This city – you know, that big one called New York? It’s an overwhelming, energetic, busy mess. At the best of times I find it hard to slow down long enough to think. Yet somehow, in the middle of that big mess of skyscrapers, old buildings, cars, bikes, buses, trains, and people, there is this stretch of garden that can make you forget it all. It’s a big, dirty city this place they call New York and, yeah, sometimes I think that’s all it is. But it only took an afternoon in central park for me to finally appreciate this big city because I’ve finally found a place to rest.

People say that Central Park is the life blood of New York City. Once you’re in the park the sounds of the city fade into the distance and the sights and sounds of the park life overcome you. You begin to remember emotions you’d forgotten about and clarity returns to your thoughts. There is no rushing here, no discount deal, no short cut, just an escape and a space to relax and think.

I saw just about every kind of person imaginable in the park. Lovers, mothers, friends, tourists. I saw dogs, birds, and squirrels. Everyone I saw was happy and smiling. I sat down and stopped everything for 5 seconds to clear my head (Something that hasn’t happened often for me here in this big city). I ended up sitting for almost 2 hours and while I breathed in fresh air I remembered emotions I’d forgotten and thought about things clearly that had been pushed to the back of my mind from the rush of the city.

I love Central Park and I love that in the middle of this huge city there is a place so peaceful. There’s something magical about it.

Feeling down, feeling gray,
Feeling up, and feeling gay.
Because your ship is passing you by.
Want to laugh, want to cry,
Want to live, and want to fly.
Feeling nothing is there when you sigh.
Find a place, find a song,
Find a way, find a wrong,
Find a dream that keeps you alive.
Search your heart, search your mind,
Search your soul, search mankind
For a meaning that isn’t maligned.
Feel the sun, smell the rain,
Feel the joy feel the pain,
Sense the seasons, linking hands through each dawn.
Hear the birds, hear the leaves,
Hear the crickets and bees,
Touch the mist in the magic it weaves.
Through winter, through spring,
Through summer, through fall,
The seasons turn round and around.
Through melting snows, through greening grass,
Through meadows of blooms that abound,
Until the leaves start to fall to the ground.
Another year follows another year past,
And the buildings stand tall all around.
Damping the bustle and hum of the city sound,
Which fulfills the dreams of a few,
Except for those who enter this place,
And experience a self cleansing pain,
After a walk in the park through the rain.
Share the people, share their lands,
Share their faces, and share their bands,
Share their music of hate or of love.
For whatever the reason, and whatever the cost,
However you find, whatever you’ve lost,
Your soul will find itself once again.
When you take a walk in the park through the rain.

- Anonymous

It took me more than a month but I have finally found myself a little closer to home in New York…and I found it in Chinatown! If you are new to my blog and haven’t read any of my old blog series’ on PNTTV, then you may not know that I recently spent a year living in China. It was probably the best year of my life to date, which is a statement that I confess I throw around loosely quite often, however this time I mean it. It’s proven when I walk down the main road of Chinatown in New York, smell the spices, see the ladies selling vegetables on the street and see the men crowding around the park playing mahjong. When I see all those things in downtown manhattan memories flood back to my head of the motherland. It isn’t surprising that I felt most relaxed and most comfortable in the middle of busy Chinatown than anywhere else so far in New York and I’ll explain why…

There’s something special about the face of an old Chinese man. While I sat in Columbus park I watched an old man finish reading his newspaper and hand it to the man next to him, his brother perhaps. Not blood, but cultural brother. The park was full of Chinese men crowded in clumps playing checkers, chess, and mahjong. All of them were brothers in this big city. Back home it’s different but here in the collective smoke of their favourite tobacco, they share common ground. They are brothers because they are minority. Here they can speak in their native tongue, and here they are respected by their fellow countrymen. It’s a big, dirty city this place they call New York but sometimes I think that’s all it is.

Since the beginning Chinese immigrants have always stuck together as a result of racial discrimination. Because of this the Chinese community of New York knew there was safety in numbers and self-segregated themselves from the rest of the population. Even today racial discrimination in New York continues and Chinese people are treated as second class citizens, which is something I can relate to and hopefully most gay people. As I sat in Columbus Park thinking about the Chinese men that were now brothers of minority I felt like I was home because I could relate. I’m not Chinese, but I am gay, and like it or not we are still second class citizens in a lot of places in the world. Even in places as “liberal” as New York I am still called names, discriminated against, and the pun of many jokes.

Maybe it’s strange to think that a gay girl can feel at home in Chinatown of all places in New York but we are all brothers and sisters of minority and we must stick together so one day we become the majority.

Next week: Thoughts from central park!

- The Travelling Ninja over and out

In a city as big, vast, and open minded as New York, it comes as a surprise to learn that it took me three weeks to grace the threshold  of a gay bar. It’s nothing personal, New York. I’m sure your gay bars are aplenty. I’m sure they are ‘hopping’, and I’m also sure they are filled with many attractive women. I just haven’t stumbled upon THOSE particular bars yet and I’m not sure you can just ‘stumble upon’ them. Let me be a little more clear.

When I arrive in a new city it takes me some time to get myself settled before I’m ready to party.  It’s a settling in thing and I’m sure most travellers can relate or at the very least understand. There’s exploring and there’s partying and I like to explore the city by day before I venture into its nightlife. I’m not the biggest party animal, but regardless of my elderly stay-at-home nature, I have finally ventured into the New York night life and it is just as you would imagine it – busy.

My first gay club was a small venue on a side street in Williamsburg. It was at the end of the street and it was dressed up with an appropriate neon sign that read ‘Sugarland’. I hadn’t found this club by accident, I was there with some friends – one a native new yorker (gay man) and the rest Californians that had only just arrived in New York like myself. It should have been the line that seemed to be mostly males, or the way my gay guy friend was telling us about his many adventures here that told me it was a gay mens club. It wasn’t until I had my coat checked by a flamboyant fellow that I turned around to find myself in the middle sea of sweaty, dancing gay boys with absolutely no females in sight. To make the story worse, most of them were scantly clad and I had to get to the other side of the dance floor to meet my friends. I won’t burden you with that disgusting sweaty story.

I guess this is the problem when you are with a group of mostly straight girls. The token gay guy takes his token straight girl friends to his favourite gay bar where they all laugh and dance and ponder why the gay guys are the most fit and handsome. For me personally, a bar full of gay boys and straight girls ranks slightly worse than a regular straight club. I stayed for fifteen minutes before I had to leave. There was something suffocating about the place, it could have been the judging eyes or it could have just been the glistening sweat on the chests of all the flamboyant men. Whatever it was, I felt like I could breathe again when I left the bar. The cold walk back to the metro station was now a welcome event to my night.

No matter how many online searches I do for ‘lesbian bars in New York’ or ‘New York lesbian scene’, I can’t seem to find the insider knowledge I want. To the future New York traveler the only thing I can recommend is finding yourself some local, authentic new york lesbian friends to show you the ropes. It’s the only way to crack the hard shell of New York and find your way to the sweet insides!

I was rather disappointed with my first gay club experience in New York but I remain hopeful that my next experience will be better…and significantly more female…

NEXT WEEK: Where does this gay girl go in New York? – Chinatown!

- The traveling ninja over and out.

It’s almost half past the hour of 8 on the first of February and I’m sitting at my desk in my Brooklyn apartment listening to Bon Iver and drinking my third cup of tea of the evening. Today as been an interesting day, as most days are in New York, in fact I challenge you to find one person that is having a boring day in New York City because I’m not sure that it’s possible. I digress, this weeks blog is going to feature my initial impressions of New York and my first taste of New York gay life.

I arrived in New York at an awful hour of the morning. It was around 7 am when I sat in my first yellow New York cab at JFK airport and gave the driver the instructions to my accommodation. He was a nice guy and we got to chatting. On the way he pointed out all the neighbourhoods his friends had been murdered in. I sympathised but secretly I was wondering why all the people he hung out with kept getting murdered, was he a bad curse? Was I now going to be murdered? Was he the murderer!? It was a traumatising cab ride but I eventually made it to my accommodation and I tipped him well in case he was considering murdering me.

My first couple of days in New York were spent looking for apartments and I was lucky to find the one I did with cool housemates in a relatively safe neighbourhood. I must point out that at this point I had not come across a single gay person in Brooklyn. I’m not gunna lie, I have an amazing gay dar and after three days in Brooklyn with no dings in my gaydar I was beginning to think that New York, or at least brooklyn in particular, was not where the gays hung out.

It wasn’t until my fourth day in Brooklyn when I was in the Williamsburg neighbourhood that I found them all….and I mean ALL OF THEM! Williamsburg is hipster gay central, it is hipster gay heaven, and at some point I thought I had actually died and gone to hipster heaven because I couldn’t believe how many lesbian hipsters I was seeing EVERYWHERE. I know hipsters aren’t for everyone and sometimes they can be a little pretentious but Williamsburg seems to be the coolest place to hang for the gays in Brooklyn so be sure to check that out if you find yourself in this great city one day.

I must say, given how liberal New York is in terms of homosexuality, to be honest, I don’t feel 100% comfortable walking around my neighbourhood in Brooklyn and being openly homosexual. It could be because I still feel a little bit lost here but it could also be the catholic churches on almost EVERY street corner that put me off. I am yet to explore manhattan and the other Burroughs of New York completely but in the more ‘hood’ neighbourhoods of Brooklyn I don’t really feel safe being homosexual. This was interesting to me because I never expected to feel this way in New York.

Then again…I did just arrive from the gay homelands of California…….perhaps my initial impression of gay culture in the states was slightly skewed because of that.
Next week: My first new york gay club!

- The traveling ninja over and out.

Good morning friends, this is the Ninja reporting for PNTTV from my wee little apartment in Brooklyn, NY! I am settled, comfortable, wifi enabled, and ready to tell you some stories…so… let’s get this show on the road. As I mentioned in my last blog, I arrived in the land of the free just over a month ago and my port of entry was San Francisco! I want to spend a little time in this blog offering my first impression of gay culture in America and how it differs to other places I’ve been to.

First of all, for a gay person arriving in America for the first time, San Francisco is probably the best place to land. The downside to that (if there is a downside at all) is that it gave me a very ‘liberal’ view of the gay community and how homosexuality was accepted in the state of California. What do I mean by liberal? For those that don’t know, and I am probably only be talking to people outside the US, San Francisco is pretty much the capital city of GAY in this country. Some people might argue that LA takes that crown and maybe it does, (I haven’t been down there yet) but from what I’ve seen and what I’ve heard first hand from authentic american west coast lesbians…San Fran deserves the crown). A lot of lesbians live in LA but all of those lesbians know that San Francisco is the lesbian playground. As you will notice yourself one day, San Francisco offers a rather nice first impression of gay culture in this splendid country.

For someone that has just arrived in America from China, seeing a lesbian couple or a gay couple walk down the street holding hands is a sight for sore eyes. I think more so because towards the end of my stay in China I began to feel so disconnected from the gay community. To make my predicament worse, towards the end of 2011, I was recommended by a good friend a reality TV show, the real l word, a show about the lives of a group of lesbians in LA. I started watching the show in hopes that it would reconnect me with my community, however the opposite happened and it made me feel so disconnected from a community that I had felt so much a part of back home in Australia. I craved to walk into a gay bar and feel like I was home and I craved to be around my friends and family whom I felt comfortable with. My friends in China were lovely but they were also incredibly ‘straight minded’ and completely oblivious to gay culture. I began to get really irritated by some of the things they would say.

When I got to the bay area, I saw a lesbian in a bookstore in berkley, I saw a gay hipsters visiting art galleries in oakland, I saw gay tourists walking on the golden gate bridge, I saw lesbians walking around downtown San Jose, I saw old gay couples buying groceries in Alameda. It was home, at least a temporary home, and I felt connected again. The feeling of belonging to something or somewhere or someone is important not just to homosexuals, but to everyone. To know that you’re accepted and appreciated in a community is one of the most amazing feelings ever. I guess the best I can do is thank the people of California for welcoming me home.

My initial impression of gay life in California was that it was a very relaxed life. No one was hiding, no one felt pressured to be something they were not, and the lesbians were ‘hella’ good looking! (I thank my Californian friends for educating me on Californian slang!) Lesbians in the bay area are well dressed, well groomed, successful, intelligent, and strikingly attractive women.

Here comes the sweeping declaration of this blog: Every lesbian must visit San Francisco and the bay area at least once in their life to see the homelands of our splendid community!

[[[Next week: New York!]]]

- The traveling ninja over and out.

This weeks question/s: Have you been to San Francisco? What did you think of the city?

I arrived in the US about a month ago now, in California to be specific. California is an awesome place and I think I could really find a home there but for now I’m hanging out in New York for the next couple of months en route to London, ENGLAND! (Yes, I will be going to the motherland!)

During my travels I saw a lot of northern California, the bay area as they call it. I feel like California in general is the gay mecca. Every gay person should take a trip to the homelands of gay in their lifetime because it’s an amazing sight to see.

This new blog of mine is going to detail the gay communities and cultures that I come across on my travels. Comparing communities, cultures, practices, and parties!

I look forward to sharing with you lovely readers the discoveries I make and the observations I observe. Thanks for reading this wee little introductory blog and I will be back next Wednesday (and every Wednesday thereafter) for more gay fun.

Stay in touch, friends and take care.

- Ninja.