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New York's flea markets are pretty serious business. They are not particularly cheap, but they do have lots of great stuff that you aren't likely to see anywhere else. If you have the flea market mentality, you can discover untold treasures with a little persisitance and some bargaining.
The best thing about a New York flea market is that it's a truly local neighborhood affair. You're not going to find too many tourists from Wichita on the corner of Grand and Broadway at 8 o'clock on a Sunday morning looking to furnish a bachelor pad.
Sixth Avenue at 26th Street, Saturdays and Sundays: This is the biggest and best of all the markets. Sunday is the better day by far, with four separate lots in full swing. They are all chock full of furniture, jewelry, and the standard flea market fare. The best lot costs a dollar to get in, but the rest are free, The real bargains go before noon, but you can also get great deals by bargaining at the end of the day, when the vendors want to unload their goods before going home.
Grand Street at Broadway, Sundays: This is a small, friendly, neighborhood affair, and not the place to go if you are looking for something in particular. This is where you'll find that something you never knew you needed.
Columbus at 77th Street, Sunday: This is one part flea market and one part craft fair (one part old junk, one part new junk). It is getting bigger all the time and has now moved indoors during the cold months, so it is open year round. There may be fewer bargains here, but there might actually be more stuff you genuinely want.
New York is a sports town. It doesn't hurt that the Knicks and the Rangers made it to the championships last year, but New Yorkers have always had the kind of "we're better than you" attitude that makes them the rowdiest and the meanest fans around. Fortunately and unfortunately for New Yorkers, we also have Madison Square Garden. There is nothing quite like the Garden for sports, and not just basketball (college and pro) and hockey; there's also volleyball, ping pong, gymnatics, and even occaisionally a monster truck rally.
The problem with getting tickets to the Garden is that you have a whole bunch of competition. Your first best shot is the box office, and you'd be suprised how often seats are available if you plan a few weeks, or months in advance. If you can't get tickets the old-fashioned way, you might think about just going to the Garden and seeing if you can pick up a few outside. There are often people scalping tickets and you might get lucky, or very unlucky. Keep in mind that scalping is illegal. But if you don't pay more than the price on the ticket, and you stay away from the people who seem to be out there every night, you should be fine. BE CAREFUL! There are lots of people selling forgeries and asking exorbitant prices, so don't get duped. It you have time, you might check the newspaper classifieds a few days before an event.
For baseball you have two options: Shea Stadium and Yankee Stadium. There are generally plenty of nosebleed seats available. For day games, it's safe to take public transportation (from Manhattan, get to Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, by subway; and Shea Stadium in Queens, by the Long Island Railroad, leaving from Penn Station). Night games are usually so crowded that they are very safe. But don't linger. Leave with the crowd.
Football fans will have to make the trek out to the Meadowlands in New Jersey to catch the Giants or the Jets, but there are buses from the Port Authority Bus Terminal if you can't catch a ride with someone.
Tennis fans should mark their calender for an August trip to Flushing Meadows in Queens to see the US Open. For those of you who can't afford the high cost of seeing it live, there is always cable, or the ubiquitous television in every bar around.
Disc-O-Rama, 186 West 4th (Barrow St.), 206-8417. A West Village favorite.
HMV, 2081 Broadway (72nd St.), 721-5900; 1280 Lexington Ave (86th St.), 348-0800. Tower with carpeting.
Tower Records, 692 Broadway (4th St.), 505-1500; 1535 Third Ave (86th St.), 369-2500; 2107 Broadway (74th St.), 799-2500. HMV with ruder staff.
The problem with live music in New York is a fortunate one: how to decide. You have everything from Madison Square Garden to a no-name blues bar in the Village to choose from, and a bunch of good places to find music listings: The Village Voice, New York magazine, The New Yorker, The New York Times. Tickets are generally not a problem, unless you wait until the day of the show, or unless it's Barbra Streisand at Radio City Music Hall.
The big venues are Radio City, which caters to a slightly older audience (Streisand, Harry Connick), or Madison Square Garden, which gives New York its dose of arena rock (Van Halen, Rolling Stones) and other big-ticket names (everything from The Dead to Elton John). Tickets to both these venues sell out fast, so plan on calling as soon as they go on sale.
There are a dozen medium-sized venues that host the more medium-sized acts that come to town (e.g. Spin Doctors, Hole, Salt-N-Pepa). These include places like the Beacon Theater, Irving Plaza, and Roseland. They price tickets in the $10-$20 range and sell out fast for the bigger names.
But you're not really making the most of your geographic good fortune if you're waiting for the big names to play the big venues. The beauty of New York is that so many of the next big things are playing just around the corner. Just 18 months ago, with a little foresight, you could have caught Sheryl Crow at the Knitting Factory with only a hundred other music fans. Scour the ads, ask around, and go see something you've never heard of. You might get lucky.
If you came to New York as a pop music fan, think about broadening a bit. There is so much good music here you can't find anywhere else. You can see Sonny Rollins, The New York Philharmonic, and the Boys Choir of Harlem all in a week. Every New Yorker complains that they don't take advantage of all the culture around them, and you certainly will too, but there is no reason not to try.
New York is the theater capital of America. But if your image of New York theater stops at Broadway, you're missing half the show.
Broadway is expensive, and unless self-indulgent musical comedy extravaganzas are your idea of a fun night for $80, read the reviews. There's lots of fantastic theater on and off Broadway, but pick carefully because there are plenty of duds. Whatever you want, you'll find it, but just make sure you know what you want so you don't end up sitting through three hours of some interminable soliloquy by someone who calls himself Doctor Hatemeister. Prices can vary from free to well over $100, with no particular relationship to quality. Tickets for most major productions can be purchased either at the box office or for slightly more through a ticket service like Telecharge (239-2600).
"Broadway" is used to describe a somewhat arbitrary collection of theaters on and around Broadway in midtown (mostly between 40th and 50th streets.) Broadway puts up the big shows, musicals, and elaborate plays. Broadway tickets are extremely expensive ($40-$100), and for hit shows they are hard to come by. Leftover half-price tickets for lots of Broadway and off-Broadway shows are available at TKTS at W. 47th and Broadway and also at 2 World Trade Center on the day of the performance only. Tickets go on sale for night shows at 3P.M. or 10A.M. for matinees.
"Off-Broadway" refers to a few dozen smaller theaters that are well regarded and scattered all over town. Off-Broadway tickets can still be a bit expensive ($30) but are generally easier to come by. "Off-off Broadway" refers to all the other theaters in the city doing a huge variety of work in an equally wide variety of spaces and locations. Tickets tend to be cheap or free. There are some great productions out there, so keep your eyes on the reviews and your ear to the buzz.
Everything plays in New York, usually long before it opens in the rest of the country. There are hundreds of theaters showing dozens of movies, which leaves you with only one problem: 10 million other people are probably going to be headed to the movies the same night as you are. I know you think I'm probably exaggerating, but you cannot go to the movies in New York on a weekend night without buying tickets well in advance. Movies just sell out here. Even weeknights can be dangerous for a new movie, so don't take anything for granted. The best bet is to get those tickets before dinner. Many theaters now allow you to charge tickets by phone, either by calling the theater directly or by calling 777-FILM. You pay an extra dollar for the tickets if you buy by phone (bringing the total to a whopping $9), but after you miss a few you'll gladly pay the extra buck.
Among the big first-run theaters there are a few special ones to keep in mind. Near Lincoln Center at 68th and Broadway is the new Sony Imax Theater (along with nine regular theaters). This hi-tech, 80-foot 3-D screen is a pretty remarkable experience, even if the 40-minute movies showing right now are kind of lame. The $9 show is on the cutting edge of technology and is certainly worth a look. If you are into big, also keep in mind the truly giant 70mm screen at the Ziegfeld Theater at 141 W. 54th St. (6th Ave).
Revival houses abound in the city, showing some of the greatest movies of all time and some that you've never heard of. Foremost among these is Film Forum, at 209 West Houston (6th Ave.), 727-8110. Film Forum has an astonishingly good program of new art-flicks and great classics that always offers something exciting. Also keep in mind the St. Mark's Theater (at 1st Ave.), and The Walter Reade Theater (at Lincoln Center).
Museums in New York are more abundant than in any city in America. There are so many it would be impossible for me to give you a complete listing. Following are just the big five (aka my five favorites):
The Metropolitan Museum of Art: 5th Ave. at 82nd Street. Tuesday through Sunday, 9:30A.M. to 5:15P.M., Friday and Saturday until 8:45. The grandaddy of museums. Everything is here: Egyptian artifacts, Renaissance drawings, Medieval armor, Impressionist paintings, contemporary photography, etc. You couldn't see it all in a day if you ran.
The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA): 11 West 53rd Street. Open Saturday through Tuesday, 11A.M. to 6P.M. and Thursday and Friday noon to 8:30P.M.. Closed Wednesday. There are great exhibits here all the time, but the major draw is the permanent collection. Modern refers to the modern age onward, so there are more Van Goghs, Picassos, and Monets than you can shake a stick at, plus lots of recent works by contemporary artists. Not to mention great photography, design, and print departments.
Guggenheim: Fifth Avenue at 89th St. Open Sunday to Wednesday, 10A.M. to 8P.M.. Another fabulous collection of modern and contemporary art. But to be honest, I go for the building itself, Frank Lloyd Wright's only New York edifice. The museum is primarily a long spiral ramp (it's better than it sounds) and is among the most beautiful places in New York. If you get to see some art in the deal, it's not bad.
Whitney Museum of American Art: Madison Ave. at 75th St. Open Friday through Sunday 11A.M. to 6P.M., and Thursday, 1 to 8P.M.. The Whitney houses the most imporant collection of American art in the city, with an excellent exhibition schedule of contemporary American artists from all mediums and sensibilities. Also great shows from the museum's permanent collection of American legends Hopper, Pollock, and Warhol.
American Museum of Natural History: Central Park West at 79th St. Open daily 10A.M. to 5:45P.M., Friday and Saturday until 8:45P.M.. This is every kid's favorite, and most adults secretly long to go too. Dinosaur bones, dioramas, and an incredibly big blue whale - all the cool stuff you're embarrassed to get excited about is here: reptiles, American Indians, meteorites, fossils. Also here is the Hayden Planetarium: call for showtimes; 769-5920.
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