunter named ‘Sea-Bass’ if you expounded your penchant for liberal politics in too much more than a whisper. An accomplished outdoorsman with handle bar moustache and hint of ‘go fuck yaself’ burliness, Craig got into matter-of-fact detail as to how to properly gut a male Elk after you shoot, it the three of us chomped away queasily into dripping double bacon burgers.

Over dinner at Barb and Craig’s place in Lester Prairie some nights later, we reeled the stories in his presence. A while ago one of Sarah’s Irish mates joined them for a meal over at the ranch – Craig did his utmost to make the bloke feel extra welcome, pumping ‘Celtic female hits’ on the stereo before offering their guest an oversized tray of Potatos and a knowing wink. At another dinner he got up from his chair and lurched over to their guest to vigorously demonstrate how to shuck a prawn, wherein he sat heavily back down, falling through his chair in a mess of wood chip and panel, ass over tit on the dining room floor. Fed up with the poor satellite reception one night, Craig decided the surrounding trees in his backyard were the signal-blocking culprits. With chainsaw in hand, he gave what for to one massive oak, before it tipped awkwardly and destroyed the roof of his recently constructed shed. In a rash of ‘Fuck, shit n’ cocksucker’, he gave the saw to another one. This tree also fell askew, landing plumb on the roof of his truck. In additional flurry of ‘Fuck’ he missed the rest of his show cleaning up the damage. To his credit, the reception improved. I could go on about Craig’s many stories, all equally gold.

Already completely awash in the spontaneity of the journey and the joy of the unexpected, it was once Sarah and I drove to her family log cabin that any lingering dramas of the world spilled away, soaking myself completely in the natural order of things. The road on the way was the kind you’d see in ‘Stand By Me’ where badasses smash roadside postboxes with baseball bats out the window of their hotted up chevies. Damn kids.

On the banks of a tranquil Lake and surrounded by thick woods, Sarah’s digs ended up being the archetypal B-grade horror setting, a textbook scenario that could easily have inspired the Evil Dead or Friday the Thirteenth. It was brilliant. We sat under stars at the foot of the glorious Lake as the last of the day’s sun filtered into darkness. The silence was deafening, like something out of a Steinbeck novel – thick, tacit but for the odd rogue loon bird rousing the banks and the soft echo of our private conversation sailing across the expanse. Craig’s massive trophy Elk head stared into taxidermic nothingness at the foot of the staircase to the upper loft.. We warmed inside with a wood stove-fire and watched ‘Boondock Saints’ in blankets and I’d rarely felt as content or as cosy in my life. This was the American dream

Waking to wilderness in the balcony window, we were joined the next day not only by Foxy, but her cousins Erin and Nikki and mutual friend Phoebs. Again, I was to be tortured with the company of five beautiful women. As classic rock crunched out through the ancient solid state RCA, beer o’clock was hollered early as we rugged up and set the outdoor heath aflame for a good old-fashioned marshmellow roasting. Sky turned to starry blackness as maturity levels dwindled, my masculine constitution suffering considerable bereavement as it struggled to keep ahead of the impenetrable wall of estrogen.

I met a lot of Mary and Sarah’s old friends and acquaintances on this trip – old friends who’d come out of the woodwork; some who never got out of Minnesota, some, I’m sure who never left town. I’ve met so many characters on this trip I can barely put it all together and keep up with the faces. The biggest onslaught came the next day at ‘Grano’s’ wedding - a good mate of the girls from way back in high school who finally got his ass into gear and got hitched. We dolled up to the nines and I managed to score a sweet poo-brown Ralph Lauren suit on loan from Mary’s brother, thus avoiding a potential arrest by the fashion police draped in Craig’s ‘formal woodsman’ corduroy pants and sportcoat. Though the Lutheran priest forgot the bride’s name mid-speech, and one of the grooms made an unsettling oratory on par with Steve Buscemi’s dud-brother in the Wedding Singer, the wedding day overallwas a hit. Standing at the reception bar in brown suit and bright white TUK Jam sneakers, I was branded ‘Clark Griswald’ by the father of the groom - clearly the old man had little concept of taste, because this footwear continually garners positive commentary from randoms everywhere I go. The tune ‘Holiday Road’ was henceforth implanted unbudgingly in my head, on top of ‘Paradise by the Dashboard Light’ and an entire playlist of cheesy 80’s awesomeness, a bevy of DJ hits which forced us to shake our bits with matrimonial abandon across the parquetry dancefloor.

The 9am wake up was rough the next morning, especially considering we were checked in to the Radisson. Ordinarily a saviour, the round of Bloody Mary’s instead made us feel foul and limped the morning off to a poor start. Duluth today felt grimy and overcast, cold and foreboding. We bid our farewell to Zimmerman’s home and returned back down highway 61 to Chaska.

***

Back at Sir Ben’s pub in Duluth on that first afternoon, I remember standing outside in my white scarf and jacket. I smoked and stared at the horizon smothering the great Lake. Everything at that moment felt electric and heightened. Felt like I’d come a long, long way since May 15, and the most of it was that I suddenly struggled to see how I could ever possibly feel the same way about living back at home. For years I’d been reluctant to go too far, for too long – the allure of home, the safety and all the triggers to old memories I never wanted to lose – they were all magnets. I thought all I’d ever need would always remain where I began. My old frame of reference had been stripped away; my life was no longer where I left it. It was here. That ever shifting here that kept on spurring and sparking my soul, augments my interior universe with the replenishing sensation of infinite possibility and flow of a limitless imagination. I breathed in. I looked up.

.. the sky is a luscious warm blanket; perfect trimmed trees leaves bristle in chill Lake Superior breeze. A lone bird circles overhead in the grey heavens – wandering, but never lost. My airbound compatriot, my brother in crime…

Suddenly, all life and the concept of ‘home’ had been transformed while I let myself get swept away in the stream. Fluidity was everything.

My life, a foreign country.

Connection is Everything

It warrants a special mention that the chains of event you inadvertently spur into action and the random people you meet in equally random places can impact your life in ways you could never possibly predict from the outset. Concrete testament to this notion is my encounter with the Fox.

I met a girl named Mary Fox back at Spicy Thai hostel in Chiang Mai. She was a crazy, live for everything every single second kinda gal; Minnesota born n’ bred and an all singin’, all dancin’ actress if ever there was one. Instantly approachable, warm and fun, she clearly possessed a heart of infinite carat gold in tow with her sparkling champagne smile. The first encounter with the Fox transpired one night during a group dinner down at a local food haunt. In the middle of a hot curry, the Fox commanded my attention down the table with, “Hey man, do you realise you look like Gerard Butler?”. Confused as to who the hell Gerard Butler was, my ego copped a considerable stroking when I learned he was King Leonidas from the film 300 - stroked again when she backed it up with a sly wink, “What are you doin later?”.

The Fox and I were good buddies for no more than five or so days – quite a long friendship in ‘backpacker time’, where people perpetually enter your life sometimes for little more than a few hours, or a one night session down at the pub. You connect, drain the red paint tin, then drunkenly swap emails or Facebook surnames and swear to high heaven you’ll stay in touch until the earth ends. But of course, time flies and the old faces get replaced with a stream of fresher ones; you meet new people, you forget names, lose those little bits of paper with all the details as the cycle repeats itself. From the outset it was difficult to believe that the situation with Foxy would be any different, no matter how much she stroked my ego with allusions of my resemblance to a beefcake Spartan warriors. We kindled an amicable friendship and jammed on guitar, frequently getting wankered on buckets of Thai whisky and enjoying late night chats about life, direction, home and love. I learned she’d left her fella back home after a five year tryst and seemed a little puzzled, if not a tad non-plussed as to how it all unravelled in the end. She’d been living in New York, working part time as an actress and paying her bills as a bartender at a local haunt. Decent at sorting the wheat from the chaff, I knew I had a connection with the Fox and realised she was a keeper, someone to share travel stories with and keep in touch with despite our seemingly divergent roads. Bound for Europe, she left us – destination: some crazy bloody pilgrimage across Spain called the Camino de Santiago. Never heard of it. Sounded like a bloody lunatic mission.

We kept in touch. I wrote Facebook messages declaring in gest that I’d one get my ass over to ‘Sota and hang with her again. As always, her response was more than enthusiastic. Foxy pulsed around Europe for a while as I kept fanging it around Asia, before hitting up London, Dublin and Edinburgh, and suddenly finding myself for whatever falutin reason on the very same thigh-bleedin’ Camino de Santiago that i was destined to fail and she was destinated to nail. We missed each other in Barcelona by a thread, and again in Pamplona and Roncevalles. And when I piked on the Camino after my knee went to shit, our Spanish rendezvous was seemingly not to be.

But that wasn;t the end of it. Time passed. I flew to the States. Foxy kept walking through the Spanish countryside and somehow got to the end without losing a leg or her sanity. I was two weeks into the San Francisco leg and the idea to go check out New York suddenly seemed a pertinent option. Workmates JD and AJ would be there at the same time, plus the big apple just felt like the right place to be at that particular moment. As fate would have it I noticed on Foxy’s facebook status that she was ‘back in NYC'. It was ridiculously excellent timing. I got in touch again; she was thrilled to hear that i ws planning to head over, and demanded that I come stay with her in a spare room at her Queens apartment for as long as I liked.

So it was after our two nights of Marriot largesse that I made the trek into unchartered territory to Queens on the number 7 subway. Fears of collapse and tales of financial dread swarmed out of the flurry of mouths on the platform fo Grand Central Station. This Wall St stuff was big news, unprecedented economic breakdown unseen in the history of our deregulated world. It was on the overland section of the number 7 that i witness the glorious vista of New York City from a healthy distance. It was put in my place with an arrant dose of gobsmack at the sight of the sprawl - the unmistakable Empire State and Chrysler building and the never ending jungle of scrapers.

The snapshot reel of this afternoon is well entrenched in my memory – the very first breath and taste of Woodside, Queens - the awesome little neighbourhood that I was very soon about to call my home. I instantly fell in love with the place, the Irish pubs on every corner enmeshed with all manner of international restaurants, cafes and stores. It was a melting pot and a half, full of characters and a real community neighbourhood vibe with unmistakable soul. The wonderful Fox met me at the foot of the 61st Woodside station steps on this glorious, sunny New York noon. We'd reunited at last, me and my Chang Mai buddy – worlds apart one day and at each others’ side the next. Over diner eggs n relentless godawful black Americano cawfee we spewed travel stories and updates on our lives at each other, much of it centering on our mutual disbelief at the physical torment of the Chafo de Santiago. At one point down the trail Foxy was told bluntly by a Spanish GP that chances of her actually completing the trek in its entirety were borderline zero. She managed to soldier on with deep blistery gashes, rigging up her legs and feet with a mesh of bandage and duct tape, defying all odds before collapsing at the foot of the Santiago cathedral in an exhausted, sweaty, jubilant mess. She offerred me a squiz at the bottoms of her feet - they looked like a grey pumice scrubber and her big toenail had died a black death. I took my hat off to the woman for nailing it.

Eyeing the daily hum and drum and rattle of trains outside in the hood, we mused on our plans for the coming weeks. She would be moving back to Minnesota in October, heading back for two weddings before shacking up with her folks for a while in order to get some cash back in the coffers. Ever enthusiastic and inclusive, she became overjoyed at the prospect of bringing me back to Minnesota with her as the novelty Australian, an offer I couldn’t refuse. Mary’s apartment was more than I ever expected - a cosy Spanish-esque terrace villa that had guitars mounted in the living room and a seriously awesome vibe that emanated right through the joint. Planes shot low over our heads as we sat on the front steps and smoked a cigarette, a deafening roar that, coupled with the slicing rumble of the overground 7 subway, provided an unmistakable soundtrack to the neighbourhood and an on-schedule cacophony that took a good few days to get used to.

Life for JD and AJ was a little rough after checking out of the Marriot, as they struggled to find any vacant hostels and very nearly got mugged by a belt-fisted fruitbat downtown during diner lunch. Foxy came to their rescue, demanding that I invite them to join the party and stay with us in Queens as well. Needless to say, they were overjoyed at fortuitous turn of events. We got the party started early and began smashing piss at the ol’ favourite Irish den the ‘Cuckoo’s Nest’, downing a series of afternoon pints and ambitious array of miscellaneous liquor. We were introduced to Mary’s mate Anne - a skinny blonde, boisterous and wild, and after being invited to her wedding in Minnesota in October on sight, we got to listen to her belt out some amazing songs back at the apartment. JD and I joined in and jammed out duel sax that filtered out all bleedin’ gums like into the night through the front window ajar. We met Sarah; Mary’s housemate and lifelong pal – a blonde, warm and gorgeous Midwest gal with a cute smile that melted me. Words fail in describing the elation and excitement of these first few days and nights with Foxy and her bevy of beautiful, intoxicating blonde girlfriends. The hard, fast, relentless arsehole reputation of New York was being busted as a myth and it seemed like all my Christmases had come at once. I would later learn that Mary and Sarah’s friends Laura and Nicki, as well as an out of towner Katie would also be living with us over the next few weeks.
A lone Australian living abroad with five women. I wasn’t leaving any time soon.

That night was a sheer bender, cabbing past the Empire cityscape downtown for a live gig featuring a good aquaintence of the girls, later returning for a second round at the Cuckoo’s Nest for a final sousing with AJ before his morning departure back home. I slept far too well that night, peering out the window to the trees above, the stars behind them, and the rousing, overwhelming black city sky, something that would blow my mind as I got to absorb the place as the days went on. There’s something about the sky over New York that was unlike any other sky I’d seen, like the enormity of the amazing city and its vibrant glory was duely reciprocated by the sky above, mirroring its magnitude like a deep ocean. I scoped flurries of brilliant blue then clusters of storybook nighttime cloud, and some of the most amazing sunsets witnessed by these two eyes. The enormity of the endless skyscrapers and cityscape amplify the natural world.
It is a magic place.

Though woken the next morning by the startling roar of an artillery of airplanes headed for LaGuardia airport, in a week or two like Darryl Kerrigan of Coolaroo, I would fail to take much notice of the clamor as it blended into the natural soundscape of daily life, Woodside, Queens, NY. Everything felt right with the move to New York – everything. I’d discovered somewhere I never wanted to leave, and a group of amazing, wonderful, creative people who had opened up their lives to me – wide and warm, without any question. All thanks to a chance encounter with a random Foxy lady in Thailand. Thank God she was delusional enough to think I looked like Gerard Butler.

Takin a chunk out of the hefty Granny Smith

Basking in the glory of our NYC karaoke debut, JD and I snoozed until 2 in the afternoon whilst AJ dealt with industry knobs all morning in a condition of furious hangover. We salvaged the day that would become choc full of wonderful touristy nuggets and moments of surreal action, hitting up the subway and venturing into the guts of town – beginning our adventure down at Grand Central Station and the surrounding downtown action.

In a flurry of yellow cabs and smooth, suited business folk, pretzel vendors and clusters of city cops, we flitted about fifth avenue and took in the magnitude of what lay in front of our hazy eyes. A city alive. On the move. Fast. Rapid. Chaos amongst order. In every conceivable direction, heads marched towards destinations with purpose and drive. Action, commotion and the nonchalant acceptance of it all. Meaty breeze flung my hair into dog’s breakfast as I trundled over the thick warmth emanating from out of steaming subway vents. We took a turn down Times Square as gargantuan billboards and advertisements overloaded our sentient systems with brutally mammoth and intense stimulation. To attempt to ‘people-watch’ around these parts is a recipe for total system overload. But it’s fun. Furiously tall skyscrapers team up in rows, as your eyes peer down avenues that seem to go on forever, boulevards to endless stretches of concrete jungle, and deep, clear sky gripping on at the very end of the line. It is breathtakingly monumental.
Monumentally breathtaking.

JD and I hauled ass to see it all. We made our presence felt outside Letterman’s Ed Sullivan theatre and Rupert G’s ‘Hello Deli, snapping the obligatory photo with a fairly tired looking Rupert, no doubt questioning the price of his quasi-fame when every prick and his dog comes in to his diner to claim a shot of his face. I ordered an ‘Alan Coulter’ sandwich (the bloodnut old-radio voice who spews schtick and the word 'Pants' at the end of each Letterman episode) whilst JD got a ‘Letterman’. We wandered further uptown to glorious Central Park as we shot the shit on life, travel and the multitudinous potential of the future, basking in the lush sun on a huge Central Park rock. It was there, looking around to the enormity of it all, in the leafy central lung of Manhattan island, that New York begun to filter my soul with a sense that all was possible here - a furious, relentlessly beating heart where anything and everything could happen if you possess the balls to have a crack.

We walked north, nearing the busy intersection of 72nd St on the Upper West side. The gothic magnificence of the eerie Dakota building on the corner shot electric chills throughout my body and spine. Lennon was shot by a lone gunman on that exact piece of concrete back on October 8, 1983. Across the road in Strawberry Fields, the heart of Lennon’s ongoing vigil, It was Love as usual for the endless stream of folk paying respect to the man whose visionary words and legacy continued to permeate humanity’s subconscious mind like cognitive glue; a dream that has still yet to manifest.

I was struggling to come to grips with how brilliant this city was. Moreover, it was becoming clear just how unique a time in history it was to be present in this wild corner of the world.

We took the subway downtown. The gaping whole where two World Trade Centre towers once used to plunge forth into the sky was headshakingly astonishing. I could only picture the scenes around me at that powerful moment back in September 2001. The panic, the shock. I could feel it all. Unassuming, innocent folk smashed into a state of fear at the menacing sight of the financial core of their city under attack. Seeing that hole was a reminder of all that went down in the last eight years. This murky, distressing, parallel reality of the ‘Era of Terrorism’; a carte blanche springboard for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the Machavellian abuse of power and criminality of an administration that preferred to fuel fires and burn bridges than provide sound, humanitarian leadership. Standing at the heart of it all yielded a walk through the past, a reminder to not give in to a ‘short memory’. And the hope that a majority of Americans might do the same come November 4.

It wasn’t just the spectre of the last eight years under Bush, nor the looming vibe of a monumental election in the sights that gave me the sensation I’d come to visit the heart of the beast at the very point of its’ awakening.

Distant sun fell on Wall St.

Later in the night we’d find out that Wall St itself had fallen hard. It was the beginning rumble of an extremely uncertain period for the global financial structure and an unnerving time for the world. As my feet traipsed the concrete slabs of the heart of global finance, I was hit by the sensation of walking through the midst of a brewing storm, Suddenly, with the shockwaves of a corrupt, financial system devouring itself in the heart of a brewing Obama-McCain election, I found that I’d gained two front row seats to the advent of history being made by the minute.

On a leisurely walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, JD and I marvelled at the pink, streaked sky, the radiant sun signing off in the distance over lady liberty. We ventured back to the Marriot and begun to plan the evening’s conviviality as AJ continued to get pumped by work obligation. From various sources we’d heard that after all the students and bohemians got pushed out from Greenwich Village, the boho vibe shifted over to Williamsburg, a burgeoning neighbourhood parked across the river in nearby Brooklyn. With a reputation for fresh edginess and a swathe of hip, trendy bars and pubs we set off to check it out.

With little knowledge of the surrounding neighbourhoods we boarded a local bus, managing to get horribly lost on the edge of one of the shadiest, more dangerous neighbourhoods in Brooklyn. We got off the bus in an area one could only describe as seriously hardcore ‘Jewtown’ (particularly if your name is John Safran). Josh and I stuck out like gentile dog’s balls as we roamed streets pulsing with Hasidic Jews. Men all in black suits, 'kolpiks' and 'shtreimels' – big, oversized headgear, furry and shaped like a hairy spare tire, trundled about in every conceivable direction. For all I knew we’d taken a teleport to seventeeth century Ukraine. Or seventeenth century Ukraine had set up shop in the future in the guts of Brooklyn, NYC. It was full on. Interrupting two Hasidic blokes in full conversation for some directions, we entered a brief period of some real-life Larry David-esque comedy, as the two archetypes fought over which way was best. One said left, one said right. This was no help. But as the propensity of black n white, hatted Jewish folk dwindled, we found ourselves instead roaming the guts of a section of neighbourhood where it looked like people most likely got murdered; at very least brutally mugged or beaten to death with their own shoes. This was serious, raw ghetto. By now, slightly unnerved by the lack of human presence on the main streets, our stomach rumbled with the hungry of bastards, getting gradually more frustrated with this ridiculous and confusing journey through Jewtown and the hood, unlikely gangsters from a foreign land desperate for a slice of pizza and some beer, and not for a cap in the ass.

We finally made it over to the Williamsburg we were looking for and settled into a cosy bar for 32 oz polystyrene vats of Bud Lite. A local would later sum up my disdain for American beer, quote "American beer is just like having sex on a boat - it's fucking close to water". AJ would join us later in the night. We drank heartily and took it all in, venturing homeward sometime after four-thirty via an all night bakery run by an eccentric, Argentinian baker who was candid enough to declare his hatred toward pastries. After chewing a piece of his cheesecake, Josh requested that he reel off the line “Eello, my little friend” in an archetypal druglord wisp. Despite not exactly colloquially accurate, angry little baker man amused us greatly, complying with the tasty treats as well as hilarious oracular Scarface impersonation.

Stumbling back into largesse we three Kings crashed for the second night spectacularly, not before a quick prank call back to our old workplace where we attempted a mock booking with one of our none-the-wiser former colleagues.
New York had again proved its worth in spades.
Another fabulous night for the annals and the commencement of a brand new era.
New York had captured me.

Noo Yawk!

“I been from Greenwich, to Greenwich Village…with some mean time in between”

Flying Virgin America is the closest thing beneath the stratosphere to commercial spaceflight. The in-flight décor is one of futuristic, white-sheen, with touch screen in-chair video screens pumping local news stations and light entertainment, as well as a gimmicky pink and mauve lighting system which gives you the peculiar impression that you’ve bought a $130 ticket to ride a sexy, cylindrical Gravitron. In typical Virgin trend, Branson seemed to have blown away the stiff 1970’s flying vibe that clung like an old dag to the industry’s arse with a hip, smooth brand and unpretentious roster of captains who greet passengers in the boarding lounge prior to the flight. All that aside, I’m still waiting for my royalty check for Virgin Dating, Branson, you wily, English bastard. (pls see back-blog ‘Sir Dick and I’ circa 2007)

Arrived at JFK airport in the mid arvo I was hungry to enter the big city and replicate the title credit scenes of so many American films - barrelling into town in a yellow cab with some catchy 80’s synth ditty aided by a panning shot of cab churning downtown along the Williamsburg Bridge. Like Eddie Murphy in ‘Coming to America’, ‘Ghostbusters 2’, the intro to NY scene in ‘Almost Famous’. God! So many brilliant films of my youth and recent past! As them ‘scrapers neared and the sunset loomed, my turbanised cabbie, Singh smashed foot to the floor through suburban Queens, destination downtown Brooklyn for a solid dose of the ‘surreals’. With Letterman ads on the in-car tv screen, ‘NYC Cops’ by the Strokes in the background, and the first sighting of the Empire State and Chrysler buildings, everything suddenly felt very right.

With old workmates AJ and Hayley in town on a tourism work junket, I rendezvoused with them and our work compatriot Josh in the spiffing largesse of the Marriot Hotel, Brooklyn Heights. The Marriot was playing host to the week-long WYSTIC travel convention – a flash event for tourism clingers to get shitfaced on the boss’ greenback and schmooze and crack onto promiscuous global counterparts. Our rooms at the Marriot were so damn plush, replete with every trimming, bar the ceiling mirror. Fortunately, one of our allocated rooms was numbered ‘666’, clearly the choice suite of Satan when he’s in town for maiming and firey slaughter. I didn’t bother checking for a Gideon’s bible in the bedside drawer. The hotel was a polar shift from the previous night’s rest on the floor of San Francisco International, an airport so unconducive to slumber that it made the floor of LAX look like the ritz. I managed to gain shut eye for little over two hours, forced to compromise a cafeteria bench with my shivering carcass whilst the temperature of the whole terminal was intentionally relegated to a chilly ‘kill any chance of those vagabond bastards enjoying a skerrick of slumber’ degrees. Farenheit. Everything was falling into place and the gut instinct to hightail it cross-country to the big, meaty apple was undisputedly the best move I could have made. JD, AJ and myself freshened up and made our way through the golden, revolving doors of luxury to the bustling, balmy night air of Brooklyn.

First port of call was Little Italy, no guesses as to the demographic of this neighbourhood – a bustling, intense little pocket sporting an endless cavalcade of Italian fare and restaurants, certainly the bastard child of Lygon St and a town carnival if ever there was one. After a sumptuous pasta meal, we hit the subway across town a few stops to Greenwhich Village, birthplace of so many great musicians and beat artists, a landmark richly anticipated after reading of Bob Dylan’s early days as a teen performing in local coffee houses, and old beat tales originating from this loose, melting hub of art and creative vibe. I guess the pitfall of intoxicating oneself with romanticized reflections of days past is that the places in your imagination are generally always richer than the places themselves. They get built up and nostalgized and thrown high on a pedestal, and when little remains in reality to remind you of the place in your mind it can be a little bit of a let down. Since the 60’s went down, the village’s demand and escalating price of living led to the gradual erosion of the neighbourhood’s rich bohemian vibe. Still, seeing ‘Café Wha’ with my own two eyes, the coffee houses and leafy, historic streets was a great buzz, and a solid meal for the imagination and soul.

There really is something familiar about everywhere you go in New York. My folks summed it best when they travelled through the big apple late last year. Sustaining pangs of déjà vu as they lumbered through the freezing Christmas streets, they put this odd sensation down to the fact that they’d bore witness so many films set in NYC that their subconscious memory had been infiltrated to a point where streets and landmarks, as well as feeling surreal, inevitably produced a sensation of noticeable familiarity.

With a couple of pints behind us in the village, we proclaimed the city our lobster and got ready to shuck. For some unknown bloody reason we ended up in a near-empty karaoke bar, drinking $2 cans of swill amidst the company of some seriously inebriate, never-had-beens belting out and massacring hits from decades gone by. Josh and I reached a point where we were forced to show them all how it was done, delving into a rousing rendition of Dirty Dancing’s ‘I’ve had the time of my life’ – me on manly vocals, with Josh providing scintillating female falsetto. Need I say it brought the house down. With a fire breathing barmaid and a host of hilarious characters, it was declared that the best nights out are almost always the shady ones that from the outset appear doomed to fail and spoil all desire for a quality night out. And suddenly, you sing a bad 80's tune, smash cans, get acquainted with the locals and bear witness to an exemplary evening that will probably go down in history and never be forgotten. With warmed throats we found ourselves nearing plastered territory, chatting with a local chick about her penchant for John McCain, as well as with another bloke, an archetypal 'Fahgettabouddit' Itali-Yorker who provided some classic New York advice that would last more that the night. “Be Good. And if ya can’t be good…be dangerous”.

Funnily enough, New York for all it’s stories about fast living, rough attitudes, muggings and crime felt safer at night time than walking through the CBD of Melbourne after a 2am lockout. In fact, of all US cities with population of over 500,000, New York sits comfortably at fifth safest, well ahead even of San Francisco. There are cops hanging about every busy street corner, a presence totally unthreatening yet extremely mind-easing. Despite the build up equivalent of Australia’s population wedged with the confines of Manhattan Island alone, there is the sense that with such a diverse society of people ‘doin their own thing’, New York just ain’t got any time to waste with pissing each other off.

Upon leaving the karaoke bar we acquainted ourselves with two Californian girls, Orita and Kaitlyn, who’d been privy to our unfortunate Dirty Dancing vocal sequence earlier in the night. Our smooth Australian accents (and vocal proclivity) were too much for the attractive west coasters, deciding they had little choice but to join us for another beer. Feeling dangerous after bringing the karaoke house down, we also thought it might be a good idea to attend to our checklist of NYC objectives and plant ourselves in front of a moving taxi while retorting “I’M WALKIN” HERE, JERKORF!”. Dangerous, but not stupid, we reasoned that certain death, whilst noble and potentially humorous in this circumstance, would probably put a dampener on the evening, not to mention bear the probable loss of our female company. The next pub, sans karaoke and, by and large, people - by chance happened to be host to a dwindling bucks night of bloody Australians. Internationally, Aussies seem to sport a magnetic attraction with each other and rarely will a night transpire without some interaction with a fellow countryman, for better or worse. One bloke from Sydney sat down in our booth and passed out before we got his name. Later, outside we chatted with Pete from the back of Bourke, a fish out of water huffing an unfiltered Camel in the heart of a long way from home. Pete was a relic Australian from the past, a real life Hogan-era dinosaur.

Shenanigans on the subway aplenty, we made asses of ourselves and decided that New York was a bloody fantastic place. The sense that in such a massive, vibrant city one can get away with anything as long as you don’t piss people off or break the law was such a liberating feeling. My inebriate brain hit ecstacy point with the knowledge of a great night up our sleeve and more to be had, feeding off the sleepless energy of this beautiful, insane and truly marvellous city. Start spreadin the news….i aint leaving today. Nor tomorrow. And probably not the next...

Lions and Tigers and Beats, Oh My

I came. I saw. I wore flowers in my hair. Joan Starr’s prophecies had finally manifested to realistic fruition, the by product of interplay between psychic predeterminism and the power of vivid suggestion. I’d wandered the streets of this magical city like an old beat; as Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘America’ and the Beach Boys’ ‘Feel Flows’ and Thundercalp Newman's ‘Somethign in the Air’ flew through my ears, exacerbating ecstactic sensations of spine tingles and shivers that coursed electric through my awakened consciousness. I’d never felt this alive before. Never this free. And like Keroauc, never planting trough for too long and perpetually envisioning a third eye on the next adventure, this cat began to sustain an itch that desired a good, hard scratchin' some place else.

Alas, San Francisco was not to be the culmination jewel-point of four months a’globe-traipsin’ for this wandering dreamer. Instead, it was about to serve as a monumental signpost along an unexpectedly deeper yellow brick road. This, along with my documented frequentation of homosexual 80’s nights and fetching floral hair arrangement might appropriately suggest a change of name to Dorothy.

As far as luck goes, I seem to cop well beyond my fair share of the stuff. This whole trip has been nothing but smooth sailing, only a couple of heavily introspective times upsetting the mix where I felt like a marooned git adrift upon the vast existential ocean of life. But those times were fleeting, not to mention very necessary. You have to know the murky to appreciate the crystal. All in all, everything had gone my way – fluid opportunities, synchronous turns of event and encounters with some of the most genuine, amazing people I’d ever met who crossed my path on an all too regular basis. Writing gigs had fallen into my lap sustaining my ability to eat, drink and be merry. And in the final few days at the Green Tortoise, drinking at Vesuvio and Specs, eating 3 buck pepperoni and hanging out with the hippies down Haight and Washington Square, fortune managed to replenish my ailing lack of wardrobe, as four bags of premium, brand new clothes appeared on the steps of the hostel. It was a lucrative free for all in which I gained a brand new pair of G-Star jeans, Ben Sherman shirts and an Armani sweater. With a rapidly embarrassing gape materialising about the crotch of my filthy, ragged jeans, this was a highly welcome predicament.

With no clear direction on where I was off to next, this was a peripheral detail that just didn’t seem to matter. I had new pants. Life was good. And akin to the warmth freshly felt in the nether regions courtesy of brand spankin’ new threads, the warming buzz of recognition deep in the soul was an incessant reminder that everything was swell and that this Dorothy was on the right track to somewhere. As wisdom would have it, there really is no wrong track. Only a selection in which to choose, and lessons to learn according to those choices made. As the mental clouds cleared way for inspired sunshine, the time suddenly seemed extremely ripe to be pickin apples – in this circumstance a great big Emerald granny smith. With luck again on my side, I jumped on the net and swung a ridiculously cheap flight to New York City. Scheduled to take wing in a matter of days, I lapped the last of this magical place, clicked my heels and packed my sack.