News Editor John O’Connor reflects on his time in New York
‘Programmed by all the movies I had ever seen and all the songs I had ever heard sung and all the stories I had ever read about New York, informed me that it would never be quite the same again. In fact it never was.’
- Joan Didion
I think Joan Didion got it right, New York never was the same after she got off that DC-7 at the old Idlewild temporary terminal, and it has changed time and time again since. Such is the nature of the city. New York, by definition, is a city of change. When I told friends I planned to go to America it was met with conversation such as: “You really want to go there? Now?” and "I wouldn't go there until he is gone!” New York and America have changed, as it always does - as it always will. The first time I was in New York was two years ago, a different President, a different climate, and a very different country. Growing up, of course, I wasn't aware of the nature of something changing and I had quite an obsession with the city, pictures hanging in my bedroom and an excitement for riding along in a yellow taxi as the city passed me by. That is the image I had in my head. Then you grow up and earn the means to visit such a place and it invokes the idea of why you should never meet your heroes. But even with its faults I still am, as I was when I was a child, in love with the place.
We arrived the same week as the city’s mayoral election, and tensions were high and scattered. We stopped at 6th Avenue and bought a bagel and stood on the corner eating it and I felt the cold air blowing from a subway grating. I stepped over a Zohran Mamdani poster left in a puddle, his slogan - A New York City You Can Afford! - smudged and shriveled in the water. The first snow of the season was forecasted and the big Christmas tree glittered yellow and white on top of Radio City Music Hall while we looked all the way up the avenue which had other, smaller, Christmas trees leading to the Rockefeller ice skating rink. I was visiting with my sister, and meeting my friend who was on exchange in upstate New York. We did the expected after that; an observation deck, the Empire State, 911 memorial, and walked down 5th Avenue. The street was lined with high-end stores and many appeared from revolving doors with bags hanging from each finger tip. To quote Didion again, ‘It is often said that New York is a city for only the very rich and the very poor.’ One does not have to stay long to realise the moral of that story.
While we were there we thought we’d go see a show; Death Becomes Her. Our hotel was on Broadway and the lights from Hamilton, Moulin Rouge and Chicago could be seen from the fire escape. At the end of the show, after the high kicks, spins, but before the curtain fell and they took their final bow, there was an announcement. One actor stepped forward into the spotlights, and asked us, if we could, to donate to an American charity that helps fund food banks. This was the week that the Trump administration disbanded funding to SNAP benefits to over 40 million citizens. The visit had many moments like this; an idealised version of the city, of the country, being pierced by the reality of those who now run it.
The next day, after my friend took the Greyhound Coach back upstate and my sister went to see the Rockettes I had a few hours to myself and decided to go to The Met. I stood before Edward Hopper’s painting, The Lighthouse at Two Lights, my favourite artist and a catalyst to my coming to the museum, while I waited for the crowd to disperse around Monet’s Water Lilies and Bouquet of Sunflowers. When my eyes had their fill I walked from Egypt, to Oceania, to medieval England in the Arms and Armour Hall, and back to Egypt again. I waited in line behind two women admiring a sculpture almost mirroring themselves - two women rising from the same block of stone and intricately intertwined with one another reaching towards the skylight of the gallery; stolen. One of the alive women leaned in to say to the other in a Southern drawl, “They should really give it back, shouldn't they?” Her friend nodded in agreement before looking down at their map, and opening the doors into the Fall of Rome.
They ought to give it all back, although I too was complicit as I did purchase the ticket in the first place and did possess a certain degree of envy towards those who had available access to such works of art. In truth, between typing my first and last name and entering my bank details I did have the time to change my mind and decided not to. I can blame Edward Hopper. I manoeuvred around the moat of The Temple of Dendur in the centre of the room and admired the busts of Nile crocodiles before walking down the steps and on to 5th Avenue in the midst of a flood of November rain. The air was thick and harsh and steam rose from their vents on the wide street as if the avenue had been awash in a rainstorm that had come and gone during my museum excursion.
That evening, after visiting The New Yorker exhibition in the New York Public Library, as the sun set in the reflection of glass buildings, we crossed Brooklyn Bridge into Brooklyn itself. The steps at Dumbo Beach provided us with a prime spot to view the city as the sky darkened and the city grew brighter. A bitter wind came from the river as we poured two glasses of wine, had a sip and looked out at the scene before tilting the drinks down towards the pebbles when we realised they had turned bad. We laughed about it while passing the carousel they used in the filming of Past Lives. It was a nice idea. We waited for the ferry to bring us back to Manhattan and despite the cold, when the ferry arrived, we climbed the stairs to the top. The deck was empty and we watched the skyline pass us, the one ingrained into that part of our minds that store such things from the films we watched as children, and pointed out our favourite landmarks and sights that we could never see at home. When the cold grew too much for us to bear we moved inside. I sat by the window and watched for the skyline, now covered in low hanging clouds with rays of light seeping across the river to reach us.
I pointed out the Brooklyn Bridge as it passed us by to my sister, it turned out to be the Manhattan Bridge and I wondered if there would ever come a time where I would know the names of all the bridges and all the avenues and potentially call this place home. I thought of all the ways this city could change before that opportunity could arise - I already no longer saw the city as just yellow taxis - and felt something that could only be characterized as one thing; excitement for the clouds to clear and come back again to find out for myself. The East River raged against the ferry’s side, yet we kept moving, up and down, up and down, pushing forward towards our final stop.