A Bleecker Street Holiday Shopping Guide: From Abingdon Square to the Bowery

Fifth Avenue and SoHo may be popular destinations for holiday shopping in New York, but for those who enjoy browsing in small stores away from the crowded sidewalks, Bleecker Street in Greenwhich Village could be the answer. Approximately 1.14 miles in length from Abingdon Square in the West Village down to the Bowery, Bleecker Street changes its mood block by block. Because of the diversity of the street, it's possible to find gifts for the bohemian and the bourgeois alike.

On the north end, stores such as Marc Jacobs, Ralph Lauren, and Mulberry have turned the street into a designer row. Some Villagers aren't crazy about the embourgeoisement of the historic Greenwich Village street, largely because these stores can me found in any other affluent neighborhood. The stores near the nightspots and bars between 6th Avenue and LaGuardia Place, on the other hand, are far less tailored. The stretch between 6th Avenue and 7th Avenue is a heaven for foodies, with Murray's Cheese, Amy's Bread, Rocco's Pastry just a few of the mandatory stops for gourmet food lovers. Music stores like Rebel Rebel and Bleecker Street Records keep the soul of Greenwich Village alive.


View A Bleecker Street Holiday Guide: From Abingdon Square to the Bowery in a larger map

Alicia Keys and Empire State of Mind, Part II

Thanks largely to the popularity of Jay-Z's now ubiquitous New York-loving anthem "Empire State of Mind," the top song on Billboard's Hot 100 chart this week and on which she sings the chorus and gets credit as a co-writer, Alicia Keys is on a roll these days. Now, with the release on December 15 of her fourth album, The Element of Freedom, and the cut "Empire State of Mind, Part II," the singer-songwriter and actress brings her own voice to the "concrete jungle where dreams are made of. " While both versions of the song narrate their respective roads to success, Keys' take, in addition to adhering to conventions of melody throughout, pays homage to the struggle of hard-working women, something of a flipside to Jay-Z's riffs on girls going bad in the big city.

Both songs, judging by the responses to the video variations on YouTube, have touched many people deeply (excluding New York Yankees haters). Some often-jaded New Yorkers grow misty-eyed upon listening to the lyrics and the soaring refrain. Beyond the surface, though, it's tempting to read in the sequence of these musical urban autobiographies an important moment in the city's cultural history. The city may be losing part of its soul with the closing of family businesses and the rise of the cookie-cutter chain stores, but as "Empire State of Mind" trumpets, the mythology of success endures. The important part, however, is not what is being sung here, but who is singing it.



Born Alicia Augello Cook (changing her name later), Keys was raised by a single mother in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of New York. She watched her Italian American mother, a part-time actress and paralegal, work hard to support her. Her African American father, a flight attendant, was not part of the picture. A gifted classically-trained pianist, she attended Manhattan's Professional Performing Arts School, graduating early. Choosing a music career over Columbia University, Keys met with early music success, with her debut album, Songs in A Minor (2001) winning five Grammy Awards.

Alicia Keys will play to a sold out concert at the Nokia Theatre in Times Square on Tuesday, December 1, a benefit on World AIDS Day for her Keep a Child Alive charity.* On the next evening, Wednesday, December 2, she will be a featured performer on NBC's Christmas in Rockefeller Center.

The live version here was recorded on November 17, 2009 at the P.C. Richard & Son Theater in Tribeca for www.iheartradio.com. (For those outside New York, the "BQE" she refers to in her opening remarks stands for the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.)

From an interview with Reader's Digest:
"RD: What was it like growing up in Hell's Kitchen?
Keys: It was like a big world of everything. I grew up around prostitutes, drug dealers, pimps, strippers, needles on the ground. Yet right there was Broadway, with the big lights and Theatre Row. I grew up with dreams, in a place that from the beginning told me you can go this way -- or you can go that way."

Notes: The tree lighting ceremony at Rockefeller Center takes place December 2, with festivities beginning at 6:45 p.m. The tree lights up at 8:55 p.m. Many thanks to fellow Twitterer @EverythingNYC for pointing out the existence of this video in the first place. *Alicia Keys's concert at the Nokia Theatre will be streamed live on YouTube (Mashable).

An Unofficial Guide to Macy's New Thanksgiving Day Parade Route

Click here for a new post with updated parade information for 2011.


(revised for 2010)

Following last year, the 84th Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on Thursday, November 25, 2010 will be following a new route through Manhattan. A major reason for the change has to do with the city's recent experiments along Broadway to make the thoroughfare more engaging for pedestrians and bicyclists. The installation of planters and seating fixtures prove to be an impediment for marching bands, entertainers on floats, an army of clowns, inflatable dogs, and ultimately Santa himself, so another route is necessary. As we're getting to know the new path down Seventh Avenue, I thought it would be helpful to take a look at some of the famous buildings and businesses along the way. The first section along Central Park West should be familiar to parade-goers, but new sights will come into view along Seventh and Sixth Avenues - for example, Carnegie Hall and the Carnegie Deli, to name a couple of beloved New York institutions. Old and new buildings of varying architectural distinction line the avenues, from the great apartments buildings such the Dakota and San Remo to Art Deco and contemporary office buildings.


View An Unofficial Guide to Macy's Parade Route in a larger map

Click the map to enlarge for detailed placemarks and brief descriptions. Switching over to Street View would provide a simulation of the experience.

Click here for the official Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade website.

The night before: Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade Balloon Inflation. Wednesday, November 24, 2009, approximately 3:00 p.m.– 8:00 p.m. Central Park West and Columbus Avenue on 77th and 81st Streets. A fun alternative way to see the balloons.  Go early, as the event can get crowded.

One good place to view the parade: On a couch watching the television (NBC). Parade begins at 9 a.m. ET

Image by Walking Off the Big Apple from 2008 from the night before Thanksgiving.

Night Falls on the City: The View from the Brooklyn Bridge

During those liminal moments after the sun sets but before the night has muted the clarity of day, the landscape veers off into abstraction. It's the golden hour, a mystical time favored by visual artists. Familiar sights gradually lose detail, giving way to sheer fundamental shapes, silhouettes, colors, hues, and qualities of luminosity. To describe the sunset you have to think like a painter. For many in New York, this hallowed time is best worshipped under the neo-Gothic arches of the Brooklyn Bridge, the city's-well-known icon that links Brooklyn with Manhattan. Below, silver currents of the East River reflect the day's last light. Above, birds and helicopters streak across an increasingly electric sky. On some evenings, the sunset flames out in a blazing eruption of yellow and plum and crimson glory. The Statue of Liberty makes a dramatic statement silhouetted against the flaming sky. As soon as the colors fade and darkness falls, however, the Manhattan skyline, waiting patiently, begins to start the night show. Church is over. Cue the jazz. The night has other plans for you.



Images from Saturday, November 21, 2009 between 4:20 p.m. and 5:15 p.m. To see the images fullscreen (recommended), click the arrows at bottom right inside the photo frame..

A Cultural Guide to West 57th Street: A Walk and a Map

It began in 1891 with the opening of Carnegie Hall, the symbol of music world success that Andrew Carnegie paid people to construct on 7th Avenue between West 57th and West 56th Streets. A year later, the Art Students League moved into the new American Fine Arts Building, an elegant French Renaissance building at 215 West 57th Street. In 1916-17, Cass Gilbert designed the Rodin Studios at 200 W. 57th Street, a building with elaborate apartments. Developing by small increments, by the late 1920s the blocks of West 57th Street between 8th Avenue and 5th Avenue had become a major center for cultural life in the United States. Steinway Hall was constructed in 1924-1925, a pitch perfect Neo-classical companion to the Renaissance Revival of Carnegie Hall down the street. Art galleries, piano dealers, studios, arts-minded restaurants, hotels, and apartments for writers, artists, and renowned musicians joined them. The building at 130 West 57th, designed as a cooperative for artists, was once home to writer William Dean Howells and painter Childe Hassam. American novelist Theodore Dreiser, during one of his cranky phases, lived at the Rodin Studios. Statesman and classical pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski stayed at the Buckingham Hotel.

This section of Midtown Manhattan continues to flourish as a center for music, the arts, and publishing, with businesses and restaurants serving the major institutions. High-rise residential buildings soar over landmarks such as Carnegie Hall, the Art Students League, the Russian Tea Room, and Steinway Hall, with residents peering down on the cultured masses from their 70th+ floor apartment perches above. The architectural history of W. 57th Street is substantial, with a range of architectural styles including Chicago School (Osborne Apartments), Austrian Secession (Joseph Urban’s original Hearst building), Post-Modern (Hotel Parker Meridien's arcade entrance on W. 57th.), Neo-Gothic (Cass Gilbert’s Rodin Studios) and Green High Tech Modern (Norman Foster's Hearst Tower). Any one of these arts-institutions is worthy of their own post, but this brief guide suggests the importance of taking in the whole stretch as a cultural neighborhood.

An Early Morning Walk in the East Village

Sometimes it's not about where to walk but when. Certain hours of the day carry with them their own qualities, and strange as it may sound, I am fond of the quiet mystery of the early morning. Just before sunrise the day has not yet lost its patina of night, and ever so gradually, the velvety air of the post-midnight hours begins to retreat into shadows. As I walk through the streets in those poignant moments before sunrise, I never see many people, mostly just the silhouettes of lone individuals not yet recognizable by the light of day. Birds rustle in their nests. A few taxis swish by. The coffee cart guys are setting up for the day. We have scientific terms for these moments. Astronomical twilight gives way to nautical twilight before real morning, civil twilight, begins.



As a person with dogs, I am accustomed to venturing out in the city at the first hint of morning light. That's my excuse. Maybe I'm also a little bit in love with the terminology of twilight. I also love watching the city wake up. At this time in autumn, the general urban awakening occurs between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m., with 6 being very sleepy, with a few inebriated stragglers finding their way home, and 7 being wide awake with coffee. I have a neighbor who walks her dog at 6 o'clock, too, but not a minute before. She says she waits until 6 "because by then, all the crazies have gone."



I often let the dogs select their own walking itinerary every morning, leading the way with their noses. This morning they kept pressing east for some reason, past our usual boundary of the Bowery, surveying the unchartered smells (at least for them) of East 2nd Street. Ahead on the left, the New York Marble Cemetery looked appropriately spooky in the minutes before sunset, the stones seemingly emitting their own light. Ahead of us at the end of the street the imminent sunrise appeared as a small glow, and we pressed onward towards the light, a direction that would have taken us to the East River. Instead we turned north on Avenue C and then headed back home via E. 6th. At the intersection of Avenue A, the dogs sniffed out Tompkins Square Park so we made a detour north. How beautiful the park looked in the morning hour, the lamp lights still glowing against the soft morning light.



The East Village is almost always happening at night, so walking through the old neighborhood in the morning gives the feeling that you've just come too late to the party. St. Marks Place cleans up well even after a hard night. While the great advantage of morning walks comes with the feeling that you have the city all to yourself, the drawback is that there's hardly anything open and won't be for another four or five hours. But thank goodness for the coffee cart vendors. It's a brilliant time and place, this 6 a.m. in the morning in a city that never sleeps. As long as no one else agrees with me about getting up before daylight, I'll continue enjoying it all to myself.

Images by Walking Off the Big Apple from 6 a.m. to 7 a.m. - East 2nd St. near 1st Avenue, Tompkins Square Park, St. Marks Place. To see the itinerary of the walk, visit this link to the Google Map. See more images of the walk in this Flickr WOTBA Slideshow.

A Literary Holiday Gift Guide: Best New Books on New York, New York

Not surprisingly, New York as a subject generates a lot of books. Each year the shelves in the New York section of bookstores become overcrowded with new books about the city, each one adding something different to a vast body of city literature. This year the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson's voyage to the New World inspired several new books on New York's Dutch heritage, many of them accompanying exhibitions at area museums. In addition, the Lincoln Bicentennial (1809-2009) brought new attention to the role of New York in creating the circumstances for his Presidency. And as always, New York's position in the creative arts and food culture insures that writers will always find new stories to tell about artists and chefs in the city.

The number of new tourist guide books alone continues to grow, each providing the visitor with a new angle on the city. In selecting the best New York-centered books for this holiday gift guide, I decided to leave off the guide books, although many are quite good, because they tend to have a short shelf life. Nevertheless, the list of recommended New York-centered books is large and impressive, just like the city.

All the books listed below were published in 2009. Price quoted is the publisher's retail price. The images of Fifth Avenue are from November 2009. And now for your shopping pleasure - Walking Off the Big Apple's recommended books on New York.

NONFICTION

• Appetite City: A Culinary History of New York by William Grimes (North Point Press, 2009). $30. Former New York Times restaurant critic explains why New York became such a foodie town and why residents continue to be obsessed with food.

• Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-time Eater by Frank Bruni (Penguin, 2009). $25.95. Those who enjoyed reading Bruni's restaurant reviews for The New York Times will be interested in his long struggle with his weight and self image.

• The City Out My Window: 63 Views of New York by Matteo Pericoli (Simon & Schuster, 2003). $21.99. What do New Yorkers see when they look out their windows? An intimate view of the city through the drawings of artist Matteo Pericoli, with celebrities pointing out the sights from their windows. With an introduction by architecture critic Paul Goldberger.

• Dutch New York: The Roots of Hudson Valley Culture by Robert Panetta. (Co-published with Hudson River Museum, 2009) $29.95. Henry Hudson's voyage 400 years ago spawned several excellent books this year. This collection of scholarly essays looks at the Dutch in the Hudson River Valley through chronological frames from 1609, 1709, 1809, 1909, and 2009.

• Dutch New York, between East and West: The World of Margrieta van Varick (Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design & Culture) (Yale University Press, 2009). $75. Fascinating story of a Dutch woman who came to New York with her husband in 1686 and set up shop in Flatbush, Brooklyn.

• Free for All: Joe Papp, The Public, and the Greatest Theater Story Ever Told by Kenneth Turan (Doubleday, 2009). $39.95. Turan began a similar book over twenty years ago, but a falling out with Papp derailed the project. Now, the story can be told, with many interviews with friends of Papp and their stories of the New York Shakespeare Festival and the Public Theater.

• Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City by Michelle Nevius and James Nevius. (Free Press, 2009). $16.95. Fascinating history of New York City by two knowledgeable veteran guides, with fourteen history-themed walking tours.

• The Jazz Loft Project: Photographs and Tapes of W. Eugene Smith from 821 Sixth Avenue, 1957-1965 by Sam Stephenson (Knopf, 2009). $40. Release date is November 24, 2009. From 1957 to 1965, Smith created the largest body of work in his career, taking pictures of the jazz scene in the flower district from the perspective of his apartment. The work adds a significant amount of knowledge about the vibrant jazz scene in 1950s and 1960s New York. Written by the man who discovered the jazz loft photographs.


• The Kingdom of New York: Knights, Knaves, Billionaires, and Beauties in the City of Big Shots by The New York Observer. (Harper, 2009). $35. Twenty years of insights, stories, and observations about the trends and stories of the city from the writers of the Observer.

• Legacy: The Preservation of Wilderness in New York City Parks, Photographs by Joel Meyerowitz (Aperture, 2009). $65. The photographer who has often made New York his subject, especially in his haunting images following September 11, was commissioned by the New York Department of Parks & Recreation to take images of the areas of wilderness within New York's parks. The images are on display at the Museum of the City of New York through March 7, 2010.

Shopping for Dinner at the Union Square Greenmarket: A Slideshow of Seasonal Bounty

Walking through the Union Square Greenmarket, I often feel like such an amateur. Dumfounded by the varieties of potatoes, rutabagas, turnips, squash, or heirloom tomatoes on display and what to do with them, I often beat a retreat to the bakery stands. Here among the pumpkin tea cakes, gingerbread, and sourdough breads, I feel like an authority. I'm also good with flowers. Nevertheless, members of the health establishment have recently urged me to become more friendly with the vegetable and fruit displays, and accordingly, I'm getting acquainted with the edible natural world. Man or woman does not live by pumpkin raisin bread alone. In the spirit of knowing my vegetables, I've recently learned that the rutabaga, for example, came about as an random hybridization, i.e. love child,  between a cabbage and a turnip. Talk about companion planting!

A Walk to See Carl Jung's Red Book: A Journey Into the Psyche

Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung (July 1875 – June 1961) embarked on an extraordinary journey in the years before World War I, a dangerous adventure that took him inward to the deepest recesses of his psyche. At the time he embarked on the journey he had broken his close relationship with his mentor, Sigmund Freud. His subsequent six-year long breakdown, largely self-induced, manifested itself in intensive journal writing with the recording of his dream states and visualizations, especially of mandalas. He made notes in black journals, later meticulously recording his images and interpretive text in chronological order all in gorgeous calligraphy in a voluptuous Red Book. Anyone interested in artists’ books needs to see this work with their own eyes.

The exhibit at the Rubin Museum of Art, The Red Book of C.G. Jung: Creation of a New Cosmology, on display through January 25, 2010, explores the visual manifestation of the journal, the diary of Jung's voyage into his own psyche that he recorded between 1914 and 1930. Never before seen in public, the book expresses an almost overwhelming commitment to self-knowledge that's artistically masterful, mystical, and unparalleled. Anyone's bedside dream book fails by comparison. It's a visual tour-de-force. When he came up from the crisis, Jung pulled the strands of knowledge together to formulate the foundations of analytical psychology.

Jung believed mandalas must have originated in dreams and visions and were not the human invention of a church father. He drew his first one in 1916. Furthermore, the images were among the oldest symbols of humanity and could be found all over the world. The squaring of the circle represents the archetype of wholeness. Outside of Tibet, healing circles can be found in Native American sand paintings, in the geometry of the Kabbalah, and even in the stained glass rose windows of Gothic cathedrals. Mandalas formed the core of Jung's philosophies of the self. He writes in Concerning Mandala Symbolism (Zurich, 1950), "Their basic motif is the premonition of a centre of personality, a kind of central point within the psyche, to which everything is related, by which everything is arranged, and which is itself a source of energy."

A New York Yankees State of Mind

Hundreds of thousands of New York Yankees fans in the city got the chance to applaud their hometown World Series heroes for the parade and ceremony in lower Manhattan on Friday, November 6, celebrating along the Canyon of Heroes on Broadway and on the nearby streets under a sunny sky. Like many others I arrived too late to see any of the parade, but I did get to enjoy the moment with the crowds gathered in the chilly autumn weather. The diverse fans arrived from all the boroughs and from places even farther away, but they all shared today's required uniform of navy blue and pinstripes. Many grew frustrated when they couldn't see anything at all and turned around to go home, while the lucky ones up front applauded themselves for arriving hours before parade time at 11 a.m.. They got to see Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Hideki Matsui, Mariano Rivera, or any of the others, standing on floats and waving to the crowd, dressed in their street casuals, even as everyone in the crowd along the sidewalks looked suited up for a game.



At some point I turned home, electing to see the rest of the parade and ceremony on television in a warm living room. I was glad I had gone downtown just to be a part of the moment, but i was equally happy to have a better televised view of Mayor Bloomberg's ceremony at City Hall. When the Mayor started passing out the ceremonial keys to the city to every member of the team and to each of the many other members of the Yankees organization, however, the ceremony grew somewhat long and tedious, like it was a high school graduation. Fortunately, the show improved when the Mayor announced a reprieve of the performance from Game 2 of the series - Jay-Z's stunning new city anthem, "Empire State of Mind." No one seemed more happy than the Yankees themselves, who judging by their enthusiastic reactions to the song during Game 2 and during today's performance have taken the song to heart.

20 Short Walks between New York Landmarks

Favorable weather may encourage long walks through the New York cityscape, but sometimes a short walk of a mile or less may be just the ticket for some serious New York sightseeing. Perfect for brisk autumn weather, these suggested walks pair two nearby landmarks with a pleasant stroll along the way. The images suggest autumn to be the best time, but the strolls should be pleasant year round, weather permitting. The cool air on a sunny day invites excursions, a little window shopping, and a stop in cafes or a cozy tavern.

Exploring New York without an agenda or a destination is fun, too, but appreciating museums, public sculpture, parks, and major buildings characterizes the informed and intelligent traveler as well as the savvy resident. Eventually, the well-traveled explorer develops a sophisticated internal map of the city, building up a repertory of options for navigating the city. While the map here should come in handy for visitors looking for sightseeing ideas, residents may want to mentally test themselves by imagining the route they would choose to walk between these pairs of destinations.

Of course, any of these walks would work just as well in the other direction. A map is included here.

1. Lincoln Center to the Boathouse in Central Park. Upper West Side to Central Park. A lovely walk that begins at the Lincoln Center Fountain and then ambles northeast through the park. Why not take a tour of the center and then walk to the boathouse for a cocktail?

2. Metropolitan Museum to Hayden Planetarium. Central Park East to Central Park West. After seeing an exhibition or two at the Met, walk across the park near Turtle Pond and then do some stargazing at the Planetarium.

3. Cathedral of St. John the Divine to the Apollo Theatre. Harlem. The soaring Gothic cathedral is remarkable for the extraordinary craftsmanship that went into its making. Follow with a visit to the famous Apollo Theatre for a walk through Harlem history.

4. Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum to Times Square. Hell's Kitchen to the Theatre District. Someone should enjoy touring both aircraft carriers and the neon sights of the Theatre District. Like a million sailors, right? They would know the way off the boat to Times Square.

5. Macy's to Rockefeller Center. Herald Square to Midtown. A classic holiday duo. Shopping in the vast Macy's followed by a trip to see the glories of NYC's most famous Depression-era complex.

6. Empire State Building to Gramercy Park. Midtown. A lovely quiet walk. From the heights overlooking the city, stroll to the city's most secluded gated park. Explore side streets near the park for beautiful townhouses and some of the city's best restaurants.