nw3 to nyc

Observations on moving my family across the Atlantic


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Fabulous Frick

I don’t think there are many people who’d know about the Frick Collection when they visit New York as a tourist. It’s not on the usual tourist trails despite being just down the road from the more glamorous Met on Fifth Avenue. I have to confess the only reason I knew about it was because I read somewhere that the Goldfinch painting by Fabritius was on display there and as I’d read the Donna Tartt book all about it, I went to have a look.

Seems I wasn’t the only one. I went just before Christmas but I read today in the New York Times that by the time the show ends on Sunday over 235,000 people will have done the same. This is nearly double the visitor numbers they had for their last successful exhibition. Most people went to see Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, which is impressive but doesn’t look that much like Scarlett Johansen. Ha ha. The very small painting of a goldfinch chained to a metal bracket should look cruel but it is just lovely. Set against a dramatic red wall, it stands out beautifully and looks quite different from each vantage point. I was quite taken with it. I even bought a postcard. My photo is rubbish, so I haven’t put it on here, but the New York Times link above shows it well.

The Frick Collection itself is quite a find. Henry Clay Frick  commissioned the impressive mansion overlooking Fifth Avenue at the beginning of the 20th Century with a view to him living there and giving it to the city on his death. He housed his magnificent art collection there and today you trip over Rembrandt, Turner and all manner of well known artists as you walk around the austere interior. It’s a bit like being in Chatsworth House in Derbyshire (or the set of Downton Abbey), he was inspired by English stately homes and it shows.

One big difference with the Frick Collection is that they ban the under 10s. I was unimpressed by this initially but having visited it I can see why. There are no barriers anywhere, nothing to stop grubby hands and curious toddlers from leaving their mark. So for a child free zone and some respite from busy New York, take a look, even though the Dutch masters will be on their way back to the Netherlands very soon.


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Not everyone in England lives in an abbey

There has been much excitement here in the US at the prospect of a new series of Downton Abbey. The New York Times devoted an entire broadsheet page to previewing the new series. It shows on PBS here, which is a peculiar public channel that I think pretty much everyone gets. On our RCN cable package it shows up as something called Masterpiece, so when you search for it on TIVO (our version of Sky+) it doesn’t show up. It was only by chance I found it on the listings. I have been asked so many times whether I am watching Downton Abbey. I am very glad to say that yes I am, because I had already seen the first three series in the UK and was peeved to have to wait until January to see series 4 when it had already finished showing in the UK.

I do have to remind people that not everyone lives like that – it is set nearly a hundred years ago, for a start; and I am not landed gentry. Well, I grew up on a  farm, but that’s not quite the same. I have to say though, seeing it now after being here for over a  year, it is lovely. I even find myself talking just a bit posher afterwards. And they show Sherlock on the same channel. Now that’s good TV and you don’t need the BBC iPlayer to see it. Bliss.


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Nelson Mandela slept there

So in the cold wastes of New York, I find myself in the same bedroom that once saw Nelson Mandela and other dignitaries who visited the Mayor of New York. The official residence of the Mayor is called Gracie Mansion and it’s only a few blocks from our apartment. It was built in 1799 but has only been the home the Mayors of New York since 1945; prior to that was mostly in private hands.It’s pretty fancy inside, having been lovingly restored under Bloomberg’s watch, but he never lived there, preferring his much fancier town house on 79th Street by Central Park. The new Mayor, Bill de Blasio, is moving in soon, so the tour that I went on today is unlikely to continue much longer. Good timing from me, then.

I did wonder why de Blasio would want to move from super trendy Park Slope in Brooklyn to Gracie Mansion. It’s right next to the FDR, which is a really busy road running down the east side of Manhattan. It does have great views of the East River, but then so does our apartment and we don’t have to look at cars racing by all day. It’s basically a creaky floored old museum, stuffed to rafters with old furniture and fittings either on loan or given by previous residents.

It’s amusing to see the graffiti in the glass made by the children of previous Mayors, when everything else looks so perfect. Good job de Blasio’s kids are in their late teens, because I wouldn’t put a toddler anywhere near that place. Even the tour guides made us cling to the bannister when going up the grand staircase, as health and safety went safely mad in there. Not sure it would be a comfy place to chill out and watch the telly, but then again, if you’re the Mayor of New York, maybe you’re just a bit too busy.

Take a look for yourself at the Gracie Mansion website.


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We appear to be in an episode of Star Trek

Yes, that’s right, we are in a Polar Vortex. No, I hadn’t heard of it either, but according to ABC News this morning, the reason it is so bitterly cold here today is because of a weather condition called a Polar Vortex. There’s a funky video of this on their website showing this loop of cold weather that normally hangs out in Canada but has been pushed down to the northern parts of the US by the Gulf Stream and we are not doing well as a result. Of course the news here talks in Fahrenheit, so I have to keep translating to Celsius. At the moment in New York it is minus 15 Celsius which is about 5 Fahrenheit. But there’s a wind chill so the temperatures on the streets feel much colder. The only consolation is that it’s much colder elsewhere in the US. Brrrrr. Wrap up warm today.


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The prawn hierarchy

In the UK we say ‘prawn’, in the US they say ‘shrimp’. Fair enough. I am used to this. In the UK they generally come in small plastic boxes with cellophane lids and cost about 3 quid, depending if Sainsbury’s has an offer on at the time. Occasionally you see them raw and grey, but mostly people buy them cooked and pink. In New York, in Fairway’s of course, they have fresh shrimp, cooked or raw. They aren’t the same size as those in Sainsbury’s, they are huge. The smallest ones are called Extra Large; the next size up is Jumbo. Normally that’s it, there’s no medium sized, or just right sized, or small (nothing is small). No, today, we were offered Colossal shrimp. Colossal? Really? I mean they were quite large and I would have been terrified to cook them, but colossal? Honestly, what’s wrong with small, medium and large?


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A different kind of familiarity

Returning to the UK for Christmas and New Year proved to me how much I love the UK. Even though it was mostly wet, mostly grey and dark, it was home. The familiarity of language, accents and culture all came flooding home. And in the most peculiar places. The services on the M1, where the woman behind the counter in Starbucks just said ‘hi, what would you like?’ No asking me how I am, having to ask back and them move on to the transaction. No standing in line, no being called  ‘a guest’, when I am a customer. And lots and lots of ‘cheers’ when concluding any  transaction. Ah, how nice.

I never thought I’d say this, but going into Marks and Spencer was great! Even though the one I went into was a bit rubbish and small, it just felt so British, so familiar. Given that practically every British person owns some M&S underwear, it seemed rude not to get some. And then there’s the classic M&S Cherry Genoa Cake. I love fruit cake and this is the best. Having devoured my mother in law’s one, I went to find another and was sadly disappointed. All gone. So I consoled myself with a packet of 6 mince pies, reduced to 50p (about a dollar). Bargain. I love mince pies too. I should start a new business importing them into the US to replace their obsession with cup cakes.

I had such a lovely time catching up with family and friends, I almost didn’t want to come back to New York. But the funny thing was when we got here (in a treacherous taxi journey in the driving snow from  JFK airport), it all looked so familiar, so normal, that it was good to be home.

Happy New Year to all my lovely readers. Only 18 months to go!


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Apparently we speak the same language

Update: This competition closed on 20 December. I came 3rd in the US bloggers section, so thanks for all the comments!

I felt inspired to enter a competition to share my expat experience. I have written a top tips post which was published on the Expats Blog website yesterday. Take a look using the link below, you may see some common themes from things I’ve written about before and some new observations. If you have a moment, leave a comment and tell others what you think. Thanks!

http://www.expatsblog.com/contests/786/apparently-speak-same-language-9-ways-to-get-along-in-new-york-city

blog-award-2013-entry-150


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What to do in minus 2 when you’re 2

Gawd it’s cold today. Clear sky and well below zero with a cutting wind when you least expect it. Here is my guide for what to do when it’s blooming cold and you have a fractious 2 year old:

  1. Take him to an indoor gym class but make sure you’ve been before and he doesn’t have a massive melt down because he can’t rampage where he wants; this lasts ten minutes and you have to leave.
  2. Trek down to the Central Park Zoo with your trusty annual pass; a dead cert for an hour’s entertainment in the children’s petting zoo.  Today it’s your own private zoo because no bugger else is mad enough to be there. Spend 50 cents on some animal pellets to feed the goats and bribe them out of their warm sheds. Leave after 15 minutes including bathroom break where you have to tear him away from playing with the taps in the toddler sized sinks.
  3. Move on to the main zoo and check out the ducks and attempt to see the penguins inside their dark room, but freak out your 2 year old with the too dark room and leave with him in tears. Console him with seeing the seals being fed but fail because all he wants to do is get back in the buggy and be grumpy.
  4. Wrest straps onto your 2 year old and bundle up short of suffocating him to ensure he doesn’t freeze on the trek home. Walk through Central Park in the glorious December sunshine, waiting for the warmth to appear in your frozen fingers. Think happy thoughts about hot tea and sitting reading the paper when he’s asleep.
  5. He’s fallen asleep. It’s just gone midday and you are near the Met so take a gamble and put thoughts of reading the paper to the back of your mind for an hour’s browsing without stressing out whether your 2 year old will knock over some priceless antiquity.
  6. Check out the Carlo Scarpa Venetian glass exhibition and marvel at the fact you actually found it in the Met because it is so buried in the bowels of the place. Gaze admiringly at the incredible work of this artist and curb your urge to touch everything because it’s so wonderfully tactile (it’s stuck behind glass, which helps with the restraint). Take photos and get told off. Try not to forget to wheel the buggy as you go so as to prevent having a 2 year old as a bomb risk (especially thinking of this as you are far into Donna Tartt’s new book ‘The Goldfinch’ which is partly based in the Met and is a great read).
  7. And finally, with your 2 year old still asleep and still breathing, wander home via Dean and Deluca to get that well deserved luxury lunch to munch at home.

 

I should write guide books.


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Why so popular?

I remember in Sex and the City when they visited a restaurant called Balthazar. I presume it had just opened back then and it is still going strong. It is hugely popular and rammed pretty much all the time. It’s downtown on Spring Street, which is prime SoHo and a great shopping area.

And yes, it was rammed when we went too. It was hard to even get in the door there were so many people packed into the tiny waiting area.  Once we’d worked out who was doing what and whether we were queue jumping (you don’t want a pissed off New Yorker yelling at you because you jumped the ‘line’) we were told we had to wait. We made our way carefully to the bar – in danger of running into a waiter bearing plates or stumbling into the lap of some poor sod who got the worst table in the place right next to the door.

It’s kind of a French brasserie in side and all Christmassy looking at the moment. I expect if you did a straw poll you’d actually find very few actual New Yorkers in there. I saw lots of shopping bags, ladies in groups looking very excited and a slightly out of place group of young lads in school ties, or something like that. So glad we went without E and J, there were no kids in there under 10.

I’m not sure it’s entirely necessary to have a lady in the toilets hand you a paper towel when the dispenser is right next to you and New Yorkers are clean freaks so this kind of goes against the grain of the ‘don’t touch anything’ mentality. But I did like the fact that in the spirit of its French vibe, they had a fancy ‘Toilettes’ sign high up on the wall but had to have an explanatory ‘restrooms’ in modern type below it, just in case.

The food is good, they specialise in steak and chips, which is always a winner. It’s not cheap, so probably more of a treat kind of place. Even if eating that in the middle of the afternoon seemed a bit decadent, it’s a bit like time isn’t relevant, you can’t see outside, it could be any time of day.

Just think about the operation behind this place with hundreds of diners there from pretty much 6am to midnight seven days a week. The New York Times did a great behind the scenes piece on them which is well worth reading. Makes you appreciate that steak just that bit more.

It reminds me of the Wolseley in London, which is on Piccadilly and based in an old car showroom. They don’t have such an obvious Parisian brasserie thing going on, but it’s always rammed in there too and for good comfort food at odd times of day, it’s well worth trying.

And no, I have no clue why it’s so popular.


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Nevermore

It’s been an interesting time of contrast for me in the last couple of weeks. I had been keenly anticipating visiting two particular exhibitions, one on the 100th anniversary of the famous Armory Show of 1913 and one of the writings of Edgar Allan Poe. Now that I write it like that, it does sound a bit dull, but they weren’t. Honest.

Please excuse poor quality of photos here, both taken surreptitiously as cameras were banned. The one below is of the original 1913 poster for the show.

armory poster

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The New York Historical Society is on the Upper West Side, it’s next to the American Museum of Natural History in a grand building overlooking Central Park around 77th street. I’d not heard of it before I came here, but when I read about the exhibition I was excited to see it. I wanted to learn about how Americans viewed art from Europe when it was exhibited here for sale for the first time on the eve of the First World War. It was the first time mass audiences had seen artists like Van Gogh, Gauguin and Duchamps. Art that didn’t look like real things or real people was pretty radical back then. It’s a great exhibition and the catalogue is a monster at over 500 pages, weighing a tonne just for the paperback. Out of around 1300 works only 250sih were sold at a value of $1.6 million in today’s money. Incredible.

poe

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Further downtown is the Morgan Library and Museum. Again, not really on your tourist trail, but hugely accessible from Grand Central Station or Penn Station and on a glorious block on prime Madison Avenue at 36th street. The one-time home of Pierpoint Morgan, financial whizz and owner of great wealth, he was a voracious collector and amassed an enormous and eclectic collection of art, literature and artefacts from all over the world. Subject to a recent refurbishment, the Morgan Library and the modern building that now surrounds it are well worth a visit.

I spent a good hour looking at the Poe exhibition and whilst small, it was filled with his original writings mostly drawn from the Morgan collection. Seeing how neat his writing was made me realise what a lost art penmanship really is today. Reading Poe’s most famous poem, The Raven, in the original newspaper that it was first published in is a real treat. Seeing a letter from Charles Dickens, his contemporary, writing to him about his work gave me a real thrill (the manuscript for A Christmas Carol is currently on display as well). You’ll need your glasses to read this lot as the room is darkly lit and the walls a rich burgundy colour adding to the gothic theme.

That’s my amateur review but actually, what I really want to share is how different these places are in terms of customer experience. The New York Historical Society is full of security guards who ignore you and look sullen and make you feel uncomfortable. Their policy about bags is laughable and the abuse the cloakroom staff were taking for not letting hand bags in was fairly unpleasant. For the Armory Show they don’t even let you take a buggy in – but you can take your marauding 2 year old with you… I didn’t, but let’s re-think that one, NYHS.

Let me contrast this to the Morgan Library. What a delight. The staff are lovely. They greet you with a good morning and they are incredibly helpful but understated in their presence. The ambience is welcoming, the building beautiful and light and filled with fabulous treasures from the Booker prize exhibition, showing how book design has changed since the 1960s, to the drawings of Da Vinci, to Venetian glass, to Poe.

Poe wrote about a Raven and its constant refrain of ‘nevermore’. For me, it’s more Morgan and nevermore NYHS.