I had paced myself the previous evening, and taken the opportunity to down a pint or two of water before turning in, and so the morning after Dave was feeling the pinch of Sam Adams’s finest while I was raring to go. We decided, for the sheer randomness of it, to seek adventure whilst finishing the last of the items on our checklist – Brooklyn Bridge, the financial district proper, Pier 17 and Times Square at least one more time. We managed another reasonably priced and enjoyable breakfast at Charlestons, even though our order was hopelessly wrong as we ordered in English. Who was it made the remark about two peoples divided by a common language? We then caught the subway down to Battery Park and jumped on the free Staten Island ferry for another trip across the harbour. This turned out to be an excellent hangover cure for Dave, as he spent most of the trip clutching at the bar and letting the refreshing wind blow in his face. I was jumping around the ferry like a child, conscious of the fact that this was our last full day and wanting to fill it with as much variety as I could. After half an hour or so the ferry docked on Staten Island, which I had thought to be a tiny island like Ellis or Liberty, although Staten Island is nothing like this – it is a thriving community all of its own, and more than half as big as Manhattan. Apparently it briefly considered seceding from the city for some trifling issue in the last century (possibly “the sake of it”), but in the end decided to remain linked. We were turfed off the ferry onto a bus terminal which rapidly emptied of people, leaving us without a clear idea of where we wanted to go. The Rough Guide detailed an attraction: the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art located in the centre of the island and apparently a real hidden gem, so we decided to strike out in this direction. I tried to ring ahead, only to be informed I was ringing a Chinese takeaway. Seeds of doubt blossomed when I checked the guide again – the museum was closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, and apparently farmed out its facilities to a takeaway company in the meantime. A little bemused, we decided to jump on the first bus which came our way and ride it until somewhere interesting appeared on the horizon. For thirty gently worrying minutes, nothing much did. Staten Island is all wood frontages and overhangs, under which it’s easy to imagine shotgun-toting Republicans rocking gently in their chairs and discussing the relative merits of passing tumbleweeds. In short, it’s a terrifying slice of smalltown America, far too close to Manhattan for my liking.
We remained on the bus until it reached the Yukon Terminal, and as the engine switched off we realised we had no choice but to get out. We ended up standing in yet more blistering sunshine, a good fifteen miles from Manhattan, unable to see the familiar city skyline, and the only sign of civilisation a small hot dog stand. We had prided ourselves on our ability to find good in every situation, and anyway Dave couldn’t resist the temptation of yet more hot dogs, and so we got ourselves some snacks while waiting for the bus back across the island. The hot dog stand man was a model of friendliness, immediately identifying us as British (is it the nose?) and demanding that we try his secret weapon on our hot dogs – a small but dangerously coloured bottle labelled, simply, “The Hottest Fuckin’ Sauce”. Braver, or perhaps more stupid than the man Williams, I sallied forth and allowed the grinning hot dog stand man to place a tiny quantity of this lethal-looking concoction on my hot dog. Swallowing was only the *start* of my problems. A full litre of water later, I could still taste the damn stuff, and my tongue felt like I’d been gargling bleach. Perhaps gratified to have found some victims so early in the day, Mr. Hot Dog Stand With Nuclear Capability told us hilarious stories about this sauce; he’d made two Mexicans cry with it, a huge black trucker refused to admit it was blowing his face off and manfully finished a dog drenched in it, his freely sweating forehead the only indicator of the turmoil within. Dave and I have never once made any pretensions toward common sense, and we immediately purchased two bottles from Mr. Hot Dog Arms Dealer before jumping back on the bus. We’d travelled fifteen miles for free and for no reason, but we’d gotten The Hottest Fuckin’ Sauce, and that provided the village idiots with more than enough gratification.
Travelling back through more strangely quiet residential neighbourhoods towards the ferry terminal, we decided to properly visit and photograph Wall Street once we returned to the mainland. The free ferry quickly appeared and whisked us off the most bizarrely un-New Yorkish section of New York. Once back on the mainland we set off for the financial district, and realised we were there when we saw the New York Stock Exchange. This building has an ever-so-tiny flag draped across the expanse of its frontage, but we were disappointed to find heavy security preventing us from viewing the trading floor. We contented ourselves with visiting the Federal Reserve building, which fans of Die Hard with a Vengeance will remember is the building Jeremy Irons’ comedy German character empties of its gold reserves. A quiet building with an extensive collection of art, this is a great distraction for half an hour, and additionally features the famous George Washington statue outside.
Upon leaving the Federal Reserve building, we spent a good few minutes considering an issue both of us had thought about long and hard: whether to pay a visit to the site of the September 11th attack on the World Trade Centre. The idea of turning a site where so many people lost their lives into a tourist attraction struck both myself and Dave as in the worst possible taste, and not something we wanted to be a party to. However places like the Somme and Ypres are now sites of education, and in Hiroshima and Nagasaki there are monuments to guarantee “rest in peace, for it will never happen again”. People visit these sites to pay their respects, and so our decision was to go briefly and do this, and leave after a decent period of time. When we arrived there, I was shocked by the site itself – where the towers once were there is a massive crater six stories deep and over a hundred metres square, with some isolated girders and struts too deeply embedded for construction crews to extract. A fence separates the crowds from the site, and while Dave and I took as little time as possible, I was a little annoyed to see many taxis pulling up and people piling out, and the likes of mobile phones and personal stereos disturbing the calm. Both more than a little uncomfortable, we left and headed across to Pier 17, and the conversation was stilted and almost silent for a good while afterwards – which, as anybody who knows either of us will realise, is very unusual.
Pier 17 is (naturally) a pier, but it is also a decent shopping centre and collection of eateries. Various ornamental galleon and schooner-type vessels are moored beside it, and it remained as busy and well-outfitted as I remembered from the previous visit. Sighting the “Cyber Cigar” internet café and cigar emporium, we took time out to have a drink and lie back in the sun. Dave spent a relaxing half hour outside Cyber Cigar supping away at the beer and taking in the ambience while I went present shopping; taking some photographs of the Brooklyn Bridge and the impressive ships while I had the opportunity. I also bought a Romeo y Julieta cigar which has not been smoked just yet, but with my sister’s wedding on the horizon, it will not remain so for long. We left Pier 17 after I’d seen all I wanted to, and wandered back through the financial district to a tube station. By now it was coming up to six o’clock in the evening, and the subway was full to bursting. As bad luck would have it we’d managed to catch a slower tube which stopped at every station, and so we were feeling a little bedraggled when we made it back to Penn Station. We had planned to fill the time between check-out and our airport connection on the last day with another Matrix Reloaded viewing, we were both feeling quite shattered after the pace of the last few days. The Red Hot Chili Peppers guy had not been in touch, so we made the decision to spend our last evening with another viewing of the Wachowski brothers’ finest, before drinking our last in Niles. The film stood up very well to a second viewing, and the barman in Niles by this time was on first name terms with us, asking us how we’d got on that day. Some Bushmills whiskey rounded the trip off in fine style, although around 1am or so I had the urge to take a wander up to Times Square to see the mesmerising lights one last time.