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

Day 27 – Bronx Opera House Hotel & (former) Concourse Plaza Hotel
436 E 149th St, Bronx & Grand Concourse and 161st St, Bronx

An historic day, for a couple of reasons.
It occurred to me that so far all the hotels that have given birth to Roger Spoffin’s latest epic adventure have been located on Manhattan (save for the Book Cadillac in Detroit). There are good reasons for this, obviously. But the rest of New York has been around for a while too.
So I Googled ‘Historic hotels the Bronx’ and realized immediately why I haven’t been heading up there whenever I wanted to put pen to paper. But there were two. Kinda.

The Bronx Opera House opened in 1913 and in its early years featured Houdini and the Marx Brothers (the comedians – not the self-proclaimed hero of the working classes and his little known, less despotic sibling). It was the centre of culture in the Bronx. But this was a long, long time ago. It survived until around 2004 as a church, but like much of South Bronx had fallen into decay. The hotel opened only last year and I headed there full of hopes to see an historic gem, converted to new use, perhaps the lobby where the stage was, the pool in the orchestra pit. No luck. All that remains is the façade. And the name over the door with a few posters inside. The link to the past is tentative.
Nevertheless, the dudes on the front desk were very cool and after I’d explained what I was there for they let me in to help myself to complimentary coffee in the ‘guests-only’ breakfast bar (memories of the Washington Square Hotel came flooding back).

Then, I walked up to the Concourse Plaza Hotel. This former luxury hotel on the hill above Yankee Stadium was opened in 1922 and famously hosted a young JFK in 1960 when he was the Democratic candidate for the Presidency. But it was already on a downward slide then (which wasn’t helped a decade later by the catastrophic deterioration of the neighbourhood – type ‘Burning of the Bronx’ into Google to see what I mean). It’s been a nursing home since 1974, and not surprisingly it’s a nursing home that doesn’t permit random authors to write Middle Grade fantasy adventure novels in its former lobby. No matter. I managed to physically enter the building – through the ‘buzz me in’ security door but that was as far as I could go. And, unlike the former Hotel Theresa in Harlem, there was no White Castle for me to dine in. So, I worked in the park opposite and let the shadow of the hotel pass over me.

So, three ‘First’s’ were achieved that day.
First New York hotel outside of Manhattan.
First time I wrote at two hotels in the same day.
First time I didn’t actually write a single word inside a hotel.

Today’s word count: 2587

Word count to date: 66,130

  • The Bronx Opera House Hotel. Pretty much what you see here is all that remains of the original opera house.

  • The Author enjoying his complimentary coffee.

  • The news that morning. First strike inside Syria.

  • An original poster in the lobby.

  • Many famous performers featured at the Bronx Opera House.

  • The Concourse Plaza from the very pleasant park where I worked on a beautiful Autumn morning.

  • Panorama from the Bronx courthouse on the left, Yankee Stadium and the Plaza Concourse Hotel far right.

  • Guests no longer check out of this place.

  • The insalubrious entrance.

 
Details

Day 26 – The Grand Hyatt

East 42 Street

Another massive mid-city hotel but this place holds a special significance for me, as it was the location of the first children’s book writers and illustrators conference I attended in New York.

Way back in Feb of 2013, when we’d been in town barely 24 hours, I headed here for three days with my portfolio tucked under my arm. Back then it was all Widodo the tree kangaroo, but whether it was due to a latent hostility towards marsupials in the target readership, or perhaps his adventures were just a little too cutting edge at the time, or maybe the story just totally sucked, the project got no takers.

So it was with a hint of sadness, I must confess, I re-entered this modern marvel of a hotel. Not only that, but having worked at a Hyatt many years ago, I am always struck by a slightly nostalgic air whenever I see their logo and I remember a simpler, more innocent time. Actually, not that innocent, come to think of it.

Once Roger got underway, however, all nostalgia and marsupial reminisces faded from memory (not unlike Widodo’s particular species one day, should they keep cutting down his habitat. Avoid the palm oil if you can, folks) as the plucky 14 year-old hero continued his epic quest against the forces which will do him harm (and an awful lot of London too, if I can reveal so much of the upcoming tale so soon).

Today’s word count: 2158

Word count to date: 63,543

  • A great shot of a very modern hotel.

  • The vast, stretching lobby.

  • The Author, at breakfast.

  • Grapefruit brûlée – one of the most amazing breakfasts I’ve ever had.

  • Jaume Plensa’s sculptures adorn the lobby

  • Looking up at the lobby from the entrance on 42nd Street.

 
Details

Day 25 – The Lexington

511 Lexington Avenue

‘Fly me to the Moon’

It was raining in New York, really raining hard, when I headed from the Rockefeller Center across 5th, Madison and Park, past the Waldorf-Astoria, to the Lexington (on Lexington Avenue, of course, though the folks round here call it ‘Lex’). There’s something about navigating the city in the rain, giving the doorman a nod as you fumble with your umbrella on your way to the lobby of a big New York Art Deco hotel then hearing Frankie (who’s pad was nearby) singing one of his classics. It don’t get cosier than that.

A lot of business gets done at the Lexington. You can just feel it. Highest concentration of iBooks I’ve ever seen outside of an Upper West Side Starbucks. Coffee cups everywhere (take-away believe it or not, as the hotel has no service in the lobby) and heaps of guys and gals in suits interviewing, selling, reading the NYTimes.
But in one corner of the room, Roger Spoffin’s latest exhilarating adventures in the sands of Persia (I daren’t give away too much) took shape. Three hours later, just as I was winding up, Frankie’s smooth voice came back on.

Fly me to the moon? Nah, I’ll take New York.

Today’s word count: 2958

Word count to date: 63,543

  • The Lexington on Lexington

  • My pano hasn’t done the crowd in the lobby any favours

  • Autumn rains outside. Old Blue Eyes playing in the lobby. Perfect

  • Unfortunately, there’s no service in the lobby so I had to drag this in with me

  • Art at the Lexington

  • Relief in the cafe (where I found coffee)

  • In the gents

 
Details

Days 22, 23 & 24
Washington Square Hotel
Gansevort Hotel
The Peninsula

104 days of summer vacation is not something to laugh about. I had to restrain myself from throwing my arms in the air and yelling ‘Freedom!’ when our three treasures finally went back to school. It’s hard to sit writing in hotel lobbies with three children buzzing around. Now, the summer gone, I could begin hitting the hotels again and by week’s end another 10,000 words had poured forth onto the iPad.
In brief, here’s how it panned out.

Day 22 – Washington Square Hotel
103 Waverly Place

Bob Dylan lived at this little hotel in the early 60’s in room 305, when it was the Hotel Earle. I popped in and walked through to the very casual café at the back, and asked the server for a coffee. He said to help yourself. Tres casual, I thought. Very airport hotel vibe before you catch a shuttle. I grabbed a coffee and a bagel for good measure and set to work. A couple of hours later I tried to pay, and the server asked if I was staying in the hotel. No, says I. Oh, says he, genuinely bemused. Seems the café (and goods within) are just for the guests of the hotel and free of charge. Laughs all round. Not wishing to besmirch my good-natured Australian reputation (I’d just been praised for my honesty, you see), I offered a $5 tip and said, I’d be back tomorrow. Great laughs!
Do try it sometime at the Washington Square Hotel. They’re very pleasant there.
Daily word count: 2935

Day 23 – Gansevort Hotel
18 9th Avenue

Uber hip Chelsea digs. Not far from the Standard and the markets and with cobblestones on each side. Coffee and pancakes, sitting beside a large plate-glass window with the sun streaming in did wonders for the hourly word count, which ended up being the best I’ve ever done. It’s got a fabulous pool on the roof too (but of course I didn’t get to see that).
Daily word count: 2870

Day 24 – The Peninsula
700 5th Avenue

Another Beaux Arts hotel on Fifth Ave directly across the road from the St Regis (which is also a very nice place to work). Wasn’t as productive a morning as usual as I got talking to a chap from Switzerland who was in town to oversee the production of the second series of a tv show. This fellow also ran an orphanage in India and had done all manner of extraordinary things in that country, so I got distracted. But that’s one of the risks the author-at-large faces in New York. You keep running into amazing folk.
Daily word count: 2069

Total word count to date: 58, 427

  • Happily working away with the free food & coffee

  • The Washington Square Hotel

  • NY University film-makers in Washington Square

  • More NYU film-makers in Washington Square

  • Ultra-groovy Gansevort. There’s a v hip pool up there on the roof.

  • Everything is cool. Everything is hip. There’s even a panda bleeding black blood.

  • iPhone iPad Coffee – Gansevort style

  • Bond art in the Gansevort

  • A beautiful, intimate space in the Gansevort

  • The magnificent imposing entrance of the Peninsula

  • The intimate interior of the Peninsula

  • Breakfast at the Peninsula’s long table

  • Nearly bought one. Put a deposit on a Manhattan apartment instead.

 
Details

Day 21 – Marriott Marquis
1535 Broadway.

“If you want to make an omelette, you’ve got to break some eggs.”
So said that doomed Robespierre and broken eggs come to mind when you dig into the story behind the massive Marriot Marquis.

This place has no historical literary associations whatsoever that I can uncover. Type ‘Marriott Marquis Great Authors’ into Google and you won’t be overwhelmed. However, try ‘Marriott Marquis Historic Theatre Destruction’ and you’ll find yourself in much more fertile soil. You see, no less than five old Broadway theatres were demolished to build this 2000 room space-age monster. When it opened (way back in 1985 when Bobby Brown ruled the airwaves) Times Square was nasty, nasty and so the city was keen to try to turn it around. Demolishing five theatres was part of that plan.

As such, I like to think working here is true to the intention of writing the new novel in an artistic space (the ghosts of five theatres and countless performances surely can’t but help the muse). Plus the views are kinda amazing.
Yes, it was Saturday night and time to head into the office so I chose this place – right in the middle of Manhattan madness. New York gets a million visitors a week and most of them end up in Times Square. At night the place glows for blocks around (we can see it from our pad on 85th Street – that’s 40 blocks away) and sure enough if you want to experience the true city that never sleeps, Times Square is it. Goulburn this ain’t.

And so it was I headed off at 9pm, iPad in my man-bag, rode the elevator to the 48th floor, ordered my Blue Moon (a perfectly acceptable local wheat beer), and clocked on. As I rotated in the sky watching the lightning storms over Jersey, the hours spun by and Roger Spoffin came to life.
Productive night, you ask? Well, who cares really, but the answer’s, ‘Yes. Good enough’. Hourly word count was more than acceptable and incidentally, the novel ticked over 50,000 words to date.

When I’d had enough, I rode the elevator back down to the street. As if from Mount Olympus, I descended from the lofty heights back to the grit and lights and rain-soaked streets and of course, New York was still abuzz. It’s never let me down yet.

Today’s word count: 2086
Word count to date: 50,553

  • The massive, massive space-station-like Marquis Marriott.

  • Looking for the barman who served my beer with an orange slice.

  • The vast Marquis Marriott rising up out of Gotham. It was raining too.

  • The incredible interior.

  • My taxi – about to whisk me through the wet streets of Gotham.

 
Details

Day 20 – Roosevelt Hotel
45 East 45th St, New York

Very nice-ish.
This place is another of the old elegant (and big), hotels located mid city. A stone’s throw from Grand Central, I’ve walked past it and never noticed it though it’s vast enough taking the whole block facing Fifth Avenue. Sure enough, it looks pretty nice in these photos, but there’s a slightly faded air about the place. Don’t get me wrong – it’s a long, long way from the ghastly conditions of the Pennsylvania Hotel (see Day #12) but it lacks the polish of the Waldorf Astoria or the Plaza. Perhaps it’s the Starbucks coffee they serve in the lobby delivered to you in Starbucks branded paper cups with a gentle, ‘Cream and sugar are over there. Sir.’

That said, I enjoyed my time at the place, though productivity was rather dormant at first. I found it hard after three weeks away to get back in the swing of things (my last post was in Detroit, you’d recall). I found I couldn’t remember what had been happening. It didn’t help that I accidentally opened a file over a month old and found myself reading something from Act 1 (‘Hang on. I was sure I’d gotten past this!’)
But once I recalled what was going on, Roger and co were soon back into the swing of things and the word count – helped I’m sure by that paper cup be-vesseled Starbucks coffee – ticked over satisfactorily.

The Roosevelt, not surprisingly, is named after one Teddy R. and there are plenty of portraits of the great man about the place, though hidden away in the lesser travelled corners of the hotel. Him with his family. Him on his horse. As a young lad. If you’re a fan of the naturalist/philosopher/statesman/’cowboy’ explorer then this is the place for you.
If Jennifer Lopez is more your bag though, well you won’t be disappointed here either. J. Lo’s seminal flick, where she starred opposite Mr On-Again-Off-Again-Never-Quite-Fulfilled-His-Promise, Ralph Fiennes, that classic ‘Maid in Manhattan’, was set here.

Conrad Hilton bought the place in 1943 and even though he also owned the Plaza and the Waldorf-Astoria made it his home. It was also the first hotel to have leased storefronts on its sidewalks – rather than lounges or restaurants – which is a surprising feature of many big New York hotels. It’s rather odd, IMO, to discover a pharmacy or grocery store next to the entrance of a magnificent hotel.

I must say, it felt great to be back in the incredible buzz of New York. I foresee skyrocketing word counts in the weeks to come.
(I had the meatballs for lunch with an iced tea, in case you were wondering.)

Today’s word count: 2115
Word count to date: 48,467

  • A dead President utilised as security. Not common in my experience.

  • Myself, slightly unnerved by the threat of Teddy ‘watching me’

  • I worked (and dined, of course) in the alcove on the left

  • President Roosevelt and family.

  • Guy Lombardo from the long lost Big Band era

  • The uninspiring exterior and streetscape. It’s pretty much all retail.

  • Roosevelt meatballs and iced-tea

 
Details

Day 19: Book Cadillac, 1114 Washington Ave, Detroit

You could stand in front of this hotel and photograph it and think you were in New York or Washington or Chicago. But turn around and you’ll see urban decay which needs to be seen to be believed. The entire block opposite (and that includes a 35 storey historic skyscraper, the Book Building) is vacant. Trees growing from the roofs. At night, look down Washington Ave, which should be a glorious, grand boulevard, and you’ll see the stop lights flashing amber continually. They don’t even bother to change them to red and green there are so few vehicles. Or it costs too much. Detroit is broke. In fact, it’s worse than that; Detroit – at least downtown – is absolutely shattered.

This hotel is as historic as it gets for Detroit and I hope it survives. It’s big (when it opened in 1924 it was the tallest in the world), it’s pleasant enough (it’s a mock-Renaissance which has been remodeled nicely enough into a modern style) and it’s hosted everyone from gangsters to US Presidents. A slip inside my bar menu (another evening writing session, dear readers) claimed the hotel had hosted every US President since 1924. Quite a claim.

I can’t compare this writing experience with any other. I was comfortably settled, the muse was a trite sluggish but I’d had a mega-busy day, and a glass of average Argentinian Malbec was at hand, but outside was a wilderness. Block after block of boarded up businesses, vast empty carparks, many homeless sleeping on the street benches, no shops (seriously), and those flashing amber lights. I finished my work, took the photos, and was solicited as I was leaving.
Detroit’s a troubled city at the moment.

Here’s the hotel’s official website, but I just want to say to the photographer, ‘Dude, context. Context.’: http://www.bookcadillacwestin.com

Today’s word count: 1201
Word count to date: 46,352

  • The most historic hotel in Detroit. That skyscraper across the road is abandoned

  • I took this earlier in the day. Every building in the picture (other than the hotel) is abandoned.

  • My gorgeous wife on the streets of Detroit – margarita in a can in hand

  • The Author ever-watchful. This ain’t New York

  • Every US President since 1924 has visited the Book Cadillac

 
Details

Day 18 – W hotel, Union Square

This was definitely a morning of two halves.

Firstly, the hotel. The W chain is a trendy bunch. I had an appointment near Union Square at lunch so it seemed a good choice. The hotel sits on the north east corner on Fifth Avenue and its public spaces are done in the green-brown-silver colour scheme that seems particularly prevalent at the moment. Not offensive by any means but one can pretty much foresee how tired it will look two years’ hence.

For some reason I ordered red velvet pancakes. See photo. They were approximately the size of my iPad. They were beautiful to behold but were sufficient for three meals, rather than one. The writing seemed hard going for some reason (yesterday the muse had struck fast and prodigally), and then things went from sluggish to a grinding halt as I was more than momentarily distracted.

45 minutes into Roger’s latest adventures, 6 girls walked into the lobby. They were all dressed alike in white sneakers, cut-off blue jeans, white shirts, pink scarves with their (long brunette) hair curled within an inch of its life. They sat down not far from me and then a minute later another 6 appeared, then approximately 20 more, then more and more until roughly 40 matching girls sat squished around me. They giggled and chatted loudly and took photos of themselves and commented how nice my red velvet pancakes looked. Being the gentleman I am, I said, “help yourselves” for I’d had my fill and never thought they’d take up the offer anyway. Well, they did. And with gusto. With my mouth open I watched as one after the other devoured what was left of my breakfast. They passed it around, giving me the thumbs up, while I kept a firm grip on my coffee cup.

It was impossible to work under such circumstances. Each time one would say, ‘I hope we’re not disturbing you’, I’d simply smile and look back at the screen and try to concentrate. Which I had trouble doing, particularly when a small group of the lovely ladies who hadn’t managed to find a seat started dancing to the funky music that was piping through the lobby speakers.

It was not an unpleasant morning by any stretch of the imagination, but once they all left, it took me a good 30 minutes to refocus and resume relating the adventures of a 14 year-old, very chaste schoolboy.

Lowest hourly word count ever.

Today’s word count: 1321

Word count to date: 45,151

Oh, just in case you were wondering what was going on, they were filming an ad for a TV series starring Andi McDowell called ‘Cedar Cove’.

Click here

  • The hotel from the park. Romantic looking, no?

  • My gorgeous red velvet pancakes (before they disappeared)

  • The first girl to eat my breakfast

  • More girls having fun with my breakfast. Such fun.

  • Just a few of the 70-plus girls who filled the hotel lobby, most of whom ate some of my breakfast

  • The author wondering if it was all a dream.

 
Details