Enjoying What New York City has to Offer
An intrepid neuroscience postdoc at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory heads downtown for museums, fine dining, and rock ‘n roll.
Published July 1, 2006
By Linda Wilbrecht
Academy Contributor
To me “going downtown” has always meant “good food.” This is especially true in Manhattan, where some of the best restaurants in New York City are concentrated below Canal Street.
I asked two friends to join me at the Financier Patisserie, near Hanover Square, ready for a day of exploration downtown. Pouring rain made the cobblestones and pubs outside on Stone Street look more like London than New York. The Financier probably gets noisy at lunchtime on weekdays with its green and white tiled walls and floors, but this Sunday morning it was blissfully quiet, every customer sitting on a French brasserie chair rapt in a news- paper with a bowl of cappuccino resting on a saucer.
Each saucer also held a small golden cake, the traditional French financier made with almonds and egg whites. I scanned the pastry case, trying to decide between éclairs, tarts, and crème brûlées. I settled on the raspberry éclair, its pastry lid held aloft by fresh and perfect berries sitting in cream. Not my usual breakfast, but this felt like a special occasion.
Properly sugared and caffeinated, we moved on to the National Museum of the American Indian. I was surprised I had never noticed it before, installed inside the ornate U.S. Custom House at Bowling Green. I was pleased to find admission was free; the museum is part of the Smithsonian.
From Museums to Shopping
The collection represents a vast number of tribes from the Americas, and includes clothing, pottery, basketry, carvings, even saddlery. I was struck by a model tipi, perhaps a planning model, perhaps a toy. It is made of deer hide, and painted riders dance across its surface with all the lightness of a Chagall. The Born of Clay exhibit showcases pots, jars, and storage vessels spanning 5000 years.
Several water jugs are decorated with paintings of deer with arrows running from their mouths to their bellies. Others are in the shape of trophy heads and maize gods. Contemporary potters are also well represented. On a simple gray basin made in 1986 by Peter Jones, an Iroquois potter, three clay singers emerge from the lip, looking like Edvard Munch figures beating a drum.
By the time we were back out on Bowling Green, the clouds had cleared. My friends were planning a trip to Hawaii, so they needed sandals and a new camera. We were in the perfect neighborhood to shop for both. At Century 21, New York’s most famous discount warehouse (located at 22 Cortland Street), we went elbow to elbow with young women pawing metallic purple Manolo Blahnik stilettos, marked down from $400 to $200. We found our sandals for a more reasonable price.
Passing quickly through the rest of the store, we petted 400 thread-count sheets and racks of silk ties, some garish, some at- tractive. Then we headed just a few blocks away to J&R, the computer and electronic superstore at Park Row (between Beekman and Ann Streets), to scope out cameras. I priced some wireless software, but we all decided to order online, in order not to burden ourselves with more packages for the rest of the day.
Beers and Parks
Now quite hungry, we wandered a few blocks north to Duane and West Broadway where we found Blaue Gans, a festive and relaxed Austrian and German restaurant decorated by a hundred or more colorful art posters. The sunlight poured through the windows onto tall glasses of slightly cloudy lemon-colored hefe weisse, a wheat beer we used to wash down our starters of brown bread and burenwurst.
For lunch we shared a superb Wiener schnitzel with lingonberries, as well as a salty goulash with buttery spaetzle. Although we were full, our curiosity led us to the dessert menu and we were thrilled to discover the best apple strudel any of us had ever tasted: crispy crust and perfectly cooked apples, not too cloyingly sweet or runny.
We decided to walk off our lunch along the promenade at Hudson River Park. Then, we ducked into the World Financial Center Winter Garden and had a look at the palm trees and the display Recovery to Renewal, showcasing plans for the Freedom Tower and 9/11 memorial at the World Trade Center site. We admired models of the winning designs and debated their superiority to the alternatives, also shown, a discussion rendered more relevant by the fact that cost overruns are now forcing a rethinking of the memorial design.
The Museum of Jewish Heritage
Further south on the river path we came to the Museum of Jewish Heritage at 36 Battery Place. From the outside I had always thought this museum was quite small, but today I realized the rotunda is connected to the new and much larger Morgenthau wing that juts from the waterfront off into Battery Park City. If you want to see the whole exhibit you should schedule at least three hours.
The Museum aims to honor the victims of the Holocaust by celebrating their lives, and affirming today’s vibrant world-wide Jewish community. Everything in the museum is unusually personal, often bearing the original owner’s name and country of origin. I was particularly struck by the dented trumpet of Louis Bannet, “the Dutch Louis Armstrong,” who managed to survive for three years as a musician at the Auschwitz- Birkenau concentration camp.
Above the instrument hangs a quote from Bannet: “This wonderful horn kept me alive.” On the lower level is a large exhibit on Jewish culture, illustrated by videos of synagogues around the world and religious, ceremonial, and everyday objects. A modern Sukkah, or harvest shelter, painted by Aryeh Steinberger with scenes of Budapest and Israel, caught my eye with its rainbow of colors.
The City’s Nightlife
For dinner we wanted to eat outside with a water view. Our options included Steamers Landing, Liberty View, and Southwest NY up near the World Financial Center, but we settled on the elegant Gigino at 20 Battery Place. We sat under a brick archway on the terrace with a direct view of the Statue of Liberty.
As we sipped Italian wine, the sun was setting over the skyscrapers of Jersey City and an enormous cruise ship floated by like an iceberg silently headed out to sea. It dwarfed the little orange Staten Island Ferry as they crossed paths far in the eastern reach of the harbor. I eyed the osso buco di pollo, but decided instead on the duck breast over arugula with pineapple carpaccio.
A day in New York also needs nightlife. We saw singles sitting outside flirting at Merchants NY (90 Washington Street). On Greenwich Street, women in stylish designer clothes were chatting intensely at Yaffa’s outdoor tables (353 Greenwich). We decided we wanted music, so cut east to Leonard Street, near Church, to the Knitting Factory, which has three different performance spaces. It used to offer jazz and experimental music, but now tends to cater to a younger rock and pop audience.
The street outside was lined with young men with shaved heads and Mohawks. We were carded. The band in the main room tonight was the Horrorpops, led by an upbeat young woman in a strapless dress who enthusiastically swayed with an electric double bass. The whole room “pogo-ed” up and down very happily and we joined in until our feet hurt and it was time to go home.
