A Year In New York

As a Californian used to spending lots of time with trees, especially pine trees, New York City can be a barren place. These East Coast maples and elms have lost all their leaves. If it’s a pine smell you want, hail a taxi that has a tree-shaped air freshener dangling from the rear-view mirror. Or […]

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The holiday season has been too a-bustle for me to blog about every store window that has turned my head. Now, two days before Christmas, allow me to present the best of the best: the display at the Bergdorf Goodman store on Fifth Avenue. The designers ditched the egg nog and cherubic children — yawn […]

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The weathermen have described the snow and sleet this weekend as nasty, but that all depends on your perspective. All Friday I kept pressing my nose against the window and watching the snowflakes fall out of the sky. This was my first New York snowstorm and I have been waiting for it like a seven-year-old […]

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The tree has been standing unadorned in my living room for the last two weeks, and when my partner Joo visits me she looks at it suspiciously. It makes her sneeze. Joo is a Hindu, half-allergic to Christmas and fully allergic to pollen. “OK, OK, OK, I’ll help you decorate it,” she said yesterday, sniffling, […]

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Many moons ago, on my first trip to New York, some good friends (that’s you, Mike and Dan!) took me to see this new show in the East Village called the Blue Man Group. The Blue Men’s blend of vaudeville and gadgetry, combined with loads of toilet paper, just knocked my socks off. I wasn’t […]

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For the second day, New York is under a gray blanket of rain. Nothing epic or torrential, just a dose. Half an inch every 24 hours. Call me in the morning. The puddles at the curb are just deep enough to flood my shoes. Indoors, everyone’s jackets and umbrellas shed drops and leave a thin […]

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The most thrilling part of my day in New York is often astride my bicycle, the Super Star, on the morning commute. It’s a great workout, the scenery spans all of Manhattan, and of course there’s the adrenaline rush that comes with racing transit buses I thought I’d share the excitement with this handlebar’s-eye guide […]

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A few weeks ago Joo and I traveled to Boston, where temperatures were in the twenties, and the clothing dilemma that I had mothballed for months gained a sharp, aching clarity. Winter is coming, and this Californian had arrived on the East Coast woefully unequipped. The problem isn’t staying warm, exactly; it’s staying fashionable. I […]

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Loyal reader Melissa Griffiths pointed out recently that my RSS feed was broken, and that any attempt to subscribe to AYINY resulted in a page of gobbledygook. After a few sparring sessions with my computer I persuaded it to work. You’re free to subscribe again. For those not in the know, that “RSS” button on […]

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I have neglected to mention Thanksgiving and the utterly different side of New York I saw over the long weekend. I rented a car and took a five-hour drive upstate to Wellsville, New York, all the way to end of a dirt road where my friend Rich Shear owns a farm. I met Rich on […]

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