invasion of america - the neverending story

New York City

My friend lives deep in the maze of highways which is the New Jersey turnpike system. If you have seen the movie "labyrinth" then you get the general idea of how difficult it is to find your way around in magical conditions. This place makes David Bowie's maze look like child's play. Highways just lead off into no particular direction for long periods of time and distance, and you can actually circle back across your own tracks before finally reaching your destination. It's very confusing. And to add insult to injury - there is a toll booth every two miles that wants your money. Add a bunch of city drivers that know the cops in this part of the world don't care how you drive so they go NUTS and what you is pure driving anarchy. In a car, this would have been a living hell. On a bike, this is a lot like down hill skiing -- You have to dodge and weave your way through tiny openings between the traffic and try not to miss your turns. All of this at high speed. I'm alive, the bike has an ulcer and an accelerated heart rate, but she's okay too.

Jersey City - Right across from New York's lower west side and the best view of the World Trade Center memorial. From this point on Sept. 11th, most of New Jersey witnessed the attacks with an unobstructed view. I can only imagine what kind of horror that must be to live with. They have some of the twisted metal from the buildings and they built a memorial at the water front. The awesome power of the destruction is readily evident in the sheer force that it took to rip apart two inch thick iron beams. It was a real smack in the face welcome.

I unpacked, showered and spent the next two days and nights in the city across the river. You have to take the train into the city and it drops you off in lower Manhattan. From there, it's all you can do to not go crazy.

WHAT TO DO FIRST:

The Chelsea Hotel where Dylan Thomas, Arthur Miller and Ethan Hawke once lived. Dylan and Arthur are dead, sadly Ethan is still alive, but living somewhere else. It's also where Nancy, of Sid and Nancy fame, was killed - Sid stabbed her to death in a heroin daze. They were the first couple of punk rock. Other than that, it's a pretty little hotel and while gandering at the spectacle of the lobby I saw my first celebrity -- I don't know his name, but I know his face, so no big deal. Moving on...

The New Yorker Hotel where Nikoli Tesla (see my website for more information about this man) lived for ten years and was eventually run over by a cab. My heart was a little uneasy about this stop. I love this man. He is my math god.

Times Square - Celebrity and tourist central. More famous people than you can put on a stick. It's an orgy of lights and sounds and your basic sensory overload. If it was just the glitz of light bulbs and four story television screens, that would be something, but add 200,000 people, tons of crazy cross traffic that is trying to kill you, television cameras, television flood lights and a wee bit of history and you have insane bedlam. Stay away if you have a weak heart or don't like MTV's TRL.

Madison Square Garden - Okay nothing special here. It's a huge building, there are lot of them here.

Studio 54 - Or what was Studio 54, now it's a parking garage. This is New York, not much stays here out of sentimental reasons. Make your statement and move on. People died trying to get in here and other people crossed other ethical lines just to go inside, now you can park your car here for ten dollars for each half hour.

Max's Kansas City - The bar where almost every famous band that came out of the seventies first played when they came to New York; Aerosmith and Bruce Springsteen are just a few of the rookies that played here first. Like Studio 54, it's a Burger King now.

Andy Warhol's Factory - It's just condos now, but it was the place where all things "cool and hip" where determined for 20 years back in the late sixties up to the mid eighties. People like Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Basquiat and Sid Vicious used to hang out here. Now, the place is just another doorway along a street. No one cares - Warhol is dead and so is everyone else that I mentioned here. Death is not hip or cool.

CBGB's - This is the temple and the soul of punk rock and with the recent fashion trend of young girls trying to look punk, the soul of punk rock is a shell of its former self. In fact, CBGB's is closing its doors forever. "HELP US ATRAYU, ONLY YOU CAN SAVE US FROM THE NOTHINGNESS!!!! GET ON YOUR DRAGON AND FLY!!!!" It's one of the darkest places I have ever been to in my life. I dare say it, but I believe that the hardest war-torn veteran would shiver when he saw the destruction that is the inside of this building. This place has seen more blood spilled in the name of entertainment than all the Girl Scout rodeos in history. It smelled so angry in there that I wanted to hit my friend in the head and have him hit me just so we can say we spilled some blood here. It was awesome to stand in the room where giants danced and gods were born. I'm glad I saw it before the fashion industry(or the nothingness) consumes it completely.

Nathan's Famous Hot Dogs - It's in Coney Island and the real reason I wanted to see it was because it was in Coney Island which is where "The Warriors" are from. Coney is at the ass end of Brooklyn and it takes 45 minutes to get there by subway from Manhattan. It's an uncomfortable ride and when you get to Coney all that is there to great you is depression. THe day was cloudy and cold and that only made the visit even more depressing. However, I blame the sentiment on Coney itself. Even with New York's ability to erase the past and start over with a Burger King or a parking garage, this former heavyweight champion looks like it was just left to be a playground for the poor, the dumb and the addicted. Ever see, "Escape from New York" that's a paradise compared to Coney Island, 2006. The once former ocean front boardwalk power house is now a death trap and should be condemned for every reason you can condemn a place. You can shoot a real human there for five bucks(photos coming). We ate our hot dogs, laughed, cried and then got back on the train before we succumbed to the nothingness that had already eaten this part of New York. ( I believe this might be the same nothingness that is eating up the rest of New York's great history)

World Trade Exhibit - It's a hole. The PATH train from New Jersey stops in the middle of that hole. SO when you walk off the train, you have to walk OUT of the the hole that WAS once the World Trade. You walk smack-dab into the middle of the memorial with people crying all around you. I should remind you that it's just barely five days after the five year anniversary of the attacks and people here are still pretty torn up. The flowers that people have left are still looking pretty fresh. In my mind, this is what the nothingness looks like after it devours the soul of history. Nothing here really hurt me that much or got under my skin until we went into the small church that sat across the street from the WTC that completely escaped the attacks without one physical scar. Inside the church i was a massive display of memorabilia from those terrible days and weeks that followed the attack. One of the more memorable pieces on display is a huge two foot wide scarf that is made up of millions of colors and stretches on for literally MILES. It is made up of millions and millions of a pieces of thread that anyone can add to by simply sending this one particular lady a piece of thread. She'll weave it into the end of the huge scarf and voila, a win for history over the nothingness. There are pieces of every conceivable type of fabric with a story for each one; "This was a piece of parachute that I used on D Day", "this is a piece of my baby blanket", "this is a piece of my wedding dress", "this is my father's uniform". The idea is beautiful - we are all linked by a common thread. When weaved together, it's a pretty tough piece of thread to break. Look her up on line if you wish to add to the scarf. I gave her a piece of my bike jacket.

That scarf got to me and so did the photos that had been collected off of the fence. Photos of those people that were lost on 9/11. There were photos of people moments before they went in to rescue people that never came out, and there were photos from weddings or high school yearbooks or from family reunions. Photos that people needed, treasured and were willing to give up in an offering to the gods for the safe return of the person in that photo. That tore me up. Sometimes nothingness takes more than it should from us. Sometimes a memory is not as good as the real thing.

Empire State Building - I went up at 11:30 at night when I was told that no one would be there and the wait would be nothing at all. If you try to see this during the day it takes hours of waing in long lines and, in fact when I got inside and saw the empty waiting ROOMS(plural) and how long the roped off LINES(PLURAL) were, I was ill. Thankfully, I just walked straight up to the building, went up the elevator, took my photos, did my thing and was down in less than forty minutes(I was forced out). From the top I was able to see New York the way you are supposed to see New York - from above it, like in the pictures. It's cleaner and softer from here and there is no rancid smell of rotting trash or large two foot rats running out in front of you as you walk down the sidewalks. From here there is no poverty or depression or failure that can be seen. NO visible nothingness, just lights, colors, muted sounds from below and energy that is palpalible. From here the only thing that is visible is the possibility of a dream. The belief that anything can happen if you can try to make it happen here. The descent back into the city on the elevators is very symbolic of the descent back into reality from the high horse that you were on just a few moments ago. And when the doors open onto the street and you see two drunks fighting and people just walking around them as if they weren't even there, you realize that the battle to reach the top isn't going to start with the purchase of a power suit. Perhaps there is more to every dream than meets the eye. Perhaps dreams are never found using our eyes. Aren't most of our dreams found when our eyes are closed at night and we are sleeping?

Central Park and The Dakota - John Lennon, bless his heart, was gunned down in front of the Dakota building which sits on Central Park West. A gunman shot him down in front of his wife, Yoko and then sat down and waited for police to come and take him to jail where hundreds of Beattles fans that are incarcerated could savagely beat and rape him for the rest of his natural life(Mark David Chapman has lived in protected custody in prison since December 8th, 1980. He is more a pariah in prison than child rapists). However, Mark did do something for the world: Hippies now have a god to worship and a Mecca of their own to which they must make a pilgrimage to at some point in their life to pay homage. Sadly, the world lost a great soul. Yoko still lives in the Dakota - doesn't get a lot of dating offers - and hippies hang around this place crying with cleaver signs that read, "Imagine" and "Give peace a chance". I pushed a few out into traffic and they didn't seem like they wanted to give peace a chance as they chased me down afterwards. The nothingness has consumed most of them along time ago.

Grand Central Station - It's beyond the beauty standards that a building should be allowed to have. No one structure should be this sexual attractive and it's just a train station. If you ever travel to New York. You will fly into one of the airports and then take a train into the city. You should get off here, no matter where your hotel is. Just so you can see this place. It's a good place to prepare for the streets of New York.

That makes up the bulk of my sight seeing. What you really what see in New York isn't the landmarks or forgotten history or the border between New York today and the nothingness that is creeping in, what you see here is the energy that exists here and no where else on earth. I saw five of the ten most beautiful women I have ever seen in my life in less than twelve hours. I saw fights between all sorts of people and they weren't racial or sexual oriented or religious, just pure unbridled personal hatred, the way hate should be. I ate two dollar hot dogs with hot mustard, I ate pizza, and a canoli. I watched people of all colors, religions and nationalities mix and mingle - sometimes nicely and other times, not so nicely. I rode the infamous subway and met interesting people that know an odd and puzzling kind of life that is different than mine. I met people in their forties that have never driven a car. I met people that have never known life with a yard or a tree or a garden. I met people that thought they were being cleaver in their "I heart NY" tee shirts. I saw people carrying around the same small package into the same small buildings and come out with the same huge belief that their lives were about to change with "this one". (those packages all contain headshots and resumes AND the bulk of their chances at getting that shot at fame and fortune here in New York)

I saw it all. I missed a lot, but I saw it all. I had so much I wanted to say and so much I could have said, but the best thing you can really do is say, "I saw it all". I missed out on some things by years or even decades. I missed meeting some of the people I wanted to meet by decades and centuries. I tried to rekindle the power and the magic that made me want to come here, but New York doesn't live on energy from the past, it exists on energy made right now. I enjoyed this town and took in all I could and all I was really able to walk away with was leg cramps and a chapped ass. I walked over twenty miles in the two days I was in New York. Easily.

Thankfully, I have two days of more walking in DC ahead of me.

There are eight million stories in this naked city; this is mine. Mine is made up of a man trying to find the stories that were written by other people in other times. Just because you sit or dance or take a picture in a place of note, doesn't mean that it will offer you any of the same magic it once gave someone else. It will not offer you any closure to the questions and curiosities that brought you to it in the first place. Your magic lives beyond the border of the nothingness, not in the middle of it.

DC is four hours down the New Jersey turnpike.