nw3 to nyc

Observations on moving my family across the Atlantic


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A hierarchy of gourmet

Gourmet must be the most overused word in New York. The corner shops selling everything claim to be gourmet, the pizza joints do the same. But there really is a hierarchy of food here. It starts with the independent deli, ubiquitous and fairly generic, selling sandwiches, bagels etc. Then there are the supermarkets, starting with Gristedes, which has been around since 1888 and here is open 24 hours, great for a quick in and out to get odds and sods. D’Agostino around since 1932 is ok, but a bit over priced. Morton Williams, founded in 1946, is similar but so tightly packed with goods it is a real challenge with a buggy, especially on Tuesdays when seniors get their ten per cent discount. My regular haunt is Fairways, huge, with great fresh produce and big on organic. The Food Emporium is similar, but I rarely go in as it is hidden by the horror of the Second Avenue subway construction works. I did go to Trader Joe’s once, out of my way, but as so many people had raved about it I went and had a look. I didn’t think it was anything special, especially the queues, so long they have someone specifically to indicate the end of the queue with a white paddle saying ‘end of the line’.

Then you change to the fancy specialist supermarkets cum deli shops. This is where the true meaning of gourmet comes to life. There’s Eli’s and its West Side relation, Zabar’s. Wonderful cheese counters, great on Jewish food but hefty on price – definitely treat territory. Agata and Valentina is a real favourite: mouth watering cakes and the best liquorice all sorts. There is also Citarella with its famous fish counter – don’t count on much change here.

And top of the hierarchy? It has to be Dean and Deluca. It is incredible. Located on Madison Avenue and very close to Central Park and the Met, its clientele don’t need to look at the prices. It has amazing cakes, bread and the best sushi I have had so far. Its white understated bags undersell quite how expensive and upmarket this place is. When you see the local private school girls buying their lunch here, you know you are in Gossip Girl territory. Best not go in with a credit card and a post run appetite, that’s for sure. Now that really is gourmet.


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I don’t think we’re in Manhattan any more

There are five boroughs in New York, with Manhattan being the most well known. Staten Island suffered horribly in the Hurricane and is often forgotten as the island off the bottom of Manhattan. The Bronx is at the other end of Manhattan and whilst I have discovered there is a zoo and a botanical garden there (to be visited on warmer days) it still makes me think of scary New York of the 70s. Ed Koch, Mayor between 1978 and 1990 died recently and was credited with transformation of the Bronx and other run down parts of New York. This leaves Queens and Brooklyn. The latter is of course well known because the Beckhams called their eldest son after the borough – it’s certainly up and coming now, with Park Slope known as the nappy valley of New York.  I visited the Transit Museum today and got my first glance at Brooklyn. I only saw the civic parts around city hall and the MTA (transport authority) but it was a world apart from Manhattan. Lower built and more interesting to look at than the high rises of the Upper East Side. And as for Queens, well, I wouldn’t go there again unless there was a good reason. We went to Astoria, which is across the East River from the Upper East Side of Manhattan and it is pretty unloved and run down. The Museum of the Moving Image has been there for 20 years but it hasn’t led to any regeneration in the neighbourhood a la Tate Modern in London. The museum is great, hosting a computer games through the ages exhibit (or excuse for middle aged men to play with computer games dating back to their teens) and it did make me laugh to see the Wizard of Oz as part of the permanent exhibition, when the first thoughts I had when we emerged from the subway were “I don’t think we’re in Kansas any more, Toto”.


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Did you see the game?

This is the conversation of the day. No explanation needed, everyone is talking about the Super Bowl. I had never seen it before nor had any interest in its existence but you could not escape it here. Every bar, every cafe had some sign up encouraging people to watch it on the big screen, eat lots of junk food and drink beer. Even when I went for a run in Central Park early on Sunday morning there were reminders, as the fun run also going on in the park split a section of the road into the San Franciso 49ers and the Baltimore Ravens who were the competing teams. In honour of the great day, Animal Planet, a cable channel shows Puppy Bowl, which is in its 9th year. It is a mini American football field filled with puppies and goes on for two hours, over four quarters, just like the real Super Bowl. However after half an hour of ‘ahh, aren’t they cute’ it does get a bit samey. Although I did enjoy the hedgehog cheerleaders and the guinea pig commentators. I did watch the entire Super Bowl which started at 6.30 pm and went on until past 10.30, not helped by a power outage just after half time which the conspiracy theorists say gave the losing team time to recover and stage a come back. R explained the rules to me all the way through, quite how he knows all about this, I have no idea, but it did make a bit more sense that way. Because each play of American football is so short, it’s a great excuse to show lots and lots of adverts and because each break is variable in length, it’s hard to watch on time lapse, so I saw a lot. Beyonce strutted her stuff during the half time break and put on an impressive show, her legs seem to go on forever!  Oh, and Baltimore won. I put it down to their kit, so much nicer than the San Francisco ensemble of red and brown.


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Manners matter

My daughter’s old school in NW3 had a big thing about manners. It had the rules about good manners emblazoned on the walls of the dining hall and I have to say, I thought this was a real strength of the school. I’m British, I say ‘thank you’ and ‘please’ and ‘cheers’ a lot. No one says cheers in New York, it’s what marks me apart. I say thank you when someone gives way to me and my buggy on the pavement; I do the same when someone let’s me in a shop, holds open a door or does something nice. New Yorkers don’t. I am sort of getting used to it, but it does seem pretty rude when you give way, hold a door or whatever and you get nothing. And yet when I am in a lift (must remember to say elevator) and someone gets out they bid me ‘have a good day’. When I go in a shop, a cafe or anywhere in fact, I am always greeted with ‘hello, how are you?’ and it sounds sincere. I always respond ‘good, thank you’ and then swiftly move on to what I want, having failed to ask them the same. If I’m feeling New York enough I will respond with a ‘how are you?’ I have come to the conclusion that actually no one cares how I am, these are just words that are used to greet you, it’s just a bit of a verbal dance to get to the main attraction. I will keep trying to respond spontaneously and I think if I say ‘thank you’, ‘please’ and ‘cheers’ enough, someone may actually do the same.


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Bloomberg billions

I’ve been reading about Michael Bloomberg, the Mayor of New York. He is worth $25 billion! Blimey. Nice to see that he declined his salary and takes a notional dollar in payment.  He made his cash in financial information. He has just given Johns Hopkins University a multi million dollar gift which takes the total he has donated to his alma mater over $1 billion. Incredible isn’t it? Bill Gates had already given away $28 billion by 2007 and says he will give away 95 per cent of his fortune, so it looks like he’ll be donating many more billions over the years, given he’s only 57. Philanthropy is big here and goes back a long way. There’s Andrew Carnegie, born in Scotland in the 19th  Century, but who spent most of his life in the US, who gave away $350 million by the time he died in 1919, that’s $4.7 billion in today’s money. He gave loads to UK libraries, including a dozen built in London. Other big names include the Mellon family, the Rockefellers (not just for Christmas!) and Stanford. Most of their wealth seems to have gone to higher education and it’s no coincidence that universities here have massive endowments built up over centuries. The Mayor is up for re election later this year and it’s unlikely that Bloomberg would be able to run for a fourth time having changed the laws last time so that he could have a third go. I doubt the new Mayor will have quite so much cash, but you never know!


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Dear New York Times

I like your paper, I only buy it on a Sunday because the rest of the week I am fond of the New York Post and I don’t have time to read both of you. But there is one thing I really dislike about you. It is really irritating when you start an article on one page and then finish it off on another page. I understand when you do this on the front page of the main news section as there are lots of stories and it sort of makes sense. But in the Arts and Leisure section you start a review of the new TV show Americans on page 20, pause it half way down the page to then tell me to turn to page 23. The reason for this is another article on an actress called Brett Butler and this article ends with a request to turn to page 23 as well. So on page 23 we have the remnants of both articles. Just jiggle the page layout to get the articles to start and finish on the same page, please. Your current approach, which is littered throughout the paper, makes no sense.

Yours, nyc-newbie.


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Brrrr, it’s cold out there

I listen intently to Radio 4 on the Internet each day and follow the typical British response to the recent snow. Supermarket shelves emptied in a frenzy of panic buying, schools shutting and travel chaos. Same as usual then. You might think that it would be the same in New York but no. Here it is bitterly cold, temperatures last night went down to minus 9 degrees. I had considered going out for a pedicure last night until I realised I’d be walking back up the street in my sandals on the coldest night of the year so far and be in considerable danger of losing a toe. But still, there’s no snow and no chaos. The padded coats are out in force, everyone is in a big hurry to get out of the cold and in particular the wind. You can tell which direction it’s coming in because of the grid structure of the streets. Walk along the street and get knocked down by the wind then it’s East/West; walk down an avenue and get hit by the wind, then it’s North/South. But it’s deceptive when you’re in a warm apartment, high up, looking out at the blue sky, crystal clear and bright. Lovely. I am gratified that New Yorkers comment on the weather as much as British people do and even they think it’s cold.


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NYU sugar daddies

When I went to university it was free, in fact I got a grant to pay for accommodation and living expenses. It wasn’t much, but I did leave university with no debts. There were no tuition fees back then either. In last week’s New York Post, which is a bit like the Daily Mail crossed with the Sun, they were very excited at the high number of New York University students who had enrolled with a sugar-daddy dating site called seekingarrangement.com. The article is pretty superficial and full of comments from people who only gave their first name, probably out of sheer embarrassment. The Sugar Daddy Blog on the front page of the website rather cleverly wrote about the high numbers of students and provided the figures by university to the media which resulted in some great free publicity as not only did the Post pick it up, but USA Today, Cosmopolitan and the Huffington Post.

I looked up the cost of undergraduate tuition at NYU and for one semester in the Arts and Science Faculty, the fees are a staggering $22,000. Multiply this by three for the three semesters per year and then over three years and you get tuition fees of around $200,000 just to get a degree! And of course, don’t forget, they have to then live, so it’s no wonder that students here in New York need to work or find some way of earning cash through sites like this one to get by.


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Thank you Bevan

I am in shock. I have just paid the bill for J’s 1 year check and MMR. It is huge. So huge, I cannot bring myself to type the number. In the UK I would have taken J to the rather run down health centre and waited in a bland room filled with plastic chairs, peeling paintwork and been reluctant to touch anything. But it was free. Every part of J’s medical life had been free, my prenatal care and his birth at one of the best teaching hospitals in central London, the checks by the health visitor and all his immunisations. If I wanted to weigh him, all I had to do was turn up at the clinic and do it myself. If was concerned about his health, I just made an appointment with the GP who may or may not have been that interested, but I hoped would know more than me and send me away reassured.

The contrast with New York couldn’t be greater. J doesn’t see a GP in a normal surgery, he has a paediatrician in a paediatric practice (trouble spelling that one). Every step of the 40 minute 1 year check is itemised on the bill. It still has plastic chairs and I’m still reluctant to touch anything or let J crawl anywhere, so no difference there. I speak to a French lady with twins and a 9 month old in the waiting room. She sees me looking wide eyed at my bill and offers her own experience. Her twins were in hospital for 4 weeks after they were born early and for this the hospital presented her with a bill for $350,000 for EACH child. Unsurprisingly her health insurer was reluctant to pay but she said they did, in the end.

I find myself reaching for my political history, reminding myself about Nye Bevan, socialist and youngest Minister in Attlee’s ground breaking Labour administration in 1945. It was Bevan, as Minister of Health, who took the National Health Service Bill through Parliament and is known as the founder of the NHS. I know it’s changed a lot and I don’t pretend to be any expert on what’s happening with it under the current Government and I know it’s paid for through tax and National Insurance. There is something quite comforting about knowing you don’t have to worry about the cost before you access the NHS but now that I know how bankrupting it can be, perhaps the peeling paintwork and dreary waiting rooms in the UK aren’t so bad after all.


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Let there be light

One thing I’ve noticed since I’ve been in New York is the light. I never really thought about it in the UK, but here in New York the sheer volume of high rise development has had a massive impact on light. It’s almost as if there is light poverty here. If you are lower down in a high rise apartment building you pay less rent and you get less light because you are surrounded by others. You are more likely to be looking across at another high rise building and for that you pay less. Conversely the higher up you are the more you pay and there is a premium for being at the top, in the penthouse. Purpose built apartment buildings tend to be at the end of streets, abutting the avenues, this then serves to create a light corridor along the many avenues going from north to south along the island of Manhattan. Pause whilst crossing an avenue and look south and then north you can see a remarkable feat of town planning with the straight, straight avenue forcing your eye skywards, seeking the light. The Manhattan town house, a 4-6 storey building, probably built around the beginning of the 20th Century, would have been the peak of housing achievement but now, I’m not so sure. Surrounded by other buildings – there is little free space here and if there is, it’s being built on – the reduction in light levels is huge. With a town house you generally get a small garden and the ones we saw when we looked for somewhere to live were so overlooked, so dark, it was just not worth it. Go closer to Central Park then the buildings seem to reduce in size, there is, I believe a real push from those living in the affluent neighbourhoods near the park to ensure that development is sympathetic and that means low rise. We didn’t appreciate the value of the light before we arrived but now that we’re here, living pretty high up, it’s great to bathe in the luxury of light.