Brooklyn, Schnooklyn

This morning I got up bright and early and went with Ayub and Lorenzo to explore our assigned neighbourhoods in Brooklyn. You can probably tell that I wasn't too thrilled with Bushwick, so I decided to check out Borough Park as an alternative. It's an Orthodox Jewish enclave...enough said. We took the subway, which was actually the first time I used public transport here. The carriages are nice and spacious like in Paris, and the trains run 24 hours, but it can take absolutely ages to get to where you want to go because there are so few intersections to change lines from. The journey wasn't entirely dull, though, with Ayub telling us stories of exchanging pot shots with Iraqi border guards and the Turkish repression of Kurds. At one point, an immaculately dressed Spanish guy sat opposite us and began to sing - I looked around and noticed that someone else was filming him while another guy played the backing track through a tinny speaker. This was a music video! Everyone else was just staring at him so we decided to clap along. Hopefully the video will become widely available so you can see me grinning bashfully next to a Kurd and a Colombian clicking their fingers. The singer's name is Jose Luis Manzanero, and that boy is going places.

We arrived in Brooklyn and took in the beautiful sights of a slightly narrower Manhattan. I think my companions blended in very well:

















We picked a direction and began walking. Each block was virtually identical: video game store, restaurant, barbers, hardware store. At one point we saw a fire engine backing into a station marked 'Ladder 14'. I told Ayub and Lorenzo that, as they were covering this area, they should go over and introduce themselves to the grizzled, white-haired fireman who looked like he'd seen more deaths than Pol Pot. After all the experience Ayub has had covering a warzone, I could not believe that he seemed terrified of doing this. So I put on my best clueless Brit accent and introduced myself to 'Mike McGuire', who had a perfect thick Brooklyn accent. He told us where the control office was, pointed out a few things, was generally helpful. By the way, we've been told time and time again not to do any 'Bogarting', ie what everyone dreams of doing as a reporter in New York. So it's always best to grovel and be polite - if you sidle up to a cop and say 'hey tootsie, spill the beans or I'm gonna ravish your wife', consider the city closed.

Further into Sunset Park, the influx of Chinese became rather apparent. A kindly old lady told us that the Chinese came to the area 'ten families at a time', even living in the basement of houses, which once upon a time was not actually allowed. She was also upset that her neighbour John cluttered up his yard, especially as he was 'one of them...you know, gays' and lived with a 'friend'. There was a great market, however:

















It was now time to go to Borough Park. It's utterly amazing how, in the space of one street, you can go from all-Chinese to all-Hassidim. Women began to wear strange dark robes and tough little hats, while children stared sulkily from their sidelocks (well, maybe not, but the alliteration sounds really good). I picked a random guy to introduce myself to, a guy in his 50s/60s who was sitting on the steps of his house. 'Ernest' turned out to be originally from Romania, a self-described 'Liberal Jew' who did not have many kind words to say about his Hassidic neighbours. By this point we were very hungry, so I said my goodbyes and did not even bother visiting Bushwick. My future lies with my people, Tevye!

So now I'm just trawling through websites trying to find a suit and a kippah. Irritatingly, I can only find bizarre novelty ones with sequins on them, or custom-made leather ones that only Peter Stringfellow would wear. But it's good that I've finally got a neighbourhood. And I've almost finished my dissertation, so I'll be able to concentrate my studies on street reporting and the Pentateuch.

PS Joe, please check your email again, I need some tips on how to style my sideburns

A Bronx Tail

At 8.45am my journalism colleagues and I gathered at 116th and Amsterdam for a bus tour of the Bronx. This neighbourhood has appeared in films such as "A Bronx Tale" with Chazz Palminteri, "Rumble In The Bronx" with Jackie Chan and "The Bronx Executioner", a bizarre Italian sci-fi film involving a soldier getting raped by female androids. I've given up trying to remember the demographic that best sums up the various parts of New York City, there's pretty much everything in the Bronx anyway. Hispanics make up about half of it, the rest mostly Black, Asian and 'other'. Before our first stop, I chatted to a nice guy from the West Coast who's actually my next door neighbour. He will also be covering Bushwick, so I made him promise that we'd go out there together for the first time at least. I wasn't like 'Promise...PROMISE!' or anything, but I think we understood each other.

Our tour guide was Gary, a journalist from the Bronx, whose talk show on local television had just been cancelled after seven years. He evidently seemed depressed about it, and kept mentioning that he had been taken off the air for being subversive and outspoken about development in the Bronx. When we arrived at the site where the new Yankee stadium was being built, he became more active and introduced us to Councilwoman Helen Foster. Helen had voted 'no' (along with only two others) to the project, arguing that it made life hell for those living nearby and did not guarantee any jobs or economic improvement. The unions had the site stitched up, effectively cutting off any unrepresented jobhunters. Before going to the next place of interest, a security guard asked Gary what we were up to. Gary told us later that this interrogation was typical of the corporatisation of New York, and added that a certain talk show had been taken off the air after a seven-year run for the same reason.

At this point it began to rain hard, and the shabby streets and run-down shops took on a more glum appearance. We were driven to a development project by SoBro, a non-profit organisation that valiantly searched for unused or run-down real estate and turned it into affordable residential/office space. Though living space is scarce in New York, some run-down apartment blocks are left empty to serve some other purpose, most often to serve as a prop-up for a huge television channel billboard. We got off the bus and walked round an office block that had once been an empty factory. In the midst of the SoBro representative's description, my friend Ayub (a Kurd from Iraq) sarcastically whispered, "Oh wow, so amazing. There are people starving all over the world and we're being told about an old building that was renovated."

Ayub is an interesting guy. You can read his profile and his articles on OpenDemocracy. He speaks six languages and has a repertoire of bizarre jokes. One of them is: "an elephant and an ant go into the shower together. The elephant comes out five minutes later. What happened to the ant? HE'S STUCK TO THE SOAP!" Another one, which is good in a sort of weird macabre I-see-death-every-day-in-my-life way, goes: 'a man dies and his family and friends come out to bury him. His son digs a grave and places the coffin inside the hole, but suddenly the man wakes up and gets to his feet. All the mourners scream in fear and run away. The son, however, takes out a knife and stabs his father. He then calls to the fleeing crowd, "Come back! It's okay! I 've killed him!"'

After getting home, I watched a charming French classic called "Les Aventures de Rabbi Jacob".





























It's an utterly ridiculous film about an anti-Semitic old French guy who is forced to disguise himself as an Orthodox rabbi to hide from an armed group of Arab nationalists. There is a funny scene at the start of the film that really gets to the heart of what being French is like. The French guy is being driven home by his Jewish chauffeur, ranting about all the foreigners on the road. "Look, Solomon, an English car! I hate the English. And a Belgian one too! The Belgians are flooding this country." The man even stops at a mixed race marriage to scream about the fact that the bride is black and the groom white. He is then shocked upon finding out that his chauffer is Jewish, and fumes before saying, "Well, I'm keeping you anyway." After all this, the chauffeur goes, "Sir, might you not be a tiny bit racist?" The guy's reaction is classic, brilliant French hypocrisy. "ME? RACIST? Ah no, Solomon, you're going too far! Never!"

Here is the scene in question, on Youtube. There is also another a clip from the movie, in which a bunch of Ashkenazis do a dance routine. Any similarities to Iranian propaganda are entirely coincidental. Click here.

Another clip featuring the same actor is worth pointing out, because it precedes the Father Ted Hitler moustache by a few decades.

Bushwick

Ladies and gentlemen, your wish is granted. I have been assigned the neigbourhood of Bushwick, in Brooklyn, to patrol and report from. You can read all about it on Wikipedia. The sub-headings in the entry are: "White Flight and Economic Depression", "Riots and Looting" and "Blight and Poverty".

On Flickr you can find an online photo album of some typical Bushwick scenes. I urge you to enjoy the scenery and to imagine me in my Ralph Lauren polo shirt running as fast as my little fat legs can carry me.

It Starts

I think I'm just not used to the style of journalism one finds in America, particularly in the New York Times. It's so self-consciously literary. I'm used to reading articles that print the facts in a detached, sometimes knowing voice; the N Y Times, meanwhile, seems to bring in Toni Morrison to report on tax cuts. Let me give you an example from the front page of today's edition, a story about paedophilic imagery on the internet. These are the opening lines:

"In the photograph, the model is shown rising out of a bubble bath, suds dripping from her body. Her tight panties and skimpy top are soaked and revealing. She gazes at the viewer, her face showing a wisp of a smile that seems to have been coaxed from off-camera."

What the HELL is that about? Worst of all, you can just picture the journalist thinking he's god's gift to journalism. 'Oh man,' he must think, 'with erotic language like this, the reader will feel aroused, and then when I deliver the sucker-punch that this girl is actually nine years old, just imagine the feelings of guilt that will pass through him! He will feel violated, as though HE is the paedophile!' etc etc etc. I don't really want to feel like a paedophile at 8 in the morning when I'm eating cereal and trying to find out the news of the day. God knows how the paper must report the war in Lebanon: "The Hezbollah explosives expert adjusts his eyepatch and waits, tense, like a grasshopper in the Tallahassee swampland. "It is a good day to die," he thinks, before looking up one last time at the sky." etc etc etc

Today was a big picnic for international students at Professor Freedman's house. Here's a picture for you:

We each had to describe ourselves in 5 minutes. I felt very sorry for the poor girl with the very bad stammer, the words just refused to come out and nobody really knew what to say. What CAN you say? "That's all right luv, we get the picture"? In true Peep Show style, the person after the stammering girl unintentionally said the worst thing possible: "Well I can say, without hesitation, that I am from Toronto!" I'm sure she didn't mean hesitation in that sense, but it sent a ripple of awkwardness through the circle.

For a glimpse of what students are paying $60,000 for, take a look at one of the Deans of the school hosting an interview (from Youtube.com)

Hey douchebags!

Here are some dull photos, but photos nonetheless. I hid the porn in the first two, obviously.






















Here are some photos of Columbia's campus. The first is the Journalism School building, with a statue of Thomas Jefferson mincing in front of it. Then we have the central steps, leading up to the Alma Mater statue; finally, the Butler library.

And if you're very lucky, next time I'll take pictures of the homeless people outside the campus as they gaze desperately through the railings, hoping that some small measure of wealth will perhaps magically fall into their crumpled paper cups.

Back in NYC

I'm back in New York, which is both good and bad. Good because I can go outside, pick an avenue and just stare at the amazing things that go on in this city (although my apartment is a little TOO north for my tastes, I could do without the impatient, aggressive beggar and the Hugo Chavez Football Club outside). Bad because it means taking care of important yet dull things: bank account, mobile phone (my number in the US is now (oo 1) 914 426 2617 and the stupid apartment itself. What really made my day special was finding cockroaches in the living room and bathroom. I've just called the caretaker, and he bluntly said 'I'll call the exterminator' and hung up. I can't believe I'm living in a flat with cockroaches in Harlem, next I'll be shaking down Mr Lucewski on 127th.

I can't believe I ever thought London was multicultural, or that you had to have a debate about the inherent pitfalls of 'assimilation'. New York is nothing but a collection of ghettos, with entire neighbourhoods summed up as 'Black/Jewish', 'Russian/Hispanic'. Spanish is treated almost as a second official language here, in banks they have paperwork in Spanish and even in a computer shop I saw the Spanish version of Microsoft XP being offered. Yet the American flags proliferate, and the amount of great food I've seen walking down Broadway would certainly make up for anyone being a Mexican dissident. The only thing that pisses me off is the blatant crime problem. I get the feeling I'm not going to survive the year without being attacked. There are notices everywhere telling me of incidents nearby. Apparently last week a woman and THREE men were on Columbia campus when a black guy ran up behind the woman, got her in a head lock (!!!) and pushed an 'object' into her back (blimey). The men all handed over money and the guy ran away! So let's recap: even being on a university campus in a group of four will not deter muggers.

I'm going to sign up for Taekwondo classes, I think.

Oy vey!

Sunday morning I couldn't sleep, so I watched some TV. It was execrable. The kind of TV evangelists that used to be such a cliche of the US are STILL going strong. It was like reading descriptions of Quaker ceremonies written by sceptical Anglicans in the 18th century. The congregation was trembling and dancing while the preacher just shouted whatever crap came into his head in an incredibly loud manner. I then flicked onto the news channels, which were equally disastrous. Fox News everyone knows is a joke, and CNN I find almost as bad. It's such superficial toss, and unbelievably sensationalist. The only Arab voice you hear is when they have a 'featurette' on Osama Bin Laden (part of their 'Know Your Enemy' series) in which his third dog's second owner speaks utter bullshit about a man she clearly never knew. Other than that it's moderate, balanced programmes such as "TARGET: USA" or "YOUR NEIGHBOUR RAPED YOUR CHILDREN AND IS HIDING IN THE BATHTUB".

Sunday was also the birthday of the sister of my mum's friend's husband. It was held at a Jewish Centre in New Jersey, and I was laughing the whole afternoon. It was like the worst parody of a Woody Allen film ever. Everyone had thick Brooklyn accents, we danced to magnificently cheesy Jewish medleys and the entertainment was a ventriloquist.

But a particularly nasty one. We usually hate comedians who just say things like, 'see your girlfriend, mate? She's fucking UGLY!' but in America they are apparently loved. This ventriloquist turned up and all his lines were 'god, you guys look like crap!' 'god, you are OLD! aren't you DEAD yet?' One line, and I am quoting this verbatim, was spoken by one of his dummies that was supposed to be a grumpy old man. "My wife," he said, "is huge. She takes craps bigger than me!" Bizarre. Anyway, I got off lightly. His joke for me consisted of telling the crowd that we had the best belly dancer in Staten Island at the party..."and there he is, the guy in the glasses!" It was cute, I guess. Even the fifth time he said it, I was wincing away like a guy who really can take a joke! Yes siree.

Anyway, all this is fun, but I have four days to do my dissertation and get ready for uni. It's not happening somehow.

Second Day

Saturday's most memorable moment was in the evening, when we drove over to my mother's friend's son's house. This son had just had twins - well, his poor wife had - and after cooing at the frankly bizarre-looking crumpled babies, he chatted to me about Columbia. "You know, you're in the middle of Spanish Harlem. You gotta be careful."

"What, so I should work out?" I asked. Bearing in mind this guy is a huge beefcake with a crew-cut.

"Hey, it's ALWAYS good to work out. I just mean...be street-smart. Keep your eyes open. Don't go out of your way to help strangers." I realised how right he was, I was so the kind of bumbling Londoner who would run after a drug dealer telling him that he'd dropped his cocaine.

Then this guy goes, "You wanna see something cool?" It turned out 'something cool' was this guy's gun collection. GUN COLLECTION. A man who was about to look after two little twin girls was tapping in his safe combination while excitedly telling me about how rare this stuff was. "It's only thanks to my friends in the military that I have this."

He pulled out a shotgun. It looked like something from 'Doom'. He held it up and beamed proudly. "This is my burglar alarm."

Each weapon he pulled out frightened me, as though each one reminded me of how tiny my penis was. I looked at and handled a sniper rifle with scope, a Walther PPK with silencer and a fucking (you HAVE to prefix this with 'fucking') Magnum with laser sight. He assured me we would go out to the firing range one weekend and try them all out. I had a momentary image of me running naked through the woods crying with five American navy seals shooting at me with Magnums. Just momentary, you understand.

Over dinner we talked about the Middle East conflict again. The son raised a very good point about the lax attitudes in the US before 9/11. He said, chewing on some Chinese food, "if you get some towel-head come up to you and say, 'I want flying lessons', but he doesn't want to learn how to LAND, do you not think there's something WRONG here?' No amount of IR theory could rebuff that line.

First Day

The people I'm staying with are pretty rich. Pretty bloody rich. The result is that when I suggest going to get a few things before I move into my flat, I'm told that we will go to a shop called "Bed, Bath & Beyond". The "Beyond" part is pretty much where I was taken. My mother and her partner in waste filled up a trolley with every utterly useless household item that has ever graced the pages of Vogue. It began with a loofah and ended with an attempt to get me to buy a pillow for $99. I was getting pissed off and demanding that anything over $1 go back to the shelves. What was worse was that my father was screaming at me over my phone saying that it was "ridicule" and "un gaspillage".

I then sat in the car and watched as my mother and her friend were driven to every pointless puffed-up department store in NYC, from 'Barneys' (which only sells about three dresses, each at $10000) to Bloomingdales. I waited in the car with the chauffeur, whose name is Milan.

"Milan...is that a Czech name?" I wondered aloud.

"No, Serbian. You ever been to ex-Yugoslavia?"

"No, but I hear it's beautiful."

"Well, it WAS beautiful. Now it's just six banana republics."

"Ah...and Kosovo? Isn't there a vote on independence ahead?"

"How can they vote for independence!? Serbia is the mother land for these people! It's those Albanians that are the problem. They breed like cucarachas."

I let the moment pass. Now wasn't a good time for a lecture about understanding. But Milan just kept going. It appeared he really didn't want anyone to feel left out.

"You know, this country, in 15 years, will become just like South America. Spanish everywhere."

He eventually moved on to black people, but I sort of zoned out after a while.

I got a sandwich from a deli and I realised how much of an English ponce I look, walking up to the counter with all the Manhattan charm of a seashell collector at Lyme Regis. The guy gave me free bananas and a pickle, so I guess it worked. Then I was finally driven to the Columbia University housing offices, where I was to collect my apartment keys.

I entered the plush white offices and again ponced and mumbled my way through an introduction. Ten minutes later I and two other students were escorted into a meeting room where a short guy spoke with an edgy, annoyed tone. "Okay guys, we are going to fill in forms fast. REAL fast. You have ten minutes to get your keys, and if you don't get them in time you'll have to wait till Monday." I was about to laugh when the man began to shout. "I want you to SIGN, PRINT and DATE! SIGN, PRINT and DATE! DO IT!" Everyone scribbled frantically. I kept making mistakes and hyperventilating. "LIONEL! SIGN, PRINT and DATE goddammit!" We weren't even allowed to read through what we were signing. Von Bismarck provided an explanation: "The first one is for lead in the paint. I don't want to see any licking of the walls. The second is for friends. Oh SURE, you want to invite your friends, huh? We want that too. Nice to have friends. But they're not staying at your place long. BOY are they not staying long...' and so on and so on.

I then was told to meet my superintendent, a black 40-year old who had an equally aggressive voice. I realised then that everyone in New York has that voice that makes you shit your pants in fear, but actually they just see it as a likeable greeting. He babbled all sorts of rules about taking out the 'garbage', checking my 'mailbox' and 'washing' my underwear. Then I went up to my apartment to see my flatmate. He smiled and mumbled nervously before running back to his little IT mousehole - he seemed like a nice guy though. The flat was ok, but with bizarre room proportions; huge living room and separate dining room, but a miniscule bathroom and kitchen. I dumped my Brita filters in my bedroom and then went for tea with my mother and a couple of friends.

It was at the Carlyle Hotel, the kind of place I imagine Sex & The City covers frequently. 'Inspired' by Ottoman art, the hotel's (Puerto Rican) staff wore fezes and sold tea priced at $35. I stared into space and listened to the vacuous talk of women: what new diets to try, gym equipment to buy and who had had the most tiring day. Actually to be fair they did touch on the Middle East conflict and said some intelligent things, but how else am I going to feel superior? After the drive home we had dinner and I read some 'Don Quixote' to warn me of what my year might turn me into.

Terror threat level: Critical

I was once again at the centre of a terrorist scandal today when the authorities raised the Terror Threat level to 'critical' and banned all hand luggage on the transatlantic flights that weren't cancelled. I passed the buck on to 20 poor saps in High Wycombe, but I will no doubt fulfil my divine mission next time! May Allah give added strength to my Chanel no. 5 explosive concoction.

Seriously though, if the plot is substantiated, what a bunch of vicious little bastards. I don't know how it's appearing your end but the Americans are alarmed at the British police's recent revelation that they wanted to wait another day before making arrests. The news seems to imply that there is very little evidence to throw at these guys. Time to scour their laptops for 'Teen Dreams'.

I spent the flight watching the Enron documentary, 'The Smartest Guys in the Room', and enjoying the pantomime villainry of Skilling, Lay & co. Maybe if they knew that they'd eventually get caught, they wouldn't make so many shareholder convention speeches basically consisting of the words "MONEY! We have all the MONEY in the world! Your pension funds are OURS!" I came away with a rosy glow inside about unbridled, unregulated capitalism; the moral seems to be that if you jump ship early enough, it's perfectly ok for you to keep the money and the lap dancers. Just don't, for the love of god, be the last guy.

I landed in New York expecting my French passport to be greeted with a cry of 'you're no patriot!' but for some reason the border control was easy and much nicer than it had been on previous visits. I would like to add that in the long queue were burka-clad Saudis with their little eyes peeping out and crazy men in white sheets with long beards shouting at me in Urdu; for a country that persecutes Muslims, the US seems to attract quite a few of them. After another few hours we were in Greenwich, Connectitut, the kind of suburban area where every second house is missing.

Looking back on this post, I see I'm already writing like a gossip columnist in the New York Post. All before my journalism course has even started...this place is great.

Freedom fries and a visa, please