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.