Fodor's 89 [antikvár]

FOREWORD Of all the wonders of New York, the greatest is its status as an open city. It has no boundaries, no frontiers, no lines of demarcation. So you want to be a New Yorker? Consider yourself one and you are one. Because New York is a city-state of mind, its possibilities are iníinite. Creativity, in the árts, in business, in virtually every field of humán endeavor, flows from this openness. Nothing surprises us here. Everything changes. Somé people have pictured New York as harsh and callous. Not true. It is clear-eyed and tolerant. The bigness and business of all the world' s diversity compressed in one place can be unnerving. There are even natives who venture into unfamiliar precincts with a sense of trepidation. This is a shame, and an unnecessary shame. New York is meant to awaken the sense of adventure in every heart. Take art. No visitor should miss the encyclopedic marvei s of the Metropoli-tian Museum of Art and the breathtaking pleasures of the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA to you and me). But is there a better way to feel at home with the beauty of great art than getting to know the mansion that houses the Frick Col-lection? And what about the exotic rewards of the sumptuous collection of Tibetan art found in a modest house and garden on Staten Island? Take music. Of course, there is the grandest of grand opera. And a dizzying array of orchestras and groups and performers. But there is alsó the most modern of modern jazz in this club or that. There are cocktail lounge smoothies. There is a revivified folk music scene in Greenwich Village. There are punks and performance artists and piccolo players. As Leonard Cohen wrote, "There is music on Clinton Street. . ." and, it seems, on every Street. Take theater. Every time somebody starts to write "Broadway is dead," it comes alive with a burst of innovation and high-energy entertainment. But in New York, theater alsó means revisionist Shakespeare Off-Broadway, the un-known playwright experimenting Off-Off-Broadway, a new combination of music and dance and words and sounds and movement and backdrops in a SoHo loft. In New York, a painter can experience the frenzy of the New York Stock Exchange trading floor from the viewing gallery. A stockbroker can learn to sculpt at the Art Students League. Both—and everyone else—can stalk birds in the marshlands of the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge in Queens. Use this guidebook to pick up the trails and open the doors. And then use your senses to discover the rest. Walk streets that are unlike any other streets in the world. Absorb the energy. Visit George Washingtont pew at St. Paul's Chapel and reflect on New York* s role as the nation's first capital. Admire the Statue of Liberty, but don't forget Ellis Island, gateway to the füture for most of our forebears. Gazé on the mighty Palisades of the Hudson River from the bluffs of Riverdale in the Bronx. Savor harbor and skyline from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. Is there a greater úrban view anywhere? There is too much to do and too much to take in. It is a life's work. That's why there's no such thing as staying too long in New York. You simply move faster, talk quicker, and speed up your way of thinking. It may seem daunting at first, but remember the saving grace: Wherever you come from, you are home in New York. Mayor Edward I. Koch