Roaming the Hood

Today is one of those lovely days in the city when you almost forget that you're surrounded by concrete and steel, and that the closest nature is found in the produce section at the supermarket. Thus I thought it would be a great time to take you on a tour of our neighborhood and give you an up-close view of city life. First I'd like to show you a shot of the outside of our building, courtesy of Google maps. It's a charming brick building built sometime before World War II. Most buildings this old would typically be walk-ups, but an elevator was installed sometime after its construction, which we love. Being on the fourth floor, it also made moving quite a bit easier. We are on the opposite side of the building and have a view of more buildings instead of that nice tree, but during the winter it doesn't make much difference anyway since the tree is bare.

The front of our building 

One thing people always talk about needing to get used to in New York City is the noise. And that's totally true - it's an incredibly loud city that seems to have construction everywhere, plus the almost-constant piercing noise of sirens in the distance. But fortunately, we are in a quieter part of town, probably in part due to the fact that we are across the street from a Mormon church:

I love the architecture! 

Other buildings on our street include private schools, a nail salon, a dry cleaner, and other apartment buildings. The nail salon is in the building adjacent to ours (dangerously close) as is the dry cleaner, which is super convenient for those occasions when the hubby likes to show up to work with clean clothes.

About a block away there is a restaurant called Papaya, which is famous for its hot dogs and other American treasures. It's pretty small, but I've seen the line stretching out the door and around the block, so it must be pretty decent. The dogs have been featured in Serious Eats, a website devoted to delicious foods. The company also has a website that will give you a headache!

Serving New York its hot dogs since 1939

Close by is another one of my favorite restaurants - Shake Shack. According to their website, they are a modern day roadside burger stand serving the most delicious burgers, hot dogs (Papaya still has them beat, according to most), frozen custard, beer, wine and more! They use the finest local ingredients to make their own version of much-loved American classics. Initially Shake Shack opened as a small stand in Madison Square park 8 years ago, and now has lots of chains around the city. Their equivalent of a blizzard is called a concrete, and instead of ice cream, it has... wait for it... custard! The regular size is at least 20 oz. of soft, creamy, goodness. Fortunately there is always a super long line deterring me from adding another 15 pounds!

Shake Shack. Also right next to B&N.

View down Lexington Ave

So much to see! We've only walked about two blocks at this point and have already passed by almost every type of store you could think of. Mostly restaurants and shoe stores... so, so many shoe stores. But we're also super close to Staples, Best Buy, Fairway (grocery chain), Barnes and Noble, Brookstone, and a ton of other huge chains. And my favorite, Nuts 4 Nuts. Not even a store, this brilliant invention is situated right outside of the subway stop, ensuring that I pass by it almost every day. It is a small food cart that sells one thing: sugar-roasted nuts. I usually have to pause for 10 seconds just to take in the smell of roasted sweetness floating by my nose. This little cart almost makes up for all of New York's other terrible smells, including the seemingly millions of people who smoke, and all of the dogs and homeless people who use the streets as their personal bathrooms.

Nuts4Nuts!

I took the subway 10 blocks north to a branch of the NY Public Library to get my library card. I have fond childhood memories of going to the public library in our neighborhood and checking out books, and of using the catalog system at my elementary school to find the latest Goosebumps "novel". For some reason I still had that archaic image of a library stuck in my head, which was probably solidified by the thousands upon thousands of books I saw at the NYPL's main branch. Now I'm not saying the library looked modern, but you can do all sorts of cool online stuff through their systems - for free! Tax dollars at work! You can even rent DVDs and check out books for your Kindle, which I definitely plan on doing.

Anyway here are a few pictures from that part of town, near 96th and Lexington. By the way, something great happens when you travel a few blocks north - you can see the sun! The buildings are so tall here that we get about an hour of direct sunlight per day, but up towards Spanish Harlem (which starts in the 100's) the buildings get shorter and the sun is able to get through. This is also the neighborhood where Mount Sinai is located - it's a few blocks west, nestled right along Central Park.

Park Ave near 96th St

Also Park Ave

Fruit Stand

Three things that are almost on every corner here are fruit stands, food carts, and Starbucks. The first two are great if you're looking for a bargain and, for the first, wash your fruit carefully. The Starbucks phenomenon was ridiculous to me at first, and then the stores just started to blend in with the rest of the scenery.

A church amidst skyscrapers

One of my favorite little markets 

Out last stop will be Fairway - the "large" supermarket that is wonderfully close to our place. Fairway is one of the largest supermarkets in Manhattan, and still pales in comparison to an H-E-B or Kroger from back in Texas or New Mexico. That being said, I think they probably carry the same amount of inventory as a "normal" sized grocery store, it's just packed in a little tighter. Shopping can be a little overwhelming depending on the time of day and how many moms bring their kiddos with them, but if you know what you're looking for you can get in and out without much hassle.

It's actually kind of easy to miss!

Buying groceries is not the most convenient thing in the city, but it's totally do-able. Bringing the groceries home is the hard part. In the south, I was used to filling up a cart with food, taking the cart to my car, and unloading a few bags at a time. Here you can pay for delivery after picking out the items yourself, which costs anywhere from $5 to $35 depending on how far away you live, and you are still required to take your perishable items with you. You also have the convenient option of ordering online, but you pay a premium for the food and still pay an additional delivery fee. The final option - the least expensive of the three - is carting the stuff back with you. This is what I opt to do, and it usually just means I buy less food more often. Which really isn't a bad thing since I am able to get fresher produce. The first time I went to a supermarket here, though, I didn't realize how much food I was buying until after I purchased it, and ended up feeling like I just got back from the gym when I got home!

Inside Fairway - Manhattan's mega grocery store

Of course groceries are more expensive here, but you can still find great deals. Today I found fresh salmon for only $6.99/lb - a steel in any market! Anyway, that's all for the neighborhood tour, I hope you enjoyed it!

The Big 25

Hey gang! Well, if you saw my last post you may have been thinking: "I knew New York apartments were small, but this looks to be a pretty decent size!" This is true, but it was because we hadn't shipped any of our stuff yet. We were still basically living out of a hotel, plus whatever furniture the woman who is subleasing the apartment left. In the grand scheme of things, we actually didn't have that much stuff to ship. Here is a picture of our stuff in Albuquerque before we left. We didn't even ship the mattresses or any of the loose stuff you see on the right. Not bad, eh?

Life in boxes

We have been paring down our stuff over the past few months in preparation for coming here, and I thought we were doing pretty well. And then early last week, I got a knock at the door. It was a young, slightly hungover, and not very pleased UPS delivery man. The Giants had just won the Super Bowl the night before, which was making our 25-box shipment even more difficult for him. He shot me a dirty glance... "Casey Estes?"  .."yep, that's us!" ..."I'm sure glad you guys have an elevator." He then proceeded, over 5 or 6 trips, to cart all of our boxes up to our fourth story apartment. (I'm hoping our next place isn't a walk-up!) And what looks like a small amount of stuff in a garage suddenly becomes overwhelming in a 400 square foot studio.

Glad I was home when our small shipment came in

One small caveat to unpacking all of this stuff: the great closets and storage space in the apartment happened to be full of stuff when we got there. Which is, of course, completely understandable, because the woman who we are subleasing from will only be gone for six months and didn't need to take her photo albums or son's baby clothes. But, it left us with a few rows of shelving and one small closet for our stuff.

In the middle of unpacking... boxes opened, nothing put away

One solution to the no storage space thing was to buy a garment rack (right side of the above image), which we actually purchased using our last remaining wedding gift card. (Thanks Drew!) I'm super thankful that my cold didn't hit until after this stuff was all put away, because I probably would have just stared at it for a few days begrudgingly otherwise.

Empty boxes

The picture above begs an interesting question - where to put the boxes? We have no attic of any type, so we couldn't really save them for our next move. Plus half of them were ripped to shreds when they got here anyway (note to future movers: U-Haul boxes work well for storage and self moves, but UPS does not treat them very nicely. A few things broke in the move, the smelliest of which was a Peruvian specialty sauce that I decided to ship. The contents of that box were stained yellow and smelled of, well, Peruvians I guess.) Anyway, what I decided to do was to painstakingly tear the boxes apart by hand and put them down our trash shoot. Yep, we have a trash shoot right outside our apartment door. It's great for day-to-day trash and food that you don't want stinking up your apartment, but not so great for U-Haul boxes. I found this out only after getting yelled at in broken English by our super. He wasn't pleased that cardboard shreds from 25 boxes landed in his trash room. I guess I probably should have seen that coming when at one point the box mass got lodged in the shoot and I had to shove it down with a broomstick. Lesson learned.

So after all of that, I finally got everything put away. Or, as put away as it was going to be. We ended up with bathroom stuff in the kitchen and office stuff in the linen closet, but it works! The garment rack turned out to be a life-saver, as we now have a his and hers closet. Plus I guess it's kind of trendy? Now we just need some exposed brick!

The "after"

The "after" - office / dining table 

Kitchen / bathroom storage

New York has many perks. One of them is how close you are to virtually every type of store. When we first got to the apartment, there was no microwave (how did she eat??), so I had to go buy one. Fortunately we live near a P.C. Richards, a chain electronics store in the city. And by near, I mean less than a block away. Somehow there's also a Best Buy right down the street. Anyway, I walked in, purchased my cooking machine, and walked home with it. All in less than 20 minutes.

New York also has its quirks, something that happens as a result of how old the city is. Old cities have old things in them, such as our oven / stove. Now, I wouldn't quite call this "vintage" yet, but it just old enough to have its own quirks. Here is a full picture of the beaut:

Somewhere in between vintage and outdated?

 And here is a close-up of its full range of motion:

That's right, we've got Off, Lite, and Hi

So I wouldn't say I'm a great chef. I don't know if I could even fairly call myself a decent one, but I sure do try. Another trait I have possessed for a long time is a common sense... "mis-fire" every once in a while. Thus, when presented with a stove that has three settings (off, lite, and hi) I just assume that's all there is to it. Which means that for the first week we were here, I cooked everything on hi. This type of cooking is great for boiling water, but that's about it. When pan-frying chicken, I literally poured water in the pan to keep the chicken from burning. And then my husband devised this scheme:

Yep, that's three grates stacked on top of one another

Safe, you ask? Absolutely not. This contraption almost spilled no fewer than four times. Add to that the fact that the pots are metal and the entire thing, including handle, gets hot very fast. Assuming we would have an oven mitt (which we do not) when we arrived, this was almost a catastrophe. The meal (one of my favorites) turned out okay, but it did still cook in half the time. And, the best part of the story? I emailed our sublettor and she told me that to get to the medium and low settings, you simply turn the knob clockwise. ...clockwise! Of course, why didn't I think of that??

I hope you are having a wonderful night, and stay tuned for my tour around our neighborhood, as well as stories from my new part-time job! Love you all.

Our Efficiency Apartment

Casey and I have officially moved in to our apartment! We are located on the upper east side of Manhattan in a relatively quiet neighborhood. It is about a ten minute walk to Central Park, and about a five minute walk to every store and restaurant imaginable. Today I just wanted to take you through our place to give you a little taste of New York living. All of these pictures are what the place looked like before our stuff arrived, which is why it's so clean and tidy. Enjoy!

A map of Manhattan and its surrounding boroughs. Central Park is the green patch in the middle.  

The hallway when you first walk in, including closet space

Our kitchen

The kitchen also has a lot of cabinet space!

Bathroom

Breakfast nook / formal dining area / office

View out our window

Nature!

Living room / bedroom (convertible couch)

Armour and library (filled with the tenant's items) 

Efficiency at its best

Stay tuned for my next post, which will include what the apartment looked like after 25 UPS boxes arrived, and how everything was arranged!

The Empire State Building

A New York City classic, the Empire State Building has been part of Manhattan’s skyline for 81 years and is a popular tourist destination for people from around the world. While is does not have the vast reserves and historical presence of the New York Public Library, it does have its own story and drama worth telling.

Photo courtesy of Maps of the World

Before you even enter the building, you are hounded by salesmen from NY Skyride claiming you NEED TO CHECK OUT THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING!! “NY Skyride?” you say to yourself, “that must be awesome!” Figuring it was some type of tramway between skyscrapers, I head inside to check it out. Again greeted by the friendly folks from this amazing tour company, I grab a pamphlet and head upstairs to the ticketing office. I’m in the process of getting amped to dangle hundreds of feet over the city, when I find that NY Skyride is, in fact, a video. For a small fee ($33) you get to watch a virtual tour of the city – in high def! Think that’s a little pricey? Don’t worry, it’s well worth the money. Kevin Bacon is the narrator. Did I mention high def?

Now THIS is what I want to see if I have to pay up!

Anyway, I decided to forego the virtual tour and continued on to the regular ticketing office. Other add-ons I declined included a map (laminated! $8) of the city and a guided audio tour (also $8) explaining which direction you were looking and what you were looking at. That last one may have been worth the added expense, but I figured the iPhone would do a decent enough job by itself. Continuing on, I was directed by no fewer than 20 employees on where to go next. They had signs everywhere and even had those velvet ropes to move people like cattle, but I guess folks still like to wander when employees aren’t directing them where to go. Fortunately since it was a weekday afternoon during a non-tourist time of year, there weren’t many other people to direct.

If a welcome sign doesn't cut it for you, don't worry. A host of employees are present to welcome you with open arms as well. 

Next stop: the 80^th floor. I took an elevator from the second to the 80^th floor, which probably took less than a minute. I wish the elevators were made from glass so I could see how fast it was going! There were windows on this floor, but they were covered with old pictures of the building during its construction phases, probably to keep people moving along and get them excited for the big view on the 86^th floor. The 80^th floor also had some information on the history of the building: on March 17, 1930, construction on the Empire State Building began. Under the direction of architects Shreve, Lamb & Harmon Associates, and a peak labor force of 3,000 men, frame work rises at a rate of 4 stories per week. (At its peak, the building rose at the rate of a story a day!) By April 7^th of the same year the building’s structural columns were set, and six months after that the frame was already to the 86^th floor. The building was officially complete on May 1, 1931 – just a little over a year after construction started. Compare that to the construction of the Public Library, which a few decades earlier took 16 years to complete!

A massive amount of steel was required to construct the building. Engineer Homer Balcom designed the steel skeleton for the building including drawings of every column, beam, girder, and brace. The steel moment frame, connected with rivets, was typical skyscraper design of the era, but with proportions unheard of at the time and which remain extraordinary even today. The steel requirement was so large that the fabrication was split between two mills – American Bridge Company and McClintic-Marshall Company. The greatest number of men employed on steel erection alone was 350, spread among riveting gangs, derrick gangs, hoisting engineers, and other ironworkers.

Don't look down!

The Empire State Building compared to other buildings of its time

The owners decided to give the Empire State an iconic, inspiring crown. In theory, dirigibles were to moor at the tip of the mast. The stainless steel and glass mast was a brilliant gesture, but the powerful winds at 1,250 feet above New York City ensured no airship ever successfully docked there. The mooring mast was a late addition not included in any preliminary architectural schemes. After the Chrysler Building topped out at 1,046 feet, however, the 200-foot mooring mast was added to designs in November 1929, and today contains a metal staircase and elevator that lifts visitors (for an additional fee) to the 102^nd floor Observatory for a bird’s eye view of NYC and surrounding states.

Since its construction, a few notable events have taken place. In 1961 the building was sold to its current owners – an investment group headed by Lawrence A. Wien for $65 million. This was the highest amount ever paid for a building at the time. In 1966 the manually operated high-speed elevators on the first 80 floors of the building were replaced with fancy automatic elevators that are still there today. In 1986 the Empire State Building became a National Historic Landmark, and in 2007 the building is given a $550 million face-lift. In 2009 the building was retrofitted with energy-efficient measures to become more “green,” and in 2010 was officially ranked one of the most energy efficient buildings in the US by the EPA.

All of that being said, what you really pay for when you gain admittance to the Empire State Building is the spectacular view. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the pictures! And if you ever visit don’t forget to bring your camera. 

West view

Looking to the west, high above the legendary Madison Square Garden sports arena you can see the jet-black spike of One Penn Plaza. Immediately to the right is the Jacob Javits Convention Center. Look past there, and you'll see the former WWII aircraft carrier Intrepid - home to the Sea, Air and Space Museum. Across the Hudson River you get a great view of New Jersey and beyond, to Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains (hard to see in my picture). 

North view

Looking to the north from left to right, start with the Hudson River - watch as it flows beneath the George Washington Bridge, which connects New York to New Jersey. You will see the green MetLife Building directly in front of One Bryant Park, with its angles and spire. Moving right, there is the GE Building, the angled roof of Citigroup Center, and the second MetLife building. If it's a clear day, you can see well beyond New York and New Jersey to Connecticut, and even Massachusetts. 

East view

Directly east is the Borough of Queens, separated from Manhattan by the East River. Right beside the river is the United Nations headquarters, and just west from there is the famous Chrysler building. Across the river, standing high above Queens is the Citicorp Building. Keep spanning north, up the river, and you will see two bridges: the Queensborough Bridge (in the King of Queens theme song!), connecting Queens and Manhattan, and the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge Tri-Borough, connecting Queens, Manhattan, and the Bronx. Look carefully and you can see planes taking off and landing at LaGuardia and Kennedy Airports - though probably not at this resolution. 

South view

 Looking south you can see Manhattan's financial district. But before you get all the way downtown, check out at the aptly name Flatiron Building and the historic Woolworth Building - once the world's tallest at at mere 60 floors. Look to the right and you'll see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, and to the left are the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges (also a little hard to see in this photo). And here are a few more photos to finish up the post: 

Looking down

A long flight up for a local pigeon!