Now based in Auckland, writer Luis Portillo grew up in Venezuela then moved to Washington DC where, for him, New York was a playground and a source of joy, with its twin towers a silent, seemingly infinite presence.
Navigating midtown Manhattan’s bumper-to-bumper traffic and narrow, noisy streets after a Sunday matinée at the St. James Theatre was a task I left for my partner. In fact, I always got him to drive us out of the city for one reason.
Exiting the New Jersey end of the Lincoln tunnel, I got to see the city’s skyline in its full brilliance. With each building reaching up to scrape the rolling clouds, this was the postcard view that had been dispatched around the world for years.
A montage of stills from Times Square on New Year's Eve 1992. (Source: Supplied)
A few miles later, driving south on the New Jersey Turnpike, windows down, wind on my face, I could see the Statue of Liberty on the left for a brief moment, the city behind it, bathed in the flickering June light about to turn into summer.
Minutes later, I turned around once more to take in one last glimpse of the enthralling concrete jungle, saying goodbye until the next time.
1980: a teenage love affair
Twenty-one years earlier, on a hot mid-summer night, I was coming from the east, crossing the Manhattan Bridge, into New York City for the first time.
This was the skyline of Woody Allen’s Manhattan, only in full colour, and with Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue replaced by the echoes of traffic running up and down the town’s perfect grid, the thud of millions pounding the streets, and that month’s radio hits blasting from steamy frankfurter carts on every corner.
For three unforgettable days, the city hosted this wide-eyed 15-year-old, who had been captivated after seeing King Kong climb the Empire State Building, and entertained by Ann Marie’s adventures in the city with her patient boyfriend Donald in That Girl. This was the city that never slept, from the ‘I Love New York’ ads that played on TV back home in Venezuela. It was the town with a thoroughfare running into Times Square known as 42nd Street.
The city – its noise, its humidity, its pace, its shadows at sunrise and sunset, its crowds, its coolness and music – stayed in me, and kept me coming back for years.
1990: a tantalising glimpse
Ten years later I was back, but only briefly. I landed at JFK Airport with two bags on a hot summer afternoon. Tempting as it was, I didn’t go into the city. This was only a stopover before my final destination – upstate New York, where I was to spend a semester at university in Buffalo.
Sitting by the window in my hotel room, I could see Manhattan's resplendence, so close but unreachable.
Early the next morning, from the window of the small Pan Am commuter plane, I watched the morning light break through the borough’s parallel streets, where millions were waking up, making coffee, getting ready for work, and riding the subway. No doubt some of the daffydills that entertain at night were only just getting home.
Driving from Highland Park, New Jersey, the following summer with a friend, I saw the city’s skyline for the first time coming from the west. It was as breathtaking as it had been eleven years earlier. The city had changed since my last visit, but it still was great, brash, and tough. I couldn’t get enough and, as expected, a late-afternoon rapid summer thunderstorm went through the city.
As we left the city, driving through the West Side Highway and passing the Twin Towers in the evening, I leaned forward as much as possible to admire their grandness through the windshield. The potential human story behind each glowing window stirred my mind, and stayed there.
1995 – a hopeful young guy in a suit
For two hot and sticky mornings in early August 1995, I came to Turtle Bay on the east side of Mid-Manhattan for a series of tests at the United Nations. I had been pre-selected to potentially join their Junior Professional Program.
Standing across the street from the UN’s landmark headquarters, about to go in, with a nervous cigarette in hand, sweating under my suit and tie, I wondered for an instant if I could ever be so lucky to live in the city also known as Gotham.
I wasn’t. Nothing came out of my three-day visit to New York that time, except my chance to see my first two Broadway musicals, a revival of Damn Yankees and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard.
After that, New York and Broadway kept calling me over.
Life in DC, hearts in NYC
Three or four times a year, my partner and I would get on our Plymouth Colt and drive North from our home in Washington DC, passing through Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. On the NJ Turnpike, about 15 miles out of Manhattan, the city’s skyline would emerge.
People coming to New York by boat were greeted by the Statue of Liberty, but those coming by road saw the Twin Towers standing tall and stoic at the bottom of the island, welcoming everybody.
The two steel-and-glass anchors kept the city grounded.
My partner thought they were tacky and lacked soul. I thought they were magnificent. As a kid, I saw photos of their construction and read of their famed, intended height. I lived in a four-story building, and 110 stories was undreamt of.
On every trip, the city spoiled me with its theatre scene Terence McNally’s Master Class, Jonathan Larson’s Rent, Kander and Ebb’s Cabaret, Moisés Kaufman’s The Laramie Project, and Ragtime, a special one because it was based on my favourite novel of all time. I saw the original casts of shows that went on to run for years, like the revival of Chicago, and The Lion King.
It didn’t matter how stressful life and work were back in DC; I knew Broadway would always be there, with an orchestra seat waiting for me, instruments tuning in a pit, and an overture carrying me to a world of stories that could only be told through song and dance.
Face-to-face with those iconic twins
During a frigid visit in late fall 1999, we stayed in Tribeca, within spitting distance of the World Trade Center. One afternoon, we stopped by for a visit although, the truth was, we just wanted to see where Homer’s car was found illegally parked in one episode of The Simpsons.
But it was the Twin Towers that captured my attention. It didn’t matter if you’d already admired them from a distance. Standing at their feet and looking up, following their straight angles all the way to the heavens, gave infinity a new meaning.
Just before something was lost
Our visit to New York that Sunday in 2001 was short; we were driving back from camping in a neighbouring state, and barely had time for a quick lunch before going to a matinée of The Producers, itself a love letter to musical theatre and New York City. The show’s energy followed us out of the city that day, satisfied that once again the city had delivered.
Three months later, images of the city’s skyline would be plastered around the world, not on postcards, but on video footage and stills showing a fractured city covered in dust and debris.
Those weekends in the 1990s and turn of the century were some of the best of my life.
But one humid afternoon in the summer of my first visit is the one I cherish the most.
My brother, a cousin, a friend, and I rushed wildly down 5th Avenue from Rockefeller Center to the Empire State Building. Four teenagers galloping in a foreign city, engulfed by the smells of bus fumes and hot dogs, feeling the growl of the subway beneath our feet, drowning among locals, slowpokes and tourists at every corner. We were trying to reach the top of the world, and we did it in record time.
From the Empire State’s 86th floor, we had an uninterrupted view of the city’s skyline. Central Park to the north, Brooklyn and Queens to the east, the Hudson River in the west, and to the south, the Bowery and those Twin Towers.
We stood up there for a few minutes. It was so quiet and peaceful. No city madness, only four mesmerised young men, letting a fresh, rare summer breeze cool us down. We were on top of the Big Apple.
I’ve come back to New York City many times in the last 25 years. Broadway is still there. I can still feel the subway under my feet, and a brief, compact summer storm occasionally still cleanses the afternoon air.
But an absence is still felt.
Driving north on the New Jersey Turnpike, I always close my eyes and draw two glass and steel columns in my mind. Trying to see them scrape the sky, to remember all those Friday afternoons in the 1990s, rolling into the city, excited for all the gifts the city would give me.
But when I open my eyes, the city I remember isn’t there.
Luis G Portillo is the lead video content producer at TVNZ.
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