All Gone to Look for America

by Peter Millar

  Not that you can actually shut something like Niagara Falls, pouring more than 25 million gallons of water per minute from one Great Lake towards another for tens of thousands of years. Niagara at night ought to be a spellbindingly romantic location, and maybe it is if you’re in the right mood with the right company and at the right moment, with the moon out and a balmy breeze wafting through the trees. But watching water churn towards a precipice you know is there but can’t see – which is what you essentially have at city level on the American side of the falls – is weird enough at the best of times. Wandering out alone in the dark with a cold damp drizzle in the air that is almost certainly spray from thundering rapids but feels like a damp dank English autumn evening with the roar of heavy traffic in the background, it seems best to look for entertainment elsewhere and wait for morning. I mean, one of the most famous honeymoon destinations in the world has to have a nightlife. Or then again, maybe not!

  One way or another, 10:00 p.m. sees me heading out from my motel room (which costs less than the YMCA and in comparison, with king-size double bed, television and en-suite bathroom feels like the Savoy) across a wilderness of parking lots in a blustery drizzle looking for something to eat and maybe a drink and some company. It was the Canadians who first realised that having got the punters into town to see the falls, there ought to be more ways to take money off them than just providing boat trips and viewing platforms. Their first attempt was a ‘futuristic’ observation tower that now protrudes into the night sky above their side of the falls, rather ruining the impact of a natural wonder, but nowhere near as much as their second, and far more successful when it came to taking in the money, attempt: several huge, neon-lit multistorey casinos. The skyline of Niagara Falls, Ontario, therefore, as seen from Niagara Falls, New York, gleams surreally out of the night fog like a set from a low budget 1960s sci-fi film. When the ‘Skylon’ tower and its like were built (1964) – and it is amazing how many of them were – architects had a vision of the future based on Superman comics and imagined that by the twenty-first century we’d all be jetting around in hovercars wearing one-piece figure-hugging jumpsuits. Luckily for carbon emissions and the general shape of the American public, neither of these predictions has proved true.

  But they do explain the strange case of one-upmanship that has led the otherwise still small town of Niagara Falls, New York, to erect a 20-storey skyscraper with an ethnic-tribal symbol in blue and green neon flashing up and down its face. Peeved by the Canadians hogging the lion’s share of the tourist income, not least because they also claim that the best view of the falls is from their side, the Americans decided to fight fire with fire and build a casino of their own. Or rather, the Native Americans have. Or sort of, as I shall find out slightly later. Signs proclaim it to be the property of the ‘Seneca clan of Iroquois Indians’.

  Casinos aren’t really my thing, so for the moment I leave it alone and head towards the small row of single-storey buildings that would appear to be what passes for ‘Main Street’. I’m just musing on the fact that the Seneca refer to themselves as ‘Indians’ rather than the now accepted and politically correct Native Americans, when as if conjured up by the power of association (another one of those small gods) I run across the Taste of India restaurant, quickly followed by the Bombay Cuisine, the Sirdhar Sahib and the Punjabi Dhaba, more Indian restaurants in a short stretch than you’re likely to find in Leicester or Bradford, and that’s saying something. For a moment the thought whizzes through my head that maybe some large group of migrants from the subcontinent heard a rumour that things were going well these days for the Indians up in Niagara and misunderstood. I put it to the back of my mind for the moment as strange but unlikely and forage on.

  It quickly becomes clear that the nightlife in Niagara, like many small towns in America, particularly those with a large transient or tourist population, is chiefly made up of rows of identical dark bars with multicoloured neon signs in the window advertising cheap ‘domestic’ beer – Coors, Bud Lite, Miller – and blaring almost identical music. Kids lurch in and out of them, most repeatedly having to produce picture identity cards to the doorman to prove they are over 21, though such is the practised hypocrisy of absurd drinking laws which even the president’s daughters break, that both parties are happily aware they are fake. Doormen examine IDs chiefly in the hope of eliciting cute smiles or a peck on the cheek from pretty girls or for an excuse to turn away 20-year-old men they don’t like the look of. Either way, I’m not in the mood for mingling with a load of drunk kids.

  The hotel tourist map marks ‘Wine on 3rd’ which might be worth one final investigation before giving up altogether and admitting defeat to the drizzle before an early night and an early morning start to the sightseeing. I have just about decided that ‘Wine on 3rd’ is probably a euphemism for the closed ‘liquor store’ on 3rd Street, when I spot the establishment in question a few doors further along. To my total amazement it is a bright, airy, almost modern minimalist decorated wine bar, with just a few customers of mixed age sitting conversing in civilised fashion at the bar. Too good to miss. And it proves to be better still when the barman – who insists on being known only as JB – turns out to be an authority on something I didn’t even know existed: New York wine!

  I don’t know why – I have had white wine from Herefordshire and red wine from Gloucestershire, English counties far from the sunny climes of the Mosel or Gironde – but New York just didn’t chime with wine. On sudden reflection, though, I realise I have actually tasted a wine made in upstate New York: a kosher wine. It had been made from original pre-phylloxera American grapes and then been pasteurised to ensure it would retain its religious authenticity even when served by gentiles, and it tasted like rather manky grape juice. This recollection almost immediately dampens my euphoria at the promise of oenophile delight, particularly as the last thing I want to do in a strange bar in a strange city at night is to offend anybody’s religious sensitivities.

  My fears could not have been more unfounded. Over the next hour or so the knowledgeable man behind the counter introduces me to a whole new wine landscape: the Finger Lakes of upstate New York and wineries with names ranging from the distinctly Hispanic-sounding Casa Larga from Fairport to the very Anglo-Saxon Heron Hill from Hammondsport. The former produces an interesting variant on the Viognier grape which has so entranced the world since taking off from its niche home at Condrieu on the Rhone (though no one has yet equalled the original), the latter a wholly unexpected mature full-bodied 2004 red, marketed under the brand name Eclipse but full enough of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc to pull its weight in any backwater around Bordeaux if not exactly the grand cellars of the Médoc.

  A Chardonnay that could have blagged me into thinking it was a Chablis, comes from the Vinifera cellars of Dr Konstantin Frank, a Ukrainian who arrived in the US in 1951 and almost single-handedly created the Finger Lake – and hence New York state – wine industry. The most remarkable thing about that achievement, was that his fluent command of six European languages had one notable omission: English. The winery, also in Hammondsport, is run today by his grandson Frederick, who presumably speaks English fluently and also produces an excellent Riesling.

  I could have gone on all evening tasting the wines of upper New York with such a knowledgeable host – this, you remember, on an evening when I had been expecting no more entertainment than a few bottles of Miller Lite in a bar playing The Eagles at 200 decibels – when my sophisticated wine connoisseur bartender unpredictably decides to demonstrate another side to his character. To be fair, the blame probably lay with his assistant barman whose iPod plugged into the stereo system has up until now been providing a background of discreetly subdued classic rock songs. But just as I’m about to say something erudite on the almost Alsatian attributes coaxed by the Frank family into that most German of grapes, the Riesling, the track changes and JB suddenly abandons his sommelier stance for one of raving lunatic: turning up the volume and si
nging along in a spontaneous karaoke version of Jimi Hendrix’s ‘All Along the Watchtowers’. Accompanied by some quite spectacular air guitar.

  As you can imagine this is followed by something of a pregnant pause in the conversation. I mean, it’s sort of hard to get back to discussing poncy points of oenophilia with someone who’s just splattered testosterone all over the walls. So under the circumstances I do the only thing any self-respecting Brit would do in my situation, I turn the conversation to the weather. This at least has the benefit of drawing someone else into the discussion, even if not in the way I had quite anticipated.

  ‘Say that again, what you just said. I really lurvve your accent,’ says the extremely good-looking 30-something woman with long blonde hair who for the past hour has been sitting a few feet away with a bloke old enough to be her father.

  ‘I said it was really hot in New York City,’ I say, repeating myself in embarrassment and knowing what’s coming. The terrible trouble here, and it is mine particularly, is that I have always had something of an affinity for foreign languages and accents, possibly out of an only-child shyness which made me overly anxious to fit in and therefore eager to adapt any accent that happens to be around me. This is, I have been told, a formidable advantage insofar as I don’t feel silly putting on a ‘funny’ accent if it is the way other people around me are speaking.

  The other side of that coin is that, especially in other English-speaking countries, I have a tendency to adopt over-readily the native accent, which of course makes me seem like a complete dork to friends from home if I happen to be travelling with any. There is also the danger – I’m thinking primarily of Scotland here – of ending up doing what is perceived to be a very poor imitation of the locals’ accent, which in Glasgow especially is a recipe for ending the evening in the Royal Infirmary, with what the locals term ‘yer heed in yer hands’. Try it. I have.

  Then, of course, you get the situation, as here, when I have managed not to succumb to local peer pressure and am talking in what I consider to be my normal accent and all of a sudden someone next to me declares it to be the funniest thing she has ever heard. In the nicest possible way. At which point I start thinking about the sound of the words and can, at worst, become horribly confused. Right at this moment, however, I am doing my level best to repeat the words I had just said in exactly the same accent; an attractive young woman, after all, had just said she ‘lurrrrved it’.

  ‘Hoht,’ she says. ‘I just lurrv that. Hoht. You mean “hat”.’

  ‘No,’ I reply, playing the game because I’m not sure I can take more air guitar, ‘that is something you put on your head.’

  This causes a fair amount of merriment, including from the older chap next to her. ‘That’s “het”,’ she erupts. (I should point out I am doing my best here to render this as it sounded to me at the time; if you are American, of course, it’s all going to seem the wrong way round and you won’t have a clue what I’m on about, but the only alternative would be to use the international phonetic alphabet, which would come out with things like ‘ha]t’ and ‘hæt’ that wouldn’t help any of us.)

  Anyhow, much to my relief – I could see this going on all night and getting sillier and sillier until one of us took offence – a bloke on my other side taps me on my other shoulder and says, ‘I hear you’re from London?’ I nod, and he continues with: ‘Did you just drive down this evening.’ Now this has got me puzzled, there being the not insignificant obstacle of the Atlantic Ocean in between, until he catches the accent and says, ‘Oh, London, England?’ It turns out he thought I had driven from London, Ontario, which it seems is not too far away. ‘Like all the Injuns,’ he adds, which has got me puzzled again until I realise he means the Indian Indians, of which it seems London, Ontario, has a goodly number. ‘Thousands of ’em,’ he says, in a tone of voice that leads me to suspect there may be a few racial tensions lurking under the bland friendly face most of us conjure up when we think of Canada. ‘They come down here in their thousands too, don’t know why. All feel they have to see the falls.’ I’m about to mention that a fair few other folk do and that tourist dollars must provide the main source of income around here, when he adds the obvious, ‘That’s why there’s all them restaurants. Don’t see any of ’em in the American bars.’

  At this point I decide it might be as well to deflect the topic of conversation and tell him that when he said ‘Injuns’ I had thought he meant the ones that own the casino. That gets a bit of a laugh all round, including from the older bloke with the young woman who turns out to be something of an apologist for the Native American cause. He laughs when I ask him how come the Seneca clan came to still own such a prime chunk of land in the middle of town: ‘They gave it to ’em,’ he says. ‘If you can call it giving to them when they stole it from them in the first place.’

  The story of the casino, it appears, is that the town’s desire to have one to combat their Canadian competition wasn’t received quite so simply down in distant Albany, home of the New York state legislature. There were questions asked, problems posed about moral issues, general doubts about how to go about partially legalising gambling in just one part of the state while it is illegal in the rest. At which point a deal was cut with elders of the Seneca tribe to declare a chunk of downtown Niagara Falls, including a moribund convention centre, tribal territory, in theory making it a ‘sovereign nation’. The convention centre was then transformed into a casino with adjoining hotel, using money and expertise put together by a gambling magnate close to Donald Trump and a Chinese billionaire, whose takings theoretically benefit the Seneca. They also, not incidentally, benefit the state to the tune of some $38 million a year in tax. According to my new acquaintance, whose name is Dan and is a college professor – the younger woman being an ex-student – state legislatures purport to uphold a prudish public morality worthy of their Puritan forebears but are happy to let the Indians do the ‘dirty work’ for them, while the people who run the casino actually make most of the profits. Nobody seems to know quite how much the Seneca Indians actually make out of it, although they are supposedly entitled to a fixed percentage. ‘They have a shop in there that sells trinkets,’ says Dan with an ironic smile.

  On the way back to my motel I decide to take a look inside out of curiosity and there indeed in the marble halls of the lobby is a shop, closed at this time of night, but selling ceremonial tomahawks, coloured blankets and various bits of Indian jewellery. There is also a plaque giving the names of the elders of the Seneca nation in whose name the casino is operated. But it all seems a bit peripheral to the main business which even near midnight is clearly thriving, with lines of decidedly pale faces sitting in rows feeding dollar bills into slot machines. This in itself is new to me: not slot machines but ones that take notes rather than coins, especially notes as low in value as one dollar, which these days can be incredibly grubby considering how many of them you need to buy almost anything. But the single dollar bill is such an intrinsic essential element in American culture that the idea of phasing it out in favour of coins (which would be worth only some 50 pence each, a tenth the amount of the smallest British note) remains unimaginable. Most players in fact feed in larger denominations, fives, tens or even twenties and get proportionately more pulls of the handle, pushes of the button, or electronically-dealt hands of cards.

  With twinkling chandelier lights above the flashing electronic lights of the machines and girls in skimpy costumes meandering between them serving drinks, the atmosphere is calculated to eliminate any concept of time of day. I wander over to the circular raised bar in the centre and decide to have just the one more, as a nightcap, especially as they are serving Yuengling, and more particularly because on a small circular stage at head height in the centre of the bar itself there is a saxophone player knocking out a slow cool rendering of the Grover Washington standard ‘Just the Two of Us’ from his classic album Winelight. An almost perfect way to end an evening.

  There is just the one of me, howe
ver, and as I sip at my beer I can’t wholly manage to ignore that built into the bar is an electronic poker machine. Every time I set my pint down after a sip there is a deck of cards underneath it, displaying aces and deuces and inviting me to have a go, just a quick game of blackjack or poker to pass the time. And you think – or at least I do, just as I’m supposed to – hey, why not, and slip a five-dollar note into the inconspicuous slot in the perspex of the bar counter. Five quick games of blackjack; what harm can it do? Within 10 minutes or so, playing cheap at 10 cents debit a hand, my $5 is a princely $7.50, and the music is still playing and I’m quite enjoying myself and the beer is only $3.50 which is the cheapest I’ve found so far, so what the hell, I have another one, rack up to a dollar a game – big rollers are us – and see if I can break the bank before bedtime.

  You can guess the rest. My $7.50, through some incredible unpredictable bad luck with the cards, rises to $11 before dwindling to nothing. At which stage I decide to just play a couple more to make back my initial stake. By the time I leave I am $25 poorer (plus another $12 for three beers plus tip) and as I wander out wearily into the night I realise I have sat there for more than an hour and a half, though it seemed like 20 minutes at most. For the first time I realise that my residual feeling that supercasinos in Britain would not be a good thing and end up more like an extra tax on the poor and gullible is right on the money, to coin a phrase. Wandering across the parking lot in the rain I feel deeply aggrieved, not at the loss of the money but at the waste of time. Never before have I felt life sucked away quite so meaninglessly as in the past mindless 90 minutes of mental masturbation. Never again, I tell myself as my head hits the pillow. Ha! Ha!

  Next morning, the excesses of the night before notwithstanding, 8.45 a.m. sees me standing damp and bedraggled in the continuing drizzle outside the ticket office for the Cave of the Winds reading a sign that warns ‘waterproofs should be worn at all times’ and doesn’t open for another 15 minutes. I had thought the receptionist at the motel might have known this – what time do the various attractions open being a not totally ridiculous question for a tourist to ask at a tourist resort – but she had blithely assured me that everything was up and running by 8:00 a.m. This matters more than you might think to a man travelling on an Amtrak schedule. There are only three trains a day to Buffalo, from where I am intending to catch the Lakeshore Limited to Chicago; one leaves in the middle of the night, one at dawn and the last at 12:35 p.m., which means I have to get my ‘falls experience’ in sharpish!