The New York Minute Show

Back by popular demand. This is the tale of an unassuming gentleman who just wants one slice of pizza. Unfortunately a pair of crazy pizza guys have other ideas.

Waterfalls are coming to New York City. This is likely to be the biggest city attraction in the summer of 2008.  A series of waterfalls are being installed in the East River at the following locations:

1. The Brooklyn Anchorage of the Brooklyn Bridge;
2. Between Piers 4 and 5 in Brooklyn Heights;
3. Lower Manhattan at Pier 35 (north of Manhattan Bridge);
4. The North Shore of Governors Island.

The falls will be on display from June 26th to October 13th, 2008. You can get a good view of the spectacle by taking either the Staten Island or Governors Island ferries. Both ferries are free so the experience will be light on the pocket book.

The project was designed by Olafur Eliasson and is being financed by the Public Art Fund. More information and photos are available at http://nycwaterfalls.org and via the press release.

Henry from Poland sent me a question about my recent Brooklyn Bridge video.

I liked the post about the Brooklyn Bridge trip. It also made me think of a question to you. Is it possible to make a walking trip, crossing Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan, walk up to Manhattan Bridge (my map shows it’s only a few blocks) and come back to the Manhattan borough using Manhattan Bridge.

You can most definitely do this. In fact, when you are walking across the Brooklyn Bridge from Brooklyn you see a sign for the Manhattan Bridge walking path as well. Based on the map below I estimate the distance of the trip to be about 2.5 miles, assuming your starting point is at City Hall in Manhattan.

This is a video of the George Washington Bridge. It was taken from inside an Amtrak train heading south. The combo of the bridge, the sun and the Hudson River makes for a really nice setting I think.

I walked over the Brooklyn Bridge this past weekend. It was a great experience. A Brooklyn Bridge walk is one of the great free attractions in New York City.

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Join me on a soundseeing tour across downtown Manhattan. I start at City Hall Park and make my way up into Tribeca. After a break in the action I get started up again in Greenwich Village.

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A quick audio blog post captured while walking over the Brooklyn Bridge.

Ralph Lauren is producing a video series called Around The Corner which aims to provide some insider info on various destinations. The video embedded below shows a young lady stopping by a vegan bakery, a barber shop and a Mexican Cuban restaurant. These spots were all new to me so it’s worth taking a look.

In other news. I will be out and about in the city this weekend with video camera in hand. I hope to capture a couple of short videos to share with you here really soon.

My good friend Dave Rimington is working on a very nice gallery of photos from Central Park that I just had to share with you. You can view the original gallery at full size here.

A couple of good questions from Ray in United Kingdom.

To try and keep down the cost, we are considering staying outside of the main island and traveling in and I wondered what your thoughts of this are? Is it worth it to save decent money or should we just bite he bullet and make the most of our few days?

It really depends on what deals you are able to find within a decent proximity to the city. Some people stay over in Secaucus, NJ which is about fifteen minutes by bus to Manhattan with a little traffic. To the north of the city there is a Residence Inn by Marriott in White Plains that offers rooms with kitchens and is a couple of minutes walk from the Metro-North train into Grand Central Station. The ride is about thirty to forty minutes.

There are some other options in Queens as well if you stay at a hotel near La Guardia airport. The ambiance isn’t that great though and public transport from there is limited. The Best Western City View hotel in Long Island City might be a good option as well. It is close to Manhattan and is about half a mile from the Number 7 train into Manhattan. Take a look at Jersey City hotels as well. There is convenient access to lower Manhattan from there via the PATH train system.

I would advise that you shop around and see if the prices you find are considerably less that the deals available in Manhattan hotels. I would compare the outlying hotels with ones in Manhattan that are outside of the Midtown hot zone, especially avoiding from Times Square up to Central Park. Once you have a comparison that includes the lesser price hotels in Manhattan you can start to figure out if the travel time and cost will be worth it.

In general, I’d recommend staying someplace where you can catch a train into town, rather than relying on the buses. Bus service to outer areas can take a long time if there is traffic and might not run as frequently as the Metro-North or New York City subway trains.

We will also catch the start of the US Open Tennis and again wondered if you had any particular tips for getting tickets/visiting to see the stars in action.

The U.S. Open is a great sporting event. I’ve attended several times and always enjoy it. I believe that tickets for the event go on sale in May or June. You can typically buy them online via Ticketmaster. You can set up an alert on the Ticketmaster site to remind you of the on sale date. My advice is to know the date when tickets go on sale and be online and ready to buy at the time when the tickets go on sale. They do go fast! I remember that they have special early on-sale dates for American Express credit card holders. So keep an eye out for that if you happen to have one of those cards.

If you want to be able to relax and mingle with the players I recommend going for a day session early in the tournament. There are a lot of matches going on at that time. There are certainly a lot more players around. And during the day it’s easier to recognize the different tennis pros and personalities walking the grounds there.