Floppyshop 2/Floppyshop - 2.zip/Floppyshop - 2.iso/diskmags/0022-3.564/dmg-3413/news.txt/inter4.asc

Text File | 1989-04-05 | 18KB | 318 lines

                          ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
                          ~  INTERLEAVINGS 4  ~
                          ~                   ~
                          ~   by Tom Zunder   ~
                          ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

      Hello and welcome to Interleavings 4.  I have just finished  reading
ST  News 7.2 and have been tidying up my hard drive while I wait  for  the
files  that  I  couldn't  read on screen to  be  printed  by  the  Neodesk
spooler.  I like Neodesk 3; do you?

     This  issue  is very simply about the USA,  but before I go  I  would
like  people to know that I now have an Internet address.  I am on cix  as
[e-mail]  if  you  are  on JANET  then  that  would  be
[e-mail]

     I  would very much like to talk email to anyone on the Net,  I  guess
that Stefan must have a Net address but does anyone else?

     Anyway, on with the show....

     Amerika! Amerika!

     I had an opportunity to go to the USA on business recently and had  a
great time. I think I'll tell you about it!

     I flew into Logan Airport in Boston on the 28th March,  jetlagged  to
pieces  by the time gap and having to wait for my colleague to come  on  a
later flight.  Eventually he arrived and we went to collect our hire  car.
Whoa!  I've never driven on the wrong side of the road,  nor an automatic.
Lovely car,  about the size of a Cavalier but considered a 'standard' car.
Beautiful  black and red trim and a really weird gonging sound which  went
off  if you did anything wrong,  like leave the lights on or leave  it  in
'Drive' mode.  Anyhow,  how was I going to cope with the wrong side of the
road?

     Great!  I had no real problems,  just laterally inverted my mind  and
away   I  went,   through  the  evening  Boston  traffic  and   onto   the
Massachusetts  Turnpike.  "Hey,  they really do have huge billboards  over
the road.."  Off we went,  50 miles in a vertical snowstorm in New England
after  a  7  hour flight and a 16 hour day.  As I  cruised  along  in  the
outside  lane  at 55mph I suddenly remembered that this  was  the  country
with  silly  speed limits.  As I overtook a police car I decided  to  slow
down.  (I  later discovered that the federal 55mph limit is  being  eroded
away,  especially  in  big  empty states.)  We arrived  in  Worcester  and
crashed out in the hotel.  Well, I sent a search party out to find the bed
and then trekked to it.  The room was BIG!

    In  fact,  and I'm sure Gus would agree,  everything  is  BIG!  Forget
Texas,  even  crowded  old New England is built on the  premise  that  all
buildings  should  have enough land around it for any British  builder  to
put  up  a handy estate of mixed semis and  bungalows..  Anyhow,  to  move
along before you all die of boredom,  we spent the Sunday being taken on a
guided  tour of Maine and New Hampshire,  the states above  Massachusetts,
going to such strange places as York,  Portsmouth,  Chelmsford and so  on.
Good  God,  I  never  knew that the whole of New England  really  was  Old
England shuffled around!

     The  countryside was beautiful,  the roads open and capacious  enough
for the early Spring tourists.  Portsmouth is delightful,  a small version
of  ours,  but far more idyllic.  We ate there and then popped up to  York
which is a lovely holiday town hugging the curving coastal bays.  We stood
and   watched  the  Atlantic  and  admired  the  charming  (and   defunct)
lighthouse  before  visiting  the New Hampshire  state  liquor  store  and
dropping  off to sleep on the way back to the hotel.  It was a lovely  day
and I even got to go to a Toy Liquidators to buy toys at silly prices.


                              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
                              ~ Interlude ~
                              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

     You  know,  I  never realised how much  difference  state  government
makes in the USA.  New England is not that big,  and the states are  close
and  quite  small in comparison to such places as  Arizona  etc.  In  this
respect  you  could  compare the Tri State of  New  Hampshire,  Maine  and
Massachusetts as equivalent to Yorkshire,  Lancashire and 'The  Midlands'.
The difference is that each state controls so much more.  If you're in New
Hampshire  there  is  no  income  tax,   car  tax  is  half  of  that   in
Massachusetts,  the  state  sells liquor without tax and the land  tax  is
huge.  In Massachusetts,  the sales tax is different,  income tax is  high
and  your car plates are expensive.  Speed limits change not just on  road
type but as you move in and out of states.

     This  leads to the most interesting behaviour,  as the  news  showed.
People  falsify  where they live to  register  their  cars,  Massachusetts
watches  its citizens calculate whether the high land tax in NH is  offset
by the absence of income tax.  Every Friday night the drinkers drive  into
NH  to stock up on their booze.  Must say,  makes regional  planning  look
quite easy in comparison.


                            ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
                            ~ Interlude Ends ~
                            ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

     So  next  day we did some business,  after an 'eat all  you  can  for
$3.50' breakfast at the "Big Boy" diner.  You don't want to know all  that
so  we'll progress to the next bit which is the night we went  to  Boston.
Our  suppliers  bundled  us  into their lovely  company  van  and  off  we
pootled.  "Oh God, it's snarled up tonight!" they said as we moved through
a  queue  which  wouldn't even be considered a  delay  in  London.  I  was
beginning to think this country might not be too bad after all.

     After  an  evening  in  Boston  I  was  almost  sure.   The  city  is
delightful.  We started in the equivalent of Covent Garden,  a market  and
warehouse  area  which  has  been gentrified  and  filled  with  food  and
speciality shops.  I had my first hot fresh bagel with cream cheese. Oh my
god  let  me eat these forever!  We went to the  oldest  restaurant  still
operating  in the US,  the Union Oyster House.  It was actually  old!   In
fact it had been used as the paymaster's house for the Revolutionary  Army
as  well as housing a French king in exile.  The food was excellent but  I
didn't  like  it,  the mussels were too resilient and it put  me  off  the
lobster.

     We went to Cheers!  Actually we went to the Bull and Finch,  which is
the  pub which inspired Cheers and which you see in the  opening  credits.
It  is a lovely pub,  small and unlike the set used for the TV but  I  can
see how it inspired the series.  It's a tourist trap now,  but fortunately
wasn't too crowded.  I bought Ann a sweatshirt at an exhorbitant rate  and
left contented.  You know,  the street that it is on,  the shot you get in
the  opening  credits for Cheers,  is beautiful,  it has  functioning  gas
lamps,  wonderful Victorian houses and a park opposite.  It used to be run
down but now it's very desirable, rather like Boston, really.

     Well  that's the end of Boston,  and the end of New England for  now.
We got on the plane and with all the assurance of the bus service that  it
is, lifted off for Ohio...


                              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
                              ~ Interlude ~
                              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

     Well,  as  I'm flying over the States down to Ohio let me give you  a
brief  description  of  US  TV.  It really is  crap.  Not  just  that  the
programmes  are  all  full of Barbie  doll  stereotypes,  including  token
blacks,  but one can rarely watch a programme since most are riddled  with
adverts.  There is no pause on US TV before the ads,  so all of a sudden a
superficial  and  trite report on the Soviet Union is flicked into  an  ad
for pain killers.  There are ads both between and within programmes,  even
ads  before and after the theme tune,  so it's indigestion  pill,  opening
for prog, Coke adverts, ten minutes of prog, Ford adverts... and so on.

     All  this  is extremely unsettling and leaves one unable to  take  in
what one is watching,  no wonder the TV is crap,  no-one could take it in!
Actually  that  is what is difficult to ascertain.  My  hosts  claimed  to
watch no TV,  save Public Service Broadcasting (which is basically  Sesame
Street  followed by BBC2).  However when I asked them how they coped  with
the news being hacked to bits by ads,  they said they didn't notice,  they
simply  kept the newspaper on their laps and flipped their minds from  one
to the other! Maybe it's just a mindset that you have to get into.

     The other interesting thing is how different the states are.  PBS  in
Cincinatti  was  good  and slick,  in New York it was heavy  but  very  in
depth.  Cable is very popular,  and why?  Because there are no ads! Ironic
really since Sky is full of crap.  Then again one of the best stations  in
terms of entertainment and consistency was Fox,  and who owns Fox?  Rupert
Murdoch, that well known US citizen..

     So,  US TV veers from disjointed surreal ad ridden blips of image  to
studious and informative PBS to slick,  uninterrupted but expensive cable.
You pays your money and you takes your choice!  (If you've any money, that
is..)


                           ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
                           ~ End of Interlude ~
                           ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

     Anyhow  so I've flown to Cincinnati,  stopping over in another  clone
airport en route.  The Ohio valley is weird,  huge plains of empty glacier
smooth  farmland with huge snaking rivers,  many splitting into curls  and
waves  that have no purpose but sure are impressive when you  realise  how
high up you areand therefore how huge they really are.  Interestingly  the
Greater Cincinnati Airport is actually in Kentucky,  twelve miles from the
border with Ohio.  Kentucky is where the terminal moraines of the glaciers
clustered,producing  the  rolling hills so reminiscient of  South  England
and a great contrast with the plains we had just flown over,  ground  flat
by the glaciers.

     Cincinnatti  sits  on  the  Ohio,  over the  river  is  Covington  in
Kentucky,  as  you'd expect they merge right into each  other.  You  know,
this  hopping between states happens quite a lot.  Cincinnati is a  German
city,  and  as such the architecture is brick based and very  reminiscient
of Northern Germany.  Its industries were/are machine tools and beer, good
German specialities.  We were visiting a machine tool supplier, so I guess
we were here for the right economic reasons.

     Cincinnati  is dull,  not awful as I had been  told,  but  dull.  The
people  who live there say so,  but I guess it's quite okay,  and  if  you
were coming in from the small farming communities which make up  Ohio,  it
must  be  quite  fun.  Procter  and Gamble  have  their  corporate  HQ  in
Cincinnati.  They have a bloody big river on their doorstep,  and boy does
it  move!  We ate lunch in a riverboat moored to the side with  the  river
side  replaced  by glass and I've got to admit one really can see  what  a
major artery that river is.

     Anyhow,  that's all for Cincinnati,  the business was very productive
but you lot don't care about that so let's go to New York..

     Well,  New York was all and more that you would expect.  We flew into
La  Guardia  only a week or two after the crash there  and  straight  into
hustling  taxi  touts  and very clear warnings that  to  follow  them  was
bloody dangerous...  We sped away in one of the famous Yellow  Cabs,  over
and under the bridges and underpasses,  thru the neon night to  Manhattan.
We were staying on Central Park South,  at a hotel which had probably seen
better days but which was still salubrious,  until you got into the  room,
which was tiny!  (Actually some of the rooms were gorgeous,  I peeked into
them whilst they were being cleaned.)

     Not  wishing  to  miss  a moment in the city  that  never  sleeps  we
grabbed  the Fodor's guide I'd been reading on the flight and took a  taxi
to  the World Trade Centre,  hoping to view the city at night,  the  guide
said it stayed open until 11.  Oops!  It was wrong and they actually  shut
at 9 at that time of year,  so back into the taxi and away to Times Square
to  look at Broadway.  I had been briefed by a Canadian some weeks  before
that  this was the best place outside of Taiwan to buy cheap  electronics.
What  I  didn't know was that this was also the seediest  place  for  hard
core  porn outside of Sweden.  Okay so I'm not adverse to smut,  but  this
was  really spoiling the place.  I weaved my way down the street  haggling
over  computers,  video camcorders,  electronic organisers  and  virtually
everything else.  Each time I walked away,  and it's a good job too  since
every  time the price I reached fell as I became more streetwise and  used
to the style of haggling.

     New  York  electronics  salesmen are a  breed  apart.  They  show  no
interest whatsoever in helping you,  and tell you nothing at all about the
products they sell.  Everything is marked up with astronomical prices  and
they consult these to decipher what their baseline price is.  If only  you
could  work out what the figures meant,  but you can't so you're in  there
fighting  in the dark and then they've got you.  On the first night I  got
offered a camcorder at $800,  which seemed quite good.  On the last day  I
was  offered it at $499!  I think that the attitude works  well,  you  are
forced  to reveal how much you know and from that they know how much  they
can get away with.  It's hard work,  and if you ever go,  prepare yourself
first by reading the papers,  sussing the ads,  then spend a day comparing
prices.  You can buy anything there, PAL camcorders, TVs, cameras from all
manufacturers  at silly prices,  but there wasn't much computer  stuff  in
the ones I went into.

     Anyhow,  it  was now very late and pausing only to grab a pizza  from
an all-nighter we hit the road.

     Next  day we had to do New York,  we had one day in which  to  really
get  to  the place,  so off we went...  Taxi to the  Staten  Island  Ferry
Terminal,  bagels and coffee and then over the bay to Staten Island.  It's
the  cheapest tourist ride in New York.  It was great,  watching the  high
rise  skyline  of  Manhattan  receding as we then  passed  the  Statue  of
Liberty,  cruised  past the islands and bridges which link up  this  water
city.  We  then walked into the Terminal on Staten Island,  turned  around
and caught the ferry staright back.  What good value. It cost us 50 cents!

     The  World Trade Center was next,  it being but a short walk  through
the Lower Manhattan streets which are usually full of the financial  elite
of  the world.  Totally empty on Saturday,  and a nice walk later we  were
standing  at the lift entrance to the top of the World Trade  Center.  107
floors and 58 seconds later we were at the top and I've got to admit  that
the  views  were  so  impressive that I forgot  my  longstanding  fear  of
heights  and stood right up to edge of the glass,  peering down  into  the
streets  below.  The  only  thing more impressive  were  the  huge  prices
charged for souvenirs!

     At the bottom we went to a ticket clearance house and bought  tickets
for  "Return From The Forbidden Planet" for $20 each.  Try doing  that  in
London.  We  wandered  around the extensive shops in the basement  of  the
Trade Center,  which incongruously has a weekly farmers' market,  and then
decided to 'walk'.

     This  was the best decision we made all trip.  We walked  from  lower
Manhattan  to  the bottom of Central Park and we  realised  two  important
facts:

     Manhattan is not big & Manhattan is varied and alive.

     The  total walk was five miles and took us roughly two thirds of  the
way  across Manhattan.  We passed through Chinatown (like downtown  Taiwan
but  with black people as well),  through Soho (like Gucci land  with  all
the trendy fire escape iron frame buildings you see in films like  Ghost),
through  Greenwich  Village  (you know it really is lke  a  slice  of  the
sixties  mixed  with eighties alternative culture) and onto  Fifth  Avenue
(good God the first block was a load of cheap flats...).

     My time in New York was great,  I did much more and the  play/musical
was  excellent  but  I am very aware of the fact that  BTS  ("Between  the
Sheets" - a 'zine that Tom compiles for a group of ex-university  friends)
is  now  months  late and that the beans are burning  so  I'll  finish  my
incomplete  report on my USA trip with these quotes which partially  cover
some of the things I've mentioned and some I haven't;



     "We really have everything in common with America  nowadays,  except,
of course, language"

                                                             Oscar Wilde



     "In the United States there is more space where nobody is than  where
anybody is. That is what makes America what it is."


                                                          Gertrude Stein



     "I don't know much about Americanism,  but it's a damn good word with
which to carry an election."

                                                        Warren G Harding



                              ~~~~~eof~~~~~