Sightsology
When visiting New York, you probably want to come armed with one or two good, up-to-date guidebooks and check out many of the good web guides to NYC attractions including New York magazine, New York Times, the Economist and the city's official site, NYC & Co. For more listings of events going on now, you can check NewYorkology's Calendar, Time Out and Gothamist.
High in the Sky: Empire Hotel's rooftop cocktail bar
NewYorkology contributor Vidiot commits journalism by night, edits Cocktailians and explores NYC by day. He’s especially interested in the infrastructure, transit, architectural wonders, drinking establishments, and hidden corners of the greatest city in the world.
Rooftop bars are the new black in New York drinking, and another relatively new offering is the Jeffrey Chodorow-backed Empire Hotel Rooftop, which opened in early June.
 When NewYorkology visited on a recent Thursday evening, the place was hopping. The line stretched through the lobby, behind a velvet rope, and out to the sidewalk. I waited for eight minutes (but my friend who joined me arrived about twenty minutes after I did and wound up waiting for half an hour) and watched some VIPs being waved right to the front of the line. After a cramped elevator ride up to the 12th floor, we arrived in a spacious room filled with a stylish crowd.
A large bar anchored the room, with two big terraces leading off to the sides. One terrace is the designated smokers’ section, while the other offers more seating, huge potted ferns, a retractable roof, and another bar. Loud-ish, well-chosen R&B enhanced the after-work party atmosphere, and “Reserved” signs rested atop every table and banquette.
Despite the crowd, I was served very quickly at the bar. Bartender Anthony told me the most popular drink is the Black Cherry Cosmopolitan, but I opted for the Cucu Cocktail: Patron Anejo, Cointreau, cucumber, cilantro, and fresh lime juice. It was a well-balanced drink, spiky in that good-tequila kind of way. (Mojitos and vodka drinks also seemed very popular, such as the “Empiretini”: Bombay Sapphire and pomegranate juice) and all the cocktails on the menu were made with premium liquors such as Belvedere, Grey Goose, and Glenfiddich. Cocktails were $15 and $16, beers (Bud Light, Heineken, Corona) were $8, and Champagne was $14 and $21, depending on the brand. Food is available as well for $14 to $18, and skewed toward the decadent: the now-standard Kobe beef sliders, a foie gras PB&J, deviled eggs, a lobster roll.
The oh-so-fabulous crowd seemed more intent on drinking (and being seen) than eating, however. The manager of the bar told me that many celebrity events and private parties are held there — he mentioned Will Smith and P. Diddy — and said that sometimes the rooftop is open to the public during these events. The crowd is a young-ish one, most in their 20s or early 30s, with a few outliers. The manager said that they don’t get too many tourists, and are aiming for a “more refined clientele.”
You can get into the inner sanctum — the upper level of the rooftop, with a plunge pool and private bar — only if you book a room at the Empire; it’s reserved for hotel guests.
The Empire Rooftop
12th floor of 44 W. 63rd St., map
(212) 956-3313
Picture credits: Vidiot.
Earlier: High in the Sky cocktails at Roosevelt Hotel’s mad46
High in the Sky at Peninsula hotel’s new Salon de Ning
August 27, 2008 1:21 PM Comments (0)
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Tugs rev up for annual Hudson River race on Sunday
 Come Sunday morning, Manhattan will host the Great North River Tugboat Race & Competition from 9:30 to 2 p.m.
You can watch from shore, or onboard the Circle Line Spectator Boat, which will depart Pier 83 (at West 43rd Street) at 9:30 a.m. Tickets are $35 for adults, $30 for children and seniors.
To view the start of the race, head toward Pier I, near 72nd Street in Riverside Park South. To view the middle of the race, organizers recommend the best spot is Clinton Cove, at 55th Street on the Hudson.
The full schedule:
9:30 a.m. - Tugs gather near Pier 84, spectator boat departs Pier 83
10 a.m. - Parade of tugs from Pier 84 to the start line near the 79th Street Boat Basin
10:30 a.m. - Race starts
11 a.m. - Nose-to-nose pushing contests and line toss competition
Noon - Tugs tie up to Pier 84 for lunch
1 p.m. - Awards ceremony.
2 p.m. - Tugs depart
The event is organized by the Working Harbor Committee, Capt. Jerry Roberts (the founder of the event), Bert Reinauer of Reinauer Transportation and the Tugboat Race Steering Committee.
Picture credits: 2007 tugboat race, Amy Langfield/NewYorkology.
August 26, 2008 12:02 PM Comments (0)
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Summer's photo finish with Atget, Evans, Kikai, Fusco
By day, NewYorkology contributor Heesun Wee works as a video segment producer for Yahoo’sTech Ticker. She’s also writing a screenplay entitled “War Photographer.” Today, she surveys the best of the end-of-summer photography to check out in NYC.
I like to look. For photography fans like myself, it has been a bountiful summer in the city. From the shuttered, brothel-filled streets of early century Paris to the punk street culture of modern Tokyo, you can travel the globe through pictures – all for the price of a NYC museum ticket.
First stop, Paris by way of Alabama. “Framing a Century: Master Photographers, 1840-1940” is a special exhibit that runs through September 1 at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. The collection features a wide swath of images from Gothic-like landscapes to iconic portraits.
Among my favorites is Eugène Atget’s image of prostitutes, hanging out a widow in 1930s Paris. The women’s faces are painted like clowns, their eyebrows harshly filled in and arched. We may be looking at them, but they’re looking at us — and having the last laugh.
 Also stunning are works by Charles Marville, who was under the service of Napoleon III and officially documented Paris as it was deconstructed and reconstructed. Marville roamed Paris early in mornings to record the metamorphosis of the city’s architecture. If NYC is all energy and money, Paris’ cityscape is elegiac and haunting in Marville’s version.
As dawn turned into day, another French photographer, Eugene Atget, was busy capturing iconic images of Paris street shops and windows. It’s the social, everyday Paris I imagine and dream of, as someone who has never been to the City of Lights.
Half way around the world, a budding American photographer named Walker Evans was taking note of the French photographers. In 1936, Evans set out on assignment for Fortune magazine to document the daily Depression-era lives of tenant families in Hale County, Alabama.
 Those images, a handful of which are on display at the Met, were groundbreaking in how collectively they weaved together as a narrative, something we take for granted today.
In Evans’ images, the families look directly into the camera, truly testing the boundaries of direct observation. It was a tactic Walker noted and borrowed from French photographers such as Atget and then made his own — an apprentice-like process of individuality great artists master.
Evans’ photographs along with writer James Agee’s nonfiction eventually was published, “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,” a landmark document of poverty in America during the Depression. (I met Agee’s daughter, deeply in love with her father, yet still haunted by her father’s larger-than-life past, but that’s another story. “Men” is a must read by the way. The original gonzo, nonfiction swashbuckler, way before the likes of Hunter S. Thompson, Sebastian Junger and “Generation Kill.”)
Modern Japan via Midtown
Next stop Japan. “Heavy Light” is an impressive survey of modern photography from Japan featured at the International Center of Photography in Midtown until September 7.
Read the rest of this entry
August 22, 2008 10:12 AM Comments (0)
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W Hotel Fashion Week tickets: Reese, Azria, Tibi, Léger
 W Hotel’s Fashion Week packages have hit the Internet and once again they come with a pair of reserved-seat invitations to a catwalk show inside the tents.
Packages are still available to the following shows: Perry Ellis, Lacoste, Tracy Reese, Harvé Léger by Max Azria, Tibi and Custo Barcelona. Already gone: Miss Sixty, Diesel Black Gold,
Nanette Lepore and Rock & Republic.
The price is $899 and that gets you a suite for the night at the W Hotel at 541 Lexington Ave., map, two cocktails at the hotel’s Living Room, two seats at your fashion show plus passes to the backstage lounge with 2 VIP backstage tours, Bliss’s Triple Oxygen Instant Energizing Mask and 3 p.m. late check-out at the hotel.
Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week runs from September 5 though 12 and is technically not open to the public.
Image source: Tracy Reese’s earlier collection at Fashion Week
August 19, 2008 6:20 PM Comments (0)
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Central Park's hot air balloon to depart Friday
Friday is your last chance to float up 30 stories above Central Park in the Aeroballoon hot air balloon.
Reservations for the entire run filled up fast, but Aeroballoon accepts walk-ups every day from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. The best time to come without reservations is 10 a.m., when the balloon is less likely to be grounded for weather reasons, a spokeswoman told NewYorkology by e-mail this afternoon.
She estimated that about 3,000 people thus far have gone up in the balloon, but they’ve had to take a pause of two to four hours nearly every day due to afternoon breezes or thunderstorms.
The price for a 10-minute ride is $25 for adults and $17.50 for children. The balloon is here courtesy of the Central Park Conservancy and NYC Department of Parks & Recreation to o celebrate the 150th anniversary of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux’s original design of the park — known as the Greensward plan.
Picture credit: NewYorkology contributor Vidiot.
August 18, 2008 3:47 PM Comments (0)
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$150K report to study opening Statue of Liberty's crown
Pressured into commissioning another study to determine if there’s a safe way to reopen the upper levels of the Statue of Liberty to tourists, the federal government will spend $150,000 on a new report due in February, according to the Daily News.
It could be a step in the right direction unless “it’s just another bureaucratic barrier, then it’s not worth the paper it’s written on,” U.S. Rep. and probable mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner told the paper.
In 2006, Weiner pushed the House of Representatives to approve $1 million to reopen the Statue of Liberty’s crown. The vote garnered a lot of headlines worldwide, but a National Park Service official called the statue a “firetrap” and told NewYorkology that “regardless of what happens, a fire or post-9/11 action, we still find it does not meet the standards for egress and fire safety.”
Sept. 10, 2001 was the last day Lady Liberty’s crown was open to the public. But oddly enough, prior to that the National Park Service was already under pressure (most publicly via a New Jersey newspaper investigation) to improve the safety issues for visitors at the Statue of Liberty.
Since August 3, 2004, visitors with special monument passes have been able to get inside the statue’s pedestal and look up into the statue — from about the height of her toes. (Access to the torch has been off-limits since 1916 following a massive railyard explosion nearby at Black Tom’s, which was widely believed to have been caused by German saboteurs.)
Just days ago, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer called for all federal, state and international buildings to lose their exemption from New York City fire codes. That would mean new rules for the United Nations, Grand Central Terminal and many other tourist hot spots.
Earlier: NewYorkology Basics: Statue of Liberty & Ellis Island
Fire safety keeping Statue of Liberty’s top closed
August 14, 2008 12:44 PM Comments (0)
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Security Council drops off U.N. tour for fire safety fears
Starting Friday, the United Nations will start truncating its tours to placate NY City officials’ concerns that the iconic structure’s turned into a firetrap, the Sun reports today.
The new tour route kicks in August 1, and the U.N. warns “that due to renovations of the complex, as of 1 August 2008, visitors will no longer be allowed to access the Conference building, which includes the Security Council Chamber.”
However, even up until now visitors haven’t been guaranteed a glimpse of any rooms where meetings were in session. (U.N. events calendar.) The only way to be fairly certain was to visit on a weekend when there was no international crisis. But earlier this year, the U.N. permanently stopped offering tours on the weekends.
The United Nations recently broke ground on its $2 billion renovation project, hoping to bring its asbestos-laden headquarters — which is in international territory — closer to the building and fire codes observed by the people across the street.
The U.N. visitor’s entrance is located on First Avenue at 46th Street, map, and you must go through the airport-style security tent, even if you’re just going for lunch at the Delegates’ Dining Room.
Current tour prices:
Adults - $13.50
Seniors - $9
Students - $9
Children (5-14) - $7.50
Earlier:
United Nations renovation begins; projected completion: 2013
Schoolkids may be banned from U.N. ‘firetrap’ tours
United Nations called ‘firetrap’ for safety lapses
Fire safety keeping Statue of Liberty’s top closed
July 28, 2008 11:40 AM Comments (0)
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Brookhaven to open ion collider, nanomaterials center
The Brookhaven National Laboratory has resumed its Summer Sunday schedule, allowing the public to have a look behind the curtain, including an August 17 public tour of the relativistic heavy ion collider.
Normally closed to the public, Brookhaven is a U.S. Department of Energy site open to the public for five Sundays, with a different theme scheduled for each week. All events are free. No reservations are necessary, but you should arrive between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m.
The remaining dates for 2008:
July 27 - Science Learning Center
August 3 - National Weather Service
August 10 - Center for Functional Nanomaterials
August 17 - Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider
See the Brookhaven website for directions.
Brookhaven National Lab
William Floyd Parkway, County Road 46
Long Island
(631) 344-2651
Picture credit: In the tunnel with Brookhaven’s relativistic heavy ion collider. Amy Langfield/NewYorkology.
Earlier:
Brookhaven Lab opens again for Summer Sundays (more pix, 2007)
July 22, 2008 10:30 AM Comments (0)
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Onboard Circle Line 42's harbor lights waterfalls cruise
NewYorkology contributor Anna Links recently checked out the NYC Waterfalls by boat, onboard one of Circle Line’s first Harbor Lights cruises.
For Olafur Eliasson Waterfall purposes, the Circle Line 7 p.m. daily Harbor Lights cruise is more of a sunset voyage, but the photo opportunities are still worth the $27 ticket.
As we’ve just passed the vernal equinox and the days will get increasingly shorter (sad, but true!), this will become a bona fide Harbor Lights cruise in September with sunset times between 7:30 and 6:40. The boat’s departure will change to 6 p.m. on September 27 through the end of the Waterfalls exhibition, October 13.
 The vessel seats about 400 with indoor and outdoor seating on both the main and upper decks but your best bet for waterfall viewing is the main bow deck which opens about 15 minutes after departure, weather permitting, with a notification from the cruise announcer. The deck quickly floods with eager photographers so be ready to make a dash and park yourself on the starboard side for optimal viewing of the Statue of Liberty and Governors Island, Brooklyn Piers 4 & 5 and Brooklyn Bridge falls. When the ship turns around for the trip downriver, you’ll be set up to check out the Manhattan Pier 35 falls without having to sally across the crowded deck.
Leaving from Pier 83 at West 42nd, the 2-hour cruise makes a half-circle around the island of Manhattan, arriving at the Governors Island waterfall at 7:55 p.m.. The second waterfall at Brooklyn Piers 4 & 5 follows immediately and although the ship doesn’t get as close to this one as to the other three, the sun’s reflection off the buildings of Brooklyn Heights more than makes up for it. The Brooklyn Bridge falls is next on the starboard side and the approach offers choice views of the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges, the falls, the East River and Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park.
The Manhattan Pier 35 falls is next up on the port side at about 8:10 p.m. Depending on the progression of daylight savings, this is a great photo op to catch the sunset behind the Manhattan Bridge and the Municipal Building.
The cruise advances north an additional 20 blocks or so with great views of Brooklyn’s industrial waterfront and the Empire State Building before turning around and heading back down river. The return trip affords another pass at the Manhattan Pier 35 and Brooklyn Bridge falls but the Brooklyn Piers 4 & 5 and Governors Island falls are just a little too far off for the standard digital camera lens, as the ship hugs the Manhattan coastline on its trip back to Pier 83 on the Hudson.
The ship sells beer and wine for $6.50, plus snacks and other beverages from $2 to $7. You can drink alcohol anywhere on board and there is a smoking area on the main deck port side. If you’re on deck to watch the crew tie up at the pier, check out their awesome nautical knots.
Onboard, the ship’s announcer, warned that cabs can be rare at the pier late in the evening. Upon exiting, there were a few limo drivers and pedi-cabs, but your nearest subway is the A/C/E at 42nd and 8th.
Tickets can be reserved online, by phone at (212) 563-3200, or purchased at the pier. Circle Line recommends you arrive 45 minutes prior to departure time.
Also note that this Circle Line cruise is operated by Circle Line at 42nd Street, sometimes called Circle Line uptown. It’s a different company than Circle Line downtown, which operates its own waterfalls cruises, including the shorter, free one.
Picture credits: Anna Links.
Earlier: Eliasson’s NYC Waterfalls officially on through Oct. 13
Circle Line launching a $50,000 NYC Waterfalls tour
July 7, 2008 1:55 AM Comments (3)
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Rockaway Beach easy to reach on weekend Water Taxi
 Weekend NY Water Taxi service to Breezy Point in Rockaway starts this Friday and the fare is a mere $6 each way.
The schedule posted on the NY Water Taxi website lists two morning departures from Pier 11 at Wall Street and two return trips from Rockaway.
The morning boats will leave Manhattan at 9:15 and 11:45 a.m. while the afternoon boats leave the beach at 2:30 and 5 p.m. There’s one stop in both directions at the Brooklyn Army Terminal.
The service is scheduled to start July 4 and will run through September 1, according to the website for the National Park Service, which operates the beach and surrounding Jamaica Bay wildlife area.
Related: NY mag’s guide to Jacob Riis Park.
Image source: New York Water Taxi.
Earlier: Rockaways, Frying Pan to get Water Taxi on weekends
July 2, 2008 3:30 PM Comments (0)
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