I wanna be a part of it

Something about New York sets my heart a-flutter like nowhere else on earth. It could be the sheer number of people, the way that you have to keep moving or get swept under in the torrential pedestrian traffic. It could be the communities of every stripe crammed into every nook and cranny of the city. It could be that allure of raw power - that a handful of skyscrapers in the downtown area can make or break entire economies. It could simply be Central Park, or how art sits hand in glove with ordinary everyday life. It could be a million things. And it probably is.

New York breathes ambition. I’m not talking about the grasping, backstabbing ambition, that ugly kind that comes from greed and fear (although I know that’s here in spades). I’m talking ambition that comes from people wanting to “better themselves”, to follow their dreams, to think big and see it through. And that buzz that comes from putting all these people together.

But I don’t know if that’s just me projecting. New York is so ingrained into my cultural subconscious that I’m not sure where my imagination ends and reality begins.

Manhattan is also a temple of consumerism. Women skitter around in must-have heels made famous by gratuitous references in Sex And The City. Abercrombie and Fitch employ identical baby-faced male models to hold the doors open at their Fifth Avenue store. In this megacity of 12 million consumers, it’s a matter of survival to express your personality through the stuff you have.

I get the feeling that if it were allowed, advertising would expand to cover every spare bit of space. And it isn’t like the Henty Field Day ads on rural Victorian TV, constructed using little more than photos of tractors, a $50 budget and a creative application of Microsoft Powerpoint. It’s the frighteningly clever stuff that’s been focus-grouped to death and hints at a multi-million dollar budget behind the glossy and uncomplicated final product.

It’s designed to hook the professional earners with too little time and too much money. And it gets you down. On one train carriage I counted three ads that used the concept of “happiness” (and your desperate lack of it) to flog nighttime philosophy classes, long-term storage and (of course) whiter teeth.

My cousin, an Australian engineering graduate, has been living and working in New York for a year. During that time he’s swung from loving it to hating it and is now languishing somewhere between apathy and affection. He’s not quite sure how he ended up here - sharing his Greenwich Village apartment complex with celebrities, watching hard-won deals collapse during the financial crisis, working punishing hours week after week. I think he misses Australia’s somewhat slower pace, where the stakes aren’t as high and the games aren’t as crafty.

Last Friday was Grand Final Night, and we did what thousands of expats the world over do – go to a bar with hundreds of other expats, drink excessively, swear filthily and generally get their Aussie on.

Back home the importance of football was lost on me. The strongest allegiance I can claim is a disposition towards Geelong, inherited from my grandma. But Friday night was no night for fence-sitters.

The crowd, mostly St Kilda supporters, erupted at every goal and groaned at every point. The game was streamed over the internet and very poor quality: slow, pixilated and occasionally interrupted by Skype messages (such as “Oh hey boss! I didn’t know you were still up”). The fare was meat pies and slabs of Coopers Pale. The uniform was distinctly Australian: shorts, printed art t-shirts and thongs for men; long straight hair and denim skirts for women; and team colours everywhere.

And after it was all over and final insults exchanged with the screen, we went home and ate vegemite on toast, and then went to sleep just as the sun was rising. It was a surreal cultural experience; a preparatory taste-test three weeks out from my return home.

“Cheap”, or even better, “Free” have been my key words. So I got my jollies from walking a lot. In Brooklyn I saw a free production of The Tempest against the backdrop of decrepit Coney Island theme parks and the beach that European explorers landed on 400 years ago this year. It was Yom Kippur and there were Orthodox Jews reading their prayers out to sea and families dressed going out to dinner to celebrate. We caught the Museum of Modern Art’s Free Friday and jostled for space with the thousands of others.

I watched the Masters of the Universe on their lunch breaks at Wall Street, where things seem noticeably more subdued than they were in 2007. Counted the number of romantic dates underway in the rowboats in the Central Park lakes. Took the Staten Island Ferry to get out on the water and came straight back once I’d got there (I’d made the mistake before of thinking there was something on Staten Island worth knowing about). Caught up with Kate and her family for the third time and third location in a month, and said our final final goodbyes.

Everywhere I went in New York – and throughout the entire States – I saw people’s names attached to things. Private donations seem to make the world go round. The wildlife exhibits in the Natural History Museum are adorned with bronze plaques bearing the name of the patron in a font just as large as the name of the actual animal. The UC Berkeley campus is covered with sentimental, cringeworthy posters designed to get wealthy alumni reaching for their wallets.

Giving is next to godliness, and the virtue of the benefactor is celebrated loudly. It seems to me that this type of thing would never fly in Australia, since a) governments are expected to pay for projects in the public good; b) private donations often signal private interests, with strings attached; and c) this type of recognition would be seen as self-aggrandising ego-stroking and would be torn apart.

But perhaps this culture is worth cultivating. The USA has some incredibly cool shit because of it. Readers? Instead of celebrating great people by naming freeways after them, should we be celebrating the millionaires whose generosity got it made?

So I am leaving North America behind after nine hectic weeks. It’s been epic and amazing, rocky and blissfully calm, like it is now. Thanks to the generosity of family, friends and complete strangers, I’ve only paid for about a week’s worth of accommodation. I’ve got a glimpse at the trends Australia will be infatuated with in a year’s time, such as FREE wireless everywhere - in cafes, laundromats and chinese restaurants. And the rise to fame of the space-age Kindle, the electronic book from Amazon.

My love and hate relationship with the USA continues, but despite our differences our partings are always sad.

Next stop – Greece. Then Berlin. Then home. Two weeks left of Eliza Goes To Germany. Requests, faithful followers?