Across the great divide

WELL, that’s easy for Tom Waits or Bruce Springsteen to say.

But for the visitor to these parts, getting from A in Manhattan to B in New Jersey can be a little more complicated.

We’ve criss-crossed the Hudson a few times this week and all has gone smoothly but I can never make the journey from the Empire State to the Garden State without suffering a traumatic flashback to our maiden voyage during the 1994 World Cup.

Myself, Con Houlihan and two other Irish Press colleagues had just flown in to JFK en route to the Irish team base in a place by the name of Parsippany in New Jersey. The route looked pretty straightforward on the map, as these things always tend to do — I mean, we’re talking neighbouring states, after all — so we simply hailed a yellow cab in downtown Manhattan and struck a deal.

The driver, a gentle fellow of Indian extraction, seemed well up for it, especially when we agreed on a flat fare of a hundred bucks for the trip. So piling our luggage in the boot, off we went in a spirit of high adventure, the iconic Manhattan skyline receding behind us, the car loud with the jolly banter of the Burgh Quay Four, as Mr Houlihan quickly dubbed us.

Three hours later we were driving up the side of a mountain, hopelessly, fantastically lost. We had already moved through moods of good-humour, mounting concern and flat-out hysteria, and had now reached that point where exhausting jet-lag and black depression had combined to suffuse the hot, stuffy cab with the silence of the grave.

To our left, a rock face towered above us, to our right a valley fell away sharply below, as we continued to climb higher and higher, the profusely-sweating driver desperately swinging the steering wheel as he negotiated one hairpin bend after another.

And then, suddenly, we came upon a sign. It was a big sign, the letters printed in black on yellow, and I’ll never forget it. It read simply: “WARNING: BEARS”.

It was at this point, that the distinctive Kerry brogue of Con Houlihan was heard from the back of the cab.

“I smell Canada,” he said.

We immediately instructed the driver to take the next available exit, no matter where it took us, for fear we would succumb to altitude sickness, if the damn bears didn’t get us first. The long descent into the valley brought us through leafy, small town, white picket fence America, much to the astonishment of various good citizens out mowing their lawns, who were suddenly confronted by the sight of a dusty New York yellow cab pulling up at the curb, the faces of four dehydrated and weeping Irish hacks pressed against the window, as our driver — who chose just this moment to reveal that he’d never actually been out of Manhattan before — frantically sought directions for Parsippany, a place we now had good reason to believe didn’t exist at all.

But it did — and still does, I presume, although I have no intention of ever going back there to prove it — and somehow we eventually found it. Our driver was so far from home at this point — and I mean New York, not India — that we encouraged him to book in with us for a much-needed holiday. But, rewarded with a hefty tip for his troubles, he opted to head back east to the bosom of his concerned family and, after a round of hugs and farewell speeches, such as might be shared by war veterans leaving the front, that was the last we ever saw of him.

A few hours later we heard the shocking news on the TV that a New York yellow cab had crashed on a local mountain road and that the poor driver, shackled by his seat-belt, had been savaged to death by a rogue grizzly.

Oh, alright, I made that last bit up. Blame it on too much exposure this week to the New York Post, a prince of tabloids and one of the countless reasons why every trip to the Big Apple is such an unadulterated buzz.

There’s nothing quite like breakfast in America in a bustling midtown diner, with bacon, eggs over easy, orange juice, toast, a big pot of coffee and the Post propped up on the counter for added stimulation and hoots.

The paper, which does lurid with some style, specialises in a brand of hard-boiled Noo Yawk tabloidese which takes no prisoners, whether ordinary Joe or high-profile celebrity. This week, you could find artist Damien Hirst referred to as the “controversial shark-pickler”, Paris Hilton called a “narcissistic knucklehead”, local celeb Joey Buttafuoco labelled a “a lumpy Lothario” and a New York family who got in a brawl down in Disneyland dubbed “Long Island lunkheads.”

What you won’t find in the Post is a whole lot of coverage of “sawker”. While it would be something of an understatement to say that Ireland’s games here and in Boston have failed to capture the public imagination, the committed local fan will struggle even to find a few paragraphs about the MLS stashed away in sports page after sports page devoted to the troubles of the Yankees and the rise of the Mets.

But diligent searching on Sunday did eventually uncover a report on New York Red Bulls’ game against Columbus Crew; a 4-0 win which featured a goal by Clint Mathis who, in the words of the reporter, “elevated to head home a flicked-on ball for a 2-0 cushion.” The intervention of the elevator man was clearly welcome since the piece also informed us that the Red Bulls, “mired in a three-game winless streak”, had been facing “a gut-check” against Columbus.

Which leaves only one question: do Red Bulls give you wingers? And a word to David Beckham: it’s football, buddy, but not as you know it.