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Destination Guide for New York
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About
New York
The most exciting city in the world, New York is an adrenaline-charged,
history-laden place that holds immense romantic appeal for visitors.
Wandering the streets here, you'll cut between buildings that
are icons to the modern age - and whether gazing at the flickering
lights of the midtown skyscrapers as you speed across the Queensboro
bridge, experiencing the 4am half-life downtown, or just wasting
the morning on the Staten Island ferry, you really would have
to be made of stone not to be moved by it all. There's no place
quite like it.
While the events of September 11, 2001, which demolished
the World Trade Center, shook New York to its core, the populace
responded resiliently under the composed aegis of then-Mayor
Rudy Giuliani. Until the attacks, many New Yorkers loved to
hate Giuliani, partly because they saw him as committed to
making their city too much like everyone else's. To some extent
he succeeded, and during the late Nineties New York seemed
cleaner, safer, and more liveable, as the city took on a truly
international allure and shook off the more notorious aspects
to its reputation. However, the maverick quality of New York
and its people still shines as brightly as it ever did. Even
in the aftermath of the World Trade Center's collapse, New
York remains a unique and fascinating city - and one you'll
want to return to again and again.
You could spend weeks in New York and still barely scratch
the surface, but there are some key attractions - and some
pleasures - that you won't want to miss. There are the different
ethnic neighborhoods , like lower Manhattan's Chinatown and
the traditionally Jewish Lower East Side (not so much anymore);
and the more artsy concentrations of SoHo, TriBeCa, and the
East and West Villages. Of course, there is the celebrated
architecture of corporate Manhattan, with the skyscrapers
in downtown and midtown forming the most indelible images.
There are the museums , not just the Metropolitan and MoMA,
but countless other smaller collections that afford weeks
of happy wandering. In between sights, you can eat just about
anything, at any time, cooked in any style; you can drink
in any kind of company; and sit through any number of obscure
movies . The more established arts - dance, theater, music
- are superbly catered for; and New York's clubs are as varied
and exciting as you might expect. And for the avid consumer,
the choice of shops is vast, almost numbingly exhaustive in
this heartland of the great capitalist dream.
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The
City
New York City comprises the central island of Manhattan along
with four outer boroughs - Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx , and
Staten Island . Manhattan, to many, is New York - whatever your
interests, it's here that you'll spend the most time and are
likely to stay. New York is very much a city of neighborhoods
and is best explored on foot.
Offshore, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island comprise
the first section of New York (and America) that most nineteenth-century
immigrants would have seen. The Financial District takes in
the skyscrapers and historic buildings of Manhattan's southern
reaches and was hardest hit by the destruction of perhaps
its most famous landmarks, the Twin Towers of the World Trade
Center. Just northeast is the area around City Hall , New
York's well-appointed municipal center, which adjoins TriBeCa
, known for its swanky restaurants, galleries, and nightlife.
Moving east, Chinatown is Manhattan's most populous ethnic
neighborhood, a vibrant locale that's great for food and shopping.
Nearby, Little Italy bears few traces of the once-strong immigrant
presence, while the Lower East Side , the city's traditional
gateway neighborhood for new immigrants, is nowadays scattered
with trendy bars and clubs. To the west, SoHo is one of the
premier districts for galleries and the commercial art scene,
not to mention designer shopping. Continuing north, the West
and East Villages form a focus of bars, restaurants, and shops
catering to students and would-be bohemians - and of course
tourists. Chelsea is a largely residential neighborhood that
is now mostly known for its gay scene and art galleries that
borders on Manhattan's old Garment District . Murray Hill
contains the city's largest skyscraper and most enduring symbol,
the Empire State Building .
Beyond 42nd Street , the main east-west artery of midtown,
the character of the city changes quite radically, and the
skyline becomes more high-rise and home to some of New York's
most awe-inspiring, neck-cricking architecture. There are
also some superb museums and the city's best shopping as you
work your way north up Fifth Avenue as far as 59th Street.
Here, the classic Manhattan vistas are broken by the broad
expanse of Central Park , a supreme piece of nineteenth-century
landscaping, without which life in Manhattan would be unthinkable.
Flanking the park, the mostly residential and fairly affluent
Upper West Side boasts Lincoln Center, Manhattan's temple
to the performing arts, the American Museum of Natural History,
and Riverside Park along the Hudson River. On the other side
of the park, the Upper East Side is wealthier and more grandiose,
with its nineteenth-century millionaires' mansions now transformed
into a string of magnificent museums known as the "Museum
Mile," the most prominent being the vast Metropolitan
Museum of Art . Alongside is a patrician residential neighborhood
that boasts some of the swankiest addresses in Manhattan,
and a nest of designer shopping along Madison Avenue in the
seventies. Immediately above Central Park, Harlem , the historic
black city-within-a-city, has a healthy sense of an improving
go-ahead community; a jaunt further north is most likely required
only to see the unusual Cloisters, a nineteenth-century mock-up
of a medieval monastery, packed with great European Romanesque
and Gothic art and (transplanted) architecture.
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Highlights
Central Park opened
in 1876, and though that was a slight overstatement, today few
New Yorkers could imagine life without it. At various times
and places, the park functions as a beach, theater, singles'
scene, athletic activity center, and animal behavior lab, both
human and canine. In bad times and good New Yorkers still treasure
it more than any other city institution.
In spite of the advent of motorized traffic, the sense of
disorderly nature the park's nineteenth-century designers,
Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, intended largely survives,
with cars and buses cutting through the park in the sheltered,
sunken transverses originally meant for horse-drawn carriages,
mostly unseen from the park itself. The midtown skyline, of
course, has changed, and buildings thrust their way into view,
sometimes detracting from the park's original pastoral intention,
but at the same time adding to the sense of being on a green
island in the center of a magnificent city
Accessible to
anyone for the price of a subway ride, the beachfront amusement
spot of Coney Island has long given working-class New Yorkers
the kind of holiday they just couldn't get otherwise. It brings
to mind old black-and-white photos from the earlier part of
the nineteenth century. Find out for yourself by taking the
subway to Stillwell Avenue (last stop on the #F, #M, #Q or
#W train). These days, the music blares louder than it once
did, the language of choice on the boardwalk is Spanish or
Russian as often as English, and the rides look a bit worse
for the wear.
The beach can be overwhelmingly crowded on hot days, and
it's never the cleanest place in or out of the water. But
show up for the annual Mermaid Parade on the first Saturday
of summer and you'll get caught up in the fun of what's got
to be one of the oddest - certainly glitziest - small-town
festivals in the country, where paraders dress in King Neptune
and mermaid attire.
The amusement area comprises several parks, none of which
offers a deal that makes a lot of sense - unless you have
kids (nearly all the children's rides are in Deno's Wonder
Wheel Park) or plan on riding one ride more than four times.
Still, the 75-year-old Wonder Wheel ($3, plus a free children's
ticket to the New York Aquarium, see below) is a must. After
75 years, it's still the tallest Ferris wheel in the world,
and the only one on which two-thirds of the cars slide on
serpentine tracks, shifting position as the wheel makes its
slow circle twice around. The rickety Cyclone rollercoaster
($4, $3 for a repeat ride) is another landmark, but if you're
used to slick modern loop-coaster rides, be forewarned: this
low-tech wooden coaster is not for the faint of heart.
With more than 200,000
residents (125,000 of them Chinese and the rest other Asian
ethnicities), 7 Chinese newspapers, 12 Buddhist temples, around
150 restaurants and over 300 garment factories, Chinatown
is Manhattan's most populous ethnic neighborhood, one of busy
restaurants and exotic street markets. Since the Eighties,
it has pushed its boundaries north across Canal Street into
Little Italy and sprawls east into the nether fringes of the
Lower East Side around Division Street and East Broadway.
The Chinese community has been careful to preserve its own
way of dealing with things, preferring to keep affairs close
to the bond of the family and allowing few intrusions into
a still-insular culture. And while insularity means that much
of Chinatown's character survives relatively unspoiled - especially
on streets such as Canal, Pell, Mott and Bayard - it has also
meant non-union sweatshop labor and poor overcrowded tenements
ill-kept by landlords. However, unless you stay in Chinatown
for a considerable length of time it's unlikely you'll see
much of this seamier side. Most tourists, like most New Yorkers,
come here not to get the lowdown on Chinese politics but to
eat excellent Chinese food or to hunt for bargains along Canal
Street .
: Located
in New York Harbor, the Statue of Liberty was a gift of international
friendship from the people of France to the people of the
United States and is one of the most universal symbols of
political freedom and democracy. The Statue of Liberty was
dedicated on October 28, 1886 and was designated a National
Monument on October 15, 1924. The Statue was extensively restored
in time for her spectacular centennial on July 4, 1986
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Things to do
From Broadway glitter
to Lower East Side grunge, the range and variety of the performing
arts in New York is exactly what you might expect. Broadway,
and even Off-Broadway theater , is notoriously expensive,
but if you know where to look, there are a variety of ways
to get tickets cheaper, and on the Off-Off-Broadway fringe
you can see a play for little more than the price of a movie
ticket. As for dance, music and opera , the big mainstream
events are extremely expensive, but smaller ones are often
equally as interesting and far cheaper. New York gets the
first run of most American films (and many foreign ones before
they reach Europe) and has a very healthy arthouse and revival
scene.
New York is a
rich port city that can get the best foodstuffs from anywhere
in the world, and, as a major immigration gateway, it attracts
chefs who know how to cook the world's cuisines properly,
even exceptionally. As you stroll through the streets of New
York, heavenly odors seem to emanate from every corner; it's
not hard to work up an appetite.
Outside of American and continental cuisines (more or less
including New American, which can either dazzle with its inventive
fusions or fail miserably and pretentiously), be prepared
to confront a startling variety of ethnic food . In New York,
none has had so dominant an effect as Jewish food , to the
extent that many Jewish specialties - bagels, pastrami, lox
and cream cheese - are now considered archetypal New York.
Others retain more specific identities. Chinese food includes
the familiar Cantonese, as well as spicier Szechuan and Hunan
dishes - most restaurants specialize in one or the other.
Japanese food is widely available and very good; other Asian
cuisines include Indian and a broad sprinkling of Thai, Korean,
Vietnamese and Indonesian restaurants.
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