Giveaways
FAMOUS for its grand architecture and exuberant landmarks, New York City is filled with excitement and an endless list of things to do.
The General Sherman Memorial in Grand Army Plaza, adjacent to the southern end of Central Park, is really impressive.
As is the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Arch in another Grand Army Plaza, in Brooklyn (yes, there two Grand Army Plazas in New York, one in Manhattan and one in Brooklyn). The Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Arch celebrates Northern victory in the American Civil War. It is modelled on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, though the Quadriga on top is an added touch.
New York City is also famous for its delicatessens and cheap (but excellent) food.
It has an amazing subway system, by American standards at any rate, and the famous Staten Island Ferry, which is free. The New York City public transport system is called the MTA, and there is an app you can download called MyMTA.
Must-see places and landmarks like Central Park, the Empire State Building, and the Statue of Liberty are all here. Here is a short video I made, of tall buildings around Grand Army Plaza in Manhattan, the Statue of Liberty as glimpsed from the Staten Island Ferry, and the interior of Trump Tower. I talk about how I always love visiting New York and how exciting it is!
And the colourful Times Square.
The Guggenheim Museum, of course.
Here’s a collage I made in 2016, when the One World Trade Center Tower and Transportation Hub were both new.
The distinctive building is called the Oculus. I took some more photos on my latest trip.
The footprints of the two great towers that were destroyed on September 11, 2001, are now occupied by two huge pools that together make up the 9/11 Memorial.
Here is a video I made, showing scenes outside and inside the Oculus, one of the memorial pools, and the buildings around the World Trade Center site.
Central Park is tremendously wild and rocky. I really appreciated that it had walking paths segregated from bike paths, because, in New Zealand they have the two together and you have to watch out for speeding e-bikes.
Central Park is said to have been inspired by the Wellington Town Belt in New Zealand, which was laid out in the 1840s, one of several such town belts or long, skinny parks encompassing and surrounding the downtown area in several of the cities and towns of New Zealand and Australia. The Adelaide Parklands, created in 1837, is the most famous example of this peculiar kind of park.
Central Park is newer than the town belts of New Zealand and Australia, having been designed in the 1860s. Its origins are controversial, as a community of free people of colour was evicted to create it.
On a bluff at a site called McGowan’s Pass, there used to be a fort in the time of the American Revolution and the war of 1812. The fort no longer exists, but in its honour, since 2014, the bluff has been topped by an old cannon and a mortar from a British ship called HMS Hussar, which sank during the Revolutionary War, in 1780.
The cannon was plugged with concrete for a long time before that. When the concrete was removed for cleaning and restoration in 2013, before bringing the cannon to McGowan’s Pass, a live charge of gunpowder and a cannonball were found inside. Journalists had a field day writing about how the New Yorkers had been lucky to escape a “blast from the past.”
The first time I visited Central Park, there were hundreds of runners! Here is a video I made of Central Park scenes, of cycling and walking tracks laid out so that pedestrians and runners don’t have to worry about the bikes, then the cannon at McGowan’s Pass, and then of some cute squirrels!
I’ve been to New York several times, including a visit in 2016, and then again at the end of February and beginning of March in 2024. Here is a map and an aerial view, one of several collages from my book A Kiwi on the Amtrak Tracks which I’ve reproduced here.
In 2016, I stayed in Harlem, which has become quite gentrified. Early in the 2010s you could get an apartment for $500 a month and it had gone up already to $1900 a month in 2016. Rents are now $2,500 to $3,000 a month for a three-bedroom apartment. A lot of homeless people are being put up in hotels as well, and this has further boosted the cost of accommodation.
In the words of Ossiana Tepfenhart,
It used to be possible to go to New York with $20 and a dream, and somehow make it into an apartment. You can’t do that anymore.
This time around, I stayed at the Hi New York City Hostel on 103rd Street, in the Upper West Side. Hi is short for Hostelling International, formerly known as the Youth Hostel Association.
In these areas, it is quite safe to walk along the main streets because people catch public transport until 2 or 3 in the morning: New York is a city that doesn’t sleep, more so than London. And it is a real city that uses public transport, which was excellent.
Although, having said that, I would not use the subway past 9 pm. Another thing I noticed was that the NYPD were everywhere, by the World Trade Center, outside my hostel, they had cameras everywhere, they even stopped schoolkids from being loud outside Central Park.
A thousand city police officers were redeployed to police the subway in February, in response to recent criminal acts, and 750 National Guard and 250 state troopers are being assigned to the subway stations to keep order there. The incidence of crime on the subway was even worse during the Covid pandemic.
I remember, back in 2016, that the buzzer didn’t work at the Airbnb when I got there on 145th Street. I was lucky to have a mobile phone number to use. That would have been an issue with no key and no buzzer. Always get a mobile number.
I went to a jazz club called the Metropole Room on 22nd Street. There was a guy and his band playing. I got there at 9:30 p.m. and after watching the bandleader drink several glasses of wine one after the other, I saw them play a few songs for an hour.
I was surprised to learn that when you order a drink, you had to order two drinks minimum there. So, I had a yummy cheesecake and two cocktails which were reasonably priced at $11 each. Then they tried to get me to pay a mandatory tip for the band!
Afterwards, there was a girl called Allie who was doing Carpenters songs and some jazz songs, both which I loved.
On Friday night, I went to a comedy club called Tribeca Comedy Lounge on 22 Warren Street. It was only $2. The comedians were great. I really enjoyed getting out and seeing New York culture on my first two nights.
I also explored the city during the daytime, including the famous beatnik quarter known as Greenwich Village, where a 1969 riot by drinkers in a gay bar called the Stonewall Inn, against police who were trying to arrest them for being that way, kicked off the modern gay liberation movement.
The Staten Island Ferry is not only free, but also a good way to view the Statue of Liberty and the Manhattan skyline: the classic view.
I also went on a dedicated boat tour that took me to Ellis Island, the famous immigration station that is now a museum, and past the Brooklyn Bridge, built in 1883 and, as such, one of the first modern suspension bridges.
I also went by ferry to Red Hook, an old manufacturing and warehouse district due south of Manhattan Island, with lots of old brick buildings and lofts and a generally run-down air. These days, Red Hook has become an artists’ colony. There are plans to extend the subway to Red Hook and build 45,000 apartments, which are needed, but I expect it won’t be the same.
The new buildings and memorial on the World Trade Centre site were truly impressive. I’m glad something was rebuilt. Three buildings came down on that terrible day, incidentally, not just two.
In 2024, I discovered that many prices have shot up compared to what you paid in 2016. But there is a last-minute booking site where you can get hotel rooms for around $65 a night, not $350. Many of the restaurants, like elsewhere, have gone up. On the other hand, food prices in the shops are a lot cheaper than in New Zealand. I spent about $60, the equivalent of NZ $100, in an organic shop, and that lasted me for four days, which I thought was pretty good.
If you go into the shops, they tend to have cheap food sections where you can get cheap sandwiches, cheap coffee, and so on.
See, also, my other post about New York with a particular focus on Red Hook, A Fickle Easter in Brooklyn.
My next post in this New York series will be about my theatre and museum experiences, the deli and street cart tradition, Coney Island, and the charming town of Hudson, two hours from New York City by Amtrak.
A Kiwi on the Amtrak Tracks is available on this website, a-maverick.com.
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