New York picks
03/12/04
Yesterday, I put up some of my favorite photos from the last year. Today, here are some of my favorite things about New York. I originally wrote this list as something of a to-do list for a friend who will be in New York for three months.
Walk the length of Broadway. Detour for Haitian food at Krik Krak, 844 Amsterdam Avenue at 102nd.
Walk the length of Roosevelt Avenue in Queens. Stop to eat at Sripraphai, 64-13 39th Avenue.
The walk of abrupt Brooklyn neighborhood transitions: Manhattan Avenue to Bedford Avenue to Division to Lee (Hasidic shopping street; don't go on Saturday!) to Nostrand to Flatbush. Then back up Flatbush as far as Church.
Walk the length of Fulton Street in Brooklyn, from Fulton Ferry to City Line (a neighborhood near what used to be the city line but is now just the Queens border).
Ride (or blade or walk) the circumference of Manhattan. Call 311 and thank the Mayor.
Floyd Bennett Field. Hospital ruins on Roosevelt Island. Any marginal industrial waterfront area (Sunset Park, Long Island City, Red Hook, Gowanus). The High Line. The old LIRR Rockaway line.
Flushing. Have breakfast at No. 1 People's & People Restaurant, 38-08 Prince Street. Then see the panorama of New York at the Queens Museum. And the Unisphere.
Ride the whole subway system. Get out at the ends of the lines and walk around. Get lost among the winding streets downtown.
Tenements on Henry, Madison and Monroe Streets in Chinatown. Then have dinner for $1. Visit the junk towers at 6th and Avenue B. Green-wood Cemetery. Coney Island.
My favorite block for graffiti? A tie between Huntington Street east of Smith Street in Gowanus, and Lexington Avenue and Quincy Street west of Franklin in Bed-Stuy. Don't miss the house at 4 Downing (at the foot of Quincy Street).
City Reliquary, Havemeyer and Grand, Williamsburg.
Take in the view from the F/G train platforms at Smith-9th, or the J/L platforms at Broadway Junction.
Get the world's best shwarma at Sabaa, 4th and Atlantic, Brooklyn. Then take the D train to a Yankee game.
Go anywhere, and take pictures there.
Thanks for helping make this a fun year.