Downtown
Governors Island to open early for OHNY tour night
 Governors Island will open for the season on May 31, but if you prefer VIP to free, sign up for the May 20 tour offered as a fund-raiser for Open House New York.
The Tuesday evening tour -- from 5:15 to 7 p.m. -- comes with impressive tour guides: Governors Island Preservation & Education Corporation's president Leslie Koch and vice president for planning, design and preservation Betty Chen, plus members of the architecture and landscape team creating the designs to turn the former military base partly into a park.
Tickets are $50.
Image credit: Governors Island in 2006. Amy Langfield/NewYorkology.
Earlier: NY Philharmonic to play free July 5 Gov. Island concert
Governors Island to reopen May 31, with bike rentals
May 12, 2008 05:56 PM Comments (0)
. . . . . . . . . . .
Sunday's Working Harbor Day offers industrial cruises
This Sunday, New York's annual Working Harbor Day will encouarge the city's island-bound landlubbers to hop on a boat -- pirate ship or otherwise -- for an up-close view of how the water-bound lives and works.
 Hidden harbor tours will visit tugboat yards, container ship ports, shipyards, dry docks and graving docks. The South Street Seaport Museum will offer reduced admission for $3 for the day. (They're also the ones offering the pirate ship sails aboard the Pioneer.)
The event is organized by the Working Harbor Committee, which has also announced summer dates for their hidden harbor tours. This year's hidden harbor tours are scheduled for June 10 and 24, July 8 and 29, August 12 and 26 and September 16 and 30.
The group has also scheduled a June 8 NY Harbor Rail-Marine Cruise.
Picture credit: Staten Island Ferry in a repair dock, and a tug, both seen during a June 2007 hidden harbor tour. Amy Langfield/NewYorkology.
May 12, 2008 02:01 PM Comments (0)
. . . . . . . . . . .
Tonight's NYC hotel price check: $90 to $895
 HotelChatter.com today notes that rates at Robert DeNiro's new Greenwich Hotel have dropped to $550 a night, and that seemed like a good enough excuse to see what other NYC hotels are currently offering for tonight.
The Plaza, despite the fact that some publications are still bantying-on about that $1,000-a-night rate, actually has rooms from $755 tonight. (While there, you can hit up the newly opened Rose Club restaurant for the likes of a $21 pomegranate and cucumber mojito, the $34 Angus beef burger and the $17 chocolate pot de creme. For more practical: there's a $45 prix fixe menu.)
Nearby, the Ritz-Carlton Central Park has rooms from $895 tonight.
The Radisson on Lexington has a "hot deal" for $179.
Kimpton's Muse Hotel rates for tonight start at $539.
The bookophile-friendly Library Hotel has a bed from $489.
The once-budget Hotel QT has rooms just off Times Square from $339 tonight.
The normally-budget Pod Hotel has nothing less than $239 a night. (All hotel rates for this feature are what's listed on the hotel's own website, except for the Pod because the online reservation system won't accept bookings unless the arrival date is about a week out.)
Even the Carter Hotel -- which TripAdvisor.com called the dirtiest hotel in America -- has nothing less than $116 for tonight.
In Brooklyn, the Hotel Le Jolie in Williamsburg will put you up for $219 tonight.
The Hilton Garden Inn on Staten Island, which has an indoor heated pool, starts at $225.
And then there's the 45-room Howard Johnson in the Bronx, which the New York Times features today. That's $90 for tonight - including free wi-fi.
May 12, 2008 11:38 AM Comments (0)
. . . . . . . . . . .
Waldorf's lost train off-limits, other tunnels offer tours
Matt Lauer of the "Today" show this morning got rare access into one of New York's City's best hidden spaces -- the abandoned rail platfrm under the Waldorf-Astoria hotel.
Most famously used by President Franklin Roosevelt to help hide the fact he was wheelchair-bound, the track allowed VIPs to enter Manhattan by train and take an elevator directly up to the luxury hotel without ever setting foot on the street.
In 2006, the Waldorf's general manager told NewYorkology that the hotel's entrance to the rail platform had been reconfigued and is no longer easy to access. He also debunked a few myths about who used the private entrance. Researchers at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Museum in Hyde Park also did some research on the matter for NewYorkology, making it clear that the abandoned rail car under the Waldorf isn't the polio-stricken president's famous Pullman car, the Ferdinand Magellan.
 So unless you're Matt Lauer, you're probably not ever getting access to the train cars under the Waldorf. But you can get access to a couple other abandoned rail stations in NYC. The oldest option is in Brooklyn, directly under Atlantic Avenue as it leads out to the East River. Tours of the 1844 tunnel are offered about once a month by the Brooklyn Historic Railway Association. But be warned that you do enter the tunnel by crawling through a manhole in the middle of the street at the intersection of Atlantic and Court.
 Your other option is to catch one of the rare tours the NY Transit Museum offers of the city's original subway station that opened in 1904 under City Hall in Lower Manhattan. The stunning station, with chandeliers, skylights and tiled, vaulted ceilings, is next open for tours on July 19.
Not quite as glamorous, but still cool, the old Knickerbocker Hotel on Times Square had its own stairs from the subway platform leading up to the hotel. See Forgotten NY for pictures. (In 2006, the Dubai royal family announced plans to convert the Knickerbocker back into a luxury hotel but the Post reported last week that instead they've decided to sell the landmark building which now houses offices and a Gap shop, streetview map.)
Also of note: Julia Solis' intriguing "New York Underground" recently came out in paperback.
Earlier: 1844 Atlantic Avenue railway tunnel reopens for tours
Waldorf-Astoria's private rail platform forever closed
NY's golden hotel era architects: Schultze & Weaver
May 8, 2008 10:26 AM Comments (0)
. . . . . . . . . . .
Momofuku Ko is NYC's 'it' restaurant of the moment
 Everybody wants to go to Momofuku Ko.
To amp up the oft-unrequited love offering, there are only 12 seats in the restaurant and only two seatings a night. Reservations are taken online only, and to thwart scalpers, you must first provide your credit card number and e-mail address to create an account to merely enter the long-shot derby to secure a seat. Six days a week, the reservation form at 10 a.m. opens up all the slots for dinner six days hence. Seconds later, they're gone. (Ko is closed Tuesdays.)
Expect the competition to get even worse now that the New York Times has granted Ko three-stars.
Ko was opened March 12 in the East Village by 30-year-old David Chang, who last year was named best chef in NYC in the James Beard Awards for his Momofuku Ssäm Bar. (He also runs the nearby Momofuku Noodle Bar.)
The style of food is what Ko calls "delicious american food" and Frank Bruni of the NY Times describes as Asian-French. "You’ll love it, provided you ever get access to it," he writes. The paper isn't the first to fall for Ko.
From the Wall Street Journal review:
Mr. Chang has crafted an inventive menu filled with delightful dishes such as a plump hen's egg split open into a flood of caviar, and escargot and asparagus "lasagna" touched off with both crumbled and whipped ricotta. A simple amuse bouche featuring a miniature English muffin slathered with pork fat and topped with chives gave off a mouthwatering Sunday-brunch smell as it sizzled on the stove. Strips of soft fluke in a buttermilk sauce tinged with Sriracha, an Asian hot sauce, and filled with poppy seeds provided an incredible juxtaposition of varying tastes and textures -- crunchy, soft, milky and just slightly spicy all at once. From Bloomberg News:Over three visits, I watched as the chefs cursed, drank coffee, shouted, devoured pie, talked about cars and cursed some more. Some will find it juvenile and unpleasant, but those chefs also happen to cook. And that they do quite well.
This is food you haven't tried before. And New York magazine:“We charge cook’s prices” is how Chang puts it to one of the patrons at the bar. He is standing with the rest of his cooks, who look the way top-line restaurant cooks usually do, which is to say pallid and harried, with assorted random baseball caps on their heads and their sleeves rolled up to give their burn marks full display. The first impression you get at Momofuku Ko, in fact, is that this is a kind of kitchen slave’s revolt, an operation run by hypergifted line cooks for the benefit of their downtrodden, misunderstood, back-of-the-house brethren. And if you don't like choices, you'll do just fine at Ko. The eight-course menu changes daily and it's all chef's choice. The price is $85, plus an optional wine pairing for $50, $80 or $150. The restaurant's website also mentions a $15 corkage fee.
Ko is located at 163 1st Ave. between 10th and 11th streets. map.
Related coverage: Ko reservation tips (Wall Street Journal)
The Ko reviewers' spreadsheet (Savory Tidbits)
When Good People Do Bad Things to Get Into Ko (Eater)
The maligned reservation-seller speaks (Grub Street)
Image source: Ko.
May 7, 2008 10:30 AM Comments (0)
. . . . . . . . . . .
Circle Line launching a $50,000 NYC Waterfalls tour
While several ferry companies have already announced plans for summer cruises that will get spectators close to artist Olafur Eliasson's NYC Waterfalls, Circle Line Sightseeing Cruises is hoping to top them all when it comes to pure excess.
 For $50,000 you can get a private Circle Line boat (with crew) to cruise aroound the waterfalls while sipping Dom Perignon, dining on a six-course meal from Chef Daniel Boulud's Feast & Fêtes catering and sharing chocolate Knipschildt's La Madeline au Truffes.
And as for the ice: Tiffany Jazz Drop Earrings.
Since you probably won't be sleeping on the boat, Circle Line will also throw in a night in a presidential suite in a hotel on par with the Waldorf, Mandarin Oriental or Four Seasons, a spokesman told NewYorkology.
Eliasson's four waterfalls are currently under construction under the Brooklyn Bridge, at Governors Island, at Manhattan's Pier 35 and below the Brooklyn Promenade. They'll be in operation from late June to mid-October.
Image source: Circle Line and Tiffany's
Earlier: NYC Waterfalls taking shape under Brooklyn Bridge
NYC Waterfalls could start flowing as early as June
Hotel packages start trickling in for NYC Waterfalls
'NYC Waterfalls' cruises priced at $10 and $20
May 6, 2008 03:46 PM Comments (0)
. . . . . . . . . . .
Rockaways, Frying Pan to get Water Taxi on weekends
While the mayor made his big announcement today about new ferry commmuter service between the Rockaways and Manhattan, the more interesting news may lie in the New York Water Taxi's other plans for this summer, including weekend service to Rockaway Beach as well as the Frying Pan on the Hudson.
Service will also start to Red Hook's new Brooklyn Ikea starting June 18, but the Water Taxi has ditched all plans for Governors Island and the Mets Express this summer, a spokeswoman for the company told NewYorkology. (Governors Island will still be served by a free ferry from Lower Manhattan for the season, which starts May 31.)
Water Taxi Beach in Long Island City will officially reopen for the season on the Thursday before Memorial Day weekend, with Friday/Saturday/Sunday ferry service from E. 34th Street in Manhattan.
The NY Water Taxi is also ditching its weekday hop-on hop-off service which has been aimed at the tourist crowd. That service will remain on weekends (when ridership was higher and the boats won't be needed for the commuter routes.)
However, it will still run its evening sunset happy-hour cruises on most nights. And new this week, it's adding a TV and Movie cruise every Thursday. And once Olafur Eliasson's NYC Waterfalls art project starts flowing, the Water Taxi (along with Circle Line and NY Waterway) will start special waterfall cruises.
NY Water Taxi weekend service to the Rockaways -- at Riis Landing on National Park Service land -- is aiming to start weekend service in early summer. No pricing details are yet available (although the city-subsidised weekday commuter service on the same route will be $6 each way.)
Service to the Lightship "Frying Pan" would also start mid-summer, as a stop on the hop-on hop-off service. The "Frying Pan," which recently moved to Pier 66 from its longtime Pier 63 home on the Hudson River, hopes to reopen soon as a restaurant and bar -- the same facilities it offered in the old location, a spokeswoman told NewYorkology today.
Farther out on the horizon, the city is sinking $500,000 into a study on more routes, including LaGuardia Airport, Roosevelt Island, Coney Island, Riverdale, Camp St. Edward on Staten Island, W. 125th Street, Orchard Beach, Hunts Point, Sheepshead Bay, Bay Ridge, Astoria, and Manhattan's E. 20th , E. 75th, and E. 90th streets.
Earlier: Hotel packages start trickling in for NYC Waterfalls
'NYC Waterfalls' cruises priced at $10 and $20
Water Taxi starts Brooklyn-to-Governors Island route
Frying Pan moves to Pier 66; reopening date uncertain
Circle Line adds cruises, but LaGuardia ferry on hold
May 5, 2008 05:32 PM Comments (0)
. . . . . . . . . . .
Sharpton: Protest to 'close this city down' Wednesday
To protest the acquittal of the three officers who shot Sean Bell as he was leaving his bachelor party in 2006, Rev. Al Sharpton has vowed to "close this city down" starting Wednesday at 3 p.m. with a series of civil disobedience actions.
 Sharpton has called for protesters to gather in at least six locations to pray (and presumably stop all traffic in the area.) NewYorkology created a map for the announced locations:
125th Street and Third Avenue
60th Street and Third Avenue
34th Street and Park Avenue
Varick and Houston streets, near the entrance to the Holland Tunnel
One Police Plaza, near the base of the Brooklyn Bridge
House of the Lord Church, 415 Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn
In rendering the verdict April 25, the judge said the witnesses were unreliable and "at times, the testimony just didn't make sense."
While the judge said the actions of the three indicted NYPD officers did not rise to the level of criminal, "questions of carelessness and incompetence must be left to other forums," he said.
The police officers could still face federal charges over their actions, and after that determination, the NYPD will be allowed to determine its discipline for the trio. The stated aim of the upcoming protest is to persuade federal officials to "enforce laws to make police brutality illegal and prosecute officers that violate such laws.
Of special note to travelers to NYC, one of those 50 bullets fired by police was so off course that it sailed into a nearby AirTrain station. On the video, you can see suitcase-toting travelers ducking for cover.
May 5, 2008 07:49 AM Comments (0)
. . . . . . . . . . .
NYC Waterfalls taking shape under Brooklyn Bridge
Artist Olafur Eliasson's big public art project for the summer -- "New York City Waterfalls" -- continues to take shape along the East River.
NewYorkology contributor Vidiot took these pictures Sunday from the Mary A. Whalen tanker as it was tugged from the Brooklyn Navy Yard to Red Hook.
The four waterfalls, which could start flowing as early as late June are positioned at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge (on the Brooklyn side,) at Manhattan's Pier 35, between Brooklyn's piers 4 and 5 (where the floating pool was docked last summer,) and at Governor's Island, facing Manhattan's Staten Island Ferry terminal.
The 90- to 120-foot waterfalls will flow from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day -- and will be lit after sunset. They'll come down mid-October.
Read the rest of this entry
April 30, 2008 03:48 PM Comments (0)
. . . . . . . . . . .
Statue of Liberty's insides twisted, but no beating heart
In Grand Theft Auto IV's Liberty City, which is apparently New York City in a parallel universe, a number of things in the video game are cleverly inspired by the real.
Serious Eats has charted the places to eat in Liberty City (including the "Steinway Beer Garden,") while Gawker points out that the "Statue of Happiness" in the harbor "contains at its heart... a beating heart, chained to the exterior walls."
But since NewYorkology dwells in the travel blog realm, it would be proper to proffer some pictures of what the inside of the Statue of Liberty actually looks like.
Also, keep in mind that if you're planning a trip out to the Statue of Liberty, it's key to buy your time-specific ferry tickets in advance and tick the box for the free monument pass (otherwise you can't see up inside the statue or gain access to the museum.)
Read the rest of this entry
April 30, 2008 02:49 PM Comments (1)
. . . . . . . . . . .
®Copyright 2008, All Rights Reserved
|
