Holiday Windows, Part 2: Daylight Hours

Sneak preview of Part 3. Happy Honu-days!

We made a little bit of a change to our usual holiday-window-viewing routine this year. I think we usually go after work, or later in the day if we go on a weekend. We were trying to remember how we settled on that and we think it's because when we went on a weekend day once and the crowds were just too much. There are always too many people out there, that's just part of the deal, but there are degrees of crowdedness and apparently our one daytime outing featured a degree or ten more than we could handle.

Mandy was interested in some holiday music this year, though, and a couple of weeks ago it hit me that the Brick Presbyterian Church has a lovely carol service. I sang with the choir there years ago and Keith Toth, who was and still is the music director at the church, always picked interesting and beautiful carols and hymns for the choir to perform, combined with a few old favorites for the congregation to sing. That was at 4. Mandy picked Jane, a restaurant on Houston Street, for brunch; they turned out to be pretty popular*, with no reservations between 10:15 and 4, so we decided to take the 10:15 reservation, eat, go see windows until it was time to go to church, and then finish off whatever we'd missed afterwards (the service wasn't that long).

That worked out really nicely; the weather was spectacular, the crowds were surprisingly not as horrendous as we'd expected (plenty of people certainly but we've seen worse), the carol service was splendid (I almost can't believe I used to sing with that choir, they're really really beautiful), and since we started downtown and headed uptown, that left our favorite windows for last (and also for after dark, which is when they really show to the best advantage. Plus that put us at the Rockefeller Center Teuscher shop well before their closing time of 6:00 - treating ourselves to Teuscher is an integral part of our holiday ritual and we were absolutely crushed the first time we got there after closing time!

I took a LOT of pictures, as usual, so I decided to split it into 2 sets - click here for the afternoon set, I'll post the evening pix next.

Crystal honu above was actually from a high-speed preview of the Bergdorf Goodman windows Mandy and I took a couple of weeks ago - we'd gone to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and swung by Carnegie Hall to see if we could get Mandy registered there for the NYC ID program (free admission in 2016 to 33 cultural institutions, but you actually had to appear in person at each one to register - I didn't even try but Mandy has been doing this amazing cultural marathon through the fall getting herself set up, which was fun for her friends as we took turns joining her) so we were in the neighborhood and couldn't resist taking a quick look. I think this was the weekend before Thanksgiving, and the designers were literally putting on the finishing touches, which was fun to see. See the designer here? 

What a cool job that must be. The Bergdorf windows are always pretty spectacular but this year they were sponsored by Swarovski, so extra extra sparkly. 

Tomorrow - Holiday Windows Part 2: After dark! 

*Brunch was actually a little bit complicated - first we thought we would hit the Popover Cafe, which we went to once and enjoyed very much, but I asked that we reserve that for days when we had other uptown plans because the subway trip was a bit on the long side for just brunch - Brick Church counts as uptown, crosstown buses work pretty well, but I went to look at the menu or hours or something and discovered that they'd closed last year. Bummer bummer bummer! My  

. My next idea was Sarabeth's, which was even MORE popular than Jane - reservations there were going to be at 8:15 am or 5 pm, nothing in between. Whoa. We'll save that for sometime when we're planning a little more in advance - with Mandy signed up with the NYC ID thingy at the Met I'm sure we'll get back up there sometime next year, plus getting back up to my old neighborhood reminded me that used to love visiting Cooper Hewitt, the Museum of the City of NY, and the formal garden in Central Park that are all up there, all of which Mandy would love, so we are multiple excuses for returns to that neighborhood). Boy, am I ever spoiled by Courtelyou Road - I don't think I've ever made brunch reservations in my neighborhood!

Season's Greetings from NYC!

From the quiet of the Norwalk Islands, to the heart of NYC!

Getting off the train at Union Square - always seems to be "doings" in that station around the holidays! Last week, it was SantaCon - this week, I heard the unmistakable, unearthly sound of Silent Night, as performed on the Musical Saw - followed the sound to find the one & only Saw Lady! You never saw anyone play the saw with as much verve & panache as Ms. Paruz. Had errands to run but thoroughly enjoyed the moment!

The cause for my even venturing into the holiday madness of midtown New York City...Teuscher Chocolates for TQ's family.

Teuscher specializes in fancy packaging. Yes, the angel chorus is actually packaging for appropriately heavenly chocolate. When I go get this kind of chocolate, I make a habit of always getting a large box for giving, plus a small box. Call it the "decoy box" - it's basically to keep myself out of the big box!

Mission accomplished, I wander out past the tree, and the rink. I'd never skate here - there are lovely ice rinks in Prospect & Central Parks - but much though I'm not really into big crowds, this is always fun to see.

Needs no caption, right?

Back off to Connecticut now, chocolates in hand!

Happy Holidays to all!

Holiday Greeting from NYC, and a snowflake generator

Rockefeller Center Tree 2012

Rockefeller Center Tree 2012

57th St. Snowflake

Merry Christmas and (in case I don't get in another post before then) Happy New Year from NYC! Much family togetherness, no kayaking this year - just back from a long-overdue visit to TQ's folks, and now getting ready for an even MORE overdue visit to the relatives in Texas - haven't been there since 2007. The trip is turning out to be very confusing somehow, plans seem to change every time I hear from my folks, but whatever happens, it should be fun, Mom's side of the family finally gets to meet the guy I've been dating for ages, I'll get to practice driving a bit (eek, look out Texas, it's been a while!), and maybe we'll even hunt down a little barbeque this time (I think my aunt & uncle aren't big BBQ fans so we haven't really ever done that, but with TQ coming along I thought maybe we could put in a request, and it's met with a friendly reception).

We're not really doing presents, I hope (although I've gotten everything else wrong so I may have gotten that wrong too), but of course I have got some NYC goodies to take along - a box of Teuscher, which I've managed to stay out of, mostly by bribing myself with other kinds of candy...note to self: please stop being a slug and resume exercising after New Year, and then I made a special quick run into the city today after we got back from CT 'cause I found out that Joe's Dairy was open today (they're usually closed Mondays but since it's the day before Christmas they made an exception. Have smoked mozzarella & sausage, will travel!

Wanna make a snowflake? Click here for the Barkley US Snowflake Generator! The snowflake generator is fun, I made this one for the purpose of embellishing the "on-vacation" sign I put up on my computer at work on my last night before vacation, I was beginning to feel festive & couldn't resist dressing up the sign a bit.

Note later: Oy. I am recalling now why I started staying in Brooklyn for the holidays. The changes to the family holiday plans were tricky to keep up with but I was more or less following. But then US Airways decided to get into the "confuse the heck out of this poor woman" game too. It's like those coffee commercials - "We've secretly replaced Bonnie and TQ's Christmas day flight with a boxing day flight. Let's see what happens!" Thank goodness for online check in, I called US Air and a helpful rep there saw what had happened & helped get us back into flying on Christmas day. I am crossing my fingers that nothing else goes wrong and I'm not uncrossing them until we pull into my aunt & uncle's driveway. Here we go, fingers crossed, Boy iet;s haerd to typw thid way!

Kid at the Candy Store Window

Teuscher Chocolates, Rockefeller Center, 12/20/08

Holiday Windows 2013

Generally speaking, I don't like crowds too much. Black Thursday? No thank you! Times Square on New Year's Eve?  Good heck, you couldn't PAY me enough to be there. But there some things for which I will make an exception, and one of them is my annual trip with my friend Mandy to go see the holiday windows. I can't remember how or when we started doing this but we got to be friends when we were working together at NatWest Markets back in the 90's, so I think that by now this counts as a tradition!

That's not Mandy with the pups, btw. That's a picture I took for my friend Gracie, who started taking pictures of dogs doing what dogs do in NYC and posting them on Facebook, just for fun and as a way to keep her page active for her friends (I enjoy it!). Eventually she started putting them up on a blog, Dogs Of New York. Couldn't resist grabbing a shot of this society lady taking the fluffies for a walk in their little coats for her!

She's passing in front of Bergdorf Goodman, which was where we started this year. Last year we were a bit disappointed - in the past, we've always sort of saved Bergdorf's for last because their window have alway been these spectacularly detailed surrealist fantasies (think, oh, life-sized polar bears covered in fringe and crystals, entire scenes covered in intricately cut paper or tile and glass, absolutely gorgeous with a mindboggling amount of work in the planning and execution), but last year they pretty much just had female mannequins in clothing they had for sale, set in fairly simple scenes with male mannequins dressed as waiters, ushers, etc., only with animal heads.

This year they didn't have as many of the fantasy windows as they have in the past but at least they were back to the elaborate and bizarre scenes. This year's theme was Holiday on Ice.  

Valentine's Day

Halloween

Arbor Day

Next stop was the Plaza. 

I don't think I've actually ever set foot in here but we walked up to look at the fountain that the Fitzgeralds so famously frolicked in (full of evergreens and lights this time of year) and decided to walk in and see if they were serving tea. They were, and although our dining plans this year involved post-window steak, we're now toying with the idea of working in high tea with our window excursion sometime, just for fun.

Next stop, heading south on Fifth Avenue - Tiffany's!

We always love the Tiffany's windows - they are small ones, designed as showcases for Tiffany's jewelry (same as Holly Golightly loved so much in Breakfast at Tiffany's), and for their holiday displays they build these amazing miniature sets. The last couple of years they've started expanding the window themes outside of the windows - last year or maybe the year before they had a carousel theme with carousel canopies built out over the windows. This year they'd done an elaborate design of windows with silhouettes in them on the building's facade - 

and then in the windows they'd built miniature NY street scenes - 

with tiny silhouettes in the windows. 

We always love the details they get into these models - look at the chimneys and skylights and water tanks, perfect NY roofscape in our older neighborhoods!

Mandy with a present! :D

Across the street, Bulgari's has adorned their building with a gigantic "diamond" snake armlet. I think this is fairly new, don't recall seeing it before the last year or so. Goes nicely with the giant snowflake that hangs over the intersection.

Henri Bendel is not one of our usual stops but Hirschfeld's dinner party grabbed our attention this year.

The artist at work -

The dinner table

And speaking of Holly Golightly - there she is, gazing uptown towards her beloved Tiffany's. Whoopi Goldberg in the background, of course. 

Continuing south - St. Patrick's Cathedral, under renovation

Next stop, Rockefeller Center

Just a few people here!

But we'll brave the crowds for one of our favorite windows - Teuscher Chocolates! Always the same every year, but we can't resist their chocolate!

Rockefeller Center Tree

Back on 5th Avenue. Empire State Building. With the new LED's, the red and white spire does a barber-pole effect.

Tabi! Mandy asked for a quick stop at the Bryant Park gift fair for a calendar she likes. 

Back out on 5th Avenue in front of the library. Patience (unless it's Fortitude, I assume they're named left to right as you face them but I'm not sure) decked out for the holidays!

Last stop before steak, Lord and Taylor. They also traditionally do miniature scenes, not quite on the tiny scale of Tiffany's, but animated, and with music.

This year they did something a little new, adding vintage advertising photos to the usual animated miniatures - it made for a very different effect, we liked it. 

And that was it for our holiday window viewing, 2013 edition - sometimes we've gone on down to Macy's but they tend to only do one new window each year (the rest, they switch back and forth between Yes Virginia There Is A Santa Clause and Miracle on 34th St.) and since it was getting on towards dinnertime by the time we hit Lord and Taylor, we decided we would call that the end of the window tour for 2013. 

Back to kayaking soon - looking forward to the annual Sebago Frostbite Regatta. Looks like it's going to be a particulary frosty one this year!

NYC Holiday Windows 2011

34th St. - Empire State Building and the entrance to Macy's. From here, I got one of the Chanukah faces of the Empire State Building (East and West were blue & white, North & South red and green).

It was a little bit late, but how could I skip my annual post about my annual trip to see the holiday windows with my friend Mandy? We started doing this in '09, and it's really starting to feel like a holiday tradition. I'd been doing a holiday walk through the Rockefeller Center area for a long time, but it's more fun to go with a friend. I'm posting a few pictures here - if you enjoy my "New Yorky" posts, you can go see more on Flickr.

We usually start with dinner at an Italian restaurant up in the east 60's; it's a favorite of Mandy's but being that far north, it's outside of the area we'd usually consider when choosing a dinner spot -- but with our favorite windows (Bergdorf's and Tiffany's) starting near 57th street, it works pretty well. This year, since I was on vacation & she's looking for work, we decided to experiment with reversing the order of the day - we started at Macy's and went north, finishing with dinner. That was nice in that it put those 2 favorites at the end of the route, but we'll be going back to the old routine next year because hooo, the crowds were insane! Macy's did have some special windows - magic marionettes on a magic star making ornaments out of wishes and rhinestones, but mostly rhinestones. I think we would've liked them but there were masses of people & no crowd control & we left pretty quickly because it just wasn't fun, you couldn't get to the windows without indulging in behavior more suited to the gridiron. We've seen crowds but never that bad.

The mobs may have had something to do with the very pleasant weather (windy for boating, but perfect for touristication), but we also think that maybe starting with dinner around 6 helped to put our sightseeing time back to an hour when at least parents of the smallest children would have already headed for home.

Fleeing Macy's, we headed on over to 5th Avenue. Our next stop was Lord & Taylors - we always like this one, they always do classic NYC holiday scenes with animated figures, like this park scene:



They had a fun twist this year in that they'd found a piece of advertising artwork, circa 1941, in their archives - it was entitled "What Is Christmas Made Of?" and showed a St. Nick with all sorts of holiday scenes incorporated in his suit:


They posed that same question to a number of children's organizations and asked the kids to do their own illustrations, and they took those pictures and framed them and used those to frame the windows - and in some cases even blew up some of the images and incorporated them.


I still remember how cool I thought it was when I won a prize (a gift certificate, and I still have the little beanbag elephant I got with it!) in a coloring contest when I was in 4th grade and had my picture go up the wall in the Mare Island Navy Exchange for a little while - I can't imagine how much these kids must have enjoyed seeing their artwork being admired by millions of people.


Next stop was Rockefeller Center.


Once again, hordes of people.


We paused to watch the Sak's Fifth Avenue Light Show. They used the entire front of the building for a projection screen showing a dance of bubbles & snowflakes. We noticed quite a bit of clockwork imagery in various displays this year - wonder if it was the Hugo Cabret effect? Later on we crossed the street to go look at the windows. Sak's used to be another favorite; they'd pick one of the season's crop of holiday picture books and they'd build animated scenes from it in their windows, but then last year they threw that concept out the window and just went kind of weird:


Sort of the same general idea as the Bergdorf's windows that I always like so much, but without as much commitment to taking whatever the theme is to the absolute nth degree of crazed, lavish opulence (hey, let's take this polar bear taxidermy form and completely cover it it with six hundred miles of upholstery fringe!). Meh. This year's were a little better, in fact they were tied in with the bubble-machine theme of the light show, the idea was that the bubbles were being produced by elaborately dressed mannequins operating machinery...interesting, but still didn't grab us. We moseyed, sidled, and elbowed our way on.

But before that...we had a mission to complete in Rockefeller Center.

YAY! TEUSCHER CHOCOLATE!


On past the tree and the rink again - glad I stopped to take pictures and watch the skaters the day before I went to Michigan because there was no way that was happening this time. I did get one nice shot - the little fold-out viewfinder screen on the back of the Lumix is wonderful for this sort of periscopic photography!



After that & the quick look at the Sak's windows, we had 2 more stops before dinner - both favorites, but Tiffany's totally blew us away this year. Their display windows are designed to showcase jewelry, and their holiday window designers always create beautiful little sets within that limited space. This year, though, they outdid themselves with a carousel theme - with the little jewel-case windows framed with carousel-art facings, complete with lights!



They'd framed out the windows even further with beveled & etched mirrors, and inside of those...well, I know it's the wrong season, but it was like looking into the most wonderful sugar egg ever made. Look - that's a little teeny Tiffany's in there -



You can't see it in that shot, but if you move over a little bit - look, just around the corner at the end of the street - there's a tiny carousel -



And in the rest of the windows, the carousel animals break loose and canter through a miniature New York (that is a scale model of the Gothic Bridge in Central Park.



I loved that one, but possibly the coolest from a miniature-scenic-design perspective was this lovely exercise in forced perspective - a close call between a tiny sleigh and a flyaway carousel horse high above Central Park. Again, you can't really see it, but there's a tiny carousel that comes into view - and as you move towards the edge of the frame, the Hudson River and the far shore come into view. Amazing!



Turning away from the last window (and I did leave a couple unshown), there's the snowflake that hangs at the intersection of 5th Avenue and 57th street...



which I learned, literally moments before adding that picture, is actually the Unicef Snowflake. I never knew that before, but when I went to post the picture I thought "What is the story on that snowflake, anyways - I know it's famous, but why?", and now I know!

We finished off the sightseeing part of the evening with a visit to the strange but beautiful worlds of the Bergdorf Goodman windows. This year's theme was "The Carnival of the Animals". For looking at, my favorite was the "Testing the Waves" windows, crowded with mosaic fish (insert terrible pun about tilefish here ______)



And for oohing and aaahing over the sheer painstaking labor of creation, this one:

with the animal figures crafted of cut paper.

Porcupaper? Paperpine? Whatever, isn't he lovely?


Hope you enjoyed this little slice of "New Yorky"! And again, if you want to see the other half of the pictures, they're all right here.