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The above quote could – at a push – have been applied to me as I stirred in my pit on the Friday morning. Dave sprang from his bed like a jack-in-the-box and inquired as to whether I’d be joining him for breakfast. I’d forgotten that to drink whisky with the Williams is to swing for Cassius Clay, to try and tackle Pele, to wrestle a nuclear explosion… in short, to be completely and ridiculously outmatched. Dave’s cyborg liver had rapidly demolished the mere dribbles of whiskey he’d thrown at it, while I felt like I’d been kicked in the head by several horses. I languished in my bed while Dave toddled off to indulge in another Lindy’s breakfast, and it took repeated visits from the Dominican housekeeper to rouse me. Dave returned in time to charm yet another female (he’d busily been making up to the Mexican waitress in Lindy’s) as he generously tipped the lady bustling around our room warbling in Spanish. After showering and dressing I felt nominally better, but a brave effort to strike out towards the lobby sent me spinning back to our freshly-cleaned en-suite to take care of a little business. This was almost like a magic charm, as it did the job of Alka-Seltzer, strong coffee and dip in the sea all in one go. I was once again ready to get out there. My rapid transformation led to some wry head-shaking from Mr. Williams, and I believe mutterings in the vein of “Amateur”. Back on the street, I was badly in need of some food, so we broke our ban on chain restaurants and purchased a stack of donuts from a certain well-known shop. We devoured these on the street, feeling like vagrants, and then wandered into a small DVD store directly opposite Macy’s. This place had a massive selection of obscure and mainstream music and film at very reasonable prices, and I earmarked a decent number of DVDs I planned to return and buy later in the holiday. We then headed to Macy’s department store to have a look at the self-proclaimed “largest store in the world”. I had very fond memories of this shop from my previous visit, but it proved to be quite a disappointment. Undergoing an extensive refit, a large portion of the store was closed off, and there seemed to be floor upon floor of stuff which held no interest for us, such as frocks and housewares. While I wasn’t interested in the frocks, I can’t speak for Dave. Even a store guide didn’t do much to help us, and we left feeling a little disappointed. Dave had expressed an interest in the Museum of Television and Radio on 48th Street, while I was more interested in wandering into the Times Square Virgin Megastore. Initially keen, Dave’s enthusiasm waned when it dawned on him that he would be negotiating extensive stretches of the subway and road network on his own. He and I parted company at the 34th Street subway station, and I was left feeling a little nervous, like I’d just finished assembling the monster and was now watching it lurch around the Transylvanian countryside. I walked back up to street level and set at a slow pace up to Times Square, taking the opportunity to snap many photographs along the way. The New York street crowds are characterised by a strange mixture of native and tourist, and people-watching you rapidly learn to discern which you belong in, and which you should avoid at all costs. On Times Square proper (which, I feel it’s important to add, is not a square) the crowds are almost exclusively tourist, and the neon/display screen visual cacophony is as pronounced in the daylight as it is at night. I wandered with some satisfaction into the Virgin Megastore, a record store in which my dad and I had spent a good three or four hours last time I’d been in the city. The selection of music, film, literature and latte is enormous, and since there are a great many items unavailable or available in vastly inferior form in the UK, I set about hurting my plastic in a big way. Entire racks dedicated to Japanese animation, a genre barely acknowledged in the UK? Check. Two racks dedicated to Criterion DVD editions of films, an exclusively Region 1 phenomenon? Check. New York Monopoly? Check (that’s the board game, rather than the economic principle). Two hours of my life are lost in that store. All I remember is wandering out feeling slightly dazed, a couple of hundred dollars’ worth of switch receipts and some very heavy carrier bags in my hands. I had managed to notice that Tiesto, a Dutch DJ and producer whose stuff I’ve liked for a while, was to be playing a set in the store at 6pm that evening to promote his new mix album Nyana. I bought the album, and I was looking forward to the opportunity to see a European DJ in the midst of an American crowd, to see if it was as different as watching a movie amongst the natives. Meanwhile I struck out towards 48th Street to meet up once again with Dave, and it didn’t take me very long to find the Museum of Television and Radio. It was recessed quite a way from the street, and I was concerned that Dave would inadvertently (or perhaps advertently) have ended up in the Museum of Sadomasochism and Pornography two blocks down. When I enquired at the desk if anybody had seen someone matching Dave’s unique description, the girl on duty – barely my age – erupted in a barrage of giggling and grinning. “Oh yeah, he was here, he was great!”. After some searching of my carrier bag swarm and some raised eyebrows at my Rump Shaker 3 DVD, I took the lift up the fourth floor and the multimedia library. Dave was merrily sampling a selection of classic broadcasts, such as TV’s establishment in the UK and Orson Welles’ broadcast of War of the Worlds, which famously duped a lot of Americans into believing an invasion really was under way. By the time we left the museum it was late afternoon, my shopping trip and Dave’s broadcasting fetish having devoured a fair portion of the day. We chose to walk further up Manhattan towards the distantly visible Central Park. For the one remaining person on the planet who may not know, Central Park is an oasis of greenery and calm in the centre of the city, constituting the space of twenty or so adjacent blocks. It has quite rightly been called “the lungs of the city”, and were its administrators ever to sell the land up for development, billions of dollars would be made right before the city choked entirely. Dave and I grabbed hot dog and pretzel respectively and walked around this incongruent slice of peaceful parkland, flanked as it is by the most extensive urban development in the world. After walking through Columbus Circle and past the Trump Tower, we realised we were not a great distance from the Dakota Building, where John Lennon was killed by a deranged fan in 1980. Across the way is the Strawberry Fields memorial and mosaic, and we were both interested enough to take a wander along on a minor pilgrimage. This location is on 72nd Street, so it was a fair distance, but we arrived in good time for around 6pm – I later realised with dismay I’d missed the Tiesto set, but it seems for a fitting reason; to pay my respects to one of the founding fathers of modern popular music. Spotting an inattentive-looking doorman barring the entrance, we ascertained that Strawberry Fields was directly opposite, and we had indeed found the apartment building Yoko Ono still occupies. The Strawberry Fields memorial itself is strangely silent after the noise of the city, and the mosaic itself a simple circle around seven or eight feet in diameter, with the word “Imagine” in the centre. Many tourists were filtering through, but Dave and I took time to sit and contemplate this sobering sight. I took a walk and found the statue to one Daniel Webster, responsible for Webster’s Dictionary, and purchased another much-needed bottle of water. By the time I got back the mosaic had attracted an unwelcome guest; an American woman in her early thirties. This character was running around, loudly informing the assembled company of her woes, her five-times-changed degree course, and proclaiming that it was “OK, cos he’s not really dead”. Not content with shattering the calm of the evening, she then began to sing, and with passing tourists and a transient variously shouting encouragement and abuse we decided to take our leave. Hopping the subway back to 33rd Street we returned to the hotel room to plan our evening. One of the things we had agreed we should definitely do was visit a New York jazz club, as we are both fans enough of the genre to spend a calm evening sampling some live performance. Consulting my Rough Guide we identified two possible venues, the Savoy Lounge and Birdland. The latter was famously opened and headlined by Charlie Parker – otherwise known as “Bird”. However the cover charge alone for Birdland was forty dollars, and we were aware of rapidly shrinking wallets and four more full days to fund. We decided the best strategy was to head over to the Savoy Lounge, and if it proved disappointing, to push the boat out and hit Birdland. Wandering the New York streets on the Friday evening still felt safe, even behind the Penn bus terminal, where the Rough Guide informed us the Savoy Lounge was located. After much searching and increasing frustration on my part we found a promising looking candidate, only to be informed by the bouncer that it hadn’t been the Savoy for three years. My Rough Guide, it seemed, was woefully out of date. The bouncer did inform us that Birdland was a decent venue, and not far from where we were, so we bit the bullet and headed towards the more expensive choice. Upon arrival we realised that Birdland valued its exclusivity; with no reservation, our chances for a table looked slim. However after some theatrical consideration they managed to seat us, and we quickly ordered drinks and food; steak for Dave, calamari for me. Dave later pronounced this was the finest steak he’d ever had, which coming from a connoisseur of the bovine is praise indeed. The act entertaining a rapt audience was the twelve-member Cuban combo Orquesta Aragon, a selection of three saxophonists, three violinists, three percussionists/vocalists, a flautist, a pianist and a gentleman whose sole purpose, it seemed, was to grin at the audience, bash his tambourine and generally be the Bez of the outfit. The resultant music from the twenty-year old troupe was definitely not what we were expecting. Jazz by definition has no stereotype, but this was a highly unusual and entertaining performance. Variously the band pushed members to the fore, with pianist, flautist and finally violinist managing insane chromatic runs which blended and refused to stop until dogs outside were going insane. The audience – clearly big fans of the combo – were dancing and applauding like idiots, and Dave and I were initially bemused before vastly enjoying the lengthy performance and excellent food. Orquesta Aragon retired at around 10:30pm before being dragged back on for an encore. Another set to was due to start around thirty minutes after the finish, and we were condescendingly informed “my manager may invite you to stay for the second half”. We decided we’d seen enough, and headed out onto the street to find yet more places to down some alcohol. Our choice this time was yet another of the ubiquitous Irish bars dotting New York. In here we sat and drank for a while, literally propping up the bar and enjoying the atmosphere before walking back over towards Penn Station after midnight. At no time did I feel threatened, even as we were in quieter streets in the small hours. I feel that the reputation of New York as a dangerous city (prior to the emergence of the zero-tolerance policy on crime) must have been exaggerated.

‘On the ground, doing some damage’ became a catchphrase for whole trip, as we had both firmly decided there was no way we were going to waste any days lounging around the hotel or idly doing things we could do at home (cinema visits notwithstanding ;). We awoke to a phone call from Steve “Get up, you lazy brits!” at 7am EDT, but since this was 12pm BST it wasn’t so bad. We organised ourselves as quickly as possible and splurged on pancakes and syrup at Lindy’s, which was perfect from the Americana point of view. However accounting for coffee, drinks, state tax and tips, the whole deal was more than twenty dollars each. We decided that we would have to find somewhere else to breakfast at least some of the days, as neither of us could afford to blow over 100 dollars purely on pancakes.

We left the hotel and headed across to Penn Station, a labyrinthine honeycomb of platforms taking you to other places on Manhattan, off the island to the rest of New York State and even interstate to the likes of Washington D.C. and Boston. I was shocked to see a good number of soldiers on guard toting M16 assault rifles, but as a security precaution and deterrent I suppose there are few more effective things than a soldier with a loaded gun. We quickly bought the 20 dollar Metrocard we had decided upon previously, as we knew this would save us a lot of money in the long run and also be more convenient. Our destination was the most iconic American tourist attraction of them all, the Statue of Liberty, although Dave wanted to take the opportunity to cross Wall Street first. Wandering through the financial district we were in the shade, but as we meandered out onto Battery Park and the harbour, it became apparent that the leather jackets maybe weren’t such a good idea. The sky was a uniform Mediterranean blue and the sun was beating down as though we were a good few lines of latitude further south. We quickly bought tickets for the ferry ride out to the statue and onto Ellis Island, and after getting through airport-grade security we boarded the small but comfortable Circle Line ferry.

The weather made the ferry trip all the more pleasant, and allowed for unrivalled panoramic views of the south of the city. Catching sight of the Empire State Building – only a block from our hotel – in the distance, I was amazed to see how far we’d already travelled. Also on view during our trip across were the Verrazano and Brooklyn Bridges as well as Ellis Island, before arriving at Liberty Island proper around twenty minutes later. We declined to purchase one of the top ten tackiest items I think I’ve ever seen: an green foam crown you can put on your head so ostensibly, you can think you look like the Statue of Liberty, when in actual fact, you look like an idiot. We realised to our horror that there were a goodly proportion of school trips dogging our footsteps, and many small American children ended up running about in these green foam crowns. It made them a lot happier than it made me. (It’s an evil man who cannot abide small children having innocent fun).

The statue itself and the grassland surrounding it were surprisingly peaceful, and the statue itself majestic if a little understated after the dizzy heights of the Manhattan skyscrapers. Interestingly enough, the distinctive green colour of the statue is not paint, but rather intentional oxidation of the metal; the statue is constructed and treated in a way to encourage this rapid oxidation, which turned it from its original metallic grey and gold. In this way rust is prevented from ever taking hold, as the coating of the statue has already oxidised as far as it is going to. Once again I was struck by the level of security – watching the crowds keenly from the base of the monument was yet another soldier, this time armed with a long-range rifle, and the interior of the statue was closed to visitors. As before I was initially shocked, then dimly gratified, and I realised that the precautions would act as a significant and highly visible deterrent against any terrorist threat.

After taking a decent amount of snaps we got ourselves a badly needed cold drink and headed on over to Ellis Island. What was once a centre for immigration is now a restored national heritage centre and museum, and makes for a fascinating attraction. There are a lot of exhibits detailing the processes potential immigrants had to go through, and some statistical information detailing the influx of immigrants during America’s “Open Door Policy” years. There are some fairly chilling sights to see, including the dormitory around ten feet by twelve – smaller than our hotel room – occupied by twelve people for months at a time while their applications were processed. We continued to wander around the Ellis Island museum until the realisation dawned that we should really be heading back to the mainland for lunch, and more importantly to make our Matrix Reloaded screening at Loews. Once again the transport proved to be superbly well timed, and it was on this ferry ride that I successfully folded my subway map until it showed the most important section, Manhattan proper. We jumped off the ferry and with my new found mastery of the subway system rapidly made it back to our hotel, grabbing the first of many snacks from street vendors en route. Dave was partial to hot dogs with mustard, while I was a fan of the pretzels. It tasted like the worst kind of junk food, but also felt not only encouraged but downright compulsory.

As it turned out, we were a little early for the film by about forty-five minutes, but it gave us an opportunity to catch our breath in the cinema foyer and call home, since it was early evening in the UK. After an interminable wait Matrix Hour finally rolled around and we got perfect seats, slap bang in the centre, two thirds of the way up. The film itself blew me away, being as its predecessor was an “intelligent blockbuster”. We also had the novelty of an American audience, far more responsive and less inhibited than its British counterpart. These boys and girls laughed out loud, cheered, clapped, yelled advice at screen characters, and generally made the experience a lot more enjoyable.

The Matrix Reloaded done and dusted, we took Steve up on a late-breaking offer to come across to the East Village and have a curry at a place he recommended, Haveli’s Indian Restaurant. We were given the choice of having “the best curry money can buy but no beer” in Queens, or “a damn good curry and beer” in the East Village. We decided on the latter after considering the choices for a second or two. On Steve’s advice, we took two buses across to Haveli’s, since it was a good six blocks east and another 30 blocks south. The buses were prompt and clean, and our subway passes worked here as well – a boon since we were in a fair hurry and didn’t have time to be fiddling with small change. Although we got off a little further south than intended, it made for a nice unintentional walk through Lower Manhattan as dusk fell, and by the time we arrived at the restaurant we were ready for lots of high quality food and drink. Haveli’s did not disappoint, being a curry house to duke it out with the best of the UK’s Midlands or north-west, and it was interesting to meet the friendly couple of Steve and Marilyn Matzura. While Steve is Dave’s friend rather than mine, both Steve and Marilyn made us both very welcome from the outset, and beer and conversation were soon flowing easily and rapidly. In the end the restaurant was cleaning up around us by the time we finally upped and left. Steve and Marilyn were heading off home to bed, but Dave and I were ready to see some more of the bar scene. As we were down in the East Village we decided to wander into an inviting-looking student-packed Irish bar, where we once again drank the double act of stout and lager. Conspicuous here was the recently-implemented smoking ban, as the bar felt like it should have been smoky as hell, but the air was as clean as that outside. OK, the air in Central Park.

While Dave was being propositioned by attractive student type lasses before I’d even gotten to the bar, at the back of our minds was our favourite little watering hole, the place with the wondrous spirit rack, Niles. We tried a couple of other places but our wanderings eventually took us back to the bar we’d gratefully patronised on the first night. More, much more beer was consumed, followed by tumblers full of Maker’s Mark whisky. These were New York measures and, by god, they had teeth. We gamely did our best to keep on doing the damage, but eventually we left at some ridiculous hour feeling damaged ourselves. Our hotel was a block north, and it took us a good ten minutes to make it there, whereupon we stumbled past the concierge who was beginning to look like he was wondering who his glorious hotel had admitted, and spent the second night on the 17th floor in our respective beds, feeling like we’d given a good account of ourselves on our first full day.

Accommodation, flights, currency and tri-band mobile phones organised, Dave took the train down from Preston the night before we were to head off on the trip. The morning of our flight a strangely unreal sense descended. My dad, being the finest human being alive, offered to take a day off work and give us a lift down to Heathrow. This made things a great deal easier simply because it meant there would be no need to struggle across the bus, train and Tube networks with heavy suitcases and rucksacks. As it was, the service was door to door, and my dad deserves a mention purely for making this stage of the journey infinitely easier. At Heathrow Dave exchanged a final wedge of currency to fill his travel funds to bursting point, and after a full English breakfast, we were checked in by a pretty Japanese lady who assured me I would be able to use my laptop to watch Family Guy once the aircraft was in flight. Following check-in, I had to get to a post office to send some items I had managed to flog on eBay to boost the travel fund, and then we sat and filled out the immigration forms. Characteristically the Americans want to know everything about you, but some of the questions are verging on the ridiculous. “Are you”, the form shrilly demands, “intending to cause civil unrest whilst in the United States?”. Equally absurd is the question “Between 1935 and 1945 were you involved in the activities of Nazi Germany or the Nazi Party?”. The urge to tick “Yes” to the more ridiculous questions was suppressed by thoughts of spending our week avoiding body cavity searches in a joyless immigration holding centre.

As we sat in the bar outside the security checkpoint, we realised our time of departure was close at hand with just under an hour before we were due to board our transatlantic flight. There was absolutely no need to panic, but this became a trend for the holiday as a whole – most lengthy travel was tremendously well timed. After a fairly rigorous security check, but nothing as insanely over-the-top as we had anticipated, we headed over to our gate. I’d seen transatlantic jets previously, the huge Boeing four-engine behemoths, but the ridiculously enormous aircraft sat on the tarmac still knocked my socks off. In another emerging trend for the holiday, I couldn’t resist a few quick snaps with the digital camera. Security remained tight – random searches were being conducted at the boarding gate, although we ourselves were not searched, despite gormless facial expressions.

Our flight departed from the UK at 14:00 BST and landed approximately seven and a half hours later, slightly ahead of schedule, shortly after 16:30 EDT. The flight itself was fairly run-of-the-mill, but deserving of a mention is the sterling service provided by the Virgin Atlantic cabin crew. The helpful staff certainly came in handy when removing a gentleman who was mistakenly occupying Dave’s seat. Upon boarding we were greeted by a smiling, fresh-faced Lancashire lass, but by the time the jet landed she appeared decidedly frazzled. The quarters were cramped, but then this is what you sign up for when you travel economy class, and since this whole trip had been thrown together on the slimmest of shoestrings we couldn’t really complain about just a tiny bit of deep vein thrombosis. The jet was newly refitted with amazing individual entertainment systems: gone are the days of films starting and ending at allotted times, instead you can request the film, show or radio programme of your choice, start it when you want, and pause, fast forward and rewind at your leisure. The scores of offerings are controlled from an in-seat handset which also doubles as a game pad, credit card reader and telephone handset, although at $9 a minute we were not tempted in the slightest to give anyone even a quick call. The video on-demand system is marvellous when it works; Dave’s failed about halfway across the Atlantic and since I had the laptop we swapped places in order that he could finish his film. It seemed also that we were not the only ones having trouble, as an announcement was made apologising for the problems soon after we noticed the glitch. These did seem like teething problems however, and in the face of the awesome flexibility of the system it seems churlish to moan.

Flying from East to West seems less ruling in terms of jet lag, and we arrived on American soil in the late afternoon without it feeling too wrong. We both were far too hyped up about being where we were to worry about such trivialities as fatigue. “Pain is weakness leaving the body” – more of that later. Our rapid progress through immigration was assured when a security official noticed Dave was brandishing a white cane, and seeing the enormous queue I assured him that this was no time to be proud. After a very serious man glowered at our documentation and demanded to know why we were visiting his country “Robert”, we salvaged our baggage with a little trouble (labels next time Robert, labels) and wandered out onto the concourse at JFK. We’d made it, and my ridiculous grin was back.

We managed to arrange our trip from the airport to Manhattan with minimal difficulty, paying $27 for a return ticket on the New York Airport Transit service. This proved to be pretty hassle-free in the main, although after an hour’s transit through heavy traffic we were deposited on the ground at Grand Central to await a connecting bus which would deliver us to Penn Station and our hotel. I’d been warned by my friend Sarah not to stare up at the huge buildings, as this advertises you as a tourist and therefore easy meat for con artists and muggers, but I couldn’t resist. The moment I stepped off the bus and smelled that mixture of pretzels and pollution that characterises the Manhattan air I was back in 1996, seeing the whole amazing place for the first time. To Dave’s mild amusement, I stared (and snapped) like a lunatic.

Our transport arrived fairly promptly, and once again we were weaving through the dangerously fast-moving traffic. After a few minutes we pulled up just before the intersection of 33rd and 7th. Penn Station and Madison Square are both part of the same building, and it’s pretty amazing to look at. What amazed me even more was the grandiose frontage oposite. The Hotel Pennsylvania built in 1919 boasts 1700 rooms and is supposed to be a 2 star location, they were charging us less per night than I’d spend on a big night out, and yet it looked every bit as impressive as the four-star Millennium Broadway entrance ten blocks north. I was even more excited when we walked into the lobby – a quiet flute sonata lending a dignified air; it was enormous and outfitted with a beautiful marble and mirror scheme throughout. I began to realise how much we had landed on our feet when we had chosen New York’s fourth largest hotel.

We joined the small line for check-in and within seconds, for the second time in as many hours, we were pulled away from a queue. The concierge randomly decided that we should go through the “Penn 5000 Club” executive check-in. His explanation was that he wanted to “give the guy something to do”. Whether this was true or not we didn’t care, it meant more time to check out the city. We opted for the highest room available which turned out to be on the 17th floor, and got up there to get organised and see what was what.

Our room was a good fifteen feet square with windows on two of the walls. Unfortunately one of them only showed an office block, but the other provided a great view of the Madison Square frontage. The spacious twin room was equipped with a large colour TV which provided web access, a telephone with free voice mail, a walk-in wardrobe (!), en-suite shower and toilet, an ornate marble desk and a comfortable sofa. Way over and above what we were expecting, and exactly the base of operations we required. Dave immediately called his friend Steve Matzura, a local who, it seemed, couldn’t quite believe we’d made it over. We didn’t want to jump on Steve to entertain us right away so we contented ourselves with sorting out the numbers he would have to dial to contact us. Besides, we wanted to get out into the city and soak up some of the atmosphere. We unpacked, cleaned ourselves up and got down to street level to hit New York good and proper, to get on the ground and do some damage.

Out amongst the hustle and bustle, we headed north towards Times Square, the distant neon attracting me as more and more memories began to reawaken. Weaving in and out of the human traffic was fairly easy, but it was only when we reached the gob-smacking orgy of light and noise that it really hit home: we were now truly at the pulsating core of the Big Apple. The city has such a resonance for most people, and being at the centre of the action so soon after arriving is definitely the best course of action to avoid feeling like you’re missing out. It was the middle of a Wednesday evening, and yet the place was as insanely busy as the densest corners of any city in the world at prime time on a Saturday night. Beginning to feel a little drained, as we’d both been on our feet for almost twenty hours, we wandered back towards the hotel to eat and consider an insane trip one hundred and sixty blocks north.

For dinner, we made the first of one of many visits to a Lindy’s restaurant. These places have a uniquely American menu (pancakes, bagels, breakfasts, cheesecake) and quotes in the following vein on the walls:

Drunk (leaving Lindy’s): Hey doorman, call me a cab, willya?

Admiral Nimitz (who was standing nearby): My good man, I’m not a doorman, I’m an Admiral!

Drunk: Alrighty, call me a boat, I gotta get home.”

We both indulged in a sizable meal to fuel up after so long travelling and nibbling at snacks. Dave indulged his perennial pleasure of steak washed down with a couple of beers.

As luck would have it, the movie The Matrix Reloaded was released in the States the day we arrived. We were both fans of the first film, and so while still in the UK we had decided, somewhat stupidly in retrospect, to book tickets online to see it as soon as we got over there. Unsurprisingly, the film was sold out almost everywhere, and I decided to plump for tickets at a cinema on 189th Street. Had I realised that this would have involved us returning via the subway through The Bronx and Harlem at two in the morning, I wouldn’t have done it, but hindsight is 20/20. As it happened, we decided it was going to be ridiculous to try and get up there in time, and so we wrote off the $20 or so the tickets had cost us. Feeling loath to abandon the idea altogether, we asked the hotel doorman for the location of the nearest cinema – sorry, “movie theatre”. Infuriatingly, there was one barely a block away – Loews Cineplex on 34th and 8th. We took a walk over there to see what was happening, and the first thing we saw was a queue almost a block long. It seemed we had little chance of securing tickets, but we chose to saunter in regardless. Inquiring nonchalantly at the desk, we were bowled over when it turned out there were apparently seats available at an 11pm showing! The time was only around 10pm, so we immediately asked for tickets only for the attendant to inform us in a dull New York drawl “Oh sorry, it just sold out”. To have been tantalised thus and cruelly denied I’m sure has some parallel with Greek tragedy. We had to content ourselves with booking tickets to see the film the following afternoon at four o’clock. Still unwilling to call it a night with the whole of Manhattan at our disposal, we wandered across to the Empire State Building.

New York by night and from a height is a mind-bending experience. The Empire State boasts a variety of attractions including a motorised ride-cum-cinema affair with James Doohan (Scotty from Star Trek) pontificating at you, but we went for the vanilla 11-dollar observatory ticket. Once we’d received our ticket and concessionary pass and gotten through more security checks, including a ticket machine which barked “Next!” at us in the same New York twang, we took a series of two lifts “elevators” to the observation platform on the 88th floor. Once there the only part of the building higher than us was the nine-storey TV mast and sometime airship-mooring platform, and spread out beneath us like a postcard was the entire island of Manhattan. This was undoubtedly the highlight of our first evening. With the loss of the World Trade Centre, at 381 metres (1250 feet) the Empire State is now the tallest building in New York, and while eleven dollars might seem a little steep (no pun intended), it’s not something you should miss. In the event, the camera batteries died before I could take too many shots of the mesmerising light show from the top of the building, and we vowed to return at least twice more for a good selection of day and night shots. Dave had previously visited the top of the Eiffel Tower, but at 320 metres (1052 feet.) the famous Parisian landmark is nearly 200 feet smaller then the Empire State. If you’re wondering in the midst of all these statistics which is the tallest building in the world: http://www.xs4all.nl/~hnetten/tallest.html

By now it was close to midnight local time, and that meant we’d been going for twenty-two hours and travelled three and a half thousand miles. It was time to get back to the hotel room and get some sleep in before we spent the whole trip feeling exhausted. We couldn’t resist, however, checking out some of the bars in the locality of the hotel before retiring, and we discovered what turned out to be one of our favourite watering holes for the duration of the holiday – an Irish bar called Niles. This bar, it later turned out, was the hotel bar of the Sheraton Tower Hotel, and had the most impressive spirit rack I think I’ve ever seen in a place so small. We promptly slapped our money down on the bar to try the local poison. Ironically enough Dave had an Irish stout and I had a German lager, but it remains the first sampling of alcohol either of us ever had on American soil. The paranoia I’d been led to expect on ID checking when alcohol is ordered did not materialise, although I suppose since I’m now 23 the barman thought I might take offence at being carded. We stayed in Niles for a good hour or so, before calling it a night and heading up for some seriously needed shut-eye.

This whole crazy enterprise began, as do so many great things, with two friends shouting the odds across a table in a pub. In September of 2000 Dave Williams and I decided to go for some quiet drinks, and over many rounds, we concocted a scheme. In 1996 I had been lucky enough for my parents to offer the penniless student I was a trip to America, and to not just any old place in America either – to New York, the unofficial capital of the free world. Fried by the stress of A-levels I jumped at the chance for (justified cliche) the holiday of a lifetime, and so it came to be that a 16-year old with zero capital ended up in a room on the 43rd floor of a four-star hotel, staring down at the neon madness of Times Square and unable to wipe an enormous grin from his face.

It was unrealistic to expect to recreate the sheer awe and wonder I felt during that first amazing visit, but the desire to go back and spend another week feeling like I was on a film set had been sitting at the back of my mind for a long while. Dave, too, had the urge to get out there and see what the fuss was about. Dave seems to have a great many friends spread across the planet, (name a country, chances are he knows someone there) and New York was no exception. So we thumped the table and slurred a proclamation: we would one day get it organised and go there. The whole thing then, predictably, got put on the back burner while we got on with our lives. I finished off various university commitments and moved back home to crack on with some more. While Dave and I kept in regular contact, the subject rarely came up until it came to my attention in April of 2003 that I could get some flights from Heathrow to JFK at absolutely rock-bottom prices. The only cost would be the airport tax of approximately sixty pounds per ticket. So I picked up the phone, and threw the very real and imminent possibility of making good on that three-year old alcohol-soaked proclamation at Dave’s face, where it exploded and left him feeling somewhat surprised, but he still responded with a resounding “Bring it on!”.

As we got on with organising the trip, minor problems began to rear their delaying little heads. The US will not accept a passport which has fewer than six months left before it expires; this poorly publicised fact became a very relevant issue. My passport was valid until 2005; Dave’s on the other hand was due to expire in June of 2003. So, feeling slightly deflated, we postponed our plans while Dave renewed his passport. He did briefly consider a same-day renewal which would have entailed a trip to Liverpool and a cost of almost a hundred pounds, but ultimately the boy Williams opted for a regular renewal in 14 working days. We decided to use the extra time to thoroughly research possible hotels and also the various activities we would want to do while we were over there. While I hate holidays that are planned down to the hour, or worse involve relentlessly cheery reps bashing on the door at 7am, it would be essential for us to look lively and not squander the time once we got over there.

Having considered unused university accommodation off Manhattan, decidedly dodgy-looking hostels, and (briefly) the luxurious 4-star Millennium Broadway I had been lucky enough to stay in on my previous visit, our final choice was the Hotel Pennsylvania. This hotel is located on 7th Avenue between 32nd and 33rd Streets, a nigh-perfect location directly opposite Madison Square Garden and the colossal transport hub that is Penn Station. At that time the hotel was still undergoing some refurbishment, which left us feeling a little uncertain, but location-wise it couldn’t have been better. Additionally, it was well within the accommodation budget. For seven nights in a twin room, on a room-only basis, we would have to find 267 pounds each. A comfortable and spacious Midtown Manhattan location for less than forty pounds a night may seem too good to be true, but in the event, this was exactly what we got.

To be fore warned is fore armed right? Well maybe. What follows was a collabourative effort in more ways than I am capable of expressing in mere words. However, my acquaintance, nay good friend, Mr Robert young is a man of many words, 15000 of them you will find here.

Rob challenged me to rewrite this text from my perspective, however I feel to do so would take something away from what genuinely is the definitive account of when he and I made good on a 2-year-old commitment to go to New York and have a f**king good time!

So Rob, I have failed on your challenge to redraft this tome. However, I have succeeded where you have not. I.e. bringing this tale of: entertainment, enthusiasm and excess to the widest possible audience.

Before I run out of alliterations, any reader who has curious or crazy enough to embark on this epic, will hopefully be amused, astounded and but certainly not ambivalent about Rob and I. Either we are, a pair of mindless jerks who will be the first against the wall when the revolution arrives, or we are two witty discerning erudite gentlemen of the highest calliper the like of which you are unlikely ever to meet.

Now you know why I did not write this story. Rob sir, it is over to you.