On Saturday i go to see my friend Martin in Williamsburg. Williamsburg consists of mainly two storey high, wodden houses and is very different from Manhattan. It used to be an area of the Polish and Italian community but has more become a living ground for young people.
Martin shows me Manhattan Ave, a place with a lot of Polish restaurants. We have late lunch in one of those restaurants. The place has a Hirschgeweih (antler) on the wall and paper stripes hanging from the ceiling. It’s nice and has a 70ies touch to it. I have delicious Pirogi. After 5 o’clock lunch I take a walk on Bedford Ave. I pass a big park and a Russian church and get more to the center of the fashionable area with a lot of bars and restaurants. Another nice thing about Williamsburg is the nice view you get of Manhattan.

On Thursday evening i go to the opening at Gagosian Gallery on Madison Ave. The gallery is huge (2 floor levels), very probably very expensive and to the same amount conservative. It looks like a huge dentist’s practice. I get told that there is another Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea.
The place has a terrace (with bamboo shrubs) looking out on Madison Ave, which is probably the most expensive street in NYC.
Coming out of an exhibition room I see Michael Stipe pass. He is quite small (around 170 cm) and skinny and he seems shy. He looks better and healthier in real life than on pictures of REM.

Last tuesday afternoon i walk into a bar on 6th ave (Ave of the Americas) in order to have a pee. On my way out I decide to have a coffee. Next to me on the bar is a bald headed man in his forties. He starts a conversation.

From the way he looks at me I easily can tell that he is into men. He tells me, that back in the Eighties, he used to work for an art gallery selling Chagall and Picasso.
Telling me this his looks go down on me quite often. Some of the art collectors would blow 100,000 us-d per month on buying art and he would earn his 10% share.

He keeps on talking but every now and then there is the occasional glance at my crotch. During our conversation things get heated up for him pretty much, and his eyes get now fixed more often on my private parts. I don’t answer that question what i would be up to in the evening and instead start to talk about my girlfriend.
Finally I say goodbye, shake his hand in a meant-to-be-official way and walk off the scene.

temperatures have dropped by 10° celsius (still can’t figure out fahrenheit). it will allegedely snow on the weekend. woaaaaa, i hate it.

a friend recommended a cuban restaurant to me and i have been there twice. it is a cheap place, u get chicken, pork, fried fish or rice with calamari. as a side dish u always get “arroz con frijoles”, rice with beans. there are 2 variants of each, either white or black beans and white or yellow rice. that makes 4 permutations. that’s not enough for going there everyday. i have to go looking for other places in midtown, too.

while the cockroaches have gained 50% in body size their death toll has also risen to 30. i get all of you, fuckers!

yesterday i visited katz’s delicatessen on houston street (lower east side). katz’s is a jewish self-service restaurant which is very original and 100% new york. the athmosphere is quite seventies, the place is big and loud, chaotic and great! u get huge pastrami sandwiches, sausages with kraut and the like. after waiting 15 minutes for a glass of beer, as they are run out of glasses, i have to force the bartender to give me a beer in a plastic cup. it takes some persuasion, but finally it works.
the walls are full of photographs of movie stars, mostly from the eighties. they show the boss of katz’s with celebrities like tony curtis. woody allen shot “when harry met sally” in this place.

last friday winter left for summer. temperatures jumped from around 0-5° celsius to 20°. there is not a single blossom on the trees but we already start to sweat as air humidity is high.

i learn through an email that a friend at the iscp does the artwork for a mike ladd show in a place called the kitchen. mike ladd is one of my absolute favourites in music. his music is a powerful hybrid of hip hop, spoken word, punkrock and jazz. i have seen him on stage in vienna twice. his first show which showcased his astonishing “welcome to the afterfuture” album was mind-blowing. the new show is about a conceptual band performed like an opera. i am looking very much forward to hearing more of his afrofuturistic sound.

finally i find a nice bar in midtown. after seeing a physical therapist my knee feels better. i can almost walk in a normal way and go to see a friend. he shows me a bar called the cutting room on 24th street. it is a spacious place with a nice bar. the room is more than 5 meters high. there is a mixed crowd of black and white people, it is the first place that i have been to, where this happens. in the back there is a concert hall. people queue up to get inside. as i go to the toilet i hear wild jazz music coming out of the hall. i like this place and especially the fact that black and white people mix.

i feel pain in my knees and limp for three days.
after getting better last week i catch a cold. i decide to stay home for two days. it’s sunny on saturday (like most of the times in new york) and i get out for a little walk. i walk towards the hudson river and get on the hudson highway. the lights turn red. i still want to cross, so i start running. suddenly sth snaps in my knee. i feel a very bad pain immediately. i make it to the other side of the freeway but i limp baaaaaadly. my right leg is rather stiff, i can barely walk. shock! i try to walk around a little on a hudson quai. it feels very bad.
i limp back home and call a friend. i am lucky that she had back problems recently and found out about a physical therapist who treated her. i put on some ice on my right knee. that helps a little.
on sunday my knee is badly swollen. i treat it with ice. my friend shows up and brings me breakfast and pills. i cannot get out of the house, it’s too painful to walk downstairs.
parallel to getting hold of that physical therapist on the phone i try to find out if i have travel insurance on my mastercard. apparently it does not cover visits to a doctor. i am afraid that i have to go back to austria to get treatment.
at the same time my girlfriend is having big trouble with getting a visa for the states.
on monday i feel a little better. at the same time my telephone at home decides to break down. that does not make things easier for communicating with my girlfriend in europe.

on friday night i go out a little. as i walk back towards home i pass by a cd shop which has its closing sale. it is 11 pm, i enter and have a look at the cds. there is some comtemporary music. most of the cds are on sale for US 2,99. as i skip through those cds a fortyish man enters the shop. he is very nervous and runs back and forth through the shop looking for rock music. he wants help in finding music. he yells around and finally says he has a very bad eyesight. he stresses out everybody around him. he finds out about the name of the shop clerk, who is a very nice guy called richard. richard! richard, this and that…
that man finally gets hold of a portable cd player which is on the counter in order to listen to the cds. i queue up and after some time ask him if i can listen to music.
he agrees. after listening to cds for 5 minutes he comes up again and wants me to hand over the headphones and the cd player. i tell him that i still want to go on. he lets me do that and finds out that he can listen to music on the shop’s soundsystem. thanks god he leaves me in peace.
another man enters the shop with a big freaky fur hat. he takes of his coat and his hat. i discover that he is bald and a bit crosseyed. he is dressed completely in leather, he wears tight leather trousers and a leather jacket, no t-shirt. also this guy has a bad eyesight. he brings his face very close to the cds in the rack sticks out his leather ass to the public.
around his waist there is a band where usually the undertrousers show (nowadays). i can very well imagine that he is naked in his paints. he seems to be in his late forties.