What's in a name?

For those, like me, of a certain age, it’s not possible to walk around the streets in Greenwich Village and not hear an echo from the boot heels of Bob Dylan. It’s where he burst upon the scene, seemingly from nowhere, back in the early sixties. MacDougal Street, Washington Square, 4th Street, Café Wha?: all places that hold traces of the past within the deep substance of their being, which, with a little imagination, can transcend times passing and sweep up a dreamer to carry him willingly back to those far off days.

I'm ready to go anywhere, I'm ready for to fade
Into my own parade, cast your dancing spell my way,
I promise to go under it.

Chinese men on bicycles. That’s another thing. Oriental men of all ages, riding around, all over the city. With heavy chains clanking and dangling from the handlebars for locking up and plastic bags over the saddle for the rain. Where are they all going, these Chinese pedal pushers? And why? One day, will they all come together, united in one great cycling cause, first to take Manhattan, then to take Beijing. The answer, my friend, is blowing in the east wind.

The colour of the streets in Manhattan is yellow. Yellow cabs. In their thousands. They duck, they dive, they swoop, they soar. They drive on their horns. They take hair-raising chances. But I’ve never seen a cab hit another vehicle. I know by the scrapes and gouges this sometimes happens. I guess I’ve been lucky. So far. If you don’t count the driver I had to keep awake on the drive to JFK one time. No, two times. But hey, who’s counting? Ride your luck, I say.

In New York, people walk. Thousands every day pound the sidewalks. Before I ever visited the city, it’s something I knew from watching movies. Cary Grant joining the lunchtime masses as he left his Madison Avenue office in ‘North By Northwest’. Jack Lemmon pursuing Shirley MacLaine through the revolving doors of their workplace in ‘The Apartment’. Woody Allen strolling home from a movie with Diane Keaton in ‘Annie Hall’. Tony Curtis struggling to keep pace with Burt Lancaster in ‘The Sweet Smell of Success’. Dustin Hoffman limping across the street in ‘Midnight Cowboy’, pounding the hood of a cab and yelling, ‘I’m walkin’ here’. I now know what he meant. It’s what people do in New York City.

Hotel rooms in New York City can be divided in many ways. But mainly by two. Those that face onto the street. And those that face the rear. To the front is noisy. To the rear is quiet. How noisy and how quiet depends on the location and the quality of the double-glazing.

On my latest trip, with the hotel being located in the middle of a block, my room at the rear was as far from a street as it’s possible to get on a 12th floor in Manhattan. It was quiet. Some might say eerily quiet. Only once did the late-night wail of a siren echo its way into my dreams. That and the rattle and hum of the air-conditioning unit was all there was to disturb the nocturnal peace.

New York is a hard town, built on solid rock. At first from wood, then iron and brick and now of steel and concrete. I speak of the isle of Manhattan, forced ever skywards through lack of space, with its neighbouring boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx and Staten Island spreading out rather than up. But even on Manhattan, all is not so high. In the spaces between the lofty towers of mid-town and the financial district and north of 59th Street, things come back down, closer to the street. And it’s here, on and under the streets, that the living city can be seen and felt, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

At ground level and below, New York is a nuts and bolts kind of place, the infrastructure made to function rather than please. This is best demonstrated by the Subway system. Ageing, noisy, with no aesthetic frills or frippery, it rattles on, carrying the city's millions to work, home and play every hour of every day, its human cargo supplying the energy and endeavour that keeps this city alive and kicking.

Unlike the Underground, buried deep in London clay, the Subway is a mere flight of steps below ground. The tracks are built directly below the grid of streets and avenues above, so avoiding the deep foundations of the buildings and the bedrock below. Walking around the city the clattering trains can be heard through the ventilation grids in the sidewalks, preceded by a rush of air. This never put to more sensuous use than by Marilyn Monroe in ‘The Seven Year Itch’.

The stations are a forest of iron girders and crossbeams, riveted together without the added finesse of cladding. The walls are tiled. Nothing fancy. Plain white when first done, but white no more. The booking-halls are cramped and dingy, but posses a kind of shabby charm that only comes with years of use, far preferable to the soulless, quick-fix makeovers carried out in the name of progress that have destroyed many a cherished environment in towns and cities around the world.

There are four tracks. The two on the outside for local stopping trains, one in each direction, with the two inside reserved for express trains with limited stops. This helps relieve congestion and speeds things up for those in a hurry. But it pays to stay alert if one is to avoid being rocketed past the required stop for twenty blocks or more on an express train. And knowing uptown from downtown is essential. As the song goes, ‘The Bronx is up and the Bowery’s down’: a little familiarisation with the Subway map early on can save a lot of wasted time later.

The platforms are hot and stuffy, especially in the stifling humidity of the summer months. But the trains, though dented and care-worn, are air-conditioned and mercifully cool. Sleek and pretty it ain’t, but all-in-all the Subway gets on with the job and gets it done. The citizens in this town would stand for nothing less and riding it is the best way to observe the people of the city up close, remembering, of course, to avoid direct eye contact for too long. 'Cos, come on, dis is Noo Yawk we're talkin' aboud here.

Had I known that a box of Faber Castell Mongol 482 Series pencils I may have bought in 1990 were 'very rare' and now worth £500,000, I would never have sharpened them. Had I purchased said pencils they would now be no more than stubs, so I’m not even going to bother to look in the drawer.

The inflated price put on a very particular box of pencils has come, surprise, surprise, from old money bags himself, Damien Hirst. They were part of Hirts’s installation ‘Pharmacy’. A part, that is, until 17-year-old graffiti artist Cartrain walked into Tate Britain and nicked them. Cartrain had been involved in a feud with Hirst since he used an image of the millionaire artist’s diamond encrusted skull to create collages that were put up for sale on an art website. Legal threats from Hirst’s lawyers resulted in the withdrawal of the artworks from the on-line gallery, which surrendered the pieces to the artist with a verbal apology.

On a visit to the Tate, Cartrain was presented with a golden opportunity for revenge by ‘borrowing’ the pencils. He then created a ‘wanted’–style poster that demanded the return of his artworks from Hirst. Failure to comply would be met with a threat to sharpen the pencils. But rather than getting his work back, Cartrain received a visit from Scotland Yard’s art and antiques squad and was arrested.

By now the lad should have learned that, where money is concerned, it’s not advisable to mix it with Mr Hirst. The unsharpened £500,000 pencils are to be returned to the replica pharmacy, which is no longer on public display. But what, I wonder, was the tin of HBs doing on a chemist’s shop shelves to start with? If I wanted pencils I’d go to WHSmiths, not Boots. It could be that all that wealth has blunted Hirst’s recollections of the finer points of shopping, which allegedly, like his art, he conceives and then employs others to do for him.

Photo: Jill Furmanovsky

Charlie Watts once said, ‘I hate leaving home. I love what I do, but I'd love to go home every night.’ Last night, after playing drums for an evening of boogie-woogie at the Purcell Room on London’s Southbank, I imagine Charlie got home to his own bed. He certainly had the appearance of a man doing what he loved to do.

Charlie also once observed that being in The Stones was twenty years of playing and twenty years hanging about – or words to that effect. If yesterday’s performance without Mick, Keith and Ronnie counted as the latter, then it’s not all been time wasted.

Only a week before I take to the air. It’s been a while but the call of the open road has been there in the background for some time. Unable to resist any longer a trip has been planned and the highways and byways of Arizona and New Mexico await the sound of my wheels.

Beginning with three nights in New York, it’s then down to Phoenix from where I’ll complete a round trip, taking in central New Mexico, a corner of Texas, southern and western Arizona. Seven days to go and counting. Get that breakfast coffee on the stove Ruby.