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.
Because it is so cold still, I continue to try and to find new and interesting things to do indoors with J, who is now 2 and 3 months. I’ve taken him to the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum a couple of times now. It hosts free toddler classes but they are in Harlem. The actual museum is on 91st Street at 5th Avenue, where it is housed in the enormous, grand mansion that was originally built for the philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie. It’s a beautiful site undergoing massive renovation and is due to re-open later this year. In the meantime, it has moved its educational activities to a modern space on 110th Street overlooking the north end of Central Park. The contrast between the two locations couldn’t be any more stark. Even at 91st Street, 5th Avenue is smart and the park well used. Go up another 20 or so streets and you are in Harlem proper. It feels different and looks different with the large, daunting correctional facility looming over the newly refurbished playground in the park.
This end of the park is also home to a huge statue of Duke Ellington. I am embarrassed to confess I only noticed it today – not sure how I missed it as it’s got to be 30 feet tall. He stands proud on the north eastern corner of the park, in the middle of a roundabout. He stands next to his piano and looks like he’s commanding the traffic going down 5th Avenue. Underneath the plinth he stands on are a number of naked ladies who hold him in place.
I’m sure in the summer it looks good, with the trees in their full green finery, but ultimately this isn’t a great area and not one you’d see any but the most dedicated music enthusiast visit. It’s not one you’d want to hang around in, anyway. Here are some pics from three different vantage points, whilst I was trying not to be run over or lose J; they should give you an idea of the size and setting and to save you the trip.
I’m getting used to running in minus temperatures. It’s bloody hard to start with, but once you get going, you warm up a bit and with just my face exposed to the elements, I’m covered from head to toe. Running along the streets, it’s cold and sunless, despite the fact that I know it is a beautiful sunny day and not a cloud in the sky. I pop out on to Fifth Avenue and breath a sigh of relief as the light returns and the pristine snow of Central Park beckons. It is lovely.
The 6 mile inner loop road used by runners is clear but the bordered by walls of snow. Vast swathes of the park are just covered in a blanket of white snow and everyone just seems quite happy. I run the bottom half of the loop road from north to south, all the way past the ice rink at 61st Street which looks great in this weather. Too cold to hang out at the reservoir for some stretching today, so I tootle back down to Fifth Avenue and the sun disappears in the shade of the tall buildings of Manhattan.
I pause at Park Avenue as I just miss the lights and am faced with a wall of photographers and TV cameras camped out in the central reservation of Park Avenue. What’s this? I quickly realise it’s the funeral of the actor Philip Seymour Hoffman. It’s not yet started, but the press are out in force, flanked by many NYPD officers. In the few minutes I wait for the lights, I see no one arrive but the anticipation is great and they clearly expect Hollywood stars to appear at some point to pay their last respects.
The lights change and then I’m off. It’s a surreal pause in my journey today, where sun, snow and sadness mingle together in the freezing streets of New York.
I was running in Central Park yesterday and came across a large circle of red snails. After checking my lenses were in and that I wasn’t hallucinating, I could see that they were about 6 feet tall and about the same in width. What on earth are they doing there?
So J and I went and had a closer look earlier today. It’s another bonkers art installation in New York. This time it’s a red snail invasion from Florida. You’d think in the winter they’d want to stay in warmer climes, but no, they hanging out in Central Park, around 72nd Street on the east side, if you fancy a visit. They are here courtesy of the Villa Firenze Foundation and here until 5th December when they decamp to Columbus Circle for Christmas.
This is Short Triangle. It is outside Court Square subway station in Long Island City, Queens. It is owned and maintained by the New York City Parks Department. It is not a park. If it was, it would be named Tiny Triangle (not really a park, but a bit of soil with a shrubbery) Park. Hardly worthy of a name, let alone a sign.
See?
For many Upper East Siders the thought of going much beyond 86th Street on the East Side is anathema. Park Avenue drops off massively as it flows north through Manhattan and Fifth Avenue is a very different place once it’s not bounded by Central Park on its west side. The boutiques of Madision Avenue are long gone once you cross over 90th Street. This is Harlem. Harlem is full of amazing brownstones that, had they been twenty or more blocks south would be worth a small fortune. Here, around 125th Street they are unloved and empty.
I am here to explore Marcus Garvey Park. I spotted it on the map above the very top of Central Park and went to take a look. I had experienced 125th Street on the way to La Guardia a while ago: it’s a cacophony of street noise, buses, music, shouting and a major transport hub for the 4,5,6 trains and Metro North.
Here, below around 123rd Street is the park. Originally created in 1840 and called Mount Morris Park, it was renamed Marcus Garvey Park in the 1970s after a Jamaican political leader, active in New York politics but who died in London in 1940.
It’s a funny place. It’s 20 acres, so not huge. It contains an amphitheatre for open air performances; a large open air swimming pool and a vast sports area. It has a rocky hill in the middle made of Manhattan rock called ‘schist’. Looks pretty nice from the photograph below, eh?
I’m afraid the reality is rather different. On it’s northern side are two run down kids playgrounds. I take J in but only because I see another mother with her three little boys there too. She makes me brave enough to go in, past the milling people, hanging out on the benches in the morning. Why are they there? Some are from the old people’s home opposite but some are too young. They look bored and listless but they are uninterested in us.
I ask this mother how I can find the Fire Watchtower that I had read about. She points to an internal road sloping up but warns me about drug ‘transactions’ and I am conflicted about going up. I had come here to see it and she thought, as do I mostly, that people pretty much ignore women with kids and buggies, so I’d probably be ok. And I was. I saw the odd character milling about but no one bothered me.
We reach the top of the hill and the Fire Watchtower is run down and unloved too. It originates from the 1850s when Manhattan had eight volunteer fire districts and each one its own watchtower. They are vast iron structures with a bell in the middle. In their time, they would have been ‘manned’ constantly, with the watcher looking for signs of fire and ringing the bell to alert the volunteer firefighters down below. Later in the century the New York Fire Department was created with permanent full time firefighters and there was no longer a need for the watchtower as communications developed over time.
There is a lovely website all about this, but it really doesn’t tell you quite how sad it looks behind its high fencing with rubbish strewn around.
We wander back down through the park and into the noise of Harlem below. Watching over Harlem – at least it was quiet up there.
A glorious sunny day and I take J to Battery Park. This is the park at the very tip of Manhattan, the place where everyone goes to get their boat out to see the Statue of Liberty. It is rammed with tourists but poor old Battery Park is still looking worse for wear many months after the devastation of Hurricane Sandy. Much of the park is cordoned off but there’s lots of activity going on to reconstruct it back to its former glory.
The park is host to many statues and at least two war memorials. The memorial to those who died in the Korean War (1950-53) is relatively new, having been erected in 1991 and is impressively modern. We were there for some time and very few people wandered over to this corner of the park, which was a shame, because it’s very thought provoking and a close look at the flags at the base of the memorial reveals some intricate mosaics.
I was so impressed I wanted to share it here. The first photo is the actual memorial, which is huge, you can tell from the size of the surrounding trees. Then below I have photographed three of the many paving slabs which come out from the memorial, like rays of a sun, to show how many countries were involved and how many men died, were wounded and those who were missing. The numbers for the US and for Korea are way in excess of anything I would have guessed.
Yes, a green macaw, just hanging out in a tree in our local park. I ignore the protestations of E and her friend, when I humour them that ‘yes, dear, now off you go’, in a bid to continue an conversation without small children. Later, intrigued, we wander across the grassy part of the park and yes, there it is. A macaw, Chilling out on a deck chair next to a 60 something lady. ‘You bring him here everyday, do you?’, I ask, in an attempt to hide my bemusement at seeing someone in the park with a macaw. ‘Only on the weekends’ she replies. The bird goes nuts when a toddler gets too close and the owners say ‘he bites, get him away!’ Apparently he likes small girls, so he is happy when E is cooing over him and he’s saying ‘hello’ and other greetings. I ask them how they get him to the park, as I can see no cage or similar device. He sits on her shoulder and she walks to the park wih him. They talk like it’s the most normal thing in the world. NO IT’S NOT! Well, maybe it is in NYC but not in NW3, that’s for sure.
Ah, I hear you say, but America wasn’t really around in medieval times. Sure, that’s true, but it doesn’t stop NYC from importing treasures from Europe and displaying them in a made up castle in the far reaches of north Manhattan. I kept seeing reference to the Cloisters in tourist blurb and at the Metropolitan Museum but couldn’t quite imagine what it meant. So on a hot and sunny day earlier this week J and I ventured up the A line all the way to 190th Street, which is a very long way away. And naturally it also involved a ridiculous amount of stairs, curses to you stairs, but I think my arms are rather more sculpted than they used to be, so I shouldn’t complain, really.
John D. Rockefeller Jr funded the Cloisters that emerged from the grounds of Fort Tryon Park in the 1930s. An architect called Charles Collens designed the building to look a bit like a medieval monastery and actually included relics into the construction and I think he did a pretty good job. It’s the home of the medieval collection of the Metropolitan Museum. The cloisters themselves are tranquil and beautifully landscaped and great fun to tootle round if you are 20 months old but hopeless if you are the mother of the 20 month old trying to keep him off the plants, climbing the walls and stopping him from falling into the gardens 20 feet below. But besides that the interior is great if you like looking at really old stuff, medieval stuff isn’t really my thing, but we did get to see the 1930s bowels of the building as we got special dispensation to use the original staff lift to go back up to the entrance – too many stairs. Again.
Fort Tryon Park is a revelation. Snuggled next to the Hudson River, which is very wide at this point, it is an almost tropical haven from the density of the rest of Manhattan. It was hard to believe we were still on the island at all. I doubt many tourists get this far, but on a sunny, hot day, it’s well worth the trip.
nw3 to nyc 