OK, well that New York trip was neither well thought out in any way, or themed as I’d earlier hoped to do. By the time people had finished visiting Social Security and the bank, it was the afternoon. So we didn’t get into Manhattan until about 3. I went in with the two Scottish girls, Anhita and the new girl Maria, who arrived today (such Scottish names!). We spent most of the train journey in telling Maria how bad all the customers are, and just generally trying to scare her. I also found out that apparently the person who owns Colgate comes here, along with the guy who owns Kellogs, and the guy who discovered DNA (Mr Watson I belive).
When we got to Penn Station (which is directly underneath Madison Square Gardens for anyone who cares), the first thing we did was go shopping. As I was on the receiving end of a 2:1 girl to boy ratio, this meant spending an hour looking at makeup and lipstick in Macys, before finding somewhere to eat lunch. I won on this one though, as we ended up in a sports bar with HOT girls as waitresses. The bar was showing the golf that day - I honestly didn’t think a room full of people would ever get that excited about putting.
After lunch, I decided I wanted to go off guitar shopping, so I left the girls with the plan of meeting them later. This never happened because I was given the wrong phone number for one of them, but I did get the chance to look round come awesome guitar shops. There’s a road leading of Times Square (48th street) that has about 4 or 5 guitar shops in a row. And they all specialise mainly in old school mega-expensive ones. I tried out a Gibson hollow-body that cost over $3000, but there’s no way I’ll be buying something that nice. Sounded schu-weeet though.
I also had a proper look round Times Square, which is bigger than just the image you always see in magazines of the Coca Cola advert. The whole place is covered in adverts trying to stand out from the rest by being the biggest and brightest around (even the subway is covered in light-bulbs), and people hurry everywhere they go. I had a look round Virgin Megastores there, and it’s so big, they don’t just have a ‘world music’ section, they have sections for each country. Though I couldn’t find a separate section for England…
I found a blues club on 42nd street called the B. B. King Blues Club, and wanted to venture in to see if there was any live music on in there. Apparently a couple of weeks ago Chuck Berry played there. I tried to ask one of the huge black bouncers surrounding the doorway, but they kept moving away from me, so I just walked inside. It wasn’t ‘til I tried to order a beer from the bar that it was pointed out that there was a private function on and I was the only person there dressed like a scruff. So I was politely asked to leave.
The weather finally gave in today, with storms hitting Manhattan on and off whilst I was there. I heard one guy shouting “the end of the world is nigh” to passers-by, but I don’t know if he was being serious or not. I hope not, or we’re all screwed. By the time I got back to the club, the rain had subsided, but the weather was significantly cooler this evening, and the air felt fresher. Hopefully tomorrow will be less muggy.
It occurred to me by the end of my day off today that I hadn’t really taken advantage of the fact I had a free day. The next free day I get, I’m going to try and get into Manhattan as early as possible, and check of a big list of sights. Otherwise I will be doing all work and no play, and I’ve heard that that will make me a dull boy.
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