Ten things you can learn about New York City from the subway
Newton’s little-known fourth law of motion states that all city dwellers shall complain about the transport system that gets them to work in the morning. Londoners have more reason than most to moan, with a Northern Line that resembles Calcutta on a bad day, and weekend engineering work that means any trip from Leicester Square [...]
Understanding New York’s unique formula
If you ask me – and I know you didn’t – New Yorkers must be the most accomplished numbers-oriented populace in the world. For a start, they know the price of every single slice of pizza in the city, and can calculate the cheese per cent ratio of each one by smell alone. They can [...]
The one where A Brit Out Of Water becomes a criminal
Having been brought up on a TV diet that included regular feedings of ‘Cagney & Lacey’, I have to say that I was pretty nervous on my first trip to New York City. Not because there was a possibility of being forced to spend an evening in the company of Tyne Daly and her long-suffering [...]
There’s honour among thieves
As a great philosopher once wrote, “we had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun.” Well to be honest, it was the Belgian songwriter Jacques Brel, but he sounds like a philosopher so that’s close enough for me. My suspicion – based admittedly on one trip to Antwerp nearly ten years ago [...]
Baby you can park my car
I don’t think it’s unfair to say that Americans are obsessed with their cars. Having recently flown cross-country to Los Angeles, it’s not hard to see why. Popping next door for a cup of sugar must be a whole different kettle of fish when your closest neighbour lives thirty miles away. Of course, abject fear [...]
Slow train to nowhere
Until moving to New York, my experience of the American inter-city rail network was pretty much restricted to repeated viewings of Silver Streak with Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder. And memories of a few scenes from Trading Places, on the occasions when I wasn’t wearing down our VHS copy in a bid to pause on [...]
City transport in “not very good” shock
If there’s one thing that unites Londoners and New Yorkers more than anything else, it’s their enthusiasm for (and indeed, full-blown devotion to) complaining about their respective subterranean rail systems. In the transportational equivalent of the playgroundschoolyard mantra of “my dad could beat up your dad”, the inhabitants of each city is convinced that their [...]
I used to be such a tolerant man
When I’m heading back to the depths of Brooklyn each night, a seat on the N train is as a rare as an Alaskan governor at a meeting of MENSA. Given that the N is an express train, and goes particularly quickly by New York standards (by London standards, it’s faster than the speed of [...]
London’s dirty secret
I think it’s probably fair to say that there’s a common perception among the global community that Americans are pretty direct. And that’s no bad thing. For example, I’d say that most Americans are pretty intolerant of poor service, and aren’t afraid to make their dissatisfaction known. As a sweeping generalisation, Americans aren’t known for [...]
The pipes of peace
I’ve said it before, but New York is a city packed full of people who just don’t know when to stop. As the old Chinese proverb says, “Start argument with New Yorker on Tuesday, kiss goodbye to weekend.” And if a New Yorker fails at something, expect them to keep trying until they’ve finally achieved [...]
