First night in New York can only be described as “living the dream”.
We had arrived late-ish into the city around 9pm, luckily Nik had pre-arranged through a friend of his and Ash’s, Erin, to crash at her place. We had hoped we could stay there for the whole 5 days or so we were in the city.
One lesson we just didn’t seem to learn all throughout the US was to ask people for their apartment number. Most of the people we stayed with lives in an apartment and most of them never tell you what apartment, just the number on the street. Tonight was no exception.
So. We arrive at an apartment in a dodgy part of Brooklyn, we just buzz a random number and then try to describe Erin to the bloke on the other end, he recognises her, buzzes us in and tells us to head to the third floor.
Nik had been showing me the emails between him and Erin so I was confident that it was all good, however, upon knocking on her flat door we learn 3 things. 1 – Erins flatmates have NO idea that we are staying there. 2 – Erin left for Berlin that morning. 3 – The entire apartment is being fumigated for Bedbugs that night and everybody in the building is currently vacating.
Such a ridiculous situation I burst out laughing. Even if we convinced Erin’s flatmates that we were kosher and could stay the night, we would all die of a gasing anyway.
I decide the best idea is to drop our gear off at the venue we are playing the next night so we can empty the car out and to sleep in the car again. First night in NYC and we are sleeping in the car, though I made sure I parked outside a sweet spot just off Central Park, not Harlem.
Me and Nik had also sent off a couple of desperate emails to anyone we knew in NYC to see if we could wrangle some last minute accom over the next few days.
Sally had flown in from Canada where she had just been to the Sasquatch festival with Heather. Next day, me and Sal had a little classic tourist tour of NYC checking out Wall Street and the oldest part of the city, Ground Zero, taking heaps of rides on the subway and eating some decent Pizza…ya know, what you do when you check out NYC. Was classic timing, I had pretty much the most stressful days of my life ahead of me, trying to sell the car, sell all our backline, organise 4 days of accom in NYC, organise our alibis to enter the UK, send merch to Europe, keep booking some more UK/Europe shows, book our ferry sailings for UK-Europe, organise getting a car in the UK…all the while trying to spend some time with Sally as I wouldn’t be seeing her for another 6 months! AND trying to experience some of NYC.
I spent most of my days in NYC on the internet, basically the only thing that kept me sane was the fact that internet at The Cakeshop was free and The Cakeshop is AWESOME! It’s like the best possible cuba street café, playing amazing music, I heard more kiwi flying nun sounds over those couple of days then I’ve heard in my life, the venue is below and that is where Over the Atlantic played that night.
The show was sweet. We were kinda freaking out cause it was organised last minute only like 2 weeks out and a support was only booked a couple of days before, there ended up being a really decent amount of people at the show and it went well, not a highlight of the tour, but def better then we thought it would be.
Nik had heard back from his friend Martin, who I would later find out was actually a friend of mine and Sally’s also, but from a completely different context to Nik’s. Crazy small World. The boys went and stayed at his place while me and Sally went and slept in the Car. Martin has an absolutely amazing studio apartment and we all ended up staying there the next night. To get to his house you have to go up a few flights of stairs and then walk across the roofs of three different houses. His studio is on top of the roof and is as classic a New York artists loft studio apartment as you can imagine.
The path to Martins House
