Keeping pace with the American Dream

I was sitting in a diner off Fifth Avenue in New York, logged on to the wi-fi while eating what they call a crookie, which is a glorious but messy hybrid of a croissant and a cookie, on the first day of a holiday.

Sat at a table across the way were another Irish couple. I was wearing a GAA handball top and I noticed the man looking at it (or maybe it was the chocolate stains – believe me when I say this thing was messy).

Ah, a GAA man, I decided. Excellent.

I scrolled through Twitter and surprisingly found that Mayo, who had been trailing against Galway in the Connacht final, were now coming thundering back into the contest. I got my headphones out of my bag and tuned into the commentary. “Mayo have it back to a point!” I announced excitedly to my new friend, by way of salute.

It turned out, he wasn’t a GAA man at all. In hindsight, I have my doubts as to whether he was even Irish. Maybe I was overly-familiar or something but I noticed he recoiled slightly after my enthusiastic outburst. “Oh right,” he muttered, his eyes betraying the fact that he clearly thought I was some sort of lunatic, “what is that in?”

At that moment, I felt like Henry Hill’s mother-in-law in Goodfellas, when the protagonist stays out all night not long after he has married her daughter. At her wit’s end, she exclaims, “What sort of people are these?!”

That scene was filmed in Westchester County, which I visited later in the week and found to be a slice of Americana, picket fences and friendly neighbours. We were in the city for a week, my first visit to the Big Apple in 10 years. The place has changed, everyone said – and they were right, and it’s probably not for the better, unfortunately.

For one thing, it has gotten a lot more expensive over the last decade. It wasn’t bad as people had told me it would be and things like food and drink aren’t all that dearer than Dublin, or even Cavan (where, two weeks ago, I paid €3.35 for a one-litre bottle of water in a petrol station) but it’s still hard on the pocket.

And it’s frayed around the edges, too. The smell of cannabis is everywhere – it’s been legalised since I was there last – and the general grime and decay is apparent. There is more litter, more dirt, more than the usual quotient of the wild-eyed and half-dressed rummaging through the bins.

But, still, a lot of young Irish people are moving there; the pull factor of New York is always strong and the push factor of 2025 Ireland is, too.

One night, in a lovely Irish bar just off Times Square, I got talking to a 20-something barman from Dublin. He went over, he said, for a holiday and ended up staying. He makes good money, his rent is reasonable and, he said, he has a great quality of life. I took a note of what he said.

“It's cheaper for me to live out here,” he told us.

“As diverse as this place is, I never had a minute's trouble in three years and a lot of my friends have had hassle in Dublin.”

The general consensus was that the city has declined post-Covid, which seems to be a common theme everywhere. Still, though - there is nowhere else like New York. As I always do, I turned it into a busman’s holiday by seeking out handball courts – to my disappointment, I found most of them quiet, even on fine days (the week we went was glorious at home but rained heavily at times over there).

The best players, though, congregate at the same venue so I found out where they were going and went to watch. The courts were in Grand Street in Chinatown, a few dozen of the leading players assembled to play for money.

Each game was played at maximum intensity; Asian shopkeepers wandered over and placed large wagers, with fistfuls of cash handed over after each game. It gets so hot on those courts in the summer that players cannot wear black runners, one guy told me. I could have stayed there all day.

We went down to the 9-11 Memorial one day and I thought of Hughie Smith, the Killinkere native who sadly passed away recently. Hughie, a gentleman, was a survivor of that awful day and showed us around on our last visit. God rest him.

Driving around with Hughie in his SUV on that occasion, he had Northern Sound coming through the radio. Often, he would listen to the death notices and relay the news to someone back at home. Small world.

And a changed world, too. Later, on Times Square, a fella – not a beggar, more of a hustler – accosted me talking about a CD he had made for charity, about how he was raising funds for the youth. His sales pitch was brilliant; I opened my wallet and handed him a dollar bill.

“You’ve got a 20 there, man,” he said, observantly.

“I need that,” I said, firmly.

To my astonishment, he handed me back the dollar and walked off in a huff. I’ve never seen that before - although, a guy did tell me to get out of his shop when I low-balled him on fake Yankee hats. I mean, when professional hagglers are getting insulted, you know things have gotten a bit carried away...

We walked past Trump Tower and went in for a look and in fairness to the man himself, he had the place in tip-top condition, not a mug out of place.

It was noticeable, though, that even in his home town, where he is generally disliked, there was little mention of Trump. Maybe it’s only in Ireland that we are obsessed and performatively appalled by his every utterance. I found it striking.

Our trip coincided with the NBA play-offs so I watched that most nights. I had never seen much basketball bar the odd Cavan Eagles match in Virginia and I found it very impressive and, after watching a couple of matches, pronounced myself an expert, of course.

The much-maligned Knicks were on the march while I was there. They are not unlike the Cavan footballers in that they are something of an aristocrat fallen on hard times; theirs is a storied tradition and they drive their fans up the wall.

I did begin to notice that practically every play is geared towards getting a shot off from the three-point arc. What was once a terrific and rarish skill is now the go-to and familiarity has rendered it mundane. Watch out Gaelic football, with your two-pointers; without doubt, you are next.

I made it my business to talk to whatever locals would talk to me. I mentioned Trump to one man, who declared that he was neither Republican nor Democrat. He seemed pleased to be able to talk politics without rancour; where once, friendly joshing was the norm in the bars and workplaces, now, everyone was too entrenched, got too wound up too easily, he said.

I mentioned the cost of living as having turned liberal voters towards Trump. His own theory was that education was the grain of sand, which tipped the scale; the Dems, he said, had been hijacked by crazies and now, they were teaching people’s kids “the same nonsense” in schools and they weren’t taking it any more.

Was he right? Who knows. Maybe he was biased, too – but it seemed quite a few of the same conversations we’ve been having here are going on over there. We visited a bar called The Dead Rabbit, which was voted best bar in the world recently; it was never going to live up to that but it was a fine place.

There, we met up with Aisling, an Irish-American of Mullahoran extraction (more Irish than American if you ask me), who mentioned that her friends were getting priced out of accommodation by highly-paid young tech workers. A familiar story.

New Yorkers are famously sharp and impatient - walking fast, talking fast, not afraid of confrontation. That remains the same, I can confirm.

On one of the last days, we went on a cycling tour over the Brooklyn bridge and beyond. The guide wasn’t hanging around; at one stage, a big Texan in the group went over the handlebars trying to catch up.

A scene ensued, people started shouting. When the guide arrived back on the scene, he seemed annoyed not that the fella had come off the bike but that he hadn’t kept pace with him.

And, in a way, that’s the American Dream, isn’t it? Keep up because they’re in a hurry and they won’t wait for you. That’s one thing that hasn’t changed...