New York amusements

Blue Note

131 West 3rd Street / 6th Avenue. Phone: 475 8592. (C8).

The most important jazz bar in Manhattan. All jazz players of fame play there and the players are mainly famous. The succeed each other at rapid intervals. Sarah Vaugh was brilliant and the amusing bodyguards happily panicked when the balloons burst, but the English foreign minister kept his cool. The atmosphere is unique in this really tiny place for all strata of society.

Blum / Helman

20 West 57th Street betw. 5th & 6th. Phone: 245 2888. Hours: Open Tuesday-Saturday 10-18. (C3).

The Midtown gallery that has been known to be often the first Midtown gallery to take up artists that have been introduced in the SoHo galleries, bridging the gap between SoHo and Midtown. When Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Roy Lichtenstein were exhibited here they were still relatively unknown. It also handles many new artists.

C. B. G. B. & OMFUG

315 Bowery / Bleecker Street. Phone: 982 4052. No cards. (D8).

The main venue and birthplace of punk, in East Village, a former car repair station converted into a long and dark bar with neon lights. Normal people can have fun by coming here, just as they would visit the zoo, to observe blue hair-spears, chains, dog collars and black leather on young people who walk in trance in the screaming noise and inject themselves on the stairs.

Chippendale

1110 1st Avenue betw. 61st and 62nd. Phone: 935 6060. (D3).

A ladies nightclub, suitable for outings of sewing clubs who want to have fun by observing semi-naked go-go boys from the health centers and to push dollar bills down their G-strings.

Dia Art

141 Wooster Street betw. Houston & Prince. Phone: 473 8072. Hours: Open Wednesday-Saturday 12-18. (C8).

The most important location of this group of galleries is in the center of SoHo. It is an immense space, full of damp earth that contrasts with the white walls and track lights. The name of the gallery at this location is: The New York Earth Room.

Leo Castelli

420 West Broadway betw. Prince & Spring. Phone: 431 5160. Hours: Open Tuesday-Saturday 10-18. (C8).

The most famous gallery of modern art has for more than a quarter of a century been here in the heart of SoHo. Castelli has in this time introduced great artists who became the established masters of modern art, such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Stella, Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. Most of them still feel beholden to Castelli.

Lone Star Café

240 West 52nd Street betw. 8th & Broadway. Phone: 245 2950. (B4).

Cowboy music has its main representative in Theater District. Texan country music attract homesick Texans in noisy circumstances and lots of beer and chili. It is convenient to get a seat on the balcony to have a view over the commotion. There are two bands each evening.

Mary Boone

417 West Broadway betw. Prince & Spring. Phone: 431 1818. Hours: Open Tuesday-Saturday 10-18. (C8).

For several years the most fashionable gallery in Manhattan, located in the heart of SoHo. It was the gallery of the eighties. Mary Boone is a disciple of Leo Castelli, the grand master of modern galleries. She is a social lion and has introduced controversial artists such as Rainer Fettig, David Salle and Julian Schnabel.

Michaels Pub

211 East 55th Street betw. 7th & Broadway. Phone: 758 2272. (B3).

Most jazz venues are in Greenwich Village or further south. The most important Midtown site for jazz is best known for Woody Allen playing there in a ragtime band almost every Monday night. The rather recent and tasteful bar concentrates on classic jazz and the guests are mainly middle-aged tourists, who line up outside for three hours before it opens at 11:45.

Pace

32 East 57th Street betw. 2nd & 3rd. Phone: 421 3292. Hours: Open Tuesday-Friday 9:30-17:30, in summer Saturday 10-18. (D3).

Possibly the best known of the classical art galleries, in the western part of Midtown. It is a large gallery on two floors. It covers Pablo Picasso, Jean Arp, Ad Reinhardt, Isamu Noguchi and Mark Rothko.

Palladium

126 East 14th Street (Broadway). Phone: 473 7171. (C7).

A huge Greenwich Village dancing floor with loud disco music and video flashes. It has shown a great staying power for several years, unusual for nightclubs.

Robert Miller

41 East 57th Street betw. 2nd & 3rd. Phone: 980 5454. (D3).

The best gallery atmosphere in Midtown is here, a relative newcomer to the gallery scene. It exhibits new and old artists, also photos and antiques.

S. O. B.

204 Varick Street / West Houston Street. Phone: 243 4940. (B8).

The letters stand for Sounds of Music. This joint on the border of Greenwich Village and SoHo is the main venue for Latin American music, a noisy and lively place, especially at weekends. The bands change all the time and there is sometimes African music.

Sidney Janis

110 West 57th Street betw. 6th & 7th. Phone: 586 0110. Hours: Open Monday-Saturday 10-17:30. (B3).

Sidney Janis has since time immemorial been one of the most influential galleries in the city. he made de Kooning, Pollock, Rothko, Duchamp and Leger famous in the United States. He has sold many of the works who now have a place of honor in American museums of modern art. He introduced the Dada style to America. The gallery is in the center of Midtown.

Sweet Basil

88 7th Avenue South / Bleecker & Grove. Phone: 242 1785. (B7).

Modern jazz has its center in the western part of Greenwich Village, in an unusually decorous place with brick walls and paneling, enlivened by paintings of important musicians. It is small and crowded and the atmosphere is relaxed.

Village Vanguard

178 7th Avenue South / 11th Street. Phone: 255 4037. No cards. (B7).

For more than half a century this small and rickety, crowded and smoke-filled basement in the northern part of Greenwich Village has been one of the very top jazz venues in New York. Many famous musicians started their career in this intimate hole that has been imitated all over the world. The music is mainly classic jazz.

Chumleys

86 Bedford Street near Commerce Street. Phone: 675 4449. (B8).

The most amusing bar in Greenwich Village, from 1920, completely unmarked on the outside to prevent strangers from finding it, so you have to remember the address. It is a neighborhood pub and nearly a private pub of the literary crowd in Greenwich Village.

First you walk up steps and the down steps to enter the dim pub, where talkative guests sit tight at small table of massive wood, carved with initials. Jackets of books by well-known and unknown regulars line the walls.

Fanelli‘s

94 Prince Street / Mercer Street. Phone: 226 9412. Hours: Closed Saturday & Sunday. (C8).

A British pub since 1872 in the SoHo district of arts. Formerly it was a workingmans hangout but now its red-and-white oilcloth tables have been taken over by trendy artists. It is often very crowded and most enjoyable at that time. Take a look at the beautiful entrance door.

P. J. Clarke‘s

915 3rd Avenue / 55th Street. Phone: 355 8857. Hours: Open late. (C3).

The most famous Midtown bar, in an old house of two floors, nestling on a corner under one of the Midtown towers. The owner, Daniel Lavezzo, refused to sell, when all the other lots on the block were bought to make way for the tower. And he still refuses.

There is a long bar with a few stools around it. A few tables are at the far end of the room. All furnishings are old and worn and so are the mirrors. In busy hours several layers of customers stand at the bar, most of them drinking beer. This is a popular venue for the happy hour after work and before the subway ride to the suburbia.

Café Central

Grand Central Station. (C4).

Spectacular view over the famous main hall of the railway station, offering coffee with good, fresh fruit for breakfast.

Café Europa

West 57th Street / 7th Avenue. (B3).

A comfortable café with tiny tables diagonally opposite Carnegie Hall, serving excellent fresh fruit with yogurt for breakfast.

Caffe Reggio

119 Mac Dougal Street betw. West 3rd & Minetta Lane. Phone: 475 9557. (C8).

The best known of very few real European cafés in Manhattan, a haunt of intellectuals in Greenwich Village, the most European part of Manhattan. It even has tables on the pavement, a curiosity in America.

Real coffee is sold, such as espresso and cappuccino, also very good chocolate and several types of tea. It is a popular after-dinner meeting place in the neighborhood and a convenient place for people-watching.

Giannis

South Street Seaport, 15 Fulton Street. Phone: 608 7300. (D10).

A rare sight in New York, a pavement café, in the touristy South Street Seaport, a good place for observing vacationers and Wall Street bankers from nearby towers.

Balduccis

424 Avenue of the Americas betw. 9th & 10th. Phone: 673 2600. (C7).

In northern Greenwich Village, the main gourmet shop in Manhattan. It has the very best of everything, of fresh vegetables and fish and of ripe cheeses, 550 of them. It also has the best bakery in town. The shelves are full of jars of eccentric food from all the corners of the world, especially from Italy and France.

Bergdorf-Goodman

754 5th Avenue / 57th Street. Phone: 753 7300. Hours: Closed Sunday. (C3).

The most luxurious fashion shop on Manhattan is on Midtowns central corner of the main fashion streets. It is an expensive shop, designed as a palace and it receives visitors like royalty. It has been in the forefront of introducing Italian fashions to the American audience.

Bloomingdales

1000 3rd Avenue / 59th Street. Phone: 705 2000. Hours: Open all week, except Sunday morning. (C3).

The upper class department store is on the border of Midtown and Upper East Side, seven floors of playing ground for interior designers and decorators. Thousands of New Yorkers and suburbanites follow Bloomingdales fashions as if in a trance.

In addition to the fashion goods there are the most strange goods from China, India and other corners of the world. The department of food and wine in the cellar is famous.

The store is a mixture of an Eastern bazaar and a disco. There is always something going on here. The place is sometimes a riot, the most interesting theater in town, a necessary stop for curious visitors, one of the landmarks of New York.

Brooks Brothers

346 Madison Avenue / 44th Street. Phone: 682 8800. Hours: Closed Sunday. (C4).

Near Grand Central, the shop for all bankers in America. It is from 1818 and has directed the conservative taste in mens clothes ever since. It also sells clothes for conservative ladies and conservative children.

No notice at all is taken of swings in fashion. What was good in 1818 is also good today. Shoulder pads have always, are now and will always be banned here. It is also nice to know that the overcoat that was bought here in 1960 is still valid today. And some items are not expensive at all.

Casswell Massey

518 Lexington Avenue / 48th Street. Phone: 755 2254. (C4).

This pharmacy in hotel Inter-Continental in eastern Midtown is the oldest one in the city, from 1725, and reminds you of an outdated London specialty shop. It still sells perfume that was made especially for the wife of President Washington and a night crème that was made specially for Sara Bernhardt. And it is fun to observe the pharmacy jars from the 18th C.

Dalton

(C4).

One of the main bookshops on 5th Avenue.

Hammacher-Schlemmer

147 East 57th Street betw. 3rd & Lexington. Phone: 421 9000. (C3).

In eastern Midtown, the haven for the technically mad. It is the shop that introduced the world to pressing irons, electrical razors and pressure cookers. It has lots of strange things of the most ingenious kind, such as an automatic soup ladle, a computer for prophecies and a golf green. If you are an eccentric, this shop has exactly what you know that you need.

Henri Bendel

712 5th Avenue betw. 55th & 56th. Phone: 247 1100. Hours: Open all week, except Sunday morning. (C3).

The main fashion shop in Manhattan is on four floors in central Midtown and has become an avant-garde shop in fashion. It is designed as a collection of glittering boutiques where each designer has his own space. Some of them have even become famous at Bendel, including Mary McFadden. American fashion starts here. In spite of that the clothes seem to be wearable.

Macy‘s

34th Street / Broadway / 6th Avenue. Phone: 736 5151. Hours: Open all week. (B5).

The largest department shop in the world, west of Empire State, has been fighting for its life in recent years. It covers 200,000 square meters. It has gradually changed from being a downmarket shop into a shop with many quality goods and even fashions and gourmet food, serving the middle classes. The ground floor and the balcony is occupied by semi-independent boutiques.

Saks

611 5th Avenue betw. 49th & 50th. Phone: 753 4000. Hours: Closed Sunday. (C4).

Near Rockefeller Center in Midtown, this is the conservative fashion shop per excellence, tasteful and elegant. It is well organized and reminds you of Harrods in London, even if Saks only sells clothes and food. And it is never old-fashioned in spite of being conservative.

Tiffany

727 5th Avenue / 57th Street. Phone: 755 8000. Hours: Closed Sunday. (C3).

The most American shop in the world, because it could not have existed anywhere else. This shop on the main Midtown corner sells jewels, tableware and household ware, both tasteful and tasteless. It has its own style that does not follow other trends.

People buy wedding presents and wedding invitations with the Tiffany sign to make sure everybody knows where it is from. Silver rattles as gifts for newborn babies are popular.

Some goods are not expensive but packed in the blue Tiffany cases all the same, and that is the important thing for many people.

1996

© Jónas Kristjánsson