Guest blogger: Carol Cain, The Adventures of a NYCity Mama

Most guide books for New York City don’t take their readers past The American Museum of Natural History and there used to be a time when most newly arrived residents of New York thought Manhattan ended on 86 St. However, go further North in Manhattan and you will find all the delights of older neighborhoods still holding on to the traditions of their rich history. It is certainly worth the trip uptown just to experience the food, and when you do, you will be submerged in the epitomy of what New York represents to those who first came here so long ago.

If ever on the East side, by Central Park, and you decide to go beyond that invisible line often found in most guide books and tourist maps, you will find yourself in Spanish Harlem, or El Barrio. A neighborhood currently known for its vibrant Puerto Rican community, but originally established by Italian immigrants. Walk through the streets of Spanish Harlem, and you will get a hint here and there of both cultures, mostly in the name of the streets, and various restaurant choices.

Spanish Harlem has given birth to many musical talents renowned world wide. Musical geniuses such as Ray Barreto andTito Puente.

Conservatory Garden

Enter Central Park on 105th and 5th Avenue and you will lose your breath at the beautiful site of the Conservatory Garden, a popular location for photographers and painters alike. Originally established in 1898 as a greenhouse, it has gone through several reconstructions that have lead to the beautiful garden it is today.

Three Dancing Maidens

Honoring both the French, Italian, and English artistic styles, its center is decorated by the Three Dancing Maidens fountain designed by German sculptor Walter Schott. The amazing flower arrangements and they absolute escape it offers from city life and noise make this worth the adventure North.

El Museo del Barrio

Only a block down from the Conservatory, on East 104th St., is El Museo del Barrio where you will see Latino art of all genres surround you. This recently renovated museum is the pride and joy of Spanish Harlem, one which has stayed true to the neighborhood and culture in which it resides.

Other great museums to visit while in Spanish Harlem are the The Museum of the City of New York which showcases the City’s cultural diversity through its exhibitions and family-friendly programs.

mmmm Patsy's

If you have the time, venture further North and East to 1st Avenue and 118th St. This is where you will find Patsy’s Pizzeria. This is true New York style pizza, one of the originals, keeping alive the passion and pizza making tradition of the Lancieri family since 1933. It is very much like the often featured, but impossible to get into tourist spot, Grimaldi’s. The pizza tastes similar because Grimaldi, Lancieri’s nephew, learned to make pizza from him in the 1940s.

For a taste of authentic Puerto Rican cuisine you must visit La Fonda Boricua for true Puerto Rican culinary staples, as well as entertainment, and ambiance. There is a vibrant theater community as well, with theater houses and cultural groups such as Taller Boricua, Puerto Rican Traveling Theater, and the National Black Theater.

Spanish Harlem is on the East side of Manhattan and extends from 96th St. to140th St. You can access Spanish Harlem by public transit via the 4, 5, or 6 train.
Next time you’re in Manhattan, break the barriers of your hand held guide book, and discover El Sabor of New York City.

Artist working with Harlem kids

Carol Cain is a freelance travel writer and native New Yorker. She is a former publishing and public relations professional, with an MBA in International Relations. She is the founder of The Adventures of a NYCity Mama, a family travel site that was nominated for a Nickelodeon Parent’s Picks Award in 2009. Carol herself was nominated Best Latina Blogger in the same year by Latinos in Social Media. She lives in New York City with her husband and three boys.

Explore NYC with audio walking tours from CityListen. Any 2 for just 20 bucks!

By Michelle and James Nevius
(CityListen tour guides and authors of the indispensable Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City)

There was a meme floating around the Internet awhile ago where people compared their “bucket list” of places to see before they die. Which made us wonder: what should be on everyone’s New York City bucket list? What are the quintessential New York experiences that both natives and tourists should have?

Below, in no particular order, are ten “must do” NYC places/events/etc. Feel free to chime in, criticize, add, etc., in the comments.

1. Visit the Statue of Liberty
This is one that will surely rile many New Yorkers. Isn’t the Statue of Liberty only for tourists? Isn’t it just a big hunk of not-so-great art? Isn’t it, like so many transplants, in New York but not of New York.

Well, sure, all those things are true. But it’s still the Statue of Liberty and it’s an awesome sight up close. Not “ride on the Staten Island ferry ‘cause it’s free” up close, but actually in person, standing on Liberty Island, gazing up at her giant face.

Climbing to the crown? Probably not worth it, though we admit we haven’t done it yet under the new rules where only 10 people can go up at a time.

Best time to go without crowds? Put on your long underwear and go on a weekday in the last week in January; you’ll virtually have the place to yourself.

2. And Ellis Island
Since you are already taking the ferry to the Statue of Liberty, don’t miss its next-door neighbor, Ellis Island. Too often, people set out for the Statue of Liberty late in the day and by the time they’ve waited in all the interminable lines, Ellis Island gets skipped. That’s too bad – in just 35 years, 12 million people immigrated to America through Ellis Island, and the museum that is run by the National Park Service takes you step-by-step through that experience in the very place it happened.

3. Visit the Clove in Inwood Hill Park
New York has been built up and torn down so many times over the past 400 years that it is surprising to discover that there are any traces of pre-contact Manhattan. But if you go to Inwood Hill Park in Northern Manhattan and head in to the forested center of the park you’ll be in the Clove, an old-growth forest of hickory, dogwood, and oak. Some claim that Peter Minuit bought the island from the Native Americans near here in 1626; while that may not be true, it is certainly the case that this forest has changed little in the intervening centuries.

4. Walk Up Broadway
Since you need to get from Ellis Island to Inwood Hill Park somehow, why not walk? Starting at Battery Park and walking north, you’ll see an amazing array of neighborhoods from the “canyon of heroes” where tickertape parades are held to the edge of the Harlem River 13.25 miles later. It’s an all-day outing, but you’ll likely see parts of the city you’ve never visited before.

5. Go to the Beach
When people think about going to New York, it’s usually not for a beach vacation. But we have almost 600 miles of coastline in the city and some of that is beautiful beachfront. According to the organization New Yorkers for Parks, the best beach is Midland Beach on Staten Island, which brings us to…

6. Get out of Manhattan (or fill in your own borough if you live somewhere else)
New York is a big place and there’s much to love in each of the Five Boroughs. Too many visitors (and New Yorkers) end up being Manhattan-centric and that’s a shame, because the city is full of wonderful places in the outer boroughs, many of them easily accessible by public transportation. MetroCards are cheap: go out and explore.

7. Eat something you’ve never had before
There is probably no city in the world that has the array of cuisine that New York does—so stop going back to the same two or three places that always get your business and stretch your culinary horizons. (It might help you with #6, above, as well.) If you need some help finding places, check out The Confined Nomad, where they are trying to eat their way through the United Nations, alphabetically.

8. Take a chance on an Off- Off-Broadway show
New York has so many theaters doing so many plays at any given time that it can be overwhelming. Almost everyone in New York has been to a tiny theater to see a play starring a friend-of-a-friend, but how many choose to go support these little theaters just for the heck of it? There’s some terrific stagecraft out there for those willing to do a little hunting and always at a ticket price that won’t break the bank. A good resource is theateronline.com.

9. Take a walking tour.
Ok, this one’s self-serving, but one of the great joys of New York is that there is something historical around every corner. Don’t just walk the streets—explore them.

10. Venture into the northern reaches of Central Park.
For many, the park ends somewhere near the reservoir, and so they never get to enjoy the serene northern end, which includes the Pool, the North Woods, a blockhouse from the war of 1812 (the park’s oldest structure), and the fantastic Harlem Meer.

We could probably come up with dozens of more must-see/must-do experiences; for example, how can a list like this not have the Met (museum), the Met (opera), or the Mets (baseball team)? But we thought 10 would be a good start.

What’s on your New York City bucket list?

Other than Bialystock & Bloom in Mel Brooks’ The Producers, no one sets out to manufacture a Broadway Flop. Yet the streets of Broadway are littered with some notorious failures. There is something kind of poetic about truly bombing on Broadway (except, of course for those involved). The creators talk about being misunderstood or too far ahead of their time or victims of a critic conspiracy - but more often than not, the shows were just plain old awful.

In celebration of our Walkin’ Broadway tour, we present the Top Ten List of Broadway Flops. There are plenty more out there. These are our faves. (Please add your own!) Many link to their original New York Times review, because scathing reviews are pretty darn funny.

10. Late Night Comic, 1987
How’s this for a bad sign: the director removed his name from the credits after the previews before the show opened on Broadway. He probably shouldn’t have bothered; the show only lasted four performances. The New York Times review probably didn’t help: ”Late Nite Comic has no sense of direction. It also has no sense of book or score.”

9. Via Galactica, 1972
This one was a rock musical that starred Raul Julia as a space sanitation man living on an asteroid 1,000 years in the future. It was a originally entitled Up! – but appearing at the newly opened Uris theater, the producers thoughtfully avoided a billboard that read Up! Uris. True.
NY Times Review

8. The Capeman, 1998
“It would take a hard-core sadist to derive pleasure from the sad, benumbed spectacle that finally opened last night at the Marquis Theater, three weeks behind schedule.” Paul Simon’s much anticipated pop-opera hit the stage with a thud. While it survived a couple of months after opening, this one was pretty much dead on arrival. Paul Simon did release an album of the songs to some generally positive reviews. And in 2008, Simon performed a series of concerts “Songs from The Capeman” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
NY Times review.

7. Lennon, 2005
Continuing the trend of the ‘jukebox musical,’ Lennon aspired to be an interpretation of the life of John Lennon through the lens of his music. But the seemingly manufactured nature of the show was a “drippy version of his life” that featured a “Muzak-alized assortment of Lennon’s non-Beatles songs.” In a style not unlike that employed (more successfully) in the Bob Dylan-inspired film I’m Not There (2007), 5 actors portrayed different aspects of Lennon’s life. Weak reviews drove the show to close in about 6 weeks.
New York Times review

6. Frankenstein, 1981
The most expensive dramatic production to come to Broadway at the time, Frankenstein lasted just one night at the Palace Theater. Elaborate special effects and a ballooning budget behind extensive scenery (and the huge crew of stagehands to move it all around) made it impossible for the production to withstand a critical panning.

5. Dude, 1972
A musical from the creators of Hair, (one of whom was also the composer of Via Galactica, also on this list) this was a high-concept production that scattered the orchestra around the audience and turned the theater into an arena. Rewrites and last minute personnel changes pushed the budget of this “monstrosity” ever upwards, leading Newsweek to posit, “Only in America can a million dollars be thrown directly into the garbage disposal that is the cultural machine operated by the Holzers (the show’s backers) and their ilk.” A bunch of Dude articles are indexed here.

4. Breakfast at Tiffany’s, 1966
A beloved film makes its way to the Broadway stage as a musical. And starring Mary Tyler Moore as Holly Golightly. Sounds perfect. What could go wrong? Well, everything. Constant rewrites and massive changes – all the way up to and including the Broadway previews. Breakfast at Tiffany’s The Musical never made it out of previews. Producer Bob Merrick announced the abrupt close of the show with an ad the New York Times explaining that he chose to shut down the production “rather than subject the drama critics and the public to an excruciatingly boring evening.” (As the show never opened, there were no reviews to link to. Too bad!)

3. Kelly, 1965
Once considered the flop of all flops, this was a musical about a con man who reneges on a promise to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge in the 1880s. After pretty bad reviews in warm-up runs in Philadelphia and Boston, the producers brought in Mel Brooks, among others, to rework the script. More bad reviews, a big budget and some negative publicity all teamed to close this show after opening night to make it the most expensive flop in its day.

2. Carrie, 1988
A musical of the version of the Stephen King novel / horror movie classic about a taunted teenager with telekinetic powers that she unleashes at the prom. Expectations were actually pretty high for this one. The show was produced in conjunction with the Royal Shakespeare Company and had some strong talent pulling it all together. A production budget of blockbuster proportions and scathing reviews across town did it in. Thanks to its combo of pedigree (from King to a classic movie to the RSC), high expectations, huge budget and a run of just 5 performances, Carrie is often considered the quintessential Broadway flop.

1. Moose Murders, 1983
One night. One great (read: hysterically awful) review in the New York Times. Moose Murders could be the worst Broadway play of all time. Opening to dreadful reviews and closing on the same night, this is the flop that Bialystock & Bloom dreamed about. Perhaps a recent reference in Times described it best, as a “monumental fiasco…which closed almost before the final curtain.”

We are putting the finishing touches on a new Broadway tour that is truly a one-of-a-kind experience. Interspersed amidst the history of Broadway theater you’ll hear exclusive anecdotes and recollections from the likes of legendary producer and director Hal Prince (Fiddler on the Roof, Phantom of the Opera, Sweeney Todd, Cabaret, …), Tony® Award winner James Naughton, renowned actor Ossie Davis and so many more actors and creators from shows like Pippin, Godspell, A Chorus Line, Avenue Q, and on and on.

If you are a fan of Broadway theater, this is an experience not to be missed. And, like all of our tours, this is absolutely a not-just-for-tourists kind of activity. Plus, you can enjoy the tour on your own time, at your own pace.

Hosted by Peabody Award winning broadcaster and producer Elliott Forrest, here is an audio tour that takes full advantage of the medium to bring you the fascinating and rich stories of Broadway lore directly from the people who made them happen.

Walkin’ Broadway will be available within the next two weeks. We’ll keep you posted.