Stoompy does New York

It’s time for another retrospective post. This time we’re off to New York. In 1983, I visited the Big Apple for the first time as an 18-year-old exchange student. My host high school’s Art Club spent a week in the city experiencing many of its artistic endeavours, including ballet at the Lincoln Centre, musical theatre on Broadway, and numerous exhibits at the Metropolitan Museum, the Guggenheim and the Museum of Modern Art. We also ticked off some popular sights, including a visit to the United Nations, the Empire State Building observatory, and the lights of Times Square.

However, despite an active week, we missed plenty of iconic sights. It would be another 15 years before I’d finally return to complete more of my New York bucket list. This post is about my return visit in 1999, the first of many in the years that followed. On this occasion, I travelled with Ian, a friend I’d known for many years. He had the unfortunate nickname of Stoompy, a not-so-subtle play on the word stumpy, as he was a rather short, stocky bloke. Together we spent a week rediscovering the best of the Big Apple.

A few weeks before our departure, I’d spotted a discount fare advertised by United Airlines. I mentioned it to Ian at the pub one night. He expressed interest in joining me for a holiday. On Friday, 27 August, we departed Sydney on an early afternoon flight bound for San Francisco, where we stopped for 48 hours before continuing onwards to New York.

Our brief stop in San Francisco was my first visit to the Bay Area. We crossed the dateline mid-flight and thus landed shortly before 8:30am the same day. We made the most of our brief stopover. This included a little bar-hopping in the Castro District on Friday night, plus a handful of popular sights on Friday and Saturday.

Like all good tourists, we caught the cable car to Fisherman’s Wharf and stopped along the way to visit Grace Cathedral in Nob Hill. At the time, the Cathedral was popular thanks to Tales of the City, a series of books by Armistead Maupin set in San Francisco’s gay community. We visited Lombard Street, the crooked hill street renowned for its eight sharp hairpin turns located in the Russian Hill neighbourhood.

On Sunday 29 August, we boarded UA810 bound for New York, arriving five hours later around 10:20pm. We then spent the next seven days exploring the best the city had to offer before departing again on 5 September 1999. I recently discovered that flight UA810 originated in Osaka and served as United’s primary connection from this Japanese city to New York. In late 1999, the airline had recently announced the end of this service. Hence, it was selling tickets for the domestic leg at a hefty discount to fill its last remaining seats.

Stoompy and I packed in a host of wonderful highlights, and the Autumn weather played its part, making for an incredibly memorable trip. Three highlights stand out. We climbed the Statue of Liberty, toured Ellis Island, visited the Observation Deck at the top of the World Trade Centre, and shopped until we literally dropped at Seaport’s discount outlets.

Climbing the Statue of Liberty was a real treat for me. Years earlier, I’d delivered a presentation on its history and its construction, another example of my enduring passion for Civil Engineering feats. I’d always wanted to climb up to the observation deck built into the crown on her head. The deck itself is relatively small, with room for about a dozen people, and the view is restricted to a row of 25 narrow windows.

To reach it, you climb a narrow internal 162-step double-helix spiral staircase from the statue’s pedestal, plus another 172 steps from the base of the pedestal, a climb of approximately ten stories. Tickets sell out fast, so you’re best to book the first ferry of the day. I can honestly say that the view of the statue’s internal skeleton is almost as memorable as the view across the Hudson River.

Equally memorable was the opposing view from the top of the South Tower at the World Trade Centre. I’d desperately wanted to visit the Twin Towers in 1983. However, the Art teacher leading the group politely reminded me that our school excursion wasn’t a sightseeing tour; we were in town to experience the arts. The 15-year wait to finally visit was well worth it.

We caught the express elevator to the 107th floor and stepped into the lobby of the South Tower’s indoor observatory that wraps around the building’s interior. However, the next observation deck on the 110th floor really took our breath away. An escalator takes visitors up another three floors to an outdoor observation deck on the roof. The deck is a raised platform that elevates visitors above the pipes and utility plant installed on the roof.

The view is truly magnificent. Above you stretch the open sky, while all around lies a completely unobstructed view of New Jersey and the Hudson River to the east, and the five boroughs of New York to the north, east and south. The view looking north along Manhattan, past the North Tower and towards the Empire State Building, is one I’ll never forget. I took my digital video camera with me and still have the mini tape I recorded of the stunning view. You’re so high up that you literally feel like you’re flying. Little did we know that less than two years later the building would be gone, destroyed by the horrific 9/11 terrorist attacks.

After climbing the Twin Towers, we crossed the East River via the Brooklyn Bridge. It was pure catnip for a civil engineering geek like me. Another bucket list activity finally ticked off. However, we didn’t explore Brooklyn; instead, we caught the subway back to Chelsea where we visited The Stonewall Inn. In 1969, a series of riots and demonstrations outside this bar kicked off the gay rights movement in the USA.

We also ventured up the Empire State Building to take in the view back down Manhattan. I visited the small enclosed 102nd-Floor observatory in 1983 and was keen to repeat the experience. However, this time, the 102nd floor was closed, so we had to make do with the outdoor observatory on the 86th Floor. We promptly made up for it by booking a helicopter flight over Manhattan. Back then, heli-tours departed from a pier on the Hudson River, west of Times Square. I distinctly recall both of us complaining that the distance to the river looked shorter on a map than it was in real life.

Our tour of Ellis Island was equally memorable. I’d always wanted to visit the island and learn more about the millions of immigrants who first made landfall here in the USA. During its years of active service, this immigration centre processed more than 12 million people. In the image, you can see one of the ledger desks officials used for screening the huddled masses. I was surprised to learn that the centre operated until 1954. The guided tour we took served up plenty of these fascinating facts and figures. Another satisfying bucket list tick.

 

Stoompy and I also got our fill of the arts. We visited the Museum of Modern Art, marvelling at Van Gogh’s famous Starry Night and Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup series. The Guggenheim also got a look in. We walked through Central Park to see its iconic Alice in Wonderland sculpture and ate hot dogs from sidewalk vendors. We also bought tickets for a Broadway show. Sadly, I cannot recall what we saw. Much to Stoompy’s amusement, I grabbed a manicure for a laugh while wandering the streets of Chelsea.

One final memory. I recall we decided to visit Century 21, a discount outlet store located a couple blocks east of the Twin Towers, in search of some clothing bargains. The in-store selection was a little limited, so we ended up heading across to the pseudo-outlet mall at South Street Seaport. I distinctly recall both of us stumbling out of the complex with shopping bags laden on both arms. I was a lot fitter in those days. On a whim, Stoompy and I decided to walk back to our hotel near Times Square, a distance of more than six kilometres. It’s a long walk at the best of times without the added burden of heavy shopping bags.

As two single blokes, it would be fair to say that we also made the most of our evenings with several decadent outings to some of Manhattan’s popular gay bars. This included Splash, a bar renowned for its scantily clad Chippendale dancers who completed their routines standing on the bar’s counter, or in a series of transparent shower stalls on an elevated stage. The less that’s said about our exploits after dark, the better.

On Sunday 5 September, we flew back to San Francisco on Flight UA5, where we caught our late-night connecting flight to Sydney. We finally landed back at home two days later, early on Tuesday morning. Ian and I had travelled well together. We both enjoyed the same sights, and the weather was nearly perfect for the entire trip. My New York bucket list was finally complete.

Little did I know I’d be back in New York for business two years later, and then return regularly after Garry and I relocated to London in 2005. The return visit in 2001 was an intense affair. At the time, my employer Text 100 was pitching for IBM’s global public relations account. It was the largest opportunity the company had ever chased, one that could completely transform its fledgling global network. It flew in representatives from around the world to demonstrate both its global reach and its cohesive culture.

I was Australia’s Managing Director at the time. I flew in from Sydney via Los Angeles as the company’s Antipodean representative on 21 July, and returned home again on 31 July. For almost a week, we refined and rehearsed our presentation in the company’s recently established New York office, before heading north to White Plains for the actual pitch. Ironically, the New York office was located on 17th Avenue, just a few blocks west of Union Square and a block or so east of Splash, the notorious gay bar Stoompy and I had frequented a few years earlier.

The company put us up in Omni Apartment Suite Hotel, a few blocks east of Times Square. My enormous room was a real winner. A row of windows stretched along its entire length, offering an elevated view of midtown Manhattan. Every night, I enjoyed a spectacular view of the Chrysler Building and the surrounding skyline, lit up in all its glory. And yes, as a single man, I made it my mission to reacquaint myself with the clientele at Splash on Friday night. Let’s just say Australian accents are a bit of an aphrodisiac for adventurous Americans.

Text 100 ultimately won the IBM account. However, despite being sold as a global pitch, the business was only formally awarded in the USA. Several markets worldwide, including Australia, were later required to re-pitch the account competitively on a local basis. I ended up going head-to-head with my former employer, Recognition Public Relations, who already managed its software portfolio. We ultimately won the entire Australian account with a pitch I still consider the best I’ve ever led. Globally, Text 100 went on to retain the IBM account for 17 years.

One final observation. I was in New York in 2001, just six weeks before 9/11. As a result, memories of the city were still fresh in my mind when tragedy struck on that fatal day.

Party Animals

Here's a final retrospective post about the first round-the-world ticket I ever bought. This time we're off to the USA, that is, Los Angeles and Honolulu, the final two stops on my three-week global-trotting circuit. 

I visited Los Angeles for the first time as a 17-year-old exchange student in July 1983. It was my first time overseas. Along with more than a hundred students from Australia and New Zealand, I spent a week undergoing an orientation program while housed in student accommodation at UCLA. AFS, the organisation responsible for our exchange program, typically conducted this program to help non-native English-speaking students adapt to American life. However, for us Antipodeans, brought up on American films and television, the week was a bit of a joke.

Much to our frustration, we never got to explore the city. As a result, when I finally returned in 1996, I was determined to see as many of the city’s iconic sights as possible. As was my habit, I collected a fistful of brochures at the airport and mapped out my sightseeing schedule. I flew in from Frankfurt on October 22 and was scheduled to fly out again two days later to Hawaii. I’d just spent seven days attending my brother’s wedding in Austria and travelling through Prague and Berlin with my parents. With less than 48 hours on the ground, I had plenty of bucket-list sights to tick off in a relatively short timeframe.

I decided to book a full-day LA highlights bus tour. The tour initially took us to the city’s historic Spanish quarter for a walking tour (that's the LA Town Hall in the opening image of this post), then to the original Farmer’s Market in Melrose for another wander. With Halloween barely a week away, the market was filled with pumpkins and appropriately themed displays. It was the ideal location for a classic taste of America’s enduring obsession with Halloween.

Our next stop was West Hollywood, where we visited Mann’s Chinese Theatre to walk the pavement littered with the footprints and handprints of hundreds of celebrities. There's something special about spotting the handprints of Hollywood stars from a bygone era like Humphrey Bogart and Will Rogers. Like all first-time tourists, I was also delighted to finally see the giant Hollywood sign in the nearby foothills. Although it was much smaller than it appears on television!

The tour then ventured up into the hills to the Hollywood Bowl lookout for an iconic view of the city's smoggy skyline stretching south along the Pacific Coast. The tour then concluded with a drive-by tour of celebrity homes in Beverly Hills. To be honest, most of the time all we could see were high walls, security gates and hedges. We finished our tour of Beverly Hills with a final stop at Rodeo Drive, where I was in awe of the exclusive designer labels and their equally eye-watering price tags. That's me on Rodeo Drive above. 

I also recall spotting the equally famous Beverly Hills Hotel from our bus. Back in the days when celebrity was worn with the elegance and grace of diamonds and mink, this hotel was where the stars played. W.C. Fields, Humphrey Bogart and the Rat Pack tippled at the bar; Katharine Hepburn did a backflip into the pool in her tennis clothes, and Elizabeth Taylor honeymooned six times in the bungalows out back. Howard Hughes famously kept one bungalow permanently available for himself.

The following day, October 24, I boarded another flight, this time bound for Hawaii. Once again, I was off to explore a destination I’d visited in transit in 1983. Back then, Air New Zealand’s Boeing 747-200 couldn’t reach the USA in a single leg. As a result, our flight stopped in Honolulu for a couple of hours to refuel in the middle of the night. However, passengers had to disembark and congregate in a secure, nondescript transit lounge before reboarding and continuing to Los Angeles.

For this return trip, with four days on the ground, I was keen to finally see Oahu. However, I ultimately saw very little of the island. A few hours after landing, a good friend flew in from Sydney to join me. Richard took one look at the pile of brochures I’d collected at the airport and laughed. They went straight in the bin. He was in town to celebrate his birthday (October 27) – and what a celebration it was.

We booked ourselves into the Hotel Honolulu, an LGBTQI friendly venue. Back then it was promoted as Hawaii’s only gay hotel, and was renowned for its somewhat camp and kitsch decor. The hotel had a sundeck on the roof. It also assisted travellers in the pre-internet age by sharing gay information. Each room featured a thick guestbook where visitors could add their comments about friendly restaurants, cheap clothing outlets, gay bars, rip-off merchants, and gay-friendly everything worldwide. They were compulsive reading. 

We were allocated a Japanese-themed room on the top floor directly below the sundeck. It was called the Samurai Room, which we accessed via a small faux-Japanese arch bridge. The walls were also decorated with appropriately illustrated panels. Within hours, Richard had turned our room into party central, and for the next four days, that’s all we did.

We hit the local LGBTQI-friendly bars at night, continued the party back in our room after they closed, and eventually ventured out to bask in the sun along Waikiki Beach before repeating the cycle. I took the photo of the beach posted above to prove we actually made it to the beach at least once. By the time we were done, we’d collected a gang of three new American friends who did their best to keep up with us. 

This included a guy called Ken, who kept pace for four days straight. That's him above. We christened him Kenisha in honour of our room. Richard's nickname was Doodle (He was a Graphic Artist), and mine? The Mad Kiwi. The other two lads simply gave up after two days.  Hand on my heart, it was the most decadent overseas experience I've ever had.

I recall one night Richard and I went out to the infamous Hula's s, a bar built around an enormous banyan tree in the Kūhiō District. At one point we got separated. I went off to party with a group of American flight attendants, while Richard disappeared with a newfound friend.  Hours later, I found myself wandering the streets of Honolulu. I was completely lost and couldn't find our hotel. At 2:00 a.m., I rounded a corner, and who do you think I bumped into? Richard, coming home from his own adventures. Fortunately, he knew how to get back to the hotel.

After partying nonstop for four days, I caught a late-evening flight back to Sydney on 27 October, while Richard stayed a few more days. It was another eight years before I returned to Honolulu and finally ventured out to explore Oahu. This time with Garry in tow. Let’s just say our return visit in 2004 was a more civilised affair! Sadly, Garry never got to experience Hula's in all its glory. Developers bought the land a few years after my decadent holiday. It reopened at the opposite end of Waihiki Beach, but the new location lacked the quirky character of the original venue.

I finally landed back in Australia early on 29 October 1996, having completed my first-ever round-the-world ticket. What an adventure it had been. Aside from relentless partying in Hawaii, I’d also gone on safari in Africa, flown a microlight over Victoria Falls, walked the cobblestone streets of Kitzbühel and Salzburg, explored the medieval heart of Prague and shown my parents where I’d once chipped off my own piece of the Berlin Wall.

Berlin in 1996

It's time for another retrospective post. This time we're off to Berlin. It's 20 October 1996.  I've just spent two days exploring Prague for the first time with my parents. Shortly after lunch, we boarded a train bound for Berlin. This was meant to be a simple four-hour train journey, or so we thought. 

We arrived in East Berlin around 4:00pm. It had been an uneventful journey, unlike our earlier experience in Czechoslovakia. However, it was Sunday afternoon and, unbeknownst to us, the train connecting East and West was running on a limited timetable due to weekend trackwork. In hindsight, it was clear that the decaying communist-era infrastructure was under renovation everywhere in Eastern Europe.

Once again, I was forced to decipher what was happening without the aid of English signs and announcements. It was clear there were no trains to West Berlin listed on the overhead display board. I eventually learned that just one train an hour was running toward West Berlin. After missing one train, we finally made it into the western sector. It was after dark, and the station’s tourism office had long since closed for the day. I told Mum and Dad to stay put on a bench in the station concourse while I went searching for accommodation.

I eventually stumbled upon Hotel Palace Berlin, a boutique five-star hotel located at the end of Kurfuerstendamm, the city’s ritzy shopping street. It was also a block away from one of West Berlin's iconic sights: the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. I suspect it was the most expensive hotel my parents ever booked in Europe. Needless to say, I would never rock up to a new city without my first night’s accommodation guaranteed.

After such a dramatic introduction to Berlin, we decided to keep things simple and made dinner reservations at the hotel restaurant. Much to our surprise, the venue offered an authentic silver service experience; so much for keeping it simple. As our meal unfolded, white-gloved waiters presented each course under cloche-enclosed silver trays. Each silver dome was then dramatically lifted to reveal our meals. I also recall a cavalcade of cutlery fanning out from either side of our place setting. It was probably the fanciest meal my parents have ever eaten in Europe. It’s also the only time I’ve ever enjoyed a true silver-service dining experience.

The following day we explored iconic sights around the German capital. I took Mum and Dad to experience many of the places I’d explored six years earlier. We walked along Unter den Linden towards the Brandenburger Tor, or Brandenburg Gate. Here we came upon a small section of the Berlin Wall standing in isolation as an impromptu memorial. This section was scarred and ragged, its once smooth edges hacked to pieces by souvenir hunters years earlier. I’d been one of those people.

I also took them to see the East Side Gallery. This is the only original section of the wall still standing. Its once ominous concrete panels stand vigil for about 1.3km along the eastern bank of the Spree River. 118 artists have graffitied them with murals and slogans denouncing the wall and all it stood for. It’s a compelling open-air memorial.

We visited Checkpoint Charlie. The original warning signs were still standing. These days they’ve been replaced by shiny new replicas. At the time, sections of the checkpoint were fenced off as part of a major revitalisation project. A guard post where armed East German soldiers once surveyed the checkpoint had been capped with a golden Statue of Liberty replica. We were lucky to have seen it. The statue was a temporary exhibit by an American artist, John Powers, who lived in Berlin. It disappeared a few months later as the area’s reconstruction progressed.

I took my parents to Alexanderplatz, the symbolic centre of former East Berlin. Here I showed them the Supermarket where I’d once queued for groceries, before we ventured up the Berliner Fernsehturm TV tower to enjoy its spectacular views more than 200 metres above the plaza.

We also spent a morning walking Kurfürstendamm, the boulevard that symbolised the heart of West Berlin, and visited the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. This badly bombed building was left standing as a permanent memorial after the war. Despite its heavily damaged façade, a section of the building was rebuilt while several damaged sections were partially restored and made weatherproof. You can venture inside to experience the serenity of a stunning chapel whose translucent walls are made of a concrete honeycomb containing 21,292 stained glass inlays.

Early on the morning of 22 October, I farewelled my parents and caught a high-speed train to Frankfurt Airport. Mum and Dad stayed in Berlin for a few more days. I recall getting disorienting head spins whenever I looked out of the train window. This was the side-effect of Lariam, a drug I was taking to ward off malaria while on safari in Africa. I’d taken my next weekly dose before leaving the hotel that morning.

From Berlin I flew across the North Atlantic and Greenland to Los Angeles. This would be my first return visit after spending a week at UCLA as an exchange student in July 1983. You can read more about my brief stopover in LA here before I carried on to Hawaii to celebrate a friend’s birthday.