New York attractions – Page 3

October 7, 2009October 4, 2009

Central Park’s Gapstow Bridge

One of my favorite places in all of New York is the tiny, little bridge known as Gapstow Bridge. Actually, I take that back. I think it’s far more accurate to say that the bridge is one of my favorite places in the entire world. 🙂 I am so enamored with it, in fact, that my entire family now refers to it as “Lindsay’s Bridge”. 🙂 Gapstow Bridge and its surroundings are so incredibly picturesque and romantic that I’ve taken about three hundred photographs of it on my various trips to the Big Apple and I go out of my way to visit it at least once each day while in Manhattan. It’s just one of those places that has the ability to calm me and warm me all at the same time. I just can’t get enough of it.

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Part of what makes Gapstow Bridge so beautiful is its surroundings. The bridge spans the northeast corner of the Central Park Pond and overlooks the beautiful Plaza Hotel to the South, Wollman Rink to the North, and the skyscrapers of the Upper West Side to the West. Believe me when I say that there is no other place like it in the entire world. I can’t be sure where Heaven is located, but I’m pretty certain it has a view of Gapstow Bridge. 🙂

The bridge was first built in 1874 by prominent New York architect Jacob Wrey Mould, who also designed Central Park’s Bethesda Fountain and Belvedere Castle. The bridge was originally built out of wood with intricate cast iron railings, but sadly, due to years of wear and tear, the entire thing had to be completely replaced in 1896. The Gapstow Bridge that stands today was designed by Howard & Caudwell, is made out of a sturdy, medium-grade rock known as schist, measures 12 feet tall, and has a span of 44 feet. It truly looks like something straight out of a movie. And, as a matter of fact, it is!

Because Gapstow Bridge is so incredibly picturesque and unique, it’s no surprise that it is one of the most photographed places in all of Manhattan and has, of course, appeared in countless movie and television productions – many more so than I could ever account for here. But just to name a few . . .

The bridge, of course, appeared in an episode of the quintessential New York series Sex and the City. In the Season 6 episode which was entitled “Let There Be Light”, Carrie and new love Aleksandr Petrovsky sit and eat chocolates on a Central Park bench with the Gapstow Bridge in the background.

Gapstow Bridge was also the site of Nate and Blair’s reunion kiss in the Season 2 episode of Gossip Girl entitled “Remains of the J”. In the episode, Dorota mentions that the bridge is Blair’s favorite spot in all of New York. I knew there was a reason why she was my favorite GG character. 🙂

In Home Alone 2: Lost In New York, the bridge is the place where Kevin McCallister first encounters the Pigeon Lady.

It is also the spot where, on Christmas morning, Kevin gives her one of his turtle dove ornaments and tells her “I won’t forget you. Trust me.” I swear no matter how many times I see that scene, it always manages to bring a tear to my eye.

In the movie The Devil Wears Prada, the Runway Magazine “Urban Jungle” photo shoot takes place right in front of Gapstow Bridge. In the first screen capture pictured above, the camera is situated just above my bridge, facing South.

While visiting New York last December, my family and I happened to run into the production crew for the television series Rescue Me filming on my bridge! Unfortunately, they were just wrapping up when we got there, so we didn’t get to see any of the actual filming or any of the show’s stars.

According to one of the crew members, though, the scene involved two guest stars having a conversation right in front of the Gapstow Bridge. The above photograph shows one of the crew members removing the actors’ “marks” off of the pavement and thus denotes the exact spot where filming took place.

The day we happened upon the filming was an EXTREMELY cold winter day in New York. If I remember correctly, temperatures were a record low for that year. The poor crew members were freezing their buns off, especially when they had to remove their gloves in order to fiddle with something on a piece of equipment. I felt so bad for them, as they all looked absolutely miserable. 🙁 But, even in the extreme cold, they still could NOT have been nicer and answered all of my silly questions about the filming.

It’s a sad truth that most movie locations look better onscreen than they do in real life. It’s the magic of the camera and all the set dressing, I suppose, or the bigger than life quality that being in a movie gives to something that’s behind it. Gapstow Bridge is one of the rare exceptions to that rule. It’s even prettier and more picturesque in person than I’ve ever seen it come across onscreen and I can’t recommend stalking it enough!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Gapstow Bridge is located in the Southeast corner of Central Park in Manhattan. The best way to reach it is by entering the Park at the corner of Central Park South and Fifth Avenue and following the path that runs along the perimeter of the Pond.

October 6, 2009October 4, 2009

The Searching For Bobby Fischer Chess Park

One location that I have been wanting to stalk for years now is the park where child prodigy Josh Waitzkin (aka Max Pomeranc) and Vinnie (aka Laurence Fishburne) played chess in the 1993 movie Searching for Bobby Fischer. I actually thought I had found this location in Central Park during my very first trip to the Big Apple six years ago, but upon closer inspection after arriving home, realized I had stalked the wrong outdoor chess park. LOL It turns out that New York has quite a few of them. Then last year, thanks to fave New York stalking book Manhattan On Film: Walking Tours of Hollywood’s Fabled Front Lot, I finally found the right spot! And I was shocked to discover that Chess Table Alley, as it is more commonly known, is actually located in Washington Square Park, a place that I had visited numerous times on my many trips to New York! Ugh! I can be such an airhead sometimes! LOL

Not only has Searching for Bobby Fischer long been one of my family’s favorite movies, but chess has also long been one of our favorite games. I can’t say that any of us are especially good at it, but we love to play nonetheless. So, in 1993 when a film based on the life of real life child chess prodigy Josh Waitzkin premiered, you can bet we were some of the first in line to see it. Ever since that day, I’ve wanted to see, in person, the outdoor chess tables where Josh first perfected his game. And, during last years trip to New York, I finally got to do just that! Thanks to the movie, I had visions dancing in my head of the park being occupied by hundreds of chess geniuses hunkered over the cement tables, furiously punching timers and screaming out “Check mate!” to their opponents, but, in actuality, that’s not really the case.

When we got to Chess Table Alley, the tables were surprisingly empty – probably due to the fact that it was about three degrees below zero outside – and the place was startlingly quiet. LOL There honestly wasn’t a soul to be found or a chess player in sight! Nevertheless, it was still extremely exciting to be stalking the outdoor chess park. And, I am happy to report that it still looks very much the same in person as it did in the movie. The name “Chess Table Alley” is something of a misnomer, though. The outdoor chess park is actually set up in the shape of a semi-circle, not an alley, and, unfortunately, because of the way it is situated, I wasn’t able to snap a great photograph of the entire thing. But you can get an idea of what it looks like in the picture above.

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According to Wikipedia, not only did Stanley Kubrick play on the outdoor tables as a child, but Chess Table Alley was also featured in the 2002 movie Bad Company starring Chris Rock.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Searching for Bobby Fischer chess park, aka Chess Table Alley, is located in the Southwest corner of Washington Square Park, off MacDougal and West 4th Streets, in New York’s Greenwich Village.

October 2, 2009October 1, 2009

Cafe Luka

One of my very favorite places to grab a bite to eat in all of New York is a small restaurant located on Manhattan’s Upper East Side named Cafe Luka. The tiny, little cafe also just happens to be the spot where I ate my first ever New York meal on my first ever New York vacation just about four years ago. My family and I actually happened upon the restaurant quite accidentally one freezing cold morning in December of 2004. We had just taken the red-eye in from L.A. as my dad was scheduled to have surgery at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in the upcoming week. Because our plane was due to arrive at 5 O’clock in the morning, my mom had called our hotel at the last minute and added on what she thought was an extra day at the beginning of our trip. That way, as soon as we landed, we could go straight to the hotel and go to sleep. But, as fate would have it, what my mom actually booked was an extra night at the END of our stay. LOL Now you know where I get my air-headedness from. 🙂 So, there we were at 5 O’clock a.m., exhausted, hungry, and absolutely freezing in the middle of Manhattan with no place to go! Rather than hang out in the hotel lobby until they could get a room ready for us, we instead flagged down a cab-driver and asked him to take us to the nearest open restaurant. That restaurant just so happened to be Cafe Luka. When we arrived, the front door was unlocked, so my parents, my fiancé, and I walked right in and sat down at a booth. As we looked around at the empty seats, my mom said “I don’t think this place is open yet.” My dad, who has absolutely no inhibitions whatsoever, replied “I don’t care if it’s open or not. I’m about to curl up in that booth right there and take a nap.” LOL LOL LOL And curl up he did, right there in the middle of the empty restaurant! A few minutes later a busboy wandered out of the kitchen area, took one look at our motley crew and said “We don’t open for another 45 minutes, but you are welcome to sit here and get warm and I’ll bring you some coffee.” And they say New Yorkers are rude! Well, that was it for us! We had found our new favorite restaurant! 🙂 My family and I went back for breakfast pretty much every morning during that trip and got to know Cafe Luka’s two owners, Jon and Marc, pretty well. Flash forward to a year later during our next trip to the Big Apple. After landing in NYC, at 5 a.m. yet again, my parents headed to our hotel room – which my mom had managed to book correctly this time – to get some sleep, while my boyfriend and I headed to Cafe Luka for some coffee. When we walked in, Jon greeted us BY NAME and then said “How’s your dad doing?” Well, let me tell you, I almost fell on the floor! I could NOT believe that this guy that we had met so briefly an entire year beforehand not only remembered us, but also recalled our names and the fact that my dad had had surgery! My fiancé, ever the pessimist, said to me “OF COURSE he remembers us! Your dad curled up in one of his empty booths and took a nap!!!!!” LOL LOL LOL Even had my dad not done that, though, I’m pretty sure Jon would have still remembered us. He just seems like that kind of guy. Since that visit we’ve become regular patrons of Cafe Luka, and its sister restaurant Fratelli Brick Oven Pizza, usually eating there several times during our New York vacations. And, without fail, Jon and Marc remember us by name on every single visit! And this review of the restaurant on Insider Pages let me know that we haven’t been alone in our experiences there.

So, last year when we stopped into Cafe Luka for our traditional first-morning-in-New-York-breakfast and Jon asked what we had been up to, I, of course, told him about my blog. My dad piped up and said “Hey, you should write about this place.” To which I replied, “That’s a good idea, but have any celebrities ever eaten here?” Jon laughed and said that he had heard buzzings about celebs every now and again, but had no idea which stars in particular had actually dropped by. That’s the difference between L.A. and New York – while Angelinos pretend they are too cool to care about celebrities, New Yorkers actually are too cool – or too busy, for that matter – to care. LOL Anyway, Jon told me that several New York sports stars stop in to eat at the cafe on a regular basis, but I couldn’t tell you specifically who, as I pretty much tune out whenever people start talking sports to me. 🙂 But my ears did perk up when he mentioned that Conan O’Brien stops in to Cafe Luka every morning for a cup of coffee and that Eric Roberts dined next door at Fratelli with some fellow actors shortly after it opened last year. Of course, Jon didn’t know either Conan or Eric by name – he referred to Eric Roberts as the actor with the really famous sister who has curly hair and to Conan as the red-headed comic with a TV show LOL – so I had to play a bit of a guessing game to figure out who he was talking about. Anyway, I decided that if Cafe Luka is good enough for Conan O’Brien and Eric Roberts, it’s definitely good enough for my blog. 🙂

And while I’ve never spotted Conan grabbing his daily cup of coffee while eating at Cafe Luka, I honestly can’t recommend stalking the place enough. Besides the great service (that’s me and owner Marc pictured above), they also serve up some of the BEST chicken strips, mashed potatoes, and chicken noodle soup that I’ve ever tasted! What can I say? I am WAY into comfort food. 🙂 Their sister restaurant, Fratelli, which is located right next door, is equally as tasty! Especially the pizza!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Cafe Luka is located at 1319 1st Avenue #A on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Their sister restaurant, Fratelli Brick Oven Pizza, is located right next door at 1317 1st Avenue.