I’m struggling to remember much of what I did in New York on the Saturday after Thanksgiving.
I know I spent much of the Friday with Mara at the Lincoln Center and then about the place:
I probabaly spent some time on the Saturday clearing up the W77th Street apartment and preparing to leave.
I also sense, from the photos, that I took another long walk at some point quite early in the day:
I am prety sure I went on a bit of a shopping spree downtown that day too. I had been told about post-Thanksgiving sales and but was also was keen to buy some second hand records of the kind I might not find in England so easily.
I did buy some second hand records, although I recall thinking that the selction in Notting Hill Gate beat anything I could find in New York in most departments.
I do recall buying a copy of Mish Mosh by Mickey Katz and his Kosher Jammers for my dad, who was a bit of a fan. I have inherited that record back since, so have it in my collection now. Below is a sample some other fan has kindly uploaded to YouTube:
But Mickey Katz and his Kosher Jammers was not the soundtrack of my visit to New York in late 1989…
…no no no. The song that was absolutely stuck in my head, playing regularly while I was in New York, was Pump Up The Jam by Technotronic:
I bought a copy of that single while I was in New York and recall talking to my half-Belgian friend/colleague Daniel Scordel about the record soon after my return to London. I described it as a quintessentially New York sound, to which Daniel replied:
Actually I think that group is Belgian. Actually that’s a quintessentially “Europeans trying to sound like New York” sound.
I thought Daniel was joking, but Mr Google informs me that Daniel was correct. The lipsynching model/dancer is Congolese, just to add to the geographical confusion.
Still a good record and still quintessentially MY visit to New York.
I think the dinner with Becca Simmons might have been that Saturday evening, but perhaps I had dinner with her before Thanksgiving weekend. She might remember.
Alternatively, this might have been the evening that I attempted to follow American football in a bar/diner, based on Bob Blake’s tutorial earlier in my stay, discovering that I hadn’t really taken much in from Bob’s instruction.
The above twwo paragraphs make more sense if you have read Part One of my New York trip: