Displaced

Disclaimer: These are brief descriptions that do not do the neighborhoods justice. They are rife with vast generalizations.

Harlem.

Clinton has replaced the Globetrotters as the most famous resident of Harlem and that says about all you need to know. I once went home with a guy who lived in Harlem just as it was starting to re-emerge. He had a pit bull and his roommate paid the guy at the parking garage Viagra to watch his car ‘specially. There’s just not that much up there yet but what was once considered a dangerous neighborhood has, with the rising wealth of the city, become just another front on the battle for quality real estate on the island of Manhattan. Harlem had a ton of beautiful and neglected brownstones and underdeveloped (read: abandoned) buildings that are now renovated brownstones and office buildings (one of which houses Clinton’s offices).

The Upper East Side.

Generally speaking, this neighborhood is the one east of Central Park up to about 86th St.. It’s home to two populations: old money and new graduates. The old money lives along the park itself (5th Avenue), and up and down Madison and Park Avenues. The homes are huge and beautiful and insanely pricey. It’s a pretty place to be and is home to some of New York’s best museums (The Met, The Guggenheim, The Frick, Cooper-Hewitt, The Whitney) but is not so excellent for street life or anything unique. There are, however, a lot of very expensive stores along Madison if you’d like to damage your credit score in a single transaction.

There is a figurative set of railroad tracks running up Lexington Avenue, on the other side of which live the ex-frat boys and ex-sorority girls. They have all congregated here because they hope to inch a few blocks closer to the park if they marry well or rake in some financial industry bonuses by working 173 hours/week, thereby becoming uninteresting enough to move into a brownstone on 64th and Park. As a result of this homogenous colonizing, there are a lot of binge drinking bars, baseball hat stores and nondescript housing. If you’re moving to New York without a trust fund, chances are about half of the places you and your nine roommates can even remotely afford are going to be up here. Avoid it if you can help it. It’s not the New York you’re moving there for.

(The far east side is not as bad as the Lex/3rd Avenue area because it’s not convenient to the subway. If you have a bike or a chauffeur, you could do worse than living on York Avenue. Also, if you live on York, you can hit my favorite pizza place on the corner of 85th and York. Don’t move there right away though because they’re digging the new subway line right now, so it’s going to be noisy for a couple of years. Of course, after it quiets down, the subway will be in and the rents will go up, so yeah, maybe you should move in now and just plan on getting a lot of exercise and no sleep.)

For those of you from San Francisco, The UES is the equivalent of the Marina + Pac Heights + Twin Peaks, only with older money.

The Upper West Side.

West side of the park. The accessible and interesting part of it runs further north than on the east side because of Columbia University’s presence on 115th St.. The neighborhood is also more accessible because it’s narrower, so the red line (1/2/3/9) can get you closer to where you’re going. Besides Columbia, the UWS is home to the Natural History Museum (fantastic) and the best selection of grocery stores in the city (Zabar’s, Citarella and Fairway).

All of the psychotherapists have congregated up here, so if you haven’t been feeling yourself lately and you can muster the inner strength to reach out, this is probably where you’ll end up. It’s nice to be able to get a decent eclair on your way to or from therapy (depending, I guess, on which end of your session you need custardy comfort). I like the UWS a lot. It’s close to the park and is also home to a lot of money but the university and Lincoln Center have brought in the academics and artists, so it’s not staid like the UES. There are flea markets on the weekends and it’s a little grittier and the shopping and dining are more interesting. If you’d like to stroll around and hit some shops, get off the 1/2/3/9 at 72nd St. and walk up Amsterdam or Columbus. It’s not edgy or boutiquey like the downtown neighborhoods but you will be able to get tea and scones at Alice’s (reserve or take out if you’re going at peak times) or pick up some half-pound, best-ever cookies at Levain.

Midtown / Times Square

Don’t ever, ever, ever let anyone tell you this is a nice place to live unless you are a.) going to school in the immediate vicinity, or b.)…. never mind. There is no second reason. Likewise, if you are visiting New York, do not stay here unless you think the Magic Kingdom is the best darn place on earth. In which case, I am not your best source for information about New York, so you should probably stop reading. You will visit Midtown during your stay/life, no doubt. Grand Central is here (train station). Port Authority is here (bus station). The Theater District is here. Columbus Circle. Flagship Macy’s. The Empire State Building. Madison Square Garden (train station below, events above). The Daily Show. Bryant Park and the NY Public Library. MoMa. Radio City Music Hall. The part of 5th Avenue that you think you want to shop on. St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Chances are your first job will be here. Yada yada yada.

The main point is that it is the most un-New York neighborhood of New York, populated as it is with a crazy number of tourists who would love nothing better than to eat (again) at TGI Friday‘s, be crowded by a bunch of people just like themselves and buy overpriced T-shirts. It’s the Midwest of Manhattan at New York prices. If you want to see people just like you – visitors, that is – you could have stayed home. Also, you will pay a premium to see them, so it’s a double whammy.

There’s a 50/50 chance that anyone who looks like s/he knows where s/he is going is not in fact a New Yorker but a bridge and tunnel-er, which is the New York phrase for someone who had to cross the water from somewhere to get there (New Jersey or Long Island usually). You can tell who they are by the size of their hair (her), their track shoes with a skirt (also her – Working Girl, anyone?) or their lack of interesting clothes (both him and her). These people are also like you only local. My advice? Don’t go to midtown unless you have a specific destination in mind, like your job or a show or a movie in Bryant Park in the summer. And H&M is not a destination.

So now that you’re on foot, how do you know which way to go? There is nothing more tiring than spending your precious time in the city standing on street corners wondering which direction to go or, worse, picking a direction and schlepping a whole avenue only to realize you went the wrong way. This error could be fatal in the summer when it is 1000 degrees outside and 200% humidity. Orient twice, walk once.

If you’re some kind of Daniel Boone and can navigate by the position of the sun, you can stop reading. Unless it’s nighttime and you can’t see the stars because you’ve come to the big city, in which case feel free to come crawling back. I’ll trade you my instructions for your deerskin pants. Hand ’em over.

Uptown/downtown orientation

I have no sense of direction at all. None. Zip. Zero. Zilch. Nada. So how do I move around with confidence in New York? Traffic, that’s how. Most of the avenues (north/south) are one-way, so you just come out of the subway (which all drop off on corners) and check which way traffic is moving. For instance, if I get off the Lexington Avenue green line (4/5/6) at 57th St. and I’m headed for 59th, I walk against the flow of the downtown traffic and know I’m headed uptown (north). Of course, this presumes that you know that Lexington Ave. is one-way downtown. Any self-respecting map will show the arrows for one-way on the avenues.

If you don’t want to do that, you can use buildings. When the World Trade towers still stood, they were the downtown landmark. Now I use the Chrysler Building or the Empire State Building (which, to my mind, is much less pretty than the Chrysler, but no one asked me). Since they’re both in midtown, for this to work, you have to know where you are in relation to where they are (43rd and 34th Streets, respectively). (If you think that’s self-evident, clearly you haven’t met my kind.) That is, if you are on the corner of 72nd, you know the Chrysler Building is downtown from you. Likewise, if you’re on 14th St., the Chrysler will be uptown.

East/west orientation

Once you know whether you’re facing uptown or downtown, you can sort out your east/west orientation. (As Manhattan is an island, it’s pointless to use the water as a determiner of where you are. Also, I have yet to identify a building that is on the eastern or western edge of the city and is visible from just about anywhere.) If you’re facing downtown (south), and you need to go west, turn to your right. Since I have a lifelong handicap of thinking that whichever direction I’m facing is north, this method does leave me hesitating on streetcorners fighting my instincts for five seconds, but it’s worth it to head confidently in the right direction.

Please do not stand in the middle of the sidewalk while you sort this out. There is nothing more annoying to New Yorkers who do know where they’re going to have their paths blocked by puzzled newcomers. It will (and should) make you feel like a a gauche intruder to break the rhythm of the city by standing perfectly still in the middle of a busy sidewalk staring at the direction of traffic. Step aside. Step into a doorway (NOT a store doorway where you will still be in the way) or around the corner to where you can breathe and orient yourself.

Addresses

Knowing that a bar is on 9th Avenue is pointless. You will not know what to tell a cab driver or where to get off the subway. You must know where on 9th Avenue. First stop: most restaurant guides or store web sites will note the cross street when listing their address. If they don’t, call and ask. That’s what I do.

For those who would like to be more self-sufficient or are just weird about asking for help, using phones or whatever, here are some guidelines. First, get a hold of yourself and just call the place already. Geez. Second, if that’s out of reach, here’s what you have to go through instead:

• If you’re looking for an address below Houston Street (pronounced “How-ston”, not like the city in Texas) or in the West Village, give up. Google maps is your only hope.
• If you’re in the numbered streets, you have an advantage. If you’re online, go here for reference or to have them sort it for you. (Why you won’t just use Google Maps is beyond me.)
• If you’re not online, check the actual street names again. “West 14th St.” or “East 51st St.” are distinctions that start at 5th Avenue and go up by 100 each block. That sounds confusing, but it’s not. If you need 52 East 57th St., it’s on the block between 5th Avenue and Madison (the first street east of 5th). 152 East 57th is on the next block, between Madison and Park. And so on.
• If you’re heading to an address on an avenue, there’s a formula for that too. It’s here. I never learned this formula and I did fine.

I’m not recommending learning all this math, but if you’re a numbers nut, be my guest.

Cabs.
Cabs are fine. I like cabs. But cabs are the #1 money sink in New York and, if you’re not used to the steep costs of the city, you will already be begging for mercy. Cutting out cabs should be your first stop when trying to cut costs. Save your duckets for tickets and drinks and wildly expensive clothing. Also, do not be fooled into thinking that a cab will be faster than the subway. This is a common non-native mistake.

Cabs 101:

1. Cabs have lights on the top. Take a look. See? If the lights are off, the cab’s occupied. Don’t run after it swearing. It won’t stop, and you will look silly. If the center light is on, it’s up for grabs. (If all the lights on top are on – side lights + center light, the cab’s off-duty. Also no running and swearing.) Max capacity is four passengers in a regular cab, no arguing.
2. Just getting in a cab will cost you $2.50, even if you change your mind and get out a block later. After 8PM, tack on a night surcharge of an additional $1.
3. Bearing that in mind, always catch a cab going in the direction you’re headed. For instance, if you’re on 17th St. between 6th and 7th Avenues and you’re going downtown to meet your pals in SoHo, walk over to 7th and grab a cab there. (7th is one-way headed downtown – see Part III – Orientation). Otherwise, you’ll pay $5 to basically drive around the block.
4. Cabs are definitely faster at night – say, after 8:00PM – when subways run less frequently and you might spend an extra 5-10 minutes on the subway platform.
5. Late at night (after 11:00PM), I’d jump in a cab. This isn’t because the subways aren’t safe (they are), but mainly because I’ve usually had a drink (or many) and the long waits underground combined with the super-bright lights on the cars are a downer.
6. Flip side is that during rush hours, cabs are to be avoided entirely. You will be paying to sit in the backseat of someone’s car while they take your money. It’s like being mugged very, very slowly.
7. Cabs from the airports are brutally expensive. From Newark, expect $65 minimum. From JFK, there’s a fixed rate of $45 into Manhattan + toll + tips, so you’ll come in around $60. La Guardia’s the cheapest. You might get off with $40 total. That said, I still cab in from the airports because I don’t like flying, so I’m usually worn out and am willing to fork over the cash.If you have time and patience and not much luggage, there are definitely public transportation options to all the airports. The subway runs to JFK. See here for directions. There are efficient and cheap shuttle buses to/from Newark or you can hop New Jersey Transit (train), both of which will drop you in/near the subway system once you’re on Manhattan. (Your best bet to getting on the right bus with the right ticket in your hand is to go to the info booth in your terminal – they’ll hook you up and point you in the right direction.) The M60 bus to La Guardia is the preferred non-car route. See here for options.
8. When I’m going to the airport, I don’t try to catch a cab, since that usually requires that I schlep my luggage to a corner. Call a car service: it’s the same price as long as you don’t opt for a luxury car. Call 212-777-7777 and tell the dispatcher where you’re staying and they’ll collect you at the right time to make your flight.
9. Speaking of airports, if you can help it, don’t book your flights to New York to depart or arrive between 8-9:30 AM or between 4-7PM. That’s rush hour, kids, and your commute to/from the airport will suck.

Subway

The subway rules in New York. It goes pretty much everywhere except the far east side and they’re digging up 2nd Avenue to solve that one right now. Get a subway map, buy a MetroCard from any station, and you’re good to go. Fares are $2 each time you go into the subway + free transfer to/from a bus within 2 hours. You can swipe four consecutive people – your kids, strangers, bandmates – through on the same Metrocard. If you load your MetroCard with $20 or more, you’ll get a free ride for every $20 you spend. (But don’t go too wild: MetroCards have expiration dates, so if you thought you’d buy $800 of rides for your weekend and be good to go for the rest of your life, you would be wrong. $760 wrong. Which is a lot of wrong.)

Cab vs. Subway Showdown: when in doubt, just get on the subway.

Buses

I don’t take buses much, but they’re a great idea when trying to get across town when Central Park’s in your way – say, from the Met over to the west side for dinner. Buses are also great if you have a lot of time (they stop every couple blocks) and want to see the city as you’re getting to where you’re going.

Note to self/you: getting across town (east/west) is tough both on subways and in cabs but I think cabs are worse. This is because most cross-town streets are one-way and one-lane so you sit in traffic a lot. The cross-town artery streets that aren’t one-way and have four lanes (14th, 23rd, 28th, 34th, 42nd, 57th – don’t try to find a pattern ’cause there isn’t one) are wildly busy.

Rather than cab it to get crosstown, I’d take a subway to one of the few crosstown subway lines: the L runs across 14th, the S across 42nd St., or the N/R runs up/down Broadway diagonally. The “N/R” stands for “Never/Rarely”, so be warned on that one. It’s an annoying line. I know. I used to live on one of its local stops. Don’t ask. It hurts to talk about it.

Walking

The standard wisdom is that it should take about 1 minute to walk one block, which is about 1/5 mile. This presumes you are walking and not looking around. It also presumes that you are not wearing high heels, so don’t count on making that kind of time on your way out to dinner or the theater. An avenue is about a ¼ mile so it’s gonna take 2-3 minutes to walk.

I walk all the time in Manhattan. It’s the best way to see the city and there are very few dead spots in central Manhattan where a brisk walk won’t be interesting. (Once you’re on the far east or west side of the city, things get farther apart and duller.) If you have evening plans, think ahead though: walking around for eight hours will take it out of you, so if you’re tourist-ing it up, pace yourself.

My first several trips to New York, I was five years old, so that wasn’t a great time to orient myself to the finer points of the city that never sleeps. There are a couple of things you should know right away.

1. With the possible exception of going to Sweden, you will spend more money than you think humanly possibly within your first 24 hours in New York. Plan accordingly. And by “accordingly” I don’t mean what your dad would tell you, like, “Watch where you spend your pennies because they add up to real dollars.” I mean, you may well have spent all your pennies and their associated dollars before you even make it out of your hotel, so brace yourself and multiply what you think you can afford by x4 before you even get there and plan for that as your budget.And don’t try and lower costs by joining up with some insane package deal run by a bunch of yahoos in Duluth. It will just mean that your trip to New York will be exactly like the trip you took to Branson, Missouri with your grandparents when you were eight (i.e. featuring people who can’t hold their liquor and shows that you can catch on tour in just about any medium-sized city a year from now).
2. Nowhere you stay will be larger than your average closet. I don’t care if it’s an Ian Shrager hotel off Times Square or on the floor of your college buddy’s walk-up in the Village, the shower will be within reaching distance of all major room landmarks. Remember that it is a privilege to be in New York and 8.2 million other people think so too (1.6 million if you stick with Manhattan, not counting you and all the other visitors) so y’all are competing for some seriously limited space (23 square miles, to be exact).
3. If you are not from San Francisco or the Third World, New York will seem dirty to you. It’s not. It is, but it’s so much better than it used to be + you need to keep those 1.6 million people in mind, so pull yourself together and, as my high school physics teacher used to say, “Quit’cher bitchin’.

Basic geography.

Location, location, location. Learn your geography. You will be nowhere without it, pun somewhat intended. When I went back to New York as a college student, I was with friends who knew their way around, so I paid no attention, which left me looking uncool when people chatted about uptown, downtown, crosstown and pretty much any neighborhood.

For starters, New York City has five boroughs: Manhattan (an island), Brooklyn (an island), Queens (same island as Brooklyn, namely Long Island), the Bronx (not an island) and Staten Island (predicatably, an island). These are not neighborhoods and they do not share the address of “New York, NY,” or the area code 212, as I discovered when I moved into my studio in Brooklyn as a novice New Yorker. The island of Manhattan is the only New York, NY. The boroughs are all governed by the same mayor (currently Michael Bloomberg) but each has a borough president, plus representation at the neighborhood level. It’s complicated. All you really need to know is that if go to New York, you probably mean Manhattan with a possible hipster sojourn to Williamsburg (a neighborhood in Brooklyn) or a trip to the Bronx Zoo (in, um, the Bronx).

I recommend this map. It’s the Filofax-sized version of the Streetwise map series and it kicks ass. I got my first one when I moved there in 1994 and still carry one with me all the time (when I’m in New York, that is. Don’t be a smart aleck.) It’s small, it’s laminated and it has all the subway stops, a bus map, an index and everything you need (except a view of the other boroughs which you can also get from Streetwise but which aren’t in the handy small size).

The whole island of Manhattan is only thirteen and a half miles, north to south, and about two and a half miles wide, less in most places. The Hudson River bounds Manhattan on the west and separates it from New Jersey or “Jersey” as you should now call it. The East River bounds it to the, er, east.

Central Park. Find it on your map. It runs from 59th St. up to 110 St. and is the boundary for the Upper East Side and the Upper West Side.

With the confusing exceptions of the financial district all the way downtown and the West Village, the city is pretty much a numbered grid of avenues that run north/south (or uptown/downtown) and streets that run east/west (or crosstown). Naturally, there are exceptions to this, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Basically, it’s a grid.

The avenue numbers start on the east side and increase as you move west: First Avenue is on the far east side and 11th Avenue is on the far west side. The exceptions you should learn right away are Madison Avenue, Park Avenue and Lexington Avenue which disrupt the avenue numbering system on the east side of the city. Memorizing their order is a minor task: from the east, it goes 1st Ave., 2nd Ave, 3rd Ave, Lexington, Park, Madison, 5th Ave., 6th Ave. and so on.

Broadway is the only diagonal artery in the city. South of Central Park, it runs west-east diagonally across Manhattan. Once it hits Central Park it straightens itself out on the Upper West Side.

When I was in college, I knew New Yorkers. They were divided into two groups: natives and familiars. The familiars would have gladly passed themselves off as natives but were distinguishable because they were trying a tiny bit too hard to seem nonchalant. The natives had an entitlement that seemed both tasty and repellent. But that might’ve been because the only natives I knew were either a.) actors or b.) insanely wealthy, not two sets known for their humility or tact. I myself became a New Yorker not long afterwards and still consider myself one since I haven’t found anything better (yet).

New York was a mystery to me when I started looking for a place there and I could have used a hand. I know there are already roughly 1 million guides to New York on the bookshelves, but I didn’t need one of those. I needed a.) someone to tell me the non-touristy basics that I wouldn’t even have known to ask about, and b.) someone who was roughly like me to tell me what was worth doing once I sorted myself out. That’s why I wrote this.

Who Will Benefit

1. If you have never been to New York and desperately want to go but are just a leetle beet afraid of the city or are overwhelmed with all the options.
2. If you have only been to New York for that bus trip/dog show/bachelor party that one time but have been meaning to go back.
3. If you have been a bunch of times but still don’t feel comfortable or want to look more like a native.
4. If you are up and moving there (hooray!) and have no idea where to start.

So far, it’s been a trip marked by reversals. You know when you know you’re scattered and you can give the people around you a heads up, “Hey – I’m scattered. Don’t count on me to return the ball after the first bounce”? That’s not where I am. Where I am is racket back, watching the ball come over the net, I’ve got it covered and at the last minute realizing we’re playing water polo.

There are two sides to every story though, right? Same day, two stories.

Thursday: Red eye. ‘Nuf said.
Thursday – the other version: I do not die.

Friday: Feel desperately tired and overwhelmed. In an effort to regain equilibrium, walk so many miles around lower Manhattan that I practically maim myself.
Friday – the other version: Find stripey hat for $16 at Muji. Cannot stop wearing it even though it’s very possible I look deranged. Go see Mike Birbiglia (funny) and have excellent sandwich.

Saturday: Regain equilibrium. Have great dinner at Raoul’s in SoHo with friends.
Saturday – the other version: Same.

Sunday: No sleep. Equilibrium lost track of again, possibly under bed. Make plans to be in three locations at the same time with three different people. As am not able to bend laws of time/space continuum (still), spend the day making excuses on my cell phone. R leaves for Baltimore. Attend Oscar party featuring a woman I used to loathe but have not seen in several years. Turns out, I still loathe her. Some things do not change. Good to know. Lose all my Oscar bets. Go to bed at 3AM upset about not having neutralizing ray gun to take down enemies.
Sunday – the other version: Discover the French toast at 202 (squishy, tasty) and their perfect cafe au lait. See my brother, which could be fraught but isn’t. Help R with some of his work, which never happens because he is Señor Executivo and I am the one who usually needs assistance because Excel is stupid, stupid program and R is a genius. Have play time with friend’s perfect baby (after convincing said baby that I was not a kidnapper). The Academy Awards show wins Most Improved.

Monday: Finally get some sleep. Have lunch, write, scrap all plans outside a 20-block radius. Chat with David at 19 Christopher (which is not going out of business like their neighbor, Hus, thank God). Do not buy the Serge Thoraval necklace I desperately want at Destination. Nice British dude at Tea & Sympathy with ’70’s hair makes me an excellent cup of tea to go in the bitter cold. Overcome urge to buy everything at Murray’s Cheese due to personal recession incurred by leaving job. Instead, pick up red velvet cupcake at Amy’s Breads. Have more Pegu drinks with bro. (Is there any liquor in the Pisco Punch at all? Or has the sustained stress of the last month upped my tolerance for liquor somehow? Does your liver also process stress?) Have dinner with excellent friends at Stanton Social. Order everything on the menu + many cocktails. Get 25% off total bill because we rule. (Also because that is, in fact, their rule: after 9PM Mondays, 25% off.)
Monday – the other version: Same.

Tuesday: 202 breakfast. Writing. Good start. Downhill from there: go to Met, decide against Calder jewelry exhibit as being too blah to justify $20 entrance fee ($20?! I know everyone else got upset about this a long time ago, but the sticker shock has, um, stuck.) Do not buy snowglobe I wanted as, like many celebrities, it is not good looking up close and in person. Go across the Park to UWS. Lose wallet. Recover wallet. Am unable to find the hoodie I want. Go back downtown hoodie-less. Have walked self lame (again). Hurt shoulder injury due to overpurchase of heavy things like books and conditioner (don’t ask). Go to Hable, which is closing their store on Perry St. this Saturday. (So you should go now and get that cool bird lamp I didn’t buy. You’ll know which one I mean: it looks like I made it for you in shop class.) Kristen Johnston is there (and ridiculously too thin). Cannot tell if she is drunk, wildly insecure or just super annoying, but she takes up all the air in the place. Have 100 crossed wires with friend re: evening plans. Have emotional tantrum because am overtired and have had only Levain cookies and no lunch. Get very depressed. Go out anyway. Have wine with friend at Riposo 72. Lose wallet again. Am too tired to care.
Tuesday – the other version: 202. Write. Recover lost wallet (twice). Levain cookies. Find Banksy book at the Strand. Get bag at Hable. Get time with friend, despite Oscar fiasco + tangle of crossed wires + tantrum. Do not die.

Wednesday: Pack. Feel organized and self-satisfied. Leave apartment for leisurely breakfast and to write. Realize will do no such thing as have miscalculated schedule despite checking itinerary four times because that’s how I roll and am bad at math. Panic. Call car service. Car service goes to wrong address. Car service drops me at United. United says flight is with USAir (one mile away, other terminal) despite ticket having been purchased from United and stating United flight number. Miss out on together time with the shuttle lounge, which is a happy place: plugs, comfy chairs, business men who know how to travel (quietly). Have somehow permanently scratched my glasses. Arrive in Boston. Find out that R is attending a conference for the next two days. Have mini breakdown contemplating re-planning next two days.
Wednesday – the other version: Have superior latte (albeit speedy). Score rugelach at Amy’s. Catch flight. Find R. Am definitely not dead.