Reposted from a long time ago…
In the fall of 1984, my friend Anne showed up at NYU. She and I, along with her roommate, Linda, were prone to doing (and fond of doing) street theatre. ONe night we did the Balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet: Linda was studying R&J and Anne thought it might help her if she could read the scene with a man. I thought it might help her if she could read the scene with a man who was several stories below… So, Linda stuck her head out of their tiny, 4th floor room in the (then) Judson Hall Dorm (next to the Judson Memorial Baptist Church). And I wondered across W4th Street to the edge of Washington Square Park.
I can still see the event: Linda’s long dark hair easier to see than her pale skin against the light coloured stone of Judson. And a skinny, 20 year old me holding the Riverside Shakespeare entering into Romeo-esque dialogue with passers-by, (drug dealers and what all - whispering “coke hash meth… acid, acid. Go get ‘er Romeo”)
But that’s not what I wanted to share - that moment came to me as a set up for the real moment.
One night, in a fit of boredom, we took the Number 1 up town to 112th street to look at the outside of the Cathedral Church of St John the Divine. It was after midnight when the journey started. Of course the Cathedral was locked. But we poked around the front steps, looking up into the night. And then we decided to walk home. Now think about it: we lived on West 4th. The Cathedral is at West 112th. There are not a few streets between one point and the other that have names rather than numbers. So… We set ourselves up for it.
We walked down Broadway. One could say that all the streets were empty - but that would be a lie. This is, after all, Manhattan we’re talking about. In those days there were even unsafe neighbourhoods - unsafe not only in the horribly silly opinions of New Jerseyites and other tourists and day trippers, but also in the collective opinion of middle class white New Yorkers. One such area was just in the low 100s and the upper 90s. There were row after row of dark windows, and construction scaffoldings. Even a decade later when much of the Upper West Side had gentrified, 106th St was a bit of scary (to a white boy) Spanish Harlem that had been cut off from the rest by Columbia University, St Lukes-Roosevelt Hospital and the Cathedral.
As we followed Broadway along, our Shakespeare came back to us and we developed a sort of “cheer” or “motto” for chanting: “Life! Love! Broadway!” As we drew nigh to Midtown, and the enfolding of Broadway into the outdoor porn palace of the Pre-Disney Time Square, we thought it best to cut over towards Fifth Ave, and so we walked past the St Moritz, and the Plaza Hotel: in these days there was no Donald Trump name attached to everything.
By this time dawn was breaking beyond the 59th Street Bridge. We stopped on the corner of 5th Ave and Central Park South, near the Gold Statue of That War Criminal arrogantly riding his horse over the Southlands. Sitting at his feet, we watched the hansom cabs pull up for their morning: Linda flirted with a cabbie from Ireland who kissed her hand. Anne wondered over into the Plaza lobby to use the facilities.
When she returned, we began a moment of Street Theatre, rehearsing a dance number that some how involved Sherman’s horse and the three of us singing our way through a theme song that had developed from our chant.
Some woman with flowers presented one each to the girls. The hansom cabbies applauded. A lone, adventurous woman in shorts and a tank top broke from her safety pod of fellow tourists exiting the Plaza and asked us the name of the show for which we were rehearsing. We dreamed up a story on the spot, laughing at the idea, later, of the woman telling her friends back in Indiana that she had seen real live Broadway Performers rehearsing on the street. (And knowing that would be much better than the alternative story about seeing some drunk guy wee on the side of their tour bus - we felt we had done Ed Koch a favour.) Blisters were making it hard for us to keep dancing through…
We walked the rest of the way home - reconnecting with Broadway at Madison Square and making through the unsafe neighbourhood in the lower 20s and the upper teens. We passed the Mays Department store that was still then on the corner of Broadway and Union Square. We stopped at Cozy Soup and Burger (B’way at Astor) for some more coffee and then, reaching my Fraternity House on Washington Place, we parted company and I curled up in a little ball on my bed. By the late morning - 8AM or 9AM - the Village seemed only like the Village. It was NYC, again - bereft of Life and Love, Broadway by daylight only a commute route.
One of the things I greatly lament about my lost youth is the passing of my romance with NYC. There are no more unsafe neighbourhoods. There is no more Mays (although there is a huge, ugly HMV there now). There is no more outdoor porn palace. There is no more NYC, really. Only a huge open air touristy mall. Still, I was blessed to have lived there well before Donald Trump, Disney and Rudy ruined the town (they do insist they’ve made it better). With the advent of a Time Squre that looks as if it were commissioned by Regis Philbin, the true meaning of “inner city” relocated to the Rust Belt.
Still there is a New York of the heart, if I may be forgiven the phrase - or at least a Romantice New York of the Memory. Anne twirls out on stage right from behind the Horse’s butt and sings
As Linda comes from stage left and sings
Yours truly walks down to centre stage and belts out, joined in harmony by the girls,
I’ve walked at least 60 blocks up Manhattan in one go but that was in broad daylight. That was fun - it’s the most recent time I’ve popped into St Patrick’s and the only time so far into St Thomas’, Fifth Avenue (from which I was promptly chased out as they were doing construction inside; there were clear plastic coverings and scaffolding everywhere but I got a glimpse of the place’s glory).
The two young Russian folk-rockers The Two Siberians I heard performing outside the Lincoln Center that day were very good too.
While I’m showing off… one day in London I walked from Westminster and the edge of Trafalgar Square all the way to St Paul’s and back (by way of Clerkenwell, which IIRC wasn’t gentrified in those days and the only place I went in the city where I felt a little scared - made a pilgrimage to my late rector’s old parish, Holy Redeemer, which was locked for the evening).
Forsooth, but thou hadst a truly full codpiece at that time, to try that walk and to bravely face the dangers of the night.