If you’re lucky enough to strike a native Bronx or Brooklyn resident as we did a couple of times, or an older Lower East Side resident for instance, you’ll  have the joy of hearing those voices you are so familiar with from the screen in real, loud, glorious life – complete with witty asides, sayings and speech patterns you thought were only spoken in movies or on television. Of course the African American dialect is practically ubiquitous on our screens – but it is still a shock to hear the N word used with such abandon and to hear large-bottomed black women squeal and flap their hands and exclaim in that way the guests on Oprah do.

We sometimes wondered whether people were for real, or actors or comedians practising a character or honing their standup routine.

Possibly the low point of my trip was being accosted on the street in Harlem by a street stall vendor as follows

‘Hello big mumma’, looking down, ‘lordy, that’s a faaahn pair you got there’. Ahem!

Subway conversation one day – please insert broad Brooklyn/Italian accent and imagine large, red faced gentleman aged about 50, excuse my attempt at phonetic writing!

“Where yas from”

Australia

“Awstraalyaa … my brudder lives in England, in Yawk, ya know it?’

“I do, but we’re from Australia”

“He moved there twenny years ago, married an English girl, sez he’s happy.. who’m I to question? Its cold there, snows a lot, he drinks a lotta beer, got kids”

“Where are you from?” (giving up on the finer points of geography)

“Brooklyn, born here, parents came from Italy”

“You have any children?”

“Nah, my wife, she’s too selfish .. shoulda married an English girl like my brudda, all she does is nuttin – spends money has her hair done, and her nails always havin her nails done, take me out to dinner she sez, take me here take me there. Shoulda divorced her and gotta wife from Italy, a proper Italian, knows how to cook and clean, wantsa have kids, my mother – she says – ‘why that woman no give you kids, shesa no good’…….

(well you kind of get the drift – it went on for a few subway stops like that, a kind of stream of consciousness anti-wife rant, I could feel Oscar beside me shaking with laughter)

“Well, nice meeting you, have a great day”

“Yeah, enjoy Noo Yawk, its the best city in the world, especially Brooklyn. When ya goin back?””

“2 weeks”

“I’m gonna visit my brudder soon, might run into yas”

In fact, the tourist in NY, especially one of a certain age such as myself, will often find themselves feeling as if they are an extra or bit player in a movie or TV show.  Apart from the familiar buildings with their fire escapes, the Brooklyn or Harlem brownstones with the stoops,the skylines and streetscapes – several times a day situations and people, voices and sounds will bring a weird sense of deja vu, or a moment of disbelief that such things exist FOR REAL!

The famous ‘Cage’ or West 4th Street basketball courts are instantly recognisable from ads and movies, I found the players and regulars super-friendly and spent some time there taking photos and shooting the breeze. The banter, shit talking and arguing is easily as entertaining as the basketball action and much funnier.

The building on the left is actually the lower half of the East Village building from the front of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Physical Graffiti’ album. Sorry I didn’t photograph it properly, not sure why! Patti Smith’s shop was a few doors down.

“When Harry Met Sally” orgasm location – and remaining  part of old Lower East Side NY (more to come later on this)

Please excuse the terrible image quality! On our last night, we ate at John’s Pizza on Bleeker St in The Village – an institution since 1929. You’d expect, well we did anyway, that an ‘institution’ would be just for tourists and out of towners. But it provided us with our last ‘I’m in a movie’ moment when the large round table beside us was occupied by a smartly dressed group of elderly (and one young) regulars. The buzz of conversation from the table was SO New York, they were talking baseball, sharing pizza, teasing eachother and just generally all talking loudly  and eating while waving their arms around a lot.

Of course I couldn’t resist it and had to have a chat, it turns out they meet there every month and all live, or have lived locally – within a few streets, they ranged in age from 88 to 45.

As they posed for their photo – I said, ‘I feel like I’m in a Woody Allen movie’, to which one replied, in ‘that’ classic De Niro/Pacino accent ‘No sweetheart, you’re in a Scorsese movie – we’re Italian!’, his tablemates fell about laughing and one said ‘he should know, we call him the Don’, just joking, I think.

Speaking of Pacino – a photo on the wall of John’s Pizza reminded me of how incredibly handsome he was as a young man, he still is of course, but sadly my wish for a NY Pacino or De Niro sighting remained unfulfilled.