New York 2022

  

THE last time I was in New York, a balmy summer three years ago, I went to see the statue of Alice in Central Park. She is with the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, the Dormouse and Dinah while the Cheshire Cat watches on. “We’re all mad here,” he will tell her. She sits on a giant mushroom - the one that makes you bigger if you take a bite from one side, and smaller if you take a bite from the other. It made me think of the extremes of New York, the extremes of any city, of any place: the rich and the poor, the open spaces and crowded buildings, the world above ground and the one below.
I was thinking of extremes again this time, of the big and the small. I was thinking of the extremes of temperature outside (it was 25 degrees in early November when I arrived) and in: there is a New York heating law that means all buildings must be a certain temperature, but there is no real way to control it. The heating blasting from the pipe in my room mostly escaped through the window I had open all the time so I didn’t bake alive. It was in stark contrast to the UK where people are struggling to afford to heat their homes at all.
Which brings up the extremes of cost. New York was just named the most expensive city in the world to live (for the first time despite its reputation). Although the average salary is $70,000 (if you work in housekeeping, as part of the powerful hotel workers’ union, you can earn almost six figures) rents are huge, sales tax and the almost essential tipping makes things more expensive than they first appear. You won’t get much change out of $6 for your morning coffee. But you can get a couple of slices of the best pizza of your life, or a couple of tacos (enough for dinner) for under $10. A subway ride costs about the same as in London, but in New York there are no zones or peak times - you can go from Harlem to Coney Island for $2.75… You can pay what you like to enter the Whitney Museum on Friday nights, and at the Guggenheim on Saturdays. Walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, along the paths of Central Park, are free.
Money is a fascinating subject when it comes to New York. If the state itself were its own country it would be about the 15th richest, with a GDP similar to Australia or Brazil. It’s why many people go to the city - to make money. It is one of the four main characteristics that the Museum of the City of New York, in its recently-opened exhibition, felt defined the city (the others being diversity, density and creativity).
I had gone to see Nigella Lawson talk with Ina Garten - two worlds colliding in the King’s Theatre in Brooklyn. I wasn’t invited back to the Hamptons unfortunately, but with around 3000 other people there I didn’t get to say hello either.
But I had come to get a better feel for New York itself, to spend a bit longer in the city. For a bit of creativity too: the galleries and museums and inspiration that just generally wandering around can bring. I had been to the Whitney Museum before (it’s about art, not the singer) but went this time for the Hopper exhibition and the nighttime views from the terrace. At Dia Beacon, a sculpture museum about fifty miles outside the city, I came to appreciate space and materials and perspective and light. I was impressed by the variety at the Brooklyn Museum and their thoughtful take on art collections. At the Guggenheim I was intrigued by the retrospective of Alex Katz and on a gallery crawl around Chelsea, I saw dozens of different spaces and artists, including Anselm Kiefer whose Exodus pieces were inches thick in paint and glowing with gold leaf. Monumental.
So much about New York is big. The skyscrapers (the Chrysler Building, the Empire State and the World Trade Centre were all the tallest buildings in the world when they were made); Central Park, and the dreams and fantasies fostered by TV and film.
Yet it’s the small moments that make the city special: the way the light filters through Wall Street, the way it falls through autumn leaves on the High Line. It’s walking over the Williamsburg Bridge, with its steel blue and pale pink, the Manhattan skyline glinting beyond. It’s emerging from the subway to a breeze that flies down the avenues, then seeing glass-fronted skyscrapers reflected in each other, as if hinting at another dimension. It’s Brooklyn brownstones and the cast-iron facades of Soho; walking along tree-lined streets. It’s deciding which bakery to try next, seeing what sample sale is on, people-watching of course, and actually getting a train from Grand Central, stopping to look at the stars.
There is much to not like about New York. There is the rubbish problem, and with that the rats (though I didn’t see that many over the few weeks I was there). Again, the expense (I was sure it was a mistake when basic deodorant came up as $10 at the checkout) and, although the motives are admirable for the legalisation of marijuana, the stink of it can be prevalent.
But it is the sort of place that can have a hold on you.
Maybe you have to be a bit mad to be pulled back, to stay.

“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.

“You must be,” said the Cat, or you wouldn’t have come here.”