Talk fifty five.
New York, 12thApril
- Is there anything else that hasn’t been written about New York? Is there any place there that hasn’t been photographed from all angles? Is there anything else, you wondered before coming here for the fourth time, you hadn’t yet seen?
- I think I've seen everything – that’s how I’d commented and now I have to admit I was wrong!
- You cannot just see everything in New York. It’s impossible! You'd have to live here for years and explore the streets one by one on daily basis.
- Even wandering around the places that I know very well, I could discover continuous changes that occur here.
- When I look at the changes in the organization of traffic in the city center and I can see that it is possible to make life easier for all users of the street, in such a city like New York, I’m convinced that just anywhere such improvements should be made.
- But you need to want to do it, be capable of doing it, more importantly, to implement innovative solutions consistently. In our country nothing of the above occurs!
- If on the busiest stretch of Broadway[4] it was possible to separate lanes for cars, for cyclists and additionally for pedestrians, where people can find a table and chairs to sit and relax for free, it means that nothing is impossible in the matter.
- You have to have a vision and put it into practice.
- You have to have such a human resource potential like in New York City!
- Another change: New York brilliant town planners took care of an inactive sections of the old iron railway bridge several kilometres long, in lower Manhattan, and transformed it into ... a passage for pedestrians.
- But what a passage! It's a beautiful walking avenue! Some straps of the rails weren’t removed and big deck-chairs on wheels looking like railway trolleys are kept on them. Throughout the trail there are planted trees, shrubs, flower beds, and other green attractions.
- I’d call the whole thing a hanging city park over the busy streets. I was impressed with the idea of rows of benches falling in the direction of the streets, so that the people can enjoy the view being protected from the dust with huge plexiglass boards. A great place for lunch, where hundreds of people of all ages can gather.
- All this happens in an atmosphere of peace, play, relaxation. Hard to believe. In this crazy, racing city of New York! The place is called The High Line Elevated Park[5], - I like it both at the day and night time.
- Obviously you enjoyed those couples in love, of all possible races and gender configurations, who occupied the place.
- True. Our native civilization does accept such scandalous conduct!
- You didn’t crave for such behaviour with me in the High Line Park!
- After over twelve years together!?
- Sure. You were busy looking at those younger couples! I also think that they were more interesting than we.
- So, we are both to blame.
- Not everyone knows that New York is becoming increasingly more friendly to its inhabitants and visitors, from year to year. With each visit we discover new investments that change the city town into a metropolis, where people do not only work, but also relax and breathe fresh air! Those great avenues and streets are decorated with flowering shrubs and flowerbeds. It’s possible to sit for a while just everywhere: on benches, steps, ledges; and eat your lunch and have a break, if you wish.
- Close to many lawns you can find electrical outlets to connect your laptop and use free Internet connection.
- There are more and more bike paths all over the citry and along the Hudson River (about 10 km). Where there used to be harbor buildings, a green belt was created for bicycles and walkers.
- As well as the beaches on wooden piers that the gays from the district of Soho fancy so much.
- Well, well. We can repeat now and again that well-worn sentence that New York is a fascinating city. But it’s always true.
- That it never sleeps, and neither do we.
- First, let me remind you Broadway musical How to Succeed in Business without even trying that we saw the other day. We had a great time, but I, personally, did not learn much new. The message that to be successful in business you have to have money, I’ve known for a long time ...
- In the audience were mainly Americans who were roaring with laughter at the jokes tumbling from the stage. Unfortunately, I didn’t understand all of them.
- Don’t feel intimidated. I didn’t understand them either because the laughter in the audience drowned out the punch lines.
- After all, I'm probably more self-confident in the Apple store! I love the atmosphere. Despite my resistance against the Apple products, as a user of Microsoft and the android, I admit that a visit to the New York City Apple store left me stunned!
- The store on Fifth Avenue[6], just off Central Park, at least in part, shows what the modern sale looks like. It's like a reading room and library in one. The difference is that you can leave the store with all possible computer gadgets. For quite a remarkable sum of money, though. The store has a huge basement which you enter through the entrance in the form of a large, glass cube in the middle of which there’s an apple - a highlighted logo of the company.
- America’s crazy about Apple, and the young use exclusively the iPhones.
- We too, like those young one, purchased some of those toys. We’re addicted to them. But it's a nice addiction.
- Besides, through these and other electronic gadgets, our trip hasn’t resulted in several months of homesickness since we’ve had regular contact with the family and friends.
- I admit, they made the logistic of our round the world trip much alleviated.
- Thanks to the technology we’d meet many interesting people in many countries and learn more about the local life.
- Shall we, in this way, summarize our meeting with Jackie - a New Yorker of a Filipino origin, and his colleagues?
- We learned how they like to spend their free time, those financially independent upper middle class gay men, what clubs they go to, what turns them on.
- What turns them on?
- I believe, the same thing that it does to all the middle-aged men in their late thirties. Definitely, sex turns them on.
- Some still live in partner relationships, and some in the marriages, because the state of New York allows gay marriage.
- Oh?! And this has to be their argument against promiscuity?
- Are these your conclusions?
- I think they take these their relationships quite freely, and I don’t think that they differ here in anything from their heterosexual counterparts.
- Jackie was telling us that he loved his Victor, a New Yorker of Italian blood, but that it didn’t prevent him from fooling around quite freely during his numerous business trips around the world.
- Our evening with Jackie and his friends, with Victor not present, yet without any special excesses, was vibrating with sex, as we once commented gay ocean cruises.
- And what else can it vibrate with when a group of five handsome guys are having fun in gay clubs where the atmosphere is very casual. To call it moderately, everybody was happy, and luckily nobody had so called “a moral hangover”, the morning after.
- Jackie, Johnny Depp type of a guy, is a real volcano of energy and a picture of „vibrating sex”, isn’t he?.
- Yes, he is. Besides he’s extremely witty and full of joie de vivre – joy of life as the French would say. He matches New York very well, and New York matches him.
- But he did not want us to meet Victor and somehow it happened that the two evenings Jackie was with us without him!
- Or maybe it was Victor who didn’t want us to meet us? Let’s leave it at that. We’ll keep fond memories, anyway.
[1] Broadway NYC
[2] The High Line NYC
[3]Apple Store Manhattan
[4] Broadway NYC
[5] The High Line NYC
[6]Apple Store Manhattan
