ablarc
December 6th, 2008, 01:43 AM
I am now back in England and was hoping someone could give me some new ideas for places to visit that aren’t so much touristy. I have done the obvious sites and i am interested in photography of a 'different side of manhattan'.
I would like to visit the following.....
Real new york style bar
Is brooklyn worth visiting for photo's?
Manhatten neighbourhood
Anything that really does sum NY up to a local.
As i said my emphasis will be on photo's of the city so any hidden away places that give you a fantastic view of the skyline and the character of the city would be much appreciated!
I don’t currently live in New York, but I was ardent during the years when I did. My favorite spots --some probably over-familiar to you, others perhaps less so:
NEIGHBORHOODS (each is worth a half-day, even if you’re on a whirlwind tour)
West Village ( http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5083). The nicest of the nice. (subway Sheridan Square; go into the fenced square for a Segal surprise). Here you’ll find captains of finance fresh out of a job, and advertising, publishing, entertainment moguls. You’ll spy them in tee-shirts on weekends, walking their dogs or heading for gay bars.
The tree-lined streets of finely-detailed 19th Century town houses are both harmonious and stylistically diverse. As this is the northernmost outpost of New York’s pre-Madison Plan organic grid, these fine-grained houses are superimposed on a street pattern that may remind you of Paris. At its heart, don’t miss quietly beautiful, Parisian, refurbished Abingdon Square and the adjacent White Horse Tavern, where Dylan Thomas drank himself into a coma. This is now primarily a tourist destination with a solid underlayment of local regulars, like some London pubs. A “real New York style bar”? Dylan Thomas must have thought so --though that was half a century ago. To this day, you’ll find locals among the tourists.
Be sure you go all the way out to the (Hudson) River to the handsome new park with its astroturf piers and look back to admire Richard Meier’s three graceful and fine-scaled glass towers --semi-vacant stacks of celebrities-- and Julian Schnabel’s amazing pink palazzo. Late in the afternoon, you may see mammoth cruise ships glide by, ocean-bound.
The rest of Greenwich Village (http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5113) is also nice.
South of the West Village lies even more affluent Tribeca (http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=10171), faux-gritty with industrial architecture converted ages ago into housing for plutocrats.
To the north along the High Line ( http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2868) they pack meat among elegant boutiques --though less of it all the time; and above even that you’ll find Chelsea, where pockets of poverty coexist unhomogenized with artists, bohemians, gays and the usual yuppies.
Is brooklyn worth visiting for photos?
Brooklyn Heights. (http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=13159) The next-to-nicest of the nice. (subway Clark Street or Borough Hall) Solid bourgeois houses here are more overtly Victorian than in the West Village, though a few go way back to colonial times, and some are even wood-clad. Joralemon Street is a nice neighborhood shopping street that may remind you of Notting Hill.
Here you’ll find mews and a really nice mix of building types –as diverse as Washington’s Georgetown. My favorite street: unassuming but terminally picturesque Willow Place (not Willow Street, look for it on a map) with its sprinkling of Miesian block rowhouses mixed with Greek Revival colonnades, a church and even a small power station. My idea of the city as it could (should) be without the dead hand of zoning. Stupendously pretty but not precious, and still a little gritty.
The glory here is the (East) River Promenade with its TwinTowerless Downtown skyline view with Brooklyn Bridge. This Promenade is cantilevered out over a multi-tiered highway, which is thus neutralized as an environmental liability. Brilliant.
If there’s money burning a hole in your pocket, the River Café beneath the Bridge will scorch the contents of any size wallet with alfresco dining or drinks and a million dollar view. The interior’s pretty nice too, in a high-toned cosa nostra kind of way.
Walk back to Manhattan on the Bridge. Or take a water taxi if you’re tired.
Other districts that might interest you in Brooklyn include Brooklyn: Williamsburg (yuppies, artists, young folks, industrial grit, Orthodox Jews, and Peter Luger, the world-famous steakhouse);
Further out in the wilds of Brooklyn: Park Slope (http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=9892) (fancy rowhouses, nice bistros, check out Café Steinhof ( http://www.cafesteinhof.com/), subway F train at Seventh Ave., a neighborhood dive where the goulash is cheap and you can write home about the desserts).
Also in Brooklyn, you might want to check out Williamsburg. and Carroll Gardens ( http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=14572) (rowhouses with front yards).
And really off the beaten path, even for Brooklyn: Red Hook. (http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2938) Take the IKEA Water Taxi (http://www.nywatertaxi.com/commuters/ikea/) ferry to get there.
Just across the Hudson by ferry: Hoboken. Nice enough to be a part of Manhattan, but it’s in another state [though the PATH subway does get you there in a few minutes from Herald Square or Ground Zero (or take a ferry from Battery Park City)]. Like Manhattan, it’s built on a grid of oblong blocks.
Presently many similarities link it to Brooklyn Heights and the West Village. These include: 19th Century red-brick rowhouse infrastructure, a prosperous population, a nice mix of commerce and residences, walkability due to absence of parking lots, beautiful riverfront parks with views, resistance to [very] high-rise development, and easy subway access.
A difference is that Hoboken sank deep into a trough of slumhood; when Sinatra was born there it was rough enough for him to be ashamed of. He saw himself as an escapee from the dense, violent, gangster-ridden little city of stevedores chronicled by Elia Kazan in On the Waterfront; like New Orleans, Hoboken boosted Brando to stardom.
The vast scale of container shipping vaporized Hoboken’s dainty piers and cranes without a trace. Their replacement is Frank Sinatra Drive, a glitzy waterfront parade of elephantine lumps in postmodern style; it may remind you of some of the newer places along the Thames. After sampling Sinatra’s pleasures, be sure you get up away from it into Hoboken’s viewless residential and commercial core, which lies along handsome Washington Street (disfigured by one or two bank parking lots).
Vanished along with the cranes are the stevedores. These seem to have been replaced by an army of trust-fund kids. I can imagine the baby boomers’ reasoning as they plunk down payment on junior’s condo: “there’s a river between here and that bad ol’ city full of drugs and disease; Junior’ll be fine here, and he can visit the kulchur on weekends. After he gets married and needs a bigger place, we can either flip the condo or retire to it ourselves.”
What Junior actually does on weekends is get drunk. He does that mostly in Hoboken, which is full of dating bars, and he’s even joined by college buddies from the City.
Reminds me of Miami Beach: weekend eves feature acres of tasty tanned flesh scantily framed in designer-dud glitter (even in cool weather; you know what that's about). Saturday night, it's a mating dance. At 10 pm the PATH subway to Manhattan (ten minute ride) is packed with revelers--about evenly divided, I reckon, between Hobokenites headed for a night on the town and Manhattanites returning from their evening on the [other] town. Check out the calamari, the view, the passersby and the clientele at Quays.
Truly the sixth borough, though a miniature. Everything looks good in Hoboken. And the views of Manhattan…
Worth a short and easy train ride to the borough of Queens is Olmsted’s great Garden Suburb, Forest Hills (http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=13914). This will remind you of the exactly contemporaneous Hampstead Garden Suburb by Unwin, though I think the architecture (Grosvenor Atterbury) is better in the Queens example. Look for the rich mix of building types jumbled together in imitation of an English town; look for the sendup of modern zoning that this beautiful, varied and walkable environment represents.
Like Ebenezer Howard’s prototypes, Forest Hills was conceived as a railway suburb; all points are walking distance to the station. Though now the subway also goes to Forest Hills, take the LIRR train out of Penn Station instead. This frequent service is fast and comfortable, but the main reason to take it is the thrill of arriving at Forest Hills’ Station Square. The miniature Art and Crafts skyscraper that greets you at this atmospheric plaza was until recently the station hotel, but now it’s elderly housing.
Make a broad loop southward from the station, take note of all the diverse but harmonious housing types –apartment buildings, single-family attached, detached, duplexes, quadruplexes, rowhouses, cottages, garage units. Swing by the school and loop back via Ascan Avenue, under the tracks and left on Austin Street, the main shopping drag. This has lost much of its Tudor detail but manages to charm with an overlay of small-scale grit. It remains resolutely walkable and the sidewalk teems. Is Brixton like this? Walk all the way up to the splendidly-stocked Barnes and Noble Bookstore (even has an escalator!) and snuggle up with a latte and a good book before you take perhaps the subway home (just yonder, on awful Queens Boulevard).
Back in Manhattan:
Upper West Side (http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4646). The best for last. This is where I recommend you encamp for the duration of your visit. It's New York to the core and New York at its best, and it's not touristy.
Hotel rates are way up, but Hotel Beacon ( http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g60763-d93338-Reviews-Hotel_Beacon-New_York_City_New_York.html) is still my personal choice for best hotel deal in New York. Not the cheapest but low-priced for New York. And this place has so many strong points, of which the strongest is location. Better than Midtown, because it's in a real New York neighborhood, but just one express stop from Times Square from nearby 72nd Street subway station. Great Fairway Supermarket across street, and plenty of other good food stores as well, including Zabar's. Kitchenette in every room, nice lobby, pleasant and accommodating staff. For a real treat, ask for Room 2512; corner rooms like this provide views towards Central Park, the fabulous Second Empire Ansonia Apartments and Verdi Square (http://www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com/bigmap/manhattan/uws/verdisquare), Broadway above 72nd Street, once a traffic island, now a pleasant peninsula; look for the composer’s statue.
You’ll spend hours snapping pictures if you have a good zoom lens. Or settle for any room on a high floor, though the views out the windows are pretty good on lower floors too, if they face Broadway. Ask for the best price you can get, which may not be booking direct with the hotel. Get a reservation, then call the hotel and dicker nicely for a room location.
Broadway is bustling and vibrant, and this stretch will inevitably remind you of Paris. One block over, West End Avenue is quiet because it's residential, and it too will remind you of Paris; it's like a boulevard with the buildings scaled up to about fifteen stories. Even further over is elegant Riverside Drive and Park right on the Hudson.
Great apartment buildings are also to be found on Broadway; go in the courtyards of those that have them. Look especially for the Apthorp ( http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4646&page=5&highlight=apthorp) (west side of Broadway between 78th and 79th Streets) and the Belnord (east side of Broadway at 86th Street). An unexpected delight to stumble across (if you can find it): Pomander Walk ( http://nymag.com/nymetro/realestate/columns/realestate/12451/), which runs between 94th and 95th Streets, midblock between Broadway and West End Ave. For hardcore deco: Master Apartments, Riverside Drive at 103rd Street. Round the corner, handsome Beaux-Arts rowhouses from the late 1890’s on 103rd Street. An adult George Gershwin lived in the building at #316 (1925-31), simultaneously Humphrey Bogart grew up (did he?) at #245.
On Central Park West, twin towers reign, mostly deco. These are best seen from within the Park at Strawberry Fields (the Lennon Monument) and to the north of it, from The Ramble, Central Park’s best feature.
East of Broadway, you’ll find
Restaurants ( http://nymag.com/srch?t=restaurant&N=265+69+1321&No=0&Ns=nyml_sort_name|0) galore, especially on Amsterdam Avenue.
Even further east: Central Park and the Museum of Natural History. Side streets hereabouts feature brownstones galore, especially in the Seventies between Central Park West and Amsterdam Avenue. A lovely place for a walk.
Lincoln Center is actually within walking distance on Broadway (66th Street). A little further down: be sure you take in the fairly new Columbus Circle, its fountain, the Time Warner Center and its shops, jazz venues, glitzy restaurants and slick basement supermarket/snack bar (Whole Foods).
West Side movies: http://www.newyorkmetro.com/movies/listings/tn_579320060211.htm
A West Side cultural institution of sorts (not what you think): http://www.symphonyspace.org/
Morningside Heights is an academic community and the West Side’s uppermost reaches before Harlem. Take the subway a few stops uptown to 116th Street (transfer to local at 96th) for Columbia’s terrific campus; (see the rotunda and the chapel, find where they invented The Bomb, explore), St. John the Divine, now fully recovered from its fire; check out the sculpture in its Peace Garden! Climb the tower of Riverside Church.
Plenty of bookstores hereabouts.
But architecturally the very best thing in Morningside Heights is the intensely romantic Grant's Tomb, a moving experience, a poignant reminder of conjugal devotion, and perhaps New York’s noblest Beaux-Arts space, both inside (Napoleonic) and out (Mausoleic). Note the urn near the fence and the Gaudiesque benches. There’s even a ruined belvedere with a magnificent view. Solitude and privacy will follow you here.
Still a bit gritty but rapidly gentrifying and worth a visit for street photography: Harlem, East Village, St. Mark’s Place, Lower East Side.
Good for photographing people: Union Square, Madison Square, SoHo, Bryant Park, Chinatown.
Clockwork Orange surreal,
Roosevelt Island (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roosevelt_Island) offers great views and a bizarre ambiance that ranges from sinister streets to Gothic ruins. You get there by the soon-to-be-closed-for-repairs Roosevelt Island Tramway ( http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2869).
Familiar to Spider Maniacs, this suspended cable-car gondola’s fare is a mere fraction of London Eye’s, but its spectacular trajectory across the East River parallels the Queensboro Bridge, affords dynamic skyline views and actually takes you somewhere. It will take you from Second Avenue and 60th Street to Utopia. In this case that means a social-engineered brutalist utopia surrounded by water.
After you’ve seen the spectacular view, the incongruously-preserved woodframe farmhouse that once loomed manorially over the island’s cornfields and the vaguely Gothic madhouse chapel*, you’ll be ready to hop the subway back. Or would you care for a return trip on the gondola?
*From the Roosevelt Island Historical Society’s brochure: “Architect Frederick Clark Withers planned the handsome structure… in 1889 [for] the New York Episcopal Mission Society for its ministry of comfort and hope to the unwanted poor and sick in the surrounding almshouses.
The chapel's bell, now in Good Shepherd Plaza, summoned them not only to worship, but daily from their straw beds to long listless hours of loneliness.”
Though you might find the open upper level of a Gray Line Bus (http://www.coachusa.com/newyorksightseeing/cs.map.asp) a bit chilly, it’s a great photo opportunity. The high vantage point and open top give you a great perspective and facilitate photography (certain kinds, anyway); it's great to be able to hop on and off. Ride both Manhattan loops all the way through, hopping off and on as you please.
The tourguides’ patter ranges from witty to bland, from informative and insightful to ignorant and dumb. But hey, if you’re well-informed, you know when the facts aren't spot-on; and when the commentary's truly inspired it's like a rolling comedy club --with all that scenery.
I recommend it no matter how jaded you are or reluctant to do something so touristy. You’ll love it, but better hope the weather isn’t too cold or wet.
PARKS AND SQUARES
The best you don’t want to miss. They are:
The Ramble. Everyone goes to Central Park. The Castle’s a great place to view the skyline, the sunning turtles and an exquisite frog skeleton in a display case, but the best part of Central Park is The Ramble…make-believe nature improved by man, a concept familiar to anyone English. Start across from the Dakota, where Chapman shot Lennon (72nd Street at Central Park West), cross into the park, where you’ll find that event memorialized, head east, then north around the lake, cross the Bow Bridge, and then proceed aimlessly north. Try to get lost and spot some wildlife.
Union Square. New York’s liveliest, and like the others once the realm of low-lifes. Now you’ll find the Starbucks crowd shopping for organic produce on market days, Mo, We, Fr, Sa, 8-6. Newly restored Madison Square, 9 blocks up Broadway, is nice, not as lively, and flanked by some nifty architecture, including the original MetLife Building and the Flatiron, now possibly shrouded in scaffolding. Unlike in Times Square, most folks you see will be New Yorkers. Grab a delicious burger at Shake Shack unless you’re averse to queues.
Washington Square. Being rebuilt with the fountain to be moved on axis with the arch and Fifth Avenue, this used to be a great place for people watching. Here you’ll also find picturesque Washington Mews, a street of stables for the splendid Greek Revival rowhouse/mansions that line Washington Square’s northern edge. Both mansions and mews are now mostly New York University offices. Henry James, Richard Morris Hunt, John Dos Passos, Edward Hopper and various other well-heeled artists lived here in the Square’s Nineteenth Century (and subsequent) heyday, before several of the houses were swept away for a crass apartment building.
If you think Washington Mews was picturesque, wait till you see its western counterpart, McDougal Alley. Accessible only from McDougal Street, this gives new meaning to the term “gated community.” Feel free to open the gate and enter. This will remind you of places in London’s Chelsea; the carriage houses have evolved in such diverse ways. You have to be rich.
Tompkins Square. The East Village edition of Washington Square is bigger, less genteel, a little remote and about equally good for watching people. Walk to it from Washington Square via 8th Street and you’ll pass a little zoo of architectural specimens called Astor Place. Here Charles Gwathmey’s undulating and glossy high rise plays svelte campanile to Cooper Union’s motley collection of corpulent piles, and an amazing colonnade (once row houses) that looks plucked from Bath’s Royal Crescent for a straightening. Some specimens at Astor Place are interesting as individuals, but the whole remains a traffic intersection, not a place. In the middle lurks a reconstructed subway headhouse (Art Nouveau or perhaps Turkish) of the type that used to abound; and elsewhere a cube appears balanced jauntily on one point. There’s a Starbuck’s from which you can watch and photograph the passing parade of eccentric characters.
Eighth Street changes its name to St. Mark’s Place; here you can still buy patchouli and a Che Guevara poster. Then you’re in Tompkins Square, once home to a largish bidonville of homeless shanties. When the city commenced eviction, rioting ensued. The people who live thereabouts fancy themselves progressive. Many of them own very large dogs.
Bryant Park. It’s easy to think of this as New York’s best park. It’s definitely Parisian, everything is just so --especially impressive to those who know that just a decade ago this was New York’s most dangerous needle park. Come with a little lunch or buy some at the kiosk, or if you’re feeling flush eat at the grill. Any way you do it, you’re bound to hang around for an hour or more. So many people to watch, such pleasant and salubrious surroundings, so much architecture to ogle. Just right. (Unless it’s cold.)
Gramercy Park. Like a quiet London residential square, with some really refined architecture and a Julian Schnabel conversion of the former Gramercy Park Hotel. You need a key to access the park proper
Grand Central Station. On the American model, not the British. The big space is for people; the trains lurk in tunnels. In the basement, a great food court. Up the steps: mezzanine restaurants with bars. Up the escalators: the MetLife (Pan Am) Building (Walter Gropius, et al.) Grand Central functions like an indoor square; hence its inclusion here.
FOOD AND DRINK
To me, the quintessential New York dining experience is a hot dog from a pushcart. Get it with sauerkraut or onions, and maybe wash it down with a grape soda. That way, you won’t waste valuable time eating lunch when you could be seeing something.
On the other hand, sometimes it’s worth just sitting. In good weather, you can watch the world go by from a sidewalk café while you quaff beer. Best I know is the sidewalk café at Markt, 14th St. and Eighth Avenue in the Meatpacking District, where Paris meets New York. The beer is Belgian and the victual specialty mussels. As an extra bonus, after 5 pm the bar here features pulchritude seeking male company.
For a classy saloon experience, I know no place to match Café des Artistes, 67th Street at Central Park West. Accompanied or solo, you’ll find conversation here, if only with the friendly and knowledgeable bartender, amid Art Nouveau surroundings that would find favor in Vienna. You might be tempted to stick around for the (pricey) food and heart-stopping desserts.
Even more hazardous sweets can be found at the Hungarian Pastry Shop, Amsterdam Avenue at 111th Street, where sitting on the sidewalk treats you to the passing parade of students and bohemians backdropped by St. John the Divine’s colossal Gothic west front. The chocolatiest desserts here are also the best.
A Sunday excursion: Park dining can be found at the New Leaf Café (http://www.nyrp.org/newleaf/), simultaneously rustic and deco in Fort Tryon, New York’s boskiest park. It’s been around for a while but credit for its latest incarnation goes to Bette Midler. Atmospheric as a French roadhouse, New Leaf is good to snatch a snack or saunter through a full-course meal before or after a visit to the nearby Middle Ages at the Cloisters ( http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4260), one of New York’s three best museums. Great for Sunday brunch. Beautiful.
A preppy bar: http://www.dorrians.com/nyc/
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I would like to visit the following.....
Real new york style bar
Is brooklyn worth visiting for photo's?
Manhatten neighbourhood
Anything that really does sum NY up to a local.
As i said my emphasis will be on photo's of the city so any hidden away places that give you a fantastic view of the skyline and the character of the city would be much appreciated!
I don’t currently live in New York, but I was ardent during the years when I did. My favorite spots --some probably over-familiar to you, others perhaps less so:
NEIGHBORHOODS (each is worth a half-day, even if you’re on a whirlwind tour)
West Village ( http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5083). The nicest of the nice. (subway Sheridan Square; go into the fenced square for a Segal surprise). Here you’ll find captains of finance fresh out of a job, and advertising, publishing, entertainment moguls. You’ll spy them in tee-shirts on weekends, walking their dogs or heading for gay bars.
The tree-lined streets of finely-detailed 19th Century town houses are both harmonious and stylistically diverse. As this is the northernmost outpost of New York’s pre-Madison Plan organic grid, these fine-grained houses are superimposed on a street pattern that may remind you of Paris. At its heart, don’t miss quietly beautiful, Parisian, refurbished Abingdon Square and the adjacent White Horse Tavern, where Dylan Thomas drank himself into a coma. This is now primarily a tourist destination with a solid underlayment of local regulars, like some London pubs. A “real New York style bar”? Dylan Thomas must have thought so --though that was half a century ago. To this day, you’ll find locals among the tourists.
Be sure you go all the way out to the (Hudson) River to the handsome new park with its astroturf piers and look back to admire Richard Meier’s three graceful and fine-scaled glass towers --semi-vacant stacks of celebrities-- and Julian Schnabel’s amazing pink palazzo. Late in the afternoon, you may see mammoth cruise ships glide by, ocean-bound.
The rest of Greenwich Village (http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5113) is also nice.
South of the West Village lies even more affluent Tribeca (http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=10171), faux-gritty with industrial architecture converted ages ago into housing for plutocrats.
To the north along the High Line ( http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2868) they pack meat among elegant boutiques --though less of it all the time; and above even that you’ll find Chelsea, where pockets of poverty coexist unhomogenized with artists, bohemians, gays and the usual yuppies.
Is brooklyn worth visiting for photos?
Brooklyn Heights. (http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=13159) The next-to-nicest of the nice. (subway Clark Street or Borough Hall) Solid bourgeois houses here are more overtly Victorian than in the West Village, though a few go way back to colonial times, and some are even wood-clad. Joralemon Street is a nice neighborhood shopping street that may remind you of Notting Hill.
Here you’ll find mews and a really nice mix of building types –as diverse as Washington’s Georgetown. My favorite street: unassuming but terminally picturesque Willow Place (not Willow Street, look for it on a map) with its sprinkling of Miesian block rowhouses mixed with Greek Revival colonnades, a church and even a small power station. My idea of the city as it could (should) be without the dead hand of zoning. Stupendously pretty but not precious, and still a little gritty.
The glory here is the (East) River Promenade with its TwinTowerless Downtown skyline view with Brooklyn Bridge. This Promenade is cantilevered out over a multi-tiered highway, which is thus neutralized as an environmental liability. Brilliant.
If there’s money burning a hole in your pocket, the River Café beneath the Bridge will scorch the contents of any size wallet with alfresco dining or drinks and a million dollar view. The interior’s pretty nice too, in a high-toned cosa nostra kind of way.
Walk back to Manhattan on the Bridge. Or take a water taxi if you’re tired.
Other districts that might interest you in Brooklyn include Brooklyn: Williamsburg (yuppies, artists, young folks, industrial grit, Orthodox Jews, and Peter Luger, the world-famous steakhouse);
Further out in the wilds of Brooklyn: Park Slope (http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=9892) (fancy rowhouses, nice bistros, check out Café Steinhof ( http://www.cafesteinhof.com/), subway F train at Seventh Ave., a neighborhood dive where the goulash is cheap and you can write home about the desserts).
Also in Brooklyn, you might want to check out Williamsburg. and Carroll Gardens ( http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=14572) (rowhouses with front yards).
And really off the beaten path, even for Brooklyn: Red Hook. (http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2938) Take the IKEA Water Taxi (http://www.nywatertaxi.com/commuters/ikea/) ferry to get there.
Just across the Hudson by ferry: Hoboken. Nice enough to be a part of Manhattan, but it’s in another state [though the PATH subway does get you there in a few minutes from Herald Square or Ground Zero (or take a ferry from Battery Park City)]. Like Manhattan, it’s built on a grid of oblong blocks.
Presently many similarities link it to Brooklyn Heights and the West Village. These include: 19th Century red-brick rowhouse infrastructure, a prosperous population, a nice mix of commerce and residences, walkability due to absence of parking lots, beautiful riverfront parks with views, resistance to [very] high-rise development, and easy subway access.
A difference is that Hoboken sank deep into a trough of slumhood; when Sinatra was born there it was rough enough for him to be ashamed of. He saw himself as an escapee from the dense, violent, gangster-ridden little city of stevedores chronicled by Elia Kazan in On the Waterfront; like New Orleans, Hoboken boosted Brando to stardom.
The vast scale of container shipping vaporized Hoboken’s dainty piers and cranes without a trace. Their replacement is Frank Sinatra Drive, a glitzy waterfront parade of elephantine lumps in postmodern style; it may remind you of some of the newer places along the Thames. After sampling Sinatra’s pleasures, be sure you get up away from it into Hoboken’s viewless residential and commercial core, which lies along handsome Washington Street (disfigured by one or two bank parking lots).
Vanished along with the cranes are the stevedores. These seem to have been replaced by an army of trust-fund kids. I can imagine the baby boomers’ reasoning as they plunk down payment on junior’s condo: “there’s a river between here and that bad ol’ city full of drugs and disease; Junior’ll be fine here, and he can visit the kulchur on weekends. After he gets married and needs a bigger place, we can either flip the condo or retire to it ourselves.”
What Junior actually does on weekends is get drunk. He does that mostly in Hoboken, which is full of dating bars, and he’s even joined by college buddies from the City.
Reminds me of Miami Beach: weekend eves feature acres of tasty tanned flesh scantily framed in designer-dud glitter (even in cool weather; you know what that's about). Saturday night, it's a mating dance. At 10 pm the PATH subway to Manhattan (ten minute ride) is packed with revelers--about evenly divided, I reckon, between Hobokenites headed for a night on the town and Manhattanites returning from their evening on the [other] town. Check out the calamari, the view, the passersby and the clientele at Quays.
Truly the sixth borough, though a miniature. Everything looks good in Hoboken. And the views of Manhattan…
Worth a short and easy train ride to the borough of Queens is Olmsted’s great Garden Suburb, Forest Hills (http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=13914). This will remind you of the exactly contemporaneous Hampstead Garden Suburb by Unwin, though I think the architecture (Grosvenor Atterbury) is better in the Queens example. Look for the rich mix of building types jumbled together in imitation of an English town; look for the sendup of modern zoning that this beautiful, varied and walkable environment represents.
Like Ebenezer Howard’s prototypes, Forest Hills was conceived as a railway suburb; all points are walking distance to the station. Though now the subway also goes to Forest Hills, take the LIRR train out of Penn Station instead. This frequent service is fast and comfortable, but the main reason to take it is the thrill of arriving at Forest Hills’ Station Square. The miniature Art and Crafts skyscraper that greets you at this atmospheric plaza was until recently the station hotel, but now it’s elderly housing.
Make a broad loop southward from the station, take note of all the diverse but harmonious housing types –apartment buildings, single-family attached, detached, duplexes, quadruplexes, rowhouses, cottages, garage units. Swing by the school and loop back via Ascan Avenue, under the tracks and left on Austin Street, the main shopping drag. This has lost much of its Tudor detail but manages to charm with an overlay of small-scale grit. It remains resolutely walkable and the sidewalk teems. Is Brixton like this? Walk all the way up to the splendidly-stocked Barnes and Noble Bookstore (even has an escalator!) and snuggle up with a latte and a good book before you take perhaps the subway home (just yonder, on awful Queens Boulevard).
Back in Manhattan:
Upper West Side (http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4646). The best for last. This is where I recommend you encamp for the duration of your visit. It's New York to the core and New York at its best, and it's not touristy.
Hotel rates are way up, but Hotel Beacon ( http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g60763-d93338-Reviews-Hotel_Beacon-New_York_City_New_York.html) is still my personal choice for best hotel deal in New York. Not the cheapest but low-priced for New York. And this place has so many strong points, of which the strongest is location. Better than Midtown, because it's in a real New York neighborhood, but just one express stop from Times Square from nearby 72nd Street subway station. Great Fairway Supermarket across street, and plenty of other good food stores as well, including Zabar's. Kitchenette in every room, nice lobby, pleasant and accommodating staff. For a real treat, ask for Room 2512; corner rooms like this provide views towards Central Park, the fabulous Second Empire Ansonia Apartments and Verdi Square (http://www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com/bigmap/manhattan/uws/verdisquare), Broadway above 72nd Street, once a traffic island, now a pleasant peninsula; look for the composer’s statue.
You’ll spend hours snapping pictures if you have a good zoom lens. Or settle for any room on a high floor, though the views out the windows are pretty good on lower floors too, if they face Broadway. Ask for the best price you can get, which may not be booking direct with the hotel. Get a reservation, then call the hotel and dicker nicely for a room location.
Broadway is bustling and vibrant, and this stretch will inevitably remind you of Paris. One block over, West End Avenue is quiet because it's residential, and it too will remind you of Paris; it's like a boulevard with the buildings scaled up to about fifteen stories. Even further over is elegant Riverside Drive and Park right on the Hudson.
Great apartment buildings are also to be found on Broadway; go in the courtyards of those that have them. Look especially for the Apthorp ( http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4646&page=5&highlight=apthorp) (west side of Broadway between 78th and 79th Streets) and the Belnord (east side of Broadway at 86th Street). An unexpected delight to stumble across (if you can find it): Pomander Walk ( http://nymag.com/nymetro/realestate/columns/realestate/12451/), which runs between 94th and 95th Streets, midblock between Broadway and West End Ave. For hardcore deco: Master Apartments, Riverside Drive at 103rd Street. Round the corner, handsome Beaux-Arts rowhouses from the late 1890’s on 103rd Street. An adult George Gershwin lived in the building at #316 (1925-31), simultaneously Humphrey Bogart grew up (did he?) at #245.
On Central Park West, twin towers reign, mostly deco. These are best seen from within the Park at Strawberry Fields (the Lennon Monument) and to the north of it, from The Ramble, Central Park’s best feature.
East of Broadway, you’ll find
Restaurants ( http://nymag.com/srch?t=restaurant&N=265+69+1321&No=0&Ns=nyml_sort_name|0) galore, especially on Amsterdam Avenue.
Even further east: Central Park and the Museum of Natural History. Side streets hereabouts feature brownstones galore, especially in the Seventies between Central Park West and Amsterdam Avenue. A lovely place for a walk.
Lincoln Center is actually within walking distance on Broadway (66th Street). A little further down: be sure you take in the fairly new Columbus Circle, its fountain, the Time Warner Center and its shops, jazz venues, glitzy restaurants and slick basement supermarket/snack bar (Whole Foods).
West Side movies: http://www.newyorkmetro.com/movies/listings/tn_579320060211.htm
A West Side cultural institution of sorts (not what you think): http://www.symphonyspace.org/
Morningside Heights is an academic community and the West Side’s uppermost reaches before Harlem. Take the subway a few stops uptown to 116th Street (transfer to local at 96th) for Columbia’s terrific campus; (see the rotunda and the chapel, find where they invented The Bomb, explore), St. John the Divine, now fully recovered from its fire; check out the sculpture in its Peace Garden! Climb the tower of Riverside Church.
Plenty of bookstores hereabouts.
But architecturally the very best thing in Morningside Heights is the intensely romantic Grant's Tomb, a moving experience, a poignant reminder of conjugal devotion, and perhaps New York’s noblest Beaux-Arts space, both inside (Napoleonic) and out (Mausoleic). Note the urn near the fence and the Gaudiesque benches. There’s even a ruined belvedere with a magnificent view. Solitude and privacy will follow you here.
Still a bit gritty but rapidly gentrifying and worth a visit for street photography: Harlem, East Village, St. Mark’s Place, Lower East Side.
Good for photographing people: Union Square, Madison Square, SoHo, Bryant Park, Chinatown.
Clockwork Orange surreal,
Roosevelt Island (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roosevelt_Island) offers great views and a bizarre ambiance that ranges from sinister streets to Gothic ruins. You get there by the soon-to-be-closed-for-repairs Roosevelt Island Tramway ( http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2869).
Familiar to Spider Maniacs, this suspended cable-car gondola’s fare is a mere fraction of London Eye’s, but its spectacular trajectory across the East River parallels the Queensboro Bridge, affords dynamic skyline views and actually takes you somewhere. It will take you from Second Avenue and 60th Street to Utopia. In this case that means a social-engineered brutalist utopia surrounded by water.
After you’ve seen the spectacular view, the incongruously-preserved woodframe farmhouse that once loomed manorially over the island’s cornfields and the vaguely Gothic madhouse chapel*, you’ll be ready to hop the subway back. Or would you care for a return trip on the gondola?
*From the Roosevelt Island Historical Society’s brochure: “Architect Frederick Clark Withers planned the handsome structure… in 1889 [for] the New York Episcopal Mission Society for its ministry of comfort and hope to the unwanted poor and sick in the surrounding almshouses.
The chapel's bell, now in Good Shepherd Plaza, summoned them not only to worship, but daily from their straw beds to long listless hours of loneliness.”
Though you might find the open upper level of a Gray Line Bus (http://www.coachusa.com/newyorksightseeing/cs.map.asp) a bit chilly, it’s a great photo opportunity. The high vantage point and open top give you a great perspective and facilitate photography (certain kinds, anyway); it's great to be able to hop on and off. Ride both Manhattan loops all the way through, hopping off and on as you please.
The tourguides’ patter ranges from witty to bland, from informative and insightful to ignorant and dumb. But hey, if you’re well-informed, you know when the facts aren't spot-on; and when the commentary's truly inspired it's like a rolling comedy club --with all that scenery.
I recommend it no matter how jaded you are or reluctant to do something so touristy. You’ll love it, but better hope the weather isn’t too cold or wet.
PARKS AND SQUARES
The best you don’t want to miss. They are:
The Ramble. Everyone goes to Central Park. The Castle’s a great place to view the skyline, the sunning turtles and an exquisite frog skeleton in a display case, but the best part of Central Park is The Ramble…make-believe nature improved by man, a concept familiar to anyone English. Start across from the Dakota, where Chapman shot Lennon (72nd Street at Central Park West), cross into the park, where you’ll find that event memorialized, head east, then north around the lake, cross the Bow Bridge, and then proceed aimlessly north. Try to get lost and spot some wildlife.
Union Square. New York’s liveliest, and like the others once the realm of low-lifes. Now you’ll find the Starbucks crowd shopping for organic produce on market days, Mo, We, Fr, Sa, 8-6. Newly restored Madison Square, 9 blocks up Broadway, is nice, not as lively, and flanked by some nifty architecture, including the original MetLife Building and the Flatiron, now possibly shrouded in scaffolding. Unlike in Times Square, most folks you see will be New Yorkers. Grab a delicious burger at Shake Shack unless you’re averse to queues.
Washington Square. Being rebuilt with the fountain to be moved on axis with the arch and Fifth Avenue, this used to be a great place for people watching. Here you’ll also find picturesque Washington Mews, a street of stables for the splendid Greek Revival rowhouse/mansions that line Washington Square’s northern edge. Both mansions and mews are now mostly New York University offices. Henry James, Richard Morris Hunt, John Dos Passos, Edward Hopper and various other well-heeled artists lived here in the Square’s Nineteenth Century (and subsequent) heyday, before several of the houses were swept away for a crass apartment building.
If you think Washington Mews was picturesque, wait till you see its western counterpart, McDougal Alley. Accessible only from McDougal Street, this gives new meaning to the term “gated community.” Feel free to open the gate and enter. This will remind you of places in London’s Chelsea; the carriage houses have evolved in such diverse ways. You have to be rich.
Tompkins Square. The East Village edition of Washington Square is bigger, less genteel, a little remote and about equally good for watching people. Walk to it from Washington Square via 8th Street and you’ll pass a little zoo of architectural specimens called Astor Place. Here Charles Gwathmey’s undulating and glossy high rise plays svelte campanile to Cooper Union’s motley collection of corpulent piles, and an amazing colonnade (once row houses) that looks plucked from Bath’s Royal Crescent for a straightening. Some specimens at Astor Place are interesting as individuals, but the whole remains a traffic intersection, not a place. In the middle lurks a reconstructed subway headhouse (Art Nouveau or perhaps Turkish) of the type that used to abound; and elsewhere a cube appears balanced jauntily on one point. There’s a Starbuck’s from which you can watch and photograph the passing parade of eccentric characters.
Eighth Street changes its name to St. Mark’s Place; here you can still buy patchouli and a Che Guevara poster. Then you’re in Tompkins Square, once home to a largish bidonville of homeless shanties. When the city commenced eviction, rioting ensued. The people who live thereabouts fancy themselves progressive. Many of them own very large dogs.
Bryant Park. It’s easy to think of this as New York’s best park. It’s definitely Parisian, everything is just so --especially impressive to those who know that just a decade ago this was New York’s most dangerous needle park. Come with a little lunch or buy some at the kiosk, or if you’re feeling flush eat at the grill. Any way you do it, you’re bound to hang around for an hour or more. So many people to watch, such pleasant and salubrious surroundings, so much architecture to ogle. Just right. (Unless it’s cold.)
Gramercy Park. Like a quiet London residential square, with some really refined architecture and a Julian Schnabel conversion of the former Gramercy Park Hotel. You need a key to access the park proper
Grand Central Station. On the American model, not the British. The big space is for people; the trains lurk in tunnels. In the basement, a great food court. Up the steps: mezzanine restaurants with bars. Up the escalators: the MetLife (Pan Am) Building (Walter Gropius, et al.) Grand Central functions like an indoor square; hence its inclusion here.
FOOD AND DRINK
To me, the quintessential New York dining experience is a hot dog from a pushcart. Get it with sauerkraut or onions, and maybe wash it down with a grape soda. That way, you won’t waste valuable time eating lunch when you could be seeing something.
On the other hand, sometimes it’s worth just sitting. In good weather, you can watch the world go by from a sidewalk café while you quaff beer. Best I know is the sidewalk café at Markt, 14th St. and Eighth Avenue in the Meatpacking District, where Paris meets New York. The beer is Belgian and the victual specialty mussels. As an extra bonus, after 5 pm the bar here features pulchritude seeking male company.
For a classy saloon experience, I know no place to match Café des Artistes, 67th Street at Central Park West. Accompanied or solo, you’ll find conversation here, if only with the friendly and knowledgeable bartender, amid Art Nouveau surroundings that would find favor in Vienna. You might be tempted to stick around for the (pricey) food and heart-stopping desserts.
Even more hazardous sweets can be found at the Hungarian Pastry Shop, Amsterdam Avenue at 111th Street, where sitting on the sidewalk treats you to the passing parade of students and bohemians backdropped by St. John the Divine’s colossal Gothic west front. The chocolatiest desserts here are also the best.
A Sunday excursion: Park dining can be found at the New Leaf Café (http://www.nyrp.org/newleaf/), simultaneously rustic and deco in Fort Tryon, New York’s boskiest park. It’s been around for a while but credit for its latest incarnation goes to Bette Midler. Atmospheric as a French roadhouse, New Leaf is good to snatch a snack or saunter through a full-course meal before or after a visit to the nearby Middle Ages at the Cloisters ( http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4260), one of New York’s three best museums. Great for Sunday brunch. Beautiful.
A preppy bar: http://www.dorrians.com/nyc/
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