As my time in London is rapidly drawing to a close, it is probably time I filed my New York review, so here it is:

New York is the world city. It is after all in the US which, as Copernicus proved, is the centre of the universe. It manages to cram a little piece of all the world’s societies on to one small island (and bar about four hours in not-very-Brooklyny bits of Brooklyn and 1.5 minutes on Staten Island, Manhattan is ‘all’ I saw). Despite the masses of tourists it is very much a worker’s city and, as my aunt pointed out to me, to truly understand its psyche you would really need to be working there. As I said in my previous message it has cleaned up a lot, almost to the point where it has maybe lost a little of what made it special. Regardless, it is still a great city — when you shove 15 million people from all around the world into a space the size of Melbourne you are bound to get something pretty special.

Pros: A little bit of every culture/society all mixed up, good CD shops, good live music, good bars, easy to follow if slightly unoriginal street names.

Cons: For me it lacked a certain je ne sais quoi.

Score: 7.5/10

(I asked Gisela also to give NY a score out of ten. She asked what the criteria were. I said whatever she wanted them to be. She said that was a fucking stupid idea — giving something a score based on an unknown criteria — and refused to do so. I pointed out that criteria was in fact the plural, criterion was the singular. She punched me. I am therefore forced to give what I think Gisela’s score based on the unknown criteria I believe she would select would be: 9.5/10.)

318

This entry was posted by the illustrious Andrew Coulthurst on Sunday, October 9th, 2005. It concerns such pressing issues as travel, usa. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.