Been to the garage again x times all day. Vehicle registration document comes and doesn’t come, I keep getting transferred again. I feel like I’m being taken for a ride. And now I urgently need the car. I’m looking for alternatives again, even thinking about renting a car for $2800. Can’t do anything. So: back into the city on the metro.
In a small deli near the Guggenheim Museum I treat myself to a nice beer – in a brown paper bag. With the owner’s permission in the far corner of the shop, but still illegal. Afterwards, I head for the spiral in the Guggenheim Museum, well fuelled. Unfortunately, it’s completely ruined at the moment, completely wrapped up on the outside for general refurbishment.
Cracks, fissures and rust everywhere, worse than at Regensburg University. Architecturally a failure. And somehow I can’t relate to the statement of abstract art.
By bus down Central Park to 5th Avenue, Penn Station, then on to Christopher Street. In America, strippers are not allowed to take off their briefs. To be honest: I still understand the titty bars – halfway. But what on earth do male strippers have to report? I’ll save the bars, stroll down the street and have the worst gyros-pitta burger ever. Exceptional service justifies exceptional prices, so the $8.95 is totally fine. I leave the leftovers at the table in the hope that they won’t be irresponsibly disposed of in the household rubbish.
Back home, I quickly buy a few beers, eat something sensible and then sprint across 38 metro stations to the far north of the Bronx. The Metropolitan Opera is performing La Bohème in Pelham Bay Park today. For free. I lie down on the field. Football players are all sissies, by the way. The turf is soft plastic, with 5 cm of the softest rubber granules underneath. I’ve dug my way down to the ground and hope that a sissy breaks his knuckle in this offside trap – to find out what real pain is :-)
Dorfbursche could of course have guessed from the map that the park is right in the centre of the flight paths from La Guardia and JFK. But he didn’t. But the jumbos flying over the stage at intervals of 60 seconds / 300 metres in altitude can’t ruin the atmosphere. Not even the football game on the back half of the field. Or the baseball players. Or the guy with his mobile satellite TV that he’s watching 10 metres away from me. La Bohème is great. I put my beer in a stylish brown paper bag, enjoy the evening and feel so un-German.
On the way home, I give myself a fitting musical finale. Edwyn Collins, “Girl like you” and “There’s got to be a way to break out of this world”. La Bohème, the fifth act. If I wasn’t sitting opposite the emergency sign in the metro, I’d probably be smiling. At my broad grin reflected in the window opposite. Everything is fine for once.
Frank Woelky, born in 1973. Kitesurfer since 1998. Since 2006, I have been combining kitesurfing and web design on trips lasting several months off the beaten track.