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Walking Off the Big Apple
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New York walking journal, neighborhood guides, maps, lists of affordable hotels, and art reviews with entertaining commentary on the cultural life of the city.
Recent Posts Tagged With 'shopping'
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 Americ...
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 stand...
Old New York Gets a New Amsterdam Market
Are there really vineyards on Long Island? Yes. Where did the cocoa in the chocolate come from? Ecuador. What is in the Halve Maen pie? Mincemeat. Where can I normally buy this cheese? At Fairway. You really make handmade corn tortillas? Yes. Such we...
How Not to Shop in the World's Largest Department Store
I decided to finish most all of my shopping for the holidays at Macy's in Herald Square. My logic was that I would probably find all the items on my list in this one enormous department store. Turns out I was right, and after a couple of hours, I hap...
On New York Street Corners and Elsewhere: President-Elect Gifts for the Holidays
I'm enjoying the Obama-related merchandise on the streets this season, and I've had to restrain myself not to buy a whole lot of it. Many of the items for sale that feature the President-elect can be found on street corners by individuals who have al...
New York Holiday Windows on Fifth Avenue: A Slideshow, and An Appreciation
Strolling the blocks along Fifth Avenue from 49th St. up to 59th Street provides almost everything anyone could want out of the holiday season. Here we find the creative talent of the department store windows - and this year, the smash hits are those...
All Shopped Out, Maybe It's Something I Read
While visions of Roubini danced in my head...Shopping for holiday gifts is peculiar this year, thanks to the grim economic news. The beautiful objects in the store windows seem far away, unreachable, as if there's some sort of veil separating object ...
Rainy Day New York: Places to Go in the City When the Weather Turns Frightful
When bad weather hits, I find it hard to leave the apartment. But, sometimes you get sick of staying at home and need to be somewhere else. Fortunately, New York City has many great places to spend a day indoors. The hard part is getting motivated to...
Selected List of Events for NYC Thanksgiving Week and Beyond: Balloon Inflation, Sondheim, Cindy Sherman, Zabar's, and more
Here's my To-Do list (and one Not-To-Do, I'll let you guess) for the upcoming holiday week in the big city. While I eagerly await the feast with friends and family on Thursday, I'm compiling here a list of city entertainments in and around the festiv...
Coping with Anxiety and Crisis: A Selected List of Fine Chocolate Stores in New York
It's Chocolate Week in New York, and chocolate fans in town may enjoy the Chocolate Show at Pier 94.Fears of recession, concerns about the state of the world, worries about job prospects, and anxieties about the future dominate the news headlines the...
The Golightly Variations: Shopping for the Most Affordable Thing at Tiffany's
In the spirit of first-person participatory literary criticism, I visited the flagship store of Tiffany & Co. on Fifth Avenue this afternoon to see if the store could make me feel like Truman Capote's Holly Golightly, a place to beat the "mean reds."...
Upper West Side: Cafe Lalo for Lunch, and a Stop at Tip Top Shoes
It's hard to know how to react to this financial crisis, but I definitely needed to get out of the apartment today, meet a friend for lunch and then pal around and look at architecture, streetlife, and some shoes. Maybe this is what we do in New York...
The Changing Village, and the New Economy of Vintage Clothing and Donuts
When I'm not out pacing New York streets for the themed walks on this website, I routinely walk closer to home in and around the area south of Washington Square Park. It's remarkable how things are changing now along LaGuardia Place, Thompson, Sulliv...
Gucci, Prada, and Pucci on Fifth Avenue: Thoughts Outside the Box
Believe it or not, but I can walk into any Fifth Avenue store and not immediately think about the financial markets, class warfare, the history of New York culture, or whatever connection the store may have to literary history. I can walk into Gucci'...
Ready to Wear, If I Can Find It: Shopping for My Personal Style
I often think of my personal style like one of those mix-and-match paper doll books of swappable outfit parts, but in my case the cut-outs consist of a variety of blue jeans for the legs and an assortment of classic tailored jackets for the top. As a...
