Positively 9th Street

This is a mad city, every year it just gets crazier. In the 80s it was crazy dirty, drugs everywhere, lawlessness like the wild west. I remember wincing in the back of a taxi, stopped at the light on the corner of 12th and 1st, there was a small popping sound that suggested a sinister event behind me.

I ducked and looked, two guys were shooting at each other from opposite sides of the street – bad shots obviously, ‘cos no one was hit – but they were only about 20 yards behind me. The light changed, we got outta there.

Now, past the noughties and into the 20s, New York is somewhat gentrified. The drugs haven’t gone, but they are less visible, more legit perhaps. But the city is still crazy.

If you have a lot of confidence, New York is for you; if you have no confidence, New York is for you; if you are sexually adventurous, New York is for you; if you are lonely, or want to be someone else, this is the place.

If you are a conspiracy theorist, or believe that your most abstract dream should be shared over dinner with strangers, or if you believe you are writing a book, come here, everyone is writing a book in New York as far as I can see. And lastly, if you want to keep talking like a baby until you’re ninety; not extraordinary here.

My friend Beverly waved me into her shop one day as I was passing by. It’s a shop filled with curiosities. Antique typewriters, 50s lamp shades, jewelry, musical instruments. Movie stars love to root around in there with little fuss from the proprietor: Tom Hanks and Rachel Weisz immediately come to mind. Rachel lives with Daniel Craig just across the street.

Bev beckoned me from behind a small glass counter.

‘Come ere, can you do me a favour and stand up here?’ ‘What! where?’

‘Can you stand up on the carpet?’

She pointed directly downward, I had been standing a little bit away cos there was a large carpet rolled in front of her, it was over a foot tall and almost twice as wide. She silently pointed down again with a mischievous grin. Bev is from a small town in England, we share a similar sense of humour. Eventually I copped that she wanted me to stand up on the rolled carpet. I stepped up but found it a little hard to balance, it was lumpy. Bev shushed with an index finger to her lips.

‘Just stand there for a while.’ She announced calmly for all to hear. But who was all? Besides us. And where were they?

‘So how the hell are you?’ she overstated.

‘Good.’

Gamely I played along. ‘Anything strange?’

‘No, there is nothing strange.’ ‘How’s business?’ ‘Good, it’s fine.’

We were distracting from the elephant in the room, and plainly, it was underneath me. I felt some movement in the carpet, there was somebody in the bloody thing! Bev – seeing that I had copped on – asked could I stay on there a little longer. I did my best, but it was too weird. She beckoned me outside. ‘What’s goin on Bev?’

She explained that this guy had come in and offered to pay her if she would allow him to roll up in a carpet and encourage customers to stand on him. It was an art project, she explained. ‘That’s all there is to it ?’ ‘Seemingly,’ she said. ‘Yeah, RIGGHT!!!’ said I, and we both laughed knowingly.

This is a crazy bloody city, who would live here?

“Two guys were shooting at each other from opposite sides of the street – bad shots obviously, ‘cos no one was hit