Another arty waffle breakfast,
and then Day 3 was the “Big Tourist Day“.
Yes, we were headed for Sugar Hill, an historic district of Harlem. I could have used the obvious U2 reference, but we all know “Rapper’s Delight” beats “Angel of Harlem” hands down.
Actually, we were headed there by accident, having inadvertently got on the subway train that didn’t stop at Central Park as expected. But I will swear it was intentional. A bit like riding the District Line to Dagenham, intentionally, and walking back to West Ham.
And I had no problem convincing the rest of the Taylor family to get a move on when they learnt they were on the edge of the Bronx. Reputations die hard.
The walk down St Nicholas Avenue was remarkably uneventful, except for fans of cakes.
The mosaic at the top was hidden away in the memorial to the venerable Harriet Tubman, but I’ve no idea what it means. Newbury Tim is our go-to man on art.
It took an hour to reach Central Park, at which point two lads set off at their own pace leaving Mrs RM and I to seek coffee ($2) and admire the gardens (free).
New York can look a bit samey in parts, but it’s less frantic and tidier than I expected having learnt about it from Starsky & Hutch (I assumed New York was America).
Central Park was worth the trip alone.
We’d managed about an eighth of the park in 90 minutes, which is when we were supposed to rendezvous at the Lennon memorial of Strawberry Fields. We cheated and caught the subway. The boys will never know we didn’t walk it.
I wanted hummus. The boys wanted Mexican. They called it Chi-polay, I called it Chi-pottel, let’s call the whole thing off.
More great food here, but perhaps 4 plates of hummus was overdoing it.
Mrs RM’s bottle of East IPA was the only Brooklyn we had the entire trip, oddly. Never saw it on draft (sorry).
Across the road, I thought I’d sneak a quick half of Bass murk in at this place.
But of course, under 21s aren’t allowed in bars* as they will be corrupted in an otherwise pure nation, and I wasn’t leaving James standing outside the door. Not today.
*In Cologne they were virtually forcing him to drink Kolsch with me. He was 15.
retiredmartin 
You questioning our purity?
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Your beer has pumpkins in it!
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Describing “Pumpkin Ale” as beer, is in contravention of the Trades Descriptions Act – but the US probably doesn’t have such legislation.
No “under 21’s” in bars is pretty daft too. You can buy a rifle or shotgun at 18 years of age in the US, although not a handgun. Crazy!
ps. I can remember Matthew knocking back a litre of Helles with me in the Hofbrauhaus, Munich, whilst only 15 years old.
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Ah, I think it may have been your Munich memories that prompted that comment, Paul. The waiters in Cologne certainly asked if James was drinking beer, and he was 15 then. Perfectly legal of course.
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But in Britain young children can GAMBLE “for low stakes” and some gaming machines, such as coin pushers, teddy grabbers and some lower stakes fruit machines in family entertainment centres and amusement arcades, don’t have a minimum legal age and are open to anyone, then one has to be 16 to get married or join the army, but it’s 18 to go into a pub and buy a pint.
I would have thought that deciding on a partner ’till death us do part’ takes a bit more thought than Bass or ‘craft’ ?.
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You’re wise beyond your years, Paul.
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That’s enough hummus to keep Al Qaida firing on all cylinders for at least a couple of terrorist incidents.
I finished the 1985 New York marathon in Central Park raising 15 grand for a Thames TV charity telethon that involved me training with Jimmy Savile and Steve Cram to raise pledges from the viewers.
I was feeling pretty pleased with myself until the programme I was working for to raise the money jokingly showed the footage to several million people of the person finishing just in front of me.
He’d ran the 26 miles on crutches.
Bastards.
But getting mullahed on cold keg Bass in the Ear Inn to dull the pain of jogger’s nipple after running 26 miles was one of my life’s most memorable sessions.
Happy days.
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Al, Jimmy and Steve in the same comment. You really bring the blog down with the Cram.
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I didn’t take up running until I was fifty-seven. I used to duck into the woods on school cross-countries. Or hide in the library. So, in whatever state the rest of me might be, the knees are pretty well OK. Mrs. E fits in better here on that point, perhaps. On the other hand, she does like to mention them.
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57!
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Etu,
Similarly in the Sixth Form I opted for Orienteering because it was the one that was least like sport, a pint of Highgate Mild in the Roebuck on the way up to an afternoon out on Cannock Chase and it was of no consequence whatsoever to me if I found any of those bits of paper tied to birch trees.
In earlier years it was usually football and I would consistently be in the last three or four out of twenty-something picked by the two captains and would always be in ‘defence’ which didn’t involve moving about much. I remember one time it was rugby and I was busy watching some birds flying overhead when the ball kicked from the other end of the pitch hit me straight in the face but a bloodied nose meant that I was out of the rest of that ‘lesson’.
School days the happiest of your life ?
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You’re in good company, Paul:
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P P-T,
It was wise to do the marathon before the gout set in.
Have you tried Glucosamine for your knees ?
It has worked wonders for me. Two years ago I could just do the six pubs within sight of Macclesfield railway station but now I’m up to over 300 pubs a year.
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I’ve only ever had 3 people walk past me in my adult life and Paul was one of them. The other two were about 6ft6.
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about 6ft6 – Timbo ?
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This is the only musical reference to Sugar Hill that I recognise.
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I’ve been past the Sugar Loaf Mountain on the train near Abergavenny but don’t know of any Sugar Hill.
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Sugarloaf Hill, on the North Downs, at the back of Folkestone.
Walked passed it yesterday en route to Dover.
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Catching up on your NYC posts. I enjoyed seeing your reference to the city sometimes being a bit “samey.” I agree, and sometimes think fans of NYC are viewing the place through decidedly rose-tinted glasses.
Interesting that you mentioned Brooklyn beers not being as common as you might have expected. I don’t see them all that often in Michigan or in my other American travels, actually, though they seem to have an outsized reputation among UK beer fans (possibly also American beer fans, for all I know). You’d think in NYC, of all places, they’d be in every other crafty bar, but clearly that is not the case.
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I loved NYC. Looking purely at the architecture there’s a lot that’s not distinctive in the way London is these days. London is a special city, of course.
NY was clean, friendly and safe. Worth saying.
I’m not very “beery” but I sensed beforehand that Brooklyn occupied a position similar to BrewDog. Big craft, but also making some interesting beers
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