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Since I jacked in the rat race and headed east for a life on the Big Blue, I haven't been back. But Jamie and I have a dream of sailing 'Esper' into the great melting-pot one day...
New York, New York, so good they named it twice,
New York, New York, all the scandal and the vice, I love it!
Gerard Kenny, 1978.
I’m not so sure about the vice, but I love a bit of scandal and news, so what better way to start the day than with the New York Times? Sitting in one of NY’s many diners, while knocking back endless cups of coffee and wolfing down a real Big Apple breakfast, is a pretty good way to soak up the city morning atmosphere.
It does not matter what interests you, New York has it all. There are a million things to do and see, from art to sport, from shopping to parks and from Broadway to boat tours, it is impossible to be bored.
I started my affair with New York in 1972 when I visited the city for the first time at the tender age of fourteen. Flying from London on my own, too scared to disturb the passenger next to me – or to use the lavatory – I remained in my seat for the whole journey. Listening to Tony Blackburn through crackly headphones, on a continuous one-hour loop, must surely earn me some kind of medal? Emerging surprisingly unscathed from the experience of hearing the iconic disk jockey’s cheesy jokes eight times, I was met at the airport by the American family I would be staying with for a month.
It was the time of flower power and the hippy generation, a movement I embraced with open arms, marvelling at the brave new world of shopping malls. I bought LPs by Carole King, Harry Nilsson, and Alice Cooper, covered myself in cheap jewellery, slavered on the patchouli or musk perfume, and squeezed my feet into cuban heeled cowboy boots. I went to the Empire State Building – just pipped at the post as the world’s highest building by the recently built World Trade Centre. I saw the Rockerfeller Center, Central Park and the Statue of Liberty, but it was Saks 5th Avenue which impressed me most. Fab, all those bright, blinking, winking things.
Most amazingly of all during that trip I was somehow smuggled into a cinema to see the X rated “The Godfather”. Life did not get much hipper or happier.
Since my first glimpse of the metropolitan heaven that is New York I have been back often, sometimes on holiday and sometimes on business, but always with pleasure and affection. It has changed over the years, with even places like Harlem getting a makeover and becoming gentrified – this once ‘no-go’ area now offers Harlem Heritage Tours.
If you've never been before I would try a whistle stop tour of the major tourist sights – they are all worth seeing – but just strolling around Manhattan gives a great flavour of the place that spawned ‘Fame’, ‘Friends’ and countless Woody Allen flicks. Catch a Broadway show and see a Hollywood star in the flesh, if you are lucky, but ‘Off Broadway’ or even in one of the other boroughs – Queens, Brooklyn, The Bronx or Staten Island – there are performances most nights.
NY never ceases to thrill and to throw up something new. The Frick Collection and Museum of Modern Art are always worth visiting for a culture fix. For aspirational shopping it is hard to beat Barneys, and the boutiques around SoHo are full of gorgeous clothes and to-die-for trinkets.
There is nothing quite like waking up in the city that never sleeps and I haven’t even mentioned the bars...
For more tales have a look at www.lizcleere.com
East of San Francisco, north of Mexico, south of Canada and west of Ireland.
Art for art's space. Dia Art Foundation's gallery at Beacon exemplifies what New York does best - converting disused industrial space into space for art. At over 240,000 square feet this ex-box printing factory, located just over an hour's train ride away from Grand Central Station up the Hudson River, houses art on a grand scale. Each gallery is devoted to a single artist - from Beuys to Judd to Warhol (72 of them!) Including monumental holes in the ground and obligatory piles of shattered glass this is art, and as importantly a gallery, on a scale to take your breath away and make you smile. Follow with a stroll up the river and lunch in the groovy Beacon.
www.diaart.org
535 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011
+1 212.989.5566
Google map: bit.ly/gYV2GB
Small museum that for a suggested 99 cents donation displays and contextualises wonderful remnants of Coney Island's colourful past including vintage bumper cars, funhouse mirrors and photos of the sideshow folk who once worked there. Also houses temporary exhibitions. Highly recommended to those with a taste for oddball Americana. Note that it's only open at weekends.
1208 Surf Avenue, Brooklyn, NY
+1(718) 372-5159
www.coneyisland.com/museum.shtml
Nearest subway: Coney Island
Google map: bit.ly/mQ3Jr1
New York's oldest building that is still in continuous use dating from 1766. Amazing when you think it is right in middle of the financial district, surrounded by skyscrapers.
Since it was only across the road from the Twin Towers, this chapel was used by the rescue workers as a place of respite. A lot of displays relate to the 9/11 period and are moving reminders of what happened that day. This was the church on whose railings people pinned photos of loved ones missing in the days following the terrorist attack.
74 Trinity Place, Manhattan, NY
+12122334164
www.saintpaulschapel.org/
Google map: bit.ly/kSWLi5
The museum's name speaks for itself I think. Basically it's guided small tours around re-created tenement rooms. Really worth a visit. If you've been to the Dennis Severs house in London you'll get the idea.
The Target Free Friday Night, sponsored by clothing giant Target is a great experience. The free admission begins at 4:00pm and ends at 8:00pm giving plenty of time to take in the best this gallery (including 150 000 paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs and design objects) has to offer. The most famous of which include Van Gogh’s The Starry Night and Dali’s The Persistence of Memory. Although tickets are not available to buy in advance the lengthy queue surprisingly moves quickly but arriving early never hurts.
(212) 708-9400
11 West 53 Street,
between Fifth and Sixth avenues
New York, NY 10019-5497
The Neue Galerie shows early twentieth century German and Austrian art and design, including first-rate examples of paintings by Kokoschka, Schiele, Klimt (Adele Bloch-Bauer), and many other artists and designers. The setting is a 1914 mansion, just off Fifth Avenue, which opened in 2001.
The work is displayed as if it were in a private house, with furniture and fabrics appropriate to the pieces on show. The glassware and ceramics are also of high quality. The Neue Galerie is a pleasure to visit and a tribute to its founders. There is a comprehensive bookshop offering scholarly works as well as souvenirs.
Corner of Fifth Avenue and 87th Street. Subway to 86th Street and walk from there.
The Whitney Museum was designed by Marcel Breuer and contains a large collection of American art from the nineteenth century to the present day. Sometimes however it shows special exhibitions and that can restrict the range of work on display. This is a pity since many visitors to New York will want to see a representative selection of work from the Whitney's entire collection to gain an insight into the nature and range of American art, rather than concentrating on the work of select figures.
However the Whitney is well worth visiting especially if, in future, it makes a more generous selection of its main collections available than was on show this season. There is also a good bookshop.
945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street. www.whitney.org Subway lines 5 or 6, at 77th St and walk towards Central Park.
I can really recommend a City Pass. For $74 you get entrance to six attractions including The Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Modern Art and American Museum of Natural History. It’s about a $65 saving so its good value and once you’ve brought the pass it’s valid for nine days.
The tiny Tenement Museum in New York's Lower East Side is often overlooked by tourists in favour of the more 'glitzy' and well known museums such as the Natural History Museum or the Met. But in my opinion this beats them all hands down.
97 Orchard Street is a wonderful slice of NY history and it really helps you see past Macys and Banana Republic to the real New York - the urban working class immigrant families who built the city to the one we know today. The building itself was home to scores of families through the ages - each of whom lived in tiny cramped apartments. And it's these apartments you can visit, restored to how they would have looked in different eras.
The restorers have been really clever, and researched specific families to get an authentic version of their life, and there are real belongings and photos within the apartments. You can walk through the 1870s, 1890s, the 1930s and so on. And you really feel that you get to know the specific families, and can imagine how difficult it was to build a family and survive in such a tiny space.
It's absolutely magical, and worth every cent of the $17 it costs for the guided tour. In my opinion, this is a must-see venue in NYC, and it might take your mind off trying to find the ultimate cheap designer jeans. Suddenly shopping seems terribly unimportant in the face of such real poverty.
Once visited, this museum will leave an indelible mark on you, and you'll be recommending it to all your friends.
97 Orchard Street, Lower East Side, NYC
+1212 982 8420
www.tenement.org/
Google map: bit.ly/knFYId
MoMA has the finest and largest holding of 20th and 21st century modern art in the world.
To save $20 admission go after 4pm (up to 8pm) on Fridays when it's free - although it gets busy, it's a great way of seeing some of the best displays of modern art you can ever see.
11W 53rd Street; nearest subway: Fifth-53rd Street
www.moma.org/
Brilliant place. Small and manageable, amazing collection, friendly guides, good special exhibitions. Make sure you see Alexander Calder's Circus. Beat the crowds at MoMA!
Museum Mile, Upper East Side
www.whitney.org/
Tel: (212) 570 3676
Head to the Metropolitan Museum of Art just before it closes and go straight up to the rooftop; when we went there was a bar on the rooftop and we had a glass of wine and watched the sun go down over the city - the views are amazing.
Metropolitan Museum of Art in Central Park
Visit this museum after Ellis Island and continue in the steps of the immigrants after finally making it onto American soil. The museum is an unrestored tenement building with authentic furnishings and the guided tour gives a fascinating glimpse of the life and hardships faced by the first immigrants. A real treasure of a place.
97 Orchard Street (Delancy Street) www.tenement.org/
Authentic viennese cafe on the ground floor of the Neue Galerie, a recently opened gallery to German and Austrian art. Situated in a charming townhouse.
On 88th and Museum mile. About 2 blocks north of the Metropolitan museum. The actual galleries hours are odd - but the cafe is open most days
Despite the recent reopening of Moma in all its splendour, the Met still wins out. Like any huge museum of this kind - it is has seven major, permanent collections - you won't see it all. If you have the stamina put aside a day, go early, take a break and go back for more. If not then it makes sense to focus on what piece of candy in this particularly huge store you want and then try not to binge.
1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street; Tel: 212-535-7710; www.metmuseum.org/
The younger, hipper sister gallery of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), PS1 showcases the best of cutting-edge contemporary art. Even if you don't "get it", you're bound to find something entertaining in this old school building. A recent exhibition included a video of a family kitted out in back-to-front Bernie Clifton-style ostrich outfits played backwards, & a mouse-eye view of a toy train ride through the bowels of houses & offices. Guaranteed to wind up Daily Mail readers & Jack Vettriano lovers, which is never a bad thing. Entry is free with a MoMA ticket.
It's on Long Island. Take the E or V train to 23 St/Ely Ave. Exit onto 44th to Jackson Ave. Walk two blocks south on Jackson to 46th Ave.
www.ps1.org
A weird and wonderful collection (the Henry Darger collection is extensive), beautifully displayed in a great new museum just down the street from MOMA. Great temporary exhibits and friendly staff.
45 West 53rd Street
Part of the Metropolitan Museum, high above the Hudson on the northernmost tip of Manhattan. If you want to escape from the craziness into some peace, visit this medieval monastery brought over from Europe. Contains "The Lady and the Unicorn" tapestries; a herb garden and wonderful views.
Contact Metropolitan museum website for details of transport. You can use you Met ticket here the same day too.
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