The Big Trip to the Big Apple

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Ireland Calling with John Spain

The Big Trip to the Big Apple

August 28, 2008

Ireland Calling by John Spain

NEW Yorkers are rude and impatient and Dubliners are friendly and prepared to give visitors all the time in the world? Yeah, right. The failure of New Yorkers to live up to their nasty image was once again made clear to me recently when the Spanish Armada (a/k/a the Spain family) was in Manhattan for a week’s R&R.

In fact again and again during our week in the Big Apple I was struck by how friendly, patient and engaging New Yorkers are. They take time to answer questions and give directions, they chat, they crack jokes. You could say they are very like the way Dubliners used to be before the Celtic Tiger made us so hassled and impatient.

This week Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Brian Cowen is still on holiday in the rain in Connemara and there’s not much going on in Dublin apart from the summer-long monsoon, so it gives me the opportunity to turn this week’s page from “Ireland Calling” to “Manhattan Calling” and to tell you all about the Spanish Armada in the Big Apple.

At some point most Irish families do the big trip to New York. The best time to go is when the children are young teenagers, old enough to cope with the demands of a week exploring the city but still young enough so that sightseeing with the parents is not, like, totally embarrassing. Our three kids are at that stage right now and the dollar-euro rate is great for us, so this summer was the right time for us to show them Manhattan.

The first rule when traveling with teenagers is to stay somewhere interesting. Most Irish families who do New York take a package and end up in somewhere like the Affinia which is popular with visiting families because it has one and two bedroom suites.

The Affinia is well positioned and even a bit swish, with a big lobby and a uniformed doorman etc. But it’s anonymous and a bit boring, because one big hotel is just like another.

And it’s more than a little bit expensive (around $900 a night for a two bedroom suite in June when we were visiting). You can do an awful lot better than that by being a bit adventurous and using the Internet to find yourself a short stay apartment in Manhattan. You can even find yourself one in the thick of the action down in Greenwich Village, for example.

Which is exactly what we did. It cost us $350 a night, it had two bedrooms, bathroom, eat-in kitchen and a large lounge with a double sofa bed.

Best of all, it was on the famous Bleecker Street in the West Village, the old stomping ground where Bob Dylan and so many other icons from the sixties started out. Plus it was right next door to John’s Pizzeria, reputedly the best pizza house in Manhattan. And it was opposite the Blind Tiger, one of the most popular bars in the area.

We woke up on our first morning in the apartment and opened the blinds on the front windows to discover that the street outside had been closed because they were shooting a movie starring Sarah Michelle Gellar. The camera, the crew and the lighting rigs were right outside our windows. It was that kind of place.

Our apartment was a walk-up on the first floor in an old three-story building. The stairs leaned precariously to one side, the windows were not the best, the air conditioning struggled and the plumbing was temperamental.

But the place was full of character, with walls covered in paintings, interesting furniture, comfortable beds, lots of books and magazines, a TV and an Internet connection. It belonged to a designer who was there with a welcoming smile when we arrived in the cab from JFK.

Take a bow Gina, the first of all the friendly faces we met in New York. She took time to explain where everything was, gave us advice about the neighborhood, showed us how to do the multiple locks, left us her cell number and then left us to it.

The location was fantastic, with a 24 hour deli on the corner, a homemade ice cream shop and several traditional Italian food stores right beside us, as well as great restaurants, coffee shops, bars, art galleries, jewelry shops and boutiques. The street buzzed with life day and night.

Next door to us was a trendy restaurant called Fish, which had a park bench outside on the pavement. In the evenings, after a hard day’s sight seeing, I used to sit there to watch the street life and frequently one of the smokers outside the Blind Tiger would wander over, sit down and chat. As I said, it was that kind of place.

So we had fallen on our feet. For me the apartment and the locality brought back memories of student days. For the kids it was deep immersion in what it’s like to live in Greenwich Village. They loved it. and by the second day they were acting like locals.

We did all the usual things, the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, the Empire State, the Top of the Rock and so on. And of course (being married to a fashion designer) there was lots of shopping.

For me and my two sons, once the big Nike store was done, the shopping soon became boring. So we broke up our week with a day on the Chelsea Piers, where we practiced our golf drives, tried the baseball cages, the ice skating and the indoor soccer. Then we spent a second non-shopping, non-sightseeing day cycling around Central Park on rented bikes.

And everywhere we went that week we met New Yorkers who were friendly and willing to take time to talk or help. There was the guy and his son who stopped us killing ourselves in the baseball cages, the various joggers who showed us the way when we got lost several times in Central Park, the hip hoppers on the Staten Island ferry who gave us their take on what was great about New York, the gang at the bar in the Blind Tiger, the street basketball players around the corner from our apartment in the Village. Once they heard the accent they were all asking more questions than us.

Even the taxi drivers were great. The European soccer finals had started the week we were there so my football mad sons set up a temporary camp in the ESPN Sports Zone bar with its wall of TV screens.

We emerged after watching a match one day, and the taxi we got happened to be driven by a guy from Croatia, who were then doing very well in the competition. When he saw one son in his Eircom Ireland jersey, the driver’s gentle teasing about how crap Ireland were and how brilliant Croatia were lasted all the way back to Bleecker Street. We gave as good as we got. When my son named half of the Croatian team the driver said the ride was free ... but we paid him anyway.

We passed Ground Zero several times, but as you know it’s now a building site like any other, except that there is still something in the air down there that sends a chill down your spine, a wave of sorrow through your stomach.

For me, the most evocative day was the one on Ellis Island. Down in the basement of the main building we put our hands on the faded white tiles on the walls and the floors, the original tiles still in place from the time over a century ago when so many passed this way, putting their hands on the walls as they did, perhaps sitting on these same floors, exhausted after their journey.

The records show that more than a few Spains, from Tipperary and Limerick where my people come from, were among those who arrived in search of a new life. When you think about it, we have it so easy these days.

After our week in Manhattan we were ready to hit the beach for a couple of weeks doing nothing. So we hired a car and did what so many American families do. We headed down the Jersey Shore. You can read all about our adventures there in this page next week.

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