My short trips page captures short trips or updates on new visits to places that I’ve already visited.

NYC hello again – May 24, 2018

This is just a short entry for a short stay, but wanted to capture a few new things about  New York. It’s a city that’s one of my faves if not THE favourite, where I’ve been travelling since we used to go some Thanksgiving and Easter long weekends when I was a kid (how uncool is it when one’s parents introduce us to the city we’re all supposed to rebelliously discover on our own).

I’ve been many times as an adult, including the month-long stint in 2004 that kicked off this weblog. More recently I’ve been coming annually for the past three years to the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) annual conference where I attended the first two and was finally a speaker this year!

But while NYC is probably the city I’ve stayed in the most, so much that it’s one of the few where I don’t set myself a frantic touring agenda, isn’t it the best to be still able to discover new things?

On with it! Here are the new and new-to-me things I found on my most recent trip:

Chelsea or thereabouts

Always looking for new budget accommodations, I happened on the Jane hotel https://www.thejanenyc.com/ in Chelsea (aka West Village, aka Meatpacking district? different websites identify it as in different neighbourhoods), which prompted me to discover a new-to-me neighbourhood.

First, The Jane was a discovery in itself, a 100+ years-old hotel originally built as a home for sailors (with later iterations as a YMCA and a “hub for bohemian culture” in the 80s). With tiny cabin-like rooms that were restored in 2008 to their original cramped glory, it’s perfect for a solo traveller looking for a bed. Co-ed bathrooms down the hall, but overal it’s a quiet place to stay and relatively reasonable for NYC. I’d definitely book there again.

Wandering from the Jane, I came upon Chelsea Market a few blocks away, which I’d heard about but had visited, and found really cool with its mix of little food shops and artisan makers of everything from jewellery to face cream.

Just a couple of blocks from my hotel is also a terminal point for The High Line, a public park built on an old elevated rail line that I’ve heard more and more about in the past few years. I walked part of it for the first time last year but this year took it all the way from 14th to 34th and was impressed by even more art installations than I recall from last year (I liked especially Dorothy Iannone’s I lift my lamp beside the golden door )

Of course since the High Line ended at 34th street I was forced to go shopping at Macy’s. My. Poor. Credit. Card. Hurts.

Off off Broadway

Not sure how the Metropolitan Theatre on the lower East side would be classified as but a friend also attending the writers’ conference got me a ticket to a production of The Jewish King Lear, an 1892 play by Jacob Gordin, which later googling told me is also called the Yiddish King Lear and ushered in the first great era of Yiddish theatre. The play is not a translation but rather inspired by the general story of Shakespeare’s King Lear. Quite good acting in a very small setting.

In return I treated her an Uber ride to the venue through Saturday night Manhattan traffic when we couldn’t immediately find the subway. That was probably a bit nuts but my first time taking an Uber in NYC. I felt like congratulating the driver on his job.

The Cloisters

Although I try to hit the Met every visit to New York, I haven’t been to the satellite medieval art mecca called the Cloisters in at least a decade if not two. What pulled me up there was both maximizing my ticket price (the Met used to be one of the more affordable museums with its pay-what-you-can pricing, now that is reserved for New Yorkers only – end of an era, I suppose) and also the continuation of the Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination, an exhibit of the museum’s Costume Institute set in its medieval galleries.

Since I hadn’t been up to the Cloisters in so long, I made the trek (hint: take the A train rather than the M4 bus if you don’t want to be travelling forever, even though people watching out the bus window is fun) and can say that it was probably the strongest part of the exhibit. I’m pitching an article on the exhibit so I’ll leave it there for now to avoid repeating myself, though if the article doesn’t find a home I’ll post it here later.