US East Coast Travelogue 2 - New York. Lights, Camera, Action!!

US East Coast Travelogue 2 - New York. Lights, Camera, Action!!

New York!! City of Dreams, money, power, towers, icons, diversity, languages, cultures!!

No matter what corner of world you are but you must have heard about New York. City is always in news for one reason or another. Shared are my experiences from visit to New York!

It’s been 2 weeks but it feels as if we were there yesterday. We started our journey to New York from Los Angeles, the Hollywood city. It took 5 hrs 30 mins of flight time to reach JFK, i was a bit anxious about how would we manage travel that night after a long day flight, Caption of flight announced our landing and wished everyone on-board a happy journey.. exactly what we were there for. Excitement in crowd was palpable, it was long weekend in US and most of passengers might have come for vacation is what i felt. We picked our bags from airport and our tour guide was ready to pick us up, starting our journey from JFK itself.

Me and my wife were excited, both were searching if we can spot the iconic towers of New York but then JFK is little too far from Manhattan to see anything. Bags packed, put into truck, we moved for location where all the other tourists were going to gather. Different advertisements for New York started flashing on the way to town of Flushing, Queens. Now I couldn't understand why it was called Flushing, Queens; as both words don't match in literal meaning!! May be people just liked the combination to annoy their masters!! Anyways.. It was humid outside, i requested driver to make it little cold but then he gave a look and just touched the AC button, yes i was sitting on front seat so i could see what he did, he didn’t even bother to reply me.. which left me wondering isn’t this how our own Indian Ola and Uber drivers sometime behave? Well, may be Chinese and Indians are all same on other sides of great China wall. While going to Flushing, we got some peeks of Manhattan assuring ourselves that yes, we are in NY. Also the change in weather from dryness of LA to coldness of NY was getting us refreshed and helped to forget tiredness from long journey.

In Flushing, few tourists joined for night tour and rest went for hotel stay directly. We boarded Volvo look like bus.. may be Chinese have created look likes of all products from small to big; to see NY in night. As we started moving towards the Manhattan, city landscape started changing, Apartments started getting taller, from small neighborhood of Flushing’s, we could feel the difference as we were entering the Manhattan. Freeways, flyovers, bridges, towers, iconic building, East river, all started revealing their looks, blur images of Manhattan started getting clearer. We were able to see iconic Brooklyn bridge built by famous Carnegie, which paved the way for cities to expand for future generations. Everybody in Bus started taking pictures of NY, chatter of bus had suddenly turned into silence, everybody was switching to windows with their cameras and phones to take pictures of whatever they could see. In all of this, south Indian couple in 50s taking the advantage of situations started kissing.. I looked at their 15 yr old kind of daughter and she was also looking outside.. then I looked at my wife.. she looked at me and gave me a cold look.. maybe you have to wait till you get some green card or so to get your Indian wife change their moods in public places..Anyways...  and again I started looking outside.. Board flashed 'Welcome to Manhattan'.

Our Chinese tour guide started explaining in alien language and My daughter burst into laugh.. Maybe because of the accent guide was speaking in. She looked at us, i looked at her and gave a smile as if nothing happened and looked outside embarrassed. After making some magical statements in Chinese came the turn of English and then i started laughing.. it was more of English words in Chinese accent... Explaining us how Manhattan and Brooklyn got connected by Brooklyn bridge, different tunnels connecting Manhattan, most tallest building race in Manhattan and our destinations for the night.. On the platter were iconic Time square, Rockefeller Plaza, pass through downtown city and in the end riverside park offering night time view of NY skyline.

Let me tell here first thing, navigating through suburbs and through Manhattan is completely different. Roads are very narrow, you won’t see a top of any building standing on the road.. buildings are just too close and too tall no matter how backward you bend, you can try sleeping on the roads as well, after all it’s the financial capital of the world. Names we hear on all economic news channels Bank of America, Chess and others.. all have towering offices and headquarters in NY. In a way, it’s the complete display of American economy on the very streets you are walking on. Every office has something different from others, there is a race of how I am taller and better than you, people coming out of those offices looked like the most intelligent people on planet earth, suited up and ready to rock, maybe that’s what has shaped NY for all these years. Moving through narrow lanes, making false attempts at looking how tall and beautiful the buildings are, we reached our first stop the Rockefeller Plaza. You may be wondering  who is Rockefeller? He was the biggest businessman of America in 1900s, if we take his net worth in today’s dollars then it would be around $320 B, four times that of Bill Gates, the richest man alive today. He controlled all of Oil market in US and alone had 1.5% share in US economy. He made lot of charity in his last years, so you will see many foundations with his name. Well, if you haven’t seen ‘Men who built America’ series, then I would recommend you to watch it.

So here we were at the Rockefeller Plaza, surrounded by towering offices and NBC studio office in the heart of NY. There is metal girl statue at the Plaza in beautiful blue color dress watching over the basement next to it. There were many of American flags around the basement and all people around it were looking down into the basements. Curiosity grasped me and I wanted to go over there and see what’s happening. But then, by that time my family was in ready position next to girl statue and ordered me to take the picture. I realized all people from my bus were around the statue and taking pictures, so I fell in line, took the pictures. Then came the turn of selfies, yes selfie mania has grasped the world like anything today. You go anywhere, you will find people standing with selfie stick in hands and making all kinds of faces and clicking selfies. Whoever reached to that statue, they used to do ‘About Turn’, read it like you have said it during your NCC parades and loudly.. yes, that’s how people do it when they see anything they came to see these days. Turn around, show your back to sculpture, nature, anything and take the photo, for what? To show that to others on social media and let them know where you went. If you ask these people how was it, probably they might need to open the mobile to tell you how exactly it was. Some people spend whole time taking selfies only. That’s the irony of today’s tourism, instead of living that moment, capturing all you can in your mind through your eyes which will last long with you for rest of life, people just want to waste their time making faces. Picture it in your mind as if everybody around the statue was showing there back to the it and taking selfies instead of admiring its beauty and discussing about it, even the sculpture of statue would have considered it as his/her disrespect and thought – maybe that’s not why I sculpted it. I felt somewhere the face of statue had gone silent with the disrespect that was shown to her, I tried to capture her in my camera through different angles but she didn’t smiled.I stopped taking photos, we looked around, it was glittery, its as if money is in the air in NY.

The curiosity about the basement was still there.. so moved there to see what’s actually happening down below,  it was open basement hotel where wealthy people were having their party, And that’s why cattle class was looking at them, maybe with envy.. and those rich people were not bothered at all. It was like they were used to this thing, how would you feel if you are eating and thousand people were looking at you at the same time.. Standards and Poor's of New York!! Well, I left from there.. showing surrounding to my daughter and playing with her. To my surprise the little kido said.. Dad ‘she is so funny’ looking at the statue. Looked like the statue had found her friend in all the chaos. We said adieu to her and left for next spot – Times Square.

Finding parking spot somewhere near the Times Square, bus driver stopped and we marched towards the Times Square. Yes, if you are going into times square then it’s like marching, hundreds of people move in same direction, with excitement on their faces to see what’s exactly is it? Why is it so famous? We were among them. I had hold my daughters’ hand firmly, was moving towards the square with the crowd. I am Indian and used to crowd but in last 2 years I had somewhat forgotten what’s it’s like to be in the crowd and getting pushed, thanks to LA. As we started moving in, screens flashing colorful lights were seen from far distance, various advertisements were featuring on them, crowd was jubilant, there were army officers moving around as it was night before Memorial day, somewhere across the road divider army veterans were standing, people had gathered around them to watch small army event, there was patriotism in the air, and you could feel it. I was missing all patriotic songs in India which get new life every 15 Aug and 26 Jan in a year... In the background of army veterans, there was around 20 feet by 10 feet screen showing military might of America and their war heroes.. amazing surrounding.

On the other side of Army event, were the local groups amusing tourists. Some were displaying marshal arts, others become comic heroes like spiderman and batman, trying to get attention of little kids and to ask them take photo with them for $5.. Also was the group of naked women, having painted American stars and stripes around their breasts and belly wearing blue bikinis, that was different form of patriotism I think. Most of the families were standing far from them, to 'stand' in eyes of their wives may be…. But I noticed – youngsters and kids were moving much more to army event and senior citizens moving to women group… kind of giving the youngsters advice – we are done with our part serving nation and time to relax. Well, whatever it was.. we looked around.. many screens were flashing at the same time, there was this Toshiba tower there from where new year ball is dropped on new year eve and is the place, where thousands throng to watch fireworks spectacle. I must say, the energy that place had, I have never seen it anywhere, taking those memorable moments with us, we departed for our night stay to take the rest, as tomorrow was going to be a big day in NY!!

P.S. - This is part 2 of travelogue of US East Coast tour, there are 3 more I am planning to post. Please visit next post. Thanks.