Travel Drinking in New York

If there’s a single website which summarises New York City perfectly,

it’s overheardinnewyork.com, a collection of the best soundbites from the city’s

residents. In fact, the reason I gave up ever trying to write fiction was that I’d never

be able to come up with anything that’s as close to a work of genius as the following:

Overheard in Banana Republic:

Posh lady on cellphone: “I know, but I was at a funeral all day...Yeah, it was sad, but I didn’t really know him

at all. The saddest thing was seeing his daughters upset. They’re the same age as...Wow! This shirt is only

$19! You can’t even buy a freaking frappuccino for $19! I’m getting it in blue...”

Overheard on an A Train:

Conductor: “We are currently being held in the station because of some other A Train fucking us all over.”

Overheard in a flower shop in Greenwich Village:

Florist #1: (hanging up the phone) “We just got a funeral.”

Florist #2: “Man or woman?”

Florist #1: “Man.”

Florist #2: “Goddammit! We have all these pink roses and nothing we can use them for.”

Florist #1: “We could always use them and just hope that he was a flamer.”

Overheard in Peter Luger’s restaurant:

Patron: “What would you suggest if I don’t want red meat?”

Waiter: “Another restaurant.”

Overheard in Union Square:

Mother: “Don’t you ever do that again!” (slaps child hard)

Child (calmly): “Well, are you happy with yourself?”

(I really like that last one; it’s got a certain zen quality about it.)

Overheard in Crema restaurant:

Mother with little girl: “Excuse me. My daughter wants to know if you’re a pirate.”

Woman wearing bandana: “No, I’m just a lesbian.”

Overheard at Fordham University:

Woman: “Come to think of it, all of my Jewish friends went to summer camp. Isn’t that kind of

ironic, though; Jews at camp?”

No, you really didn’t read that. Quickly, here’s something far more tasteful:

Overheard on 3rd Avenue:

Man on cellphone: “I would fucking marry the girl, if it wasn’t for every time I went down on her she tasted like hummus.”

Okay, I’m going to have to stop now, or I’ll end up doing nothing else but quote the website.

New Yorkers, baby! One of the weird things about them is, because Manhattan is mostly just a colossal,

numbered grid system, they’re utterly addicted to giving directions which are basically just pairs of

coordinates. Countless times I’ve had conversations with NYC residents that sound like this:

“Yeah, there’s a fantastic little bar on 23rd Street and 2nd Avenue.”

“Actually, John, I think it was on 17th and 3rd.”

“Uh, are you thinking of where we were the other night, on 57th and 7th?”

That’s numberwang! If you’re a mathematician, it feels ever so slightly like living in a graph. And, to be

honest with you, that’s not an entirely unpleasant experience.

I’m not doing too well regarding the ‘drinking’ aspect of this article, am I? Okay, let me tell you about my visit to Jekyll & Hyde’s which, John, is at 57th and 6th. This is a horror-themed bar / restaurant aimed at the family market, a mixture that clearly shouldn’t work.

And it sort of doesn’t. When I arrived, at the same time as an American family, we were all shown into a

small, dimly lit room with a bizarre hybrid of a French maid and a vampire stood at the far end. (Sounds

sexy, doesn’t it? It wasn’t.) With a prolonged squeak that could just about pass for a voice, she announced

that her name was Anaemia and we would all have to prove our bravery before entering Jekyll & Hyde’s.

(For god’s sake; I only wanted a beer.) Right on cue, the ceiling started descending and big fucking

spikes started coming out of it! Holy crap! At this point, one of the little kids in the family got genuinely

scared and started to cry. This only seemed to make Anaemia all the more pleased.

After an extremely long minute, the march of the spikes abated and we were informed that we were all worthy

to enter. For the venue itself, they’ve gone for a ‘haunted mansion’ feel, with dark corridors, and scary monster

paraphernalia, and the odd coffin. While it puts a big grin on your face when you’re pleasantly inebriated, I would

utterly beg you never to enter this establishment on acid. Because one or two of the skeletons which populate

the bar area will occasionally turn around and start talking to you. And I don’t mean some cheesy pre-recorded

spiel about preparing to meet your doom; they actually start talking to you, jawbone moving immaculately in

time with the words. When I sat down for a beer, the surrealometer was nudged off the scale when a giant

vampire bat descended over the assembled families in the restaurant area and started liberally insulting them.

In a Spanish accent, by the way.

Time to move on.

I headed to a, for want of a better word, pub. It was called The Perfect Pint and was located next door to

Grace Hotel where I was staying. Actually, I’m going to have to tell you about the hotel. I chose it for the

novelty of its having a pool that allows you to swim right up to the adjacent bar. (People who say that

alcohol and water don’t mix just aren’t trying properly.) However, after a brief foray into the art of aquatic

intoxication, I found that the problem was the other clientele – a collection of attractive, young, curvy

women alongside obese, greying men, all of whom are indulging in almost naked, late-night flirting. Still, I

shouldn’t be so cynical; there are plenty of men who might not seem that charming on the surface, but

deep down are probably very rich.

Anyway, The Perfect Pint...

(Just for the record, in America they’ll serve you 80% of a perfect pint – stupid fucking colonial system!)

I struck up a conversation with the guy sat next to me, a Manhattan resident called Glen. Rather bizarrely, we got talking because of my pen. I’ll explain:

At the airport before I left I’d gone stationery shopping and soon found that you can go screw yourself if you think you’re going to be able to buy a pen at Heathrow. Beatles fridge magnets, iPods, more chocolate than you could eat in a human lifetime...no problem with all of that. But a writing implement would be really unacceptable. In the end, I had to buy a gift set of various trinkets emblazoned with the Union Jack – making me possibly the only Englishman ever to do so – purely because it contained a pen.

I’d forgotten all about this when I was sat at the bar in The Perfect Pint writing in my journal, and a voice next to me piped up: “say, are you Briddish?”

Oh god! Suddenly I realise I look like Austin Powers writing his diary. Extremely embarrassed, I tried to

relate the Heathrow story – but, far from being cynical about it, Glen was utterly chuffed with the pen. He

even asked if I wanted to swap. And indeed I did. Instantly, we bonded.

In fact, as Glen and I rattle off the usual bar-room nonsense, I’ll relate to you

something weird that I saw in New York which I’ve never seen anywhere outside

America: the stores have two genres of female clothes mannequin. One is the tastefully proportioned,

regular woman-shaped model; the other is an exaggerated sort of hyper-woman, proudly displaying a pair

of Jessica Rabbit-style breasts the size of footballs. Seriously, it looks like a female body that’s been

out that there’s a big market amongst the silicone valley brigade, or they’ve hit upon the ideal way of

getting blokes into clothes stores.

(Incidentally, if you see one of these in a shop window, you’ll never need to say to the guy next to you

“hey, check that out!” – he’ll already be checking it out.)

Bidding Glen farewell after a couple of pints (so, technically, 160% of a pint), I then spent the evening at a cabaret

venue called Duplex, down in Greenwich Village. By coincidence, it was July 14th – Bastille Day in France – and the

themed performance was called Bastille Magnolias (I quite like that pun). Having found out earlier that this part of the

Village is a known gay district, the female double-act were thus instantly lesbians. In my head, if not in reality, but

let’s not spoil it. Wandering down the street afterwards, I stumbled across the iconic gay bar that is ... Stonewall.

So I couldn’t resist seeing what that was like (yes, I know I’m making myself sound the archetypal closet

homosexual, but I promise you if I were looking to come out I would do it less subtly than this).

And they were having a Bingo night! I can’t work out whether that’s weird gay or regular gay. The distinctly non-anorexic drag queen who was hosting spotted me walking in and ordered me up to the front (happily, I was sloshed enough not to be self-conscious by this point). He / she told me that if I mooned the entire bar I’d get a free shot of my choice. Bonus! I thus quite cheerfully displayed my ass before the yanks and accepted the mouthful. (Frankie Howerd would have exploded by this point, I suspect.)

Actually, I’m rather glad the drag queen didn’t try to push things a little further – you don’t want to know

how far I’d go for free booze.

Right, it’s time to wish you all ‘have a nice day’ and be on my way. I’ll leave you with my own genuine

submission to overheardinnewyork.com which will hopefully be appearing soon:

Overheard in Market Table restaurant:

Woman at next table to male companion: “You know Jane. She’s not that into food – even though she’s fat.”