Between West Street and Bleecker Street - New York Memories
“I saw a shadow touch a shadow’s hand. On Bleecker Street.”
(New York Memories from many years ago and a taxi trip I took to follow a song. A repost but with edits and additions.)
When I first went to New York, American Express put me up at The Marriott Downtown on West Street. (1) After a hard day in the office doing, oh I don’t know what - all work is ephemeral given time and distance - I would ask my US colleagues out for a beer. And sometimes they would oblige... For a beer. Just one beer. Before then departing for New Jersey or somewhere out of town. Leaving me alone in New York.
The Marriott Downtown on West Street is down at the bottom of Manhattan Island, in a very business district; all skyscrapers, bustling with life during the day but dead after work. What to do? On my first trip to New York?
Letting art be my guide, I summoned a yellow taxi and told the cabbie to take me to Bleecker Street. Due to the Simon and Garfunkel song, it was the only uptown street I knew and I didn’t know any attractive ladies I could meet at the top of the Empire State Building. So the cabbie took me - circuitously I found later - up to Greenwich Village.
De-cabbed, I wandered around the village. Had some beers in 'coffee shops' where I had to get used to putting dollars on the bar before ordering my drink. Lighting up a Marlboro - yes, you could in those days - I thought, hey! - this is living. All my idols - Neil Diamond, Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, had walked these very streets. Played in the coffee houses. All I lacked was my very own Suzi Rotolo immortalised on The Freewheeling Bob Dylan:-
Now that image is well known. Less well known is the cover of The Paul Simon Songbook where Paul poses (influenced by Dylan, no doubt) with his then girlfriend Kathy Chitty (of Kathy's Song fame):-
The album cover above is framed and hung in my hallway. The Song Book was released in 1965 and recorded in England after Simon temporarily left Garkunkel following the poor reception to their first album, Wednesday Morning 3am. Wednesday Morning, of course, contained Bleecker Street. Being a fan, I had all the albums.
So what does this all show? Not much, in the receding view of history. A first time visitor to a great city takes a taxi ride to someplace mentioned in a song. But to me it was real. It was living art. All of my life - in those distant youthful days - seemed to be an unwritten novel, an oral poem - a song, awaiting to be sung.
I suppose life is an ever diminishing version of that little story: The search for the new, the openness of naivety, the finding of oneself, wherever that may be. I suppose we all search for the thrill and expectation I felt during that first taxi ride between West Street and Bleecker Street.
And sometimes we find that feeling. But usually we don't. We all live in between.
Tim
NOTES
1) Subsequently, I used to stay at the Marriott World Trade Centre, a little further up West Street. It was in between the twin towers and, of an evening, instead of Bleecker Street, I’d hang out in Windows on the World bar, up on 101st floor.
2) Other memories of that first trip to New York? The death of Richard Nixon vying with Mayor Giuliani’s first budget and both being very much on TV & Radio. Surprisingly crappy roads with potholes even down in the financial district.