The Split Personalities of New York
"Get your eyebrows tattooed on for less than $10!" a voice croons in my ear as we amble through the streets of Harlem. It's a stark contrast from where we were just yesterday - walking down Fifth Avenue, where one tonne jewels drip from the exteriors of buildings, light shows erupt with colour and music every ten minutes, and the American Dream is alive and well. A single word is scrawled across the side of Macy's, the largest department store in the world: "Believe". Believe in what, exactly? Yourself? Macy's? America? It almost doesn't matter. The squeaky clean sparkle of these streets makes you feel as though anything could happen. I felt the same looking at New York's iconic buildings, views and monuments. You can't help but feel optimistic.
But of course, like any city, the face it presents to the world is just one of many. Fifth Avenue may be New York's prettiest side, but it's definitely not its only one.
Back to Harlem, on an unseasonably warm December morning. A tangled spider's web of accents and languages stretches across the streets. You feel as though you've stumbled into a large family's home at dinnertime; people holler and call to each other, greeting, reprimanding, joking. The delicious smell of spiced meat fades as quickly as it appeared. The hollowed out skeletons of old music halls, their glory days long behind them, stand abandoned, fencing in the chaos. Knock-off CDs, perfumes and t-shirts are as common as street lamps. Swap diamonds for phone cases, and I guess the general idea is the same. Buy, buy, buy.
On our last day in New York, I felt fairly confident that I had a feel for its aesthetic, its voice and its rhythm. But then we went to the High Line, an abandoned railway line cutting through the midsection of the city. It used to be a freight route, but it was overtaken by trucking. Before long, nature claimed it back - knotted roots and tendrils choking the iron tracks, and the people of New York saved it from destruction. Now, it's carefully preserved and you can walk along it for over two miles. If you think of New York as a body - with the streets as the feet and the heady heights of the Rockefeller Center and the Empire State Building as the eyes, the walk along the High Line is the heart. Up here, level with people's living rooms, offices and meeting rooms is where life happens. It's like being behind the scenes. In parts, the buildings become more sparse and the scene turns gritty and industrial; smoke billows from giant pipes and defiant graffiti is splashed across grey-brown brick. Far from the rawness of Harlem and the glitz of Fifth Avenue, walking the High Line is like passing through a post-apocalyptic world, a place recently abandoned, still echoing with the memory of manufacturing and industry.
Before we knew it, our time in NYC had come to an end. What I saw there confirmed that my initial deduction was way off: it isn't possible to know this city in four days. You'd probably need years to appreciate a city with so many sides, layers, personalities. But for now, I'm ready to leave New York's blinding lights behind for the next stop on our route: Boston. I write this on an early morning Greyhound bus that's Boston-bound. The freeway is snaking through dense forestry that only thickens as we travel further north. I can't wait to find out what makes Boston tick.
Have you ever been? Any tips?
