A fun NYC day (albeit COLD!)

By Caitlin Kelly

There’s only so many pandemic months I can stand to live a cycle of apartment/gym/grocery store. Living in a small suburban town with virtually everything amusing closed for months is lonely and isolating!

So, occasionally, I drive the hour into Manhattan, find street parking (sometimes unpaid, when lucky) and wander a bit, savoring fresh air and sunshine and funky old buildings and stonework and little old ladies moving slowly down the block, hipsters in plaid coats and so many dog-walkers!

Carved red sandstone, exterior of an apartment building on Leroy Street

I parked this time on Leroy, a short north-south street in the heart of Greenwich Village, all residential, a mix of five and six-story walk-ups and several brick houses built in 1813.

Imagine! Who walked these streets then? What did they wear? Where were they going?

I was headed a block north to my favorite city street, Bleecker, an odd street that manages to run both north-south on its western edge (right?) then straight across to terminate at the Bowery.

Robert de Niro grew up there.

Herman Melville lived there.

Even singer Dua Lipa lived there for a year.

The legendary John’s Pizza.

Here’s its Wikipedia entry.

The pandemic has closed many places, but a few great ones remain — so I hit Rocco’s Pastry and Murray’s Cheese, stocking up on delicacies like sfogliatelle and Brie. I ate brunch outdoors — the only way right now to eat there since indoor dining is banned again and it was cold! Like, 30 degrees cold.

Safely distanced, this is the only way to dine in New York right now, regardless of weather

So I read my Sunday New York Times and covered my coffee with its saucer to keep it hot and wore my lined leather gloves as I ate my baked eggs.

Ludlow Street

I drove southeast to the East Village and parked, again at no cost, on Ludlow Street, just to explore a different neighborhood a bit. I didn’t walk very far but was happy to see two great shops on Rivington are still there, Economy Candy and Edith Machinist, a terrific vintage clothing store. I also found out there’s two-hour metered parking for $10.75 on that street — a garage can easily cost three or four times that much.

I sat for a while on a park bench, soaking up some sunshine, watching locals wander by. It’s not a cool, trendy, hip part of the city, but a weathered neighborhood where people live who don’t work on Wall Street and flee to the Hamptons.

I enjoyed lunch, also outdoors, eavesdropping — a much missed habit! — on five guys, mostly in their 20s and 30s, clearly all really good friends, joking and laughing at the next table.

I so miss city energy.

So even if “all” I can enjoy — no ballet/opera/concerts/theater — is a sunny day walking, I’m happy with that.

Some glimpses of my New York

My old reporters’ notebook from the New York Daily News, whose logo is that of a classic old-time camera, the Speed Graphic

 

By Caitlin Kelly

It’s been a while since I came to live in a small suburban town on the eastern side of the Hudson River, with views of passing barges pushed and pulled by tiny, powerful tugboats. A place where red-tailed hawks glide above the tree-tops. Where one of the nation’s wealthiest families, the Rockefellers, live a 15-minute drive north of us — their helicopter always, annoyingly, thrumming too low overhead as they whisk someone south.

I love living here.

It satisfies all my desires: a beautiful landscape, access to great culture in Manhattan and at local venues like Caramoor and the art film house, Jacob Burns, economic and social diversity, (our town has million-dollar townhomes at the river’s edge, with social housing projects a few blocks inland.) I know the guys at the hardware store and the gourmet shop and the gym.

I’ve also, of course, through work and play, have gotten to know what we call The City, aka Manhattan and its four other boroughs. I know that Houston Street is pronounced How-ston and that Bleecker — perhaps confusingly — manages to run both north-south and east-west. I know where to find free street parking.

It did take me a long time, at least a decade, before I felt this was home. New York, as you can imagine of a city of eight million, many of them with multiple Ivy degrees and the most skilled and competitive in their fields and industries, can feel very intimidating.

It is also a place absolutely and rigidly stratified by wealth, social class and race, with its enormous and imposing private clubs, including the row of Ivy League-only clubs (Yale, Harvard, Princeton,. Cornell) that I’ve only visited thanks to events held there. If you head to the uppermost stretch of Park Avenue, the division between extraordinary wealth and deep poverty is, literally, across the street.

But, if you’re lucky and work your ass off, it can soften enough to become more welcoming.

Here are some images of my life here:

 

Broadway, baby! The dream of so many performers, and the provider of many well-paid union jobs backstage.

 

Here’s a really fun story I wrote about a Jen Diaz, a young woman who won a prestigious first-ever-woman backstage Broadway management job, for The New York Times. Her father manages backstage at the Met Opera.

 

Love this restaurant, Via Carota, on Grove Street in the West Village of Manhattan.

 

It’s expensive, but very good food, with a spectacular and enormous (!) green salad. The West Village is by far my favorite neighborhood — shaded cobble-stoned streets lined with early 19th century brownstone houses and indie shops and tiny and perfect restaurants like Little Owl. It’s become impossibly expensive to live there, but lovely to visit.

 

This is our local reservoir. No idea what that building is!

 

 

This is an amazing place — built in 1857. Truly a time capsule, on  the north shore of Long Island (which lies south of New York City)

 

 

Such  beauty! I love going to the ballet at Lincoln Center (and opera at the Met.)

 

 

Every spring there’s Fleet Week, welcoming ships to New York’s harbor.

 

 

The New York Botanical Garden, in the Bronx. Such a treasure!

 

Despite horrific rents, some indie bookstores hang on in Manhattan.

 

 

I love auctions! I bought two prints at this one, a splurge. That’s my bidding paddle.

 

 

Nosebleed seats (highest row at back of the balcony) still affordable.

 

 

The view from our home of the new Tappan Zee bridge, spanning the Hudson

 

 

The Brooklyn Bridge

 

Grand Central Terminal — where thousands of commuters head in and out to the northern and western suburbs; those headed to Long Island use (hideous) Penn Station. GCT is amazing: lots of great shopping and restaurants and a food market. Commuting in from our town, now, has risen to $9.50 one-way in off-peak (non rush hour), making a day trip $19 just to enjoy the city — before a meal, drink, subway ride or activity.

 

I love the details of this building in the West Village

 

 

A tug and barge heading south on the East River

 

 

 

The New York Times newsroom

 

This is a place I know well; my husband worked there for 31 years as a photographer and photo editor. I also write for the paper freelance, so have been in there many times.

 

Our amazing local bakery, Riviera Bakehouse in Ardsley, NY, made this great cake — on 2 days’ notice. I wrote the headlines (Arthur is the publisher; Zvi a colleague)

 

I always tell visitors to New York to get out of noisy, crowded, tourist-clogged midtown Manhattan as fast as possible and head to quieter neighborhoods like the East and West Village, Nolita and even parts of the Upper East Side, which is mostly residential but has some treasures like this lovely tearoom.

Get to a riverside park and enjoy the views and breezes. Savor a rooftop cocktail or a sunset bike ride.

I haven’t even mentioned Brooklyn (as I so rarely go there,) but it’s full of great shops and restaurants and views.

There are so many versions of New York!

My New York — insider tips

Lincoln Center

 

By Caitlin Kelly

Few cities are as iconic as New York — maybe Paris, London, Tokyo — its skyline instantly recognizable, whether the Empire State Building or the Chrysler Building, my favorite.

I moved here from my native Canada in 1989, thanks to my mother’s American citizenship which allowed me the right to a “green card”, the legal ability to live and work in the U.S.

Why New York?

For an ambitious writer, it seemed obvious — ready access to editors and publishers and agents and fellow writers, to conferences and parties and events where I can, and have, meet them face to face.

But also for the city itself, with its history, architecture, cultural riches and the beauty of the Lower Hudson Valley, where we live — the glittering towers of downtown Manhattan clearly visible even from our town on the river, 25 miles north.

 

Here’s some of what I enjoy…

 

Fleet Week

Once a year, since 1984, the city welcomes thousands of sailors. It’s so cool! You feel like you’re in a Broadway play from the ’30s as sailors in their crisp whites swarm midtown. This amazing collection of caps lined a table at event I attended — I was even piped aboard!

 

 

 

 

Keen’s…since 1885

 

Old-school bars and restaurants, some dating back 150 years

My favorite lunch spot is Keen’s, founded in 1885, where I even now have a regular table. The room is long, dark, quiet and full of atmosphere. Linen tablecloths, early portraits and handbills and the ceiling, lined with early clay pipes. The food is very good as is the service; it’s on a nothing-special block, 36th, in a noisy and crowded part of Midtown, a perfect refuge. For classic old school charm, I also love Fanelli’s, Old Town Bar, the Ear Inn, Sardi’s, Bemelman’s, The King Cole Bar and the Landmark.

 

What’s left of Greenwich Village

 

It’s changed a lot, thanks to greedy landlords who have raised commercial rents to absurd prices, shoving out most of its funky long-time tenants selling used CDs or Tibetan clothing. But if you look hard enough, some indies survive, usually far east or west. Two of my stand-bys are Porto Rico Coffee & Tea and McNulty’s, each of which feel like time capsules. For afternoon tea, I like Bosie’s and for a splurge meal, Morandi. East 9th is always worth a wander. The bit of Bleecker running between 6th and 7th is still home to great food shops.

 

 

 

Lincoln Center

What a gem! The exteriors, clad in gleaming white marble, and its gorgeous central fountain, make you excited just to be there. Plus the luxurious interiors of the Met Opera, the Koch Theatre and David Geffen Hall — opened between 1962 and 1966.   Unlikely but true, I once performed in eight shows of The Sleeping Beauty, with the National Ballet of Canada and with Rudolf Nureyev in the lead (I was an extra) at the Koch Theater, exiting (!) through its stage door. I began enjoying the Met Opera, finally, last year and feel like the richest woman in the world to be able to walk through those doors on any night there’s an empty seat I can afford.

 

Grand Central Terminal

Commuter trains travel from here north to Westchester county and beyond, and northeast to Connecticut. Built between 1903 to 1913, it serves approximately 66 million passengers a year. It’s truly a cathedral, with a brilliant turquoise domed ceiling, lit with stars, enormous hanging period lanterns, marble stairs and floors and its iconic central clock. It also houses very good restaurants, a lovely food hall, a wine store, multiple bakeries and some great shopping — also (very elusive!) free, clean and safe bathrooms.

 

Smaller, quieter museums

Mad for the Secessionists — Klimt, Schiele and Kokoschka — I love The Neue Galerie (with its fantastic cafe). I also like small and elegant Japan Society, the Frick and The Morgan. While the big boys (the Met and MOMA) will always win visitors, they can also be noisy and crowded.  If you love airplanes as much as I do, try the Intrepid Museum. Two truly worth a visit are the Tenement Museum — showing how the city’s earliest immigrants lived in such tiny, cramped rooms  — and the Merchant’s House, a time capsule from 1832.

 

The four B’s: Bergdorf Goodman, Bloomingdales, Barney’s and Bigelow

Oh, go on! Even for a quick peek. Last June, I watched Ivana Trump, (wife number one), blonde beehive intact, meandering the perfume department at Barney’s; (I was there to treat myself to a Byredo fragrance for my birthday.) These three stores are not inexpensive, but worth a visit to get a feel for New York luxury and BG has a gorgeous cafe with great views. Bigelow Chemists on Sixth Avenue, established in 1838, sells an amazing array of beauty and skin products, including their own line. Cool fashionistas like Dover Street Market, Opening Ceremony and Totokaelo. My two standbys are Ina, (a consignment store with multiple locations and great merch) and Aedes de Venustas, with the best selection of fragrance around, now on Orchard Street.

 

A summer week on Fire Island

By Caitlin Kelly

 

It seems impossible, but within a few hours’ drive of crazy, congested New York City is a ferry that crosses the South Bay and lands on a quiet, dune-speckled 32-mile spit of land called Fire Island.

Created by the National Park Service in 1966, it’s a barrier island that’s home to hundreds of privately-owned low-slung homes, nestled into thickets of gnarled, twisted lichen-covered trees and tall stands of speckled grasses.

It’s the anti-Hamptons, where A-listers and millionaires fly to their enormous mansions by helicopter; here everyone crams into the ferry, in flip-flops.

Deer casually graze everywhere, unafraid, as swallows and seagulls and mourning doves flit about.

Lots of brown bunnies and monarch butterflies.

The local lending library and post office

 

Friends who’ve owned a house there for more than 50 years were kind enough to lend it to us for a week of silence, sun, plane-spotting, and the gentle sound of waves lapping against a fleet of boats just off-shore.

 

 

Getting there is easy, leaving from the town of Patchogue on the south shore of Long Island, about a 20-minute ride. Day-trippers can enjoy the beach and a local bar and resturant, while residents keep enormous wooden carts there with which to transport groceries and other necessities.

There’s a restaurant near the section we were in, Davis Park, and a general store and we waited eagerly on Sunday morning for the ferry to arrive with the newspapers.

 

The island has no roads, so no cars, so it’s really quiet.

The only motorized noise comes from motorboats, Jet-Skis and helicopters — and the low, persistent hum of the ferry.

Typical sounds include mourning doves, the rustling of tall grass, the squeaking of a playground swing, the roar of ocean surf.

As aviation nerds, and passionate travelers, Jose and I loved watching aircraft descending in their final few minutes into JFK airport — we watched them through binoculars arriving from Lisbon, Madrid, Dubai, London, Edinburgh and the Ukraine. (If you don’t know FlightRadar24, check it out!)

I caught up on my reading: Transit by Rachel Cusk (meh); Appointment in Samarra, from 1934 by John O’Hara,  (which I enjoyed), On Turpentine Lane (given to me by the publisher, a light read) and How Music Works by Talking Heads’ David Byrne — which was amazing and I only got through half of it so am ordering it in order to read the rest.

(Highlight of the week — chanting the lyrics to Psycho Killer with our French friend, 70, who’s also a huge Talking Heads fan.)

I spent my days reading, napping, taking photos, kayaking, walking the beach, chatting with my husband and, later in the week, two friends who came out to join us. And, (sigh), a bit of work as well.

It rained for two days, which we used to read, nap, play lots of gin rummy and read social media and two daily newspapers.

Some homes on the island are for sale — the least expensive one I saw offered on a public bulletin board was $475,000, and weekly rentals from $1,900 to $4,200 — one dropping to $900 a week in the fall.

We left with sand in our shoes, sunburned, well-rested — and looking forward to returning next summer.

 

Some insider views of my New York…

By Caitlin Kelly

You can always see the famous icons of New York City, on postcards and T-shirts and in movies and television.

It can make you feel like you know the city even if you’ve never been here.

But, like every major city, it’s a place of many facets, most of which tourists will never see.

 

One of the coolest aspects of New York — and one so easy for pedestrians, drivers and tourists to forget — is that it’s a busy, working harbor.

The East and Hudson Rivers are as crowded with marine traffic as there is vehicular madness on the FDR (highway on the East Side), the BQE (heading out to Brooklyn and Queens) and the West Side Highway.

 

Every day dozens of tug boats are pushing barges somewhere — or guiding enormous cruise ships through a harbor filled with treacherously narrow and shallow channels.

 

I spent one of the happiest days of my work life here aboard a tug boat and came away in awe of these workhorses, each worth a ton of money and able to keep the city moving in ways no other craft can.

What many people don’t know is how crucial tugboats were to us all on 9/11, a day of utter terror and chaos. Here’s a story about their amazing, unsung role.

One of my favorite sights is seeing a tugboat at night, its lights stacked high like a mini wedding cake as it chugs along the river.

 

Broadway is still a real treat.

Despite crazy-high prices and the impossibility of getting tickets for some shows like Hamilton, seeing a performance in one of these classic, small, intimate theaters is well worth doing and can create a lifetime memory.

My favorite? Attending, of all things, Mamma Mia, with my husband’s Buddhist lama (yes, really)…Namaste on Broadway!

 

 

And Lincoln Center; this is the David Koch Theater. What a pleasure to wait for the house lights and the jewel-shaped lamps fronting each balcony to dim, the hush as the curtain rises on another ballet.

The railings have lacy, gilded dividers and the diamond-like lights repeat in the exterior and hall interior

The entire building is delicate and lovely and ethereal — very early 1960s with all that white marble and gold — and makes an event there feel, as it is, like a special occasion.

 

Now this is how to sell clothes!

 

This is a classic! One of my favorite shopping streets, East Ninth.

 

There are, still, a very few streets left in Manhattan, (more in Brooklyn now), that are funky and filled with quirky independent shops.

Rents skyrocket daily, forcing many long-time renters and businesses to shut and leave, sometimes to close for good.

The latest?

A gas station at Houston and Broadway, one of a very small handful of gas stations in Manhattan, is soon to be torn down and replaced with….what else?…more million-dollar condominiums.

Hey, who needs gas anyway? Just thousands of working cabbies, to start with.

One of my favorite cafes, Cafe Angelique, (now on Bleecker’s eastern end) had to vacate its spot in the West Village when the landlord jacked the rent to…$45,000 a month.

Find — and support — the indies while you can!

 

The NYC food bank — which I saw while working on a story about it

 

Never forget — this is a city of incredible, rising income inequality.

 

The photo above, of a space that dwarfs airplane hangars, is filled with food, all of it destined for the city’s poorest inhabitants, many of them elderly.

You can enjoy the High Line and Times Square, dear tourists, but it’s only one tiny sliver of New York City.

This group of young men, the topic of a recent documentary, The Wolfpack. The film-maker had to win their trust to move ahead with the project

The film-maker of The Wolfpack literally found her documentary subject on the sidewalk — passing this group of handsome young men — and wondering who on earth they were.

Their story is almost unimaginable, raised inside their Manhattan apartment by a fiercely controlling father.

Rockefeller Center, as seen from Saks Fifth Avenue

 

If you like shopping, you might enjoy a visit to Saks Fifth Avenue. I like eating lunch there, and enjoying this view.

 

One of the most fun things you can possibly do — dance at 7am! Daybreaker, in NYC

 

Or, getting up to dance with 800 strangers at 7 in the morning.

 

Yes, I’ve done it, several times.

 

If you keep your eyes peeled, you’ll see all sorts of elegance and beauty in the least likely places. This is a lamp on a private college campus in Brooklyn.

 

Porto Rico Coffee and Tea, Bleecker Street, NYC

 

And this tea and coffee shop, here since 1907, makes me happy. I stagger out every time laden with pounds of beans and tea.

 

 

The pattern of a metal plate on a Soho street…This is a city that still truly rewards a close look and sustained attention.

 

 

The back of a store on Spring Street in Soho. Speaking of quirky…

 

 

My birthday month…a facade in midtown Manhattan. Note the twins of Gemini.

 

 

A firehouse. How gorgeous is this?!

 

Nope, not Rome or Florence or Paris…Soho, Manhattan. The cast-iron facades downtown are a terrific reminder of the city’s past, not just the gleaming multi-million dollar condo towers.

 

And for those who still dream of becoming journalists…Columbia Journalism School.

Columbia Journalism School — there’s a lot they still don’t teach you in the classroom!

 

I studied here in the 1990s — now I teach writing there!

 

 

How can you resist? The city is filled with delicious bakeries and temptations…

If you come, make time to walk sloooooowly and savor all these sights.

 

Four spring days in New York City…

By Caitlin Kelly

The view north from her apartment, East 81st. Street.

Thanks to my friend D, who lent me her apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan while she was out of town, I just enjoyed four days wandering the city, staying overnight.

What a luxury!

I’ve been living near New York City since 1989 but have never lived in it; paying a ton of money for a very small amount of room doesn’t appeal to me.

But, having grown up in Toronto, Montreal, Paris and London, I’m used to — and really miss — the energy of living in the middle of a major city with ready access to culture, museums, shopping and restaurants.

These are glass circles inlaid into the sidewalk, to allow for illumination below. At night, they were lit up. You’ll find these in Soho, downtown, and they’re often purple as the magnesium in the glass has changed color over the years.

Not to mention the pleasure of not driving everywhere, which I consider the worst curse of suburban life. It’s polluting, isolating and expensive. And makes you fat.

You can’t help but stay in city-shape, thanks to climbing all those subway stairs and walking long cross-town blocks.

(There’s also been a recent, terrifying and unresolved series of slashings and stabbings in and near the subway here, making cabs and walking and buses even more attractive.)

Walk even a few blocks in New York City, and notice all the  details as every building, old or new, has some sort of decoration — glazed bricks, carved gargoyle faces on either side of the entrance, lacy wrought-iron over the glass doors, windowboxes filled with daffodils and ivy.

You also see the city as it’s lived, not jammed into a throng of fellow tourists.

As I stopped into Cafe Anneliese for my morning coffee, several uniformed police officers emerged, arms piled high with pizza boxes.

At 9:00 a.m.? Turns out the 19th precinct was having a bake sale.

Those are the sort of intimate details you’ll never see wandering midtown or Times Square.

Some of my observations:

So many people!

 

Turns out New York is now the biggest and fastest growing it’s been since the 1920s. Some eight million people now live here.

I never quite grasped the density that entails, but walk just a few long blocks filled with 10, 20 and 40-storey apartment buildings and you start to get the picture.

So many kids!

 

In these four days I realized, because we don’t have children, how little daily exposure to them we have; suburban kids are either in school, being driven somewhere, at some organized activity or at home.

They’re not, at least in my town, playing on the street or swarming a playground.

In the city, I saw them sitting on the bus, (like the four-year-old girl wearing silver leather boots!) and subway and sidewalk, running through the park, chattering to their mom or, as one little girl was, fast asleep on her nanny’s lap.

So many dogs!

 

If you’re a tourist in New York City, you might not even notice all the dogs. But if you live here, even for a few days in  a residential neighborhood like the Upper East Side, it’s dog city! I had a great time watching all the dog-walkers with their furry charges.

Met two gorgeous fox terrier puppies, one wire-haired named Tulip, one smooth-haired named Panda.

I was also impressed at how spotless the sidewalks were; people definitely seem to be picking up after their pets.

So many tourists!

 

I barely heard a word of English in four days, and in a variety of neighborhoods. Instead, I overheard Chinese, French, Spanish, German, Portuguese and an Eastern European language I didn’t recognize spoken by four young women, all wearing black, sitting beside me at the bar of an Indian restaurant on Bleecker Street.

One of our games is “guess the tourist”. They don’t need to be holding a map or guidebook for us to know who you are:

1) You’re wearing nice clothes. On weekends, certainly, everyone who lives here is wearing what I wore: leggings, athletic shoes and a jacket or T-shirt. i.e. not an outfit or shred of elegance. It’s all about comfort.

2) You move realllllllly slowly. Jesus, people, move it!

3) You stand still, blocking the exits and entrances to subway stairs, stores and restaurants — or spread your entourage across the entire sidewalk. Please don’t! We move fast and hate it when we can’t.

4) You’re wearing an I Love NY or FDNY T-shirt or sweatshirt. Or, like the young German couple on the uptown 6 train, scrubbing their hands with sanitizer.

So many flowers!

 

This year — hello, global warming?! — the trees are already blossoming: cherry, magnolia and others bursting into white and pink glory about two months too soon. The parks are filled with daffodils and tulips soon to join them.

Not to mention all the flower shops and corner delis filled with plants and flowers to take home.

Al Dente, a pretty, quiet Italian restaurant at 80th and Amsterdam

 Some of the many activities I enjoyed (all of which you can too, as a visitor here):

Ate well:

Surya, (Indian on Bleecker Street); Virgil’s (barbecue, on 44th St.), Al Dente, (Italian, corner of 80th and Amsterdam, UWS), Patisserie Claude (West 4th, West village.)

Got a haircut:

At Hairhoppers, my go-to salon for the past 16 years, on Grove Street in the West Village. With only three chairs, it’s tiny and fun, always an unlikely mix of age, gender and kinds of people. On various occasions, I’ve sat beside a Grammy-nominated musician, a Brooklyn museum curator and an I-banker off to the Bahamas.

Alex is the owner, Benny his assistant. My cut was $100, (I can hear you gasping), but I know what rent he pays — and it’s a fair price for terrific work.

Enjoyed a park

You might not think of parks, beyond Central Park, when you think of New York. But the city has far more green space than Paris, and many lovely pockets of greenery and silence around the city, like Carl Schurz Park on the Upper East Side, topped at its northern end by Gracie Mansion, the elegant official home of the city’s mayor.

In an overwhelmingly residential neighborhood, it offers the city at its best — clean, manicured, right on the East River so you can watch the barges and police boats and DEP crews zipping past.

Downtown, before my haircut, I sat for a while in Sheridan Square’s park, marked with several life-size white statues that commemorate a piece of history for the city’s gay population, the Stonewall Inn, which sits just outside the park.

Be sure to just sit still for a while and savor the incredible variety of people who work, live and play here.

Chatted with a stranger

One morning at the corner coffee shop, we got into a conversation with an older woman sitting beside us. Turns out — of course! — she and my husband knew someone in common.

Even in such an enormous city, it happens.

Walked

This is the single best way to enjoy New York City.

There’s such great architecture almost everywhere; (walk 42d Street from the East River to Fifth Avenue to see Tudor City, the Chrysler Building, Grand Central Terminal and the Public Library. Be sure to go inside GCT and the library.) If you love the Bourne films as much as I do, you’ll recognize Tudor City– an elegant series of apartment buildings and a park — as a key scene in one of them.

Took the bus

The subway? Fuhgeddaboutit!

Buses are by far the best way to see the city without getting crushed, trampled or having your I-phone grabbed out of your hand. If you have mobility issues, buses easily accommodate travelers using wheelchairs and walkers, by “kneeling”, lowering almost to pavement level and with a special lift for access.

Saw a few shows:

I had never been to Le Poisson Rouge, a concert venue on Bleecker St. near NYU. For an admission fee of $10 and sipping a $10 glass of Malbec, I listened to two of the three bands on that evening. Really enjoyed it.

I discovered that show by reading The Skint, a daily listing of affordable fun events and a must-read for everyone hoping to enjoy New York on a budget.

Attended Easter service at one of the city’s greatest churches:

Nope, not St. Patrick’s Cathedral but St. Bart’s.

My parents, a New Yorker (my mother) and a Canadian from Vancouver (my father) married at the spectacular church of St. Bartholomew on Park Avenue, so I’ve long felt an attachment to it. The entrance has five mosaic-filled domes overhead and deeply sculpted entrance doors.

Its location — a block north of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel and a few blocks from all the major banks and (once) investment houses — locates it in the center of New York power and money. It was founded in 1835 but the current building went up in 1918.

I hope this offers you some inspiration for your next visit here!

 

 

10 hidden treasures of New York City

By Caitlin Kelly

 

Now this is how to sell clothes! Baby in the window at 9th Street Haberdashery, one of the city’s best-edited vintage clothing stores

I moved to New York in 1989. Although I live in a lovely town 25 miles north of Manhattan, I can clearly see its southernmost towers from my street.

I love heading into the city — and that’s what locals call it, The City, (as if there were no other!) — to explore.

There are many treasures to discover, even after you’ve lived here for decades, many of them simply by walking slowly and by heading far away from the official sights.

Yes, the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center and Statue of Liberty, (to name only three), are worth a visit for the first-time visitor,  but my favorite spots are much quieter and have few tourists.

Everyone heads to midtown: Fifth Avenue, Times Square, etc. — but I avoid midtown whenever possible, and feel sorry for the millions of tourists who wander there, dazed and crushed, buying junk from every mass-market store they have at home in Iowa or, worse, all the shops whose Going Out of Business!!! signs have been there for decades.

Why come to New York City to eat at tedious chain restaurants and look at the same boring made-in-China stuff you can buy at home?

Head (far) off the beaten path — yes, it’s safe!

A great doorway on East 9th Street, NYC

East 9th Street

I love this street; here’s a story that calls it the Fifth Avenue of small business. I like its intimate scale, its battered metal fences and indie stores, the few holdouts of quirk and individuality in a city whose rents skyrocket so insanely that decades-established places disappear overnight as landlords demand fees only possible for large corporations offering…the same old things.

People actually live here, too.

Here you’ll find well-curated vintage, one of my favorite home stores, (14 years and counting), a few cafes and a quiet, affordable streetscape that reminds us that New York isn’t, (for the moment!), just an Uber-studded playground of the 1 percent.

Start at the street’s eastern end and allow at least an hour or more to really explore. When you reach Veselka, on Second Avenue, collapse at the counter for their fab home-made pea soup or pierogies. It’s an institution, serving yummy food since 1954.

Tugboats!

It’s easy to forget — or not even realize — that the island of Manhattan is surrounded by water. It’s a busy working harbor, with enormous cruise ships docking in the Hudson River and barges of coal, cement and other materials being towed or pushed along our waterways by tugboats.

Those cruise ships only get in and out of here thanks to the amazing skill of tugboat operators, one of whom allowed me to spend a day aboard for a Daily News story. Best day in New York, ever! I had no idea how shallow and treacherous the waters here are nor how much power these little boats actually possess.

Take a seat on one of the many benches along the Hudson and watch these wondrous watery workhorses do their thing, day or night.

Cafe Sabarsky

If you’ve been to a Viennese cafe, this is how it looks, sounds, feels and tastes — from the long wooden rods holding newspapers to the coffee with whipped cream. This bastion of old-world elegance, available for lunch or dinner, is in the Beaux Arts mansion of the Neue Galerie, one of my favorite NYC museums, devoted to the work of the Viennese Secessionists, Klimt, Kokoschka and Schiele.

Peridance Capezio Center

I just discovered them — by accident, of course! This huge dance studio offers dozens of classes open to adults, and has lockers, showers and a small cafe in the lobby.

If you’re sick of your hotel gym and don’t feel like walking one.more.block, why not try a class? They sell clothes and shoes in the downstairs shop. It’s on East 13th., a few minutes’ walk southeast from the Union Square subway stop.

One of my happiest travel memories ever was taking a ballet class in Paris. We stared up at 18th century painted beams and stared out the windows at the brightly colored facade of the Pompidou Center. Merveilleux!

Morris-Jumel Mansion

Built in 1765, this home sits in a part of Manhattan — Harlem — that few tourists might normally choose to visit. It’s the oldest house in the city and filled with art and artifacts relating to the city’s history. I knew it existed but only saw it when we went to visit friends living a block away.

It’s gorgeous — and the setting is lovely.

Looking through the window of The Upper Rust, East 9th. One of the city’s best shops

Japan Society

Have you ever been to East 47th street? Likely not. But it’s well worth a detour to this small museum, founded in 1907, with a lovely indoor garden.

Some of the best shows I’ve even seen in this city have been here, from hair combs to ceramics. Their current exhibition offers photos from 1968 to 1979. (Take a look at the exquisite modern church next door.)

 

Another great vintage store on East 9th. Tiny but lots of great things at not-too-bad prices

Hairhoppers

OK, shameless plug for my hairdresser, Alex. He’s been in business for decades and his three-chair salon, now on the south side of Grove Street, (right at the Christopher Street 1/9 subway station), is about the size of our (not very big!) bedroom.

I love the variety of his clients, from little old ladies who arrive with their home care aides to Wall Street machers to museum curators. I once sat beside a career musician who would be playing that evening on the Grammy broadcast.

You won’t go home bragging about some Big Name haircut or color. But you’ll get a great cut and/or color, for men and women, for a fair price and enjoy some lively conversation with some of the city’s most interesting and creative people.

If you go, tell him I sent you!

Landmark Tavern

A place many tourists will never visit or even hear of, even though it’s been in existence since 1868. Located on 12th Avenue, (i.e. the outermost western edge of Manhattan), it’s like stepping back a century.

I discovered it years ago attending an office Christmas party held upstairs and enjoy its timeless quality. Flee those exhausting midtown crowds and settle in with a Guinness and shepherd’s pie.

Tinsel Trading Company/M & J Trimming

If you, like me, love beautiful ribbons, beads and other elements of crafting and design, this 86-year-old shop is it.

If you can’t find a ribbon here, give up! This store, frequented by everyone from FIT design students to Browadway costume designers, is stocked floor to ceiling with every color, style, fabric and width imaginable. They also sell badges, buttons, leather and suede cording and upholstery trim.

Aedes de Venustas

If you’re as crazy about delicious and unusual fragrance as I am — whether for men or women, in candle form, perfume, soap or men’s fragrance — this is not to be missed. It’s on the south side of Christopher Street, (about four blocks east of Hairhoppers), and offers a fantastic array of choice.

Here’s a recent book filled with more cool suggestions as well.

I haven’t read it — but he mentions two sites — The Ford Foundation’s indoor jungle and the Daily News’ Art Deco globe — I’ve seen on business visits to each place. Both are well worth seeing.

Do you have a favorite and lesser-known spot worth visiting in New York?

Home is…

By Caitlin Kelly

The night-time view from one of the windows at my Dad’s house…

Where is it exactly?

Is it in the city or town where you grew up?

Your parents’ home?

Your rented apartment, maybe in a foreign country?

A college dorm room?

A house shared with room-mates?

Your current residence?

On a visit now back to Ontario, where I lived ages five to 30, it’s always a question for me, even though I left long ago for Montreal, (two years), then New Hampshire (1.5 years) and New York (20+ years now.)

We’ve been staying in my father’s house, reveling in all that luxurious space, a working fireplace, a spacious and private backyard and small-town charm only an hour’s drive from Toronto.

For some people, home is a place you can always retreat to, with parents, or one parent, always eager to see you and help you and set you back on your feet after a tough time, whether divorce or job loss, sometimes both.

For others, though, estrangement is the painful and isolating norm.

I left my father’s home when I was 19 and have never lived there since.

I left my mother’s care at 14 and have never lived there since.

Independence is a learned art, one I had to acquire early, as there was no physical and little emotional space for me in either place.

My father’s late wife didn’t like me much, so my stays on their sofa were pretty short; after 3 or 4 days, it was clear I had worn out my welcome.

My mother had a large house for only a few years, but then lived in a place that took me an entire day’s flying, bus and ferry to reach, so I didn’t enjoy much time there before she moved into a small one-bedroom apartment with no room for me at all; I stayed at a motel a block away. (Today she lives in a small nursing-home room, a sad and very costly end to a highly solitary life.)

So even when my first marriage ended quickly and badly, I had no “home” to rush back to. When I lost jobs and when I needed surgery, (four times within 10 years, all orthopedic), I had to call on local friends, even my church, to come and help me with meals.

So I really enjoy house-sitting while my Dad’s off traveling again, having plenty of time surrounded by the many familiar images and objects of my childhood and adolescence, the paintings and prints and sculptures I’ve been looking at my entire life. Many of them are images he’s created, paintings of his late, beloved dogs, of his late, beloved second wife and landscapes from Nova Scotia to Tunisia.

I find it deeply comforting to see them and touch them, even if they’re only inanimate objects. It’s my past.

They tell me I’m home again.

It’s also deeply comforting to even have this home to come to, as I haven’t seen or spoken to my mother in four years. (Long story, too tedious for here.)

Home is where I make it, now with my second husband, in a suburb of New York City. We talk about where we hope to retire, never sure whether we’ll return to Canada and/or live part-time in the U.S., France, Ireland…Not sure where home will be in the next few decades, if we’re fortunate enough to stay healthy and alive.

I moved to the U.S. filled with excitement and anticipation about my new life there; today, deeply weary of toxic politics, corporate greed and stagnant wages, I’m thinking more seriously about making a home elsewhere….yet Toronto, even in only two days this week, had shootings in downtown areas and not-nice houses sell, routinely, for $1 million, far, far beyond our means, even after a lifetime of hard work and saving and no kids.

Crazy.

How about you?

Where is home for you?

More simple pleasures…

By Caitlin Kelly

At my Dad’s house

The smell of Jose’s cigar

A fab new watch — $11

My first facial. Oooooohlala.

Having friends come for dinner, savoring hours of good food, good wine and lively conversation

We love to have dinner on our balcony, a pleasure we eagerly await all year long

The sound of wind soughing through the trees

The fragrance of sun-warmed pine needles

Birdsong to start the morning

Sunset over the Hudson river, our view

A mid-afternoon nap

A birthday phone message from my best friend who lives a six-hour flight away, who I met in freshman English class a bazillion years ago

A fun pair of sunglasses, scored for $12 at a London flea market

A silly winter selfie…

Treating myself to lunch at Cafe Saks, at Saks Fifth Avenue, with its great view of midtown

Fireflies

A bouquet of roses

Lunch under the trees at Maud’s with my co-ed softball team, friends ages 20-something to 70-something, a group that includes a former network TV producer, a retired ironworker and a few lawyers

Watching tugboats pushing huge barges along the Hudson River

Living in a town filled with beauty, even in unlikely places, like the walls of a newly-emptied store

A cocktail on the roof at Red Hat at sunset at the river’s edge

The thwack of a well-hit golf ball

Pretty earrings, a gift from Jose for my recent birthday

An X and an O, one for each ear

Butterscotch pudding — only 130 calories!

Hitting to the outfield, (ok, the edges anyway)

My crisp, citrus-y new fragrance, Oyedo, by French brand Dipthyque. The original name of Tokyo — Edo — is apt, given my love of Japanese design and ukiyo-e prints

Yuzu — yum!

Setting a pretty table for guests, place cards and all

Late afternoon tea, loose leaves, made in a pot and drunk from my Moomin mug

What are some of yours?

Where is home for you in the world?

By Caitlin Kelly

I’m writing this post from London, where I’m visiting for nine days, staying with Cadence, a fellow blogger who writes Small Dog Syndrome. She and her husband moved here a year ago and are settling into a city that — according to yesterday’s newspaper front page — is bursting at the seams.

I believe it!

I just spent two weeks in Paris, another major city, but London feels really jammed to me. If one more person bumps into me with their body, backpack or suitcase, I may scream!

Cadence loves it here and hopes to stay here permanently.

She also spent much of her younger life — still in her late 20s — living all over the world in a military family: Belgium, England, Guam, Virginia, Germany.

It may well be that early exposure to the world through residence shapes us permanently for it; I was born in Vancouver, Canada; moved to London at two; to Toronto at five, to Montreal twice, to Mexico at 14, to Paris at 25, to New Hampshire at 30 and — finally! — to New York at 32.

I like having lived in five countries and speaking two foreign languages, French and Spanish. It makes me realize that every place has some kindness and welcome, but some are far better fits for me than others. I loathed rural New Hampshire, (no diversity, stuffy, no work available), and, much as I adore visiting Montreal, as a resident I hated its punishing taxes, long winter and high crime rate.

I like London, and have visited many times and lived here ages two to five. But I find its scale overwhelming and too often exhausting. I’m limiting my activities to one or two a day because of it…knowing I could do twice as much even in New York, where cabs are cheaper or Paris where Metro stops are a hell of a lot closer to one another — 548 metres apart on average.

I prefer Paris.

Which makes me wonder — what is it about a place, whether it’s a cabin in the woods, or a penthouse city apartment or a shared flat in a foreign country — that makes it feel (most) like home to us?

Maybe because I’m a journalist and my husband is a photographer and photo editor — or because we have fairly adventurous friends — we know many people, non-native, now living happily very far from where they were born or raised, in rural Austria, Shanghai, Eindhoven, Rome, South Africa, New Zealand, Paris, Plymouth, Cairo, Manhattan, Toronto, Rhode Island, Australia…

For me, Paris is the city I was welcomed at 25 into a prestigious, challenging and generous journalism fellowship that lasted eight months. So my memories of it are forever somewhat colored by nostalgia and gratitude for a life-changing experience and the warmth and love I felt during that time.

On my many visits back since then, though, I still feel the same way…more so than in New York (I moved to a NYC suburb in 1989).

More than Montreal, where I have lived twice, in my late 20s and when I was 12.

One of my favorite Toronto sights — the ferry to the Islands

More than Toronto, where I lived ages 5 to 30.

The place I feel at home is a combination of things: climate, the light, the way people speak and dress and behave, its political and economic and cultural values. It’s what things cost and how much of them I can actually afford.

It’s how quickly and easily I can navigate my way around by public transit, on foot, by car, by taxi, by bicycle.

It’s how much sunlight there is on a cold afternoon in February. How much humidity there is. How much it rains or snows — or doesn’t.

Basically, regardless of other circumstances, how happy are you when you wake up there every morning?

Even newly divorced, unemployed, lonely, I was glad to be living in New York.

The view from our NY balcony — we have great river views

But also how much silence and natural beauty it also offers — parks and old trees and a river and lakes. (London beats Paris hollow on that score!)

History, and hopefully plenty of it, at least a few centuries’ worth, with buildings and streets filled with stories.

And yet…it needs to be open socially and professionally as well, which can be a tricky-to-crazy-frustrating combination if you arrive as an adult who didn’t attend the same schools, ages five through graduate school, as all your would-be new friends, colleagues and neighbors.

I moved to a suburb of New York City in June 1989, just in time for the first of three recessions in the ensuing 20 years. Not fun! I had to re-invent in every respect.

Our apartment building in Cuernavaca, Mexico where I lived at 14

But choosing to live in Tarrytown, which I love, has been a great decision; the town is 25 miles north of Manhattan, which I can reach within 40 minutes by train or car. We have a terrific quality of life for a decent price.

(Here’s a blog post I wrote about 20 reasons why I love living there.)

I chose New York for a variety of reasons:

— My mother was born there, so I had some curiosity about it

— It’s the center of American journalism and publishing, my field

— It’s New York!

— Culture, history, energy, art, architecture…all the urban stuff I enjoy

Having said that, and all due respect to the many other places in the U.S. that people love, I wouldn’t move within the U.S. It’s too hard to establish yourself in New York and the only other city that appeals to me is L.A. which my husband vetoed.

If we move when we retire, which we’re discussing, we’re trying to choose between my native Canada, France, his home state of New Mexico…or, if at all possible, some combination of these.

Jose misses his mountains and a sense of Hispanic community.

But I miss speaking French and I miss my Canadian friends.

How about you?

What makes home home for you?