East Broadway and Pike Street

Cotton candy in Chinatown stopped me in my tracks. And reminded me of something I overheard on the street, earlier in the week: “Yeah, I just couldn’t pull the trigger today.” And I wonder what it was that stopped him.

43rd Street and Ninth Avenue

Apparently, all kinds of people these days (not just bloggers) are taking pictures of whatever they’re eating. I always hate to drag out my camera in a restaurant, but once in a while, I feel compelled to do it, such as when confronted with one of my all-time favorite things to eat in this city: raw diver scallops with tangerine-pressed olive oil and pink peppercorns at Esca. (That one on the right looks mangled because I couldn’t resist tasting it before I got my camera out.)

Grand Street and Essex Street

Soon to be open in the much more convenient (for me) Hotel Chelsea, the Doughnut Plant is now still where it started, on the Lower East Side. And they close every afternoon whenever they run out of doughnuts (this has happened to me before), so it’s good to get there early, if you want your pick of the day’s flavors. Such as coconut cream, crème brûlée, banana, and strawberry.

14th Street and Eighth Avenue

Part of the Life Underground art installation in the subway station. This particular piece struck me as an urban totem pole: a repository of history and stories (about a time when people used pay phones). But the artist said, back in a 1996 interview in the New York Times, that, in fact, “the impossibility of understanding life in New York is the subject” of these artworks.

Broome Street and Mott Street

At the only North American branch of Papabubble (originally from Barcelona), you can watch the candy being made up front, behind the counter, in its tiny storefront. Even more important, you can buy the hard candy, in beautifully minimalist glass jars, in flavors such as lime-chili-salt and guava (or, rather, that’s what I bought).

Ninth Avenue and 15th Street

Just opened: an airy and enticing Anthropologie store in Chelsea Market. Lots of nice things inside that distracted me (monogrammed mugs and sequined sweaters) as I made my way through to find something for dinner.

Fort Tryon Park

Happy Earth Day! Here’s the link to New York events. And that’s a view of a bit of George Washington Bridge, by the way.

25th Street and Madison Avenue

“On the outside, there are about 30 figures by 16 sculptors, the most sculptors to work on a single building in the United States,” according to this history of the Manhattan Appellate Courthouse at the NYC.gov website. (See some nice pictures of it in Nick Carr’s piece over at The Huffington Post.)

Lexington Avenue and 28th Street

View of the street through the copper pots arrayed inside Kalustyan’s, home of all your hard-to-find spices and other products (pomegranate molasses, rose water). I came away with a bag of Thai sticky rice and a slab of homemade halva. (I’ve never tried to make halva myself, but it seems pretty straightforward: here’s a recipe from Saveur for the almond version; mine was pistachio.)

Allen Street and Stanton Street

One of my fantastic discoveries at Rayuela restaurant over the weekend was a concoction of scallops on poblano-truffle sauce with huitlacoche (oh how I love this stuff) rice and crab scattered on top. (There was also a sparkling rosé sangria involved and a papaya stuffed with duck confit.) All part of the restaurant’s “freestyle Latino” cuisine.

Lexington Avenue and 88th Street

The street finds its own uses for things.

                                    —William Gibson, in “Burning Chrome”

Broadway and 27th Street

One of the shops in the Wig and Hair District (my designation), conveniently located near the Garment District. (It’s always good to know where things are. You never know what you’ll need, eventually.) New York Magazine calls this part of town “the last unnamed neighborhood in Manhattan.”

Spring Street and Crosby Street

I love the confusion of colors in a street reflection in a window full of paper flowers at Kate’s Paperie in Soho.

Greenwich Street and Chambers Street

Fruit vendor in Tribeca. (Here’s some more info, maybe more than you wanted to know, about street food vendors of all kinds in the city.)

Houston Street and Broadway

I wasn’t aware of all the controversy surrounding The Wall art installation (by Forrest Myers), but when I spotted it recently, it surprised me somehow, as if I hadn’t seen it in a while. And it made me smile.

City Hall Park

In celebration of National Poetry Month, I thought I’d offer up a link to Hart Crane’s “To Brooklyn Bridge,” so here it is.

Greene Street and Prince Street

Kelley and Ping is a pan-Asian kind of place that I am always happy to visit: the sizzle of the open kitchen, the crispy duck, the low light (for dinnertime), reliable curries, big bowls of noodles, and fast service.

Fifth Avenue and 57th Street

One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes—I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there’s a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life.

                   —Frank O’Hara, from Meditations in an Emergency

Fort Tryon Park

Quiet in the chapel at the Cloisters before a concert. “The twelfth-century Fuentidueña Chapel from Spain” is, according to the website, “visually and acoustically one of the most beautiful sites for the performance of medieval music.” (I saw Pomerium there this past weekend, and it’s true that both the performance and the venue were beautiful—even if the religion isn’t.)

34th Street and Broadway

The Macy’s flower show is on this week and making it difficult to browse or buy anything (what with all the flowers and people taking pictures of them).

Fifth Avenue and 34th Street

Manhattan has generated a shameless architecture that has been loved in direct proportion to its defiant lack of self-hatred, respected exactly to the degree that it went too far.
      Manhattan has consistently inspired in its beholders ecstasy about architecture.

                           —from Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan by Rem Koolhaas (highly recommended if you’re interested in a mix of architectural theory, history, and fantasy and don’t mind that same kind of dizziness you get when reading Derrida)

47th Street and First Avenue

White flowers seem appropriate (thoughts of death) against the skeleton on a banner advertising an exhibit inside the Japan Society. This show of 19th-century woodblock prints (Graphic Heroes, Magic Monsters) is spectacular and on until June 13. (You can view a few of the prints here in the online gallery.) The detailed prints are worth an up-close look, however, which is possible to do in this calm and uncrowded exhibit space. Some of the printing techniques—to depict whizzing bullets or falling rain or detailed textiles or hot coals spilling out of a brazier—were revelatory (to me, at least).