Thoughts From A Broad - Part One

Well, here's the self-indulgent 'here are my holiday snaps' post so feel free to scroll on by. Click on any picture to enlarge it (with appropriate warnings that I may look horrible small, but I look even worse big).

First of all we spent 5 days in New York. Our hotel was Hotel 57 on East 57th Street and I would definitely recommend it. The room was tiny but gorgeous and had a great view. I didn't take a photo of the inside of the room because by the time we had been there 5 minutes it looked as thought Hurricane Donna had swept through it (why is it that when you go on holiday you take clothes you haven't worn for years? Or is that just me? It's as though I have something in my brain that says "Donna, those lime green crimplene hotpants your mum made that you've been saving since the early '70s will be just perfect for this trip. OK, so they were never actually in fashion and you need to lose a little weight before you get into them - but what's 150 pounds between friends?") Luckily, Ewan only had half a suitcase full of clothes so I took over the other half of his. We still had too much luggage so I unpacked his suitcase before we left, decided there were some clothes he didn't need and threw in some extra shoes for me.

The first full day we walked over the whole of lower Manhattan. We wandered through the East Village (where we found this Joe Strummer mural). The East Village was a great area to just walk around and soak up the sights and sounds and smells (although on that note, may I heartily UNrecommend the public restrooms in Tompkins Square Park in Alphabet City.)

Then it was on to the Lower East Side, the West Village and Greenwich Village, taking in Chinatown and Little Italy, via a detour to Joey Ramone Place at the corner of East 2nd Street and the Bowery, just around the corner from what used to be CBGBs. Sorry about the photo - it was humid. My hair doesn't do humid. And nor does my face, apparently. And I didn't have time to make myself look decent because while we were taking photos here there was a major drug deal going on behind us. Discretion being the better part of valour, we thought it best not to linger. We returned to the East Village and the Bowery on numerous occasions - it was a great place and the location of our two musical interludes with the lovely Mary Reagan - Spinnerette at the Bowery Ballroom and The Crocodiles at the Mercury Lounge (a tiny club that only held about 250 people). The Crocodiles were one of the best bands I've ever seen - full of energy and passion, great songs and some brilliant Jesus and Mary Chain guitar fuzz noise. I bought a CD and later found they are playing in Glasgow in July - yippee!.


We did the whole tourist thing, spending approximately 2 minutes in Times Square before heading off to the peace and quiet of Central Park which was absolutely gorgeous. I managed to shoo several 5 year olds off the Alice In Wonderland statues so that I could get my photo taken like the big kid I am. We ate in Harlem (great to see you Mary, Sarah and Ed!), and met up with old friends (Kathy - it was a joy) and new ones - the charming Nick Towasser of Dissident Books met us for drinks after we had been to a comedy club on the Upper East Side and we spent a lovely evening with him drinking until the small hours. And if you get a chance to get hold of DON'T CALL ME A CROOK!: A SCOTSMAN'S TALE OF WORLD TRAVEL, WHISKY AND CRIME jump at it - it's a great fun read.

"But Donna, what about culture?" I hear you ask. "What of Broadway, and museums and art?" Well, we did that too. In fact, we went from the ridiculous to the sublime. On a rainy afternoon we decided to go to an off Broadway production. On the positive side, we got tickets for half price. On the negative side, it was utter shite. The play was The Perfect Crime, a long-running play which was supposedly a psychological thriller. Unfortunately there was far too much scenery chewing from the female lead, the male lead had the worst British accent imaginable (stopping just short of 'top hole, old boy, what?') and not enough thrills. Oh, there was one more good thing about the production - it had an interval, which meant we could mercifully leave at half time without looking too obvious).

So we decided to go to a museum instead, to try and recapture some of that elusive culture. And the museum we chose was the Museum of Sex which was fascinating, informative and extremely funny (apparently there are sex doll brothels). One of the exhibits was 'The Sex Lives of Animals' and I was really taken by the fact that macaque monkeys will give up snacks for porn. They will gladly hand over their food in exchange for pictures of female macaque genitalia. Well, let's face it guys, when you've got that naked, hot macaque centrefold in front of you, you're going to need both hands, aren't you?

San Francisco to follow.