Friday 30th June 2006

When abroad, I annoyingly and foolishly like to try and make myself fit in as a local; I hate the idea of being seen as a tourist. This is insane, as if nothing else my accent will give me away first, if not my complete miscomprehension and unfamiliarity with local customs, but none the less I still try and pull it off. It's not entirely negative and idiotic though, if you stop doing tourist activities and start doing what everyone else is doing you'll invariably get a better idea of how people live in a new place, and one way to do that can be as simple as going to the laundrette.

Because I've extended my stay I needed to clean my clothes and found a friendly place run by some Mexicans on, I think, 16th Street. Once I'd got the machine working I sat outside in the sun with others doing the same thing as me, cleaning their filthy garments, and so that made me feel a little bit more like a bona fide New Yorker. The Mexican family had a couple of kids running about, one aged about six and the other an infant. I taught them a coin trick on some steps which involved two coins and then told them they could keep the money, and it was satisfying to watch them continue to feverishly practice the trick, eventually showing their parents and impressing them, making bets on the whereabouts of the disappearing coin, causing them all to laugh. Truly now I was not only a New Yorker, but some sort of local character and magician. Or perhaps a foreigner that inappropriately approaches local children and gives them money. Either way I was no longer simply a tourist but a local character.

Speaking with people is so important. I got to chatting with the 'Super' of a building on my street, who is basically employed to look after it. All residential buildings have Supers. I asked him what a two bedroom apartment would go on sale for and he looked at me like I was insane and explained that there are very few two bedroom apartments, people in Manhattan live in matchboxes and that's the way they like it. You're talking millions of dollars for anything of any size. The reason that many people in Manhattan don't smoke isn't because it's banned in all bars, it's because they can't fit the cigarettes inside their apartment.

I returned to McHale's bar and got charting to an English actor called Tristium who's appearing in a show called Nothing, off Broadway. When he said "I'm in Nothing" I initially thought he wasn't appearing in anything, but no, an advert in the paper confirmed there was a comedy production called Nothing on and so I might try and see that before I leave. There's another typical bar stroke of luck; I'd never have thought to see Nothing if I'd not strolled into a bar alone and struck up a conversation. I pity the fool, very much like Mr T, who only sits on a tourist bus leaning facts when they could be mixing it up with English people called Tristium.

Normally one of my personal ground rules of going abroad is to avoid British people at all costs, which I'm sure I've mentioned before. I just can't see the point, it makes the travel and expense of travel seem a bit pointless if you're talking with people from your own country. And of course they only serve to remind you why you went overseas in the first place; to get away from them. But there's quite a heavy Brit population in Greenwich village and I found quite a few in a tea shop called British Tea And Sympathy. I had a PG Tips. There were even more in an Irish bar called Fiddlers Sticks or something, including a cockney Tottenham fan with whom I watched Italy beat the Ukraine at lunchtime. But on the whole, it's a good rule to throw yourself into the nearest river if you hear a British accent coming your way.

The barmaid at McHale's, Amanda, suggested I go and see her friend Lisa Marie bartend at a dive bar called Yogies in Mid Town. I made my way up there and found the place to be enormous fun, and Lisa Marie to be a scantily clad whirlwind of madness that had a penchant for climbing up onto the bar and doing a saucy dance for all the exclusively male customers. I think this happens quite a lot in American dive bars, it's something of a tradition. So the bar is really have strip club, have rock and roll joint, and half pub. Not such a bad combination. And not in a tourist in sight, I think most would be intimidated and have their stupid cameras stolen. But not me, now I'd done my laundry and taught a Mexican child how to gamble, I was clearly now accepted as a local and wasn't punched or ordered to leave.

I met a young Jewish bloke called Sam who was very affable and interesting and it was eventually decided we should get together with his friends and go out drinking. I have a rather hazy memory of what tonight involved, but it started by going to his apartment near Harlem, having a few cocktails with his friends, then going down to a fascinating bar called The Russian Vodka House where huge vases of vodka were taken down in shots. Then I think it was onto somewhere else, but I know that around two a.m. I was in a supermarket buying beer that I took back to their apartment and we continued there until about six, dancing about the living room, until getting into cabs and going all the way back downtown to the French Roast, which is open 24/7, and having a last, killer Martini. I was quite horrendously drunk and do recall literally winding my way back to the hotel in a horrendous manner, laughing at myself with my last grain of conscious thought for what a comic book drunk I must have appeared as I avoided a tree and probably started speaking to it. I rang Sam on his cell and shouted orders to him that he was to join me for the England game tomorrow morning and he agreed.

Great day, really. I got to do my laundry, and take my shirts to one of those great Chinese laundries after they'd been washed to be ironed (this might look extravagant but there are no ironing facilities in my hotel) go to an extraordinary dive bar, go to a Russian joint, go to someone's apartment, and make new friends. Swivel on that, tourist idiots. I am like Travis Bickle, or John Gotti. As much as part as the fabric of New York as steaming manhole covers or yellow cabs.

I wish.

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