New York is as crass and vulgar a place as ever — and the time to visit is now. I was wearing my new i7 Aviator Active Noise Cancelling headphones in the plane on the way in and should have kept them on while walking around the ongoing acoustic assault that is Manhattan, but the upside of acknowledging that it’s madness is that it gives you an automatic mission to find yourself some spots of sanity in the city, and New York has more than a few to offer.
Baccarat Hotel & Residences
Let me begin with the oasis of sparkling luxury and haven of Midtown calm that is the Baccarat Hotel & Residences, parked improbably on West 53rd Street.
You want crystal? From the posh entrance to the second-floor lobby to the gorgeous bar area and beyond, the Baccarat bling doesn’t quit, and why should it?
This is the legendary French brand’s showcase to the world. This is your instant escape into a world of French chic. Even if you don’t stay in one of the luxurious guestrooms, dip into the Gallery or Bar for a delicious “boisson” such as the La Vie en Rose.
Whitney Museum of American Art
The art buzz in Manhattan these days is at the Whitney Museum of American Art’s new location downtown at the edge of the Meatpacking District on slender Gansevoort Street. Little of the art is new and most of the buzz is about the building housing it, as it’s designed by starchitect Renzo Piano, who made his mark way back when with that fabulous monstrosity, the Centre Pompidou in Paris. To say that Piano has ceased to be original is an understatement: the glass surfaces and copious terraces may be more inviting than the original Whitney uptown, but the predictability is a slap in the face to the rough-and-tumble spirit that used to animate this neighborhood.
If the presence of a mighty cultural institution like the Whitney in this zip code is proof that the old urban nerve and verve is good and gone, further proof comes in the form of the teeming tourist hordes crawling about the place like so many ants, saddled with more guidebooks and selfie-snappings than is probably good for humanity.
Yotel
If you want to stay in a hotel that feels a bit like a postmodern overgrown ant colony, albeit a cooler one with more comfortable beds, ditch the chain hotels and reserve an urban ‘cabin’ at the Yotel.
I have mixed feelings about a place that relies heavily on automation for its guests’ experiences. Between the automatic check-in via computers on the ground-floor (human contact is optional upstairs at the lobby’s ‘Mission Control’) to the automatic assumption that noisy is hip (there is rarely a moment in any of the hotel’s public areas that can’t be classified as cacophonous), there are things about this place that do more to generate stress than alleviate it. Yotel’s all-white, pocket-sized guestrooms are sort of a revelation. Surfaces are sleek and white and though surface area itself is small, I’ve never seen better use of space in a hotel room. You’re reminded of a smart business-class section where there’s a space to put everything. Even the beds recline with the touch of a button. Mattresses are thick and comfortable and there’s even room for a small work desk. If you get a room on a higher floor, you can drink in the floor to ceiling views of the Hudson or cityscape.
Landmarc
Getting a good meal in New York is not the easy feat it’s cracked up to be. There are now chain restaurants aplenty, and many young chefs focus so much on being different they seem to have forgotten about flavor. That’s why I was pleasantly surprised by Landmarc at Columbus Circle. Not a new restaurant, but their pasta carbonara was done to such perfection it could have held its own against the best of Milan or Bologna, and that’s saying something.
Idlewild Books
I did find one fascinating place in Manhattan that is actually quiet: Idlewild Books at 12 West 19th St. Long before the days of Lonely Planet and TripAdvisor, there was such a thing as the travel bookshop, which is now basically a dead breed. Idlewild is an exception. Here you can find not only a selection of regular guidebooks, but also an impressive array of foreign literature, including great finds of Middle Eastern provenance that take you beyond the headlines.