Okay winter, we get the point

Most Aussies are totally unfamiliar with terms like "thundersnow" and "polar vortex".  Yet this winter in New York, I've lived through such realities multiple times.  Even long-time locals are complaining about the cold, so you know it's serious.  We've got another six inches of snow set to fall on Sunday, which will be lovely....until the Monday morning commute.

New York City has had 57 inches of snowfall so far this winter.  While that's still 18 inches short of the 1995-96 season, it's still a pretty impressive amount.

I feel lucky to live in Manhattan most days, but this good fortune is particularly acute during snow season, when the City is really well-serviced by the snow plows.  When I relocated here 3 years ago I lived in a doorman building, so even after a decent snowfall the maintenance staff ensured our footpath was pristinely clean (or on its way to being so) in time for the morning commute.  These days I live in a low-rise apartment building where the super lives off-site and is hardly ever here.  As a result, the common area outside my building can be positively treacherous after a decent snowstorm.  And if ice accumulates?  Well it's a slow shuffle along the footpath to the next snowless spot.

The City of New York actually maintains a snow plow tracker, where you can input your address and monitor just how well the snow clearance is progressing.  However, given that the NYC Department of Sanitation trucks are in charge of snow removal, it makes it impossible for them to manage rubbish removal at the same time.  You would think that this would make New York streets even smellier than in the heat of summer; but the rubbish actually freezes, which fortunately seems to keep odors in a state of suspended animation.  Even snowstorms have a silver lining, it seems!

And while the snow might disrupt traffic and public transport, and sometimes force schools and offices to close, I still think it's a really lovely phenomenon to watch (from the relative safety of a warm, dry place of course).  I'll just need to remember to put on my gumboots on Monday morning, so I can slosh through the snowdrifts, in the direction of a subway that may or may not be running.  I'm ready whenever you are, Spring!

Something's gotta give, and it might be my waistline

When you move to New York, you have to be willing to make a few lifestyle concessions.  For some people, it's about giving up your car, and the freedom to just drive yourself wherever you need to go.  For others, it's about moving in with a room mate, giving up your space & privacy so you can live in an amazing apartment in the centre of everything.

But I think one thing that very few people count on when you move to the US is the sacrifice you make to your diet.  Portions here are huge, there's just no getting around that.  But you know what? Nobody is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to eat everything on your plate.  But do you think that makes a difference? Hell no.  You eat whatever is put in front of you, and you discretely unbutton your jeans at a restaurant and hope nobody notices. It's okay, everyone does it.

And the other thing?  In New York, you can get anything delivered at any time of day.  Everything has a price.  And you can answer your door in your pyjamas.  If you've paid the right amount of tip, what do you care if the delivery guy was silently judging you?

So it is that New Yorkers become addicted to sites like www.seamless.com- the mecca of online ordering in this crazy town.  At any time of day or night, this website will find a restaurant or diner to deliver to your door.   There are competitors of course (like Grub Hub or Healthy Out) but quite frankly, Seamless is totally the best.  Pre-load your credit card info, and you're ready to just 'click & deliver' any old time.

But trust me, do whatever you can to split your delivery order in two.  Save some for tomorrow night.  Your jeans will thank you.

You gotta keep it caffeinated

One of the biggest complaints that Australians make when they come to New York is that they can't get good coffee here.  This is a sweeping generalisation of course, but one that merits exploring.

When you move from Australia to the US, people warn you about the culture shock.  You think they're joking, because even before you come here you feel an affinity with the US.  Thanks to TV, books, and advertising, American culture has been a part of most of our lives since we were little.  We think we know it; that assimilation will be easy.  But the culture shock does exist, for all of us.  It's just that it reveals itself in little ways - such as our different approaches to queuing, or the size of food portions.

And if the moans of Aussie tourists and new arrivals are anything to go by, our definition of what constitutes "good coffee" is just another cultural disparity we need to navigate.

There are 201 Starbucks stores on Manhattan alone, and I note a new resident has rather strangely set himself the challenge of visiting every single one.  I don't know anyone (American or otherwise) who declares Starbucks to be their favourite coffee of all time though, but we can generally accept that it scratches an itch.  Because it's not a popular coffee chain back home, Australians are challenged by the ordering process at Starbucks; all this tall, grande, venti business.  By and large we don't do the fancy coffees either, like the frapaccino, no-whip mocha stuff.  We're just not used to it.  And at some point, when you add nutmeg and cinnamon and gingerbread spice and all that jazz to your drink, it really does cease to be coffee.

But Starbucks is never your only option for coffee in this City; it just seems to be the most prevalent one.  In the three years that I've lived here, I've noticed an increase in the number of smaller coffee shops & cafes popping up around town.  These are the types of places that Australians tend to favour.  If you're prepared to look for them, they are definitely around.  You may not be able to get yours hands on a "flat white", but the baristas will definitely get your heart pumping with espresso goodness.

I've compiled a short list of my favourite coffee shops below.  It's not an exhaustive list by any means, and coffee appreciation really is all relative anyway.  These are just the places where I can reliably count on having a delicious coffee every time:

• Eataly (Lavazza coffee and authentic Italian pastries)
• Fika (a Swedish coffee chain)
• Blue Bottle (easy to walk past - make sure you're paying attention)
• 9th Street Espresso (inside Chelsea Market)
• Joe Coffee (a family-owned business with a couple of locations)
• Culture Espresso (not far from Bryant Park)
• Little Collins (a taste of Melbourne on the Upper East Side)
• Laughing Man (Hugh Jackman's shop, fair trade beans)
• Stumptown (hipster baristas)
• Pie Face (a controversial choice, but they make flat whites in a range of strengths)

Serious coffee fiends might also like to subscribe to The New York Coffee Guide website for up to date recommendations, and to plot their daily grind more thoroughly.

Diamonds (and glass) are this girl's best friend

Once upon a time I read a book about Paris, and right on the first page the author asserted that "everyone in the world has been to Paris".  He posited that even if you've never physically left your house, you've been there - because we've all been exposed to so many pictures or movies about the Eiffel Tower, and the Arc de Triomphe, and Champs Elysees that it's just like making the trip.

Now those of us who have been to Paris will know that images and songs are no substitute for the real thing, but I can see what the author was trying to say.  Because I think that the same has always been true for me, only with New York.

Photo credit:
Melissa Ryan (C)

On some level I think I have always known about New York.  When I was little, it was THE big city.  It had a lot of yellow taxis and school buses, and tall grey buildings.  It was Sesame Street.

As I got older, and watched more TV and read more books, I learned that New York was where all the businessmen wore suits, and all the homeless people were drug addicts, and people would kill you on the subway.  There was always a traffic jam, the cops wore navy blue uniforms, and the mobsters always shrugged and said,  "Fuggedaboudit".

Then there was "Sex and the City", every "Law & Order" franchise, and so many movies (old and new) that I can't even count them.  I soaked it all up.

But if I had to pick where the love-affair with New York really began, it would have to be when I first watched "Breakfast At Tiffany's".  I know, it's totally cliche.  I never got tired of watching the movie, as much for Audrey's glamorous wardrobe as for the dashing George Peppard, and their romps around the big, yellow taxi-filled city.  And it was many years until I realised - and ultimately read - the novella by Truman Capote.  The movie and the book were so different, but that just added to the mystique of this town for me.

And when I finally moved here at the beginning of 2011, and if ever I found myself lonely (eek!) and at a loose end, I also wound up at "Tiffany & Co".  Never with a danish and coffee of course; rather, I'd usually just head for the 4th floor and browse the sterling silver collection (anything more expensive would just be torture).  I can't tell you the number of Saturday mornings or late Sunday afternoons that the Tiffany's flagship store on Fifth Avenue was my hang-out; a definite happy place.  Tiffany's was, and remains, one of the few things that lived up to my early hype.

And if you can't afford jewelry, a telephone dialer, or an engraved Crackerjack prize, you can always read about places like Tiffany's.  I recently finished a wonderful book called "Clara and Mr. Tiffany", by Susan Vreeland.

It's a true story that is set in New York near the turn of the 20th Century and opens with the frenzy of Louis Comfort Tiffany's stunning contribution to the 1893 Chicago World's Fair: his innovative stained glass window Chapel display.  Louis Tiffany's father actually ran the jewelry side of Tiffany's at the time, so this story focuses on the company's glasswork business, and its heroine is the head of Tiffany's women's division, a strong and creative woman named Clara Driscoll.  The story takes place at a time when Tiffany refused to hire married women, and any women who wanted to get married while working at Tiffany's had to resign their jobs.  Clara ultimately has to decide whether she most values "the professional world of her hands, or the personal world of her heart".  The story isn't all weepy relationship stuff, it's also a great insight into early New York - the opening of the Flatiron Building, stories about the Lower East Side immigrant slums and tenements, contrasted with the sheer excess and flamboyance of the Tiffany family mansions.  Clara and her team produced the sort of stained-glass lamps that I absolutely covet, but have never owned.  At least I got to see them at the Art Institute of Chicago a few months ago, and they have also been on display at the New York Historical Society and the Museum of the City of New York.

And so while I may not be Holly Golightly or Carrie Bradshaw or Detective Benson, I still find it gratifying to know that in New York, life very often imitates art.

If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere

The Apollo Theater is a giant music hall in Harlem built in 1913 as a burlesque theatre and a whites-only venue.  It traded under a different name until 1934, but when it became the Apollo, it opened its doors to black patrons too. 

In its early days, the Apollo primarily staged vaudeville-style shows, complete with a chorus line of dancing girls.  Over time though, such acts became less common and in the ‘swing’ era, the likes of Duke Ellington (whose music still features in the Christmas shows), Count Basie and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson headlined.  Sam Cook, Aretha Franklin, and Ray Charles followed and gospel and soul music filled the neighbourhood. 

These days many people visit the Apollo Theater on Monday evenings to attend Amateur Night, where a man with a broom (“The Executioner”) sweeps performers off the stage whenever the highly vocal and opinionated audience demands it.  

And the Apollo audience sure knows what it likes.  When an amateur Ella Fitzgerald first took the stage in 1934, the audience was sensible enough to love her – likewise when Jimi Hendrix won first place in his amateur music contest there thirty years later.  Other big names whose careers can be attributed to a start at the Apollo Theater include James Brown, Michael Jackson, Diana Ross & the Supremes, Dionne Warwick, Stevie Wonder, and Mariah Carey.

An island fit for a Governor

The oasis that is Governor's Island
Courtesy of the GI Trust blog

Located about a kilometre off the southern tip of Manhattan, Governor’s Island was originally known by the Native Americans as “Paggank” or “nut island”, by virtue of the hickory, oak, and chestnut trees that grew all around.  Dutch explorers knew the area as “Nutten Island” but its current name stems from 1784 when the British colony assembled there and the island was used exclusively for New York’s royal governors. 

Originally, the island was only 69 acres in total but during the 20^th century, materials excavated from the construction of the Lexington Avenue subway were dumped on the site, increasing the size of Governor’s Island by an extra 103 acres!   This gave the US Army and the US Coast Guard plenty of room to spread out and run their posts until 1996. 

Seven years later, 150 acres of Governor’s Island were transferred to the State of New York and long-term deed restrictions still prevent the State from building permanent housing or casinos there.  Instead, during the summer and early autumn, Governor’s Island is a hotspot for public concerts, events, and art installations. 

The National Park Service administers the remaining 22 acres, overseeing the island’s historic landmarks, such as the National Monument, Fort Jay, and Castle Williams.

The key attractions on Governor's Island are currently closed to the public but will reopen on 26 May, 2014 (Memorial Day).  The Island will then remain open for public concerts and events until mid-September.

From humble beginnings to something great

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby was first published in New York City nearly 90 years ago.  The story captures the essence and excesses of the roaring 1920s on Long Island, where the Fitzgeralds moved after the birth of their first baby.  It was definitely a far cry from Fitzgerald's humble beginnings in Minnesota.

The Great Gatsby is definitely a work of fiction but from their new waterfront home in New York, Fitzgerald would no doubt have observed for himself the “new money versus old money” dynamic, and his real-life neighbours surely inspired some of the juicy plot material that played out in the book.  

From the outset, Fitzgerald was confident that The Great Gatsby would be his ticket to literary stardom, and he edited his “consciously artistic achievement” heavily.  This proved an arduous process and the Fitzgeralds escaped to the French Riviera for the summer of 1923, where the first draft of the book was completed.  Final editing took two more years, and The Great Gatsby was finally released in 1925.  

The Great Gatsby wasn't Fitzgerald's preferred title for the book, and he didn't much like it, but his contemporaries and friends praised the work, and the critics were similarly encouraging.  Unfortunately for Fitzgerald, sales of The Great Gatsby didn’t quite match this enthusiasm.  He effectively fell off the literary radar, and he died in 1940 a rather forgotten man.

During the early days of World War 2, the US Armed Forces gave away 150,000 copies of The Great Gatsby to the American military.  This contributed to a surge in Fitzgerald's popularity and by the 1960s, The Great Gatsby had been firmly cemented as an American literary classic, prompting the Modern Library to declare it the second-best English language novel of the 20^th Century (behind Ulysses by James Joyce).

Whether you enjoyed Fitzgerald's novel or not, you can still come to New York and devote yourself to soaking up the Gatsbyesque lifestyle at the iconic Plaza Hotel, where some scenes of Baz Luhrmann's adaptation of the work were filmed.  Fitzgerald and Zelda were huge fans of the classic New York hotel, and you can relive their experiences by spalshing out to have classic high tea in the historic Palm Court, or be kinder to your wallet and just have a glass or two of bubbles in the hotel lobby's exclusive (yet not at all fussy) Champagne Bar.

The good kind of MSG

Madison Square Garden will be 135 years old in June 2014, but the giant arena that we know as “The Garden” today is really the fourth of its type in New York City.  

MSG 1.0 was actually built in Madison Square, about 8 blocks southwest of the current site.  

It was a roofless venue with seating for 10 thousand people, and staged circuses, dog shows, and flower competitions.  In the late 1880s, when professional cycling was all the rage in the United States, MSG was the most important velodrome in the country.  The Madison, the team event in track cycling (and featured in our modern summer Olympics) is named after the venue.  Incidentally, the Australian line dance to Nutbush City Limits is also called “The Madison”, but sadly it has no connection to MSG or New York.  Anyway, the absence of a roof made MSG 1.0 too hot in summer and too cold in winter, so it was demolished in June 1889.  

Version 2.0 (plus roof) was opened on the same site a year later.  Gala music performances, more circuses and one Democratic Convention were held here, before it too was demolished in 1926.  

Version 3.0 was built further uptown in Hell’s Kitchen, and is perhaps most famous for staging Marilyn’s breathy birthday serenade to JFK in 1962. 

Six years after that show-stopping performance, MSG 4.0 (the current Garden) was opened on the site above Penn Station on W34th Street.  MSG 4.0  has seating for 19,763 people.  Elton John has played The Garden sixty-five times, but Billy Joel still holds the ticket sales record, having performed 12 consecutive sell-out shows there in 2006, and he has residency there now.

She's so high, high above me

Up until the late 1800s, goods trains had transported meat, produce, and building materials to and from Manhattan via tracks along the west side of the island.  At the time, the tracks were at street level and traffic was so hazardous that 11^th Avenue was ominously known as “Death Avenue”.  

In 1931, construction began on The High Line, which elevated the tracks way above street level, and enabled trains to run directly through factories and warehouses to pick up and deliver goods.  

At first the neighbourhood served almost exclusively as a produce market, but as proper refrigeration became available, slaughterhouses and packing plants were subsidised by the city and they provided round-the-clock employment for new immigrants eager to make their mark.  New York’s Meatpacking District really flourished and without the High Line, the scale of operations wouldn’t have been possible.  

But in less than 20 years, with the advent of refrigerated trucks and interstate highways, New York ceased to be a manufacturing hub and the railways began to fall into disuse.  In 1980, the High Line’s final train made its way up the West Side, carrying frozen turkeys from the shuttering downtown warehouses to supermarkets across the country.  

These days, the High Line is a popular pedestrian park with multiple entry points along its 30+ block length, with new extensions being planned.  Entry is free and the elevated tracks provide joggers, families and visitors with a unique and safe way to appreciate the city streets and enjoy art installations and viewing platforms, pop-up food & drink options, and guided historical and cultural tours along the way.

Why can't we all just get along?

The General Assembly Hall (“the GA”) is the largest conference room at the UN Headquarters in New York, occupying three floors of the building.  It is currently closed for remodeling, but for those of us with nostalgic leanings, it seems a good idea to reflect for a moment on the GA as it was, indeed as it was when I first encountered it, so you have a proper idea of the "before".  But don't worry, we'll come back and do the big "after" reveal later, when it finally reopens.

The GA Hall is 50 metres long, 35 metres wide and has a 23 metre-high ceiling.  The room was designed by a team of 11 architects, including Garnett Soilleux from Australia.  The design work was overseen by American Wallis Harrison, architectural adviser to the Rockefeller family (because every family needs one!).  

The room has seating capacity for 1,898 people (including the 193 Member State delegations).  Each delegation has six seats in the GA - three at the tables for full delegates, and three behind them for their alternates.   

The GA is the only conference room that features the UN emblem, but it does not contain any UN Member State gifts or flags.   

A pair of murals by French artist Fernand Léger were gifted anonymously to the UN Association of the United States, and were installed in the GA in 1952 - the same year that the General Assembly opened its seventh regular session. 

Hollywood has only received official permission to film inside the GA twice – first for scenes from “The Glass Wall” (1953) and then for Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn’s film, “The Interpreter” (2005). 

And while all of that is very nice, for me it pales in comparison to the film clip for Beyonce’s "I Was Here", filmed in the GA on World Humanitarian Day in August 2012.  I was lucky enough to go along for that, and I deliberately wore a hot pink dress so I'd be able to find myself on camera later (and I did, albeit the back of my head, and only fleetingly).  But I was there, and it was the most exciting thing to ever happen in the GA.  Unless of course you count October 18, 2012 VOTE DAY when Australia won its temporary seat on the UN Security Council - that was another top day for us too, of course.

Maybe crime DOES pay...eventually?

In an unassuming two-room apartment on St. Mark’s Place in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, you will find the Museum of the American Gangster. 

During the Prohibition era, the building had been a speakeasy, owned by NY gangsters Frank Hoffman and Walter Schieb.  A young Frank Sinatra waited tables there, serving drinks poured from behind a long bar on the first floor that was wired to blow up in the event of a police raid.  Clearly this was never needed, but perhaps staff and patrons fled through the speakeasy’s three escape tunnels instead.  Hoffman and Schieb had bribed local business owners to let them dig the tunnels through their basements. 

In 1964, the Otway family purchased the building from Schieb and opened a theatre, but Lorcan Otway had designs on a museum to tell the story of the time when the likes of Al Capone, Lucky Luciano and John Gotti ruled the City’s streets. 

Otway’s dream was realised in 2010 and while the museum may be small, his lovingly-curated collection includes newspaper clippings, Tommy guns, John Dillinger’s death mask, and bullets from the St. Valentine’s Day massacre in Chicago.

Otway’s knowledge and enthusiasm for the seedier side of early New York has been described as “encyclopaedic” and he happily leads tours of the speakeasy and museum, to tell the story of the role that organised crime has played in shaping the politics, culture and legend of New York City.

If these walls could talk, you'd probably blush

At the time of its construction between 1883 and 1885, the Hotel Chelsea (otherwise known as the Chelsea Hotel, or simply The Chelsea) was the tallest building in Manhattan.  At only twelve storeys high, it didn’t take long for other buildings in Manhattan to surpass it, but what the hotel lacks in elevation it more than makes up for in pedigree and drama.

Located West 23rd Street, the hotel contains 250 apartments and over the years has been home to some big names including Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Arthur Miller, Iggy Pop, and Jane Fonda.  

Not all visitors to the hotel left warm and vertical though.  Welsh poet Dylan Thomas expired from alcoholism/pneumonia there in 1953, and Nancy Spungen, girlfriend of Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious was stabbed to death there in 1978 (and he was later charged with her murder). 

Less tragically though, the painter Alphaeus Philemon Cole lived at The Chelsea for 35 years until his death in 1988, at the grand old age of 112.  Bravo, sir!

The hotel closed for renovations in 2011 and while it no longer accepts new long-term leases, the building is still home to many residents who lived there before the rental policy changed. 

Architecturally the hotel is known for its delicate ironwork balconies outside, and its grand staircase and artworks inside. 

If The Chelsea’s walls could talk, they’d probably tell stories of brave Titanic survivors, and returning WWI soldiers, who had emergency housing there when they got back to New York.  Or perhaps stories of Andy Warhol’s Factory regulars, who holed up at the Hotel to sleep off the effects of the night before. 

And the hotel is widely regarded to be one of the most haunted places in New York, leaving even former resident Janis Joplin to admit, “a lot of funky things happen in The Chelsea”.

Let me just make Five Points

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

The Five Points district of Lower Manhattan was a disease-ridden, crime-infested slum that originated in about 1820 and lasted for over 70 years. 

Its squalid conditions were famous the world over, and both horrified and intrigued anyone who visited it.  Gang violence, riots, prostitutes, and illegal boxing and gambling rackets were commonplace.  But it was also the site of early New York political life, with meeting halls and political clubs for power-brokers who aspired to take over the country.

In modern NYC, the neighbourhood formerly known as Five Points is now split between the Civic Center (by City Hall) to the west, and Chinatown to the north and east. 

Bad boys can be dapper too

Director Martin Scorsese had originally wanted to make his “Gangs of New York” film (which is set in Five Points) in 1978 but the project was repeatedly delayed.  When production finally wrapped in 2002, the movie was praised for its historical accuracy, even though it had been filmed on a studio set in Rome.   In fact, due to the shortage of English-speaking actors in Italy at the time, some of the movie extras were US Air Force personnel stationed at the nearby Aviano Air Base. 

None of the extras got to break Daniel Day Lewis’s nose during a fight scene though; that honour belonged entirely to Leo DiCaprio.  And ever the professional, the cameras kept rolling, and Daniel Day Lewis kept on swinging.

[Postscript:  Incidentally, there is a great restaurant in the Noho neighbourhood of Manhattan called "Five Points".  Great burgers and cocktails.  No gang violence or bare-knuckle boxing, at least never when I've been there.]

The President with the golden grin

Federal Hall circa 1789
Image courtesy of
The National Parks Service

New York City was briefly the US capital from 1789 to 1790 and was the site of the first inauguration of George Washington as President on April 30, 1789 at Federal Hall, on present-day Wall Street.

Not the Presidential grill

An aside, did you know that by the time Washington became President (at 57), he had lost all but one of his natural teeth?  At his first inauguration he wore a set of dentures made of carved hippopotamus ivory and gold.   Nice grill, Mr. President!

The site for the first inauguration was the first Capitol building in the US and where the US Bill of Rights was first introduced into Congress.  Federal Hall was demolished in 1812 and the National Memorial that was built in its place became a Customs House and is now a beautiful Museum to the nation's first President, and the beginnings of the United States of America.

Village people

A little while ago, I went on a Netflix binge right back to Season 1 of “Law and Order”.  It became immediately obvious to me that New York City was (and really remains) as much a character on the show as "the police who investigate crime and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders" [dun dun].  And over the course of the show, you really get to see how NYC neighbourhoods have changed over the years. 

Consider Greenwich Village.  On Season 1 of "Law and Order", Greenwich Village was junkie central and the source of many a troubling 911 call.  But it wasn't always that way.

Back in the early 1500s, Native Americans knew “The Village” as Sapokanikan, meaning ‘tobacco field’.  When the Dutch settlers cleared 200 acres of land there in 1630, they renamed it Noortwyck, or ‘Farm in the Wood’, and their tobacco crops flourished.  The English conquered the settlement in 1664 and annexed the area as the little village of Grin’wich. 

Newgate Prison, circa 1800
Photo credit: Examiner.com

Law & order really came to the area from 1797 when “The Village” was the site of blustery Newgate Prison, New York's first penitentiary.  But by 1829, Newgate couldn't accommodate all of New York's criminal element, so the much larger Sing Sing Prison was constructed further up the Hudson Valley.  Greenwich Village calmed once more.

Residents moved back into the neighbourhood, and over time they opened art galleries, local theatres, and churches, creating the eclectic and eccentric community vibe of the 1950s-60s.   

Modern day Greenwich Village has an energetic community spirit, and regularly promotes public events and exhibitions for visitors and locals alike.  It is a lively and accessible residential area with a bohemian feel: a mix of mid-rise apartments, historical shops, iconic architecture, trendy bars & restaurants, and many celebrity residents.