Entries tagged “newyork”

While New Yorkers don't mind correcting you, they also want to help you. In the subway or on the sidewalk, when someone asks a passerby for directions, other people, overhearing, may hover nearby, disappointed that they were not the ones asked, and waiting to see if maybe they can get a word in. New Yorkers like to be experts. Actually, all people like to be experts, but most of them satisfy this need with friends and children and employees. New Yorkers, once again, tend to behave with strangers the way they do with people they know.

From Joan Acocella in Smithsonian Magazine, on why New Yorkers seem rude, but are really just acting familiar with strangers.

What It Is: LimoLiner is an executive-class bus service from New York to Boston (or vice versa) that gets you from the center of one city to the other in about 4 and a half hours, for less than a hundred bucks. If you count getting to the airport early and taking a cab, it ends up being about the same amount of time as flying, but you've got wifi and power and more room.

The Experience: I first heard about LimoLiner years ago, when I was spending most of my time on the West Coast. Since I've been back in NYC, I've used LimoLiner for every trip that I've made to Boston, and it's unquestionably the best way to make the trip.

Flying to Boston from New York really sucks. Aside from the rank incompetence of most everyone at Logan Airport, getting to and from Boston and NYC airports is brutal. Most Boston flights leave New York from JFK, which is a solid 45 minute (and $60) cab ride from Manhattan. Sure, you could take the train to JFK, but then you're adding an hour on top of having to be an hour early for your flight. Tack on an interminable cab ride on the Boston end of things (especially since the Big Dig is a failure) and you're easily equalling the time it takes to take LimoLiner.

It's easy to have misgivings about riding a bus for a couple hours, especially if you have any flashbacks to miserable Greyhound trips in college. East Coasters also know about the legendary Chinatown buses, which promise fast service that's as cheap as $10, at the expense of your safety, hygiene, and sanity. (Tales of livestock and fowl sharing the trip abound.)

LimoLiner ain't like that. All the seats are captain's chairs, complete with power and lots of legroom and recline. The ride is full-service, too, with a host (Drive Attendant?) who brings you drinks and a snack (usually a packaged sandwich) and whatever else you want. The bathroom on the bus is downright dignified. And the back cabin of each bus is a quiet area, with no cell phone conversations allowed. You can even kick up the footrest and watch a movie on the ride.

Best of all, LimoLiner is a small company. I once had a reschedule a trip, and called back a few hours after I'd booked my ticket. I started to say "Hi, my reservation number is..." and the woman on the other end said, "Don't worry, honey, I remember your number on the Caller ID." Can't say that's ever happened with an airline.

The Gotchas: The only shortcoming with LimoLiner is that I wish they offered service more often; There's a limited number of trips each day, and the timing isn't always ideal. I am also still holding out hope they'll expand service to Washington, D.C. and I can totally eliminate the once-great, now-pathetic Amtrak Acela experience from my travel routine.

They also recently raised prices by $10, but it's still so much cheaper than flying or Amtrak (and not much more than gas prices for driving yourself!) that it's a non-issue.

What It Costs: LimoLiner is $89 each way, and you get a sandwich and drinks. You can book reservations online.

Recommended If You Like: The Sox-Yankees rivalry, I95, making the honk-honk arm gesture at semi drivers, being able to do email or surf the web while you travel

This post is one of a series of unsolicited testimonials. Please view that introductory post for more background information.

Pentagram, the designers of the website, signage, marketing materials, and stationery for the new New York Times building, have a fascinating blog post about the intricacies of the sign that they’ve created for the new Times Square skyscraper. The photo here is my cameraphone shot of the backside of the tower, taken when passing by yesterday.

And you thought this post was going to be about Prince.

Didja like the series of posts on How to Visit New York City? Then you might want to check these out:

• Mark Dominus has a lengthy, well-considered view of New York Tourism, centered around the maxim that I “…may be a little misleading when he says ‘the natives are friendly and helpful.’ I would say not. Neither are they unfriendly or unhelpful. What they mostly are, in my experience, is brusque and in a hurry.”
• And Monsur takes a run at the Apple, too: “New York City never ceases to surprise you. Toss aside the map, walk around, and let the city reveal herself to you.”

As I’ve been sharing my opinions about how to visit New York this week, I’ve been lucky enough to get some great responses from other people on the web, and to find some terrific resources for visitors to check out. So far my own series on how to visit New York I’ve covered what you can skip, what you must see, and the basics.

• New Yorkology posted a nice link to my series, but Amy Langfeld’s New York Travel Guide is indispensable for anyone who wants to visit the Big Apple, and well deserving of its many accolades. Tips are organized by geography, by topic, and by convenient groupings like “Kids” and “Romance”.

• David’s thoughtful response, with the wonderful introduction stating, “I am adding my own two cents here, because the great thing about Manhattan is that it is a different experience everyday, for everyone. So, here is my Do-It-Yourself Manhattan Tourists’ Guide: What to do before and when you get here.”

• And then, perhaps most amusingly, Mike Monteiro’s inimitable How to Visit San Francisco over on the Mule Design blog. Not merely inspired by my post, but just plain inspired: “Try to remember that they don’t mean to be rude, they’re just thinking of the excellent gas mileage they’re getting on their Toyota Prius.” You can also see Mike’s initial response to my series. The only things I’d add are bring a sweater, and the place you’re going is closed.

• Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the invaluable resources at Ask MetaFilter, one of my favorite sites and quite simply one of the best sites on the web. Check out the questioned tagged New York or NYC or New York City (or, uh, just “york”) and you can harness some fantastic collected wisdom from lots of knowledgeable contributors.

Update: Here’s an awesome sneak preview you should check out — TravelFilter for New York, NY. It’s a collection of all Ask MetaFilter posts geocoded for New York City, nicely displayed and complete with a map. Very cool.

I get asked by a lot of people for tips on what to do when visiting New York City, and though I'm hardly an expert on NYC tourism, I thought I'd take the time to write up a lot of the tips and information that I share with family and friends when they come to town. I'm also hoping that people who read this and are inspired or offended by my suggestions or opinions take the time to write up their own recommendations. To start off the series, I thought I'd over the basics, most of which have to do with mindset and expectations about coming to visit New York.

To get in the right mindset about visiting New York City, there are a few things you need to really take to heart, and once you've absorbed these lessons, the rest of your trip will be much less stressful and a lot more fun. (This first post is aimed mostly at people who've never been to New York or don't know much about the place.)

• NYC has a different culture. If you're coming from nearly any other place on Earth, New York City will be different from what you're used to. Culturally, geographically, and socially, it's distinct from any other place in the United States. You wouldn't insist on people at Disney World wearing formal wear, and you wouldn't expect people in Paris to all know English, so if it helps, think of New York City as a city full of Americans who speak English, but just happen to have a significantly different culture than the rest of the country. Once you look at it that way, you can stop being frustrated by your expectations and enjoy the differences.
• Don't go to the goddamn Olive Garden in Times Square. If you come to New York just to experience the same things you can get at home, you'll find them to be... well, completely unimpressive. Yes, we do have really big gaudy versions of the restaurants you eat at back home, but the way fancy restaurants work here is backwards. In the small town I grew up in, going to the Red Lobster was fancy because it was a big national chain. In New York, it's the opposite -- the places we love most are those that are distinctly, and uniquely, of New York City.
• Yes, it's expensive. Speaking of comparisons to home, you'll just drive yourself nuts if you are constantly saying "Hey, that only costs half as much at the Wal-mart back home!" From rent to food to clothing to parking, a lot of the staples of life cost more here. What you may be surprised to find is how often there are very, very good examples of these staples (especially food and clothing) that you can find for cheaper than almost anywhere else. Millions of us who live here started out being broke and barely scraping by, and as a result, there's always a market for cheap eats and low-cost threads.
• Get out and walk. The primary mode of transportation for all of Manhattan and most of the outer boroughs is a combination of walking and mass transit. We really, truly do ride the subways and buses every day, and even millionaires don't own cars. Our Mayor Bloomberg is a billionaire, and he rides the subway to work, and it's not merely populist affectation -- it's just that much more efficient. If you are walking on the sidewalks and get winded because you're not used to hoofing it so much, be sure to get out of the way before you just stop; Pulling to a halt on a sidewalk is the equivalent of stopping your car right in the middle of traffic. Though the subways and buses can look a little tricky, they're actually extremely convenient and inexpensive. But if you're just too intimidated by them, grab a cab -- they're cheaper than taxis in any other American city, they're really speedy except in the worst traffic, and NYC cab drivers are almost always pretty competent at getting you to any common tourist destination.
• It's not a theme park. This one is hard to stress enough. Though New Yorkers are overwhelmingly friendly, this is the place where we live, work, and play, and being treated like zoo animals while we do those things is one of the few things that can make us ornery to tourists. I used to work in the Empire State Building. While I never got tired of being wowed by the building, it got pretty tiring being asked questions like I was a tour guide about where to find bathrooms, or how old the building was, or did I mind taking someone's picture when I was just trying to get to my office. Put yourself in the shoes of those around you, and be considerate of people trying to live their regular lives, and they'll bend over backwards to help you enjoy the city.
• It's safe. I was raised with terrifying stories of how Central Park was where one goes to get mugged, and grew up believing all kinds of horrible urban legends about what happens to people in New York City after dark. The reality is, most places any tourist would go are incredibly safe. Violent crime in New York, as in all of the U.S., has dropped dramatically over the past decade and a half. You should, of course, take sensible precautions (be as aware as you'd be at any crowded area like an amusement park or an airport) but you don't need to go around fearfully clutching your purse, like I see so many people doing in Times Square. The best way to make sure you never have to worry is to spend a little bit of time reading up on your destination and route wherever you go (all of the web-based mapping sites offer nice amenities like displaying NYC's subway stops overlayed on the map) and being mindful of your surroundings.
• The natives are friendly and helpful. Like everyone I know who lives here, I end up giving someone directions or information almost every single day. I don't live in a particularly tourism-heavy part of the city, but there are always people around who are out of their element, and they're fairly easy to spot. (You all dress funny.) If I'm not in a hurry and I think I can help, I'm always glad to answer a few questions, and that's generally true of most people here. It's even a good opportunity to talk to someone who is a little bit different than the people in your usual circle of acquaintances. No matter where you're from, you should be able to find somebody in New York who seems strange to you -- now's your chance to go make a new friend.

• I've been ruminating about radio a lot lately (more on that later), but one of the most pleasant radio discoveries of late has been XM Radio's 80s and 90s stations, as well as their "20 on 20" pop hits station. Imagine my delight when I found that AOL Radio is streaming them for free.

• Let's see: Free Jay-Z concert, cute pictures of Shiba Inus, and gratuitous Prince references. Andrea Harner's blog is apparently what I would get if I commissioned a blogger to make a site for me. For the rest of you, BuzzFeed will be more to your taste.

• How to share your event on Google Calendar. Shouldn't the microformats çrew be automating this stuff for all of us?

• Michael Arrington's taking some time off from TechCrunch. One of my main criticisms of the site has always been that he's just a youngster in blogging years. Take it from those of us who've been around for half a decade or so -- this whole "I'm quitting!" thing is only the first step in a bigger cycle. After you quit once or twice, you have to get in a big flame war, post an embarrassingly personal item to your site, have a grandiose Third Anniversary blog post, coin a catch phrase, and have your last name turned into a verb before you can even consider yourself a serious blogger. On the other hand, "TechCrunch is a new kind of publication" so maybe I know nothing.

• I like the Wired cover story on LonelyGirl15, especially because they embed a number of relevant YouTube videos into the story. But how come the it's-not-porn-we're-journalists photo shoot video isn't on YouTube, too? It'd be a great promo for the story!

• "Feature" has many definitions. It can describe a full-length movie or a particularly prominent or compelling article in a magazine or newspaper. Alternately, a feature is an individual bit of functionality in a software program or application. What do I think of Jeffrey McManus' blog post? It feels like a feature.

Earlier this year, the New York Philharmonic started distributing some recordings of their works through the iTunes music store. On its own, that's not a particularly revolutionary achievement; These days, it seems downright obvious.

But what's remarkable is the culture of respect for the artists and thoughtful consideration of the future of their genre that the Philharmonic's president Zarin Mehta seems to have adopted as part of his embrace of new technologies. From a recent interview in Hemispheres magazine:

Q: Downloading from digital music jukeboxes is very popular. How did you arrange to use new media?

A: In order to make our live performances available for downloading, we had to work out our musicians’ remuneration. Music distribution is a question of marketing. If people are not buying it in the thousands, you’re wasting your time. So we’re excited that our musicians agreed to a revenue-sharing deal, rather than a flat payment up front for the recording project, as has always been the case. I believe our orchestra is composed of very, very smart people who are aware that this appearance on the Web is the wave of the future.

What we did led the national musicians’ union to initiate negotiations with the orchestra community. Most other orchestras may be able to do what we’re doing. And revenue sharing could apply not just to new technology, but also to a new CD or DVD. The next thing I would hope to work out with the musicians is videocasts.

The emphasis above is mine: orchestra members are still typically paid on a flat payment basis for their performances on classical recordings, as a vestige of the current royalty scheme which is designed to reward composers. Those composers, of course, have often been dead for dozens or even hundreds of years, which weakens their bargaining position with the record labels somewhat.

There's a modern counterpart here, too -- the many stories of pop acts, especially R&B groups, ending up broke after selling millions of records are a vestige of the fact that the music business has never rewarded its participants based on the value that they bring to the table. From the standpoint of the music business, it's a short step from being a member of TLC to being a first-chair violinist.

The good news is that Mehta also understands that improved distribution will benefit attendance at performances:

Until the advent of Web-based broadcasting, where did people hear concerts? On the radio, at the concert hall, or on CD. In the early days of television, in the ’60s, there was some exposure to classical music on regular shows—late-night talk shows or music variety shows. You had people like soprano Beverly Sills on the Tonight Show. You don’t see that anymore, so people have not been as exposed to it. But I think the Web is changing that. The fact that listeners can go to iTunes and see Madonna next to cellist Yo-Yo Ma says something.

(Thanks to Magnus for the image of Avery Fisher Hall, home of the Philharmonic.)

It's worth taking the time to really enjoy this amazing recounting of an effort to duplicate the recipe for Patsy's pizza. It's great for a few reasons: Good food is always worth taking the time to explore, chronicles of geeky obsessiveness are what the web was created for, and of course the history of New York Pizza is a source of endless fascination.

The part that really got me, though, was how much of the quality of a pizza was determined by the yeast cultures used in the dough. Jeff covers this well:

There are lots of kinds of yeast in the air in your kitchen right now and one of them will set up shop eventually in your flour water and begin growing. What will it taste like? Well, it's like setting a trap for an animal and waiting for dinner. It could be a pheasant. It could be a rat. You have no way of knowing. Do yourself a favor and skip this part and just buy or obtain a known high quality starter...

I've seen many bogus things about the use of starters. A classic is that you can start a wild culture by setting out some flour, water and baker's yeast and the baker's yeast will 'attract' other yeasts. This is alchemy. It's like saying I put out dandelions and they attracted peaches. It makes no sense. Another myth is that you can get the same flavor out of packaged yeast as you can out of a sourdough culture if you handle it right. This is also alchemy. Can you get parsley to taste like thyme if you handle it right? These are distinct organism, like spices, that all have a different flavor. If you use a starter, and you should, then learn from Ed Wood.

The Ed Wood that he refers to is Dr. Edward Wood, a pathologist who realized while working in Saudi Arabia that he wanted to master the history and variety of sourdough yeasts that people all over the world use to make dough. sourdo.com is the home for his book, a source for buying starter cultures, and a fascinating testament to his passion for a subject most would consider arcane.

I've been trying to master a good New York-style pizza at home for years. It's been steadily improving, but still nowhere near the level of even the average brick-oven place in the city. So what did I take away from the recipe? The key to getting good results is understanding the importance of the variety of cultures available.

And naturally, I was going to send the link to Adam for Slice last night, but this morning it was already up on the site. That guy knows his stuff, too.

Nobody complains better than New Yorkers, as evidenced by this wonderful series of letters lovingly scanned and presented by the Times a few weeks ago.

Thank you so much to all of you who have messaged, emailed and called. (Or tried to.) I am physically fine, as are all my family members and immediate friends. I've been watching the footage all morning, I can't believe I watched the World Trade Center collapse... for those of you unfamiliar with New York, somewhere around 50,000 people or more work at the WTC Towers. I've been hearing sirens all day, although I live well north of the scene of the catastrophe, halfway up the island of Manhattan.

I've been sitting here this whole morning, choking back tears... this is just too much, too big. I can see the smoke and ash from the street here. I have friends of friends who work there, I was just there myself the day before yesterday. I can't process this all. I don't want to.