To Go, New York City

I’m totally obsessed by this silicone coffee cup, which collapses and changes size like a toy. The first time I saw one on the subway, I stared at it, mesmerized. Like the geeky architects who collect hundreds of different coffee lids, I couldn’t let it get away. So I made the cool person sipping from it unplug her headphones and tell me all about it. She told me it’s portable, refillable, colorful and never leaks. When she’s finished, she just collapses the sides, sticks the lined ring inside the bottom and tosses the empty flattened puck in her purse.

“Good for you, saving the earth one paper cup at a time,” said a man near us, eavesdropping. Perhaps, he, like me, had just read this article in the Climate Fwd: Newsletter from The New York Times, which suggests multiple ways to brew a greener cup of coffee to reduce climate impact. Not surprisingly, single-use cups generate a lot of waste when tossed daily. A convenient refillable mug is a great green step .

The happy, helpful coffee commuter told me to look on Amazon, where I easily found several food-safe, BPA-free brands (here’s one version). I immediately went home and ordered two. One for coffee, one for water. If I ever see her again, we’ll match.

Octotruck, New York City

This city used to run on coffee and conversation, but now it’s WiFi and the cloud. On bus and subway, citizens make personal space silos by plugging eyes and ears into smart phones. Today’s news is cleanly streamed and scrolled, not folded. Down at the new and shiny Hudson Yards, the neighborhood of the future presents an immaculate plaza, gleaming supertall glass towers, and a mirrored copper-clad staircase to the sky.

Undaunted, old New York standbys like graffiti and clutter persist on uptown streets like hardy weeds. Phone booths and large stacks of Sunday papers may be almost gone, but sidewalk boxes manage to hang in. So do random funny moments in an unexpected street scene. Here, four giveaway newspaper boxes line up like sentinels around a mailbox. Behind them, a big-eyed mollusk painted on a parked truck seems to grab the old print freebies. Only in New York: an octopus has snatched three dinosaurs.

Music Haul, New York City

Back before Uber and Lyft and Task Rabbit, the original members of the gig economy were the people who did gigs, i.e., freelance musicians. All over New York City, their instruments are visibly on the go. Mighty basses wheel down subway platforms, clever guitars steal bus seats, nimble flutes ride bikes, and leggy cellos, like the one above, are backpacked down the street. In this case, the case is critical. Why stick to dowdy brown or black when you can pack your axe in brilliant red or yellow fiberglass? This cello guy was so bright, graphic and eerily humanoid that I had to tail him for several blocks. All the while, I could feel his Cyclops eye looking right back at me.

Green Beans, New York City

Amazon packages may be scary fast and shamefully convenient, but they have yet to arrive with steaming coffee. They’re also not a textured communal experience (read here to find out why The New York Times thinks human contact is the newest luxury good).

Which may explain the growing tendency to caffeinate all sorts of urban spaces.

Custom cappuccinos have spread from bookstores to bank and hotel lobbies, gyms, clothing and home good stores, chocolate boutiques, barbershops, cocktail bars, Lexus Intersect accessories, and even a high-end car wash (see my post, Cleansed, August 18, 2018). Ditto churches and museums. No matter where you go, it seems that specialty coffee just the way you like it is there, too.

Even florists have joined the hybrid-retail trend. In Midtown East, Remi Flower and Coffee Shop sprinkles rose petals and lavender on cappuccinos. On the Upper West Side, the PlantShed sells custom coffee (would you like that with oat milk?), matcha tea and super-trendy Dirty Lemon charcoal drinks inside an enchanting indoor forest of small trees, hardy plants, terrariums, ferns, succulents, and fresh flowers. Cozy café tables in a garden setting add to the relaxing vibe. I got seduced into coffee to stay and flowers to go. Which, I guess, is exactly the point.

Malled, New York City

New Yorkers are fussy about dirt. Too little is the suburbs. Too much is the country. Just the right amount, say, on a stroll along Broadway in the West 90s, is the real New York. Some old-time city residents even mourn the super-grimy, edgy, “I’m walkin’ here!” aura of last century Times Square.

So I wasn’t surprised when the city’s critics threw mud at the $25 billion new luxury development, Hudson Yards, now open on Manhattan’s far West Side near 34th Street. For The New York Times’s Michael Kimmelman, the design was “at heart, a supersized suburban-style office park, with a shopping mall and a quasi-gated condo community targeted at the 0.1 percent.” New York Magazine’s Justin Davidson said, “too flat, too clean, too art-directed…I can’t help feeling like an alien here.” The New Yorker’s Ian Parker described the site as a “Doha-like cluster of towers on Manhattan’s West Side.”

Translation: it was too damn clean.

When I visited on opening weekend (March 15-17, 2019), I, too, was overwhelmed. Every surface, from the glass-and-steel supertall towers (one of which, 30 Hudson Yards, is now the fifth highest building in the U.S.) to the luxury retail mall’s walls and floors, gleamed. The plaza’s objet d’Instagram, “Vessel,” glowed like a penny in the sunlight and threw warm coppery reflections onto the white retractable shell of the adjacent arts complex, The Shed. The only dirt I could find was in the specially designed “smart soil” in the vast planters filled with gorgeous purple pansies. Even that dirt was clean.

How alien.

Did anyone notice? Thousands of visitors filled the 5-acre plaza, lined up to climb the 154 flights of stairs in the Vessel, flowed politely onto the seven floors of escalators at The Shops and Restaurants mall housing the city’s first Neiman Marcus, and ate snacks in the bakeries and food shops. The hordes were diverse, local, young, excited and curious. They were having fun. So was I.

Then I realized what the critics missed. The futuristic new neighborhood does fill a niche, and not just for the .1 percent. It’s a vacation from grit! Available to all, and just a subway ride away. A neighborhood with free Wi-Fi, 28,000 plants, 200 mature trees, specialty snacks under $10 and public revolving art exhibits? In close proximity to the High Line park? All sorts of people, from locals to tourists, will come for a clean getaway. By force of nature they will humanize it and, over time, it will acquire a unique patina all its own. If not from New Yorkers, then leave it to the birds.

Be Kind, Auckland

I saw a pleasant older woman walking down Broadway with a crazy big button pinned to the strap of her pocketbook. It stood out against her bright blue winter coat. “Make America Kind Again,” it yelled politely.

You couldn’t miss it. MAKA. Now there’s a thought.

Kindness is trending. Or, perhaps more accurately, counter-trending. I’ve noticed artists, writers and concerned citizens all over the world promoting kindness as a change agent for several years now.

The British newspaper, The Guardian, says that “Kindness is replacing mindfulness as the buzzword for how we should live.”

The publishing world calls it “up lit.” Christie Watson’s book, The Language of Kindness, out in paperback next month, is soon to be a TV series. Jaime Thurston’s action book, Kindness: The Little Thing that Matters Most, is an instruction manual for what no longer comes naturally.

Accepting the 2016 National Book Award for The Underground Railroad, a novel about the horrors of slavery, author Colson Whitehead said: “Be kind to everybody, make art and fight the power.”

In this NPR interview, a former neo-Nazi explained how meaningful empathetic interactions with customers who should have hated him changed his views. Instead of polarizing, they cohesed.

Even down in New Zealand, where civility and generosity are woven into the national character, I discovered this folk artist’s plea for kindness. It was love-locked to a railing in the Auckland harbor. Now is the time, it declares.

“I believe that in the end it is kindness and generous accommodation that are the catalysts for real change,” Nelson Mandela said.

Kindness is not just moral. It’s political. These days call for it.

Note: This post was published just before the tragic Christchurch mosque massacre.

Wee, New York City

People bring big dreams to this big city, but they live small to survive. They rent studio apartments with tiny kitchens. They walk diminutive dogs. They work in cramped cubicles. They do little gigs. They have trivial arguments. They eat microgreens.

Wee is us. And this mini snowman—about 18 inches high—was right on trend. He popped up on a townhouse railing after a March snowstorm that was slighter than expected. Tidbit accessories completed his look. Baby carrot for nose, celery scraps for hair, pebbles for eyes and the spindliest of twigs for arms.

And yet, small is beautiful. The frosty sculpture had presence. Think Billy Porter in his velvet tuxedo gown at the Oscars. Think Constantin Brancusi at the Guggenheim. Under its anonymous creator’s hands, the ephemeral snowman disrupted the three-circle cliché and turned a simple brown railing into a majestic pedestal. It was something all together new and fresh.

True outsider art. Or at least outside.

Code Red, Auckland

synchronicity/noun (def): That Cat-in-the-Hat inspired moment during travel in Auckland, New Zealand, when a fellow in a red-and-white striped polo walks across a matching crosswalk.

Hypotheses: 1) In New Zealand locals dress to match crosswalks 2) Engineers and fashion designers down under are greatly influenced by Dr. Seuss 3) fondness for year-round candy canes 4) WET PAINT? 5) Fresh!

Conclusion: Not only do bright crosswalks stop traffic, they impact fashion. Cities around the world should consult with Kiwi traffic safety engineers about ways to use color and design to achieve Vision Zero. The “chipped zebra” crosswalk look seen throughout New York City is way too pedestrian. Action plan: Go red.

Alive, Times Square

A friend of mine once had a devastating fire in his apartment. It wasn’t his fault. The wires behind his walls were bad. “You always forget,” he said, “that behind every smooth wall hung with pictures is a bunch of energy that’s always on.”

Same goes for city streets. A labyrinth of gas, water, electricity, transformers and cables lurks hidden underground. The grid’s power is immense and unforgiving. It refuses to be ignored. A manhole cover blows, a giant sinkhole opens, your gym’s glass windows blow out, or a pipe in the middle of traffic simply needs to let off steam. Then we remember. There’s an entire world below our feet, and, guess what? It’s alive.

Lit, New York City

In the dead of winter, candles are alive. I light them every morning to wake up to beauty. Outside my window, unbroken grey wraps sky and sidewalk in an enervating hush. The city is in hibernation. At the kitchen table, my slim candle flames dance to their own music. A wax pinecone sinks inside itself, preserving its brown spikes and spirals as it melts. Another, “Feu de Bois” from Diptyque, sends out a wood fire scent. A few are just glass votives, because, why not?

By mid-February, things are looking up. Daylight begins to stretch. Some afternoons are still too grim and dark and cruelly cold. Others hold surprises. Walking in Central Park toward dusk, I see black trees lined up like logs against the urban skyline. Glass buildings shoot gold and orange embers at the sinking sun. Everything is lit. Warmth spreads. It’s a fireplace in the sky, New York style.

Soul Mate, New York City

I’ve never forgotten the joy of finding my homemade second grade mailbox (aka slotted shoebox) stuffed with Valentine’s Day cards and SweetHearts Conversation Hearts. Admittedly, it was an easily won popularity as the teacher’s rule was give to one, give to all. I learned to see the kitsch in paper hearts and candy sentiments, but my original enthusiasm for the day never waned.

Now I search for ways to mark the day in proper urban style: Ironic, dressed in black and self-obsessed. Scrolling through my inbox, I see endless local V-day options.

Instead of buying or receiving roses, I’ll adopt a Highline plant in Manhattan. Or shed my pants at Cupid’s Undie Run for charity. With the Naked at the Met Scavenger Hunt, the nude is in the art. Still too cloyingly romantic? In Queens, My Bloody Valentine Haunted Attraction bleeds red with two floors of scary stalking. Brooklyn’s Littlefield hosts a series of hipster events: “It’s Friday and I’m (Not) in Love, ” (a wear black Anti-Valentine’s dance party), “Mortified!” (share your teen-angst memorabilia) and “Tinder Live with Lane Moore” (watch her swipe right in onstage improv).

You name it, there’s a class for it. Teachers around the city are primed to instruct in making heart-shaped chocolates, cakes, soufflés, floral bouquets, lollipops, linoleum prints, and so on. My favorite? “Self-Love Hand Lettering” at Parachute Home, where you make a card to “celebrate the one person most important in your life…you!”

I take a walk to clear my head.

An overflowing Valentine’s window display at the independently owned store, More & More Antiques on Amsterdam Avenue, calls out to me. I realize I can’t complain about national chain stores and shuttered retail fronts ruining the streetscape unless I start to put my money where my mouth is. I wander in and buy a tiny hand-painted figurine with a winsome heart-shaped face. Something about it is slightly off, but it promises to be “All Mine.”

XOXO, Cutie Pie.

Frozen, New York City

The polar vortex is here. From Maine to Michigan, people are stuck in a freezer of ice, snow and brutally cold temperatures that threaten skin and spirit. My mind flashes back to this icy guy-in-a-box, Snowman, installed in MoMA’s Outdoor Sculpture Garden last summer. The frosty copper-coated statue was a magic trick in June’s humid heat. A clever study of contrast and form by Swiss artists Peter Fischli and the late David Weiss. It amazed and amused me.

Now the extreme cold darkens my perception. I have seen the Snowman, and he is us.

Haunts, New York City

One crazy funny-but-true story about the iconic luxury store Bergdorf Goodman is the number of devoted shoppers who want their ashes scattered inside. Of course, you have to do it on the sly. Their dedicated spirit may haunt the store’s interior, but in my mind the outside sidewalks belong solely to the late fashion photographer Bill Cunningham.

Cunningham, who died in 2016 at the age of 87, was for decades a fixture on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street. He knew it was where the stylish met the fashionable. I would often see him crouched and squinting in his signature blue jacket as he hunted street trends with his Nikon. Now every shot from that location, like this one on pattern-mixing, feels haunted by his legacy.

His single-minded desire to record New York’s elegant and outlandish is shown in the 2010 documentary, “Bill Cunningham: New York” and his recent posthumous memoir: Fashion Climbing: A Memoir With Photographs (Penguin, 2018).

Even though he looked angelic, he could be tough when necessary, as I discovered.

After I was hired at Women’s Wear Daily, I was excited to learn that Bill Cunningham had started his writing career at the paper. Our commonality was only in my mind, though.

One of my earliest WWD assignments was to “cover” a big New York society party. I had to get all the photographed local celebrity’s names spelled correctly and write a column. I was green and new to the scene. We were tucked off behind ropes, and all the photographers were firing rapidly away.

Bill Cunningham was shooting next to me for The New York Times.

“Who’s that?” I asked him as the first beautiful socialite walked by. He told me, quickly. I wrote it down. “Who’s that?” I asked, as the next woman passed.

He paused and glared at me. “Get your own names,” he snapped.

It was a quick lesson in the competitive nature of journalism, down to and including party reporting. And from then on, I did.

Read Me, New York City

Lately I’ve felt overloaded by all the options in Internet reading, streaming, listening and watching. It’s hard not to feel like Lucy racing the speeding conveyor belt in her famous chocolate factory scene. Instead of candy, it’s too many stories pouring down the e-tunnel. Where’s the quality in all that quantity? Choice paralysis sets in.

Overwhelmed, I head to the quirky communal atmosphere of any one of my favorite local independent bookstores. New York City teems with them. Here’s one list.

I’ve got company. It turns out sales of physical books have increased every year since 2013. The number of indie bookshops across America has increased by more than a third from 2009-2015 (all stats from the American Booksellers Association). It’s newly trendy to promote your indie bookshop-loving inner nerd on social media with “shelfies” on #bookstagram. More than 25 million Instagrammers have done it, reports Vox.

Local bookstores are full of surprises and things you would never find without them. Take these “Read Me If You Liked…” brown-paper wrapped books sold at Book Culture on Columbus. Here’s your own psychic librarian. The burden of choice is essentially gone. When you don’t even know what you’re buying, how can you choose wrong? Best of all, you can unwrap it at home like a present.

When you cut out small decisions, you save your bandwidth for the more important things. This year I resolve to choose less.

Uplifted, New York City

Everyone knows that balloons are just for kids, except, of course, they’re not. Adults send and receive them all the time. With their short little lives and tender thin skins, balloons—like cut flowers, chocolate and childhood—are a vote for joy in the moment. You have to be resilient to enjoy them.

Surprising someone you love in Manhattan with a big bunch of balloons is fun, but it’s not easy. Forget the backseat of a taxi, walking is the way to go. Still, casualties are inevitable. If scaffolding pops a few, hang tough. Pickpockets got all my cash while I was walking two dozen to a party in the park. Never mind. Balloons had long ago taught me how to weather small loss.

It’s entirely possible to hate clowns but love balloons. I certainly do. In her book, The Principles Of Uncertainty, artist Maira Kalman asks, “We see trees. What more do you need?” My answer is, balloons, of course. At the end of all those strings is someone’s loving hand.

Street Party, NYC

This New Year’s Eve in Times Square was a soggy mess. The television broadcasters looked wet and miserable. The entertainers looked downtrodden. Then, as the hyped Waterford Crystal Ball began to drop, a cloud moved in front of it. Three days later, the rain was long gone but the confetti remained. It spun with the wind in colorful spiral updrafts. It played catch me if you can with children. Bicyclists and cars raced through it like winners at the finish line. One woman held her arms high in victory so that her friend could photograph her with the swirl behind her. A normal January afternoon in Times Square became an extended celebration. Sometimes the best party is when you least expect it.

Holiday Sweet, New York City

My childhood dream was to own a lollipop tree. I figured if I could grow my own, I’d have pops all year. The landscaper at the garden shop promised me a seedling by Christmas. When the day came, I was too old to be fooled by the scotch tape fixing lollipop to branch, but I did love the effect.

Decades later, I’m still a sucker for genius confections. This year’s holiday windows at Bergdorf Goodman take the cake. Themed “Bergdorf Goodies” and up until January 3, 2019, the windows contain fanciful chocolate bears, licorice zebras, gingerbread clocks, and macaron giraffes in vibrant candy and fashion tableaux— no scotch tape visible. To see all, watch here.

Carted, New York City

As the holiday countdown accelerates, Christmas trees are on the run. Or more precisely, on the roll—in shopping carts and wheelbarrows—and on the lug, by hand. Streaks of deep green dot the dull gray landscape as the trees move by. I’ve seen them slung over shoulders like children, tucked under arms like medieval spears, and propped up like commuters on the subway. The doors open and the tree steps off, a memory of pine needles on the train floor. Sometimes the whole family chips in. Parents hug the end like goal posts while a couple of little kids lift the saggy middle. The whole street smiles at the effort. A grand behemoth is a joyful burden. Ten blocks home or five flights up can loom like eternity. But it’s an essential New York tradition—the tree must go on.

Transported, New York City

“I’m almost dead.”

I realized after a second that the skateboarder rolling slowly to a stop near me was calling to his friend about battery power. Not health.

I see the future and it is e-assisted. Soon we will have bionic hands and plug-in feet and chip-implanted brains. Until they arrive, we are in the clunky appendage boom. We strap smart watches to our wrists. We cradle iPhones. We pedal-assist our bikes, Li-ionize our scooters, electrify our skateboards. In cities across the U.S., dockless Bird and Lime e-scooters duke it out with pedestrians and local laws. Personal transporters ‘R Us.

I snapped these two night riders at Columbus Circle just as dusk began to fall. Their boosted boards sent small cones of light ahead like tiny lighthouses across a pavement sea. Intrepid but practical, they were sensibly geared up in helmets, heavy jackets, gloves and backpacks. I figured the fellow with knee pads and fierce red tail-light had fallen once. His talismanic level of protection spoke to me of caution born of experience.

I was curious to know where they had started and for how long they had been going. I wanted to hear what brand they were riding and if they had tinkered with the design. But before I could get my nerve up to ask, the traffic light changed. They leaned back, tilted up, and off they went, across the circle and into the muffled velvet dark.

Alight, New York

Attracting attention in the chaotic neon crossroads of the world is nothing short of a miracle. But if you load two men and a giant menorah into a pickup, play Hanukkah songs from booming loudspeakers, and dance along exuberantly in shirtsleeves in freezing weather, people might just notice.

Even in Times Square.

And if your truck back bounces up and down in glorious rhythm as you rock it out, you might uplift local drivers stuck in standstill traffic and international tourists jostled by crowds. As they smile and snap videos to upload around the globe back to their friends, they amplify your contagious message of joy and celebration. Even singleminded theatergoers might stop hurrying to their curtain times and pause for a minute to watch your al fresco musical. I did.

It takes a lot of chutzpah to drive and dance across the city singing, “Hey, it’s Hanukkah!” But in New York City, where public menorahs are, let’s say, not exactly in short supply, creative swagger is essential. You have to put yourself out there.

Joy to the jammed! Even a nearby Sephora billboard got into the celebratory spirit and put “HORA” in my photo. Seriously. There’s no business like show business.