Exploring neighborhoods

Time was flying. Friday to Sunday we spent exclusively in Manhattan's neighborhoods, in the Village (Greenwich or West and in the East Village), in Midtown, but we also we explored a little more of Harlem (picture of the mural was taken on 125th St.) and revisited a couple of museums in the Upper East Side along the so-called Museum Mile.




One of them was the Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, which was just reopened after an extensive renovation. This museum is well-worth being visited, always shows great exhibitions in an unusual ambience. The art collection was founded in 1896 by the Hewitt sisters and it is located in the Andrew Carnegie Mansion, a gorgeous Georgian-style mansion built from 1899 to 1902 with 64 (!) rooms. With the renovation they also introduced top-notch electronic equipment, fancy electronic pens, with which you can play around on computerized tables, design patterns and, also, it's possible to scan information and later load it down in a personalized version by using the code on the ticket.


Afterwards we stopped by at the Metropolitan Museum and the Guggenheim (see pics) and then jumped on a bus (for lack of a subway line on the western edge of Central Park). It took forever to get down to the Village in the dense traffic of Manhattan.

The Village, our next stop, has changed considerably since our first visit and is still changing. This formerly hippie/gay/a little weird neighborhood is nowadays much more "settled" and appears "renewed" and a bit sterile. Old institutions, restaurants and shops, are gone and there are only spots (like St. Mark's Square) where the old colorful and screwed-up feeling is still there.

At Washington Square (pic) with its famous huge arch (pic) and street performers every day, we enjoyed a short break in the sun before we had lunch in a hole in the wall called "Arepa Factory", serving arepas and cachapas, both venezuelan street food, here in an excellent fresh and creative variety.

Fifth Ave. was packed (pic), and, so was the department store Macy's (which is famous for it's eleborate, always changing window decorations, this year, scenes from the Peanuts, see pic). The weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas are the time when most people shop for good deals. Even around and in St. Patrick's Cathedral (see pic) huge crowds were gathering and it was especially hard to get close to the famous Rockefeller Center Christmas tree (pic).

Contemporary Art in Queens and Hipsters in Williamsburg

Dry and rather warm weather again from Wednesday on. Instead of visiting the Bronx, as originally planned, we took the subway to Queens this morning, to check out part of the borough for its touristic appeal. One highlight is the waterfront in Long Island City with its large, historic Pepsi Cola neon sign, surrounded by huge modern condo buildings now. The old railroad iron constructions to load train wagons on ferries are still there, and, the view across the East River towards Manhattan – with the large complex of the United Nations in the center - is spectacular!

Queens is spread out and it's sort of hard to get around. One of our favorites in Queens is the contemporary art branch of the MoMA, called "P.S.1", always showing highly innovative and creative modern exhiitions in an unusual setting: a former schoolhouse.


We spent quite a bit of time in the museum and therefore skipped Astoria - the Greek neighborhood of Queens - and drove straight on to Greenpoint/Brooklyn (a predominently Polish neighborhood) for a little walk and then to Williamsburg, the "hipster heaven" of NYC. Couldn't pass "Mast Brothers" (a small chocolate producer) and our favorite whiskey shop to get a bottle of local rye whiskey (Breuckelen Distilling) for Christmas. More and more fancy shops, restaurants and bars coming up in this neighborhood, rents and real estate skyrocketing. Murals on the pics below were taken here and in Greenpoint.

From hip Williamsburg to sophisticated Brooklyn Heights, an area consisting of beautiful brownstones and big mansions along the waterfront, elevated and therefore with a great view. The Brooklyn Promenade (see pic) is still one of the very best points to watch the sunset - including the Statue of Liberty - and that was what we did. Directly below the promenade is the new Brooklyn Bridge Park, former piers transformed into playgrounds, nature areas and parks, a development still in progress and a great addition to the formerly rather inattractive waterfront.

Santa is coming to town...

Monday started with a business appointment at NYC & Co, which took longer than we expected. Being in the area, we checked out Midtown afterwards, with Times Square - with all its hustling and buzzing, it's legendary neon signs and screens and all its tourists.





At Rockefeller Center the famous Xmas tree was not yet decorated, but its ice rink in operation. Another rink is in Bryant Park - see pic -, surrounded by one of several Christmas markets in town, and, there is Christmas decoration along 5th Ave.(see pic)and in many other places.

In the early afternoon we attended the „Radio City Christmas Spectacular“ in the Radio City Music Hall (part of Rockefeller Center), which is one of New York's old Christmas legends. The Rockettes, a famous dance group, consists of about 80 dancers in total and is renowned for their „high kicks“ and for their very precise choreographies. More than 30 dancers are on stage at the same time and it's amazing how unisono and accurately they perform their formations, sometimes in heavy costumes. Four to five shows take place every day between 20th November and beginning of January, about 200 shows in total!

During this fascinating, fast and colorful 90 minute-show several scenes take place with very elaborate costumes and set decorations, from „Here Come Santa Claus“, with ice scaters, teddy bears and dozens of Santa Clauses, to „Santa Flies to NYC“ including video projection in 3 D-format, from the Nutcracker Suite to Snowflakes with GPS-controlled snowballs moving on the theater's ceiling. Highlights of the show are (from the very beginning in 1933) the superb „Parade of the Wooden Soldiers“ - with a slow-motion fall scene (see pic) and a nativity scene (crèche) with real camels and sheep.


Radio City Music Hall is a richly decorated and perfectly renovated art-déco theater with a famous hydraulic stage and a Wurlitzer organ. The Christmas show was first shown here in 1933, but the dance group was already founded in 1925 in St. Louis/MO. Wearing our (sort of silly) red Santa's hats during the show, we were in the right Christmas mood when it ended, and, what would have ended a great day better than another wonderful meal? This time it was a Mexican restaurant - Hecho en Dumbo, in the Bowery - where we enjoyed a very generous dinner with our friends Magdalena and Michael, creatively prepared authentic mexican food in a colorful, pleasant atmosphere.

Next day it rained and it was cold and our Turnstile Wall Street food cart tour became a bit of a challenge. In this weather we were the only ones taking part and got plenty to eat at different types of food vendors, little carts, larger carts and food trucks along the streets and on the boardwalks. Ate our way through falafel, pizza, chicken, tacos and halal food, standing in the rain and wind, and learned a lot about different permits and regulations, laws and rules for these food vendors on NYC's streets, which sell much more than just the well-known hotdogs, bagels or pretzels. Later, we passed by at Federal Hall and checked out the new SeaGlass Carousel at The Battery (see pic), the Southern tip of Manhattan, where a lot of construction and landscaping is going on right now.


Wednesday: rain again, but warmer. Planned to get on top of One World Observatory, but postponed it because of "Zero Visibility". Checked out Little Italy (really "little"), Manhattans shrinking Chinatown and a couple other neighborhoods, went to the Essex Street Market (one of many markets in town, but one of the more "down-to-earth", authentic ones) before we met Susan, founder of "Enthusiastic Gourmet Tours" and had lunch with her (mexican, again) to catch up with news in the restaurant business and in the ethnic neighborhoods. After all, this was our day of meeting friends. After some more walking in the rain, we met our Philadelphia friends in Bryant Park before we headed out for the famous hockey derby Rangers : Islanders in the Barclays Center. At the end we had a 14-hour-day until we got back "home" to Harlem.

Brooklyn - a world on its own

The last weekend we explored Brooklyn – another, completely different part of NYC, a city of about 2,6 mio. people, with many different neighborhoods. Every tourist knows Dumbo, Williamsburg or Brooklyn Heights in the meantime, but not many ever have heard about Gravesend, Bensonhurst, Sheepshead Bay, Fort Greene or Flatbush. Well, we got to know new parts of Brooklyn this time, starting on Saturday with the Brooklyn Bridge Park and Dumbo (with a great view towards Manhattan) and heading on to the Brooklyn Navy Yards in the Northern part of the borough for an interesting tour.

For over 150 years, starting in 1801 and being closed in 1966, the Brooklyn Navy Yard built America’s most famous fighting Naval ships. Today, the Yard is a model for a sustainable urban industrial park with a large rooftop farm and home to over 300 different businesses, among them the famous Steiner Studios (movies). By bus and walking we explored the vast, usually non accessible property along Brooklyn’s waterfront with drydocks, historic military buildings and a modern and highly instructive museum in Bldg. 92 (see pic).

Despite of the rain, we explored the partly creepy neighborhood (e.g. Vinegar Hill) and walked back to downtown Brooklyn and Fulton Street Mall, which was adecorated for X mas. One of our best culinary experiences ever, we then had in a hotel restaurant by name "Kimoto".

An elevator with a good-looking black guy brough us up to the rooftop, door opened to the restaurant and from there on we were treated like royality. Chef Brian himself - renowned and showered with awards - served us a ten-course tasting meal of creative japanese-inspired dishes, paired with cocktails and beers - it was pure heaven! In addition, the view of the city of Brooklyn from up there (see pic) was just fantastic.

Sunday we took the subway to Industry City, part of Sunset Park, another (former industrial) Brooklyn neighborhood, and in one of the huge warehouses a flea and gourmet market by name "Smorgasburg" took place. It has just moved to this new location this winter. Great vintage clothing, jewelry, knick-knack, porcellan, antiquities and such offered here besides local food producers and a pretty "hip" clientele.

In the afternoon we met our American-Italian friend Dom from Bensonhurst, who's living now in Gravesend (see pic), another interesting neighborhood of Brooklyn. After lunch in nearby Sheepshead Bay, with heaping amounts of unfamiliar uzbek food (part of former Russia) on the table in an hole-in-the-wall restaurant with servers barely speaking English, he showed us the "wild side" of Brooklyn.

Marine Park, a saltwater marsh with trails and a nature center, was our first stop, then on to Calvert Vaux Park, close to the famous entertainment district of Coney Island. This bay was off-limits for a long time and Dom told us, that even now many body parts regularly show up - besides ship wrecks and the famous "yellow submarine" (see pic). This was built by a wealthy guy who wanted to explore the famous Andrea Doria but never got around.


It was windy and ice-cold there at the beach, but it felt like being in another world. We concluded the evening with an NBA basketball game in the Barclays Center in Brooklyn before we arrived "home" in Harlem very late after a diverse and interesting day.