New York City: Mind the gap

Good Weekend, Fairfax Media

19 November 2016

Familial bonding in the Big Apple.

Central Park was designed as a "stylish" place for a stroll, a ride or a drive, as New York City pushed north in the mid-19th century from its origins in lower Manhattan. But on this clear mid-February day, the park, lying deep in snow, is hushed and still and quite empty. The only thing moving through the frozen landscape is a busy squirrel beneath a bare elm. 

I point this out to Carla, my daughter, who is trudging behind me. "That's nice, Dad," she says, from the depths of her hooded jacket. "But can we go somewhere warm and sit down? I'm cold and we've been walking … how long?" Turning to her – I'm striding a good metre ahead, like a bossy tour guide – I realise with a jolt that this father-daughter adventure might require more subtlety than I thought. I'll need to curb my own enthusiasms.

As a child, I travelled to Europe with peripatetic parents, and by my early 20s I'd done budget Asia. New York was the first city I visited with a solid job behind me, and a solid salary. There was no need to hug the city's fringes on a mean budget; I could dive right in. I couldn't think of a better place to take my daughter to celebrate her 21st birthday. But it hadn't occurred to me that my ideal Manhattan might not be hers.

"One more art gallery," I urge. "The Met, just beyond the trees up there, is a must." Once inside, Carla seems revived by the warmth and the hubbub of so many voices so variously accented. After a speed tour around some of my favourite things, we grab a bite at the cafeteria and she voices a perfectly plausible aesthetic philosophy. 

"I don't really like art that needs a lot of explanation," she says. "I think I'm pretty good at reading the emotion in a painting. In a big museum, it's kind of like the painting finds me. It's usually the portraits that do it." She didn't want a lecture, in other words – she wanted to feel a direct connection to the work. "One more museum?" I plead. "Just one."

She nods dutifully enough but when she goes on to explain that the art she likes least is "a yellow line on a red background and everyone standing around gawking", I resolve to give MoMA and the Guggenheim a miss.

That night we head to dinner at a little trattoria in the West Village, and just as we sit down I spy John Malkovich stepping in from the cold. "John Malko … which?" asks Carla, chuffed at her joke. She knows the name, but it doesn't mean a whole lot to her.

A moment later Carla spots a stubbled twentysomething singer who means nothing to me, and for a good half hour we sit there, divided by time, age and culture. A chat about the days ahead brightens the mood.

Tomorrow will start with a Sex and the City tour, followed by lunch in SoHo and a spot of shopping. If all goes to plan, sunset will find us atop 30 Rockefeller Plaza, aka 30 Rock, in Midtown, with the city lights a constellation beneath us. Breakfast next day begins with a confession "I've never been a huge fan of Sex and the City," I say. "That's okay, Dad," my daughter offers. "Neither have I." We sit together on the tour bus in shared incomprehension, thankful for the ride around the city even if we're not really getting the guide's constant patter about when Samantha did what with whom.

When we leave the tour in SoHo, I let Carla explore the shops and pick her up, not without embarrassment, from Victoria's Secret on Broadway. When I open the door and step into the frigid air, I crash into two black men the size of small mountains. One tugs at the other's sleeve and as they turn apologetically, he says, "Don't be messin' with that dude. He's an O.G." "What the …?" asks his friend. "O.G. Ol' gangsta."

Later that night, over cocktails in Bar SixtyFive atop 30 Rockefeller Plaza, Carla rotates that story. "My father the old gangsta," she laughs as she texts some friends. "So cool!" I tell Carla how I came here to 30 Rock's 65th floor when only a few years older than her.

It was high summer and the sunset lingered in the dusty sky while I listened to jazz and spoke with a colleague about what was and what might be. "It felt like the centre of the world," I recall. "Do you feel the same?"

"Not so much at street level," Carla says. "You have to get above the city to appreciate it. Up here, yes. It's amazing! I want to come back. Maybe work here one day." "Go girl!" is all I can say.

In the coming days I take my daughter to Sylvia's soul-food restaurant in Harlem, the Meatpacking District, and Carnegie Deli for a towering Reuben sandwich that defeats us both. On our last day I suggest we visit the World Trade Center site and the 9/11 museum, if only to confront the memory of that darkest of days and the marvel of the recovery, even if it might only ever be partial.

“I'm sorry Dad," she sighs. "That's about the least fun thing I can think of doing on my first trip to New York." I could get fatherly, and insist. But I buy her a pair of boots instead.

That night the temperature plunges to 18 below. Our breath, frosted into solid plumes, is pulled sideways by the wind as we stand outside the hotel waiting an age for a cab. It's as if time itself is frozen. We venture out to an all-night bar, where we meet some good people. Carla introduces me as "my father the old gangsta" and we talk deep into the night before leaving, sleepless in honour of the city that never sleeps, for the long flight home.

Five nights in New York and my daughter, it occurs to me somewhere over the Pacific, knows a little bit more about where I've come from. I think I know a little bit about where she's heading. *