The Space – Noise Continuum

Consider noise. Ear shattering, skull splitting, teenage girls watching “Friday the Thirteenth’ or “Halloween” type noise.

Now consider space. Squishy, sardine can, no room left, walls crashing in, can’t breath, kind of space.

If you can imagine the above then congratulations, you have saved yourself the trouble of taking the Statue of Liberty Cruise.

By luck alone we managed to miss the experience of being crammed on a small overloaded ferry and herded around Liberty and Ellis Islands and we are much happier for not having had the experience.

This is not the only experience we didn’t have, we also didn’t pay a couple of hundred bucks to go through airport like security to travel with another herd of people to the top of the Empire State building. Call me a cheap skate, and I know you will, however it was a joint decision not to be subjected to the same level of comfort and length of queue we could experience for two bucks fifty on the subway. For the record, the Chrysler Building leaves the Empire State building for dead in the architecture stakes.

So what did we do? Well we caught the Staten Island Ferry and saw Ms. Liberty for free. We visited Battery Park, China Town, Little Italy, Greenwich Village, Time Square, Grand Central Station, and a thousand sights in between. Picked up sushi for tea, navigated the overcrowded subway back to our new favourite place, The Bronx, with some of our new friends.

All this and didn’t get mugged once.

New York is a seriously big city. Lots of stuff here is bigger than anywhere else on the planet. It’s also noisy and crowded and demonstrates all the excesses and privations of what is arguably the richest country in the world. The economic boom years afforded enormous development opportunities for the USA and New York certainly took advantage of them. Like the rest of the developed world however (Australia included), the USA is losing it’s industry to overseas cheap manufacturers. Nearly everything is made off shore. There are increasing political rumblings here that China and other “cheap labour” economies, where currencies are held at an artificially low-level, are destroying the manufacturing capabilities of developed nations. Designed in the home country and made offshore may not work in the long run. Note to Self…lighten up, we’re all having fun right?

Anyway it’s picture time.