New York 2017 - Wandering Around Manhattan

Our week-long excursion to New York City got off to a rocky start even before we left home when our home swap fell through after we invited our friends Yim and Murray to join us and we all had already purchased our plane tickets.  Although the cost savings and other benefits of home swapping are fabulous when all goes well, the possibility of something going wrong with a swap has always been there (for medical, logistics or other reasons).  We ourselves had to cancel a trip for an unexpected medical issue back in 2013.  Although we tried to find alternate lodgings for our guests, they chose instead to find a last minute rental which is what we ended up doing as well. Despite our own need to back out of an agreed upon home swap, up until now we have not had any issues with home swaps being cancelled on us and have not taken any extra precautions against this.  Now after this experience, we may reconsider the Traveller+ insurance offered by Love Home Swap.  For $84 USD, we would be covered for up to $3200 to find alternate accommodations if a swap falls through.

We decided to fly with Porter Airlines from the Billy Bishop Island Airport to Newark Airport, as opposed to going from Pearson to La Guardia.  This was a good decision for multiple reasons.  It was much easier to get to the airport from our home, consisting of one short subway ride and then a free shuttle.  There was no line up at all either to go through security or customs.  Sitting in the free Porter lounge with hot drinks, cookies, granola and newspapers was a very civilized way to wait for our plane. Even though it was a short flight to New York, we were still offered chocolate banana cake with our on-flight drinks.  Because the Porter planes are smaller, it was also very quick to board and take off, but some of our carry-on luggage had to be "gate-checked".  Instead of having to go to the baggage claim to retrieve the bags, we simply waited in the aisle just after debarking the plane and the luggage came out within minutes.  On our return trip, Porter allowed us to move to an earlier flight free of charge and with no hassles. All in all, this was a very satisfying experience and I would fly Porter Airlines again at every opportunity.

We were originally going to take the Newark Airport Express into Manhattan, which would have cost $29 return per person and would have dropped us off at Grand Central Station or Penn Station.  From there it would have cost $2.75 each way to take the Metro to and from our destination.   This brought the total cost for a return trip for two people to $63.50 and required riding the subway and lugging bags up and down escalators or even worse, stairs.  Instead we found the Airlink NYC which provides door to door service for two people and 2 pieces of luggage to and from the airport at a cost of $67.20.  On the return pickup, we were sent a text message with a link to an app that allowed us to track the location and progress of the van and predict its estimated time of arrival.  Because the Airlink shuttle is a shared van that picks up multiple passengers along the way, our pick up time was almost 4 hours before our flight, so that fact that Porter Airlines allowed us to move to an earlier flight became all the more convenient.  We arrived at Newark Airport at 9:30am, went to the Porter desk where there was no lineup and actually got placed on the 10:10am flight, making it to the gate just as boarding began.

As replacement accommodations for this trip, we searched for a rental through our usual sources of Booking.com and VRBO.com (Vacation Rental by Owners).  Since there were so many more choices for rentals as opposed to finding a home swap match, we reasoned that we may as well pick the most convenient location in terms of getting to the tourist locations that we planned to visit.  We ended up renting a 2-bedroom apartment in the Lower East Village, within walking distance to Soho, Little Italy, Chinatown and most of the major subway lines.  This was a much more hip, happening and central location than our original home swap which was much further north in the Murray Hill area.  Rather than requiring to transit to get to most of the areas that we wanted to visit, we were able to walk to many of them.  So in the end, the change in lodgings turned out to be better for our trip and we all had a great time. 

With so many different neighbourhoods near our rental, it was fun just walking around exploring them, or strolling through them en route to one of the Metro stations that would take us further afield.  Everywhere we went, we saw the iconic steel fire escape ladders and landings that made me want to break out singing and dancing to the "Jet Song" from West Side Story.  One building's fire escapes were decorated with gold figures, while another looked strangely skewed and flattened until you looked more closely and realized that it is actually a trompe l'oeil rendering of windows and fire escapes.

New York City is known for its graffiti and street art, ranging from tags and bubble signatures to murals and pieces.  When the shops are closed, just about every storefront accordion shutter is decorated with some sort of art work.  I liked the rendering of the classic 1983 Maxell High Fidelity cassette ad depicting a man sitting in an arm chair being blown away by the sound of the tape.  The image gives the allusion of speed or motion that is accentuated by the natural horizontal folds of the shutter.  There were so many cool pieces all around but some of my other favourites included the giant green and pink baby Incredible Hulks covering the entire height of a five story building and the odd juxtaposition of themes on the mural of the Guy Fawkes character in midst of a bunch of Star Wars storm troopers.

Street art in New York also consists of sculptures scattered throughout the city.  We came across "Paparazzi Dogs" at the Ruth Wittenberg Triangle bounded by Greenwich Ave., 6th Ave. and 8th St.  According to Australian husband and wife artists Gillie and Marc who created the work, the dogs represent the "pack mentality of the media as they hunt for celebrities".  In Zuccotti park (formerly Liberty Plaza Park) in the Financial District sits "Double Check", the bronze sculpture of a businessman rummaging through his briefcase.  After the 9/11 tragedy, the sculpture became a memorial and symbol of the people who perished in the area.  We even found sculptures in the 14th Ave/8th St metro station where the collection of whimsical works of Tom Otterness titled Life Underground can be found.

On one of our walks, we noticed an ornate, narrow 3-storey building at 363 Broome St. with red brick and a bright red central arch doorway that raised upwards to reveal an emerging firetruck.  It turns out this is Fire Engine Company No. 55, built in 1899 by architect R.H. Robertson in a mix of Romanesque Revival and Beaux Arts styles.  Based on its size, it seems to only fit one fire truck and is apparently still functioning as a working fire station.  This is just one of over forty lavish fire halls designed at the end of the 19th century.  In 2010, journalist and TV personality Anderson Cooper purchased and renovated the fire station at 84 West 3rd Street, preserving the brass fire pole on the inside as well as the Beaux-Arts ornamentation and 9/11 memorial plagues on the exterior facade.  An elaborate commercial for H&M featuring David Beckham and Kevin Hart was filmed inside Cooper's apartment, giving glimpses of his living room, bedroom, gym and terrace.

Perhaps the most famous fire station in New York is the Hook and Ladder Company No. 8, where the movie GhostBusters was filmed in 1984.  Located at 14 North Moore St. in Tribecca, it was built in 1903 again in the Beaux Arts Style and was used as the exterior of the GhostBusters' headquarters.  Unfortunately the fire hall is currently undergoing a major renovation and is completely covered with scaffolding except for the red arched door.  Two GhostBusters' cartoon sketches, drawn on the sidewalk in front of the building, pay tribute to the former movie site.

It was so much fun to walk through the various neighbourhoods window shopping and popping into quirky shops. We saw a store that sold small but extremely intricate decorative items all amazingly created using a 3-D printer.  There was a “Cupcake ATM” in front of Sprinkles Cupcakes at 780 Lexington Ave. that dispensed cupcakes with sprinkles, which in retrospect we should have tried just for the experience.  In Jean Derian & Co. in the Lower East Side, we salivated over candles shaped like cakes that looked good enough to be eaten.  The kitchen store Sur La Table in Soho had their cute Easter items on display.  Somewhere near Broadway is an Asian restaurant that advertises “Gangnam Style Dumplings” complete with an image of Psy doing his famous dance. I wonder if Psy knows that his persona is being used for this purpose?

We spotted the Nike store in Soho as they were setting up their new displays and were drawn to the the series of shiny silver mannequins posed in mid-running stride, all wearing running shoes with a strange gel-like soles.  Returning a few days later when the store was open, we got a closer look at the new Air VaporMax shoes that feature clear, transparent rubber pods that compress and release air to give the shoe a springy bounce so that it feels like you are running on air.  In addition to the eye-catching mannequins, the store had other innovative shoe displays that looked more like works of art than mere merchandising.

It is always fun to poke around in the Moma Design Store at 81 Spring St. in Soho as there are usually weird and wacky versions of common-place items.  We spent a few minutes watching the "Clock Clock 24" which uses 24 round clocks with single hands that work together to form a digital representation of the time.  While the hands are formulating the next time, they each spin around in a wild fashion and you wonder whether you are even looking at a clock.  Next we opened what looked like a day-timer book and miraculously it turned into a brightly glowing lamp.  We also admired the keyboard-shaped handbag and tried out the Ostrich pillow that covers your eyes while you sleep.

Also known as the "Poster Museum", Philip Williams Posters at 122 Chambers St in Tribecca boasts the largest collection of vintage and reproduction posters in the world including giant-sized posters from France, Portugal, Poland and more.  Categories of posters include travel, film, food and beverage, products, animals, design styles ranging from 1920s to 1950s, war propaganda and more.  The inventory of posters have been digitized so that you can search for what you want on a computer set up in the store.

Rich found a collection of reproductions of classic film noir and pulp crime fiction comics posters that caught his fancy.  At the reasonable price of three for $40, he could not resist buying some as souvenirs.  The trouble was deciding which three to pick since there were so many to choose from.  Having just recently taken a film noir course, many of the titles were familiar to him.  The three posters Rich ended up selecting included a Dick Tracy 1937 serial "The Spider Strikes", a 1938 pulp detective serial "Murder Means Fry" by James Lawson and the 1950 femme fatale flick "Gun Crazy" which we actually found and watched once we returned home.

Also in Tribecca at 58 Warren St, Mysterious Bookshop is very much like Toronto's Sleuth of Baker Street.  The book store is stocked floor to ceiling with  new, used, rare and collectible mystery, crime and suspense titles.  It has that old-fashioned feel with the wooden ladders on rollers to reach the books on the upper shelves.  Yellow "Crime Scene - Do Not Cross" tape is used to mark a private area of the store, and the Open/Closed sign is really cute featuring a Sherlock Holmes-clad guard hound.  Rich found another souvenir in this shop—a book of short stories by different authors, each inspired by the Sherlock Holmes stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle called "In the Company of Sherlock Holmes".

One evening while walking home along Bowery Street, we started to notice signs posted in front of many of the storefront windows describing the historic significance of each location.  Sponsored by the Cooper Union, Windows on the Bowery consist of a set of 63 posters commemorating the long and varied history of New York's oldest road.  It began as a dirt road settled by a few Dutch families in the 17th Century, became one of New York's most elegant streets lined with grand theatres, banks, shops and mansions in the 18th Century, turned into turf war for gangs in the 19th Century (as described by the movie Gangs of New York), and became New York's Skid Row from 1940-1990 when the area began to gentrify once more.  We passed by the location of the former 3000-seat Bowery Theatre where performances of Shakespeare and Uncle Tom's Cabin were held, as well as the former Bullshead Tavern where General George Washington and his men stopped for a drink in 1783. A bit further down was a cast-iron building that started as a bank in 1879 before being converted into the Bouwerie Theatre in 1963 and finally retail and condos in 2007.  

The most interesting poster that we spotted was the one for CBGB (Country, Bluegrass and Blues), the former record store and performance space that is known as the birthplace of Punk Rock featuring American punk and new wave bands like the Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads, Misfits, Patti Smith and Joan Jett.  Not only could we read about CBGB's backstory on the poster, but we actually experienced some of this history when we walked into the shop, now a John Varvatos clothing store, and found a museum of CBGB memorabilia.  On display were historic photos, LP record covers and posters, a pinball machine, and musical instruments including a silver piano, drums and electric guitars.   Pasted on the bulkheads and posts are stickers and decals left over from the CBGB heydays.  The original store closed in the late 1980s and the club in 2006 but in 2013, the former location of CBGB was added to the National Register of Historic Places as part of the Bowery Historic District.

It's always fun to visit the Lego store and marvel at all the small colourful little pieces and how they can join together to form intricate scenes and large-scaled objects like a dragon, the Statue of Liberty or the skating rink at Rockerfeller Centre.  If you look closely at the Lego logo, you can see that it is formed by lining up the heads of a bunch of Lego men wearing red, white, black and yellow hard hats.

There is so much to do in New York including simply walking around and soaking in the cultural, commercial and historical ambience of the city.