Dispatch from Manhattan, New York
Text, photographs and web design by Erik Gauger

Note: these are my second notes for Notes from the Road. New York City is my favorite American city. In this, my first visit, I am in Manhattan for work in the year 2000, unable to get any of my Los Angeleno coworkers to want to see the city.

Jeannette said, "You'll see lots of gold chains."

Martin said, "you'll run into some, ah...interesting people." Gloria said, "You won't believe those people." Deirdre said, "You're going to meet every Guido on the East Coast." I've always been wary of any city where all that lives are rats, pigeons, cockroaches and humans. On my Frontier Airlines flight into LaGuardia, the stewardesses introduced themselves as "Cinderella" and "Pocahontas."

Atlantic Seaboard Grand Central Station The year 2000, attending a limousine convention in Manhattan with a ship of fools, I eat bad food and hang out with weird Limousine executives. Sweet Southern Swamp Paddling through the sweet swampy south, I chat with locals about alligators and beer.