nw3 to nyc

Observations on moving my family across the Atlantic

Category Archives: Environment


by Leave a comment

Welcome back, Met

As long as we’ve lived in New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has been surrounded by hoardings, covering up the work being done to reconstruct the space in front of the museum , which runs along 5th Avenue from 79th Street to 84th Street. It was pretty ugly, made the pavement very narrow in places and it was filthy to navigate in the depths of winter.

This week it was finally over. The front of the Met has been revealed and it looks beautiful. The David H. Koch Plaza is clean, simply laid out and resplendent with circular fountains and rows of bright red umbrellas providing welcome respite from the fierce New York sun.

Walking south along 5th Avenue outside the Met

Unfortunately they didn’t get rid of the ugly looking fast food vendors that line up along the pavement and pollute the air with their smoky cooking. Have a look and see what you think.

Walking north along 5th Avenue outside the Met

Walking north along 5th Avenue outside the Met

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


by Leave a comment

The $1.4 billion garbage bill

I’ve often wondered where all the rubbish goes in New York. On Saturday mornings, the streets around here are lined with rubbish bags and waste waiting to be picked up. The streets smell really bad until the ‘garbage’ trucks turn up. I usually go for my run then and I have to breathe through my mouth the whole way to avoid the smell. Friday night detritus is everywhere, pizza boxes galore along with some less salubrious leftovers.

To be fair to the DSNY (the New York City Department of Sanitation) they seem to take pretty much anything. People leave all sorts of crap out and it’s gone within hours. Each week the Department picks up 50,000 tonnes of curbside rubbish. I did try to find out where it all goes, but it was a long and complex explanation, suffice to say Manhattan is an island so it trundles off by boat from Marine Waste Transfer Stations. Where it goes from there, who knows!

I did find out that there are 6,000 uniformed workers and a vast array of vehicles:

  • 2,230 collection trucks
  • 450 mechanical street sweepers
  • 275 specialized collection trucks
  • 365 salt/sand spreaders
  • 298 front end loaders, and
  • 2,360 various other support vehicles

The New York Times did a great article yesterday, providing an insight into the life of a garbage truck worker and the training they have to go through. And I was stunned to see the cost of it: $1.4 billion. Wow. It’s well worth a read.


by Leave a comment

What you need to know about Fire Island

  1. Confirm that it is indeed an island, but it is not on fire.
  2. Prepare for your journey using Google Maps which says it is supposed to be 1 hour and 15 minutes by car from the Upper East Side. That is a lie, it is at least 2 hours (see below for exception).
  3. Choose one of the many beaches (Robert Moses Beach); you have to park in a ‘Field’, which has no grass and is actually a car park.
  4. Accept that it is unbelievably busy on a Sunday in August but at 28 degrees and not a cloud in the sky, you just don’t care.
  5. Queue for a very long time to get a cold drink to supplement your fabulous home made picnic lunch and wonder at the woman in front of you who returns soon after receiving her fries and chicken wings to complain they are so salty, they are inedible.
  6. Remember quite quickly that taking a nearly 3 year old to the beach is hard work and quite frankly the risk of losing him is pretty high, so dress him in the brightest rash top possible and hope for the best.
  7. Marvel at the water which is lovely and almost warm, but becomes a bit full on later in the day as the tide changes.
  8. Fail to find your Zip Car because it is black and nondescript and you haven’t remembered to find a reference point in the enormous car park, so wander for quite a while trying to manhandle your toddler before he ends up under a car.
  9. Locate the car and exit with half the beach in the boot (err, trunk), drive off in search of pizza at the other end of the island having smugly looked up on Yelp and other sites for the best pizza. Grind to a halt as there is an accident on the only bridge to and from the island and sit there for an hour waiting for the emergency services to leave.
  10. Drive gleefully in the opposite direction to the hideous amounts of traffic that have built up since the crash on the bridge and then find that the road on Google Maps stops half way and you can’t go any further because there’s some kind of nature reserve or whatever and the ROAD DOES NOT EXIST.
  11. Glumly join the end of the traffic that you could have avoided and spend the next hour waiting to get back on that bridge and drive home.
  12. Count the number of men peeing into the bushes on the side of the road because the traffic jam lasted so long.
  13. Attack what’s left of that fabulous picnic, because there’s nowhere to eat dinner and everyone’s starving.
  14. Arrive home nearly 4 hours after leaving the beach. Humph.


by Leave a comment

$8,000 bench

If you have have been to New York and walked in Central Park, you are very likely to have sat on a bench for a bit of a rest. It’s 800 acres of loveliness, same size as Hampstead Heath in NW3: yet another wonderful coincidence. I was using a bench earlier today to do tricep dips in a vain attempt to combat bingo wings. I am a lady of a certain age and anything I can do to stop my upper arms wobbling is worth a try.

Anyhow, I’m huffing and puffing and trying to recover from running in ridiculously humid New York when a man in a van stops by. He’s from the Parks department according to the words on the side of the van he is the man who sorts out the benches . Adopting a bench is a programme of the Women’s Committee of the Central Park Conservancy. He looks pretty well kitted out for the job with brown leatherish apron and a drill in the his hand. I watch him examine each bench in turn and then he focuses on mine. What’s wrong, I wonder? Have I ruined the bench’s aesthetic with my sweaty bum? No, apparently not. He is there to switch the silver plate that dedicates to the bench to someone who loved the park. Seems like a nice thing to do and not uncommon in other parks, other cities and other countries.

A man stops by and talks to the parks fella and asks how much it costs to get a plaque on the bench. “$8,000, sir”. The man, clearly not expecting this, looks amazed, slightly crestfallen, and wanders off. The parks man explains to me, because I am still nearby, cluttering up the place, that you get the bench for life and it’s a small price to pay to help with the upkeep of the park. I’m fairly sympathetic to this and agree with a sweaty nod; I bet there are lots of fancy New Yorkers to give them the cash for more benches in the future. Don’t think I’ll get one dedicated to me and my triceps, not quite how I want New York to remember me.


by Leave a comment

New York smells

Now this isn’t just a random insult, it’s more an observation brought on by an article in yesterday’s New York Times. “Don’t turn up your nose at the city in the summer” is written by an academic from the University of Sheffield in the UK. Victoria Henshawe, who talks about the history of New York through smell in this article, conducts ‘smell walks’ of cities around the world. This may be a rather odd occupation, but I was taken by her article and carried out my own experiment earlier today.

I walked 6 blocks south and one avenue across and back another 6 streets to our apartment. I only breathed through my nose the whole way. This is hard. It is warm today, about 29 degrees, sunny with a bit of cloud with a reasonable breeze heading north up the avenues. This is what I found:

  • heat has a smell but I can’t put my finger on it
  • the obsession that some people have for hosing down the pavement in front of their buildings leaves an odd, damp smell, a bit like a damp dog
  • and that when that water forms in pools and goes a bit stagnant, it smells rank in the heat
  • rubbish bins smell horrible in the heat
  • the wafts of deodorant and perfume from what seem to be freshly washed pedestrians aren’t too bad when carried on the wind
  • blasts of diesel and other fuels from the constant traffic are horrible and unavoidable
  • and pizza parlours smell lovely.

Summer in the city. And it’s only June.


by Leave a comment

The Bronx is Burning

More like I was burning. It was so hot today, nearly 30 degrees on the unofficial first day of summer in New York. We were intrepid and headed up to the far northern end of the 6 line, way up in the Bronx, to visit Orchard Beach. This is a wide arc of sand just off Pelham Bay Park, which is New York’s largest park. It’s nothing like its posh cousin, Central Park. It’s a bit more like Epping Forest than Hyde Park, if you like a London comparison. I think every resident of the Bronx and us decided to visit the beach today, which is Memorial Day.

In the UK you got a bank holiday today too, the usual end of May one that coincides with a week off school. Here, Memorial Day is huge. It’s ostensibly about remembering those who served their country, but in reality it’s a day off with an excuse to go to the beach if it’s hot, or take advantage of the vast amounts of sales going on in the various large department stores.

I’m not sure I’d recommend Pelham Bay Park as a tourist destination. It could do with a bit of TLC, a lot of litter clearance and more taxis. It is a long way out and if you want to get anywhere, you have to use the bus. Most of the time the buses are air conditioned to chill factor minus 100 but today, packed to the gills with mostly nearly naked beach goers, it was sweltering. I was hot. Very hot. Poor J, he ended up in the luggage rack, there was so little room to move. E held on to a pole for dear life and I did wonder if one of us might end up going through the windscreen there were so many people at the front of the bus.

The beach was pretty good and long enough at 1.1 miles to compete with the Brooklyn Bridge in length and volume of people on a busy day. When it was originally conceived in the 1930s it was known as the New York Riviera. It has a once grand pavilion, complete with tall columns and a certain art deco feel. But now, it’s unloved, boarded up and pretty much falling apart. What a shame there’s been no investment in it. Although to be honest, I think the New York Parks Department should spend some money and focus on sorting out the toilets first because they are awful.


by Leave a comment

S is for Scarecrow and Socrates

Scarecrow is the name of the new installation in the Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens. It’s by a Lithuanian artist called Zilvinas Kampinas and I’m quite obsessed by it as I can see it every day from our apartment. I watched them install it and last week we visited it when it opened to the public on 11 May.

More bonkers art, I’m afraid. It’s two S-shaped curved lines of high metal poles stuck in the soil. On top of each pole is a metal ribbon which is attached to its opposite number. Bit like a washing line. But lots of them. And they move. The vibrate in the wind and make eerie sounds, like a load of pigeons has descended. They catch the sunlight beautifully and when the morning sun catches them in the morning, it’s a lovely sight to start the day.

I like it so much, I’ll be back. And they have a great bubble ice tea place on the way from the subway station, so even more reason to go.

See what you think:

IMG_1744

scarecrow2

 


by Leave a comment

Where Fifth Avenue begins

Washington Square Park

It’s rather odd standing under the arch in Washington Square Park staring up Fifth Avenue as cars come straight at you but turn right to go around the park. This is the source of Fifth Avenue. What a great place to put a massive great arch dedicated to the first President of the United States. I think he would have been impressed.

Washington Square Park is not square, it’s rectangular; it’s not much of a park because it’s mostly paved over with criss crossing pavements and a great big fountain, but it is named after George Washington. It’s also surrounded by New York University and filled with students.

I sat for a while in the park, the first time I have been able to read outside without freezing whilst J snoozes away in the buggy. The cacophony of noise is impressive: sirens wailing, cars revving, car horns beeping, people chattering, saxophone wailing, babies wailing, birds tweeting and of course dogs barking. It’s somehow a welcome respite from egg hunting, where I have explored from Chinatown via Little Italy into SoHo and down through Greenwich Village. What a fabulous way to explore New York City. Let’s leave all the eggs in place so that all visitors can discover New York this way too.


by Leave a comment

Clouds in Central Park

Check out this quirky temporary artwork by Olaf Breuning which is currently residing at the bottom of Central Park, opposite the Apple Store and the Plaza. “Clouds”  is nearly 35 feet high, the clouds are made of aluminium and the supports are made of steel. It is here courtesy of the Public Art Fund, which funds public art across the city and has been doing this since 1977. I quite like it, but I’m not entirely sure I agree with the description of the art that appears on an sign nearby:

“Clouds dramatically transforms the skyline of the park into a playful fictional tableau, inviting us to experience the stage-like quality of a New York City street with a new sense of wonder and possibility.”

Err, ok.

clouds 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

clouds 3

 


by Leave a comment

Seen today

In Central Park:

1. A man running bare foot. But wearing a hat and gloves!? It is minus 2 degrees Celsius with a bitter Easterly wind. It was not the man I had seen previously who ran literally in just his shorts. 

2. A man juggling whilst running. I have seen him before, he’s quite old and favours wearing bright orange. 

3. A woman wearing a hooded fur coat which was so large she looked like a yeti from behind. 

That is all.