You take anhattan
Amelia Torode says that New York's trendiest spots are in the boroughs here's a famous New Yorker magazine cover from the 1970s called 'View of the World From 9th Avenue'. Manhattan is in focus and everything to the west of the Hudson River is just an irrelevant cartoon blur, tiny, receding away into the distance.
Thirty years on and the message still resonates loudly: New York is Manhattan: Manhattan is the centre of the world, nothing else matters. Having been an expat in New York for almost six years I could not disagree more strongly. For a more authentic New York experience you have to leave Manhattan, especially around the Christmas period when the outer boroughs really come into their own.
Start off in the Bronx on City Island. This tight-knit fishing community feels more like rural New England than urban America. City Island is tiny, just 1.5 miles long by half a mile wide. It has one main street, City Island Avenue, on which the island's only hotel, Le Refuge Inn, a beautiful six-room Victorian mansion, is found. There you can relax, revel in the Christmas lights and watch the sailboats docked on Eastchester Bay. Pop into any of the local restaurants and feast on succulent clams and lobsters, explore the local history museum, browse the antique stores or head to the Sailing Club and rent a boat. It's only the occasional sound of a car alarm drifting over from the mainland that brings you back to earth.
Deeper into the Bronx there is a blue-collar area, Arthur Avenue, aka the real Little Italy. Unlike Manhattan's touristy version, Arthur Avenue is utterly genuine: imagine GoodFellas meets The Sopranos. As you might guess they take Christmas very seriously (they actually use the word Christmas — no 'Happy Holiday' uttered here). The restaurants and characters are great. Restaurants have menus, but no one uses them; instead you ask what the chef recommends. It is strongly advisable not to disagree with him because they do know their food — last time we ate plates of mouth-watering eggplant parmesan, freshly made pastas, tender cuts of veal and thinly cut bresaola. At the end of the meal your waiter decides how much he would like you to pay. Our bill came to an utterly arbitrary, though very reasonable, $201 (£100) for five of us to eat and drink past the point of gluttony.
Don't forget Brooklyn. These neighbourhoods have a vibrancy that can't help but draw you in and are best explored on foot. lime Out New York recently published their Best Block edition, and the block that won was in Fort Greene. Fort Greene used to be a drugriddled nightmare during the 1970s and 1980s but is now a culturally and ethnically diverse middle-class utopia. It's managed to retain a flavour which the film-maker Spike Lee, Fort Greene's most famous son, would be proud of. Take the subway to Lafayette Avenue and start with the streets around Fort Greene Park — Portland, Oxford, Cumberland and Adelphi are the most beautiful. There are literally hundreds of Greek Revival, Romanesque and Renaissancestyle row houses of virtually original appearance, many decorated with trees, lights and other Christmas icons. The area comes into its own at weekends when even in winter the world sits out on its stoop with coffee and the New York Times. Stroll down to Junior's, a Brooklyn institution since 1950, where off-duty cops, Japanese tourists, large African-American families and locals enjoy New York's best cheesecake. It doesn't get more Brooklyn than this.
If you are in the mood for something a bit trendier, Williamsburg is the place. Just one stop from Manhattan, the area around Bedford Avenue is littered with small, trendy art galleries and one-off boutiques — it's perfect for picking up presents for cool friends and relatives. Try some of the fabulous bars and restaurants, many in old converted spaces: Relish, a diner in a disused 1930s railroad car; Union Pool, an old swimming-pool store; SEA, a former meat-packing warehouse. It can be a bit 'too cool for school', but it's a great place to explore.
It used to be that the expression 'Bridge and Tunnel' was a disparaging phrase used by Manhattanites to talk about those who streamed into the city at the weekend. Now it's used by people to describe the flow from people leaving Manhattan to go to their bars, restaurants and boutiques across the river. For a genuine New York Christmas experience this year it's all happening across the Hudson and the East River, no matter what the New Yorker says!
Previous page
