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New York City, New York
IF YOU CAN’T MAKE IT TO ANY OTHER DESTINATION IN THIS guidebook, visit New York City to experience them all. Want to roast in a banya with a room full of sweaty Russian women and pop open a bottle of Soviet Champagne? Go to Brighton Beach in Brooklyn. How about tattooing your palms with henna and slipping on a sari sewn for a princess? Head to Jackson Heights in Queens. Want to slam down some caipirinhas and samba with boys from Rio? Black Betty on 366 Metropolitan Avenue, Williamsburg. And we’re just getting started.
• For inspired works of art, begin with the obvious (the Metropolitan on 1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street; the Museum of Modern Art on 11 West 53rd Street; the Guggenheim on 1071 Fifth Avenue at 89th Street; the Whitney on 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street) and then head to Chelsea. Between 20th and 26th Streets and Tenth and Eleventh Avenues, you’ll find a wide array of independent galleries. Women own and operate the Bellwether Gallery on 134 Tenth Avenue, the Denise Bibro Fine Art Gallery on 529 West 20th Street, and the Barbara Gladstone Gallery on 515 West 24th Street. Next, hop on the 7 train to Long Island City and visit P.S. 1 on 22-25 Jackson Avenue. Founded under a 1970s project to transform New York City’s abandoned buildings into public spaces, this contemporary art center is located inside an old schoolhouse and features cutting-edge art exhibitions, films, and concerts. Round off the day (or week) with another train (or two) to survey El Museo del Barrio’s collection at 1230 Fifth Avenue at 104th Street. Founded by Puerto Rican artists and activists in 1969, this is the city’s premier Latino museum and a major gathering point for the Spanish Harlem community.
• Summertime in New York City means festivals. In just about every borough, you’ll find live music, readings, dance performances, film screenings, and street fairs—most held outdoors and many free. Grab a copy of the Village Voice and start planning. Manhattanites gravitate to Central Park for its SummerStage festival. The 2006 line-up included Canadian songstress Feist, U.K. hip-hop artist Lady Sovereign, blues rocker Bonnie Raitt, indie music star Ani DiFranco, and Pulitzer Prize finalist Joan Didion. The New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera also hold free nighttime performances in the park; sit in the back to chat. Bryant Park on 40th Street and Sixth Avenue holds free screenings of classic movies all summer long; New Yorkers pack elaborate picnics and start trickling in at 5 P.M. for 8 P.M. shows. Brooklynites, meanwhile, head to Prospect Park to Celebrate Brooklyn, which has in recent years headlined La India, Leela James, and Angelique Kidjo.
• But what you really want to do is shop, you say? As a New York cabbie once said, “Anything you can’t find anywhere else in the world, this city has two of ’em. And if you can find it somewhere else, we’ve got five of ’em.” Looking for a bamboo bird cage, a silk kimono, a sushi-and-sake set, or a hot cup of oolong tea? Try Pearl River Market on 477 Broadway. Want those strappy kittens Carrie Bradshaw swoons over in Sex and the City? Go to Jimmy Choo’s on 645 Fifth Avenue at 51st Street (and if you need to justify that $1,200 price tag, repeat Bette Midler’s credo: “Give a girl the correct footwear and she can conquer the world”). Need a touch-up on your makeup before hitting the town? Europe’s leading beauty chain, Sephora, is your answer (with ten locations in Manhattan alone). Bargain hunting? It doesn’t get better than Century 21 on 22 Cortlandt Street between Church and Broadway. (Just be forewarned that on weekends, shopping here is a full-contact sport.) And then there’s that holy grail of consignment shopping—INA—where celebrities and fashion magazine editors dump their gently-worn Marni jackets, Prada shirts, Manolo Blahnik stilettos, and handbags by Chanel, Mui Mui, Marc Jacobs, and Gucci. (It was also the site of the famous Sex and the City Wardrobe Sale, when hundreds of fans waited in lines that wrapped around the block to buy “a piece of fashion history” after the show’s end.) Much of INA’s clothing only runs to size 10, but shoes generally come in all sizes. Of the four locations, Soho is the best, at 101 Thompson Street (nearest subway: C or E to Spring Street). Watch out for their seasonal sales, when prices can be slashed up to 70 percent (which, when you’re talking about a hand-me-down from Barney’s, will still set you back several hundred bucks, but for a fashionista, that deal is a steal).
• A “rest stop for rare individuals,” the Hotel Chelsea on 222 West 23rd Street opened as a housing cooperative in 1884 before shifting toward transient occupancy, and has long attracted writers, artists, musicians, and other larger-than-lifes. Somewhere within its eleven canvas-lined floors, Sir Arthur C. Clarke wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey, poet Dylan Thomas “sailed out to die,” Janis Joplin had an affair with Leonard Cohen, Arthur Miller wrote After the Fall, and Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols killed his girlfriend, Nancy. Famous women residents include song-writer Patti Smith, filmmaker Shirley Clarke, and communist Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. “This is a feeling hotel, unlike any other,” says Stanely Bard, the hotel’s long-time managing director. “Lovely, sensitive, and beautiful people stay here.”
• Don’t leave the Big Apple without paying homage to its most famous female resident. A gift from the French in the late nineteenth century, Lady Liberty holds a torch in her right hand, a tablet in her left, and stands on a chain that symbolizes her acquired freedom. The seven spikes in her crown represent the seven seas (or continents), and her plaque is inscribed with a sonnet by Emma Lazarus that begins: ‟Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” From her perch at the mouth of the Hudson River, she welcomes (in theory, at least) all immigrants, visitors, and returning Americans to the United States. Pay her a proper visit by catching a ferry from Battery Park in New York or Liberty State Park in New Jersey and taking either the Statue of Liberty Observatory Tour or the Promenade Tour, both of which include admission to her museum.
TOURS
Gutsy Women Travel offers a women-only Discover New York Tour (www.gutsywomentravel.com).