NYC
It’s been years since I’ve been in NYC and I had only a few days to spend here, making for a very focused visit and carefully selected activities: 9/11 Memorial, Brooklyn craft brews, Yankee game, wd-50.
The World Trade Center - 9/11 Memorial - Freedom Tower have all been completed since my last time in the city when Ground Zero was still a fence around the perimeter.
I showed up at the Memorial Park with the reflecting pools where the Towers stood at about 10:20am on a Friday. There was a sparse crowd, but nearly every space lining the rails of either Tower’s pool was occupied. I walked around for about 30 minutes, reading names of the victims inscribed into the placards along the railing and keeping a particular eye out for Dennis Devlin, the Battalion Chief from my hometown. His name is on the South Tower pool, on the west side near the southwest corner.
After walking around and snapping some photos I got in line for the museum. I should have gotten tickets first. The museum admits patrons every thirty minutes but those admittance blocks sell out about an hour ahead of time. It looked like some people bought tickets online, but if you decide to buy on site I recommend buying tickets first and then walking around the memorial pools while waiting for your admittance time to come. I also recommend going early. I had to wait about 30 minutes but later in the afternoon the crowds around the memorial were massive and I imagine the wait to get into the museum was much longer. A word of caution though, taking pictures outside in the morning is difficult to work with because the light just doesn’t cooperate with you based on how the buildings are angled against the sun in the east. The best pictures are taken in the afternoon.
Give yourself a good 2-3 hours for the museum. It’s massive. Perhaps it’s too much for one trip. The museum is broken down into three phases: the buildings themselves, the events on 9/11, and then a post 9/11 exhibit. The tour will take you deep underground and below the reflecting pools to show the foundation, masonry, and support that the buildings stood on. Along the way there are countless remnants of the buildings - steel supports, firetrucks caught in the rubble, etc. The history of World Trade Center is largely in the South Tower area. There is a victims database serving as a transition from the South Tower portion to the North Tower portion where the events of 9/11 specifically are laid out. In the victims database a series of interactive panels let you call up the name of any victim and a short bio is provided along with any information friends/family has elected to share. In the center of the panels is a small room that will read off the names of victims at random and display a short bio.
Pictures are generally acceptable anywhere in the museum except in the North Tower exhibit on 9/11 specifically. The exhibit is powerful. It begins with some simple newspaper headlines of the day, then transitions to TV recordings of the early news coverage before expanding more on videos of the planes crashing into the buildings and their later collapse. Again, countless remnants of the day fill the exhibit from firefighter helmets, to plane debris, to the famous tattered American flag recovered from the rubble. Most powerful to me was a short video of United Flight 93. It displays an aerial map of that flight’s path over NY and Pennsylvania, interspersed with actual audio recordings of air traffic control messages, other airplane relay messages, comments of the crew, comments of the hijackers to the passengers and amongst themselves, and most moving are voice mail messages from passengers to their families on the ground. Everyone that walked away from that particular display had to wipe tears from their eyes.
Sadly, I ran out of time and had to leave to meet a friend for lunch so I was not able to see the post-9/11 portion of the exhibit. Still, as I left past the slurry wall and up the escalators I accepted 9/11 as something I never had before. It had always been a call to arms for me, something to incite anger and hate towards those that would mindlessly slaughter us. This was the first time that I saw it purely as a tragedy, a sorrowful day but one marked by heroes and the love of a city and nation that committed to building a memorial in the victim’s honor truly worthy of their memory.
English speakers and Americans may be the minority for visitors there, and I think that’s a good thing. The memorial is something that should be shared and experienced by many, because it wasn’t just America that was attacked that day.
Moving on from the somber, I caught lunch with a few friends - tried to go to a Shake Shack but the line was ridiculous - then headed to Brooklyn to visited some famed breweries after checking into my hotel. I stayed at the Club Quarters hotel near the World Trade Center, it’s a nice place conveniently located for lower Manhattan activities. It’s reasonably priced too considering the amenities. There’s lots of food options surrounding the hotel, but all of the heavy and hearty variety. Trying to find a place to grab a lite bite was challenging.
The train over to Williamsburg took me within to a few blocks within Brooklyn Brewery. Despite it’s popularity it has strange hours. I got there at 5pm but they don’t open until 6pm so I walked the neighborhood for a bit before grabbing a beer at a nearby bar called the Counting Room serving some craft brew including a Brooklyn Brewery Lager. I wasn’t impressed with the lager, but hey, lagers aren’t impressive anyway. I people-watched from a window of the bar and saw the hipster crowds pass by for a bit. The highlight was a young thin blond man in a yellow one piece full body outfit that looked like the type of outfit you see in depictions of the future when we all wear the same clothes. He was stumbling around seemingly drunk or high and then wandered into a random door on the street. After doing this same routine a few times we realized he was being filmed and photographed and he was just an actor…anticlimactic.
Once Brooklyn Brewery opened the line to get in was very long but moved very quickly. The bar inside doesn’t accept cash, you have to buy “beer tokens” when you first enter to then exchange tokens for beer at the bar; one token for normal beers and two or three for the more exotic ones. There is no where near enough seating for everyone and the place is super loud so the ambience kind of sucks. Unfortunately the beer wasn’t that impressive either. A law school/Marine friend joined me and we did a divide and conquer and got a Weisse that was almost undrinkable, the Scorcher which was ok, followed it up with a Summer Ale that was not good and then we put in two tokens for the Brooklyn Blast which was a good double IPA but not good enough to leave a favorable impression on the whole for the brewery.
From there we walked to Torst, the bar run by Evil Twin Brewing. Though the taps are mainly Evil Twin they have others as well. It’s a really cool bar, lots of dark wood paneling in the seating area and light marble at the bar/taps with soft lighting create a pleasant scene. They serve beer in big wine glasses and we got Imperial Donut (way too rich, super bourbon barrel flavor but it’s a beer for sipping over a long period of time) and Femme Fatale Yuzu that we’ve had before but it’s delicious and worth a second try at the expense of trying something new.
It was back to Manhattan after that for dinner at Piccolo Angelo, an Italian place. We joined some more friends and ordered a bunch of dishes to eat family style but did no coordination on which dishes to get so ended up with plate after plate of heavy Italian cuisine. It was good, but there is only so much lobster pasta and braised pork you can eat after an afternoon of drinking without needing some lighter fare mixed in.
The next morning I foraged out into the urban wilderness around the World Trade Center in search of a light breakfast and coffee. The hotel lobby coffee was pretty weak and I needed something more robust to get my motor going. There are a lot of restaurants nearby, but mostly catering to the local business hour crowd or offering a full breakfast and not something simple like a piece of fruit or toast. I had a hard time finding a place to get coffee too without resorting to watered down convenience store variety. After a few blocks I came to a Dunkin Donuts and got coffee and hit up a smoothie stand on the street for some fruit smoothies. Naturally, when I got back to the hotel I noticed a Starbucks across the street.
At about 11am I took the 4 train from Wall St for the 35 minute ride to 161st St.
I’m about halfway through visiting all the ballparks, and Yankee Stadium was my most anticipated visit. After growing up watching the Yankees near daily and going to a game at Yankee Stadium at least once a week it’s been an 8 year drought since I’ve last visited. The new stadium is now six years old.
The old stadium is reduced to just a series of little league fields, and the new stadium lacks the exterior “wow” factor that the old one had. The main entrance to the stadium, behind home plate, had a great NY Yankee symbol on the pavement in front of it but an unceremonious “Gate 4” prominently displayed on the facade. It’s a clean cut and classic architecture, but considering the history they could have done far more.
The inside is gorgeous, tons of natural light and a grand concourse with panels of Yankee history, exhibits, and posters. There are tons of tables in the concourse providing a welcome retreat from the sun on hot days such as the current one. My seat was in the outfield, and though they were typical bleacher/bench style the rough-and-tumble charm of the old Bleacher Creature section has been traded in for families and vendor access.
Hot dogs were tasty and beer selection adequate but at $12 for a draft beer it’s extortion. The vendors are in no rush to serve you; standing in line at any given stall takes innings to get the most basic item.
I was able to watch Derek Jeter hit a slow infield single to reach #6 on the all time hits leader list for the MLB so it was a nice way to cap off my first time in the new stadium. I keep a scorecard of ballparks based on a series of factors and as tight a scoring rubric as possible to avoid biases. Of the twenty stadiums I’ve been to thus far, new Yankee Stadium ranks #3.
I had dinner reservations for 7pm so I left the game to change into something nicer at the before heading back out.
Wylie Dufresne has operated wd-50 for years and I’ve wanted to go for almost a decade. He’s closing down wd-50 in a few months though, I believe to open a new place with his son. A good friend from law school recommended we go and I met him there for some molecular gastronomy tastiness. The restaurant is in the East Village in a very nondescript space (perhaps by design - adding to the “there’s more going on than what you see” theme that he does with his food). We had a round of cocktails at first, with the Citrus Hystrix leading the pack.
The meal was a 12 course event with wine pairing, but extremely well balanced so even though there were twelve servings - four of which were desserts - we weren’t gorged or uncomfortable at the end. Highlights included pasta made purely from egg yolk, chicken liver pad thai with dehydrated melon, and sous-vide duck breast with some take on curds and whey. Apparently we made our excitement well known, as the staff invited us into the kitchen at the end of the meal to see the magic happen. Awesome stuff, a small space doing so much work; it runs like a machine.
The next morning it was over to Nolita for brunch at Emporio. Got there at noon which must have been after the first brunch crowd and before the first lunch crowd because the place was empty when I got there but packed when we left two hours later. Frittata and baked eggs were amazing, but the coffee was weak. Doesn’t NYC have a strong coffee need? Why is it so hard to get a decent cup anywhere?
I left for upstate after that, but a quick 48 hours in NYC proved the following highlights for us:
1) Shake Shake - apparently popular but too busy for us to confirm
2) 9/11 Memorial - best visited in the afternoon for taking photos, and in the morning to avoid crowds
3) 9/11 Museum - buy your ticket online (can be bought three months in advance) or early morning at the site; give yourself 2-3 hours to complete. Discounts available for veterans.
4) Club Quarters hotel - we liked this place, convenient location and good price.
5) Torst bar - over in Brooklyn
6) Yankee Stadium - try to sit on the first base side if you can
7) wd-50 - get there before October when it closes
8) Emporio - brunch in Nolita
9) Uber is a pretty good way to get around without resorting to taxis, the cost is probably a push but the service and car quality are better with Uber; the construction around the 9/11 memorial confused the drivers though and getting to our hotel proved longer than otherwise for some rides.