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CHRISTIAN SAUVÉ

Don't say we didn't warn you

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New York 2001

Day 1: June 29, 2001

2001, Christian Sauvé

At last, the day came. Taking a rare day off work, I woke up around 5:15 (or, more accurately, stopped pretending I'd be able to sleep) and after the requisite shower and breakfast, look a long look at my personal haven of peace -my library- and wondered one again what had motivated me to embark on such an uncharacteristic enterprise. I don't usually travel and often doubt my ability to enjoy it. I'm a big fan of cocooning, a guy who loves routine and is really reluctant to do new stuff. In any case, that was pretty much my lowest moment of the whole experience; sitting down in my basement, luggage in hand, wondering why the hell I was doing this.

Rockland, 5:52: Will I ever see my home again?

Well, strike that. The really lowest moment of the trip came in the last few minutes waiting for the coach bus to pick us up in Ottawa, where all my doubts multiplied the usual fears about the bus never showing up. But the bus showed up, right on time. 

We boarded, got our names tags ("Remove them in New York City" helpfully added our tour director) and met our fellow voyagers. Two of them we knew, sort of. My sister glanced at the nametags of a couple in their early forties and wondered if they weren't the quasi-legendary uncle and aunt of one of our best friend. They were, showing once again that the old seven-degree-of-separation concept is more like three-degrees when considering Ottawa.

Four other passengers made an impression on us, alas negatively so: Francophone women, somewhere in their thirties, obviously good friends. Obviously idiots, too: They chattered incessantly about the most inane subjects. They couldn't come up with a single insightful comment. They talked loudly. They were, of course, sitting right behind us.

The rest of the bus population is quickly fading away in my memory. The "colonel" (looking exactly like a Civil War military stereotype) and his young wife. The two loud women at the back. The Portuguese sisters. Mister know-all-but-really-doesn't. The chain smoker. The small quiet moustached guy who looked exactly like all the other serial murderers you remember seeing on the evening news.

My sister and I were the only ones under thirty on the whole busload of thirty people. But as the travel brochure thoughtfully mentioned "our tour director is certified in CPR for your added safety", well, we knew what to expect going in.

Our tour organizers (Pat and Ron, with Marcel at the wheel of the bus) gave the impression they knew what they were doing, foregoing Nazi-like exactitude for a more comfortable casual approach. (We later learned that Ron had served in the military and later as a navigator for Air Canada. He also mentioned something about the Avro Arrow project, but -damn it!- we couldn't hear the rest very well.) Their approach worked well, and would continue to do so for the rest of the trip.

We left Ottawa proper at about 7:30. Direction south, toward the 1000 Island Bridge. I tried to sleep, a week's worth of early wakeups just screaming to catch up with me. I was unsuccessful. Remnants of adrenaline, no doubt, even though for the first time that day, I felt adequately relaxed. A good thing too; for the next ten hours, I'd essentially be going along with the bus driver.

Our first stop was at 9:00, at a service center called Mallorytown a few kilometres away from the border. Some leg stretching, some time in the washroom (sudden lack of stress loosens the urinary tract) and off we went again.

After sort-of-stopping at a duty-free shop (why would you stop there going out of the country? About half the bus agreed with the assessment and also stayed inside), we finally crossed the border at around 10:30. No problem, no checks, no passport verification, no delays save for our Irish passenger, who had to go sign something in the customs building. (I was starting to idly wonder about whether they'd shoot him escaping when he came aboard the bus. My fantasy life once again proved far more eventful that the real one.) 

A boat was making its way under the Canadian 1000 Island Bridge as we crossed it, providing us with a great photo opportunity. Was it truly, as our know-all neighbour claimed, owned by finance minister Paul Martin? Who knows?

St-Lawrence River, 9:45:
Da boat... and a few of those 1000 islands.

So my sister an I entered a foreign country for the fourth time (our first, in 1986, was a three-hour trip across the border whose whole purpose was to smuggle illegal immigrants in the States -long story-, the second in 1987 was to visit said immigrants -now naturalized- in Philadelphia, during which we might have glimpsed a faint glow of New York on the way back. Our third trip out wasn't taken together and is of even less interest to this essay than the rest of this extended parenthesis.) It all looked so... ordinary. Aside from the barbarian practice of labelling everything in imperial units (ack, ptui!) and the shameless display of American flags everywhere, North-East America is depressingly similar to Ontario and Quebec. Oh well.

Our first culture shock hit us on the highway south, when our bus repeatedly sped past several military vehicles. The Canadian Armed Forces are so small as to be invisible, this was a not-so-subtle reminder that we were quite literally in another country. (And yet most definitely not in Kansas anyhow, Toto.)

But as shocks went, this one was laughable compared to the rest of the weekend.

We had a more severe one when we stopped for lunch in Greenville, at the local Ponderosa steakhouse. Buffet-style; pay up (equivalent to $11 Can.), grab a plate, fill up and sit down. Leave the drink receipt on the table and the waitress delivers the goods without being asked. Done properly, you can be digging in chicken wings in a minute and a half. Quick and efficient, as one French-Canadian character has been known to remark; "The Americans, they've got the business!"

First culinary challenge; the caffeine-boosted American Mountain Dew (55mg caffeine), practically undrinkable after being accustomed to the caffeine-free Canadian version.

First exercise in discretion; not expressing total dismay at the appearance of the non-Canadian clients. Take up a dozen rural American clichés and you'd come up with the denizen of the Ponderosa at that particular intersection in time; mullet-haired rednecks, oversized mother with vacuous eyes and turbulent children, leering military personnel barely out of their teen years... it was almost as if a "go home!" sign had been put up just for us.

Oh well. Onward.

I managed to doze off soon afterward, lessening an impression of impending cold (heaven forbids!) and a low-grade headache. (Psychosomatic, both; I got better as we drove south.)

I had brought two six-hundred-pages books with me as reading material, but what with sightseeing, conversations with my sister, listening to our tour guides' chatter and just generally vegging\dozing, I managed to read barely two hundred pages of the first book that first day. Meanwhile, my sister laughter her way through Bridget Jones's Diary and made serious headway in another book. But mine was written in smaller characters.

My sister had brought along her trusty CD player, and so we were humming Frank Sinatra, Mel Thorme, Jimmy Reed, Pet Shop Boys and Manhattan Transfer for a while.

We stopped once more at a tourist rest stop in New Jersey after a brief transit though Pennsylvania. (Is there any way to go anywhere in the States without crossing at least two state lines?) Not much to report there; we were pretty much alone on the road, with no landmarks to see.

The Imperial system bites back: All distances were in miles, which upon cognizance suddenly required a complete re-evaluation of our ETA. (Plus: Don't the Americans realize how silly it is to display distances with half fractions?)

All in all, we made excellent time toward our destination, even at one point looking as if we'd make it to the hotel by five o'clock. (!)

New Jersey, 16:16: Our first glimpse of Manhattan.
Game: Spot the Empire State Building and one of the Twin Towers!

But then, just as we saw our hotel in the distance, we hit traffic. It wasn't the first time (some construction previously choked the interstate from three to one lane) but this was by far the worst. How bad? How about essentially an hour to make ten kilometres? Horrid. What didn't help were the lousy jokes that our tour instructors told in an effort to lighten up the atmosphere. All it did was to bring to mind some saying about a frying pan and a fire.

Meanwhile, our custom-made New York soundtrack was well into its gangsta-rap last third. That had to mean something.

Highway, 1706: Oy! Traffic!

At last, we finally turned the bus around (due to the spaghetti-like configuration of New Jersey roads, going to our hotel somehow required crawling along to nearly the George Washington bridge, not taking it, doubling back and driving to the Marriot Glennepoint. Hey, Marcel's got to know what he's doing, right?

George Washington Tollbooth, 17:09: 
An exercise in non-Euclidean driving paths.

(As a side-note, let us state that even if the Washington bridge was less than five kilometres away from our hotel, we never took it, rather always going south to the Lincoln tunnel straight to Port Authority)

We finally arrived at the hotel shortly before six o'clock.

Good surprise: Our hotel rooms were very good. $350-375 US good, if we're to believe the sheets taped to the back of our room's door. Large beds, decent accommodations, in-room bathroom... Excellent stuff. Nothing to say. (Well, they did disable the pay-per-view movies, but at least we still had HBO and CNN)

Marriott Glennepointe Hotel, 17:34:
Our room!  Splendid!

We strategically regrouped once settled in our hotel room, breaking open the luggage, generally enjoying the good accommodations, unwinding a bit and revelling in the user-adjustable air-conditioning. I used this moment of respite to unload the day's photos off the digital camera using the laptop carried over in my luggage.

Our tour guide had mentioned the possibility of taking the New Jersey Transit Authority bus to New York that very same evening, as long as we didn't mind paying $2.55 both ways.

Did we? My sister and I looked at each other and grinned.

It wasn't as simple as jumping on a shuttle and stepping off in Manhattan signing Sinatra, of course. Finding the bus schedule was a challenge and finding the bus stop was another one (a rather personally humiliating challenge at that, as I wasted ten minutes by not listening to my sister). Then, waiting for the bus became worthy of Samuel Becket when said bus failed to show, finally deigning to present itself thirty minutes late (which is impolite when running only once every hour).

More and more surprises: The NJTA buses are motor-coach types, not city type buses. Utterly comfortable, which is pretty much a must when most of their routes have no other purposes that to take oodles of people to New York under horrendous traffic conditions. 

New Jersey Turnpike, 19:39:
Typical New Jersey Scene: 
The Sun, the wilderness, the chemical industries...

As it was, there was a moderate amount of traffic on our way in (our tour guide had thoughtfully warned us that taking the 6:10 or the 7:10 wouldn't make more that ten minutes' difference at the end due to traffic woes. Looks as if he was right.)

Lincoln tunnel entrance, 19:55: 
Underneath the baseball diamond, pure traffic hell.
I call this photo "The American Dream"

Manhattan skyline, 19:57: We're so close now...

Lincoln Tunnel Entrance, 19:59: 
One last useful warning to heed before biting in the Big Apple...

There was a superb view of the New York skyline just before the Lincoln tunnel, but nothing could prepare us for the sheer exhilaration of stepping on the streets of New York for the first time. "Multimedia" will remain a hollow buzzword until it manages to produce the all-out sensual assault of your first few moments in The City.

New York, 20:13:  This is it!  We're here!

Granted, we didn't pick the place of our immersion; New Jersey Port Transity Authority is a three-story-high bus terminal that takes up a whole city block. "It's run like an airport terminal", to quote our tour director. Right on. And given its function as a main transit point, you can be sure that everything surrounding the place is designed to immerse passengers in the New York experience as quickly as possible.

You step out. The first thing you feel is visceral, hitting you all at once; the terrible heat, the sticky humidity, the constant background hum punctuated by car horns (which I'd nominate as the official sound of NYC). After the antiseptic Ottawa, the rich organic smell of New York is shocking. Open your mouth and you can almost taste the carbon particles, the sweat, the rotting foodstuff lying around on the sidewalk.

And the sights... I won't bother you with the usual descriptions of high-rise canyons and neck-stretching sights. But the visual chaos of two million people is even more pervasive that the silent skyscrapers. Everything is moving, and often at terrifying speeds.

Welcome to New York City.

And then we were off. Our first destination; Strand at 828 Broadway, "the biggest used-book store in the world". That gave us a perfect occasion to go through midtown Manhattan by walking down the city's main artery.

We immediately took to the typical New Yorker walk; heading somewhere as if you knew where you were going, exhibiting little regard for close contact and jaywalking like crazy. (Given the narrowness of the streets and the fact that most of them are one-way-only, this is ridiculously risk-free)

Our short walk from Port Authority to Strand was an exercise in continued jaw-dropping. We saw, in quick succession, Macy's, Board square, the Flatiron, Union Square... Movie scenes pop up, song snatches bubble up... face it; you already know New York before going there. It just remains to see how much you like it.

New York, 20:30~20:50: You might recognize a few of the landmarks...

One thing I understood on my way to Strand is the New Yorker's fascination with the Empire State Building. You see it on pictures and see nothing but an ugly squarish building. Compare it with the Chrysler building and it's even worse.  But once in New York, you realize that the Empire State Building can be seen from almost anywhere in the city. After dark, it's even lit up for your added convenience, making it even more impressive.

As an exercise in excess, Strand ( www.strandbooks.com ) is hard to beat. "Seven miles of books", says the documentation, but from the inside, it's like a giant paper blender. There is so much stuff that you can go crazy trying to find what you want. And what will really make you bonkers is the certitude that what you want is somewhere in the pile. (Their web site even mentions that they sell books "by the foot", to fill movie sets and for-show libraries)

That, and the heat, of course. Oh my. The store isn't air-conditioned and there are an awful lot of people in there. Granted, there are fans, and a water fountain downstairs, but even then... Browsing for books while water runs down your forehead isn't the easiest thing.

But the selection, the selection... The SF section alone is a wonder. if the prices aren't exactly mind-shattering, the selection of recent titles will relegate any other used bookstore you know to a lesser status. In face of such immensity, my mind snapped and shut down. I ended up giving up and getting out of the store with nothing in hand. (Though not before hearing a particularly vicious argument between a clerk and an alleged shoplifter. It ended with a round of applause for the clerk.)

We headed back, stopping by Forbidden Planet (big!) and the Virgin Megastore (BIG!). Forbidden Planet in particular had the best selection of high-end action figurines I've seen so far. As for the Virgin Megastore, well, its graphic novel selection alone made me drool, not not mention the rest of the CDs, DVDs and other books...

(A side note; to a somewhat prude Ottawa-area French-Canadian, the relatively easy availability of pornographic material in almost every outlet is something of an oddity. Not only is porn\erotica shelved casually, but at the Virgin megastore, there was an impressive selection of adult graphic novels in the clearance section. Casually-available porn is one thing, but cheap remaindered casually-available porn is something else entirely!)

Our last stop of the day was a biggie: Times Square at ten o'clock.

Times Square, 22:20:
Count the Police vehicles and stop wondering why we felt utterly safe in NYC.

Damn!

Times Square, 22:22
Can you identify the most garish display?

Even though I can't have any idea of what I'm saying, I'll just say that there is no other place like this in the world. None. There can't be. I refuse to accept it.

Billboards, animated displays and high-tech screens dominate the landscape, easily dwarfing street-level sights that would be impressive in their own right. Look, and you'll see the NASDAQ screen. Look, and there's another, even bigger Virgin megastore. Look, and there's a scrolling marquee for ABC. Look, and there are movie posters that could easily cover your house. And you can't help but look, because this is such an extraordinary sight that you'll be afraid to blink and miss part of it.

(As a science-fiction fan, I'll make the controversial statement that liking New York is a lot like reading good SF. Suddenly, you stumble upon a concept, an execution that is so vertiginously awesome that your mind blows up trying to come to grips with its very existence. You can barely pack it all up again than -boom- something else triggers another mind-blowing sight.)

All that goodness had a price; coming back to Port Authority, we missed the 10:30 bus back to the hotel and had to wait for the next one at 11:30. This allowed us to peruse one of the local alternative newspapers (and marvel at the pages of color "escort service" advertisements) as well as experience a fully automated ticket machine.

Total mileage for the day: 700KM on wheels, 5KM on foot (est)

Needless to say, after such emotions, we were pretty much beat by the time we got back to the hotel. I unloaded the latest batch of photos and went to sleep.