AMERICAS NEWS

TUPNews recently visited the Bowery, in America’s New York, to walk around, drink beer and watch soccer.

This was back in May, in fact, and the soccer game in question was the Champions’ League final between Liverpool FC and AC Milan. I dropped into my firm’s office on Lafayette Street at around noon to make arrangements with a Scouse-supporting expat colleague. Kick off was 2.45pm Eastern Standard Time; although my hangover from the previous day’s long, long lunch was imploring me to stay in the air-conditioned office and fuck about on the internet, my more adventurous spirit prevailed. After all, I was on vacation!

The Bowery is famous both as a notoriously shitty area and also (and relatedly) as the birthplace of New York punk rock; in particular, the home of the now-defunct Country, Bluegrass and Blues club (CBGB’s). Impoverished artists and musicians including Television, Talking Heads, Ramones and Blondie were drawn to the area’s cheap rents and bohemian ethos in the late 1970s, spawning a music and fashion scene which, whilst counter-cultural at the time, was revived and brought into the mainstream during the first half of this decade with remarkable success. As such, the Bowery is a newly relevant site of historical interest, the wellspring of every 2005 teenager’s stripy shirt and Converse All-Stars.

Post-Guiliani, the Bowery is pleasantly down-at-heel rather than outright scummy. Large parts of it, particularly the southern half, have been absorbed into New York’s Chinatown. Much larger than the London equivalent, this Chinatown seems to make even less concession to the non-Chinese speaker than central Hong Kong. Commerce is driven largely by restaurants and food centres, but also by mobile telephone vendors and massage parlours.



The real treat was up the street, however. Block after block of the northern half of the Bowery is made up by a series of ridiculously specific wholesale stores. For example, an entire massive store that just sells cash registers. Next to one that just sells scales for kitchens. Next to one that sells kitchen equipment, but only for pizzerias. Bizarre, and genius.



America generally dries me out, New York included, just through its sheer try-hard contrivance. Authenticity, that much-maligned anchor of sanity, is thin on the ground over there. Everything is marketed to the point where nothing carries the charm of a surprise: once the initial African/snow giddiness of witnessing a truly, impressively consumerist society in action (free refills!) subsides, a craving for unassuming reality, for texture, kicks in. It is there, but you have to look a little harder for it than in most places. But here, down some obscure corridor of American capitalism, I was surprised, and charmed.




I arrived at the appointed bar – Irish, and profoundly Liverpool-supporting – a little early, in order to secure a seat. Before my colleague arrived, I fell into conversation with some American college students, who played soccer locally and followed the European leagues. We discussed Beckham and the US soccer scene; I filled them in on some EPL info. My colleague arrived and the game started. The bar was now packed, roughly half American and half Brit. I was struck immediately by the different modes adopted by spectators on the other side of the pond. The Englishman watches an important football match in near silence, furrowing his brow and letting out occasional grunts of approval or frustration (take any group of friends watching a match: invariably it will be the least knowledgeable who talks the most.). He flatly refuses to state the obvious, such as shouting for offside or loudly denouncing unsportsmanlike conduct; at the most, he will growl “Ref…” under his breath. Instead, he will occasionally make insightful comments in a low voice to his companions, such as “they need to use the width”, or, “Player X looks tired.” This is because he is saving up his emotional energy for goal celebrations and chants.

The American, by contrast, plays a more up-tempo game, responding immediately and vociferously to the events of the match with a constant stream of analysis and invective – and the more knowledgeable the fan, the more vibrant the chatter. I sat wedged between my silent and increasingly sullen colleague and an enthusiastic Yank, enjoying the contrast.

By the end of the game I was blind drunk, and elected to spend another night in New York. The city is starting to grow on me.