Day 30 – The Royalton
44 W44th Street

And then came Ebola.

Here’s a multiple-choice question for you.
Imagine you’ve been caring for Ebola victims in West Africa. You return home and start feeling nauseous and fatigued with a rising fever. Do you:

  1. Stay in bed and try to get better
  2. Go to a hospital
  3. Catch the subway and go bowling

You can imagine the topic of discussion in New York this week and the general sense of bewilderment at the circumstances surrounding Case #1. After all, it’s only the most populous city in the country. But New Yorkers don’t strike me as hysterical types and everything seems pretty normal around the place. Anyway, as my doorman says to pretty much everything, ‘Waddaya gonna do??’

Keep writing’s the answer. And so I should because Act 2 (of 4) just won’t end. I’m nearly there and it is the longest of the Acts, but on and on it goes. Acts 3 and 4 will tumble forth in an avalanche in comparison.

In the Royalton, I was back at 44th Street where it all began (at the Algonquin). The Royalton has no literary history I can uncover, but it is used for a lot of film premieres. My very chatty waiter told me Bill Murray’s latest flick had been presented there last week (and Bill too). We both agreed ‘Groundhog Day’ was his best work. (Which reminds me of his co-star Andie MacDowell and the 70-odd lookalikes I ran into in the W Hotel one morning who ate my red velvet pancakes.)

Nothing much to report about the Royalton. Very dark, timber lobby. The sort of place to disappear into in the middle of the day. Would be a lot of fun at night, I imagine. Maybe I should try that as hourly word count was pretty average (again).

Today’s word count: 2533 (over 4 hours this ain’t great)

Word count to date: 74,475

  • The Royalton

  • Cover of the New York Times this morning.

  • The Author with WIP (and coffee, of course)

  • Pano of the lobby which stretches from 44th to 43rd streets. This is at 9am.

  • Breaking Bad in the Royalton.

  • Location of the Royalton on 44th Street.

 
Details

Day 29 – Bossert Hotel, 98 Montague Street, Brooklyn and
the Hotel St George, 100 Henry Street, Brooklyn.

Brooklyn ain’t Canberra (but it’s still pretty nice).

This week the New York Times wrote a piece on an OECD study that rated my hometown, Canberra, as the best place in the world to live. Based on certain criteria such as the likelihood of being shot (Mexico faired very well there), access to non-corruptible Government officials (Mexico faired poorly), and the proximity to abundant marsupials (Mexico faired poorly again), it made me reflect on one area where Canberra does very well (and New York not so much) which is cleanliness. New York is determined to hang onto its grunge factor, which is part of its charm many say.

All of this is just to say that this part of Brooklyn is nice. Not all of Brooklyn is nice (head to Coney Island for a shock – particularly if you’re silly enough to tell your kids, ‘it’ll be a bit like Disneyland’). But this area just south of where the Brooklyn Bridge touches down is well looked after with many streets lined with brownstones and a heap of funky shops. And here, are two historic hotels, neither of which is currently open.

The Bossert is under renovation and will soon reopen as a 5 Star hotel. It was a beautiful place in its day and by all accounts will be so again. As the crow flies, the Bossert is closer to Wall Street than Greenwich Village, but there’s a river in the way and that makes all the difference. Back in the 1800’s some predicted that Brooklyn would be where the New York of the future would be centred as, with Long Island stretching beyond it for 100 miles, it could expand forever. Manhattan, one cross-eyed prophet predicted, would eventually be filled up. The thing is, it turned out everyone wants to be on Manhattan. You need a Manhattan address. Manhattan keeps growing therefore, but up – not out. That’s where you’ll find everything that matters – the finance sector, the local Government, the cultural icons, the top restaurants and hotels, the famous shops. Everything else, I’ve found, tends to identify itself by its proximity to Manhattan. I don’t think you can understate the psychological effect of Manhattan’s physical nature as an island.

I worked in a café opposite the Bossert, sitting on the street in the wind, then walked north to the Hotel St George. Incredibly, it was at one point the largest hotel in New York. It took up an entire block and boasted the largest indoor salt-water pool in America. Who builds New York’s largest hotel in Brooklyn, you’d have to ask. It is so vast it would have to offer very low prices in order to even remotely fill its rooms. It sits right on top of a subway and you’re at Wall Street in two stops, but Manhattan has plenty of cheap hotels too. It’s no surprise The St George is no longer a hotel and is used mainly for student accommodation. I worked across the street in a tres funky café called Vineapple (on Pineapple street, believe it or not) which had the highest concentration of MacBooks I’d seen outside the Upper West Side.

I wish the Bossert well when it reopens, it will certainly be the hotel jewel in the crown in this area. It’s not that far from Manhattan either. But there’s a river in the way.

Today’s word count: 2537 (pretty poor for 4 hours IMO)

Word count to date: 71,942

  • Closest cafe to the Bossert I could find.

  • The Bossert – a while ago.

  • The Bossert on the day I visited.

  • View from the Bossert towards Manhattan (a while ago).

  • The Hotel St George – at least one corner of it.

  • Another corner of the Hotel St George.

  • The Hotel St George in its glory days taking up an entire block of Brooklyn.

  • St George hotel pool – once the largest indoor salt water pool in the US. Most luxurious in the world?? Hmmm.

 
Details

Day 28 – New York Public Library
Cnr. Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street.

I know this isn’t a hotel.

But if there were ever a place in New York where an author can feel all inspired, and overcome, and utterly humbled, surely this place is it. The names chiselled into the marble in the foyer (yes, literally chiselled and literally marble) are enough to make your mouth drop open. Here is the history of New York – the men and women who built this city physically, artistically, socially, you name it.
And the wonders come to you before you even set foot inside as you stand on the front steps between the famous lions (named ‘Patience’ and ‘Fortitude’, how apt for the author with a WIP) and gaze around knowing that, yes, here they filmed Ghostbusters.

The plan was to go to the famous Rose reading room – the largest in the building at nearly two blocks long. However, it’s closed for a major renovation. ‘At least a year,’ the security guard told me. But, trust me, in a building of this size there are more than a few options. Opposite the entrance to the Rose room is the delightful Edna Barnes Salomon room, so that became the office for the day.

It goes without saying that you can’t order coffee and grapefruit brulee at a place like this and it might not surprise you to learn I’m not a man who’d be seen carrying a Thermos (unless in some kind of emergency, the likes of which I can’t imagine at the moment). So it was a ‘dry write’. But it went well. Perhaps it was the countless portraits staring down at me (either urging me on, or snarling, ‘you call this working?’ I can’t be sure which). Or, maybe it was the still grandeur of the place (marble has a strange, sense-of-history effect on me). In any case, the words flowed freely. Roger Spoffin got himself into trouble then out of it again and it was only the rumbling of my stomach that made me cease and descend those marble stairs and go searching for a burrito.

Today’s word count: 3275

Word count to date: 69, 405

  • ‘Patience’ outside the library. Imagine what his eyes have beheld.

  • It wasn’t until these guys turned up in 1984 that New Yorkers really started to notice the New York Public Library.

  • I can say with confidence the Ashfield Public Library doesn’t have doors like these.

  • The entrance to my office for the day.

  • The Author – with WIP – coming to terms with the lack of coffee service in the Edna Barnes Salomon reading room.

  • Beautiful Bryant Park right behind the library.

 
Details