is my attempt to come up with a more interesting title for this post. Seems to sum up my all to breif trip to New York City last month.

Empire State Building from 30 Rockefeller Plaza

The whole thing was originally cancelled due to the Eyjafjoell(Glad I’m writing that rather than speaking it) volcano ‘event’ but I happened to re book on the first flight to actually leave Birmingham when the flights started leaving a week to the day I was originally actually suposed to leave on.

The above photo is from the ‘Top of the Rock’ which, while giving truely fantastical views was a slightly underwhelming experience and certainly over priced.

To continue with the title theme after a long mornings walk and a well deserved Mary Ann’s Punch I managed to stumble upon the relocated Mysterious Bookshop. Luckily they had just taken delivery of their limited run of what is being talked of as the final novel by three-time Edgar Award winner Donald E. Westlake.

Was nice to be able to buy a copy there and also pick up an anthology from Lawerence Block that I’d not seen before. I just read today that there may be a few more unpublished Westlake novels in the ether, which is good news (in fact the three books co written with Mr Block are due for publication later this year, the admirably titled Hellcats and Honeygirls).

Broadway

I also made it to Brooklyn for the first time. It seems that now the majoritly of the more interesting(to me) musical events and several of the cities venues have now moved across the river.

TTV photo of the Brooklyn Bridge

There was a near que at the base of the bridge of bands waiting to take promo shots with the bridge as a back drop along with what looked to be a couple of small films being made.

Close up TTV photo of the Brooklyn Bridge

On the beer front I sampled every beer for sale in McSorelys Saloon. Sadly that was not that big a task, as they only serve two drinks, a light beer and a dark beer (They do also sell cans of coke but they don’t seem to like to advertise this). Nice place to visit and all that, I had read the book, McSorley’s wonderful saloon by Joseph Mitchell several years ago and thought the pub had closed and then reopened elsewhere in the 1970’s but I can’t see anything about this on the McSorelys Saloon website. Anyway the important thing was the beer, well that and the aptmosphere, I thought it would be overly touristy being vaugly famous but it seemed every bit as basic as say The Apple Tree‎ in Bedminster for instance. It shared the same kind of basic charm as that pub too actually, the beer was well priced and decent and the place was busy without being unpleasant on the Friday night I was there. If the place was good enough for Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Woody Guthrie then its good enougfh for me, after all, as they say ‘they were here before you were born’.

TTV photo of McSorelys Saloon

Other than this I managed to catch a live broadcast from The Prairie Home Companion at the Town Hall, which was quite fantastic, along with a bit of second hand record shopping and a fair few miles of pounding the pavement.

Happy Days.