New York: great place to visit, but not to drive taxis

Press, 18 June 1982, Page 14

New York: great place to visit, but not to drive taxis

By

ALEX MENZIES,

assistant editor of

“The Press,” who visited parts of the United States as guest of the commercial section of the United States Embassy in New Zealand, and state and city visitor and tourist bureaux in the United States.

"The New York Experience" is the name of a “multi-screen, multi-sensory" show (a presentation in American terms). It’s an apt name because anyone who visits New York will have many experiences, some of them exciting, nearly all of them interesting.

In the “New York Experience,” one New Yorker says in a strange inversion: “It's a great place to live but I wouldn'.t want to visit here.” He’s got it wrong because it's a great place to visit, at least briefly. New York may have an undeserved reputation. It has become known for its crime, the violence and the mugging, because these aspects of New York life have been publicised overseas for years. I spent a week there some years ago and another week recently and I haven’t been mugged or murdered yet. Perhaps it might be trying my luck to make a third visit!

Central Park, the 840 acres in uptown Manhattan (Hagley Park is 450) is one of the New York experiences which suffers from the reputation.

"Don't go into Central Park after dark" has been the warning. Perhaps not, but certainly enjoy it in daylight. Anyone who saw it on a recent Sunday afternoon when it was the terminus of the “March of the Dimes," and also for some of the 17,000 cyclists who toured the five boroughs of the city to celebrate 200 years of relations between the United States and the Netherlands, who saw the happy people of all ages, the jazz bands, the strollers, the skaters, the cyclists, the kids playing baseball, could only be infected by the glorious air of enjoyment, in this huge and controversial city. 7 Thousands took ferries to visit the Statue of Liberty on the same day. . ? , The “March of the Dimes" went through many streets of Manhattan. It was instituted by Franklin D. Roosevelt to aid polio victims and was later extended to a collection for all the disabled.

And Sunday is a relaxing day in the “Big Apple.” The “New York Times" on Monday was enthusiastic: “Yesterday, when the long-lost sun had warmed the sidewalks . . . three weeks after a blizzard." The Big Apple as a name

for New York is comparatively recent. The term had been used in the 1920 s and 30s by people in the entertainment and* sports worlds, particularly jazz musicians, as a way of saying: "I’m playing New York city — I’ve made it to the big time.” Or, “There are many apples on the tree, but when you pick New York city you pick the big apple.” The Big Apple slogan was made the basis of a campaign by the New York Convention and Visitors, Bureau and in 10 years it has become a widely known symbol.. The campaign itself is regarded as successful because this city with a population of more than nine million attracts 17 million visitors a year. > - Has the apple a. rotten core? Not to most of the people who live there and not to most visitors' either. The “New York Experience,” the show which asks many people what they think, elicits most often from its subjects the word “exciting.” Exciting it is because there is so much to see and do. To some it may seem impersonal but it need not be. A New Zealand woman who went to a play and later to supper nearby found her-

self sitting near two young men- who had been at the same play. They, quickly started conversation about the play’s merits. r A bright young tour.guide who had conducted a big group, including half a dozen New Zealanders, round Rockefeller Centre ' one morning, happened to visit the same eating .place as the New Zealanders late in the evening. A West Indian psychology student, she had conducted six tours of the centre that day, she had attended her classes, and she was having a snack before catching a train to her home in the borough of Queens across the East River, an hour’s journey. She wanted to talk about the West“lndies, about New Zealand/, about her job, about her studies. She makes $5 an hour conducting tours.

New York can also be exciting if you stay in an hotel such as Loews Summit at the corner of Lexington

Avenue and 51st street. The president of Loews Corporation, Mr Preston Robert Tisch, also happens to be the., chairman of the Convention and Visitors Bureau. The all nations and thoughts. The opposite is the police and fire headquarters of the 17th precinct. There’s a lot of activity. Who says that New Zealand is not known on the east coast of the United States? A shopkeeper, looking at a credit card, said: “Ah, New Zealand.” Then he rattled off: "Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch." Asked if he had been to New Zealand, he denied it Mt said he was

interested in all places. It surely helps a New York shopkeeper. To many people New York may be buildings; really New York is people — people of all races and thoughts. The visitor is bound to find a demo about something. On my day as the demo march moved down the street, someone asked who they were. “Bloody Argentinians again.” They weren’t. They were Armenians protesting against Turkey. (“Armenians will free their historic land.”) They had the elderly, the-children, and the floats. New York has a demo or’two a day, all very well con-

trolled but adding to the impatience of the motorists. And who says New Zealand is not known? As I was photographing the demo I saw a man looking at me in strange fashion. Mutual recognition: he had worked on "The Press" many years ago, now lived in Australia, and was another visitor to New York. So New York as a city is not as overpowering as some might feel in spite of its scale; and it is a remarkably easy place to get about on foot or by using the subway. Anyone who can count should not get lost in Manhattan — the streets are numbered in order up the island, the avenues are numbered across it. Broadway upsets things a bit by running diagonally, but, being what it is, the centre of entertainment and the start of many of the stars, that has to be condoned. One of the most interesting features of the New York

subway is that they have done their own graffiti. They’ve always been plagued by naughty drawings and naughty words. So now they’ve filled the lot with their own art, much of it very artistic. There’s not a space left on trains, inside or out, for anyone to write a four-letter word. But where to go and what to do? One of the best ways of getting an over-all view of New York is to take the Circle Line trip by-boat from the pier at the end of 41st Street down the Hudson, round past the Statue of Liberty, up the East River, round the Harlem River, and back into the Hudson, 35 miles in all. It’s an embracing view of Manhattan, and the other boroughs, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, Staten Island and New Jersey, on the other side of the Hudson. Notable for a visitor who hasn't been in' New York for some years is the absence of ships at the many piers around Manhattan. The container age has seen to that, but several Dutch Naval ships were berthed to celebrate the Dutch-United States bi-centenary and the visit of Queen Beatrix. We sat in the 600-passen-ger converted Coast Guard cutter with Japanese behind us and Germans in front, past tugs and crowded ferries, under 20 bridges, some with two decks, while the notable sights were described by a commentator who exhorted us not to “throw anything overboard, please." The waterways

around New York were dirty enough without us adding to it. On land the choice is unlimited: touring Rockefeller Centre and the 6000-seat Radio City Music Hall; at-' tending a performance of “Encore" celebrating fifty years of the Music Hall and the famous Rockettes: taking the lift in the Empire State Building, leaving the stomach behind, for the observation floors on the 86th and 102nd floors; visiting restaurants such as Lindy’s where celebrities have gone for years, and the Mandarin Inn Pell in Chinatown. You can eat at long tables among the seafood in one of the huge concourses of the now partly unused Grand Central Station; listen to jazz concerts at Eddie Condon’s and Jimmy Ryan's jazz clubs; visit the United Nations Building and the twin towers of the World Trade Centre; take a ferry trip to the Statue of Liberty and climb up inside the statue. Or you can stroll in Central Park or see the interesting sight of a pop band playing heartily between statues of Sir Walter Scott and Robert Burns; wander among the sidewalk arts and crafts of Greenwich'Village; take in the theatres and the dirty bookshops around Times Square and 42nd Street; and, of course, shop, window and otherwise. The subways are quick; the taxi-drivers are as quick as they can be without being quick and dead. Taxi fares in

New York seem, very reasonable when you consider the difficult job they have negotiating traffic even though the system is very tnuch oneway. 7 • But bell-hops; in hotels are a different matter. They expect plenty for every case carried or even for answering a question. And if you happen to go to the baggage room where you have a raincoat stored in your case and the bell-hop is opening the room anyway for another batch of baggage, when you don’t tip him he says: “Aw, shit.” They are paid about $lOO a week but they can make about $4OO in tips. Sympathy can only be with the taxi-driver. And there was certainly sympathy with ours. A tense Italian, he loaded all our baggage, he started in the heavy traffic; then we felt what appeared to be a bang in the back. It turned out to be only his front bumper being taken off by another of the big yellow cabs. “Oh, my God. What’ll I do? Did you see him? Did you get his number? We were to blame. He looked long and hard at each of us as if we should pay. "Mama Mia. Oh, My. God. What’ll I do?” And thank goodness none of us saw the fleeing culprit; it would have meant missing our connection while the argument ensued. The poor driver. His car had only 420 miles on the clock. Who would be a taxidriver in New York? I would rather be a visitor.