1. Always listen to your older brother. He knows all and sees all. Yes, he even knows what you did last summer. When are you going to give those goldfish back?
2. Do not go to Mother Carey's on 42nd street. I don't care how good you think the music is. I went in there once and when I came out, I could see sound and hear color. And their toilets are all cracked.
3. Do visit Hewlett Street in Queens. Stand in Queens and look across to the Lake Success Golf Club. Not very subtly named, is it? But you're not there to participate anyway, nor to stand like a beggar outside a butcher shop on Christmas Eve. Just stand there and listen. Between the rush of passing cars and the thwack of golf clubs, you can hear the faint noises of a Calliope. Do not venture into the golf course itself -- Coyote's territory begins just beyond Queens. But feel free to stand and listen. The Calliope plays all the latest hits.
4. if you can sneak into the Douglaston Club at night, you can hear someone whistling "She moved through the fair." It's always the same tune, at the same volume, wherever you are on the field.
5. The Deepdale Garden Apartments on 251st street are named more appropriately than you realize. If you can get in, take the stairs down and open an unmarked brown wooden door. You will notice a rush of cold air, and as you step out onto an unlit platform, your steps will echo. You will look down and see a tiny light, occasionally blocked by something moving across it. This is as far as you can go. Only the residents know how to get down from here. Safely, at least. You could try using a parachute. Hell, you could use a rope! You just don't know if it will be there when you come back.
6. On the Little Neck Parkway in Queens, you can find Shirley's Psychic Gallery. It is bullshit, as all advertised psychics are. It is a front for a group of actual psychics. You think actual psychics want to go public? Imagine how everyone would fear them!
7. The best place to hear the beat of the city varies. Currently It's the intersection of Culman Avenue and 254th street, standing on the corner outside the Chabad of Little Neck. That's where everything lines up right -- the whine of machinery, the roar of diesel engines, chatter, the rush of the highway, babies crying, the distant sounds of an imporomptu Stomp band. It makes a kind of rthym. You have to supply the melody and the lyrics.
8. The melody of the city doesn't require a specific place. Instead, you have to block out all sound from your ears and stand on a city street. You can't hear the hotdog vendor shouting at you to place your damn order, but you can hear the echoes of all the music that has come before. It hangs around, waiting for the right ears. Pick out what you like, if you can focus upon it.
9. The best way to find the lyrics is to start recording, stand in the middle of a busy sidewalk, and capture the words people use to describe you.
10. Coyote's melody always sounds better and more enticing than what you can come up with. But if you listen to his actual lyrics...well, I'm prepared to blame him for "I Kissed a girl" and "Christmas Shoes."