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Walk on the WestSide

Everybody had to pay and pay
A hustle here and a hustle there
New York City's the place where they say,
Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side
Lou Reed


On Fridays, I visit my friend who lives in the theatre district.

The bus from my work in Queens takes me almost there. So I walk the rest of the way, taking a different route every time, to explore different aspects of Manhattan.

I walk though west mid-town. It is not my favorite area of Manhattan. From Harold Park to just north of Times Square, it seems to me that the streets are full of what we'd call in Australia, 'no hopers'. There are still the regular New Yorkers and the tourists. But the west mid-town locals predominate.

When I'm buoyant, it's fine. I pass through the crowds of down-and-outs without a second thought.

But if I'm not on top of it all, I start to feel like Anna Karenina on that last train trip, where the people take on a foreboding and disconcerting aspect.

The mid-town West side crowd is not like that of the lower East Side, or even the notorious Alphabet City. There aren't the runaways, the druggies, the unsuccessful artists. There's not the life or hope even of these people. Instead there's the depressing atmosphere of a world sans hope. Seedy rather than alternative.

The natives of west mid-town could have stepped straight out of Emile Zola's L'Assomoire.

And so last Friday I started my treck to the upper West Side. Past Sixth Avenue and along 56th Street. Only half a block away from the up-market Bergdorf Goodman store. Walking through the underlife, the underclass of New York.

Last Friday was particularly gloomy. I was tired. I had no spark. Everything appeared like a scene from Peake's Gormenghast. Gloom, doom and hopelessness. The world looked ugly.

But what was all this? I was about to meet two good friends just four blocks away. I tried to feel upbeat and to walk with a spring in my step. I decided to distract myself and started looking at store window displays.

No sooner had I so decided, than I came across a half-lit window. The display - in fact the whole store - was cram-packed with grotesque figures. See above. Cats in medieval dress, a life-sized gorilla holding aloft a tray of grapes. What WAS this? Had I stepped through the Looking Glass? A sign indicated that it was a flower shop, but apart from a few miniscule bouquets of violets, I could see no flowers.

I moved on, and passed an Irish bar the size of a postage stamp. People were spilling out onto the street. Very Charles Dickens. Was this a gin house? Literary allusions abounded.

I crossed the road. Only to see three old women, huddled together in the middle of the sidewalk. Crones, Macbeth-like, chanting to each other.

Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison'd entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Swelter'd venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i' the charmed pot.

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

No doubt the were just the local alkies. But I'd had enough.

I passed an optometrist's. In the window a young mid-western blonde was posing as something like Edvard Munch's 'Scream'. Apparently this was meant to attract you into buying your specs. No way José. I scurried on.

A few hobos talking to themselves. Some homeless druggies asking for money. Things were looking up.

The nastiness of Times Square behind me, I found my way to my friend's place.

Goodbye witches and madhatter cats. Goodby the midwesterner screaming her head off. Goodbye the drunks, the hopeless, the tired and depressed. I was at my friend's apartment building. I announced myself to the doorman and entered the elevator.

Up up up - to normality. Or as they say here, 'normalcy'. Whatever.

We had a lovely evening. Here are my two friends looking at the Manhattan skyline. We ate, we drank, we talked. The crones, cats and screaming mid-westerner disappeared into a nogo area of my memory.

Nevertheless I took a taxi home.

Till next time,
Kate Juliff
New York
March 2006