new york city of models

Yesterday New York was like a movie set. Alright, it's always like a some kind of movie set, but this one was a romantic comedy with the sun shining on the brownstones and people walking around in T shirts laughing. Like they're all living in the "shopping and trying on hats" section of the film, and it lasts forever. The headcases roaming the streets dressed as Superman and fast food items (1 x Burger, 3 x Hot Dogs) were characterful heroes of the sidewalks,  not to-be-avoided-at-all-costs crazies.

I met Rachael in a 9th floor rehearsal room, and I was instantly ushered into the leather-clad world of New York rock, with posters of Blondie, Lou Reed and Aerosmith (?) on the walls of the hallway. The reception room was peopled by guys with stubble and rock t shirts wearing shades indoors, and musicians lounging on sofas looking like they're going for a 'Velvet Underground Reformed - This Time They're All Attractive' audition. Wish I hadn't shaved today.

Later, skipping over kerbs dragging the only slightly lighter second cousin of The Bag, my guitar and a hundred plastic Troubadour bag, Rachael and I were transported into Model World. The sidewalks were glistening in very recent rain, as if art directed. Statuesque girls gathered in groups. waiting for the lights to change, with expectant open-mouthed looks, but never crossing the road. They leaned against lamp posts and stood against walls with one foot raised in the traditional 'Rock Model' pose. Were we dragging luggage through a Vogue photo shoot, unawares?

Gaggles and cliques and broods and displays of girls over 6 feet tall with tight jeans and leather knee-length boots. They glanced over their shoulders as we passed, their eyes fixed on a far off point, somewhere in another galaxy. Occasionally one of them would laugh, exposing her perfect teeth to the streetlamps' glow, and then the rest would join in, like a giant commercial for a mobile phone company.

All around us, House Concert Wars raged. Tiny sparks flying up above the skyscrapers from states as Iowa and Florida. That very afternoon I had been phoned by one of the adversaries, calling from a small town in the Mid West. Reports were serious - thousands affected, CNN crews approaching. Never underestimate the collateral damage caused by the wrath of a slighted House Concert presenter. My phone still humming from the ferocity of one side of the conflict, it rang again. I pressed 'Ignore'. Rachael told me about a concert she's been booked to play in Amsterdam. Thoughtlessly, I told her about a group who organize concerts in a library in Rotterdam. I should have known better - this group split from the Amsterdam House Concert people in a schism the likes of which still resonate throughout the Lowlands.

It's a long way from the less than zero cold of Canada, to 27 degrees at 10pm on 7th Avenue, hot and close like before a thunderstorm. Turning a corner the first drops of rain started and I saw a guy hailing a cab. As multiple cabs passed him by, I realized he wasn't really hailing a cab but posing like an advertisement of someone hailing a cab. Ridiculously good-looking, hair tousled and now gently flecked with rain, we had left the girls behind only to run the gamut of a group of muscle-crunching stubble-dusted male models gathered here to celebrate their own beauty. Not far from their female equivalents distance-wise, but in their own separate world of exquisitely beautiful suffering. No smiles this time, only chiselled jawlines pointing towards the glowering heavens. 

*

A change of weather this morning, and it does seem extreme. RIght now it's raining, and the non-stop stream of corduroy-wearing artistic types and style icons is unstoppable outside the cafe window where I'm writing. Half an hour ago I walked in and asked a man studying diagrams in a text book, and sketching them on note pad, if I could sit down. He moved his papers and I handed him his phone. I decided not to write, not to read - just to watch. But it's difficult not to write it down when it's happening all around you,

A tall guy in a checked shirt with geek glasses and fairly long hair walks in and I notice him waiting for ages to get a seat. There's a line-up for soy cappucinos and chai lattes stretches from 4th Street to Central Park. This guy's trying to eat a sandwich and hold his coffee while standing up. Just as he masters this, someone hands him a soup and toasted cheese sandwiches. He asks if he can sit down and asks me if there's room beside me and the scribbler. He asks what my pin says (that's a badge, UK people). I tell him it says 'Stand Up To Rock Stars' and was the only piece of U2 merchandise The Teenager and I could afford to buy at their Melbourne show. We loved the show but the $50 T shirts just didn't cut it.

It seems my new friend played in a band last night at a Banana Republic fashion show for their new collection. It was, by all accounts, Model World 2. Full of the same 6 foot plus girls I'd moved amongst the previous evening. As he described the fashion show, I notice a girl at the table behind him studying a script. Tall, Eastern European looking, all cheekbones and dramatic expressions. Until now she's been doing yoga stretches while reading. Now she quickly looks around and takes out a Subway sandwich, breaks it in half, and eats it ravenously, hiding it under her script.

My new friend turns out to be from LA. He's wearing a checked shirt from the home of vintage clothes. In fact, from the city where vintage clothes never have to call themselves vintage. He knows Tom Petty's daughter - she plays Highway 61 at high volume in her house opposite a friend of mine. He has been to the Casbah Cafe and busked on Grafton Street in Dublin. It's a small musical world in this café We strike up a conversation with the guy drawing diagrams, who's trying to work out the relationship between (a) the planets in the solar system, (b) the chakra points in the human body, and (c) the notes in a musical scale. We talk digeridoos and baritone guitars. My theory is that low instruments draw people towards them. There's something mysterious and exciting, satisfying, about their sound.

As we're talking, another towering model walks in and I watch her sit down beside the yoga-stretcher and eat the other half of the Subway sandwich, kneeling down under the table so as no one will see her. 

Another day, another movie set. The sound system in this café just played 'Uncle Albert' by Paul McCartney and 'Tangled Up In Blue'. Like the Beaqtles in Liverpool and U2 in Dublin, it's impossible not to think of Bob Dylan while walking on 4th St, Bleecker Street and the village. red bricked houses with stoops like the Stones video for 'Faraway Eyes'. The sound system plays 'Mandolin Wind' by Rod Stewart and as the first bars of 'Freebird' start, I feel it's time to be movin' on. There's a show tonight on Allen Street and I'm off to collect my guitars. Friends old and new are phoning. Another model buys a take away coffee and is bent over in the café doorway, trying to light a cigarette underneath her perfectly-formed lapels. The wind howls up 1st Avenue, and I am stuck in one of those moments when I think this Troubadour Life is where it's at.

All I have to do is to get out of this café before the guitar solo starts.