A block away from 42nd Street -Port Authority Bus Terminal, NYC (taken early 2000’s)
I visited New York City for the first time in the fall of 1994. I was enroute to Chapel Hill, North Carolina to take up my place on a student exchange program, from Manchester, England. I figured that it would be an adventure to fly into JFK airport and then take the Greyhound from New York City.
The first thing that struck me about Manhattan aside from the crowds, energy, and rising steam, was how strangely familiar it was. Many people who have not been to New York have a pre-defined sense of the city through film and television. For me New York City was Taxi Driver and the Taking of Pelham One Two Three. It was Ratso Rizzo shouting, “I’m walking here!” in Midnight Cowboy. More obscurely, it was the Hotel Broslin in Basket Case.
Whilst the sleaze, grit and grindhouse theaters of the ‘70s and ‘80s had largely disappeared, it was still an exhilarating and eye-opening experience to walk around midtown at night, especially close to 42nd Street and Times Square. The noise, the neon, the hustle.
In the Port Authority Bus Terminal, an African American guy came up to me, his arm outstretched. For a moment, I froze, unsure. Should I shake his hand? What did he want? “Hey man, it doesn’t come off you know” he told me. I wanted to tell him, “Oh God, no! That’s not it. I’m just wary—strangers in a big city, you know?” But instead, I struggled to speak and nervously hurried off to catch my Greyhound bus south.
30 years on, I still remember those words, with sadness and regret.
